Dieseldamned

Many, many ideas swirl through your head. You are something of a dreamer – it’s a very familiar feeling. However, as you try to concentrate on the questions before you and focus, everything becomes much clearer.

socialResolutionary isn’t really as powerful as they sound. At least, as far as you know. However, they were appointed to organise your group and clearly have some sort of higher connections within the Warsaw Pact. There was a letter that was delivered to you, along with the computer: some nebulous ‘contest’ appointed you to be part of a team of kids. For what exact task? That remained classified. They granted you access to top of the line computer hardware and insisted that you become familiar with it, but apart from that? Many details, such as the identity of your team-mates, remains a mystery.

But you do know yourself, I suppose. Mostly.

Your name is Grzegorz Kowalczyk, your age is 15 and the year is 1968.
You know that your parents were farmers, as were their parents, and those before them. They don’t tell you much about your grandparents for some reason, but there’s probably some good reasons why. You are the first member of your family with a proper education. And with luck, you won’t have to follow the footsteps of your forebears. You prefer your coffee dark and strong enough to make your best (and only) friend shake like a jackhammer, enjoy gardening (especially bright-coloured flowers) and have something of a talent for maths, despite neglecting to explore it in any real detail. The latter is probably what led to your recruitment.

You also know that you aren’t as normal as you wish you were.

You have central heterochromia; your eyes are green with a darker brown ‘ring’ in the centre. You are taller and lean – somewhere in the vicinity of 1.8 metres, though not so tall as to be blackmailed‘offered’ entry into the state basketball programs. You aren't strong, but you think you can hold your own and know how to hunt, even if you dislike it intensely. Living in a Warsaw school away from your parents thanks to the project, you're a long way from the southern mountains your family call home. Misiu, your pet sheepdog is part-wolf, but you aren’t sure which part. She’s lovelier than any wolves you’ve seen and her woolly coat has an odd yellowy-cream colour to it. She does have a habit of getting angry when she thinks you’re being threatened, though you’ve managed to avoid biting any unfortunate accidents thus far. But only just. You really wish you could train and exercise her more - she's trapped here with you, since you absolutely REFUSED to weave without her.

Music is your second most cherished love after Misiu, but your tastes in music and dance are taboo; Western ‘black music’; the soul, rhythm and blues of the United States. James Brown’s begun a big change in his sound and you really ‘dig’… um you mean enjoy it. It’s hard enough playing the odd little bit of jazz; admitting to listening to foreign music broadcasts is a pretty easy way to end up in a bad place, though things are a bit more liberal than they are in the Soviet Union. You’re trying to work out how to emulate their sounds using your computer – the moog stuff you listen to is something of an inspiration.

The few records you have are cherished pieces that cost a lot on the black market. You’ve got their piano style down, but without anyone to really play with, it’s hard to try making your own music. Instead, everyone keeps asking you to play Chopin. Maybe Czerwone Gitary, if you’re lucky. You also like dancing, but your attempts to emulate foreign dances have a habit of ending up wrong. You’re nowhere near willing to let others see you dance, let alone in any public setting.

Nobody knows any of this. You hope.

You set your handle to szczekaćSoul. sR must have some real kind of dirt on you, given their taunting. You’re going to have to respond to the probing… but how?