Epigraph

content/read/013.md

@@ -1,75 +1,69 @@
-# RJ Brewster --- 2112
+# Ioan Bălan --- 2305
 
-The pit revealed little.
+The first message was not long in coming, arriving about an hour after Ioan\#c1494bf arrived back at home. At least it wasn't high priority; ey had the choice to accept then or experience later. Half duplex, though. An actual conversation rather than a recording.
 
-There were twenty boxes set on a table in front of the snakehead. Twenty receivers for twenty wireless mics. Twenty cables neatly velcroed together into a bundle, contracting from the receivers and arcing catenary toward the dull grey plug-box. They were reduced to a four-by-five grid, arching up above the snakehead before plunging into it, XLR heads buried in XLR nests.
+Ey sighed, closed eir eyes, accepted. The things ey did for work.
 
-All of the boxes on the table were dull. Mute LEDs simple bumps on their surface. Dark. All but one: the first. The one with a piece of masking tape on its face, scrawled with a '1'. That box had a single red light on the front, indicating that it was powered on, and a single green light, indicating that the corresponding mic was transmitting.
+*"Hi Ioan,"* came Dear's voice. It was still seated on the couch. *"Long time no see, yes?"*
 
-"Great," AwDae murmured. "That leaves only half the school to search."
+Ioan nodded, subvocalizing eir response. "Yeah, took you ages. Have something for me?"
 
-If it had been a wired mic, the search would have been over as soon as it began: the cable would've been plugged into the snakehead, and by following it until ey reached its end, there would be the mic.
+*"Maybe. We have received a file from someone down-tree. Or, well, hmm."* It appeared to think for a moment before continuing, *"Someone down-tree from me found a file, and she thinks it might be a file from the clade, maybe one of the original ten."*
 
-And what?
+"Alright, send it over."
 
-There would be the mic, and ey would still be stuck in a nightmare. No, in some parody of a nightmare. All dressed up for the high school pops festival and, here, see? The auditorium is completely empty.
+The file arrived promptly. Eir shoulders sagged. It began with `-----BEGIN AES BLOCK-----` followed by hundreds, perhaps thousands of apparently random letters, numbers, and punctuation.
 
-The fox barked a laugh at how many cliches littered the situation. Turning away from the receivers, ey rested eir weight against the edge of the table that bore them. Ey leaned a moment, then hiked eir backside up onto the familiar surface, relishing the squeak of stressed metal from eir sudden burden.
+"What's an AES block?"
 
-AwDae swung eir legs back and forth, hearing the table creak and groan in time with the slow movements. The sound was quiet, but in that dread silence, more than enough to fill the hall.
+*"An old encryption algorithm."* Dear looked a little embarrassed. *"And I mean **old**. We like old things. That's why she suggested it might be from one of us."*
 
-Ey stopped.
+"You don't sound convinced."
 
-The auditorium was pleasantly wet: not damp or moist, but in terms of echo, it had just the right amount; or, at least, as much as a high school auditorium was able to muster. Had it been dry, the sound would've died away completely. The drier a room, the closer it got to an anechoic chamber. Zero echo. The painful lack thereof.
+*"I am not. You must understand that this is not something any of the clade wants known. It is just a name, yes, but it is important to us in a way that is hard to overstate."* Dear sighed. *"Much of the clade is of the opinion that, if we could simply wipe the Name from our minds, we would. For a member of the clade to break that trust is nigh unthinkable. It is acting against our very  nature."*
 
-AwDae knew this hall, even years later, even in dreams. Ey knew the pockets of good and bad sound scattered throughout the seating. Ey knew the dead spots on stage where one's voice would fall flat. Ey knew how the stage was built rather like a horn, performers at the small end, so that their performances were projected out toward the audience. Ey knew how the stage was built like a drum, the orchestra pit a chamber of its own.
+"You're right in that I probably can't understand the importance here. Still, I trust you on that. A friend, maybe? A mutual?" 
 
-And yet, there was that slight echo of the squeaking of the table.
+The fox frowned. If anything, it sounded less convinced when it said, *"Perhaps."*
 
-An idea. A crazy one, sure, but by this point, with despair nipping at eir heels, a crazy idea was better than none.
+"An enemy?"
 
-*And*, a bitter portion of em reasoned. *If getting lost is permanent like they say, I've got nothing to lose.*
+*"A valid concern."*
 
-Ey hopped off the table and began to pace.
+Ioan frowned. "I'm trying to square your use of the poet's work in your very names with your desire to forget the Name itself. That sounds like something someone could use against you."
 
-The squeal of feedback in an audio system is an emergent behavior, and even those who have not heard it before know immediately that something is wrong as soon as the hum starts. That quiet hum in the background, building exponentially.
+*"Names bear power."*
 
-It doesn't take long before it can be understood as something originating in the system, rather than coming from speaker or performer. From there, it builds on itself, feeding back into the mic and growing louder until it quickly overwhelms all other sound. Rises, crescendos. Hearing and speaker damage equally likely if left unchecked.
+"A memorial, then?" Ey hastened to add, "Sorry. It's probably not my place to understand. We can drop it for now."
 
-Similar, in an upside-down sort of way, to the echo that AwDae had caused making the table squeak beneath eir weight. Sound was picked up by the microphone, transmitted through the sound board, then out into the room. Amplified, though, through the speakers.
+*"Yes. A memorial."* The fox's shoulders slumped. *"Let's come back to it later. I do not want to get too distracted now. Still, we will have to speak more on this soon. It would be good for you to have a more complete picture."*
 
-If the microphone started to pick up sound from the speakers --- and sound was sound, the mic cared not where it came from --- that sound would loop through the board once more.
+Ioan nodded. "So do you want me--"
 
-A feedback loop.
+*"You do not need to worry about the file itself. That's why I did not just forward it to you automatically."* Dear paused, then added, *"Though I probably should have. Here I am talking about you having a more complete picture and not giving you everything."*
 
-It would continue to build through further and further iterations, until the auditorium was filled with a roar of that one dread pitch the microphone had first locked onto.
+"It's alright. I'm picking it up as we go along."
 
-Dread and dire. Cursed. An eternal struggle.
+It nodded. *"It is important, though. Amanuenses form an* Umwelt, *so this is part of yours, now. We will talk about it at the end. Something to keep in mind, I suppose. When we find the key, we will let you know and send over the contents."*
 
-Obviously microphones were still in use. They hadn't been abandoned because of the loop; they just got smarter about finding ways around feedback.
+"Okay, good. I gave AES a check, and you're right, that's ridiculously old. Can't you just crack it?"
 
-One could angle speakers toward the audience, rather than the stage. Bodies were notoriously bad reflectors of sound. Part of what made the stage so acoustically dead, that.
+*"We could. Some of us probably already have. I want the key, though. It's probably a word or something, and may prove interesting in its own right."*
 
-One could turn down the monitor speakers facing the stage, but that would be cruel to one's performers.
+"Interesting?"
 
-One could turn down amplification, but that defeated the purpose.
+*"Interesting in that the act of finding the key may turn up further clues."*
 
-The solution, then, was gain.
+"Ah. Good point. I'll do some digging on old cryptography, too, and see what all's out there."
 
-The adjustment was provided by a knob at the very top of the sound board governing the sensitivity of the mic. At the top, befitting its importance in the setup. The very beginning of the signal path.
+*"Good fucking luck. Cryptonerds were --- are --- very wordy. There's going to be a boatload to sort through."*
 
-Turn the gain all the way down, and the mic was a dumb lump of metal and plastic. Turn it all the way up, and the mic picked up everything from the movement of the air to the slight hiss of the live sound system, almost guaranteeing instant feedback.
+Ey grinned, "I'll fork and research, then."
 
-AwDae cranked the gain almost to the point of feedback. If ey could make noise in various points throughout the auditorium, maybe it'd get picked up. The more feedback ey generated, the more sound the mic was picking up. The more sound it was picking up, the closer ey was to it.
+*"Good plan. I am going to get back to the hunt, and hey, Ioan?"* The fox's smile was earnest. *"Thanks. Even if I am just running ideas past you, it is good to put in words."*
 
-Eir possible locations for the mic hadn't been reduced, it was still half the school, but eir chances of finding it sooner rather than later would go up. If the mic was not in the auditorium, ey could turn the main system up and start venturing further afield. Leave a door open, let the mic hear. Let em hear the theater ring like a bell in turn.
+"Of course, Dear." Ioan waved. Ey always felt silly interacting with sensorium messages. Would \#tracker think em crazy? "Thanks for the project."
 
-Riddles. Triply weird.
+Dear bowed, signed off.
 
-AwDae felt stupid. Insulted. Trapped for life and still solving riddles.
-
-Hopelessness dimmed eir vision.
-
-Ey shook eir head, ears laid flat.
-
-"At least it's something."
+\#tracker was, indeed, giving \#c1494bf a bemused grin.