Chapter 29: Into the Spotlight (Part I)

“How is the project going?” Frog asked. She removed her eye from the peephole in the door and paced back into the room proper, slipping between Hadaly and Elaine. “The boys appear to be getting restless.”

“Eighty-percent complete,” Elaine said. “I am mentally formulating our approach plan to Hayden Lawn. It will be tricky to get these deployed in an optimal manner. The perfume will not act under a contagion model; it’s purely airborne and in some cases may need to saturate the target’s clothing, so most of our initial contacts may require direct contact.”

“And how do you intend to reach Emily? She’s in the middle of that circus,” Frog asked.

“That’s going to depend on the data that Hadaly is collating right now.” Elaine carefully screwed the cap onto the next dispenser. After minutes of work she’d dismantled the spray mechanism, modified it with some jeweler’s tools to increase the pull pressure inside the head to cause it to crease a heavy geyser of mist rather than a fine spray as its original design.

Hadaly’s silvery-blue silhouette jittered for a moment as she side-loaded a several terabytes of data and prioritized processing over uncanniness. Elaine noticed the flicker out of the corner of her eye, set the dispenser down, and turned towards the AI. Both eyebrows raised, she waited for Hadaly to acknowledge.

The avatar smiled.

“The magnetic declination hypothesis is sustained,” she said. “The electrical disturbances across the campus run in a slightly skewed line between Manzanita Dormitory and St. Luke’s Hospital. I am looking at some outliers, but nothing that cannot be explained by paths of least resistance and traffic analysis. In fact, given a few more hours, I might be able to determine the locus of the other side of the circuit…”

Elaine shook her head. “I think we already know the second locus.”

“According to what?” Frog asked, crossing her arms. “Is there something you haven’t let on to me?”

“Hadaly,” Elaine said. “Did you complete that broad search for friends and family related financially to Emily Early I asked you do earlier that involved questions about St. Luke’s Hospital.”

“Isn’t Tom Barrett in that hospital?” asked Frog.

“Yes,” Elaine said, “however, I believe that’s a red herring to the investigation. The gremlin attack on Tom is aptly explained by our original political popularity contest meme hypothesis. He’s the obvious obstacle to Emily’s presidential gambit. Also, it explains the images on Emily’s iPhone. She’s central to this. The nam-shub itself has been using her as a central point of surveillance and Tom is the first obstacle it identified.”

“There is the other thing I discovered,” Hadaly said. “Myself.”

“Yes. The fragmentary AI—but—”

A knock at the door interrupted Elaine and a muffled voice—likely Roger—asked them how much longer they expected to be. She shook her head and checked the dispensers. Eight in total completed, that would have to be enough.

“Have the fragment upload all of its data to my goggles, and please include the collation of Emily’s correspondence and communication as it pertains to St Luke’s Hospital. If I am correct, we will see a collision of data points.

“I believe that Emily may have unexpectedly started this entire problem; which means the only way to end this is to force her to acknowledge her part.”

Elaine placed the dispensers into a bag and handed it to Frog who took them gracefully.

“Are you sure you know what you’re doing?” she asked. “After Zach, who knows how the nam-shub is going to react to you messing around with it like this. I’m not that comfortable putting you in the field unprotected.”

“I think that the second part of the mission has a contingency for that,” Elaine said. She knelt down in front of the desk and tapped at the glass of the Mason jar still sitting there, the luminous gremlin still inside bristled at her touch, licking the glass with tendrils reminiscent of a novelty plasma lamp. The acrid scent of ozone trailed her fingers as she rose, placing her hand atop the jar. “Let’s get this show on the road, shall we?”

*  *  *

The door to Elaine’s room opened and Frog emerged. She closed the door behind her with a solid click, listening to it lock before she turned to face Roger, Howie, and Andrew.

“We have to get moving now,” she said. “I’ll explain what everyone needs to do as we go. Follow me.”

Frog broke away immediately, walking briskly towards the front of the dormitory again. Caught by surprise, the boys followed behind with a wake of questions. Frog smiled to herself and quashed the sudden desire to play with them—but that would be counterproductive. The plan would work better if they didn’t suspect what Elaine had in store for Emily, so she held her tongue.

“What about Elaine?” asked Roger. “Isn’t she coming with us?”

“She’s got something she needs to get ready, but she’ll meet us in front of Agriculture building.”

“Okay. What do we do now?”

“In this bag,” she hefted the bag for them to see, “I have a bunch of spray bottles that contain the only existing quantity of my favorite fragrance ever. We will be giving you specific instructions on how to enter the mob around the stage in Hayden lawn, and you’ll be spraying it at people. If everything works out the way Elaine plans, this will break the control the nam-shub has and probably make them smell a lot better.”

The three boys nodded.

“To prevent things from getting hairy, though, you will have to spray yourself first,” Frog said handing a dispenser to each of the boys in turn. “I know, I know, you’re all manly men and all; but if you don’t want to become an Emily Early zombie, you’ll have to get with the program.” She sniffed at the top of one of the bottles. “Mm, it’s a delicious smell, if I don’t say so myself. Perhaps next time I’ll develop cologne for my beaus to wear as well. Except it’ll smell like chocolate.”

“Alright,” Roger said, eyeing his spray bottle warily. “Fine by me.”

As they passed between Best and Irish—a pair of dormitories that formed an almost-canyon of bricks on both sides—the group could see Elaine standing across the street next to some roughly cut hedges. With her idle pose and calm breathing, she looked bored, almost like she’d been waiting for them a time. Different from the last time they saw her, she wore a black hooded jacket, hood flipped up, that barely hid the goggles pushed up on her head. They glinted brightly in the sun as they crossed the street to join her.

“Everyone ready?” asked Elaine.

“You must run really fast,” Roger said.

“Never underestimate the fleet footedness of a geek with a mission,” Frog said, handing one of the dispensers to Elaine.