one more draft…

obviously, i’m still behind on the daily story. did get the weekly up, though.

the house work (roofing and siding) has taken more of a toll than expected, both in time and body. did something seriously un-cool to my neck and upper back this weekend. however, looking to get back on target with the writing this week, one way or another.

“Exquisitely thrilling as this riveting banter isn’t,” Manadan prissed, “might we please hurry it along?”

“Nevermind, Jimsa,” Gupti apologized, shrugging through the grate. “It was a bad joke. Can we get our weapons?”

Jimsa eyed him suspiciously for a moment, then seemed to give up and slid back behind the crate.

“Jimsa?”

“Eh.”

Manadan took a breath, but Gupti held his hand out to wait.

“Come on, Jimsa. We need our weapons. We’re late for duty.”

“So.”

“So, we’ve got to get moving. The captain is already angry at us for being late.”

“And whose fault was that, again?” Manadan’s stage whisper, full of snidely false curiosity, covered Jimsa’s response.

“What did you say, Jimsa?”

Jimsa mad a rough barking noise “Jes’ like I sprek. Body don’t care.” His pale arm flopped above the crate and waved dismissively. “Gan whicha.”

Gupti glared at Manadan, but kept his voice quiet.

“Jimsa, please. I’m sorry. I’m listening.”

“Nuh-ah.”

Manadan opened his mouth again, his eyebrows tight with frustration, but Gupti covered it with his hand. Leaning in close, he whispered very quickly and very firmly. “Go wait upstairs!” Then he turned the little man around like a doll and pushed him slightly less than gently back down the corridor.

Manadan did not reply, and he only paused slightly, before moving off the way they’d come, Gupti returned his attention to the grate and the reticent armorer.

“Yes I am listening, Jimsa. Please, just give us our weapons and we’ll leave you alone, okay?”

“Alone?” Dry breath rattled in a dry throat. “Alone?” His face appeared once more beside the crate and his round eyes fixed Gupti squarely. “We’re never alone.”

Gupti leaned back in mild surprise. Jimsa was not entirely squarely tied on, as it was said, but solitude was his one known pleasure. That was partly why he’d been assigned here. He hated being bothered only slightly less than he hated doing what others told him to do. The only thing he hated worse than those two things, however, was not being able to complain to someone about them.

The other reason he was bound within these stony confines was an awe-inspiring knowledge of weaponry. Or a disturbing knowledge, depending upon one’s point of view. As the King’s Guards had seen it when they had installed him some twenty years past, Jimsa was the perfect armorer. His background, whatever it had been, ensured that their weapons were always cared for, always prepared, and always lethal. As the local populace saw it, Jimsa was a bogeyman, an unseen hand whose works wreathed the barracks as a bristling reminder of an angrier past.

“Oh.”

Officer Gerent’s soft, ridiculously insufficient remark hangs awkwardly in the room for a long moment, but I hardly notice; my stomach is sinking into my toes and my mind feels like it’s going numb from the inside out.

Two fee in front of me, a few hard glints of white within the general grey and black shadows are the only discernible evidence of the lunar resorts on the heatmap; empty light reflecting off the rigid glass and steel biospheres. The rest is a dead, charcoal grey, the cold remains of a forgotten fire.

This is impossible.

“This is what I was trying to say. I didn’t do this. I’ve been hacked.” I settle into my chair in front of the screen, keeping Patrick close. I have to get my logs up and make my case as quickly as possible.

Gerent speaks up as my hands lift over the keyboard, his smartly-dressed form stepping quickly up beside me. “Mr. Nemmons, please don’t touch anything.” Despite his movement, his voice is still uncertain, as if the request is actually one which I could refuse.

I know full well that’s not true, but my mouth is already on autopilot. “I’ve been working overtime on a bunch of reports for the office tonight, when all of a sudden the system went out of control and started accessing stuff all over the place.”

“Sir, we need to assess-”

“Dad!” Patrick’s gasp doesn’t cut Gerent off, but actually punctuates the fact that Gerent had stopped speaking mid-sentence.

My mouth shuts as I face the screen again and Patrick reaches forward, tapping the lunar heatmap to the front: cold grey, hard white, and absolute black.

Not a hint of red or orange.

Following him into my office, though, it’s clearly not fine.

“Dad,” he says softly.

The screen is still scattered with the video feeds from the resorts, but they all look empty now; hollow images of shadowed, photo-negative buildings and craters. My heart dips at the apparent evidence sitting on the screen for the police and Interpol officers to see.

Behind us, his uniformed bulk filling the room, Reynolds’ grunt of satisfaction is clearly audible.

A quick glance shows the officer’s summarizing eyes on Patrick, confirming his obvious snap judgement from earlier. I give Patrick’s shoulder a firm squeeze and offer his worried face a half-hearted smile, but it’s as much to fend off my own fears. Officer Gerent squeezes into the small room around Reynolds. It’s already clear he’ll bend whichever way looks best to the other two.

As the three officers watch me, I realize how guilty I’m starting to sound. I’m over-reacting. There’s no reason Patrick can’t come in with us. We did nothing wrong.

“No, that’s fine. That’s fine.” I turn again, acutely aware of Reynold’s deprecating stare, and of the fact that I’m only making it more valid a condemnation.

Patrick has stopped in his doorway, watching.

I wave him over toward my office. “Come on, Patrick. It’s fine.”

i failed to follow my own 5-minute rule yesterday. no valid reason beyond ‘life’. yes, that’s valid, but not enough to explain why i couldn’t take a few spare minutes and post. i’ll catch up this evening.

“That is an interesting point. Hm. The relationship of one observer to the next may well yield some effect upon their recollections. Hm. Not unlike the communal consciousness of most land and sea herd creatures, like the nakk, the hippocampus, and the southern gazelle.”

He reached up distractedly to scratch Hazhi’s head. “But not the northern ones. Interesting. Dhal Mhekai’s last work, Sahng-yi nye jong, conjectured the psychological variation as dependent upon the environmental differences of the two sub-species, noting the obvious lack of natural predators in that northern savannah, as contrasted against the more typical balance of hunter and hunted south of Agden’s Spines.”

“Unfortunately for us all, however, they are now extinct thanks to the unchecked fanatical religious idiocy of the Al-Haema, and Dhal Mhekai, himself supposedly gored to death, never did logically prove the source of said differentiation, which!” he said, snapping upright and continuing his walk with renewed purpose, “brings us back to the very problem at hand.”

This time, Gupti sighed loudly as he rolled his eyes.

“Now you’re simply being boorish.”

“Now I’m simply being bored.”

“Well then.” Manadan gave an exaggerated flourish, a moment before Gupti came to a stop on his own. “Perhaps our friend the armorer might be able to pique your interest with something less…complicated?”

Gupti, slightly ashamed at interrupting Manadan so blatantly, was only vaguely surprised that Manadan had kept precise track of where they were amidst all that rambling, down to the very last step.

In front of them, recessed within the stone walls, a gate of solid, pitted black iron stood imperviously. Almost three hundred years ago, the King’s Guards had this gate had commissioned the creation of the been sunk into the walls At chest height, a grid of steel bars had been set into the massive thickness, allowing an interrupted view of the barrack’s nearly empty weapons storehouse. Beneath the bars, a similar square had been cut, though the space was blocked by a scratched and gouged plate of steel on the far side.

It did not, however, allow a view of ornery and put upon young Jimsa, the Watch Armorer and Keeper of the Keys, and professional complainer, despite his meagre years.

Gupti rapped his knuckles upon the lip of the grated window. “Jimsa?”

“Eh.” A toneless sound, deadened by distance.

“Can we get our weapons?”

“Whassapoint?” Jimsa mumbled.

Gupti couldn’t resist. “Actually, that’s just it: we don’t have a point.”

Manadan groaned audibly and squeezed the bridge of his noise.

“Eh?” Confusion.

“Points,” Gupti prodded. “Get it? Points? Weapons?”

Jimsa leaned into view from around the side of a stout crate near the far end of the armory. Thin-limbed, pale-skinned and large-eyed, the Watch Armorer clearly hadn’t seen daylight since he’d been entombed in his current position, and his oil-stained leather jerkin was all that covered his ghost-like frame. Long, sparse hair hung in stringy lengths down away from his questioning face as he peered around the crate. “Whatchou sprekking, Gupti?”

Just below the top of the stair, I wave Patrick into his room with a short nod and then turn around, my eyes narrowed.

Directly behind me, Reynolds stops, annoyed. “Please keep mo-”

“I told you,” I say slowly. “My son had nothing to do with this. I was the one who opened the wrong file. He was at a friend’s house all evening, until just before you arrived. He has nothing to do with this!” My voice has risen embarrassingly before I realize it.

“Sir,” Reynolds starts, his hard voice getting harder, but they’re threatening my son.

I glare over Reynolds’ shoulder, past Hampton’s still bored face, and down at Gerent. “Patrick has nothing to do with this!”

Gerent glances away. “Well, uh, if you prefer, sir, I believe Officer Hampton can stay with Patrick until we need him.” Half the statement is actually a question as he looks back up, first at Hampton, who nods vaguely, then at me, a small hopeful smile on his face. “If that, ah, suits you better.”

I want to say no, to explain what’s really happened, to make them stop and listen to me, but the the hard look on Reynold’s face and his steady, determined motion forward mute me.

Why am I arguing? They can look at the logs. They’ll see the hack. I made the mistake of opening the wrong file, but that’s not a crime.

My heel hits the first stair and jolts me. “Okay. My office is upstairs,” I say, turning and climbing the stairs. Above me, Patrick is heading up as well, his head craned around as he moves. “Patrick, just go to your room for now. I’ll come get you.”

“I think, ah, it would be best if we stayed together, Mr. Nemmons.” The Interpol man’s voice is still uncertain, but at least he’s not reading his lines anymore. “Patrick’s history and skills are well-documented, and they run parallel to our current investigation of the activity identified as originating from this site.”