Keeping mostly to oneself, even if traveling and dealing with matters and being involved in a profilic business, is one was of being out of the public eye.
Hence, I'm not a BNF, nor do I claim to have any affiliation outside of Hermes or the Principia Universalis.
And _every_ Fan can claim the Principia Universalis. That's kind of, you know, the whole _point_ the thing was conceptualized because of.
Officially.
It's why I can come and go as I please most of the time, even _with_ Trigon's irritating habit of making those visits stand out more than they would have normally.
Anonymity works, I do enjoy my peace and quiet, and whenever I do take care of some business other than the occasional delivery when nobody else is there to do the job ...
... well, it's usually less a case of who you're known as, than it is a case of who you know.
Vide, case study, Nikodemus Fargo, as of a few years ago, Nikodemus Riddle. For obvious reasons.
The first Fan to set foot on Jupiter, make some preliminary planning, then shove some conceptual work on the Warsies and Whedonites, and ever since then better known under the moniker that would likely plague him past his dying day.
The Jovian Lizard.
"Scales."
"Wah!"
He was a little blue around the gills, but since he's pretty much blue all over these days after Yin (or was it Yang? They're still debating that.) switched the dip on us back when, I didn't figure he was too badly affected.
Besides, he's worked with me, on and off, for the past couple of years. He's pretty much used to this sort of thing.
"You enjoy doing that way too much, Kay," he said after picking himself back up. "How the hell did you get in here, anyway?"
By 'in here', he meant his office. Back of the Asteroid Blues combination Blues/Jazz bar with a nifty little themeset that's halfway between Cowboy Bebop and film noir. It's got everything, even a Corgi.
"Like everybody else, I used the door," because, yeah, he's a people person in a way I can never quite manage, but he also gets as preoccupied with his business reports that he makes this sort of thing too easy. "Wasn't really expecting you to be in here, though."
He gave me a look that cleary said 'right, who're you kidding'.
"Tomorrow, maybe," he finally shrugged, leaning back into the recliner while I planted myself onto the couch standing beside one of the faux-wood-panel walls. "We're still juggling schedules for the music acts."
That's another reason I respect the guy. He's a talented wrangler and talker, yeah, but he's also got enough damn side projects going that he's also got a killer workload.
Of course, the damn masochist wouldn't have it any other way, or so I suspect. He gets a lot of kicks from playing puppeteer.
"So, what're you in for?"
"What, I can't visit out of the goodness of my heart?"
"The goodness of your heart is blonde, female, and currently not in evidence, Kay. Besides, last time you saw I was this deep in paperwork you just left a note and dropped by the next day. Try again."
Ah. The foibles of somebody getting to know you.
"Well, I think I'll need some legalese in a bit. We might want to dust off that old Space Exploration Bureau file."
"Oh, swell," Scales groaned, and massaged his temples. "Wouldn't happen to have anything to do with what's been coming out of the Belt, would it?"
"I don't know, would it? Nothing you've sent me say we lost anyone."
"Because, statistically speaking, we've been having a spell of good luck where that's concerned," he gave me the Evil Eye. "Doesn't mean we don't hear things. We got rumors, ideas, and then the damn Jossies decided to go and tag it as Reavers."
Scales has more ins with the Whedonites than he does with the Warsies, and more with the Warsies than he does with the Trekkies, but he pretty much does well enough by all of them so when he says 'rumors' ...
"Yeah, well, I've heard some interesting things too," I gave him my best gallic shrug. "Pretty recently, but I thought, might as well set something up to have a framework for ... whatever ... in place. Then I remembered the Bureau is still filed."
"It's been gathering dust for the past year," he snipped. "On hiatus, and I was about to scrap it in a bit. Most of the data we ship on the side is stuff the couriers and transporters pick up on their runs anyway."
Point. If you have that anyway, what's the immediate point of having a dedicated branch?
The framework _was_ there though.
So, why not make precautions, and maybe, just maybe, try and get something out of it if need be?
Because, hey, Jovian Lizards!
Also, SEBureau was too bad a pun to abandon, especially with his dabbling with coilguns. That's my inner Shirow geek talking.
-Griever
When tact is required, use brute force. When force is required, use greater force.
When the greatest force is required, use your head. Surprise is everything. - The Book of Cataclysm