xp_logs | Envoy: Lost Generations, prologue (Nathan, Angelo)

Nathan looks into precisely what was fishy about Cambodia, and finds some puzzling numbers involving the mutant birth rate. He and Angelo decide to look into it further.

In the end, he'd gone out to the nearest stationery store and come back with several boxes of colored stick-pins. The blown-up map of Southeast Asia was now pinned to a makeshift bulletin board on his office wall, and he was adding one colored stick pin for every report. There was definitely a trend going on. Cambodia, Laos, Vietnam... once he finished he could cross-reference them with medical NGO activity...

He was still adding stick pins when Angelo arrived, pausing in the doorway to watch for a minute. "What's that mean?"

Nathan looked around at him. "I noticed something odd," he said. "Mutant birth rate, or at least the reported mutant birth rate, is way down in these three countries."

Angelo frowned slightly, moving forward. "So... what? You think somethin's happenin' to the babies?"

"Okay, going from zero to mass infanticide in five seconds is probably a little over-paranoid," Nathan said, raising an eyebrow at him. "But... I think there might be something. Unless it's a statistical anomaly. Which it could be. It's not as if the mutant birth rate is the most predictable thing in the world..." He frowned, then stuck another blue pin in. "So I'm cross-referencing reports of mutant births. Where, when, how they were delivered, who did the delivering. And I just needed a visual representation..."

"I didn't say mass infanticide", Angelo objected. "I said 'somethin'. Could just mean they aren't bein' reported."

"Mmph," Nathan said, then gave Angelo a very sheepish little smile. "Sorry. Maybe I'm the one who's being overparanoid." He laughed ruefully, leaning back against the edge of his desk. "My uncle is wandering Southeast Asia drowning mutant babies. Right. Of course."

Angelo wasn't sure what to say to that, so he just wandered into the room and perched on a desk. "So. What'd you need me to do?"

"Blue, red, green," Nathan said, then rattled off the acronyms for three of the regional medical NGOs that worked in the rural areas. "Get in touch with their information offices, get me more documentation. All of this information I've got now is coming from WHO. I want it from the horse's mouth."

Angelo nodded, taking mental notes. "Sure, can do."

Nathan tilted his head sideways, regarding the map. White for mutant births, with the color-coding for whose clinics they were delivered in... "Got to be something going on here," he muttered. "I'm no math major but there's something not right about these statistics."

Angelo peered at the map too. "What's wrong about them?"

"They're skewed," Nathan said, sounding frustrated. "I'm almost positive they're skewed. I need more information."

Angelo nodded. "Another trip?"

"No, this we can do from here, at least for now. I think." Nathan finally set the box of stick pins down, scowling at the map. "I don't like it when I'm thwarted by numbers," he grumbled.

Angelo grinned slightly. "Yeah, we all know you an' the numbers don't get along."

Nathan raised an eyebrow, but couldn't quite repress a smile. "Oh, so you think you have me figured, do you?" It really was a terrible pun.

Angelo snickered. "Nate, that was really bad."

"You tease, I retaliate with bad puns. I think that works rather well, all in all."