Epigraph

content/read/022.md

@@ -1,89 +1,105 @@
-# RJ Brewster --- 2112
+# Dr. Carter Ramirez --- 2112
 
-AwDae stood in the sunlight, blinking.
+Johansson's hands dwarfed a pint of ale.
 
-Ey felt weak. Not from hunger. Not from lack of sleep. Just worn out. Exhausted.
+Once they had managed to find each other in the post-theater crush of the pub, they staked out a small two-top table crammed against one end of the bar itself. Johansson to lean to the side, away from the noise of too many voices.
 
-This was starting to feel like grinding. An endless drudge to level up. Busywork. Idle hands and tired eyes.
+He'd hardly touched the beer, but it seemed to take on an almost talismanic significance to him. Something to hold. Something to focus the thoughts. Carter drank her own cider slowly and waited, careful not to press her luck too hard. Johansson seemed slow to open up.
 
-But then, you could quit a game. Here ey was, clues and riddles. And for what?
+"Alright, so, RJ." His vocal cords unlimbered, a well-rehearsed baritone.
 
-There was even a fog of war.
+"Ey was your sound guy?" Carter backpedaled, eyes ducking to her glass. "Sound tech?"
 
-"So much bullshit," ey laughed bitterly. No sense in keeping quiet.
+There was a small smile tickling at the corner of Johansson's mouth, but he hid it a swallow of his thin ale, nodding. "Yep, lead sound tech. Best I've ever worked with, by a long shot. And don't worry. We still fuck up eir pronouns now and then. I know we did on the night ey...when ey...well, Wednesday."
 
-Ey stripped down to eir underwear, hesitated, then stripped that off as well and shook eir fur out.
+Carter nodded. "And then you tried to pull em back out?"
 
-'Comfort' was the wrong word to use in regards a sim. It was a matter of sensory inputs that the system was set up to provide. The musty smell of the auditorium seats had been one thing, but ey was starting to get the impression that, given the way this sim was constructed, there would be rather more than less input. Eir tux was decidedly uncomfortable, not made for fox-people, and so eir fur was decidedly mussed.
+"Nothing. It's like ey was still delved in even after eir contacts had been knocked out of place. We hit the panic button and called the docs. I guess some ambulance-chaser caught up with them, which is how you found out about us."
 
-Ey folded eir clothes and set them on the sidewalk in front of the school.The cool grass provided a welcome change from the indoor-outdoor carpet and tile inside, the roughness of the concrete out here.
+"Yeah. I'm not really in the habit of checking the tabloids myself, but I went out for lunch with a few coworkers and we got one pushed on us. The bit about you not being able to contact us got my attention, so I figured I'd make for the show tonight. Thought that might be my best bet."
 
-"Alright. So. Problems." Ey plucked viciously at a few close-mown blades of grass and held them pinched between eir pawpads. "Cicero is lost. He was voting on a bunch of stuff as usual, leading the comment boards. He voted on something and it made it to the floor, but it doesn't show in the records." Ey plucked blades of grass with eir free paw, enumerating the facts. "No vote cost, no bounty, no comment."
+"How'd you even manage that on opening night, anyway?"
 
-Ey swished eir tail around to the side, hiked eir backside up enough to slip it beneath em, and rolled onto eir back. Blue sky. Cloudless. Too bright, even with the fog. Ey draped eir arm, fingers still clutching grass, over eir eyes. "And now I'm lost. I was working, and then I was here. Before working, I was digging into Cicero..."
+"Oh, don't worry, it cost me plenty." Carter laughed. "Christ, this is so far out of the realm of what I'd do, too. I just feel like we're at an impasse."
 
-Ey trailed off, spent a few moments thinking, then a few more just feeling the earth beneath em, the way the grass seemed to find a way through fur to tickle at em more directly.
+"An impasse?"
 
-"So had Sasha, though. And she was the one who got me the deck in the first place." Ey ran through the actions ey had taken on the deck. It was surprisingly easy to pull up the chain of events. *Or perhaps not,* ey thought. *Given the note.*
+"Yeah." Carter leaned back in her chair to gather her thoughts. "I've been on a few projects over the years. None were easy, but all the same, this one has a weird amount of interference. It feels like we're being made to trudge through mud. They won't give us access to the patients? Fine. That's PHI. We just need the data that they collect from them, right? So why is that always so heavily redacted. Why aren't we getting that? It's never been a problem on any other project.
 
-Eir first write to the deck had been on the note about the voting records. Prior to that, there was only the sorting and sharing of records. Filtering. Reading.
+"All we're getting are little tidbits. A few hours of monitor scans, little clips of logs from before the event, and that's it. I don't mean to creep on you or anything, but with RJ, we've come across something we hadn't had before. We found out ey was, well, you know..."
 
-Ey lifted eir paw once more and stared at the torn blades of grass. Tossed them aside. "Ah, hell. I'm talking to myself."
+Johansson canted his head to the side. "An immersive tech? Genderqueer? Ace? A furry?"
 
-Laughing, AwDae stood and gathered eir tux, heading back to the costume closet. Perhaps ey could find something that would fit em. Something to take into account that ey was more fox, less human.
+"A furry, though those others are certainly interesting data points to keep in mind. We weren't totally sure ey was asexual, but it tallies."
 
-Failing that, perhaps ey'd lay down again. Sleep, perchance to dream.
+"How did em being a furry help?"
 
------
+"Ey's the second furry we've had come across our desks." Carter peered into her cider, then about the room. "In fact, it's caused a bit of a schism. Some of us are looking into possible...transmission vectors, while the rest are focused on cases individually. How could something like getting lost be transmitted from one person to another? It sounds like some awful drama; it's not a virus."
 
-AwDae wound up in a simple, pleated skirt and a loose cotton shirt, gathered at the wrists.
+"I assume you're among those who doubt the transmission story?"
 
-The skirt fit well with a tail, certainly far better than eir trousers sagging beneath its base awkwardly. It was a robin's egg blue. Nice enough. Undecorated. Any detail would be lost on the audience anyway. Might as well save both cost and effort.
+"Oh, no, I'm heading it up." She laughed. "But there are still convincing arguments to be made against it. Sanders, the leader of the opposition, such as it is, is dead-set against it. He thinks that we're wasting time chasing up this transmission tree. Valuable resources. We've got an agreement, though."
 
-The shirt was made for someone with broader shoulders. RJ might have filled it out, but on the fox's slender frame, it was baggy and loose. Again, just a plain white, but ey could hardly complain. It didn't compress eir fur, unlike the tux shirt, with its pleats sewn down the front.
+"What's that?"
 
-Ey gave consideration as to what to do with the tux. On the one paw --- and here, thinking in paws already! So soon --- it was just an artifact. Just bits. Everything was. Eir own body was. Had to be. Choosing clothes that were 'more comfortable' was only instructing the sim how best to treat eir body. Had to be. Clothes that were more comfortable were no different from clothes that weren't. It was just how the numbers added up. Just the math of simulated fashion. Had to be.
+"Well, we'll keep poking at this lead and if it dries up, we'll drop it."
 
-And yet, on the other, the tux was the only thing ey had...had what? Brought with from reality? It might just be a set of bits in eir exocortex, but it was *eir* set of bits and bytes.
+Johansson hunched his shoulders, frowning. "Not much of a lead, I'll grant you that, but all the same, anything to get RJ back. Ey was more than just a tech. Sounds silly, but we all liked em. The tech crew, especially. We went through our share of fuck-ups tonight just getting by without em."
 
-Was it? Was there any point to the sense of ownership in so solipsisitic a world?
+"Oh? I didn't notice any."
 
-Something to tie em back to the world outside this sim.
+"You weren't on the headset. We had lights and sound arguing cues while stage desperately tried to keep them on track. It was a mess."
 
-A solution in between, then. Ey dug until ey found a rucksack that had probably gone with some war-themed production. Drab, dusty, made of thick canvas. It would do well to carry anything that would help, including the notes ey had made.
+"All the same," Carter countered. "I thought it was delightful."
 
-Ey laid eir tux out on the ratty sofa and rolled it into a tight cylinder. An empty sim would care little if eir tux got wrinkled, yes? Ey stuffed it down at the base of the pack and folded the notes into a small pocket on the side.
+"Mm."
 
-Thus equipped, ey padded back to the auditorium. Ey made sure the room was put to sleep, and, on a whim, grabbed the one live microphone ey'd found earlier. Ensuring that it was off to conserve batteries, ey added it to the notes. A small token of where ey'd come from.
+Silence.
 
-"Not going to do much without the receiver or board," ey murmured. "Do the batteries even matter? This is all so fucking silly."
+It felt necessary. They both stared off into the pub. The room held the distinctly British dichotomy of being crowded and convivial, while also intensely conscious of personal space. The latter suffered as the night went on.
 
-Ey tamped down despair, buttoned down the flap above the pocket. So many questions.
+"You know," Johansson began, the rich baritone bringing Carter's attention back to the conversation.
 
-Should ey lay in rations? Food? Water bottles, perhaps? Ey dismissed the thought as even sillier. Ey didn't feel hungry or thirsty, even after so long in the school, so why worry? Obviously eir body had been taken care of. There was nothing ey could do about it from within the sim. All that food and water would do is make the sim tell eir body that the pack was heavier.
+"Hmm?"
 
-From there, ey made eir way back toward the front doors, pushing them open against the pressure differential. The breeze outside ruffled fur and skirt as ey stepped into sun once more.
+"RJ wasn't one for relationships --- doubt ey would be --- but of all the people ey was close to, it was definitely those furries ey hung around. Come to think of it, I do remember em bringing up the lost with regards to them."
 
------
+"Oh? Huh. It seemed like the two cases we have may be socially connected, but we don't have any proof."
 
-The grey mist turned out to be a render distance.
+"Yeah." Johansson shrugged. "Not much for relationships romantically, but certainly no shortage of friends. There was this one girl, Sasha, ey was close to."
 
-Had it been a barrier, AwDae could have walked up to the fog, but no further.
+Carter thumbed her phone on and swiped to a blank notes page.
 
-Had it been a barrier, ey was sure ey would have screamed.
+"She was eir childhood sweetheart," Johansson laughed. "As much of a sweetheart as ey would confess, at least. She knew 'em both. RJ and eir friend who got lost."
 
-As it was, ey was able to follow the same street ey would've taken on the walk back to the home ey grew up in and the fog simply receded before em. Ey could never approach it. There was nothing to investigate. It was just a bubble into which ey had been placed. A bubble that moved along with em.
+Carter nodded, jotting down quick notes. "She's still out there, then? Not lost?"
 
-The act of walking away from the school, wearing a backpack and heading towards home, was a dredge pulling up the silt of memories. School across the Atlantic in the '90s. Plays and productions ey still had memorized. Sasha. Dandelions in summer.
+"I assume so, I guess. You'd know better than I."
 
-Even now, pacing the street as a fox, not much had changed. Ey had carried eir tablet and few books to and from school in a pack not dissimilar than the one ey was wearing. Even the skirt was not far off from a thrift-store find ey might have worn at the time.
+She shook her head, looking down at her phone as she scribbled the last of the note. "Mm, no. No female furries. A lot of 'net addicts. I suppose there's no small crossover, but we're talking way deep. DDR junkies and layabouts."
 
-Ey prowled through memories of Sasha, of dating, of becoming better friends than partners. Ey thought back to her staying the night, back to their shared anxiety, back to the movies, back to eir mom checking in on them at one in the morning just to make sure everything was okay (and, bless, to make sure clothes had stayed on).
+Johansson bristled, "RJ was no layabout."
 
-Ey missed Sasha most of all, now. Together, the two of them would've been able to keep spirits up. Sasha would've been able to figure out the problem with Cicero's voting record faster then ey had, and ey would've been less alone, would've felt less hopeless.
+She held up her hands disarmingly, shook her head. "Mostly, is what I'm saying. They don't have ties, or if they do, they don't hold them long. These last few --- the furries --- they have lots of contacts from what we can tell. Strong ones. That's where our two groups disagree most. I think that we're seeing something novel, even if it doesn't hold for the previous cases. 'I' being the leader of the group that thinks there's the possibility of a transmission vector."
 
-AwDae trudged on toward home, reaching a paw up to pluck a handful of leaves from one of the trees as ey passed, feeling the reluctant snap as they pulled loose from the branch. For all the sim's complexity, school in spring was pretty far remote from London in the winter.
+"And the others?"
 
-School. America. Hopelessness. Stasis.
+"They see it as chance. Too small an *n*. Too few cases to say one way or another. They say that there was bound to be both connected and unconnected folks among the lost. They'd say that it's a matter of chance, since those who use the 'net more would be more likely to wind up lost, regardless of social situation. Furries just use it more than most."
 
-*"You seem kind of frozen, kind of stuck, in a few ways."*
+"Both make sense, I guess," Johansson hedged. "All the same, you know I have a vested interest in RJ, so I'm going to wind up seeing it from your point of view, since you're working with em. Never mind that you invited me out here. What do you need from me?"
+
+Carter frowned, thinking. "I guess I need to know more about em. I have eir redacted stats, a portion of the dump from eir workstation and the time leading up to it. I had been assuming we're getting all of it, but perhaps that was too generous of me. It's got PII redacted, but I don't know if there's anything else missing. What I need to know is what's slipping through the cracks. I need to know about who RJ was. How ey interacted with the theater, I mean. And anything you can tell me about eir friends."
+
+"Should you...?"
+
+"Should I have all of that information? I don't know." Carter sighed. "Is it against the law for you to tell me? No, not at all. I don't know. Maybe. Is it unethical to further my own agenda with this project by consulting you? Probably yes. If I were on a bigger, more mature project, we'd probably be interviewing you anyway, though."
+
+Johansson frowned, nodded.
+
+"But is it because I think that the more we know, the more likely we are to get RJ and the others back? I'd say yes."
+
+Johansson looked down into his beer. Then, with a decisive motion, drank most of it in a few smooth gulps, holding up the glass with the remainder, an obvious toast. "To RJ, then."
+
+Carter felt a little silly toasting to someone she'd never met, with a man she'd only just met, with a full glass of cider to his mostly empty ale. It all felt so dramatic, so theatrical, until she remembered who she was toasting with. She raised her glass and clinked its rim to Johansson's.
+
+"To RJ."