The story continues...
Rex Jaxon, private investigator, bounty hunter, riddle solver, answer finder, general helper with figuring out stuff, startled awake at the sound of his hand terminal chiming to indicate an incoming connection. He sat up in his battered leather office chair and blinked a few times, wiping the drool off the corner of his mouth and smoothing his shirt front and collar.
After a second, he accepted the connection. The tiny, mustachioed face of Dean Yann Voo of Gand University flickered into view on Rex’s hand terminal.
“Rex Jaxon?”
“The very one. What can I do for you, Dean Voo?”
“Snap to it, for one thing,” said the Dean. “You look like I just woke you out of a coma.”
Dean Voo had last hired Rex to investigate a mass grade fixing ring at the University, resulting in the expulsion of a hundred students and the firing of several very embarrassed faculty members. He’d been a reliable referral source for work since then.
“Sorry,” said Rex. “What time is it, anyway?” He answered his own question by looking at the clock blinking in the top right hand corner of his hand terminal. “Ah, that late. Must be serious then if you’re calling me now.”
“It is,” said Dean Voo. He related the saga of the stolen artificial intelligence, complete with fried tziken, pink mist, bhat, and guy with the bowler hat. Rex wrinkled his brow as the story unfolded, the sylvan tangle of his eyebrows undulating like a confused forest in winter.
“Who are the guys who reported this to you?” Rex asked, grabbing a stylus and pinching open the notes app on his hand terminal.
“Elseph Buntergrast and Florp Gadstein. Florp’s a doctoral candidate in advanced cybergenic intelligence, and Elseph is a data snake.”
“Data snake?”
“He slithers around data. That’s my own term for him. I don’t know what he actually does,” said Dean Voo. “He’s working under a grant from a private foundation that gives a lot of money to the University. Elseph was instrumental in designing the AI, although I’ll be hootled if I could tell you exactly what he contributed.”
“Huh,” said Rex, trying to think of something more substantial to say and failing. He scribbled in the names of the two guys and their contact info, and then some other notes.
“So can you help me?” asked the Dean.
“Yes,” said Rex. “But I need clearance to hire my own subcontractor on this job. I have a friend who I think will be very helpful here.”
“Jasmine Chehalis?”
“Got it in one,” said Rex.
“Good call,” said the Dean. “With your analytical genius and her technological prowess, you should figure this out in no time.”
“That’s the notion,” said Rex. “I’ll send you over my standard contract. Retainer in advance.”
Dean Voo nodded. “Thanks,” he said, and disconnected.
***
The last glimmers of sunset were fading from the sky when Jasmine Chehalis’s hand terminal vibrated in her pocket. She was walking home from her biweekly karfuera class. Having just gotten her butt kicked in a sparring match, she was sore and sweaty and ready for an antigrav bubble bath. She’d let her dark hair hang loose on her shoulders, trying to air dry the perspiration out of it.
She pulled out her hand terminal and accepted the connection. Rex Jaxon’s face greeted her.
“What’s up, Rex?”
“Need you on a case. Standard rates. Can you come talk?”
“Give me a half hour or so. You don’t want to be around me until I’ve had a decent shower, trust me.”
“No problem,” said Rex. “See you in a few.” He disconnected the call. Jasmine snapped her hand terminal closed and pocketed it.
It’d be good to work with Rex again. His cases tended toward the strange, the “crunchy” as he put it. He only brought Jasmine in when the “crunchy” involved technical, hackery, electronic problems. Jasmine’s reputation as the first person to crack the Allanaland Security Agency’s holo-encryption stress test continued to pay off nicely.
It was a chilly night, a little drizzly, nice weather to cool off in after her workout. The metallic skin of the city rose around Jasmine, enveloping her in the comfort of technology, of civilization, of home. The groundlane to her right was busy with tubes, cheap transport for the masses who couldn’t afford to fly. Above her, the skylane buzzed with flyers and gliders, shining reflections glinting off the glass canyon.
Jasmine reached her apartment building, a quaint throwback that had resisted the tide of metallic gentrification in the neighborhood. It was a building of dark stone and masonry, white windows, and a stoop with five stairs leading to the unfortunately necessary metal security door.
Which was standing open. No, not just open. Bent.
The hell?
At this point, Jasmine had a choice. She stood on the stoop, trying to figure out her best move. She could either walk in to the building and pray to all of the Gods of the Great Green Pantheon that whatever was wrong in the building didn’t involve her apartment, and that there were no thugs waiting in the dark to jump her, or she could stand outside and call the authorities and wait for a long time.
I’m tired. I just want to take a shower.
Jasmine pushed the door open slowly and peeked inside. The interior hallway, which had been hexed to look much bigger than it actually was, looked the same as it always did, which is to say that it would have caused a first time visitor to the building to have some quantity of vertigo and disorientation. The vast and sumptuous interior, far too large to fit into the building’s small dimensions, contained a sitting room, a communal dining area, and a vast and sweeping staircase that swept upward vastly toward a huge window that looked out upon a vast and sweeping vista that was nowhere in the city. Jasmine loved the whole absurd sweeping scale of it, and paid dearly for the privilege.
She headed for the small blue lift at one corner of the sitting room. Nothing jumped out at her. Nothing continued to jump out at her as she pressed the button for her fourth floor apartment. A continuance of nothing continued to not happen as the elevator doors opened.
The lift itself was empty. Jasmine took a cautious step inside and watched carefully as the doors closed. She had this terrible fear that just as the doors closed, a horrible clawed hand would reach in and stop the doors closing, and then she’d be doomed. Thankfully, that failed to happen.
Nothing happened as the lift’s doors opened onto the fourth floor. A horrible slavering monster failed to materialize as Jasmine waded through the thicket of velvet carpet to her door. A serial killer with an axe didn’t slash her throat as she pressed her keycard to the receiver and opened her front door.
It was at that point that bad things stopped failing to happen.
“Hello,” said the black winged thing standing in her living room.
“Hello,” said the man with the bowler hat standing next to the black winged thing.
Jasmine blinked at the two of them, unsure of how to proceed.
“Ah, yes, you weren’t expecting us,” said the man with the bowler hat. “Well, I’m afraid the feeling is indeed far from mutual. You see, we need your expertise on something, and well, it rather requires your presence somewhere else.”
“What?” said Jasmine, feeling ridiculous at the inadequacy of her response.
“Ah, let me be clear. We’re kidnapping you, my dear, and whisking you away to a place where you’re going to help us with a very special project.”
“What?” she repeated, for a lack of anything else to say.
“Ok, perhaps a discussion of the circumstances isn’t the best thing. Pinky, if you would.”
The black winged thing…did something…and was suddenly standing right in front of Jasmine. It grabbed her with a claw and grinned at her. She remembered her martial arts training and attempted to escape the hold.
Blackness, void, nothingness, she was dead.
…wait, no she wasn’t.
She found herself strapped to a chair in a stone room.
sh*t.
***
Rex Jaxon, private investigator, bounty hunter, riddle solver, answer finder, general helper with figuring out stuff, startled awake at the sound of his hand terminal chiming to indicate an incoming connection. He sat up in his battered leather office chair and blinked a few times, wiping the drool off the corner of his mouth and smoothing his shirt front and collar.
After a second, he accepted the connection. The tiny, mustachioed face of Dean Yann Voo of Gand University flickered into view on Rex’s hand terminal.
“Rex Jaxon?”
“The very one. What can I do for you, Dean Voo?”
“Snap to it, for one thing,” said the Dean. “You look like I just woke you out of a coma.”
Dean Voo had last hired Rex to investigate a mass grade fixing ring at the University, resulting in the expulsion of a hundred students and the firing of several very embarrassed faculty members. He’d been a reliable referral source for work since then.
“Sorry,” said Rex. “What time is it, anyway?” He answered his own question by looking at the clock blinking in the top right hand corner of his hand terminal. “Ah, that late. Must be serious then if you’re calling me now.”
“It is,” said Dean Voo. He related the saga of the stolen artificial intelligence, complete with fried tziken, pink mist, bhat, and guy with the bowler hat. Rex wrinkled his brow as the story unfolded, the sylvan tangle of his eyebrows undulating like a confused forest in winter.
“Who are the guys who reported this to you?” Rex asked, grabbing a stylus and pinching open the notes app on his hand terminal.
“Elseph Buntergrast and Florp Gadstein. Florp’s a doctoral candidate in advanced cybergenic intelligence, and Elseph is a data snake.”
“Data snake?”
“He slithers around data. That’s my own term for him. I don’t know what he actually does,” said Dean Voo. “He’s working under a grant from a private foundation that gives a lot of money to the University. Elseph was instrumental in designing the AI, although I’ll be hootled if I could tell you exactly what he contributed.”
“Huh,” said Rex, trying to think of something more substantial to say and failing. He scribbled in the names of the two guys and their contact info, and then some other notes.
“So can you help me?” asked the Dean.
“Yes,” said Rex. “But I need clearance to hire my own subcontractor on this job. I have a friend who I think will be very helpful here.”
“Jasmine Chehalis?”
“Got it in one,” said Rex.
“Good call,” said the Dean. “With your analytical genius and her technological prowess, you should figure this out in no time.”
“That’s the notion,” said Rex. “I’ll send you over my standard contract. Retainer in advance.”
Dean Voo nodded. “Thanks,” he said, and disconnected.
***
The last glimmers of sunset were fading from the sky when Jasmine Chehalis’s hand terminal vibrated in her pocket. She was walking home from her biweekly karfuera class. Having just gotten her butt kicked in a sparring match, she was sore and sweaty and ready for an antigrav bubble bath. She’d let her dark hair hang loose on her shoulders, trying to air dry the perspiration out of it.
She pulled out her hand terminal and accepted the connection. Rex Jaxon’s face greeted her.
“What’s up, Rex?”
“Need you on a case. Standard rates. Can you come talk?”
“Give me a half hour or so. You don’t want to be around me until I’ve had a decent shower, trust me.”
“No problem,” said Rex. “See you in a few.” He disconnected the call. Jasmine snapped her hand terminal closed and pocketed it.
It’d be good to work with Rex again. His cases tended toward the strange, the “crunchy” as he put it. He only brought Jasmine in when the “crunchy” involved technical, hackery, electronic problems. Jasmine’s reputation as the first person to crack the Allanaland Security Agency’s holo-encryption stress test continued to pay off nicely.
It was a chilly night, a little drizzly, nice weather to cool off in after her workout. The metallic skin of the city rose around Jasmine, enveloping her in the comfort of technology, of civilization, of home. The groundlane to her right was busy with tubes, cheap transport for the masses who couldn’t afford to fly. Above her, the skylane buzzed with flyers and gliders, shining reflections glinting off the glass canyon.
Jasmine reached her apartment building, a quaint throwback that had resisted the tide of metallic gentrification in the neighborhood. It was a building of dark stone and masonry, white windows, and a stoop with five stairs leading to the unfortunately necessary metal security door.
Which was standing open. No, not just open. Bent.
The hell?
At this point, Jasmine had a choice. She stood on the stoop, trying to figure out her best move. She could either walk in to the building and pray to all of the Gods of the Great Green Pantheon that whatever was wrong in the building didn’t involve her apartment, and that there were no thugs waiting in the dark to jump her, or she could stand outside and call the authorities and wait for a long time.
I’m tired. I just want to take a shower.
Jasmine pushed the door open slowly and peeked inside. The interior hallway, which had been hexed to look much bigger than it actually was, looked the same as it always did, which is to say that it would have caused a first time visitor to the building to have some quantity of vertigo and disorientation. The vast and sumptuous interior, far too large to fit into the building’s small dimensions, contained a sitting room, a communal dining area, and a vast and sweeping staircase that swept upward vastly toward a huge window that looked out upon a vast and sweeping vista that was nowhere in the city. Jasmine loved the whole absurd sweeping scale of it, and paid dearly for the privilege.
She headed for the small blue lift at one corner of the sitting room. Nothing jumped out at her. Nothing continued to jump out at her as she pressed the button for her fourth floor apartment. A continuance of nothing continued to not happen as the elevator doors opened.
The lift itself was empty. Jasmine took a cautious step inside and watched carefully as the doors closed. She had this terrible fear that just as the doors closed, a horrible clawed hand would reach in and stop the doors closing, and then she’d be doomed. Thankfully, that failed to happen.
Nothing happened as the lift’s doors opened onto the fourth floor. A horrible slavering monster failed to materialize as Jasmine waded through the thicket of velvet carpet to her door. A serial killer with an axe didn’t slash her throat as she pressed her keycard to the receiver and opened her front door.
It was at that point that bad things stopped failing to happen.
“Hello,” said the black winged thing standing in her living room.
“Hello,” said the man with the bowler hat standing next to the black winged thing.
Jasmine blinked at the two of them, unsure of how to proceed.
“Ah, yes, you weren’t expecting us,” said the man with the bowler hat. “Well, I’m afraid the feeling is indeed far from mutual. You see, we need your expertise on something, and well, it rather requires your presence somewhere else.”
“What?” said Jasmine, feeling ridiculous at the inadequacy of her response.
“Ah, let me be clear. We’re kidnapping you, my dear, and whisking you away to a place where you’re going to help us with a very special project.”
“What?” she repeated, for a lack of anything else to say.
“Ok, perhaps a discussion of the circumstances isn’t the best thing. Pinky, if you would.”
The black winged thing…did something…and was suddenly standing right in front of Jasmine. It grabbed her with a claw and grinned at her. She remembered her martial arts training and attempted to escape the hold.
Blackness, void, nothingness, she was dead.
…wait, no she wasn’t.
She found herself strapped to a chair in a stone room.
sh*t.
***
]
