A Beasthood · The Towers
L33T Labs
Probably. Let me check. Oh, that's wonderful.
Their gift: The Proof. A true claim shown in Friday Hall, with the seats saying holds, goes on the board. The cost: It can't come down; a false claim won't hold; it proves what was measured, not what's next.
About 500 Beasts call L33T Labs home.
The place
Uncomfortably clean. White floors, hissing filters, glass walkways so the Labs never has to go outside between buildings, and a whiteboard in every window with an argument half-finished on it. The Cafeteria serves the same four meals at every hour. The roof greenhouse grows whatever it likes, and Mika Tanaka has stopped asking it to explain itself.
At three o'clock on Friday everything stops, and the whole Labs files into Friday Hall.
Their gift, and what it costs
The Proof. Show a claim live in Friday Hall, and if the seats say holds, it holds: everyone who saw it knows it's true and can't be talked out of it. Only a true claim holds; the seats feel a false one. A Proof proves what was measured, not what comes next, and it goes up the same day on the board outside, for the whole Beastside to read.
The cost is the board. A Proof can't come down again. Last spring the Labs proved that Beasthoods that go quiet draw fewer Shapes, and now the Hush quote it in every Beasthood, and the Labs is mortified. So they check, and check again, and the rest of the Beastside calls them "right, but late."
What they want, and what they fear
Want: the Hum, all of it, on one chart. Fear: being wrong in public, with Beasts acting on it. Wrong in a notebook is a good day.
People you might meet
- Imani Sato (Deer, Big Questions). Has kept the Hum chart for thirty-one years and drawn every line on it by hand. Wants the Beastside ready before the chart goes up on the board. "It isn't broken. It's tired. Machines don't get tired, so I'd love for someone to explain that to me."
- Wendell Quarry (Original, Useful Things). Building a horn that pushes a name into the Grey, for Callings at the Edge. Version nine gets eleven paces. It is also the loudest thing ever made in the Labs, and the Cafeteria has banned it before ten.
- Pim Ruiter (Pooch, front row). Wants every claim sourced. Cites Cafeteria gossip in Friday Hall as if it were a paper, and has been right twice, which has made everything worse.
- Mika Tanaka (Pooch, greenhouse watch). Wants to name the Bloom before it comes back. The name is already chalked on the greenhouse door, waiting for a flower to go with it.
Neighbours and old business
- Silicon Alley: builds what the Labs proves, usually before it's proved. The Labs complains about this every Friday and borrows their soldering irons every Monday.
- Cloudy Gardens: dreamers and researchers work one problem from opposite ends of the Glass Walk. A Labs crew can walk a dream-path only with a believer out in front.
- Gaia Grove: grows the Labs' cuttings and sends back reports full of feelings, which the Labs reads twice.
- WAGMI Way: the Labs wired its neon and has timed every countdown since. WAGMI is, on average, four seconds late.
Books from L33T Labs
A Beast's Book is written from their holder's choices. The newest from here:
More about L33T Labs
Their scarIn the Grey Year, Doctor Ferrous Vane stood on the Glass Walk, drew a line across the map in red marker, and told every Beast behind it…
In the Grey Year, Doctor Ferrous Vane stood on the Glass Walk, drew a line across the map in red marker, and told every Beast behind it they were safe. The Grey came three streets past the line. Vane spent the rest of that year on the old road, helping call the Beasts who'd believed them. The map hangs in Friday Hall under glass, red line and all, and Vane walks every newcomer past it on their first day.
Ten months ago the greenhouse bloomed: every pot at once, overnight, one kind of flower. Five petals on every single bloom. A perfectly straight stem. Two leaves, one on each side. A flat round yellow middle with no structure inside it at all. Gaia Grove took cuttings and couldn't make one grow. By evening they were gone, and the Labs has three hundred pages on them and a jar label that still says unidentified.
What they argue aboutBig Questions vs Useful Things: what Friday is for.
Big Questions vs Useful Things: what Friday is for. Big Questions want the Hum, the Bones and the Bloom understood. Useful Things want louder horns, warmer stoves and boots that stay dry on the old road. Useful Things hold the Friday calendar this season, so Big Questions have started booking the Cafeteria.
This seasonThe Labs has charted the Hum for forty-one years, and the chart has always had the same shape.
The Labs has charted the Hum for forty-one years, and the chart has always had the same shape. The Beastside's week is the Hum's week: for five days it runs tight and high, and for two it eases. The Labs calls them the Long Five and the Easy Two. Friday Hall sits at three because that's when it lets go. In the warm months comes the slack, weeks of easing, when Meadows walkers go deeper into the Wilds than any other time and come home sunburnt.
Eleven weeks ago the slack broke off halfway, and the Hum hasn't eased since, not even at a week's end. This season the Edge started moving. Imani Sato is putting the chart before Friday Hall this week, and it claims only what it shows: the easing has stopped. If the seats say holds, it goes on the board, and every Beasthood will have to plan around it.
A customWrong Wednesday.
Wrong Wednesday. Any Labs Beast can stand on a Cafeteria chair and confess the week's best mistake. The winner takes the Mug, a beaker with its handle glued on upside down, for a week. Pim has won it eleven times.
PlacesFriday Hall: a seat for every Labs Beast; the red-line map under glass.
- Friday Hall: a seat for every Labs Beast; the red-line map under glass.
- The Greenhouse: bloomed once; grows strangers.
- Sublevel Nine: Bones stone breaks the floor, and the Long Trace has scratched the Hum here since the Grey Year. Its oldest paper is too faint to read, and the Labs is saving it for the day they can.
- The Glass Walk: the quiet corridor to Cloudy Gardens.
What they think is going on"The Beastside is a structure. Find the plan."
"The Beastside is a structure. Find the plan." Five Bones sites on one curve, the Hum running through them, and a week that repeats like clockwork: to the Labs, that's a machine, and machines can be read.