Then, Leah spotted a trio of women moving a clip slower, jogging in a shallow chevron formation, one of them a half-pace ahead of the other two. They moved along a trail that would converge a few hundred feet ahead.
“How about them?” Leah said, indicating the trio with a short motion, trying not to be too obvious.
“Good eye. Now we have to catch up. Let’s get the lead out. Pain is just weakness leaving the body!” With that, Mallery poured on the speed, leaving Leah behind.
Sometimes this job was too much. On the other hand were the cushy salary, amazing benefits, and impossibly cool vistas. She kept reminding herself of the positives as she hurried to catch up with Mallery and the trio.
The center woman was a brunette white woman in her mid-twenties. Her friends were a shorter white redhead and a taller black woman, seemingly of a similar age. The women were still ten paces ahead, but they spoke loud enough to be heard. Or maybe that was just the world’s physics giving them a break.
“…to get yourself back out there,” the black woman said.
“One thing at a time.” the woman in the center said. “I still don’t know if I want to take the offer from the studio.”
The redhead said, “You need closure. Go see him.”
“Can we talk about something else?” the woman in the center said.
“No problem, Anna,” said the taller woman. “We’ve got to get to rehearsal. Let’s take the turn-off here and hit the showers.”
The women turned off of the track, heading for the edge of the park.
“Back in a sec.” Mallery threw up her hoodie, leaned forward and rushed ahead, sprinting to overtake the women. She pushed straight through the middle of the trio, jostling the women aside.
“Excuse me,” the redhead said as Mallery rushed ahead then turned back around toward the center of the park.
Lungs heaving, Leah was happy to drop off the pace. She slowed and stopped at a bench, collapsing onto the cold wooden slats as Mallery looped around, heading her way.
The trio headed off, turning out of the park and out of sight.
Mallery slowed to a jog, then a walk, walking up to Leah sweat-sheened but still beaming.
“Good pick. That’s definitely a lead worth following. I snuck a picture, so I’m going to shoot that over to the team for them to run through the algorithm for confirmation. The tracer I dropped in Anna’s hoodie will let us keep tabs on her on the way to her gym and then home.”
“Can I state again that this is kind of creepy?” Leah said.
“We’re serving as donor figures in these people’s stories. Like fairy godparents but with headsets and genre knowledge instead of magic wands and transforming rodents,” Mallery said. “You’re going to need to get over this if you want to stick with the team, newbie. If you’ve got a major problem, you should log it with King, but I can tell you now that it won’t end well.”
Mallery stretched her arms and legs, reminding Leah she should do the same. Her head spun as she got to her feet again, but her lungs felt better, like she’d dusted the curtains.
“King doesn’t like wasting his time,” Mallery said. “If he starts to think he’s been wasting his time with you, it’ll throw a pall over everything you do, even the good stuff like your patch yesterday. Hold on to those doubts until we get this story patched, and if you’re still worried, we’ll grab coffee and talk it through.”
Leah’s back cracked as she stretched, short of breath “It’s just a big adjustment. All of this sneaking around and playing with people’s lives.”
“It’s for the good. Not just the greater good. It’s for individual people’s good as well. Especially here. Ninety-nine times out a hundred, fixing a story means reuniting someone with a lifelong love. We’re the guardian angels they never need to meet.”
“I guess. It’s still creepy.”
Mallery made for the park exit, raising a hand to hail a taxi as soon as she was within view of the street. “You’ll get used to it. Let’s get back to the condo so we can shower and head back out to the next haunt.”
“Can I collapse and die for a few minutes somewhere in there?”
A taxi rolled to a stop right in front of Mallery. Leah smiled at the story world magic.
“That’s what showers are for. Come on, you’re the youngest of us all.” Mallery beamed, which Leah was realizing was pretty close to the woman’s resting face. Some women had resting bitch face, but Mallery glowed. It was impressive. A little annoying, but impressive.
* * *
Leah didn’t die during their pit stop, but she did spend ten extra minutes in the shower massaging her already-sore legs.
This time, instead of heading back out with Mallery, she got to stick around and work the data mines with Shirin.
“You’ve gotten a taste of finding stories in the field. Shirin can teach you about how the other half of the story is assembled,” Mallery said, throwing on her coat, picking up a bright yellow umbrella from the front closet, and blowing a kiss to the pair of women before whirlwinding out of the door.
“That woman is a force of nature,” Leah said, watching the door.
“She sure is. Just make sure you’ve got both legs planted firmly on the ground when she comes blowing by, or you’ll get caught up in her storm system,” Shirin said.
Now, what does she mean by that? Leah wondered as the older Genrenaut turned and moved to the workstation set up in the living room.
“Come on over, newbie. Now you get to learn how to do the real work.” She waved her hand at the three screens arrayed like half a hexagon.
“We’re tracking Anna, the woman you and Mallery pegged at the park, as well as digging into the cases in the hospital. What I’m going to have you do is run down any intersections between the candidates we’ve identified. We’re assuming a straight pair based on the conversation, but don’t automatically discount queer pairings – there may be something less obvious going on. Occam’s Straight Razor has gotten teams in trouble in the past. Just because there are almost no mainstream queer romances in the theaters doesn’t mean they don’t have their own stories here,” Shirin said.
“Glad to hear.” One more point in this world’s favor. Red Rooster was hectic and dazzling, but it also felt welcoming, validating.
“So, are you good to help me track down our unhappy couple?” Shirin asked.
Leah sat in the fold-out chair beside Shirin at the work station. “Where do I start?”
Shirin browsed over to a window open to Persona, the social network, which had its own problems with data privacy. “Mallery made a backdoor, so you can browse all accounts as if you were friended. I’ve cross-referenced three of the six hospital sweethearts with Anna already; I want you to run down the other three.”
“We have her name and a picture.”
“So that’s where you start, assuming she uses her real name on the site. If not, search for people named Anna connected to the patients’ accounts, and you’ll need to go at least one degree of separation based on closest friends and family members.”
“So, I get to spend all afternoon Persona-stalking these people?”
“It could be worse. You could be interviewing for a job like King and Roman. You ever want to get Roman upset, tell him he has to wear a tie.”
“Noted. What are you going to be doing while I’m doing this?”
“Two things. One, resting my eyes. Too much time in front of LCD screens gives me a migraine. Two, I’m going to spend the rest of the afternoon in the gossip magazines and on local discussion groups to keep an eye out for any rumblings, especially about Kyle Randal’s party.”
“Please tell me we won’t have to go,” Leah said. “I had my fill of frat parties when I was actually in school.”
“Jury’s still out on that one, I’m afraid. If we have to go, it’ll likely be you, Mallery, and Roman. King is not especially fond of this world. He prefers the dramas.”
Leah nodded, and Shirin took up posit
ion on the couch, reclining with a book by her side.
Shirin left Leah with the trio of screens all filled with browser windows, a zillion tabs open between them.
She plugged in the earphones sitting by the workstation, cued up some techno, and got down to the social hacking business.
First up, Kevin French.
Leah browsed through all twelve-hundred and thirty-eight of Kevin’s photos, keeping an eye on tagged names and untagged faces. Persona did its damnedest to fill in every possible bit of data, but some people resisted. She kept the photo of Anna that Mallery had taken at the ready, using it plus her own memory to try to filter through the pictures and look for a match.
Once she finished the pictures, she started over, sorting through any friends named Anna. And after that, she trolled the woman’s timeline, checking for anyone who might look related, or who might look like they could be either of Anna’s friends.
All of that took a good half hour. She put an X next to Kevin French and moved on to the next name, Oliver Brown.
Three hours of eye-straining, mouse-scrolling mundanity later, she hit pay dirt.
Theo Long, candidate number three. He was Han Chinese (judging by the clothes he wore in old family pictures - Leah could tell one of her people), in his late twenties, with hints of worry lines at his brows. He didn’t have much of a Persona presence, but in the handful of pictures that he had up, Anna Grace was in fully half of them. There were pictures of the pair dancing in a studio, some kind of ballroom, from the look of it. Dinners, drinks out with friends, and more. Nothing in the last three weeks, however. The last two posts on his Persona account were a post from his mother talking about how Theo was going to be getting out of the hospital soon, how attentive (and pretty) his doctor was, and then one from Theo himself, with a picture of him walking out of the hospital with a crutch.
There were some wrinkles.
Theo’s Persona page said “Engaged,” where Anna’s said “It’s complicated.” And Anna’s page had pictures of Theo, but they’d all been untagged.
Leah gestured Shirin over to take a look. “That’s a red flag for us if I’ve ever seen one.” She laid out the connections in several tabs across the multiple screens, then scooted aside to let Shirin look at the results.
“I think you’ve got a winner here, newbie. Write it up and send it out to the team. They’ll do a first-contact pass today, then we meet up to run down their story tonight so we can start building the patch.”
“Can I take a break first?” Leah asked. “I kind of got in the zone, and I think your headache came back to the computer so it could hang out with me.”
Shirin patted Leah on the shoulder. “Sure. But don’t wait too long. Mallery is out there spending HQ’s money, and King’s the one who has to write expense reports this mission.”
“Got it.” Leah stood and walked over to the couch, flopping facedown to shield her eyes.
And promptly fell asleep.
She woke up, not having meant to sleep. Checking the clock, she’d been out for all of five minutes, just long enough for her arm to go numb and for her to be totally disoriented.
King stood in the doorway, arms crossed. “Shirin tells me that you found a match. Let’s not make the team wait anymore on that report, shall we?”
Leah leapt from the couch to the workstation in a single bound, which was tricky, since she had to scale the couch to get to the other side in order to reach the workstation. She managed not to fall over, but only just.
Within an hour, the team had come back from the field and sat in the living room, ready for the report.
Her report.
Don’t screw this up, her teammates’ eyes said, all watching, waiting.
It’s just another story. Tell the story, Leah, she told herself, and began.
Chapter Five: Meet Bachelorette Number One
Leah pointed to the board. “So, our lead candidates are Anna Grace and Theo Long. Mallery and I saw Anna this morning, jogging with friends in Central Park. I dug through the Persona pages of the six people admitted to hospitals with engagement rings over the last month, which led me to Theo Long.”
It was like her hands were asleep—she couldn’t help but be incredibly aware of them and feel awkward. During a set, she had the mic as her woobie, could focus her body language on working the room, shifting the mic, and so on. She tried to use the dry-erase marker in the same way, but then it ended up looking like she thought the marker was a mic, which was just silly.
Roman swiped through the report on his tablet. “These Persona pages tell a pretty messy story.”
“Sure do,” Leah said. “So, I figure we need to get in there and get both sides of the story, then start working on a way to make a happily-ever-after, right?” She looked to Mallery, who nodded.
Mallery stood. “Thanks, Leah. I can take it from here. King, you and Roman will make contact with Theo. See if we can’t get him to do PT at your gym, and if not, we’ll see about tweaking his insurance so that he ends up there anyway. In the meantime, get a tracker on him and see if you can’t manufacture a meeting to get yourselves into his life, bro-style.”
“Bro-style?” Leah asked.
“Doing that emotionally-repressed around all other men unless you’re drunk because only then is it okay to cry because the Patriarchy sucks. You know, bro-style.”
“Got it.”
“Leah and I will make contact with Anna, posing as a Wise Lesbian Couple so we can get her side of the story. We’ve got her tracked to her home, so we just need to pick up the trail when she heads out to dinner or drinks or whatever tonight.”
Working the archetypes was standard procedure—fill an established role and it was easier for people in story worlds to fit you into their life without question. Since Shirin had told Leah a couple of days before that Mallery was very out as a lesbian in real life, not as much would be acting.
“Wise Lesbian Couple?” Leah asked. “Shouldn’t it be Anna’s Gay BFF if we’re in a Romantic Comedy?”
Roman cut in. “I’m the one who does Gay BFF, but I’ll need to work with Theo. Can’t work both threads of the story at once.”
“Gay BFF isn’t in my repertoire,” King said. “Never got the hang of it. Veers too close to Magical Negro, and I hate that shit.”
For a moment, Leah was back in her comedy troupe, people arguing over roles. The familiarity was comforting, even if she felt a little bit out in left field as the others talked about their specialties and preferences.
“Why can’t we just use a PPM to change up our appearance and be able to play multiple roles?” Leah asked. The Personal Phase Manipulators allowed the Genrenauts to disguise their appearance and voices.
King shook his head. “PPMs are very expensive, and hard to replace. We’ve lost three already this year in missions gone wrong. Council’s keeping them on reserve.”
Mallery made the move-it-along hand gesture. “More’s the pity. They’re dangerously fun to play with. Shirin, you’re on logistics duty. Coordinate between the teams, feeding information back and forth. Mostly, I want you designing our Grand Reconciliation. Tomorrow’s party will be too soon and has too high a skeeve factor, so look farther ahead.”
Mallery looked at the board, taking it all in. “We’ll probably need to go to extra innings on this one, so King, let’s get ready to make our appeal to stay for, say, nine days? I think that’ll be enough time to lay in groundwork. Assuming this story can actually be fixed.”
“HQ has been denying extension requests left and right, especially since…” King said. “Let’s see if we can’t make it six days. We’ll reassess at five.”
“That’s fair. Okay, everyone know what we’re doing? Leah, you’re with me. We have to get our covers sorted before we go visit our Leading Lady.”
“Roger,” Leah said.
Walking back to the master bedroom, Mallery launched right in.
“So, for this story, we’re going to want to insert ourselves in
to Ms. Grace’s life as seamlessly as we can, but not in such a big way that we leave a hole when we leave.” Mallery turned into the bedroom and threw open the stand-up dresser, revealing her wardrobe as if it were an arsenal. Which, really, it was.
She pulled down three dresses, stacking clothes together, arranging and rearranging. This is why Mallery’s bag was twice as full as anyone else’s, Leah realized. In Sci-Fi or Western World, Roman brought the big bag of guns. Here, Mallery had her wardrobe.
Absently inspecting one of the dresses, Mallery continued. “If there’s one thing Shirin goes overboard on, it’s making herself indispensable. I read the report from your trip to Azura-3. She’s pushing the boundaries of long-term involvement there, and we won’t need to be as blatant with this one.”
Mallery held up a dress, looking in the mirror. “That won’t do with this hair,” she said under her breath, then continued. “We’re going to do a drive-by fairy-godmothering. We should be tourists instead of New York residents. That gives us a built-in departure.”
“Sounds good,” Leah said. “Can we be visiting from somewhere that doesn’t require accents? I can only do Minnesota and Chinese. Never got into the impersonations part of comedy.”
Mallery chuckled. “That’s fine, darling.” She dropped into a Georgia accent, thick as molasses. “I’ll go big with mine and it’ll draw the attention. So, who shall we be? Honeymooning actresses? Hippies on a food tourist adventure, adventurous enough to go to the Big Apple but not rich enough to fly to Kazakhstan?”
“I like the actress idea,” Leah said. “It’s high-status, so it’ll grab attention, and it will cover for a good amount of the story talk. We can get meta on it, helping her fix her story within her ‘real’ world.”
“Let’s not get too close to the nose there. That can throw things off. Actresses it is. How did we meet?”
“Working a TV show together. No, auditions! We were rivals for a role but went out for coffee after encouraging one another. Neither of us got the role, but the consolation prize was pretty nice.”
Genrenauts: Season One Page 23
