CRive: -egin transcription, meeting with Dylan Amaranth 7 Silmonth 433 at where did I put my watch-
DAmar: It's two seventeen.
CRive: Here it is, two eighteen thank you. Stupid machine, bunch of tin and wheels and it wears through quills like the worst novice I've ever seen, but it's useful. Think about it, never having to, ah, you know when you get a quote but you can never remember just how exactly it was said.
DAmar: Most people don't sound all that good out of their own mouths, do they?
CRive: I need a favor. I'd like an article from you.
DAmar: I'm a reporter. You're my editor. That's not a favor, that's a job.
CRive: I'd like you to, eh, introduce the Shift to our readers.
DAmar: Introduce?
CRive: Introduce.
DAmar: It's the Shift, Clare. Does it need an introduction? We fought a war there ten years ago.
CRive: I remember.
DAmar: Fifty, maybe sixty thousand people died in Hill City alone, more in the other settled worlds. Not to mention the Tosh.
CRive: Ten years ago is forever. Ask most of our readers how a bank works and they say it's a box where you put your money and it gets bigger. One generation in the city and they forget how to skin a buffalo, saddle a horse, shoot a bow. They don't know how things work, and you're losing them.
DAmar: I expect them to have some basic knowledge of how the world works. I'm not the school system, Clare. I can't travel-book the Shift in ten inches or less.
CRive: Try.
DAmar: That sounds a lot like an order.
CRive: Try, and the next time you come to me with a proposal for some six-month-long plunge into the deep sand that will most likely get you killed, I'll fight for it all the way to the board. I can get you funding. I can get you a leave of absence. I can get you space. Just do this little thing for me.
DAmar: Twenty inches.
CRive: Fifteen. You can make it stick.
DAmar: Fine.
