A whoop from outside their door completely distracted Ariel from her work, and she startled, looking away from the treescape she’d been working on just as Dan slammed her office door open.
“They got her!” he yelled, jumping up and down, shaggy hair floundering with him.
“Got what? Who?”
Jesse and Lucy danced by, swinging each other around and singing “Ding dong, the witch is dead!” over and over again.
“Mrs. Blackburn!” Dan waved a paper. “They’ve got her! Identity theft, illegal data tapping-” he flung his hands towards the heavens. “We’re free!”
“Hallelujah, praise Jesus!” someone yelled from beyond the door.
“And the district prosecutor!” another added.
“Amen!”
“You’re sure?” Ariel asked.
“Positive.”
If the world had dropped out from under Ariel Minster two months before, it all came back underneath her, the pieces fitting into place like a perfectly designed puzzle.
“Anything about me?” she asked, just to be sure.
“Editorial says you’ll be cleared of charges for sure.”
She let a whoop leap out of her throat and hugged Miranda when the other girl grabbed her happily. Dan yelled again, and they joined the odd parading dance of designers and writers and programmers flowing out of the maze of clustered cubicles. Prospero’s door remained shut, as if permitting their antics by admission of his presence, and someone turned up Pepsi and cupcakes from the food mart and no one worked for the rest of the day. They toasted the police chief and the FBI and the detectives, and every cop whose name Ariel could remember, and the detectives, and especially the district prosecutor. Dan read the whole article out loud, a good one from their local newspaper with none of the sensational absurdities that cluttered up some other publications.
Diana Blackburn had confessed during interview and was headed for court. The evidence for the charges was clear to anyone who had half a brain, and the journalist writing strongly implied that Ariel Minster, though still considered as an accessory, might be cleared entirely in light of these new developments. Chief Bancker had refused to comment, obviously, but he always refused to comment, and no one had any concerns over that.
The press tried to get into the building next, which resulted in a whole lot of whispering and giggling and hiding Ariel and Miranda under a desk behind a plant while everyone scampered back to their desks and pretended to be immersed in work. After a good deal of fruitless knocking on Prospero’s door and attempts to talk to the employees, who responded with grunts and monosyllables, the reporters contented themselves with running live reports out of the corners in their most dramatic voices. Ariel and Miranda had to hold hands over each other’s mouths to keep from laughing and giving their position away.
They nearly failed when Dan put on a vest he borrowed from Roy and pretended to be the office manager and ordered everyone who was not employed there to hit the road. He got some argument from the crews sent by big name stations, but within fifteen minutes he had shuffled them out the door to do their reports from the parking lot where a soft rain was starting to fall. Ariel and Miranda crawled out from under the desk and had more cupcakes.
Miranda hung close to Ariel, almost touching her at all times, and the other woman remembered that her companion was usually panicky in these kinds of situations. But she kept a smile on her face all the way through and giggled and laughed and even teased her new coworkers.
Five ‘o clock came, and everyone went home. Miranda crawled into the back seat of the Centurion and stretched out, promptly going to sleep.
“Did she stay out for the party?” Prospero asked.
“The whole thing.”
Prospero raised he eyebrows. “That’s impressive. I wouldn’t have expected it.”
“I guess she felt comfortable.”
However she had felt, Miranda was exhausted from the day and could barely be coaxed awake for eating supper. She managed most of her bowl of soup before nearly falling asleep on the table, and Ariel had to prop her up the stairs to the bedroom they shared. Once in the secure place, Miranda revived enough to take off her makeup and change into her pajamas.
Ariel and Miranda shared the smaller room in the house, but it was still expansive. Their beds were tucked into two gables on opposite sides of the room, nightstands and dressers beside them. The entry end of the room had a chaise lounge and a few fluffy chairs around a circular coffee table and a pull down screen for projecting movies. The bathroom had a long counter with two sinks, a jacuzzi tub and a shower, and a massive walk-in closet off of that.
They’d spent three days online shopping to furnish the room, and fortunately they shared a taste for blue, gray and lace. All the furniture was soft, elegant curves, the room breathed ease and calm, and the huge pictures of dragons on the biggest wall spaces gave it an edge. Miranda had put a lace canopy over her bed, letting it hang from a clustered point in the center and drape around. Ariel picked it up out of the way to tumble her into the bed and watched her snuggle into the covers.
Prospero was a thousand times better than working for Mrs. Blackburn. Ariel turned off the light and crawled into her own bed, stretching and shifting around to find a comfortable position. But it wasn’t Diana Blackburn who was truly the crook. It was Cal, and she hadn’t heard a breath about him in the two months she’d been here. She wouldn’t be surprised if Diana took the fall for her precious son, but she also doubted his ability to care for himself, and if his mother was in the jail for his crimes, someone had to be looking after him…unless he’d somehow learned independence.
Ariel snorted. Caliban and independence didn’t go together. Maybe he’d been farmed off on some miserable relative.
So long as he wasn’t in the system anymore. Whatever else he was, Caliban Blackburn in the mainframe was nothing less than horrifying. He’d been another complaint from the testers; they thought he was a character, not a gamer who simply refused to leave. How Diana got food down the boy was beyond her.
Prospero was clever, though; of that she was sure. And if he knew - as she did - what Caliban was, he would not have left that part of the case quiet. He kept plenty of secrets, and even if she thought she deserved to know if there was anything happening with Caliban, she did trust Prospero to manage it fairly, and in her favor, whether she learned anything or not. Wouldn’t hurt to ask tomorrow, though. He might be in a good mood.
Tuesday, November 10, 2015
Monday, November 9, 2015
Chapter Four
Two Months Later…
The kitchen at the Old Mill Road house bustled, even with only three people. Miranda packed a whole biscuit into her mouth, only to be stopped by a glare from Prospero.
“But they’re so good!” she complained.
“Then eat them slowly.”
Ariel pulled the coffee decanter off the hot plate and filled Prospero’s mug again before sitting down to her own breakfast.
“How soon will Hunting Signs be ready?” the executive asked.
“Today. I finished the monsters last night - they’re perfect!”
“They’re ugly,” Miranda clarified.
“That’s the point, Randi, they’re monsters. I was talking with Dan, and he was like, why not give them an extra set of arms coming out of their elbows, and I told him that wouldn’t be practical, but we put together a concept that has another set at the shoulders, and it works. They don’t look like a friendly Chewbacca anymore, especially with the dreads.”
Miranda made a face.
“And Castleworks?”
“Oh, ages ago. The art on that was just fun. Story writing is where the hitch is on that one. Lucy says it’s too Arthurian. Jesse says that that’s the point, and then they fight and argue.” Ariel looked down into her coffee cup and shook her head. “They should just go out already.”
“Because they’re fighting?”
“I swear they get high off it.”
“And Dragonline?”
“Post-production. It’s with our testers and we’re cleaning up the last few major bugs.”
“What’s the report from advertising?”
“Games are popular, so long as we’re not using virtual reality.”
Prospero must have caught the disappointment in her voice because he almost smiled. “Sychorax Studios breached the consumers’ trust. We need to rebuild, and that means safe, normal, high-quality video games.”
“When can we start using MA93 again?”
“When you are cleared of charges and Diana and Cal Blackburn are safely in prison.”
“That could take years.”
“It will be worth it.”
Miranda used the distraction to stuff half a biscuit in her mouth, and she closed her eyes, humming while she chewed. Then she gulped loudly, took a large swig of milk, and said, “Daddy, I want a job.”
“Miranda, you don’t need one.”
“I’m bored, and Ariel gets to play with code all day and I’ve got nothing useful to do! I could go to the office and everything.”
Prospero set down his mug. “Are you sure? There are a lot of people.”
“There were a lot of people at the airport too,” Miranda said stoutly, “and I managed. I just have to get in the door; Ariel will let me use her office, won’t you?”
Ariel glanced at Prospero, wanting to agree but uncertain if her employer would allow it. The businessman was not unfair, but he was strict, and sometimes felt more like a master than a boss. But she was doing what she loved, so-
“You’ll be in her way, darling.”
“She won’t.” Ariel contradicted quickly.
Miranda beamed.
“You never seemed much interested in code.”
“No, I can’t make heads or tales of it. I want to be a story writer, like you.”
Prospero smiled indulgently, and then something else passed behind his eyes. “Ariel, scrap all the virtual reality games Sychorax developed while the data tap was in use. You have my permission to access the WVG units. You two build me a game, and if I like it, we’ll put it on the market.”
Ariel winced at the thought of getting rid of all that work, but Miranda only clapped her hands happily and half-crawled across the table to hug her father. “You don’t mind if we keep it a big secret, do you?”
“Of course not. Surprise me, my dear.”
Twenty minutes later, Miranda was in Ariel’s office, breathing herself away from a panic attack. Ariel let her be and turned on her computer, shuffling her work around and turning open the blinds to let the sun pour into the room. Her second story office commanded a view of the sea, had three excellent computer monitors, and a massive oak desk perfect to her needs.
Miranda flopped herself into the opposite chair, still a little pale, but clearly excited.
“So, here’s my idea. The gamers get marooned on this island, and they have to survive and find a way off.”
“Okay.”
“There’s a whole bunch of spirits who can help them, but they’ve been enslaved by an evil sorceress. So you have to rescue them so they can help.”
“Help how?”
“I haven’t figured that out yet,” Miranda admitted. “I was thinking, I dunno, maybe they’re associated with the elements, like a water sprite could purify the water so you wouldn’t get sick. And an earth sprite would show you what food was good.”
“Without the sorceress finding out?”
“Yeah.”
“I can see that working.”
“It needs more, obviously, but is that enough for you to start designing with?”
“Oh yeah.” Ariel’s fingers were already itching with the thought of using the WVG unit again.
“How do you design virtual reality?” Miranda asked.
“You wanna see?”
The other woman nodded, and Ariel unpacked two WVG units. They were shaped almost like glasses, with a graceful rectangular block in front of the eyes and a thick band that clamped gently to the sides of the head. Ear pieces bent in to fit comfortably. Small sensors arched off of it, burying themselves into Ariel’s hair and against her scalp when she switched the unit on. She toggled the view box up out of her way so she could see and held up the other.
“This is a WVG unit. The viewer transfers all the visuals to your eyes, and the earpieces control the sound. These sensors pick up your brain waves and send the information wirelessly to the mainframe, where it is translated into your character’s speech and movement. While you’re wearing this, you can do anything you can imagine strongly enough.”
“Doesn’t that mean you can do anything?” Miranda lifted the unit carefully, and Ariel helped her get it on.
“Not quite. A lot of people are limited in their imagination by what they think they’re capable of. That comfortable? Okay. Breathe deeply, and focus yourself. It helps if you close your eyes; the viewer will project through the lids.”
She dropped her own viewer and shut her eyes.
The system powered up, sensors shifting on her scalp as they accustomed to her thought patterns.
“Welcome, Ariel Minster.” Ariel’s own voice rang through her earpieces, hollow in the darkness. “I am your guide, Ariel.”
Miranda squeaked with excitement beside her.
“To permit you to communicate with the mainframe, I need to learn your unique thought patterns. Without using your mouth, please repeat the words you see in front of you.”
Text flashed in front of Ariel’s eyes, and she focused on each word, repeating it in her head.
“Tell me what color and shape you see.”
Yellow triangle. Red Square. Blue circle.
“I have learned your thought patterns. All this information will be stored in this unit should you use it again. I will now learn your movements. Keep your body completely still during this exercise.”
A box appeared in the darkness, and Ariel relaxed her shoulders, letting herself fall into the sensation of moving the mind.
“Walk around the box clockwise.”
A distant part of Ariel’s mind registered that Miranda was flopping a little, still growing accustomed to communicating with the mainframe’s manipulation around her.
“Walk counterclockwise. Thank you. Walk clockwise backwards. And counterclockwise backwards. Please step onto the box, left foot first. Turn clockwise. Raise your right hand above your head. Hold your left hand to the side. Extend your arms fully. Please move your right thumb.”
She moved each appendage on the instruction of the system, growing more comfortable with each gesture. She stepped on and off the box several times before following an instruction to jump off and sit down on the box. From there, she went through a few postures - several customers had complained about the length of this process, none had complained about how well the mainframe read their movements ever after.
“Excellent. You have now entered a virtual world, and your movements are constrained only by your imagination.”
The dark space with the box faded, landing Ariel in a bare space of grids and a few gurgling, half-designed creatures. Miranda appeared beside her a few moments later.
“I thought this was a game?”
Ariel shook her head. “There’s no game in the mainframe, besides a few things we were working on. This,” she gestured to the blue grid on black, “is the root of the design I was working on when I was taken in, and this is what I’ll build off of.”
Her laptop was in her lap, already logged into the system. She clicked a few keys, the game blurring around her, and then the laptop was a tablet in her hands and a revolving screen beside her.
“You design inside the game?” Miranda asked.
“I don’t have to,” she replied, “but it does make it easier if I can see - and feel - what I’m doing. What do you want for our island?”
“Aren’t you the designer?”
“Design and story need to work together.”
“How about a Mediterranean island. With lots of cliffs and nooks and crannies.”
The grid began to spread in front of them, molding over the ghost of terrain while Miranda watched, open mouthed. Ariel kept an eye on her monitor as she sculpted casually for basic outline and size. The island ought to be nearly round, she decided, with plenty of inlets and small nooks.
A dull pounding behind her ears told her she should leave the interface. It wasn’t wise to work too long like this, computer logged in and body split between focus on the game and her physical interaction with the computer. She saved and exited, flipping up the viewer and blinking to let her eyes adjust. Beside her, Miranda opened her eyes and seemed to pop her ears.
“We could do just about anything!”
“Pretty much.”
“That’s creepy, though, having the mainframe in your head.”
“It’s perfectly safe.”
Ariel gently lifted off her WVG unit and helped Miranda untangle the sensors from her wild hair.
“My head hurts,” the young woman complained.
“Ibuprofen in the drawer.” Ariel pointed. “Take a break.”
“You don’t need to?”
She didn’t want to. Couldn’t even if she had a migraine. The images were coming too fast, an imagination left dormant for too long, forced to work on lesser products than the ones she truly loved. “No.”
Ariel could see it. The island, the trees and cliffs and waterfalls, the little caves and nooks, the sorceress’s dwelling in the midst of a eucalyptus forest, all overhung with moss and surrounded with fog and strange calls on the air. She’d need to talk to Prospero about getting a sound designer into their group.
Miranda’s laptop chimed, and the soothing clack of keys washed over Ariel. Terrain first, she decided, then the creatures that inhabited it. She’d need that from Miranda’s story writing.
The kitchen at the Old Mill Road house bustled, even with only three people. Miranda packed a whole biscuit into her mouth, only to be stopped by a glare from Prospero.
“But they’re so good!” she complained.
“Then eat them slowly.”
Ariel pulled the coffee decanter off the hot plate and filled Prospero’s mug again before sitting down to her own breakfast.
“How soon will Hunting Signs be ready?” the executive asked.
“Today. I finished the monsters last night - they’re perfect!”
“They’re ugly,” Miranda clarified.
“That’s the point, Randi, they’re monsters. I was talking with Dan, and he was like, why not give them an extra set of arms coming out of their elbows, and I told him that wouldn’t be practical, but we put together a concept that has another set at the shoulders, and it works. They don’t look like a friendly Chewbacca anymore, especially with the dreads.”
Miranda made a face.
“And Castleworks?”
“Oh, ages ago. The art on that was just fun. Story writing is where the hitch is on that one. Lucy says it’s too Arthurian. Jesse says that that’s the point, and then they fight and argue.” Ariel looked down into her coffee cup and shook her head. “They should just go out already.”
“Because they’re fighting?”
“I swear they get high off it.”
“And Dragonline?”
“Post-production. It’s with our testers and we’re cleaning up the last few major bugs.”
“What’s the report from advertising?”
“Games are popular, so long as we’re not using virtual reality.”
Prospero must have caught the disappointment in her voice because he almost smiled. “Sychorax Studios breached the consumers’ trust. We need to rebuild, and that means safe, normal, high-quality video games.”
“When can we start using MA93 again?”
“When you are cleared of charges and Diana and Cal Blackburn are safely in prison.”
“That could take years.”
“It will be worth it.”
Miranda used the distraction to stuff half a biscuit in her mouth, and she closed her eyes, humming while she chewed. Then she gulped loudly, took a large swig of milk, and said, “Daddy, I want a job.”
“Miranda, you don’t need one.”
“I’m bored, and Ariel gets to play with code all day and I’ve got nothing useful to do! I could go to the office and everything.”
Prospero set down his mug. “Are you sure? There are a lot of people.”
“There were a lot of people at the airport too,” Miranda said stoutly, “and I managed. I just have to get in the door; Ariel will let me use her office, won’t you?”
Ariel glanced at Prospero, wanting to agree but uncertain if her employer would allow it. The businessman was not unfair, but he was strict, and sometimes felt more like a master than a boss. But she was doing what she loved, so-
“You’ll be in her way, darling.”
“She won’t.” Ariel contradicted quickly.
Miranda beamed.
“You never seemed much interested in code.”
“No, I can’t make heads or tales of it. I want to be a story writer, like you.”
Prospero smiled indulgently, and then something else passed behind his eyes. “Ariel, scrap all the virtual reality games Sychorax developed while the data tap was in use. You have my permission to access the WVG units. You two build me a game, and if I like it, we’ll put it on the market.”
Ariel winced at the thought of getting rid of all that work, but Miranda only clapped her hands happily and half-crawled across the table to hug her father. “You don’t mind if we keep it a big secret, do you?”
“Of course not. Surprise me, my dear.”
Twenty minutes later, Miranda was in Ariel’s office, breathing herself away from a panic attack. Ariel let her be and turned on her computer, shuffling her work around and turning open the blinds to let the sun pour into the room. Her second story office commanded a view of the sea, had three excellent computer monitors, and a massive oak desk perfect to her needs.
Miranda flopped herself into the opposite chair, still a little pale, but clearly excited.
“So, here’s my idea. The gamers get marooned on this island, and they have to survive and find a way off.”
“Okay.”
“There’s a whole bunch of spirits who can help them, but they’ve been enslaved by an evil sorceress. So you have to rescue them so they can help.”
“Help how?”
“I haven’t figured that out yet,” Miranda admitted. “I was thinking, I dunno, maybe they’re associated with the elements, like a water sprite could purify the water so you wouldn’t get sick. And an earth sprite would show you what food was good.”
“Without the sorceress finding out?”
“Yeah.”
“I can see that working.”
“It needs more, obviously, but is that enough for you to start designing with?”
“Oh yeah.” Ariel’s fingers were already itching with the thought of using the WVG unit again.
“How do you design virtual reality?” Miranda asked.
“You wanna see?”
The other woman nodded, and Ariel unpacked two WVG units. They were shaped almost like glasses, with a graceful rectangular block in front of the eyes and a thick band that clamped gently to the sides of the head. Ear pieces bent in to fit comfortably. Small sensors arched off of it, burying themselves into Ariel’s hair and against her scalp when she switched the unit on. She toggled the view box up out of her way so she could see and held up the other.
“This is a WVG unit. The viewer transfers all the visuals to your eyes, and the earpieces control the sound. These sensors pick up your brain waves and send the information wirelessly to the mainframe, where it is translated into your character’s speech and movement. While you’re wearing this, you can do anything you can imagine strongly enough.”
“Doesn’t that mean you can do anything?” Miranda lifted the unit carefully, and Ariel helped her get it on.
“Not quite. A lot of people are limited in their imagination by what they think they’re capable of. That comfortable? Okay. Breathe deeply, and focus yourself. It helps if you close your eyes; the viewer will project through the lids.”
She dropped her own viewer and shut her eyes.
The system powered up, sensors shifting on her scalp as they accustomed to her thought patterns.
“Welcome, Ariel Minster.” Ariel’s own voice rang through her earpieces, hollow in the darkness. “I am your guide, Ariel.”
Miranda squeaked with excitement beside her.
“To permit you to communicate with the mainframe, I need to learn your unique thought patterns. Without using your mouth, please repeat the words you see in front of you.”
Text flashed in front of Ariel’s eyes, and she focused on each word, repeating it in her head.
“Tell me what color and shape you see.”
Yellow triangle. Red Square. Blue circle.
“I have learned your thought patterns. All this information will be stored in this unit should you use it again. I will now learn your movements. Keep your body completely still during this exercise.”
A box appeared in the darkness, and Ariel relaxed her shoulders, letting herself fall into the sensation of moving the mind.
“Walk around the box clockwise.”
A distant part of Ariel’s mind registered that Miranda was flopping a little, still growing accustomed to communicating with the mainframe’s manipulation around her.
“Walk counterclockwise. Thank you. Walk clockwise backwards. And counterclockwise backwards. Please step onto the box, left foot first. Turn clockwise. Raise your right hand above your head. Hold your left hand to the side. Extend your arms fully. Please move your right thumb.”
She moved each appendage on the instruction of the system, growing more comfortable with each gesture. She stepped on and off the box several times before following an instruction to jump off and sit down on the box. From there, she went through a few postures - several customers had complained about the length of this process, none had complained about how well the mainframe read their movements ever after.
“Excellent. You have now entered a virtual world, and your movements are constrained only by your imagination.”
The dark space with the box faded, landing Ariel in a bare space of grids and a few gurgling, half-designed creatures. Miranda appeared beside her a few moments later.
“I thought this was a game?”
Ariel shook her head. “There’s no game in the mainframe, besides a few things we were working on. This,” she gestured to the blue grid on black, “is the root of the design I was working on when I was taken in, and this is what I’ll build off of.”
Her laptop was in her lap, already logged into the system. She clicked a few keys, the game blurring around her, and then the laptop was a tablet in her hands and a revolving screen beside her.
“You design inside the game?” Miranda asked.
“I don’t have to,” she replied, “but it does make it easier if I can see - and feel - what I’m doing. What do you want for our island?”
“Aren’t you the designer?”
“Design and story need to work together.”
“How about a Mediterranean island. With lots of cliffs and nooks and crannies.”
The grid began to spread in front of them, molding over the ghost of terrain while Miranda watched, open mouthed. Ariel kept an eye on her monitor as she sculpted casually for basic outline and size. The island ought to be nearly round, she decided, with plenty of inlets and small nooks.
A dull pounding behind her ears told her she should leave the interface. It wasn’t wise to work too long like this, computer logged in and body split between focus on the game and her physical interaction with the computer. She saved and exited, flipping up the viewer and blinking to let her eyes adjust. Beside her, Miranda opened her eyes and seemed to pop her ears.
“We could do just about anything!”
“Pretty much.”
“That’s creepy, though, having the mainframe in your head.”
“It’s perfectly safe.”
Ariel gently lifted off her WVG unit and helped Miranda untangle the sensors from her wild hair.
“My head hurts,” the young woman complained.
“Ibuprofen in the drawer.” Ariel pointed. “Take a break.”
“You don’t need to?”
She didn’t want to. Couldn’t even if she had a migraine. The images were coming too fast, an imagination left dormant for too long, forced to work on lesser products than the ones she truly loved. “No.”
Ariel could see it. The island, the trees and cliffs and waterfalls, the little caves and nooks, the sorceress’s dwelling in the midst of a eucalyptus forest, all overhung with moss and surrounded with fog and strange calls on the air. She’d need to talk to Prospero about getting a sound designer into their group.
Miranda’s laptop chimed, and the soothing clack of keys washed over Ariel. Terrain first, she decided, then the creatures that inhabited it. She’d need that from Miranda’s story writing.
Sunday, November 8, 2015
Chapter Three
A/N: Got behind a few days ago and playing catch up since. So we're posting a little behind what I've actually written. Sorry about the delay.
Ariel Minster hung off the side of the narrow bed, platinum blonde hair pooling on the floor below her head. She’d had a very nice chat with Dr. Welsh, and felt a good deal better, but solitary confinement was boring. Her fingers wanted her keyboard, wanted to dance, to design, to see the code and bare lines whirl together into something new and strange and touchable. She’d finally gotten fur right, and she wanted her laptop and WVG unit to test and explore and-
Her hands dropped limply to her legs, and she pulled herself back up on the bed to drag her fingers through her hair.
With all this, she might never see her laptop every again. Some moron would probably take the thing apart and screw it up and she’d lose half her work trying to get it back together and- Ariel sniffled, tears leaking out of her eyes.
It wouldn’t do any good if no one would hire her ever again. If she was stuck in prison for years and years without her computer, without her design without - anything.
The door rattled, and she propped herself up on her elbows.
“Good afternoon, Miss Minster.”
“Hey, Giordo. It’s afternoon?”
“You slept pretty good.” The big Hispanic cop beckoned her up, turned her gently and cuffed her hands. “You okay?”
“No. Where are we going?”
“Someone’s here to talk to you.”
“Diana Blackburn.” Ariel choked on the name, the sneering face over Paul’s shoulder in the office, just behind that stupid ragged dusty plant that should have been thrown away years ago, gloating, transferring blame, letting Ariel take the blame for what Cal-
“No. A gentleman.”
He led her lightly by the elbow into the empty little mess hall. A gentleman indeed. His cuff links glinted and his suit did not have a single thread out of place. Ariel sat down on the bench across from the man, self conscious of the fact that her plain orange jumpsuit was rumpled and her hair hadn’t been washed in a week.
“Simon Prospero,” he said. “And I assume you’re Ariel Minster?”
“Yes.”
“Pleased to meet you. I recently acquired Sychorax Studios, only to find its lead designer missing. Your coworkers speak highly of you.”
Ariel sat still, watching the man across from her and trying to figure out what he wanted.
“We’d like you back on the team.”
“You’re paying my bail?”
“You’re paying your own bail. I’m putting the money up front, and you’ll pay it back to me.”
Ariel gaped at him. She’d been too rattled during the hearing to think properly, but she was fairly sure the judge had set her bail somewhere in the millions. Prospero took a sheaf of paper from his briefcase. “If you’ll agree to this contract.”
Giordo unlocked the cuffs, and she slid the papers across the table.
“Where do I sign? Do you have a pen?”
Prospero raised an eyebrow. “You don’t want to read it?”
If it got her out, got her back to her laptop and her designs, she would do just about anything he asked. Ariel leaned back. “Just give me the gist.”
“Very well.” Prospero steepled his fingers. “You’ll be on our design team as the design coordinator, with the accompanying pay. You will also act in capacity as my personal assistant. I’ve bought a house up on Old Mill Road, and you will live with my daughter and myself - light housekeeping duties in exchange for room and board and any other personal expenses necessary for your upkeep. My daughter’s name is Miranda. She has agoraphobia and had never been outside our home in Salt Lake. This move has been very traumatic for her, but I believe the small town will be good for coaxing her out of doors. You will share her room and be her companion when you are not working.
“All three jobs - four, depending on your housekeeping abilities - are paid positions, with the entire amount put towards your bail debt.”
“How much do they pay?” Ariel asked.
“That depends on you.”
“In other words, once I sign this, I am at your disposal until you decide I have repaid you.”
“You will never put any less than seventy five thousand dollars towards your debt every year.”
Ariel gaped at the figure - almost seven times what Sychorax had paid her before. “May I have a pen, please?”
She didn’t read the contract, just swirled her initials and signature across it wherever Prospero had highlighted. Giordo acted as witness, and Ariel went back to her cell feeling lighter.
The sun went down before her discharge finally went through, and she changed back into her clothes. It was funny to see herself in the mirror, wide gray pants and airy pale blue top with loose, lacy sleeves. She didn’t look quite right in the clothes, tired as she was from in time in the jail.
They didn’t give her all her things. Evidence, the detective explained, apology all over his face. Her computer was too essential to the investigation. She didn’t even get to see it, to make sure it was alright. Ariel put her backpack over her shoulder, turquoise and silver pendant swinging off the front pocket zipper, and found Prospero waiting for her in the front of the station with no less than three of the force’s burliest officers.
Outside, the press was crammed around the doors, all microphones and cameras and the biggest lights they could drag around with them.
“Ignore them,” Prospero ordered her. “Answer no questions.”
“Yes, sir.”
Sound hit them like a rock slide, and Ariel stuck close to the four men, letting them push a gap through the crowd. Cameras flashed in her face until all she could see was little green and blue specks of light floating across her vision. But she kept her chin up, and slowly let a smile slip across her face. She was out, and she would be designing again, and she didn’t have to work for Diana Blackburn a day longer, the old hag. That thought made a grin break across her whole face, and she gave a little jump of happiness. The reporters exploded around her, pushing microphones into her face, and she ignored every single one, ducking into the front passenger seat of the shiny black Centurion. Prospero eased his way through the crowd of reporters, picking up speed as soon as they turned out of the crowded parking lot onto the street.
She could see all the way to the other end of town from here, glowing neon signs of the small town’s little strip. Further out, on the western horizon was the sea, vast and dark, with a few spots of light where the ships were. Prospero turned the other way, down cracked black pavement, headlights shining where there were no streetlights and only a few porches lit up. The crooked sign for Old Mill Road loomed out of the darkness, and the Centurion climbed the hill easily. The top leveled out a little, with a view of the town’s glittering lights, the long peninsula that was the small state park stretched out into the Pacific Ocean, and the sea itself, white-capped in the moonlight.
Gravel crunched under the wheels as they passed the stone wall into the driveway. A remote control closed the gate behind them. The house sat next to a hill, a two story stone dwelling with a large two-level deck and a long uncovered porch. Several large gables topped the second story, edges of the gutters dripping with a little moss. The edge of the large property was overgrown with evergreens and other tangled trees and underbrush, but the front of the house was neatly landscaped with low flower beds and an overeager green vine trailing all over the trellis over the front door. Bright lamps hung off the corners of the house, casting the area beyond it in strong shadow.
They parked in a hollow six car garage, all concrete and barren walls and floors. Ariel was abruptly uncomfortable walking across the driveway to the house, and glanced back over her shoulder. The garage had a second story, windows dark, like watching eyes. Her neck prickled. Prospero rang the doorbell, then unlocked the front door and stepped through in front of her. She paused to wipe her feet on the mat, her view blocked by her employer’s shoulders, and was hit abruptly from the side by an obnoxious hug.
“You’re out! Oh, I’m so happy!”
The girl was tall and slim, with untamed curly blond hair and brown eyes. She wore a black pair of Ravenclaw lounge pants, a soft gray t-shirt, and a radiant smile.
“I’m Miranda, but you can call me Randi, if you like. When Daddy said he was going to get you, I thought to myself, O dear, it’s terrible that I’m such a hermit that Daddy has to practically buy me friends out of prison, but then I thought, That’s just the way we meet, and it doesn’t mean we can’t be real, honest friends. So I don’t expect you to think of me as a friend straight off, but we get to share a room, and it’s so lovely here, so we can be roommates first off. I’ve never had a roommate, have you?”
A little overwhelmed by this barrage, Ariel could only pull together a “Yes.”
“Oh, good! You’ll have to help me along, then. Have you had supper? Because I was about to order a pizza, and we can eat it and shop online and get all matching sheets and bedspreads, and choose paint and rugs, and lamps do you like pictures of dragons? Because I do, and there’s a really cool dragon poster that I brought from Salt Lake that we can put on the wall to start with to coordinate colors around. Do you prefer Domino’s or Pizza Hut?”
“The only take out pizza here is Geribaldi’s Pizzeria,” Ariel replied, still processing everything else.
“A local place?” Miranda looked terribly excited. “Do they make the pizzas by hand, and toss the crust and everything?” She squeaked excitedly when Ariel nodded. “Oh, it’s perfect!” She grabbed Ariel’s hands. “I am going to love it here, and I’m so glad you’re here too, and I promise pinky-swear to be your forever friend, cross my heart.”
Miranda’s excitement was contagious. Ariel felt a smile crack over her face and offered her pinky to the other girl. “Alright.”
Tuesday, November 3, 2015
Chapter Two (Part 2)
“Taylor Welsh, ma’am,” Taylor said, extending his hand and dropping it without awkwardness when Mrs. Blackburn refused to shake it. “I understand you’re the owner of Sychorax Studios, and figure you’re the most qualified to clarify some questions I have.”
“You have already confiscated my personal and business files. I hardly see why you think it necessary to inconvenience me further.”
“Ma’am. Someone was running a major data-mining operation out of your business that has inconvenienced a few thousand people. It’s my job to help see that any illegal activity is shut down, and I’d prefer to work with the owner of the business rather than against, since I know you also want to see the perp caught and restore Sychorax’s good reputation just as quick as may be.”
Benjamin smirked and put his feet up on the desk in the observation room to watch. Taylor would manage well enough, looked like.
Mrs. Blackburn sniffed. “What trash did Ariel tell you?”
“I haven’t had the opportunity to speak with her,” Taylor replied smoothly, sitting down. “But I would love to have your impression as her employer.”
“You might have noticed her pay was unusually low.”
Taylor grunted.
“In all two years of working for me, she’s never qualified for a raise. Talk to her, of course, and she’ll give you all sorts of absurd reasons. The fact is, she is lazy, unmotivated, and spends her time chatting around the water cooler instead of working.”
“Her college transcripts disagree,” Taylor said, without confrontation.
“I’m not saying she doesn’t have talent. But it’s mostly as a liar. She stole her work off her roommate at Gryphus.”
“How terrible.”
“You have to beat her over the head with a deadline to get her to do anything and then she complains, and says she doesn’t get paid enough, and I’m the reason she has that degree at all!” Mrs. Blackburn tossed her head. “I singled her out, of course, wrote all her letters of recommendation, got her scholarships, give her a job when she comes back, and this - this is how she repays me. Little snit. Using my company as a front for data mining. I hope the district will press charges.”
“As soon as we have enough evidence.” Taylor gave a self-depreciating smile. “Burden of proof, you know. Maybe you could help me?”
Had Mrs. Blackburn been a little less self-composed, she might have started drooling with eagerness. Her eyes burned and she showed yellow teeth in a large grin.
“If you’d told me that first, detective, I would have been more amenable. As it is, I am at your service.”
Benjamin checked another camera and saw that Taylor was just as eager, although he hid it well. “Could you tell me about the development of MA93?”
Mrs. Blackburn was either very bold or very foolish. Benjamin pulled out a notepad and started organizing her contradictions. Below him, Taylor did the same, writing in shorthand. She twisted the truth, sometimes she outright lied, claiming people had been in a place that Benjamin could disprove off the top of his head from scanning the file. Her confidence never wavered, and Taylor’s knee started vibrating under the table.
“Can you clarify that this document is correct?” Taylor asked, sliding the business account statements across the table.
Mrs. Blackburn looked them over thoroughly. “Oh yes. Quite. I am very precise with my accounts.”
“Excellent,” Taylor purred. His knee vibrated more. “Perhaps, then, you might explain why these-” he pointed to a few highlighted transactions- “match every one of these perfectly.”
“Oh, this.” Mrs. Blackburn swept the sheet up off the table casually. “You don’t need to worry about it. Just a little side-business my son is running.”
“How good for him,” Taylor said brightly. “What is he doing?”
“Statistical analysis.”
“I suppose that’s as good a name for it as any.”
“Pardon?”
“Mrs. Blackburn, this is the North Bank account.”
“Yes.”
“This also happens to be the account through which all transactions for purchasing illegal data were run.” Taylor’s knee was practically dancing. “Thank you for your confirmation.”
Even Mrs. Blackburn’s thick rouge could not hide the paleness that washed out her cheeks. She stammered, then cried in a false shocked tone that fooled neither detective nor police chief, “That minx pulled my poor Cal into this?! How dare she?”
“Yes, very kind of her, doing all the work and giving your son all of the money.”
Mrs. Blackburn stood up abruptly. “How dare you blame my poor little Caliban! I am leaving, sir.”
“There’s a reason I Mirandized you when you came in, Mrs. Blackburn,” Taylor replied. “I’m afraid that, under suspicion as you are, you are not free to go. Would you like to call your attorney?”
Mrs. Blackburn called Taylor a very rude name that implied exactly how meanly she thought of him. The rookie detective accepted the moniker with a happy smile on his face as he organized the papers back into the folder.
***
Leaving a fuming Mrs. Blackburn on the phone with her lawyer, Taylor bounded into the observation room, dancing from toe to toe like he might hug his superior.
“She just gave me everything! I didn’t think she would!”
“Don’t get used to it.”
Taylor slid into the seat next to Benjamin, spilling papers all over the desk. “What have we got, sir? Have I missed anything?”
Benjamin barely glanced at the clock before turning back to the station rookie. Taylor was uniquely excited and teachable to an extent that was rare among young men.
“Do you think Ariel is involved?”
“No sir.”
“Why?”
“The program has been recently dumped on her laptop. She didn’t design it. If she’d been even involved it would be cleaner. Every time Mrs. Blackburn said that Ariel met with a third party buyers, Ariel has a good alibi from either her web history or a receipt or cell phone locations. And she’s not profiting at all. Nothing in her bank account, no cash stashes under the mattress, no online shopping splurges or trips to the mall in Portland. Most expensive thing she owns is her computer, and being the geek she is, if she had that kind of money, even if she wanted to keep it quiet, she would have tricked out her baby. They framed her like Mandy down at the art depot.”
“Mandy can’t frame to save her life.”
“Exactly!” Taylor shot up out of his chair, tried to turn a cartwheel, and found that the room was too small. “Sorry, sir.”
“We don’t have Mrs. Blackburn yet.”
“No sir. But if I can get this, Maria will have it in the bag, believe me. I’m gonna drive over to the apartment and find her. If we can get Cal too, that would be great! And sir?”
“Hm?”
“Can I ask Ariel for her number?”
“You can try. But only after we’ve discharged her.”
“Yes sir! Doya think she likes Mexican?”
“If she does, don’t take her to La Bandeja.”
Taylor grinned and pelted out of the room, then returned, banging the door back against its stop and tripping over himself as he swept the papers back up into their folder, organizing them with quick fingers. Benjamin fought down a fatherly smile as the young man waved at him and bounded down the narrow staircase.
***
Someone was waiting for him in his office. Benjamin made a face and quickly hid it, glancing longingly at his computer and thinking of everything that was going by the wayside for their tiny department to handle this debacle and the problems that came with so many new people in town. The man rising out of his chair made the police chief even less friendly. He was bald, and wearing an expensive suit with diamond cuff links, and a perfectly folded handkerchief in the breast pocket.
“Simon Prospero,” he introduced himself, holding out his hand.
The two men seated themselves.
“How can I help you?”
Prospero smiled. “I think I am more likely to be able to help you. I have recently purchased Sychorax Studios, with the sale going into effect today, and wanted you to know that you will have the full support of my company in assisting you with the investigation.”
Benjamin sat back in his chair. “I was under the impression Diana Blackburn was the owner.”
“The company is bankrupt, or will be, once it loses all the lawsuits. I believe she was eager to get out from under it.”
“And you aren’t?”
“I think it has potential.” There was a flicker of something else behind Prospero’s eyes, but Benjamin could not place it. “I also believe you have one of the lead designers in custody?”
“We do.”
“I would like to pay her bail, but there are conditions for her to meet. May I speak with her?”
“You have already confiscated my personal and business files. I hardly see why you think it necessary to inconvenience me further.”
“Ma’am. Someone was running a major data-mining operation out of your business that has inconvenienced a few thousand people. It’s my job to help see that any illegal activity is shut down, and I’d prefer to work with the owner of the business rather than against, since I know you also want to see the perp caught and restore Sychorax’s good reputation just as quick as may be.”
Benjamin smirked and put his feet up on the desk in the observation room to watch. Taylor would manage well enough, looked like.
Mrs. Blackburn sniffed. “What trash did Ariel tell you?”
“I haven’t had the opportunity to speak with her,” Taylor replied smoothly, sitting down. “But I would love to have your impression as her employer.”
“You might have noticed her pay was unusually low.”
Taylor grunted.
“In all two years of working for me, she’s never qualified for a raise. Talk to her, of course, and she’ll give you all sorts of absurd reasons. The fact is, she is lazy, unmotivated, and spends her time chatting around the water cooler instead of working.”
“Her college transcripts disagree,” Taylor said, without confrontation.
“I’m not saying she doesn’t have talent. But it’s mostly as a liar. She stole her work off her roommate at Gryphus.”
“How terrible.”
“You have to beat her over the head with a deadline to get her to do anything and then she complains, and says she doesn’t get paid enough, and I’m the reason she has that degree at all!” Mrs. Blackburn tossed her head. “I singled her out, of course, wrote all her letters of recommendation, got her scholarships, give her a job when she comes back, and this - this is how she repays me. Little snit. Using my company as a front for data mining. I hope the district will press charges.”
“As soon as we have enough evidence.” Taylor gave a self-depreciating smile. “Burden of proof, you know. Maybe you could help me?”
Had Mrs. Blackburn been a little less self-composed, she might have started drooling with eagerness. Her eyes burned and she showed yellow teeth in a large grin.
“If you’d told me that first, detective, I would have been more amenable. As it is, I am at your service.”
Benjamin checked another camera and saw that Taylor was just as eager, although he hid it well. “Could you tell me about the development of MA93?”
Mrs. Blackburn was either very bold or very foolish. Benjamin pulled out a notepad and started organizing her contradictions. Below him, Taylor did the same, writing in shorthand. She twisted the truth, sometimes she outright lied, claiming people had been in a place that Benjamin could disprove off the top of his head from scanning the file. Her confidence never wavered, and Taylor’s knee started vibrating under the table.
“Can you clarify that this document is correct?” Taylor asked, sliding the business account statements across the table.
Mrs. Blackburn looked them over thoroughly. “Oh yes. Quite. I am very precise with my accounts.”
“Excellent,” Taylor purred. His knee vibrated more. “Perhaps, then, you might explain why these-” he pointed to a few highlighted transactions- “match every one of these perfectly.”
“Oh, this.” Mrs. Blackburn swept the sheet up off the table casually. “You don’t need to worry about it. Just a little side-business my son is running.”
“How good for him,” Taylor said brightly. “What is he doing?”
“Statistical analysis.”
“I suppose that’s as good a name for it as any.”
“Pardon?”
“Mrs. Blackburn, this is the North Bank account.”
“Yes.”
“This also happens to be the account through which all transactions for purchasing illegal data were run.” Taylor’s knee was practically dancing. “Thank you for your confirmation.”
Even Mrs. Blackburn’s thick rouge could not hide the paleness that washed out her cheeks. She stammered, then cried in a false shocked tone that fooled neither detective nor police chief, “That minx pulled my poor Cal into this?! How dare she?”
“Yes, very kind of her, doing all the work and giving your son all of the money.”
Mrs. Blackburn stood up abruptly. “How dare you blame my poor little Caliban! I am leaving, sir.”
“There’s a reason I Mirandized you when you came in, Mrs. Blackburn,” Taylor replied. “I’m afraid that, under suspicion as you are, you are not free to go. Would you like to call your attorney?”
Mrs. Blackburn called Taylor a very rude name that implied exactly how meanly she thought of him. The rookie detective accepted the moniker with a happy smile on his face as he organized the papers back into the folder.
***
Leaving a fuming Mrs. Blackburn on the phone with her lawyer, Taylor bounded into the observation room, dancing from toe to toe like he might hug his superior.
“She just gave me everything! I didn’t think she would!”
“Don’t get used to it.”
Taylor slid into the seat next to Benjamin, spilling papers all over the desk. “What have we got, sir? Have I missed anything?”
Benjamin barely glanced at the clock before turning back to the station rookie. Taylor was uniquely excited and teachable to an extent that was rare among young men.
“Do you think Ariel is involved?”
“No sir.”
“Why?”
“The program has been recently dumped on her laptop. She didn’t design it. If she’d been even involved it would be cleaner. Every time Mrs. Blackburn said that Ariel met with a third party buyers, Ariel has a good alibi from either her web history or a receipt or cell phone locations. And she’s not profiting at all. Nothing in her bank account, no cash stashes under the mattress, no online shopping splurges or trips to the mall in Portland. Most expensive thing she owns is her computer, and being the geek she is, if she had that kind of money, even if she wanted to keep it quiet, she would have tricked out her baby. They framed her like Mandy down at the art depot.”
“Mandy can’t frame to save her life.”
“Exactly!” Taylor shot up out of his chair, tried to turn a cartwheel, and found that the room was too small. “Sorry, sir.”
“We don’t have Mrs. Blackburn yet.”
“No sir. But if I can get this, Maria will have it in the bag, believe me. I’m gonna drive over to the apartment and find her. If we can get Cal too, that would be great! And sir?”
“Hm?”
“Can I ask Ariel for her number?”
“You can try. But only after we’ve discharged her.”
“Yes sir! Doya think she likes Mexican?”
“If she does, don’t take her to La Bandeja.”
Taylor grinned and pelted out of the room, then returned, banging the door back against its stop and tripping over himself as he swept the papers back up into their folder, organizing them with quick fingers. Benjamin fought down a fatherly smile as the young man waved at him and bounded down the narrow staircase.
***
Someone was waiting for him in his office. Benjamin made a face and quickly hid it, glancing longingly at his computer and thinking of everything that was going by the wayside for their tiny department to handle this debacle and the problems that came with so many new people in town. The man rising out of his chair made the police chief even less friendly. He was bald, and wearing an expensive suit with diamond cuff links, and a perfectly folded handkerchief in the breast pocket.
“Simon Prospero,” he introduced himself, holding out his hand.
The two men seated themselves.
“How can I help you?”
Prospero smiled. “I think I am more likely to be able to help you. I have recently purchased Sychorax Studios, with the sale going into effect today, and wanted you to know that you will have the full support of my company in assisting you with the investigation.”
Benjamin sat back in his chair. “I was under the impression Diana Blackburn was the owner.”
“The company is bankrupt, or will be, once it loses all the lawsuits. I believe she was eager to get out from under it.”
“And you aren’t?”
“I think it has potential.” There was a flicker of something else behind Prospero’s eyes, but Benjamin could not place it. “I also believe you have one of the lead designers in custody?”
“We do.”
“I would like to pay her bail, but there are conditions for her to meet. May I speak with her?”
Monday, November 2, 2015
Chapter Two (Part 1)
A/N: And we're still in backstory. Once again, I'm not any kind of tech geek, so I'm bluffing my way through the techno-babble.
When Benjamin arrived at the station the next morning, the entire parking lot and tiny front lawn was stuffed full of reporters and cameras. They mobbed his car, pressing against him, calling out questions in such cacophony that he could not understand a word they said past the racket and the microphones shoved into his face. He fixed his eyes on the front doors of the station and pushed through, wedging himself through the gap created by Giordo’s broad shoulders.
Agent Pine waited inside, arms folded and one hand clenched around a newspaper.
“I thought you said you wanted to keep this confidential.”
“I did.”
“What’s this, then?” The agent held up the paper - that morning’s copy of the Everyman Inquirer.
SYCHORAX’S DERANGED DESIGNER BEHIND BARS glared up at him from the headline of the paper. Splashed across the front page were three pictures of Ariel, hands clenched around the bars of her cell screaming, sprawled on the floor, arms around her head, and the last, most disturbing, in one of the solitary confinement rooms, eyes haunted, arms wrapped around her knees where she sat in the mangled remains of several shredded and crumpled pieces of paper. Her body was blurred slightly from her rocking.
Benjamin swore polyglot, finding new and fascinating words in his vocabulary - extensive from years of dealing with angry criminals - as he skimmed the article. ‘Driven insane by a gaming drug’ and ‘true computer addict’ wove around the information spill, everything they’d hoped to keep quiet now black ink on white paper, twisted by the sensationalist, immature commentary of a hack journalist.
“How did they get those pictures?” Pine demanded.
“I’d like to know that myself,” Benjamin muttered. “This is one of our solitary confinement rooms, and we haven’t put her there.”
“We had to last night, sir.”
Benjamin looked up to see Dr. Wales, their in-station psychiatrist, hurrying over.
“And I believe I can narrow down who might have had access to her to take those pictures.”
“What happened, doctor?”
“Paul and Roger brought in a couple tourists last night. They’d had some bonfire on the beach and God knows what they were drinking, but one of them got loose and came after Ariel. Shook her up almighty good. When they wouldn’t shut up, Roger got me, and I moved her to solitary confinement where she wouldn’t be bothered.”
“And the paper?”
“Just old newspaper ads. Tearing them helped calm her down. I just checked on her, and she’s tired, but alright. I wouldn’t move her back to the main block until those others are discharged.”
“Those others wouldn’t happen to be reporters, would they?”
Dr. Wales hesitated. “Let me get Roger.”
Roger hurried in and swore himself when Benjamin repeated the question. “I should have thought.” He swore again.
“How long can we legally detain them?” Agent Pine said.
Benjamin grimaced. “Depends on the charges, but probably not much longer.”
“How long can you drag out the discharge process?”
“A few hours, at least.”
“Do it. We need to shut this down.”
“Small town, Agent,” Benjamin said. “There’s no shutting down a rumor here.”
“What do we feed the hyenas, sir?” Roger asked, jerking his head in the direction of the crowd of press outside.
“What happened, exactly, Roger, to make her act like that?”
“There’s three of them we picked up drinking on the beach. They were sloshed and aggressive when we got there. Two went in quiet, the other one, big woman, comes at Ariel, got her by the wrist. I had a time of it getting her off, and - sir, what she said to that poor girl don’t bear repeating.”
“What was the gist?”
“That she was headed for prison and would have a - ah - bad time of it there.”
“Any idea who could have taken these?” Benjamin showed him the paper, and Roger went white, then red with anger. “Vic. He was the only other guy in there. I’ll get him, sir.” He spun in his heel and left the lobby, slamming the door behind him.
***
By the time Vic had been lectured, fired, and stuck in a cell for selling illegal information himself, and Benjamin had fed the news hyenas a satisfying story about a mysterious investigation with no clear suspect and a frightened young lady being terrorized by a drunken camerawoman, he needed a whole lot more coffee.
“Sir?”
Taylor, a budding detective, tapped on his door frame with his shoe, a box of evidence in his arms and a peace offering of steaming coffee held precariously in front of it. “Thought you might want to see this.”
Benjamin took the coffee off him and sipped. Taylor must have brewed this pot himself. The young man made the best coffee in the station, and Benjamin felt far more inclined to listen with the hot cup between his palms. “Go on.”
“It isn’t her. Ariel Minster, I mean. Whoever framed her threw up a good smoke screen, but it doesn’t take much to get behind it.” He set the young woman’s laptop down on the table.
“First thing is, and it’s a good thing too, she built this herself. So I’ve got her signature all over the place.”
“Signature?”
“The way she designs programs and software. The data mining program isn’t anything like what she does. It’s like…like code goulash. I’m shocked it works, honestly.
“Second thing, on those emails and other stuff, I managed to trace the IP addresses, and then I asked Maria to track her locations over the past few months using her other internet and cell phone activity and receipts, and we added them up about 4 a.m. this morning, and they don’t match. I listened to her interrogation with Agent Pine, and she’s telling the truth. This computer hasn’t accessed her university email in a couple years, and never went to that online bank account with North Bank. She’s got a debit card with a local credit union, and that’s it. There’s loads of transfers out of the North Bank account, but none of them went to her that I can see.”
“Could she be using another computer to protect herself?”
“I don’t think so. I read through some of the emails, and she definitely didn’t write them. And the data mining program, sir? That was child’s play. It was installed on her laptop two days ago. All the data files were dumped on her computer at about the same time, like someone had ‘em on a thumb drive. And then Maria goes through the apartment, right? Why’s somebody who makes several hundred thousand dollars every couple months selling folks’ identities living on ramen noodles?”
Benjamin took another deep swallow of coffee and let Taylor happily shuffle his papers around.
“So then I went and got the business files from Sychorax Studios that we had for investigation, right? And guess what I found.” He proudly laid out two bank statements, side by side. “Exact amounts that come out of that North Bank account go into their business account - numbers match on the transfer information - and then get paid out to one Cal Blackburn. If Ariel Minster saw a penny of that money, I’ll eat my research, and if she had anything to do with the data mining, I’ll have my desk chair for lunch today.”
“You make a good case,” Benjamin allowed. Taylor beamed. “What’s Maria say?”
“She agrees,” Taylor said of his mentor. “She’s over at the apartment now, and talking with everybody who knows Ariel. I know her too sir, and she couldn’t have-”
Benjamin held up a finger. “Son, I’ve heard that plenty of times from a lot of folks. But. This is enough for me to call in Mrs. Blackburn and her son to answer a few questions.”
Taylor bounced in his chair. “Can I be there, sir?”
The young man looked like a lab retriever waiting for Benjamin to throw a tennis ball.
“You can question them yourself,” the police chief said. Taylor beamed all over the room and scrambled his papers back into their box.
“Let me know when they come in, sir. I’ll be ready.”
***
Mrs. Blackburn did not take kindly to being asked to come to the station for questioning. She took even less kindly to being ushered into the interrogation room and turned a bitter, icy glare on Taylor as he shut the door. She was elegantly dressed in a cream skirt and blouse, pale pink jacket with a gold pin on the lapel, nude pumps and pearl earrings, but Benjamin could not help but agree with the whispered description of Mrs. Blackburn. She was a hag. Her lips were too wide, her nose too long and crooked, and her eyebrows shaved off and drawn back on in the wrong places and shape. She wore too much makeup in colors that did not fit her, and even the thick foundation and rouge did not cover the ill-placed warts. Both her shoulders hunched, giving her the posture of a vulture, and her feet turned out when she walked.
“Taylor Welsh, ma’am,” Taylor said, extending his hand and dropping it without awkwardness when Mrs. Blackburn refused to shake it. “I understand you’re the owner of Sychorax Studios, and figure you’re the most qualified to clarify some questions I have.”
“You have already confiscated my personal and business files. I hardly see why you think it necessary to inconvenience me further.”
“Ma’am. Someone was running a major data-mining operation out of your business that has inconvenienced a few thousand people. It’s my job to help see that any illegal activity is shut down, and I’d prefer to work with the owner of the business rather than against, since I know you also want to see the perp caught and restore Sychorax’s good reputation just as quick as may be.”
Benjamin smirked and put his feet up on the desk in the observation room to watch. Taylor would manage well enough, looked like.
Sunday, November 1, 2015
Chapter One
Police Chief Benjamin Bancker shoved his fingers up the bridge of his nose as the interrogation descended into unintelligible sobbing again. The FBI agent next to him snorted, smirking at the back of the big cop where he sat in the room below them.
“Small town cops are always useless.”
Benjamin didn’t respond. He’d served on the police force in various parts of Chicago for ten years, and another fifteen with the NYPD, but the agent didn’t know that, and the Feds were never much to listen to locals anyway. Giordo and Finn were trying for the good cop/bad cop routine with the young woman, but two minutes with bad cop Giordo and the poor girl was sobbing into a disintegrating tissue, straight, unwashed platinum blonde hair fanning over her blotchy face.
“I don’t know,” she sniffed, the old speakers in the observation room crackling with her voice. “I don’t know how all that stuff got on my laptop!”
“Pathological liar,” the agent said briskly. “Do you mind, Chief?”
Benjamin waved a hand. “Go ahead.”
The agent wouldn’t get anywhere. Benjamin glanced down at his copy of the young woman’s file. Ariel Minster, twenty-six years old, two years out of internationally acclaimed Gryphus University with a degree in computer design, awards for work in digital art and CGI, formerly employed at Sychorax Studios. No family or other connections. Benjamin knew her mostly as the girl Tony liked to try to flirt with at Hank’s Food Mart.
The agent opened the door below them. “Take a coffee break, officer.”
Giordo stood gratefully, and Ariel looked up from her crumpled bundle of tissues. “Could I get a trash can, please, officer?”
The cop pulled one around from the corner and she dropped the trash into it, pulling a few new tissues out of the box and blowing her nose loudly. Giordo left, door thumping behind him. The agent didn’t sit, but rested his hands on the back of the chair.
Dominance posture. Meant to intimidate.
“Good evening, Miss Minster. I’m Agent Thomas Pine, FBI.”
Ariel shrank back into the metal chair, clutching at the sleeves of her bright orange jumpsuit.
“At 3 p.m. yesterday, the police department received an anonymous tip that Sychorax Studios was mining and selling personal data, is that correct?”
“3:04,” Ariel whispered.
The agent moved to continue, then looked down at the papers in his hand. Benjamin thumbed through the file to the text of the call. 3:04:24 exactly.
“Oh?” Agent Pine recovered quickly.
Ariel stared past him at the blank wall of the concrete room. “I made the call.”
“Did you. That’s interesting, since the data mining program was run from - let’s see - your computer. The data is all stored on your computer. The communications with third parties are all with your email account, with funds transferred to a bank account that belongs to you. Do you deny that?”
“N-no. But-”
“So why were you telling Officer Martinez that you didn’t know anything about it?”
“Because I don’t! Someone can put a bank account in someone else’s name, can’t they?”
“And the email?”
“That’s my university email. I never use it.”
“And the data on your computer?”
“It must have been uploaded when I wasn’t looking.”
“And the program, being run off of your computer?”
“Someone else must have put it there.”
“Any idea who that someone else might be?”
“Cal Blackburn.”
“Cal. Your employer’s son who dropped out of school in the third grade and still can’t read or write is running a third-party data mining operation out of his mother’s basement and framed you with it.”
“Her office, but yes!”
Agent Pine shook his head. “You don’t tell a clean cover story, do you, Miss Minster.”
“It’s true, I promise, I swear!”
Benjamin swiveled his chair and stuck his head out of the observation room. “Hey, Finn. Suspect's claiming she’s our anonymous tipper. Get with dispatch; try and trace the call.”
“Yes sir.”
“Do you know what the penalty for perjury is?” Agent Pine asked, voice full of unspoken doom.
Ariel clutched her soggy tissue ball and nodded.
“So, knowing that, let’s start from the beginning. What is MA93?”
“It’s a drug administered by injection on the consent of a gamer to allow them to access a virtual reality video game world.”
“You were involved the development and testing of this drug?”
“Yes.”
“Why was MA93 developed after the WVG unit?”
“It was more effective.”
“How?”
“The WVG unit allows the gamer’s mind access to the virtual world, but it requires their total focus. Users complained of headaches after using it for more than two hours at a time, and had to use it in a soundproof room, since any noises would break their concentration.”
“And MA93 solved this problem?”
“MA93 puts the gamer to sleep, and allows them-” Ariel trailed off, twisting jumpsuit and tissues in her fingers. “It’s like lucid dreaming.”
“But they cannot leave the game at will.”
“No.”
“And if all of this is going on in their heads, how does the game know how to respond?”
“We use data feeds directly from the brain compiled from the WVG unit.”
“What do these data feeds communicate?”
“Movement. Emotion. Speech.”
“Whether or not the gamer is craving Doritos?”
A smile almost crossed Ariel’s face. “Sometimes.”
"Social security numbers? Passwords?"
"Yes."
“What happens to all this data?”
“An algorithm in the mainframe sorts it, using the relevant data to control the game and deleting everything else.”
“Or sending it to your computer?”
“I didn’t know my computer was connected.”
“Let’s consider the facts, Miss Minster. You’re a top designer in a new and booming business, your skills are in high demand, and you are working for a backwater little company in Port Oakwood for eleven thousand dollars a year, consistently turning down offers for six-figure salaries from much bigger companies. Doesn’t make much sense, unless you’ve got a steady flow of advertising information and social security numbers and passwords flowing into your hard drive and plenty of people just slavering to buy them. Can’t make that kind of money working for even Microzone Interactive, could you?”
“I’m a designer, not a hacker.”
“Why don’t you leave Sychorax, then?”
“I can’t.”
“Can’t?”
“Contract.”
“Tidy answer.”
Ariel’s lip quivered, and she gave Agent Pine the look that must have melted Giordo into a puddle - he hadn’t been very hard on her. Benjamin left the observation room. No defense Ariel gave vindicated her. And somehow, that gave him the strongest inclination that she was innocent. The police chief sat in his office and swirled his coffee and put half his mind on the vandalism report before Finn barged into the room.
“We traced it. The anonymous tip.”
“And?”
He held up a plastic bag with a dark rectangle in it. “It came from her phone. She tipped the FBI five minutes after she hung up with our people. I listened to the recording, sir. It has to be her. And she was scared.”
They headed for the interrogation room together, Benjamin reaching to tap on the door just as the knob turned and an uncomfortable-looking Agent Pine looked out. Behind him, Benjamin saw Ariel curled up under the table, hyperventilating into a paper bag, the agent’s jacket tucked under her head.
“You wouldn’t happen to have another tissue box, would you?” the agent said. “And some hot cocoa?”
***
Fifteen minutes and ten tissues later, Ariel was huddled up in a weighted blanket in the corner and sipping a styrofoam cup of Swiss Miss under the eye of the observation room.
“She called in?” Agent Pine folded his arms and shook his head. “That changes things. Unless she was trying to frame someone else.”
“What do you think?” Benjamin asked.
“Her story is pathetic, but consistent.”
“Do you believe it?”
The agent’s mouth twisted. “Yes. Durned if I know why.”
“Her claim that someone put the files on her computer is worth looking into.”
“There’s a fella I can send it to. Name’s Coy. He’s consulted on situations like this before.”
“How long would it take him?”
“Probably four days.”
“What’d you say to her?” Finn asked the agent.
“Huh?”
“I never seen a panic attack during interrogation like that.”
“I thought I, ah, might just need to be stern. Make her understand how serious the situation is.”
“How serious is it?”
“When the charges and the lawsuits all total up? Definitely prison. Probably the permanent end of her career - I can’t see as anyone would employ her with this on her record.”
Finn nodded. “That would do it. She loves her job. My wife got her talking about it exactly once and swore she’d never do it again.”
“Why not?”
“Girl wouldn’t shut up. She wouldn’t risk loosing her work like this.”
“That’s opinion,” Benjamin said, despite privately agreeing.
“She’s refused a lawyer?” Agent Pine asked.
“Yeah.”
“Try and change her mind.”
Benjamin nodded. It would be the responsibility of the district to press charges, but they would wait until they had finished analyzing evidence before choosing who they would press charges against. In a town as small as Port Oakwood, where everyone knew everyone else’s business, Ariel’s reputation was enough to assure the locals that she was not guilty, and Cal…well, if he let it get out that Ariel had accused Cal - and by extension Mrs. Blackburn - the metaphorical lynch mob would prevent any kind of unbiased investigation. “I’d prefer to keep this investigation confidential,” he told the agent.
“The press is already asking for a statement.”
“Personal information has been illegally sold to third parties. We don’t know who did it, and I’m not pointing fingers until I’m sure.”
Agent Pine was in full agreement. A small army of reporters were already filtering into the little town, taking up all the hotel rooms at the Beachside, wandering around, complaining about the lack of a Wal-Mart. Benjamin snorted at his cold coffee cup. If Hank’s Food Mart wasn’t good enough for them, they could pack up their little cameras and notebooks and get out of town.
“Small town cops are always useless.”
Benjamin didn’t respond. He’d served on the police force in various parts of Chicago for ten years, and another fifteen with the NYPD, but the agent didn’t know that, and the Feds were never much to listen to locals anyway. Giordo and Finn were trying for the good cop/bad cop routine with the young woman, but two minutes with bad cop Giordo and the poor girl was sobbing into a disintegrating tissue, straight, unwashed platinum blonde hair fanning over her blotchy face.
“I don’t know,” she sniffed, the old speakers in the observation room crackling with her voice. “I don’t know how all that stuff got on my laptop!”
“Pathological liar,” the agent said briskly. “Do you mind, Chief?”
Benjamin waved a hand. “Go ahead.”
The agent wouldn’t get anywhere. Benjamin glanced down at his copy of the young woman’s file. Ariel Minster, twenty-six years old, two years out of internationally acclaimed Gryphus University with a degree in computer design, awards for work in digital art and CGI, formerly employed at Sychorax Studios. No family or other connections. Benjamin knew her mostly as the girl Tony liked to try to flirt with at Hank’s Food Mart.
The agent opened the door below them. “Take a coffee break, officer.”
Giordo stood gratefully, and Ariel looked up from her crumpled bundle of tissues. “Could I get a trash can, please, officer?”
The cop pulled one around from the corner and she dropped the trash into it, pulling a few new tissues out of the box and blowing her nose loudly. Giordo left, door thumping behind him. The agent didn’t sit, but rested his hands on the back of the chair.
Dominance posture. Meant to intimidate.
“Good evening, Miss Minster. I’m Agent Thomas Pine, FBI.”
Ariel shrank back into the metal chair, clutching at the sleeves of her bright orange jumpsuit.
“At 3 p.m. yesterday, the police department received an anonymous tip that Sychorax Studios was mining and selling personal data, is that correct?”
“3:04,” Ariel whispered.
The agent moved to continue, then looked down at the papers in his hand. Benjamin thumbed through the file to the text of the call. 3:04:24 exactly.
“Oh?” Agent Pine recovered quickly.
Ariel stared past him at the blank wall of the concrete room. “I made the call.”
“Did you. That’s interesting, since the data mining program was run from - let’s see - your computer. The data is all stored on your computer. The communications with third parties are all with your email account, with funds transferred to a bank account that belongs to you. Do you deny that?”
“N-no. But-”
“So why were you telling Officer Martinez that you didn’t know anything about it?”
“Because I don’t! Someone can put a bank account in someone else’s name, can’t they?”
“And the email?”
“That’s my university email. I never use it.”
“And the data on your computer?”
“It must have been uploaded when I wasn’t looking.”
“And the program, being run off of your computer?”
“Someone else must have put it there.”
“Any idea who that someone else might be?”
“Cal Blackburn.”
“Cal. Your employer’s son who dropped out of school in the third grade and still can’t read or write is running a third-party data mining operation out of his mother’s basement and framed you with it.”
“Her office, but yes!”
Agent Pine shook his head. “You don’t tell a clean cover story, do you, Miss Minster.”
“It’s true, I promise, I swear!”
Benjamin swiveled his chair and stuck his head out of the observation room. “Hey, Finn. Suspect's claiming she’s our anonymous tipper. Get with dispatch; try and trace the call.”
“Yes sir.”
“Do you know what the penalty for perjury is?” Agent Pine asked, voice full of unspoken doom.
Ariel clutched her soggy tissue ball and nodded.
“So, knowing that, let’s start from the beginning. What is MA93?”
“It’s a drug administered by injection on the consent of a gamer to allow them to access a virtual reality video game world.”
“You were involved the development and testing of this drug?”
“Yes.”
“Why was MA93 developed after the WVG unit?”
“It was more effective.”
“How?”
“The WVG unit allows the gamer’s mind access to the virtual world, but it requires their total focus. Users complained of headaches after using it for more than two hours at a time, and had to use it in a soundproof room, since any noises would break their concentration.”
“And MA93 solved this problem?”
“MA93 puts the gamer to sleep, and allows them-” Ariel trailed off, twisting jumpsuit and tissues in her fingers. “It’s like lucid dreaming.”
“But they cannot leave the game at will.”
“No.”
“And if all of this is going on in their heads, how does the game know how to respond?”
“We use data feeds directly from the brain compiled from the WVG unit.”
“What do these data feeds communicate?”
“Movement. Emotion. Speech.”
“Whether or not the gamer is craving Doritos?”
A smile almost crossed Ariel’s face. “Sometimes.”
"Social security numbers? Passwords?"
"Yes."
“What happens to all this data?”
“An algorithm in the mainframe sorts it, using the relevant data to control the game and deleting everything else.”
“Or sending it to your computer?”
“I didn’t know my computer was connected.”
“Let’s consider the facts, Miss Minster. You’re a top designer in a new and booming business, your skills are in high demand, and you are working for a backwater little company in Port Oakwood for eleven thousand dollars a year, consistently turning down offers for six-figure salaries from much bigger companies. Doesn’t make much sense, unless you’ve got a steady flow of advertising information and social security numbers and passwords flowing into your hard drive and plenty of people just slavering to buy them. Can’t make that kind of money working for even Microzone Interactive, could you?”
“I’m a designer, not a hacker.”
“Why don’t you leave Sychorax, then?”
“I can’t.”
“Can’t?”
“Contract.”
“Tidy answer.”
Ariel’s lip quivered, and she gave Agent Pine the look that must have melted Giordo into a puddle - he hadn’t been very hard on her. Benjamin left the observation room. No defense Ariel gave vindicated her. And somehow, that gave him the strongest inclination that she was innocent. The police chief sat in his office and swirled his coffee and put half his mind on the vandalism report before Finn barged into the room.
“We traced it. The anonymous tip.”
“And?”
He held up a plastic bag with a dark rectangle in it. “It came from her phone. She tipped the FBI five minutes after she hung up with our people. I listened to the recording, sir. It has to be her. And she was scared.”
They headed for the interrogation room together, Benjamin reaching to tap on the door just as the knob turned and an uncomfortable-looking Agent Pine looked out. Behind him, Benjamin saw Ariel curled up under the table, hyperventilating into a paper bag, the agent’s jacket tucked under her head.
“You wouldn’t happen to have another tissue box, would you?” the agent said. “And some hot cocoa?”
***
Fifteen minutes and ten tissues later, Ariel was huddled up in a weighted blanket in the corner and sipping a styrofoam cup of Swiss Miss under the eye of the observation room.
“She called in?” Agent Pine folded his arms and shook his head. “That changes things. Unless she was trying to frame someone else.”
“What do you think?” Benjamin asked.
“Her story is pathetic, but consistent.”
“Do you believe it?”
The agent’s mouth twisted. “Yes. Durned if I know why.”
“Her claim that someone put the files on her computer is worth looking into.”
“There’s a fella I can send it to. Name’s Coy. He’s consulted on situations like this before.”
“How long would it take him?”
“Probably four days.”
“What’d you say to her?” Finn asked the agent.
“Huh?”
“I never seen a panic attack during interrogation like that.”
“I thought I, ah, might just need to be stern. Make her understand how serious the situation is.”
“How serious is it?”
“When the charges and the lawsuits all total up? Definitely prison. Probably the permanent end of her career - I can’t see as anyone would employ her with this on her record.”
Finn nodded. “That would do it. She loves her job. My wife got her talking about it exactly once and swore she’d never do it again.”
“Why not?”
“Girl wouldn’t shut up. She wouldn’t risk loosing her work like this.”
“That’s opinion,” Benjamin said, despite privately agreeing.
“She’s refused a lawyer?” Agent Pine asked.
“Yeah.”
“Try and change her mind.”
Benjamin nodded. It would be the responsibility of the district to press charges, but they would wait until they had finished analyzing evidence before choosing who they would press charges against. In a town as small as Port Oakwood, where everyone knew everyone else’s business, Ariel’s reputation was enough to assure the locals that she was not guilty, and Cal…well, if he let it get out that Ariel had accused Cal - and by extension Mrs. Blackburn - the metaphorical lynch mob would prevent any kind of unbiased investigation. “I’d prefer to keep this investigation confidential,” he told the agent.
“The press is already asking for a statement.”
“Personal information has been illegally sold to third parties. We don’t know who did it, and I’m not pointing fingers until I’m sure.”
Agent Pine was in full agreement. A small army of reporters were already filtering into the little town, taking up all the hotel rooms at the Beachside, wandering around, complaining about the lack of a Wal-Mart. Benjamin snorted at his cold coffee cup. If Hank’s Food Mart wasn’t good enough for them, they could pack up their little cameras and notebooks and get out of town.
Thursday, October 8, 2015
NaNo 2015
New year, new NaNo!
But what about Dragonhatched?
Dragonhatched is being severely edited. I haven't given up on it, but I'm having a rough time, and November is my novel writing breakout session.
This year, it's Shakespeare fanfiction! Tempestas Imaginaria - a retelling of The Tempest in a modern-day setting.
Simon Prospero is the contented CEO and lead writer for Milan Entertainment - that is, until his brother and co-owner signs a merger with Naples, effectively ousting him from the company. With just enough from his severance pay and investments to buy up bankrupt and scandal-embroiled Sychorax Studios, Prospero finds himself broke but on the front edge of the quickly developing virtual reality video game market.
With a gifted team of writers and designers in his employ, and the best technology at his fingertips, Prospero has the opportunity to make his fortune, and maybe get a little revenge. If he can get Sychorax's top designer out of jail first.
It may be good.
It may be terrible.
It may just prove once and for all that I know diddly-squat about video games and gaming.
But this story is screaming to be written, and I'm excited to share the raw draft with you.
But what about Dragonhatched?
Dragonhatched is being severely edited. I haven't given up on it, but I'm having a rough time, and November is my novel writing breakout session.
This year, it's Shakespeare fanfiction! Tempestas Imaginaria - a retelling of The Tempest in a modern-day setting.
Simon Prospero is the contented CEO and lead writer for Milan Entertainment - that is, until his brother and co-owner signs a merger with Naples, effectively ousting him from the company. With just enough from his severance pay and investments to buy up bankrupt and scandal-embroiled Sychorax Studios, Prospero finds himself broke but on the front edge of the quickly developing virtual reality video game market.
With a gifted team of writers and designers in his employ, and the best technology at his fingertips, Prospero has the opportunity to make his fortune, and maybe get a little revenge. If he can get Sychorax's top designer out of jail first.
It may be good.
It may be terrible.
It may just prove once and for all that I know diddly-squat about video games and gaming.
But this story is screaming to be written, and I'm excited to share the raw draft with you.
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