The Ascension Myth Box Set

by Ell Leigh Clark

  Meaning…

  Some of the leaps you made in your paper were outside the bounds of the Adjacent Possible you started from given the technology and awareness available to you at the time. The techniques you developed are like having created cells before the evolution of fatty acids or bounded membranes.

  What are you saying Oz?

  Well, you clearly wrote that paper. It’s your style, your finger prints are all over it. You have memory of it. I can only postulate that you were exposed to information that led you through these leaps, leading you to conclusions that made these methodologies possible well ahead of their time.

  Molly thought back to the comment Eugene had made about how the tech had evolved. She’d had to reengineer equipment to do the minute work that she wanted to do, but now they had photo optic lasers that could be controlled way better for splicing the molecules.

  You may have a point, Oz.

  I suspected so.

  So is there any way to trace this?

  I can poke around. But your memory of any significant papers which helped you make these leaps would be highly useful.

  You can access those?

  Yes. When you sleep.

  Okay. Make it so, then.

  Okay. When you sleep. I won’t make you sleep now, while you’re holding that slide.

  You can make me go to fucking sleep?

  Of course. I have control of most of your neural cortex.

  Son of a Bitch! You could have told me that when I was trying to get some sleep on the flight! Dickwad.

  That’d be Charles.

  No. It’s Dickwad Oz, now.

  Hotel Erwin, downtown Spire

  Pieter arrived at the hotel room to find Joel sitting at the table in the suite, holoscreens out, immersed in the “leg work” of the case. Joel had one leg up on a chair and seemed to be stretching his hamstring while he worked.

  Pieter closed the door behind him, and dumped a number of bags on the bed. “Okay, I got the tech pieces I needed, and I think I can start building something that will do the job.”

  Joel looked up, unimpressed with the tech. “What about the important stuff?” he asked, hunger in his eyes.

  Pieter grinned. “Oh, yeah, I got that alright.” He rummaged through the bags, locating the one with the hot, steamy containers in it. “Calzone with bacon and extra hot sauce, extra beef… No garlic.” He handed the steaming packet over to Joel, the “Hot Pocket” text written in repeat all over the wrapper.

  Joel took the package and started unwrapping it immediately. “Knew there was a reason I hired you!” he said, grateful to finally have food. He hadn’t bothered to calculate how long since he had eaten, but however long it was, his stomach was telling him food time was well over due.

  “What did you get?” he asked as Pieter located his own Hot Pocket, and abandoned the other bags on the bed to join Joel at the table. He dumped a stack of napkins on the table before sitting down.

  “Ground beef, bacon, and pulled pork, with extra hot sauce!” Pieter was fully distracted by the food as he answered, carefully unwrapping the package.

  The pair looked like they hadn’t eaten in a week as they tucked in.

  Joel started talking through a bite of pastry. “You know, it’s great to be able to chow down on something meaty with a fellow carnivore!” He realized he came across as a little more excited than he wanted to sound.

  Pieter looked up at him, missing the point. “Yeah. It’s good.”

  Joel explained further. “Without judgment, I mean. Molly… she’s great and all, and she doesn’t judge, but I feel bad eating half a cow in front of her.”

  “Veggie?” Pieter asked.

  Joel swallowed the mouthful he’d been chewing. “Yeah. To the extreme. Anything that ‘had a face,’ or came from something with a face… she won’t touch it. Makes ordering pizza a bitch.”

  Pieter laughed. “So you haven’t had, say, pepperoni pizza since you signed up with her?”

  Joel waved his hands around enthusiastically to emphasize his hardship. “Practically. I mean, I have to eat that stuff. We just do half and half where possible. But ancestors forbid that she ends up with any kind of meat on her piece!”

  The pair laughed, and continued eating - more carefully now, because as they got to the filling, the Hot Pockets were so damn hot.

  Eventually they started to slow down, and started to talk more.

  Pieter indicated to the screens Joel was looking at while chewing. “Find out anything new?”

  Joel nodded, chewing and trying to clear his pallet. “Yeah, it seems that these two scientists that went missing were model employees.” He shook his head, and pulled up their images to show Pieter. “I’m starting to think that maybe they were being threatened to steal that toxin.”

  He absently tried to bite into the next bite of filling but it was just too hot. Having eaten some crust, convincing his stomach that food was on the way, he carefully placed it down on the wrapping to let it cool.

  “We need a way to get into their holos, bank statements, and everything else to see what’s going on. I’ve only been able to get so far. I think if anything were there, it’s probably been removed to avoid suspicion.” He was musing, but then seemed to remember that he’d just hired Pieter as his tech guy. “Hey, think you can have a crack at it?”

  “Sure!” Pieter looked both excited to have something real to work on, and a little anxious that he was being thrown straight in.

  Joel transferred the files over to Pieter's holo, for when he was finished eating. “So how did you get on with the parts for the system?” Joel asked, changing the subject.

  Pieter had just taken another bite, and was chewing fast to be able to answer.

  Kid must have a mouth made of asbestos, Joel thought to himself.

  “Yeah, I got everything I needed,” Pieter responded. “I just need to get to building it and then make sure that it works. I think I’m going to have to write a specific firewall for it, too, so that the data can only be placed on the server, but not retrieved, in case it is ever discovered. The idea would be if Garet was ever caught with it, it should just look like something mundane, like a normal data plug or something.”

  Joel was impressed. He saw Pieter was thinking through the user application rather than just the code. Guys like this were hard to find. “Got it,” he said. “And then when he wants to upload, he goes somewhere public and uploads it to the server…”

  Pieter picked up the trail of thought “… which looks exactly like a Webflix server if anyone were to isolate the packets…”

  “… and then we will be able to download it to our servers any time after that,” finished Joel.

  Pieter looked pleased with himself. “Yep. That’s the plan!”

  “Okay,” Joel said, laying out the plan. “I’d like to field test it before we give it to Garet. He’s one of us. We need to make sure he’s not going to compromise himself any more than he is already doing.”

  Pieter put down his Hot Pocket briefly and made some holo notes. “Yeah, I get that,” he agreed. “Man, he’s got balls to be doing what he’s doing.”

  Joel nodded, carefully picking up his food again. “Yeah, like you wouldn’t believe. Honestly, when I first met him he seemed a bit of a pussy. You know, average guy in a life or death situation.”

  Joel’s eyes fixed on a spot on the wall as he remembered the day in the hotel room not dissimilar from the one they were in now.

  “But since he was nearly kidnapped, and everything else went down, he seems to have embraced the danger. Like he found out what was really important to him, and just decided to go for it, no matter what.”

  Joel paused, the Hot Pocket half way to his mouth. “You know, I think I’ve got a lot of respect for the guy.”

  Pieter was listening intently. He stopped chewing, and swallowed. “Sounds like a hero.”

  Joel looked thoughtful. “I’ve been on t
he fence about him a lot of the time, but recently, I’m thinking, yes. He is.” He took a bite of the Hot Pocket, careful to just eat the bits that had had time to cool.

  He indicated to his holo screens. “I was watching some of his speeches. He’s really making a difference. And I know he’s having to do some dodgy shit behind the scenes; he’s in the pocket of a really dark group, but he’s also managing to make some good strides with what he does.”

  Pieter was curious. “Didn’t he come out of nowhere, though? I mean, he was just a government employee, right? Then a whistle blower, and all of a sudden he’s what, a senator?” Pieter took another bite of food. Joel was sure he saw him flinch a little at the heat.

  Ha! Not so tough, teflon boy… he mused to himself.

  “Yeah, that’s right,” Joel nodded, interested to hear how the guy he’d hauled into a getaway car, under a hail of gunfire, was now being perceived.

  He continued. “The Syndicate made him a senator. When Dewitt, his boss, was killed - probably also by The Syndicate - it left an opening. An opening that The Syndicate wanted filled with someone they can control. Garet took the position to try and do some good, knowing he’d have to do some stuff for them along the way.”

  Pieter had just swallowed his mouthful. “Sounds like a difficult balancing act.”

  “Yeah. A very dangerous one,” Joel agreed. “And if we can help him leverage some of the things he is managing to do, then so much the better.” Finally realizing he was able to eat the Hot Pocket that wasn’t so hot any more, Joel dug into the meaty awesomeness, and didn’t speak again until he was done.

  Chapter 10

  Newstainment Offices, downtown Spire

  Evenings at the office were the best time for getting work done, and for accessing footage that she shouldn’t be. With most people having already left, there was a quietness which still remembered the activity of the day. Almost like the determination and energy of the place lingered.

  Maya was the only person left in her section of cubicles. She’d seen Scott, or Stanley, or whatever his name was, from the entertainment group, scuttling around earlier… but even he might have left.

  Maya scrolled through the footage again.

  There was something not right with it; something she couldn’t quite put her finger on. She found it hard to believe that the girl and the guy on the screen were really involved in Dewitt’s death. There had to be something more to this story.

  She scrubbed backwards and ran the clip again.

  “Any progress?” Bob August popped his head over her work cubicle wall.

  Maya screwed up her mouth to one side. “Not yet,” she said, still looking at the screen. “Something isn’t adding up.”

  “Well, you could do with figuring it out before tomorrow morning. I want something juicy to run the next cycle with.”

  As Editor-in-Chief of Newstainment, and a veteran investigative journalist, he was a hard ass; hard-boiled in the news, and, though he demanded high standards and commitment to the story, he ran a fair ship.

  Maya nodded, a strand of hair falling in front of her face. “You got it, boss,” she said, peering at her screen and ignoring the strand of hair.

  Bob turned to go. It was getting late in the evening, and it had been a long, caffeinated day of meetings and activity out on the streets. All he really wanted was to unwind with a glass of wine.

  Something stopped him leaving, though.

  He turned back to Maya, poking his nose over her cubicle again.

  “What are you watching?” he asked, with the curiosity of his gut that had led him to finding many a successful story. She started to describe it to him. He knew the clip already, and came round to look at it properly over her shoulder.

  “You know, that girl… she’s not shown up in the police facial recognition. Which in itself is odd. But you know what else…” he trailed off.

  He waved his index finger absently in the air, and walked off towards his office. Maya figured it meant wait a minute. She sat, scanning other screens she had up, awaiting his return.

  “Maya!” he called from his office ten feet away. Had the office not been deserted, she might have been embarrassed. Instead, now having the run of the place, she left her desk and obediently trotted through to him.

  She hovered at the door, and he beckoned for her to come in. He pushed a holoscreen out to the wall, enlarging it. In that moment he looked transformed, now seeming more like a journalist who had caught a case, than an aging, disgruntled editor.

  He stepped over to the screen, poking his finger into the hologram of Molly’s face. “Knew I’d seen that face before. Check it out.”

  Maya stepped closer to the image to get a better look. Her hand reached up unconsciously, as it occurred to her.

  “Same girl!” she breathed.

  “Same girl,” he confirmed.

  Maya, face up to the holo, turned to glance at him. “Where is this?” she asked.

  Bob ambled away from the screen to sit confidently behind his desk. “Coming out of a research facility. Ventus Research.”

  The video clip showed Molly and Paige outside of the Ventus Research, with two of the scientists helping them load things into their car.

  Maya had turned her head back to the hologram, nose practically interfering with some of the light rays. “Wonder what’s going on,” she mused out loud. “Who is the girl? Why is she here? What is she taking out of that facility? And what was she doing at the Dewitt residence when he died?”

  Bob was watching Maya with the look of a proud parent. “Answer those questions,” he told her, “and you’ll have one hell of a story.”

  Maya nodded. “You got anything else?”

  Bob shook his head. “The video was sent in anonymously. To my personal holo account.”

  Maya barely needed time to consider the information.

  “Means it’s from someone who is smart enough to figure out who you are, and how to get your attention.”

  Bob had taught her well. He bobbed his head, crossing one leg over the other knee. “Rules out the run of the mill kind of tips and whistle-blowers,” he admitted.

  Maya looked up again at the footage. “You tried seeing if Tech can trace it?”

  Bob scoffed. “Those buffoons?”

  “Quiet,” agreed Maya softly. “Mind if I try?”

  Bob waved his hands, “Be my guest!”

  She nodded in acknowledgment.

  Bob checked the time on his holo, then rubbed his face with his hands. “Okay, all yours,” he sat up again suddenly, uncrossing his legs and poking at his holo. “Sending it to you now. Let me know what you find out.”

  Maya felt she had been dismissed, so she headed straight back to her desk. So much for heading home for an early night tonight, she thought. How could she possibly sleep with such a lead on this thing?

  She settled in to watch the video and start the research process. She may have to call in a few favors in the morning.

  District Morgue, downtown Spire

  Maya arrived at the district morgue just as the morning shift was coming in.

  “Dr. Jones? I’m Maya Johnstone,” she called down the corridor. The slow gait, and hunched shoulders told her that this man was just finishing his shift.

  He turned around, and instantly remembered. “Ah, the girl who phoned during the graveyard shift.”

  She had two mochas in her hands, and as she approached him, she held one out for him. He chuckled. “You’re too kind.”

  The guy sighed, and indicated to the chairs in the corridor. “Shall we sit a moment?”

  They sat down, and he began right away. “You wanted to know about the Jane Doe?”

  Maya nodded expectantly.

  Jones mirrored her nodded and continued, “Her throat was slit and she bled out. We’ve tried running matches for blood type, DNA, fingerprints, and dental records… Nothing. It’s like she’s been erased from the system.�
��

  Maya looked down at her mocha, thinking out loud. “Or she was never in the system?”

  Jones looked confused.

  Maya noticed, and shifted her focus. “And if she’s not in the system, then it doesn’t matter who her DNA says she is, we can’t identify her.”

  He dipped his head, and moved his mocha for emphasis. “Correct. But you said you might have something,” he said, pointing one finger at her with the paper mug in his hand.

  “Yes,” she started. Maya scrambled to get to her bag and then swiveled in her seat, looking for somewhere to put her mocha down. He held out his other hand to hold it for her, and she gratefully handed it over.

  She continued talking while she pulled a printed photograph from her bag. “A picture of a person who went missing around the same time. The trouble is, and I think we should warn your colleagues… this missing person was a scientist at a facility that was dealing with lethal toxins. Not germs. But toxins.”

  The elderly man exhaled and shook his head, but his hand movements were now restrained by the mocha cups. He’d spent the last several weeks in the lab with that body.

  His eyes went up to the ceiling. “Okay. Let’s think this through. Those research grade things… they tend to work fast. It’s been two weeks, and the body is sealed in an evacuated tube, effectively frozen, to preserve any evidence.”

  He stood up, and handed Maya her mocha back, then started walking back towards the double doors of the morgue, away from what Maya guessed was the locker room.

  Maya started hurrying after him, battling to get her bag on her shoulder while carrying the mocha. “You don’t think there is a risk, then?” she called after him.

  “I didn’t say that,” he called back. ”But let’s go check it out. And if you have a picture, then maybe we can ID her and get some progress on this case.”