"I haven't met any of my alts personally, but by hearsay they have other projects too."

"I have a bit of a troublesome situation. A sounding board-slash-consultant who's interdimensionally verified as probably pretty clever could be helpful. 'Rates negotiable'. What do you usually ask for?"

"Depends on what you want. Money's always good, Bar changes it easy as pie no matter what kind you have. Magic items are good too, and tech if I can maintain it at home or it's durable enough."

"No magic, we're a tech-world. I have an electric multitool - solar charging. But money is fine, depending on how much you want."

"Mm, what's the multitool do?"

"Hotknife, electric lighter, fairly strong flashlight, liquid metal screwdriver that does any kind of screw, surface disinfector - don't use it on cuts, though, more harm than good - a switchable magnet, adjustable laser, and an adhesive applicator, though you do have to do refills if you use it much."

"What's it do to cuts?"

"Stops it from closing as well and stings really bad."

"...safe on whole skin before a cut or puncture?"

"Yes, safe on closed skin. It's meant for surfaces, though? Mostly you use it on tables and door handles if you're a hypochondriac or in a medical lab."

"Gotcha. I live in an impoverished area and don't necessarily have skin-safe antiseptic around, is all. How much adhesive?"

"Not a lot. Just about enough to patch a half dozen leaks in a pressure suit. It's good stuff, though, when I had to use it for that. And I can give you the refill capsule it came with."

"All right, that'll do for a medium-small problem, how complicated is it?"

"Political unrest... And an extremist group that might be willing to do a lot of damage for their goals. Environmentalists who want everyone to change their habits or else to get off the planet. I don't care either way about their issue, I want to protect my infrastructure. The trouble is that there's a single point of failure. My stargate is the only way to go between this planet and the rest of the connected systems. A very obvious target."

"How's the stargate work - practically speaking, I don't need the schematics."

"It's a large space station. If we keep the power on, you can pass a ship through the central ring and end up in Jupiter orbit. As long as the other side is working too, that is. They're paired, if either end is destroyed the other is useless."

"How's it fueled? Do you control both ends?"

"My organization controls both ends, yes. Supplies and repairs from the Sol end won't be a problem. Hydrogen and helium three powers it - luckily enough, those things are mined on Cloudbank. Er, that's the planet."

"Which side do the environmentalists want to be on?"

"Cloudbank. There's native life."

"And they want people doing what to protect it -"

"Not hunting, not mining, not building things. No more shuttles going up and down outside of narrow lanes, they're loud enough to kill certain creatures outright. Not contaminating the place, generally."

"That sounds like it would make it impossible to be there at all, why would the environmentalists want to be on that side when the stargate closed?"

"Coexisting with a nature that's never known humanity, I suppose. That's the most hardline stance on it, though - and they don't want the gate to close, necessarily. The ones that do think we never should have come there at all. It's not a well unified movement. Messy."

"How much would they need to coordinate to blow something up?"

"Probably a lot. They'd need to suborn or tie up the security fleet and have a lot of money. Or sneak a sympathizer onto my station staff, which doesn't need as much unity but I think is less likely to work."

"Why less likely?"

"We have a vetting process, and anti-hacking features and other things like that."

"Nobody's on the station who doesn't work for you?"

"No, except when we get supply deliveries twice a month."

"What's security like on those?"

"Drones load everything off the delivery ship and into the loading bay, and two of the technicians count and inspect it all. Locked doors on the bay until inspection is done. There's sensors to check for stowaways, rogue drones, and so on. Inspection usually takes a full shift."

"Sounds like you have made it pretty hard to blow up your stargate. Are you worried something else will happen?"

"Worried it'll get attacked anyway. I'm under pressure to drop security - it's rather expensive. Worried the environmentalists will convince one of my current employees to help them, or already have. Worried they can make enough of a political bloc to make my superiors replace me - we are a democracy."

"You don't think your vetting process could catch people who'd be convinceable?"

"It's just a c-level because it's not a really glamorous job and we have too few candidates to keep denying some. Not exactly top secret military levels of scrutiny. And we're limited by law to how deep we can dig into their pasts."

"So it's more of a background thing than a personality thing anyway."

"Yes, more of a background check."

"Yeah, I'd definitely worry about sabotage from inside one way or the other if the environmentalists have that much traction - it's surprising to me that they do -"

"I think we attracted all the environmentalists from a dozen worlds. There's a lot of tourism and research, even if fuel mining is still the most profitable human activity on Cloudbank."

"Would you be able to fix things if sabotaged?"

"Depends on what's hit. Main reactor - no. Not unless we cannibalize a ship and open up the whole station and it'd be a huge deal and take years. If we could even do it at all. If both our discontinuities get hit, literally nothing will fix it ever. Most of the rest, probably fixable."

"Are the environmentalists looking to make a point or practically cut off traffic?"

"Well, that's a bit complicated. This is speculation on my part. I think mostly they want to make a point. But they think they don't get taken seriously by out-system representatives - Cloudbank's population is low enough it doesn't have its own government. And governments move slowly, and the public masses don't always see the big picture and there's a history of government injustice so they get frothing mad when they're told 'we're working on it' or 'this is for the best, trust us'. So they don't want to appear to only be trying to make a point, they want to be taken utterly seriously, so they have to actually threaten to destroy mining ships and actually go out and try to ram hunting vessels going after whales, actually hack into GPS systems and so on, to feel like they're getting anything done. It's stupid and destructive and kind of unavoidable in modern society."

"Could you channel their complaints some way that makes them feel like you're paying attention? Run ads where you read letters from environmentalists and talk about what's being done and nonviolent steps they could take?"

"That... Could work. It might backfire if more people criticize it than approve... But then they'd be discussing, not being violent, at least. Progressives would say I'm pandering to a vocal minority... It would be politically risky, but doing nothing is probably just as risky."

"Yeah, I'm afraid I don't have a version of the advice package that comes with a warranty."

"Few things can be truly taken back, I understand. Risk is in everything."

"Yeah."

"So. Get to know my employees better, watch out for them feeling angry and discontent and being inclined to side with the environmentalists. And run a media campaign to try and show that the government is taking their concerns seriously, so their energy goes into talk and not shows of force. If I can, actual policy changes would help. "

"Yeah, that's what I've got from what you gave me."

"Hm. Mind if I ramble off a little more context, to see if that changes anything?"

"Sure."

"There's some political deadlock between three major parties. Two of them have strong opinions on environments on all planets, Progressives anti-environmentalist and Formers pro-environmentalist. The Progressives have the most power for now. I suspect the Formers might be bankrolling some of the most troublesome environmentalists. No easy way to prove or disprove it, but if so it might be easier for them to get the resources for major damage. Cloudbank's native life is utterly unique and has already suffered quite a lot, there's hundreds of gorey pictures of butchering circulating on the web, hundreds of species have been driven extinct and the galactic gene-engineering ban means we won't be getting them back any time soon. It's also an - air planet. The surface is violently volcanic, but the atmosphere is very thick, so everything is literally up in the air. This makes infrastructure in the traditional sense utterly impossible, so the locals have a culture of self-reliance. I'm not sure if any of that changes things, but I can't think of anything else that's likely relevant and also quick to explain."

"- Bar won't sell living things but she can probably sell things that would help, depending on your budget, if you wanted to talk to her about what those things might be. I don't think that includes gene samples but it might include something to grow organisms from gene samples in, if that wouldn't count as circumventing the ban. What does the third party think?"

"Worth looking into for sure. The third party mostly cares about personal rights and freedoms, and is at odds with the Formers more than the Progressives but isn't exactly friendly with either. I expect they'll want to take advantage of this whole fracas to gain ground."

"Where do the parties get their money?"

"Complicated - boils down to donations from individuals and corporations. Mostly corporations."

"What corporations like the Formers?"

"Service industries, agriculturals and bioengineering firms. And the terraforming megaconglomorate, called Gaia."

"...the motivations for those industries to like the environmentalists is not obvious to me."

"Nor to me! They do get more of their money from citizens than the other two, though. I think."

"Do you have evidence that they're funding the environmentalists and that the environmentalists might want to terrorize your stargate that you could show their donors?"

"I have weak evidence for the funding. That they might want to terrorize the gate, certainly. That they might actually manage it, not yet, but we're on the lookout."

"What's the weak funding evidence -?"

"Some shenanigans with financial instruments and investment payouts, plus offhand comments made by one company's CEO that imply it."

"So if they had one or two big donors you could share it with them convincingly, maybe, but it'd be a hassle to do it for everybody?"

"Yes - they've covered their tracks quite well, I'm not even positive it's really happening but it certainly seems so."

"Well, mind you don't do anything that would be a horrible idea if you were wrong till you're real sure."

"Quite. Alright, I don't think we can figure out anything else useful without some hours of explanation and context. It was good just to discuss it with someone who doesn't have the context, though. Perspective."

"Happy to help!"

He produces the multitool, a short, nearly pitch-black metal rod. "The multitool. I don't think it'll break if you drop it or something, but don't treat it too roughly. Here's the refill capsule... And here's five credits on top."

"Thanks! Is there a manual - even if you don't have it on you Bar will -"

"Aha. There should be..." He gives the model name.

"Thank you!"

"Good luck with your advice business and thanks for helping reduce the admittedly slim risk of a significant disaster."

Off he goes, to read some interesting things and talk to a few more interesting people. Five credits, it turns out, is enough for at least one full day's cheap-ish food.

Excellent.