Exponential

by JM Addison

  *

  Instead of hitting the pillow and recovering some of her needed strength, she sat on the dingy bed of the faded, graying room with the papers from Chris’ apartment spread out in front of her. The place had a moldy, unused smell. But the tired little motel seemed out of the way and the price was right. They had rooms for rent by the week, no questions, pay with cash, in advance. Just what she needed right now.

  She didn’t know what to make of any of the papers in front of her. There were store receipts that simply hadn’t been thrown away. A copy of a couple of billing statements from the phone company. Several pages of what apparently were some notes from meetings at Viiradium. Miscellaneous scraps with reminders scribbled on them in the tight illegible scratch that she recognized as Chris’. Nothing that would reveal any new information. Dell was right. If there was anything useful or incriminating here, it would already have been taken when Chris’ place had been searched.

  She didn’t know where to go next. The only clues she had were the cryptic e-mail message and the fact that Viiradium seemed involved. Still the best thing to do now was learn about your enemy. She had to become familiar with some of the in-depth details about the Viiradium products as well as financial data on the company. It was interesting that Bob Danvers was running for State Governor. She wondered again if there was any connection.

  She knew going back to Viiradium would be dangerous. Probably too dangerous. She could probably find out a lot just from the competitors. Was she supposed to go undercover? Posing as a reporter doing an article for one of those computer trade magazines that featured advertisements of huge racks of data center equipment? She didn’t really feel qualified, and there was no one to back up her story should anyone ask for a reference. She could go to the universities. She herself was a graduate of MIT with a pretty good background in math, perhaps a professor could shed some light. She wondered what Dell was doing with the investigation and thought perhaps she should call.

  She gathered up the papers that she had spread out in front of her. A few fluttered off the bed to the floor. As she hastily scooped them up, something caught her eye. It was a pencil sketch drawn on the back of one of the pages with meeting notes on the front of it. I was almost like a flowchart only a little different. She couldn’t figure out the purpose. Some sort of process flow diagram? What struck her was the word ‘tomb’ scribbled on the page in a rectangular box that had been circled a couple of times.