by S. R Russell
Jinx settled for a wag of her tail in reply as she concentrated on directing the plate against a solid surface so it would quit moving while she finished licking it clean.
—
“What can I do for you young ladies today?” the principal asked as his secretary led Jinx and Anne to his office.
Despite his polite greeting Jinx had noticed on past occasions that the principal seemed uncomfortable talking to her, so she left it to Anne to answer the man.
“We have an appointment with the Empress at sixteen thirty today. We’d like permission to skip our last class to ensure we arrive on time,” Anne informed him.
The principal looked at Anne and Jinx and asked, “Do you have any proof of this?”
As if Bethany Anne wrote us a note. Anne’s mental tone was biting. Seshat?
>>Working on it, Anne.<<
Wait, you can hear the conversation?
>>Yes. Along with the cameras you each have, I’m also tied into your implants so I can receive audio from your surroundings. I thought you knew that.<<
Anne noted the concern in her EI’s voice. I might have just forgotten. You’re dealing with an organic here! It’s not important, it just surprised me for some reason.
>>You are certain you don’t mind? ADAM will be joining the conversation.<<
I don’t mind. I didn’t remember it being an option, but it will make things much easier now that we don’t have to remember conversations to update you later.
“Anne and Jinx have a sixteen thirty appointment with Bethany Anne today,” a male voice said from the office speakers.
“Wait, who is this? How are you doing this?” The principal was on his feet, looking around the room.
“My name is ADAM. Besides Meredith, who else do you think could hack into your system to access the internal communications? Also, how many people do you think would be stupid enough to try and fake an appointment with Bethany Anne? I can assure you that once she found out about it, that sort of behavior would not go without repercussions. Sort of the same way she doesn’t like jerkwads who waste her time,” ADAM finished ominously.
“Er…umm… Right.” The principal hooked a finger in the neck of his shirt as if something were choking him.
Anne could feel Jinx’ amusement. I can’t imagine his reaction if he knew you could go all Darth Vader on his ass. Anne looked down to see Jinx’ sides quivering with suppressed laughter.
Where did you see that movie?
Matrix and Dio were watching it at Yelena’s one day. That’s what you want to do with the ruby, right? Make one of those light sword thingies?
Yes, now hush so I can pay attention to the principal.
She focused again on the principal, who was speaking as he looked at his computer screen. “I’ll inform the teacher of your last class that you will be absent with permission.”
“Thank you, sir,” Anne said as she rose from her seat. “We’d better get going or we’ll be late for homeroom.”
“Quite. You girls have a good day,” said the principal as they exited his office.
—
With the important appointment looming at the end of the day, time dragged by at glacial speed. When her penultimate class finally finished, Anne had to restrain herself from heading out of school at vampire speed.
Jinx was just as anxious, and quivered with suppressed energy as they left the school.
After a thirteen-minute ride Anne and Jinx exited the tram, and four minutes later they entered the offices where their meeting with Bethany Anne was to take place. Cheryl Lynn looked up from her desk when the two of them came in.
“Anne, sweetie, how are things going with your mother?” Cheryl Lynn asked as she rose from her chair and walked around her desk to offer Anne a hug.
Anne accepted the hug, then took a step back. “She’s doing a lot better. The last few times I’ve visited, Mom reminded me of how she used to be when we lived on Earth. There only seem to be two problems still.”
Cheryl Lynn looked into her face. The young woman had always been so polite any time she had dealt with her. “What problems?”
“Mom really doesn’t like dogs, and Jinx and I are together. F’ing-dot-period!” Anne had been looking down at her feet, but when she looked up she noticed the universal expression on Cheryl Lynn’s face. Disapproving mother. “Sorry, that was crude and maybe a little harsh, but Mom still doesn’t seem to understand or accept what Jinx and I mean to each other. And she still won’t get an implant.” Anne chuckled. “I’m sure it’s so she doesn’t have to acknowledge that Jinx can talk. The other thing that’s an issue is that I’ve been away from my parents long enough that I have no interest at all in moving back in with them.”
Any further comment from Cheryl Lynn was curtailed by the voice of Bethany Anne. “Everything okay?”
Cheryl Lynn saw the leader of the Etheric Empire standing in the doorway of her office. “Sure thing,” she answered. “Why?”
Bethany Anne shrugged. “ADAM told me that Anne has been here for several minutes already, and you usually shove people at me trying to keep me on schedule.”
“Annnnd just how often do you stay on time once your day starts?” Cheryl Lynn turned the disapproving mother-face on Bethany Anne.
“Don’t give me that look or that line of bullshit!” Bethany Anne waved her finger at Cheryl Lynn. “If you’d let me shove those idiots who won’t shut up and stick to their allotted time into the Etheric, I’d have no trouble staying on schedule.”
Cheryl Lynn sighed. “Heads of government can’t just make annoying people disappear.”
“Wanna put money on that?” Bethany Anne raised one eyebrow and let a hint of fang show in her smile.
“No!” Cheryl Lynn crossed her arms. “Someone has to keep you from going overboard, and accepting a wager like that would just give you an incentive.”
Bethany Anne stuck out her tongue at Cheryl Lynn. “Too right!”
Cheryl Lynn just shook her head, then looked at Anne and Jinx. They had been turning their heads back and forth like spectators at a tennis match as they watched the two women tease each other. “Why don’t you two head into the office and I’ll try to get the Empress to join you before her next appointment shows up.”
“Ha!” Bethany Anne barked. “When was the last time you checked my calendar?”
Cheryl Lynn looked shocked, then suspicious. She hurried around her desk, dropped into her chair, and activated her display. “Gott Verdammt! I assume ADAM is responsible for this,” Cheryl Lynn shouted at Bethany Anne’s back.
“He only did what I asked him to do.” Bethany Anne stopped at the door to her office and turned back to Cheryl Lynn. “The briefing I received about this meeting suggested this was going to require a lot more time than was originally scheduled. Lock up and head home, CL. I’ll get us out of here when we’re finished.” With a wave at the front office, Bethany Anne closed the door behind her and looked at her two visitors.
“Jean Dukes tells me you have something interesting to show me.” Bethany Anne remained standing near the door, not certain what form this demonstration would take.
Almost as if she had read Bethany Anne’s mind, Anne pulled her tablet and the piece of ruby out of her backpack. “Do you want a live demo, or the recorded ones?” she asked the Empress.
“The live demo will leave a hole in something,” Jinx added with a snort of amusement.
“In that case, let’s start with the recorded ones,” Bethany Anne suggested as she walked around her desk to take her seat.
>>I can’t get a signal to your tablet in the Empress’ office,<< Seshat informed Anne over their Etheric link.
“Is it okay if Seshat sends ADAM the files so he can show them for you?” Anne nervously asked Bethany Anne.
“Oh, the office’s security measures… Sure, that would be fine,” Bethany Anne agreed as she spun her chair a few degrees to allow her to reach a mini fridge. “Coke?” she offered as she reached in to grab
one of the bottles for herself.
“That would be great, thanks!” Anne enthusiastically accepted the ice-cold bottle from Bethany Anne. She opened it carefully, took a swallow, and sighed in enjoyment.
I take it Seshat is the name of her EI? Bethany Anne quizzed ADAM as she took a swallow of her own Coke.
>>Correct. Here are the videos of Anne’s research.<<
Not only was she happy about this being her last meeting of the day, but Bethany Anne was very pleased that her impulsive act of giving Anne a position as a researcher might be paying off.
—
Jean had been tight-lipped about Anne’s discovery. She had looked out from the screen and held up a finger.
“She’s got something scary.”
A second finger had joined the first.
“She’s going to need help moving forward.”
With a third finger now in the air, Jean shook her head.
“I don’t have a clue how she’s making it work, and even fewer ideas how to help her move forward.”
Bethany Anne looked at the woman who had been one of her first recruits. She had never imagined that hiring Jean would have paid off so well. Some of Jean’s inventions in her service were legendary.
“What are you telling me?” Bethany Anne was reasonably sure she knew what Jean was going to say, but she needed to hear her say the words.
“She’s going to need her own R&D team. I’d imagine they are going to need to be a younger group—people who have mental flexibility.”
“Is that a nice way of saying they aren’t stuck in a rut?” Bethany Anne chuckled.
“Why did you recruit Anne?” Jean had asked.
“Even though her idea wasn’t feasible, at the time she came up with an out-of-the-box solution for a situation,” Bethany Anne confessed.
Jean nodded. “She’s going to need people who can do that. People who don’t have that little voice in the back of their head telling them all the reasons why something won’t work. People who are willing to say, ‘Fuck it, it doesn’t make sense but let’s try this.’”
Bethany Anne waited briefly when she saw Ashur come in. He trotted over, lifted his front paws onto her thigh, and chuffed a greeting at Jean.
“Same to you,” Jean said, holding her hand to the camera and flexing her fingers like she was scratching the dog’s back.
Bethany Anne waited for Jean and Ashur to finish their greeting, then asked, “You’ve always been a ‘Fuck it’ sort of person, so how come you don’t want to do this?”
“I could,” Jean had agreed, “but it could take months to get results. Do you want me off my other projects for months?”
Bethany Anne shook her head sharply twice. “I’m already worried we’ll come across an enemy whose tech is far enough ahead of ours that we’ll get our asses handed to us.” Bethany Anne had just voiced one of her constant concerns.
—
Bethany Anne gave her head a figurative shake and returned her attention to Anne’s video. Despite thinking she was ready for anything, she felt her eyes widen in surprise when the gem flared red and ate through the table and into the floor.
The video paused and ADAM asked, “There are several hours of video showing the recovery of the gem from the floor. Do you wish to view them?”
“Do they show anything relevant?” Bethany Anne wanted to know.
Anne shook her head, quite happy to avoid having Bethany Anne watch her recover the ruby.
“Okay, let’s skip that then, ADAM, and move to the next demonstration,” Bethany Anne said, after taking a long swallow of her Coke.
“Stop,” Bethany Anne commanded after the new video had been running for about thirty seconds. “Where’s the video originating?”
Anne froze in surprise, then turned her head to glance at Bethany Anne. Looking back at the monitor, she realized that Seshat had used the camera in her eye to record the experiment. “Jinx and I needed a little time in the Pod-doc for a communication upgrade to link us to Seshat, so we each had a camera implanted in an eye while we were in there.”
I take it you two were behind her getting in the Pod-doc? Bethany Anne asked her companions.
It was such a minor procedure it didn’t seem worth bothering you with, Tom responded.
You’re more than likely right. It was just unexpected, Bethany Anne confessed. “Please resume the video, ADAM.”
—
Having watched the video from Jean’s workshop, Bethany Anne was impressed. “What are you thinking?” She wanted to know what Anne’s plans were.
“Well, I was trying to find an energy shunt to reduce the force Jinx has to contend with when her armor gets hit. Obviously…” Anne waved at the screen that had been displaying her experiment, “that isn’t what I have. It’s powered by Etheric energy, so—for now, anyway—it needs someone who can channel Etheric to make it work. I’ll need to experiment to see how long a person can power it, but to do that I have to find some way to contain it so I can conduct tests. That was why I went to Ms. Dukes for help, but Jean says she isn’t the person I need for the job. I’m guessing you want to keep this secret, so she said I’d need your permission to find my own, umm…staff, maybe?”
“Staff, team, flunkies—it doesn’t matter what you call them. And you’re right, you need the Anne version of Team BMW.” Bethany Anne held up a finger, a slight smile showing on her lips. “Team BMW would be a good place to start. Not that they have time to help you, but Marcus and William might know or have heard of people you could interview and recruit. If they don’t have any recommendations, talk to Frank Kurns. He’s almost magical when it comes to ferreting out that sort of information.”
Anne had been expecting something like this after visiting Jean, but the scope of what she needed to do suddenly hit her like a physical blow.
Jinx noticed the change in her person and leaned against Anne’s leg to offer silent support. “If... No, I guess it’s when we find someone, what do we do? Bring them to you?” Jinx asked her dad’s person, taking over from Anne momentarily to give Anne a chance to recover from whatever was bothering her.
Bethany Anne drained the last of her Coke, giving herself a couple seconds to consider Jinx’ question. She shook her head, disgust on her face. Noticing Jinx’ reaction to her expression, she held up a hand. “That wasn’t directed at your question. It just brought to mind how extremely limited my time is nowadays. I think your best option would be to have Barnabas be part of your final interview process.” Bethany Anne stopped as she noticed a strange expression on Anne’s face.
“That’s Ranger One, Tabitha’s boss?” Anne asked into the sudden quiet.
Bethany Anne nodded. “Yup, that’s the one.”
“Umm, wouldn’t it be easier to ask Tabitha instead?”
“Easier, possibly, but as you said, your work is going to be classified. You don’t need a Ranger-Ranger, you need someone who can read minds. Tabitha doesn’t have that particular skill but Barnabas does, so he can ensure you recruit people with the appropriate ethics.”
“Oh my God!” Anne jumped from her chair, both hands going to the top of her head. “I’ll be hiring people!” She looked at Bethany Anne with an expression of near-panic. “How do I pay them? How much do I pay them?” She shook her head. “I don’t think I’m ready to be someone’s boss.”
Bethany Anne reached down and pulled two more Cokes from her refrigerator. Offering one to Anne, she said, “Calm down! Here, take a sip and sit back down. The man I mentioned, Frank Kurns? Well, he’s amazing with stuff like that. I’ll get ADAM to ask him to contact you.”
“Message sent.” ADAM’s voice came from the room’s speakers.
“Great.” Bethany Anne smiled. “Glad I could solve that so easily.”
The sound of a person blowing a raspberry came from the speakers.
“No fair,” Jinx groused. “I can’t do that, but an AI can?”
Bethany Anne spent several more minutes helping Anne develop a plan
of action. Once they had everything settled, Bethany Anne rose and motioned for Anne and Jinx to follow her to a spot in the room big enough for all three of them to stand together. “Hold still and concentrate on a big empty spot in your apartment,” she said, taking Anne’s arm with one hand and laying her other hand on Jinx’ head. Seconds later the office of the Etheric Empire’s Empress was empty.
—
“Can you do that?” Jinx asked Anne after Bethany Anne had transported them to Anne’s apartment and then transported herself out.
“No idea,” Anne answered. “Want to try?”
Jinx’ ears standing to full alert and her tail wagging like crazy were all the answer Anne needed. She reached down and carefully grasped the scruff of Jinx’ neck. “Seshat, if we’re not back or you don’t hear from us in thirty minutes, contact ADAM and have him tell Bethany Anne we got lost in the Etheric somewhere.”
Before Seshat could respond to the order, Anne focused on the spot in the park where she and Jinx had found Christina banging her head on a tree.
“Well, this is going to make it more difficult to keep track of her,” Seshat said to the empty apartment.
—
Anne and Jinx were both drenched within seconds, and Anne’s shoes filled with water. She had managed to port them into the park as planned, but the sprinkler system was on and their arrival area was in a shallow depression, currently filled with standing water.
Jinx shook the water from her coat. Deciding that the sprinkler was fun in a messy sort of way, she ripped a mouthful of grass from the ground and tossed it into the air. Then dashing to what they now called “Christina’s tree,” she ran a loop around it and raced back to Anne.
Anne just stood there, clothing soaked and water streaming down her face. She watched Jinx, chuckling at her friend’s antics, but then the ramifications of what she had just accomplished sank in. She fist-pumped and, ignoring the soggy ground, knelt to throw her arms around Jinx. “We did it!” she shouted.
“I don’t think I did anything other than coming along for the ride,” Jinx chuffed. “And while I don’t mind the water, what if this had been on fire or something else was happening here?”
