Wednesday, July 4, 2012

Crook Q Part 20

Nic continued, "In which case, I will have to have two other assistants. Two Christians who were working for me at one point. I am sure you can find their files. I want Doctor Smyrna, and his son, Ephesus."
"You know 'em by name, eh?" the representative replied.
"I told you, I worked with them before."
"Was that before or after you threatened to wipe out all human life?"

Nic had no response. He merely changed the subject, "I suppose you still have their files?"
"Hmm, no, they seem to be lost, too..."

Nic leaned close to his microphone, "Don't give me that. They would never make trouble. Either your government has stopped trying to find excuses to kill innocent people or you're lying. Neither would surprise me, but the first would more than the latter."
The representative rustled some papers by his microphone, pretending to be checking files. Nic spat, "Just get them to me or yours won't be the only life I threaten."
The papers stopped instantly. The line hummed with silence until the representative chuckled, "You must be quite a prisoner, Q, to make such threats. As it is I found the files while you were threatening me, and if you would have just had a moment of patience I could of told you you could have them. Their files are pretty clean. The dad does an awful lot of transmitting though..."
Nic snorted, "Whatever, just get me the scientists, will you?"
The representative answered, "Yes, I an get you them. I will have to take some abnormal security measures because of the nature of their crimes and current investigations..." Nic switched off the communicator.
That day he did not work on the kitchen mainframe. He would have Ephesus do that. And no work on Red Rain today, either. Smyrna would be needed to lay the groundwork for their next phase. What would he do then?
Nic was up past midnight that night, when he finally fell asleep on the keyboard. He dreamed of his cyberspace pursuits, following endless loop after endless loop of sites and directories looking for personnel files. Carnegie's had been easy. He had read completely without surprise the note that said  he had been executed to save on the legal proceedings, since he was so old any way. Sardis had got a legal name change, so Nic couldn't easily track him after that. That had taken him only until about 10 P.M. hacking through old, low-security files. A little after two in the morning Nic had fallen asleep with the name "Rachel D. Hammister" in the search field for about the thousandth time.

6 comments:

  1. I wanted to mention that I find your choice of first name for Nic's girlfriend cleverly ironic... ;)

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    1. I wasn't feeling very creative that day. Rachel comes from you, "D" comes from me, and Hammister is a modified form of Raven of the Wood's IRL name, and I was chatting with her on HW shortly before.
      I actually made up the back story to explain her last name. My brother found it hilarious.

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    2. Well, it's a very nice name, if I do say so myself! :D

      Will this backstory end up in the story somewheres?

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    3. No, the back story is irrelevant. I just decided that somewhere centuries back in her ancestry was a German swineherd. He was known to his townspeople as "Hamm Meister" because he was the guy who sold pig meat. It eventually became "Hammeister," and when one of his descendants immigrated to America, it was Anglicised to "Hammister."
      Think maybe there's a worldbuilder somewhere deep in me?

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    4. I think so, and I'm inordinately jealous of his etymology abilities...

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  2. Wow, I love that back story XD Reiyen, I salute you again for this awesome fanfic. *keeps reading*

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