/tags/challege/Recent content in Challege on Gromet's Plaza ArchiveHugoen-usMon, 14 May 2018 00:00:00 +0000/stories/2018/05/14/together-we-are-stronger/Mon, 14 May 2018 00:00:00 +0000/stories/2018/05/14/together-we-are-stronger/<p><strong>Chapter 1: Wants and Needs</strong> By AmyAmy, based on an idea by John Hynden</p> <p><strong>July 2022</strong></p> <p>Maeve plugged Brian’s USB stick into her laptop. She waited for the icon to show up, clicking the refresh button repeatedly. When the drive appeared, the bar said ninety-five percent full. That couldn’t be right. Brian had said the drive was empty, so he must have given her the wrong stick.</p> <p>She clicked it open and her computer stopped responding. She made a small angry noise. The cursor span, so it hadn’t crashed, or probably hadn’t crashed. Waiting. Waiting. How long could it take? Then, at last, the window filled with image files. The names were jumbles of odd characters and numbers. She scrolled down. A few of the files had something she could recognize, sometimes, women’s names with numbers on the end, sometimes cryptic words or phrases like <em>clear</em>, <em>walk</em> or <em>wetrubber</em>.</p>