EggHead & I Chapter XLVIII

Chapter XLVIII
by General (Uncle Claude) Xxaxx
& General (E.J. Gold) Nunan PFC 1st Class Ret.

The street outside Sam Fauxley’s apartment was clean and wet; the second afternoon rain-shower must have fallen while Woo was inside visiting. Woo loved the fantasical scenery. Large sheets of water left on the sidewalks reflected the street-lights and traffic signals, creating the impression of a landscape marked by holes cut through into a world just below the surface. At least for the moment, the cooking smells and transportation orders of the city are eliminated by the cleansing raindrops. Citizins avoid the rain. For those adventurous few that do venture forth into the rain, the picturesque quality of the streets is accentuated by its eerie deserted quality. This is the time of day during which Woo did her best thinking — brainstorming after the rain, as it were.

However, at this moment, Woo’s thoughts were more like the calm between the storms. Woo was satisfied that Stan Lee would get the help that he needed from Sam Fauxley. The storm, yet to come, will be centered around Ja Mere and Little Roy. Every nerve plexus in Woo’s many bodies — planetary, astral and etheric — sang out with the same message: something is wrong.

Even the street echoes were wrong. The humidity was too high for this time of night. The air should be dryer and the echoes thinner. On this night, the echoes were crisp and loud.

Diary Note Comparitive Anthropology: Hidden and unknown foundations of experience separate the daily behavior of individuals in separate times and cultures. As example, consider weather. Any individual living prior to the development of SWM (Suborbital Weather Master) would not be able to relate in any way to the consistency of weather. There is a twenty-third century saying: “As inevitable as death and taxes, as predictable as the weather.” It is possible to set one’s wrist-worn time calculator by the afternoon rain. Someone living in the early twenty-first century would not be able to relate even the possibility of weather being forecast accurately, let alone totally predictable. Nor would they relate to the unnerving effect of something as minor as the humidity falling off schedule. In the twenty-third century, weather was under total control. Every aspect from humidity to barometric pressure was monitored and controlled by the SWM (Suborbital Weather Master), bent on total control of any variability in precipitation. If your neighborhood was assigned an evening shower, you got an evening shower, after which the humidity dropped to a comfortable low within its preprogrammed variance. This made the evening pleasant and the streets dry by 7:00 — in time for the main restaurant attendees to be transported to their respective dining places by 7:30. No Citizin would miss even a moment of “All My Money!”

Woo thought to herself, “This sector should not be this humid — or this electric. Someone is playing with the lightning controls. Lightning isn’t even legal within city limits. Don’t want to interfere with Vidi reception.”

Comparitive Anthropology (Cross Reference, Capital Punishment) Citizins are subject to capital punishment only for the commission of two crimes. 1) planetcide, 2) interference of a network broadcast.

Comparitive Anthropology (Cross Reference, Cruel and Unusual Punishment) The Board of Judges has determined imprisonment without access to Vidi reception, for a period of time, longer than twenty-four consecutive hours was cruel and unusual punishment. As such, it may not be administered for even the most serious crimes without a written opinion from a majority of the Board of Judges. (subnote Crime Deterent: It has been shown that a sentence of two weeks to four weeks of reduced Vidi (less than eight hours a day) was deterrent enough for most any crime. Any crime requiring a sentence of more than four weeks reduced Vidi time was considered inhumane, and lobotomy treatment was used as the preferred alternative. This was deemed more humane since it does not infringe upon the criminal’s ability to earn a living for his or her family, or interfere with his or her free access to Vidi, or limit one’s opportunity to appear as a contestant on most game shows — the only exception being the “Who gets the Cheese Show.” A lobotomized criminal may not compete on the “Who gets the Cheese Show” since the contestants are competing against small furry animals not other Citizins and need all the help they can get.

“Why does elevated humidity ring a bell? There was something that Ja Mere, or one of the other Cownsil members said about high humidity that is important. What was it?” Woo was wracking her brain to recall what the issue was, when it suddenly came to her, “Rumor has it that the bosspersons require a slightly higher humidity to be comfortable. Yes that is it. If this is the case than that can only mean one thing. The bosspersons are out in enough force to justify weather control modification. I’ve got to warn Ja Mere and Little Roy.”

Woo approached Ja Mere’s apartment building from the back. “If Ja Mere is still the hotcy-totcy expert at escape and evasion that he was at university, I’m sure his apartment will be just to the right of the air-conditioning pipes on the fourth floor.”

Diary Note Escape and Evasion Standard Tactics: An egghead will typically locate his or her laboratory on the fourth floor of a building just to the right of the air-conditioning pipes; the fourth floor so that he or she has no goober or bubbler neighbors. (See subnote Awards and Honors designer of “no cable above the third floor” as first recepient of Saint Necessity Mother of Invention medal.) An egghead’s apartment would be next to the air-conditioning complex so that he or she could use the deep-well pipes for entrance and exit as needed. Air-conditioning equipment is most usually located in the center of an apartment building where they were ideally situated because of their need of radiator panels on the roof and a heat-sink in the earth below the subbasement. Bubblers were convinced that the piping were the more expensive components of the building, and should be divided evenly between heat sinks in the ground and radiators on the roof. It was true that the pipes were an extremely expensive part of the building, but the pipes to the radiator vanes were just as expensive as the pipes to the deep-well heat sinks. No one could convince the bubblers it would be the same expense whether the air-conditioning complex was on the roof or in the basement — the same amount of pipe either way. Therefore, the air-conditioning complex was smack dab in the middle of the building — usually on the fourth floor. The fact that most buildings were only five stories high had little bearing on the division of the building floors. The fourth floor was the middle of the building, as far as the bubbler engineers were concerned.

Fortunately for Woo the streets in Ja Mere’s section of town were empty. She didn’t want to answer any questions or deal with any interference. She was certain that time was short.

Just as fortunately for Woo, the exterior walls of Ja Mere’s apartment building were pseudo-brick, thus, giving her a suitable purchase for hands and feet during her climb up the deep-well pipes. Not an easy climb in the best of conditions. Woo knew herself well enough to know that if she felt compelled to enter the apartment from an unusual and unknown vantage point, then there must be something amiss in Ja Mere’s apartment, and now was not the time to embrace convention by using the front door.

Leaning along the wall, Woo stole a peek into the apartment next to the air-conditioning complex. This was Ja Mere’s apartment all right — well kept and orderly. Holding her breath, Woo stole another glance, “good, no sign of violence.” The room into which she could see was empty. But it didn’t feel empty. Something was very much out of place. Woo didn’t even dare think too loud, “Something is wrong.” The hair on Woo’s back crawled up her spine and along her neck as realization struck her — someone, or someones, has just phased out of this room. “That explains the electric feel in the air.” This was not good information. Not good at all.

Woo made the determination to slip through the window into Ja Mere’s apartment. If she guessed right about Ja Mere, the window would be latched but not actually locked. Even the beginning level courses at university taught the necessity of leaving undetected escape and evasion routes in one’s domicile. Eggheads did not rob each other. It just wasn’t done. The bubblers had no reason to snoop around an egghead’s apartment except to look for incriminating evidence. Hence, eggheads were free to leave their apartments open and available for investigation. It was far better to allow the good Citizins full access so that they can assure themselves that nothing was afoul of the law. It was an egghead’s sekrit laboratory that was in need of protection from prying eyes. This was accomplished by the best in subterfuge. Out of sight, out of mind.

Woo was the exception in this regard. Because of the kind of research that she was involved in, it was much more convenient to turn the whole of her apartment into a laboratory. Being an adept at dragon and living in a poorer part of town was an advantage in this regard. Nothing like a minor spell turning a table full of glassware and apparatus into a pile of week old dirty dishes, and living in a neighborhood that no one cared about to put the damper on the most diligent of snoopers. Fortunately for Woo, she didn’t have to look at the full detail of the illusions she used to hide her apparatus. The maggots crawling about the crevices in an illusory pile of dirty dishes were a final touch that even she couldn’t have looked at long. Why the need for these elaborate precautions was unknown, even the most stout-hearted and devoted of investigators could not have gained access to Woo’s apartment without her express permission and assistance without either blowing it or themselves up — a handy-dandy way of destroying any incriminating evidence that may be laying about. Unless someone could use dragon magic to teleport in and out, her apartment was secure. This was important to Woo. But even as she thought this, it hit her in the gut full force. “Someone had phased in and out of Ja Mere’s apartment. This was not good. This was not good.”

continued

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