Work Text:
It's like a conference. Only bigger, and the professionals are fans; eager for a place to stay---a place free from take-downs (most definitely; the home just happens to fly) and writs. Not even the anti-aircraft guns of the enemy can reach this time. A song of "nobody can touch us here", and invites are free-flowing; ask and ye shall receive.
Samvara pilots the ship, docking for the first time. Her voice booms out over the landscape; "the Archive is open, open, open, and we are boarding". Of course, there is fine print --- 30 per hour. The crew look out the windows, stunned, at the number of boarders, and the future boarders; their work is very much wanted.
A tiny ground team is working though. Working the long, long hours, trying to stem a flow of patients and their ailments. The Archive wouldn't be fan made without a few fangs. The girls are grimy, blood-stained, their uniforms no longer neat, it's mind-wrecking work, and the users keep coming, bypassing the Known Issues station and going straight to reception. Warnings, wuzzle-tags, chapters, and pseuds; the team sends out generic treatments (oh, the irony: they struggled to get them writen during planning) in the first week alone.
Fifty one new bugs appear. Then it's fifty new ones, and thirty four more. It's not exactly an epidemic; in this case, our WHO was alert and knew. Cesy, Zooey, Cal, and Amy look on with fear; asking "just how many more can there be?"
"The Archive can't have that many virii...Can it?" By this point; Amy is looking to her crew with the eyes of one who has seen too much, too quickly. "We disinfected! Goddamnit, we even vaccinated our original boarders --- can't they confer herd immunity to niggles?"
She's close to hysterics. Zooey puts her hand on her shoulder, and lays it all down: "We made the choice to branch out, to expand, and it's making our Archive stronger, resilient, a metaphorical rock in a moving world. People will see this, and look at our responses; our responses that emphasise just what our world needs."
Amy seems to take charge on that note, with a documented order not to interact with the wanksters unless it is to politely correct them yes, we had problems with our care in the past and we're under new administration that gives everybody the treatment they need. It turns out, later, that even that is contamination,
It seems to work. Days later, when her breath is back, she'll be grateful for Zooey's intervention. She'll celebrate with her team, and organise new additions to the crew. The team know that there'll be a time to catch up, tidy up; they look out of the glass panes with the same certainty that made Open Beta possible.