This morning was certainly an interesting one! I decided that my first port of call in Eldran needed to be the Alignment Liaison Office, I have to see if I can get answers about why the Skein Access in Bern is so strange and why messages are taking so long to get through, it is fairly remote out there and we rely on the Skein for information flows and our livelihoods!

I went the long way around to find the office, because I wanted to take the opportunity to look around the streets of Eldran

Similar to last night, some of the streets felt a little subdued. There were small groups of people having hushed conversations in some areas while in others there were heated discussions about deliveries not arriving when they should and supplies of some goods being limited. This is not the bustling smooth running Eldran I remember. but as I said it is a long while since I have been here so I could be mis remembering. I will have to take the time to chat to people later on and see if I can get a better idea of how things have changed.

One thing I was pleased to see were some of the Aethri on the streets, they were obviously residents but they seemed a little distant from the groups of humans. To be honest, I don’t really know many Aethri very well but the ones I have met and talked to seemed interesting. I’d really like to get to know more about the way they interact with the world and with the Res!

I arrived at the Alignment Liaison office mid morning and the office was quieter than I was expecting, there was just one other person waiting who said they were also a Skein-Wright from a village just outside Eldran. They were there because their School’s Skein access points had been showing the children nothing but weather reports and holos of ducks since they installed the new standard mesh patches. I hope they can get that sorted out!

The Alignment Liaison office, like the other places with new fibres felt prickly and strained to me. The new standardised fibres and skein tech in the office were so uniform and so regimented, a little part of me wanted to mix them all up when the official wasn’t looking.

I started out asking about the directive to use new fibres rather than the organic grown ones for future skein access points and res tech. I wanted to understand how the new fibres interfaced with the natural ones, and if there was a mismatch that might be causing the message anomalies in Bern.

The Alignment Official, Agent Corin Hale, quite patiently explained to me that the new fibres were considered upgrades to the system and they were going to ensure a uniform and coherent flow of information to all of the remote hamlets. (remote hamlet! honestly it is not that far out of Lethran!)

I did mention that this might be the aim but the reality is not happening that way, he eventually told me that Bern itself along with the other outlying villages would eventually be served by a new more centralised Skein Hub but until then he would send the Lethran Skein-Wrights a memo and get them to add structure to the tech in the area. It sounds very official but it remains to be seen if it will help

Agent Hale became slightly less certain when I told him about the worrying developments in Brae Wood, the ancient natural relay grove that seemed to be dying and the artificial mesh patches that had been spliced in. His conclusion was that the patches were designed to revive the grove, and were ultimately going to stabilise the situation. I am not sure that is what was happening, but I kept that observation to myself for now, along with the prickly feeling that I get when around this new infrastructure.

All in all he seemed to have some very official answers and was very sure that stabilisation and enhanced coherence between cities and outlying areas was going to be a great improvement. He had several pamphlets and documents from the Ministry explaining how this was going to bring a new era of harmony. Interestingly, I don’t remember there being a great deal of disharmony, things have been changing for a while, but I am becoming less convinced that this is the solution.