“An IP address is a thing. It’s inanimate. You can’t turn it into something with free will.”
“Sure you can,” she said. “If Terry Pratchett can have a talking chest in his stories, why can’t you make a character out of anything you want?”
“That’s Terry Pratchett. It’s fantasy. This is real.” So that was it. The kid didn’t have any imagination. This was going to be tough.
“But it makes the story so much more interesting to give things personalities and watch them do things as if they’re alive.”
“That doesn’t apply here. No one will understand the concepts. Anyway, you need explanations. I think we need a voiceover.”
Amanda laughed. “Are you kidding? No way. Voiceovers are stupid. You’re telling rather than showing the audience what you want to get across. They’ll feel like you’re trying to lecture them.”
“But how can you explain something without a voiceover? Unless we go back to my original idea of lectures and Q and A,” he said.
“Easy,” she said. “You dramatize it.”
“But that isn’t enough. This is complicated stuff. You have to explain.”
“The dialog and the action will do the explaining. For example, every time an IP address changes, it’s like the person you’re tailing puts on a disguise and tries to give you the slip.”
“No,” he said. “An IP address is a location, not a person. It’s like the address of your house.”
“Sure,” she said, “but you can make it into a person or an animal or whatever.”
He sat up straight, as if preparing for battle like some kind of knight. This was turning into a big fight just the way she’d predicted. “That isn’t programmer culture,” he said,
Boy he was dense. “So what? A lot of us aren’t programmers.”
“You should be,” he said. “Programming is a basic skill. Everyone needs to know how to do it.”
If Amanda had worn glasses, she would have been peering over them at this point the way Thrillkill sometimes did when he was annoyed. “Not everyone has time to learn to program,” she said. “A lot of us have better things to do.”
“I see,” he said snippily. “And would you not learn to add or subtract because you have better things to do?”
“That’s different. You need that to manage money and measure stuff.”
Holmes rolled his eyes. “Don’t be an idiot savant, Amanda. You need to know a lot more to get along in the world than how to make movies.”
This impertinence made Amanda so mad that she got up and stomped all the way to the door. Then she turned around and said very loudly, “When you want to join the human race, Scapulus Holmes, let me know,” and left the room.
A few hours later Amanda got a text: “Please come back.” So Holmes was going to listen to reason after all. Good. She’d won the argument as she should have. His position was ultra-dumb and he’d been insulting to boot. She was glad he’d seen the light.
“Pick a problem. I’ll block out scenes,” she texted back.
“Audit trail,” the text came back.
Good choice. The topic was definitely something she could work with. “Can u send points?”
“U got it.”
Hurray for our side. They really were making progress now. Maybe they should do the whole project by text. They seemed to get along better that way.
“I’ll text Thrillkill w/ progress,” she sent.
“Excellent,” he texted, adding a smiley face. Apparently all was forgiven. Should she answer? She still didn’t like the guy, but maybe a little concession would smooth the process.
She texted him a smiley and sat back to write a quick report for Thrillkill.
“How’s the film coming along?” said Ivy when she returned to their room from wherever she’d been.
“Actually okay,” said Amanda. “At the beginning I didn’t think it would go very well, but he’s being pretty nice now.”
“Oh?” said Ivy. “Wasn’t he nice before?” She sat on her bed. Nigel placed his paw on it. “Okay, Nigel. You can come up.” The dog jumped up and leaned on her, causing her to tilt to one side. He was a big animal.
“He’s so cute,” said Amanda, gazing dreamily at the golden retriever.
“Yes,” said Ivy. “He’s perfect, isn’t he?”
“Well, he thinks he is, but he’s actually not,” said Amanda.
“What?”
“Oh, sorry. You meant Nigel. I was thinking of Holmes. I mean first I was talking about Nigel. Sorry.”
“Scapulus?” said Ivy. “No, of course not. He’s a nice guy, and extremely smart, but he isn’t perfect. Nigel’s the only one who’s perfect.” She laughed. Amanda was glad to see that her mood had improved.
“I’m glad you said that because everyone else seems to think he is. Holmes, I mean.” She couldn’t bring herself to use his first name.
“He is popular,” said Ivy. “Amphora has a huge crush on him.”
“Amphora has a huge crush on everyone,” said Amanda, smiling for the first time all day—except for the smiley she’d sent Holmes.
“Yeah. She’s going through quite a colorful puberty, isn’t she?” said Ivy, giggling.
Now it was Amanda’s turn to say, “What?”
“She is,” said Ivy happily. “We all are in one way or another. There’s no point in denying it, is there?” She seemed her old self again. Maybe her hearing had returned.
“I guess not. Say, speaking of puberty, what do you think is up with Gordon?” said Amanda.
“You mean dumping David?” said Ivy.
“I don’t know about dumping,” said Amanda. “But he certainly seems to be getting more confident, don’t you think?” She reached over and stroked Nigel absently.
“Yeah,” said Ivy. “I couldn’t believe how much he got into those glitter explosions, and wanting to go into the basements when David kept nagging him about how much trouble he’d get into. I was shocked.” She tee heed. Yep. Her hearing must have come back.
“Me too,” said Amanda. “What do you think David will do without him?”
“I don’t know if Gordon will dump David completely. You think he would?”
“Who can say?” said Amanda. “Weird things seem to be happening around here. Sometimes I think anything could happen. Speaking of which, what’s going on with Editta?”
“I don’t know,” said Ivy. “I did notice that she’s actually talking though.”
“That’s good,” said Amanda. “Whatever it is that’s bothering her must be getting better.”
“Hope so,” said Ivy. “I hate for her to be so unhappy. She still won’t say anything about what the problem is.”
“You don’t think it has anything to do with the whatsit, do you?”
“I don’t know. We haven’t made any progress on that front at all. Which reminds me, what’s this about these crystals?”
Amanda brought Ivy up to date on all the latest crystal news, adding that she thought Professor Hoxby was looking more purple than usual, then apologizing because Ivy wouldn’t be able to see the difference.
“Don’t worry about it,” said Ivy. “But this crystal thing is really exciting, isn’t it?” She looked just like them with that gleaming orange hair.
It didn’t take Amanda long to block out the scenes. Holmes had sent her a list of three points, which was the perfect number. Public speaking coaches tell you to mention no more than three ideas per talk or risk losing your audience. Either the boy was an expert in that too or he had an excellent feel for communication, which confused her, because if he did, why had he argued so much when she’d come up with her fantastic ideas?
When they convened again—it seemed that the far table in the dining room was now “their” table—Amanda explained that they would use motion capture. One of them would be wired with sensors while the other held the camera. They’d put the motion capture together with some digital characters and voila! An animated film.
“I do
n’t think we can manage that alone,” said Holmes, scrunching up his face.
“Well, if we can’t we’ll get help,” she said. “Nick can—” She gasped. She was stunned by what had just come out of her mouth. She put her hand to her lips. Then she caught herself and said, “We’ll get Prudence or someone to help us. It will be fine.”
She sneaked a peek at Holmes. He looked as if someone had hit him. She must have put him in an awful position talking about her dead best friend like that. What could he possibly say?
He sat there for a moment and then said, “Can I see the scenes?”
She pushed her printout over to him. He skimmed it and looked off into the distance. Then he said, “Okay. I’ll go with your scenes, but I reserve the right to change them later.”
What? She thought he had agreed to go along with her. Why was he being difficult again? “You can’t. There’s no time. We have to keep on schedule and budget. There’s a limit to the amount of fooling around you can do when you’re working within constraints. We might be able to fix some things in the editing, but we can’t reshoot scenes once they’re wrapped.”
He stared at her for the longest time. She couldn’t tell what he was thinking. Finally he said, “You’re the director. I bow to your expertise.”
Amanda was gobsmacked. She’d figured he would argue. Now she was thrown off. Was he or wasn’t he going to let her direct? Was he letting her get her way now so he could pull the rug out later? The words “What’s my motivation?” came to her and she didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. That was the question, wasn’t it? What made Holmes tick? She had no idea.
Over the next week Amanda wrote the script and set up cameras and lights. Holmes ran here and there, following her around like a puppy and rushing to help her with the heavy stuff. She explained that they would put a green screen behind them and composite the backgrounds in later. She told him how they would frame shots, hit their marks, and use color to tell a story. All of this was new to him and he looked as if someone were performing magic in front of him.
“How did you learn all this?” he said after Amanda had completed a particularly sensitive maneuver with a red fill light.
“I dunno,” she said. “I just picked it up. I’ve always done it. Why are you looking at me like that?”
“Like what?” he said.
“That,” she said, pointing. “You look like you just ate bad fish.”
“Oh, sorry. I didn’t realize. No, of course I didn’t eat bad fish.” He laughed. “Although I quite like fish.”
She moved her backlight. “By the way, was something weird going on with Professor Redleaf?”
“She died,” he said.
“I know, and I’m so sorry. I meant, well, you seemed to know her. You said so at her funeral. I was just wondering if you knew what happened. She looked really freaked out that first day in class.”
“Yes, I knew her. We worked together on a couple of cyberforensics cases.”
Amanda was astonished. Holmes was only a kid. “But you’re so young. How did that happen?”
“Headmaster Thrillkill is a family friend and he asked for my help on the case. Professor Redleaf and I got along really well.”
“I didn’t know your family was friends with Thrillkill—I mean Professor Thrillkill.”
“Yes. I’ve known him since I was born,” said Holmes.
That explained a lot. Amanda guessed that many of the Legatum families knew each other—and the teachers. Why hadn’t that occurred to her before? She wondered how long her own parents had known the headmaster or whether they’d known any of the teachers before she’d entered the school. Of course they’d been far away in the U.S., so maybe not.
“About what happened that day in class,” Holmes said. “I don’t want to betray a confidence so I’m afraid I can’t tell you anything.”
What? He had just so much as admitted that something was wrong. This was not good. Was it possible that Professor Redleaf had actually been murdered? Everyone thought she’d been killed in the earthquake, but maybe not. You never knew around here.
“I understand that you want to protect her,” said Amanda, “but whatever she saw could be important. She might want us to know.”
“I’m sorry, Amanda,” he said. “I can’t tell you.”
She wondered if he was lying. He hadn’t done anything to make her think so but people weren’t always what they seemed. She’d lied to Darius Plover, and she prided herself on her integrity. If she could do it anyone could. She shouldn’t have done that, though. What was she thinking? Maybe she should write back and tell the director the truth. No, if she did that he’d never trust her again. It might be okay to write back and ask him how the film was going, though. She could tell him about the earthquake at the same time.
How had she gotten so sidetracked? She had a film to make. Whether or not it was a training film, and whether or not she had to work with someone she hated didn’t matter. She was a filmmaker and this was her business. It was time to get on with it.
19
Triboluminescence
As much as Amanda wanted to wrap the film, before she could do that she got sidetracked again. While she was editing the footage she and Holmes had shot, Amphora texted her and asked her to come to the lab at once with her video camera. Simon was experimenting with the crystals and they were getting amazing results.
When she arrived Simon said, “Let’s start over. Amanda, can you video this? I want to document everything.” He had laid the crystals out on the lab bench and sorted them into categories.
“Sure, but what did you find?” She peered at the array. Some of the crystals looked as they had when the girls had found them, beautifully luminescent and apricot-colored, but some were darker and some lighter.
“You’ll see. It’ll be more dramatic this way,” he said, fiddling with the placement. He moved what Amanda thought was a pale crystal in with the medium group, then moved it back.
“What’s this?” said Amanda. “Am I witnessing a conversion? You’ve never been interested in drama before.”
“Of course I have,” said Simon. “You know I like films. Although I have to admit that Spider-Man and Star Trek have gone downhill recently.” He moved the crystal back into the medium group.
“Yes!” said Amanda. “I completely agree. I don’t know what those directors have been thinking.” She caught a glimpse of Amphora. She looked bored. “Amphora, what do you think?”
“Haven’t seen them,” she said. “I like Daniel Radcliffe.”
“Well, sure,” said Amanda. “Everyone loves Daniel Radcliffe. That’s not the point. What I’m trying to say is that one, if you’re going to remake something, improve it, don’t ruin it. And two, learn how to do your job properly. I mean honestly, the writing in those pictures is terrible.”
“I agree, but can we get back to the crystals?” said Simon. He was lining them up just so.
“Oh, sorry. Sure,” said Amanda. “It’s just that—”
Suddenly Simon grabbed a crystal and threw it across the room. It hit a wall and fell onto the floor. The three kids rushed to look at it. It had turned a deeper orange and was glowing more brightly.
“Yup,” said Simon, looking at it from all angles. “Just what I expected. Oh nuts. You missed recording that, didn’t you?”
“Yes, sorry,” said Amanda. “How about if you do it again?” She readied the camera.
This time when Simon threw a crystal, Amanda caught the action on video. She captured the crystal’s before state, the arc, the splat it made as it flew across the room and hit the wall, and the way it looked afterwards. For the before and after shots, she moved in close.
“Yup,” said Simon. “Perfect. Now this time I want to measure the strength of the light before and after.” He went to a cupboard and started rummaging around. “And the color temperature. I’m going to need some color sensors.”
“Good idea,” said Amphora. What was going on? Amphora and Simon gett
ing along? Amanda wondered if Ivy should refund some of their fine money.
“What’s that?” said Amanda when Simon had returned with a gadget that looked like a souped-up meat thermometer.
“A lux meter,” he said. “That’s for measuring the lux count—the intensity of the light. But I didn’t find any color sensors. I’m going to have to search for an app and see if I can use my phone for that. At least I can do the intensity right now.”
He tested the lux meter until he was satisfied that it was measuring correctly. Then he struck, scratched, and bumped the crystals, confirming the results the two girls had got when they’d done the same things. Amanda videoed each experiment and Amphora kept a running log with measurements and descriptions.
“What do you make of this, Simon?” said Amphora. Gosh she was being nice. Well, not nice exactly. Just not mean, which seemed nice when you considered the way she usually treated Simon.
“I’m wondering if the force of the impact is exciting electrons or photons,” Simon said. “Does this happen with any other types of light?”
“Doesn’t something like that happen with those plastic emergency lights you can carry around?” said Amanda.
“Dunno,” said Simon. “I’ve never seen those. Are they an L.A. thing?”
“Search me,” said Amanda. “I just use them. I don’t know how they work.”
“Well,” said Simon, “what makes light brighter?”
“More power,” said Amphora. Wow. She was on a roll. Since when did she become Ms. Electrical Engineer? Amanda thought there might be more to Amphora than she’d realized.
“So perhaps the kinetic energy that’s being transferred to the crystals is being turned into power and exciting the electrons or the photons,” said Simon, who seemed not to have noticed Amphora’s transformation.
“Can you explain that slowly?” said Amanda.
“This is what I mean,” said Simon. “Kinetic energy has to do with motion. The motion of an object gives it the ability to do work.”
Amanda Lester, Detective Box Set Page 53