rix_scaedu

I wrote this to kunama_wolf' prompt "Moonstone Sunstone Bloodstone. oh hey yeah more angelsverse would be good (thanks for the reminder kelkyag) or one of those officer friends of the cadet?"

For those with limited spoons or time, this piece runs to 1,842 words. Birgenes and Saprista have appeared before in Choices and Consequences and Correcting Assumptions.

“So, what was this place?” Saprista held her lantern high as she asked the question.

“It seems to have been a house,” Birgenes was directing his more focused beam at details. “The upper floors have gone, of course. Wood just doesn’t last over that amount of time in these conditions.”

“I wouldn’t have trusted my weight to it if it had,” replied Saprista. “Are you sure it’s a house? It’s seems awfully big.”

“Those stone lintels are all plain. If this had been an official building, a nobleman’s manor or even a palace they would have been carved with designs. You’re right though, it is large.” He grinned at her, “I’m hoping that it means the owner was rich.”

“You only have to be rich to build a place like this,” Saprista pointed out. “You don’t have to stay rich once you’ve got it. Besides, with the floors collapsed, anything of value or interest is going to be on the bottom level. I’ll find somewhere to tie off the ropes.”

Half an hour later, having lowered themselves carefully down to what had been the ground level of the house, they took stock of their surroundings again.

“Water’s been through here,” Saprista remarked, “but we are above the water table.”

“And no footprints in the silt and sand deposits,” added Benares. “We should be alone down here.”

“On the other hand,” Saprista bent over and picked up a shard from the floor and held it up the light from her torch to see it better, “anything fragile got broken when the floors fell, if not before.” In her hand was a piece of green painted and glaze porcelain. “I would have liked to have seen this in one piece.”

“It’s Bitrano ware,” Birgenes was already looking around their feet. “If we collect more pieces, you can get your potter friend to copy it for you.”

“And you’ll have another set of pot pieces for your collection.”

“Well, that too,” he admitted, laughing.

Later, pot pieces and a few other small items of interest and value stowed in their backpacks, they examined the set of doors they’d found leading into a section of the house bounded by corridors on all four sides. “I doubt it was a living space,” commented Birgenes.

“Metal bound doors with the hinges on the inside. Someone meant business.” Saprista was casting a business like eye over entire set up. “Not ostentatiously tall, but tall enough for a big man to get through. They were built to secure something. How secure they are now will depend on how thick the metal is and how well the wood inside has withstood the passing years.” She flexed her muscles, as if in preparation.

“Let me have a look at the lock first,” Birgenes said with a restraining hand on her arm, his touch light enough it only gave the idea of holding her back. “Even if it’s rusted solid, I may be able to cut the bolt and that would save you from a set of bruises.”

“True,” she smiled at her dark skinned companion, “and it’s not as if we have to keep an eye out for an irate home owner or the Spartoli.”

“Please, after all the times I’ve had to explain why it’s perfectly unexceptionable and above board for me to be carrying around a set of lock picks and sundry other housebreaking tools? I always keep an eye out for the Spartoli.” He shone the beam of light from his lantern into the crack between the two doors. “I can see the bolt and I should be able to get my thinnest metal saw in there, assuming the lock isn’t trapped, of course.”

“If I have to haul you back up that three storey drop because you’ve gotten yourself poisoned or something, you don’t get to complain about how I do it,” Saprista warned as she moved back down to the corridor intersection and what she hoped would be a safe distance.

“Agreed,” replied Birgenes as he carefully took a small, thin saw blade from his leather wrap of tools, “although I’m more worried about having to cut the hinges as well.”

A levered-off architrave and a good hour of metal sawing later, the door was open in the sense that its corroded in place hinges and locking bar had been cut and then it had been manoeuvred and manhandled out of the way. While they waited for the opened room to air out, Saprista and Birgenes occupied themselves with little things they would be better off doing while they had the time: Birgenes cleaned his metal saws and Saprista repacked her backpack for a better balance. Finally, Saprista tested the air by opening up her lantern and, after attaching it to the ring on the end of Birgenes’ ten foot pole, putting it into the room while the two of them stood outside the door. When the colour and size of the lantern flame didn’t change, Saprista pulled the pole back out to reclaim her lantern, and then the two of them entered the room.

After looking around, Birgenes remarked, “This is either a storeroom or a strongroom.”

“Strongroom from the door,” Saprista gave her opinion. “Not that it kept the water out. I doubt this is how the owner left it.” The light from the lanterns showed chests and amphorae piled higgledy piggledy, like children’s toys, and a few smashed tables. “Anything perishable died long ago, but,” she strode over to one of the piles of debris and took a closer look, “You’ll like this – I think some of these amphorae are still in one piece with their seals intact.”

“If the internal resin coating was good enough and the seals are wax, then the contents might still be good.” Birgenes smiled. “It would be best if we got them home before we try opening them, though, I don’t want to wind up emptying an amphora of Thonburi pepper onto the floor here.”

“That’s right, we don’t want to go wasting a king’s ransom.” Saprista bent over a chest to get a better look. “Some of these smaller chests seem to be wood, I’m surprised they’re still intact.”

“Could have been lacquer ware of some type, or simply varnished, but I doubt they’d survive being handled. The contents, well…,” he trailed off.

“Would depend on what they were.” Saprista looked at the small chests speculatively. “There aren’t that many goods that would deserve this sort of security. Spices, some of the rarer dyes, precious metals or gems.”

“Also the merchant’s strong box,” Birgenes pointed at a large, solidly metal bound chest that sat on the floor towards the back of the room. “That’s either bolted to the floor, or it was so heavy, not even the flood that came through here could shift it. Let’s open that one first.”

Naturally and expectedly, all the metal parts of the chest were corroded into place. The wood, however, crumbled into soft splinters with very little prodding. Underneath the rotten wood were mounds covered in the results of leather rot and decay. Birgenes pulled out a pig bristle brush and carefully moved the dark debris aside. The first object he revealed was a misshapen greenish mass.

“Bronze or copper coins,” he commented quietly. “Probably Senlorain murcohs. Honestly, we’d be lucky to get an intact coin out of that, though we might make something by selling them as is to an antiquarian.”

“You always say that,” Saprist chided him gently. “How many lumps of those do you have sitting around your flat now?”

“Probably more than enough, but not enough to cave the floor in, yet,” he rejoined quietly. “Now this one,” silver appeared under the brush as it moved, “looks like it was a bag of decohna.”

“Enough to make our rents this month?” Saprista cocked a knowing eye at the number of coins, “Perhaps there’s more than one bag of those?”

“Oh, yes there is. At least two more bags, we’ve definitely made rent and probably housekeeping as well.” Birgenes kept the brush moving, “and here are more murcohs and those were probably Klavan tally markers – being soaked with water would have made the ivory split.” He worked past the stick like objects to the final corner of the top layer. “Now what’s here? This doesn’t look like coins.”

“Not gold,” said Saprista. “That’ll be on the bottom layer.”

“Stones,” said Birgenes cautiously, brushing away the dark detritus.

“Moonstones and bloodstones,” murmured Saprista appreciatively. “Good ones.” She reached in and picked up a bloodstone the size of the final section of her thumb. “All a nice size and they look like a really good colour.” She looked at Birgenes, “They might even be from one of the old worked out mines that are supposed to have had a better colour stone than anything they can dig up today.”

“Your cultural biases are showing,” Birgenes smiled at her. “I prefer the sunstones myself.”

“You would. I’ll get bags for these and the silver and then we can see what’s underneath them.”

The chest was empty and Birgenes and Saprista were looking at each at each other, awestruck, across their find while they decided what they could carry away with them and what they would have to come back for. “I thought the moonstones, bloodstones and sunstones were wonderful,” said Saprista helplessly, “but rubies, emeralds and sapphires as well? And we can’t leave the gold behind.”

“We should take as much of the silver as we can carry after we’ve packed those,” added Birgenes. “It’s more negotiable than the gems or the gold.” He got a calculating look on his face. “Even after we pay taxes, make a few religious donations and put something reasonable towards public works, after all we want to be regarded as lucky and not greedy, I think we might have enough to buy land in the country and build a house. Particularly if we can get back here and get everything else out.”

“Excuse me,” Saprista interrupted him, holding up a hand. “Did you say “we might have enough to buy land and build a house”?”

“Well, yes.” Birgenes looked at her. “Would you rather keep living in the city in an insula?”

“No, no.” She shook her head and waved her hand dismissively. “You said “we.” Are you offering me a marriage contract?”

“Umm, yes?” He looked uncertain. “Should I have spoken to one of your brothers first?”

“Of course not. Technically three of them aren’t free men so they have no authority over me and even before this I was worth more than the others.” She dismissed her brothers’ fraternal authority with another wave of her hand. “You just have a tendency to come at these things sort of sideways and unexpectedly. You do realise that I’m going to want a big ceremony, don’t you?”

“As big as your heart desires.” He looked at their find. “I’m sure we can afford as many petal scatterers and nut throwers as the neighbourhood can provide.”

I wrote this to kelkyag's prompt "Missing pieces: Rensa and her therapist at work."

“I’m not sure about this.” Rensa looked at herself apprehensively in the mirror. “Do I look ordinary enough? Well as ordinary as I can with this hair and skin.”

“You look fine,” Mirren assured her, “and you’ll do fine. You’ll be drinking tea and eating healthy snacks while I’m waiting to see the obstetrician and you know how long that can take if someone’s baby decides to be born. I think the record so far has been four in one morning. And I get to do this every week from here on in.”

“Is everything okay?” Rensa looked at her friend with concern.

“Oh yes,” Mirren waved her hand dismissively. “At this stage the doctor always wants to see you every week. You’ll see, you’re almost at that stage yourself. Now, go and enjoy your coffee morning.”

Half an hour later Rensa cautiously opened the door of the coffee shop her therapist had directed her to. Once inside she looked around bewildered. She hadn’t been in such a place before without Mirren to guide her or an official to direct her to where she was supposed to go. There were several groups of women scattered around the shop and Rensa wasn’t sure which one she was supposed to be meeting.

“Excuse me, can I help you?” When Rensa turned to face the speaker, the girl added a hurried and startled, “Your Highness.”

“I hope so. I came for a pregnancy support group meeting that’s supposed to be happening here?”

“Oh yes,” the girl smiled, “they’re over in the back corner. The lady in the electric blue coat is with them.”

“Thank you.” Rensa smiled back at her and made her way between the tables to the group the waitress had indicated.

Coming up to them, Rensa had a sudden case of cold feet and froze. On the far side of the table a girl, she must have been at least five years younger than Rensa, looked up and did a double take. “What are you doing here?” The question was blunt with shock.

“Someone thought it would be good for me to get out and meet people I had something in common with who weren’t friends or colleagues of my husband.” Rensa thought there was no need to tell these women and girls that “someone” was her psychologist, not at this stage anyway.

“What do you have in common with us, Your Highness?” The brittle blonde on the right put sarcastic emphasis on the title.

“We’re all pregnant,” Rensa said quietly, “and, as I understand it, we lack personal support networks. I don’t know about the rest of you, but my entire birth family is dead and my mother-in-law, a lovely woman, lives towns away.”

“Sounds like you’re in the right place then,” it was a red-haired woman with a freshly scarred face who spoke. “Pull up a chair and make yourself comfortable, Rensa. Falen, shuffle round to make room and stop being a bitch – this is a support group, not a secondary school queen bee shuffle.”

“So let me make sure I’ve got this right,” the long haired hippy was speaking to the bovver boy and the ex-copper across the table from him, “we’re going to break into the Lydgate Prison and release all the squares. Why?”

“Crox is beginning by locking up the people who voted for him, the conservatives who are supposed to be his allies. The people he made promises to. Promises he only has to keep if they’re still around,” finished the bovver boy.

“What grounds does he have for arresting them?” The hippy, his face framed by his off-blond hair, looked worried.

“Likely to commit an act that will result in public alarm or disturbance,” replied the ex-policeman.

“And here we all thought that law was aimed at my lot,” quipped the anarchist humourlessly. “The current crackdown is actually freeing my people up; our usual surveillance is busy elsewhere.”

“So why are you here?” The ex-cop bit that out.

“If we don’t stand up for the conservatives, or the squares as our tie-dyed wearing friend calls them,” answered the anarchist, “then who do we stand up for against Crox and his government? If they come for me, or anyone of us, next and we did nothing now, well why would anyone help us? What I don’t understand is why you’re here.” He looked pointedly at the ex-policeman.

“Turns out I left the force just in time; no-one’s allowed to resign now. Lots of people don’t like the way things are going but they say the new commissioner just looks at you and says, ‘I know where you live. I know where your wife works. I know where your kids are. Get back on the job.’ Plus there’s a new fast track for ‘promising’ officers.” The speaker looked like he wanted to spit. “All of them people who would have been out on their arses before the new commissioner came in.”

“If we get the conservatives out, and he’s only locked up their louder leaders so far, will they stand with us?” The pale, female student looked like she thought she’d fallen into something that was way over her head.

“I think they’ll have to,” said the hippy slowly. “The people we free, at least. I mean, they’ve been in power all their lives. They don’t know how to survive without their credit cards and bank accounts and their connections…”

“While on the run,” added the anarchist. With some satisfaction he went on, “It’s going to be a whole new world for them.”

I wrote this in response to wyld_dandelyon's prompt "When my feet got bigger than hers, my Grandma teased me about having "good understanding"." This is set in the same universe as Firenze.

“I don’t understand what the problem is,” the customer sounded perplexed, “my size feet are quite common where I come from.”

Drahapni bit her tongue. It was obvious to her that the customer was a robusta or even a gigantica cross, so of course his foot size would be common where he came from but rare here. Of course, to comment on his species would both be rude and out her. “Unfortunately sir, we don’t get sufficient call for your size to keep them in stock, except in a sports shoe. We can order a pair in for you, if you wish, or I can suggest several bespoke cobblers who do excellent work.”

“So I can’t get a black business shoe today.” The man was, apparently, stating the obvious.

“Not from us, sir,” Drahapni said apologetically.

“Are there any other shoe stores in town?”

“I’m afraid not, sir. There was a Masselman’s until the chain went bankrupt but now there’s just us. If you’d like to select a shoe and let me take your fitting, we should be able to get it in for you by the end of the week.”

“Is that offer good until the end of today?” The large man pulled his exercise shoe back on and did up the laces. “I’d like to check with your cobblers to see if one of them might have something on hand.”

“Of course, sir. I’ll just get you their business cards.” Drahapni could see no reason not to send this man’s business to what were technically their competitors, after all she couldn’t give him what he wanted when he wanted it and if one of them could, well sending them the business might create some good will. She wasn’t surprise, of course, when the tall man came back later that afternoon and ordered a pair of shoes from her; bespoke cobblers were unlikely to have shoes on hand and if they did have unclaimed stock, it was likely to be in more common sizes.

Later, in a house out of town that had been empty since the tree changers who‘d moved into it in the nineties had died, the tall man was speaking to the others of his sworn band. “It’s not like Marche,” he told them. “The people here are more like us, but smaller. They don’t carry clothing in our sizes in their stores but they can get it in for, so people our size are not unknown. Their script is a variant of the one we learned in Maerche and their language does not seem overly complicated so having only the one mutual comprehension talisman might not be as limiting as we feared.”

One of his battle brothers asked, “Are there any others in the town? Or anyone who might recognise us as other to this world?”

“I saw and met one fae in the entire time I was away from this building,” the man who’d gone into town told them, “and I think she was young because she did not seem to realise that I could see what she was.”

“It’s odd that blindness to the strange is inherent in the natives,” remarked another of their group. “I wouldn’t have picked it as a survival trait.”

“It’s a survival trait if everyone who points out a fae or a werewolf get their throat ripped out,” replied another of their brethren. “Let’s hope we can find a way home from here easily, I’m tired of living among that which is strange to us.”

“As are we all,” answered their leader. “We all long for home and the sight of a living moon.”

“How many people has Moid suborned?” Suohonn drummed his fingers on the table.

“Not that many,” Kalhara, his wife, looked up from her terminal, “but they’re people who can spread his view of the world around. Apparently you’re holding Persis captive.”

“Please, I haven’t even laid a hand on him.”

“I know,” Kalhara nodded, “and, frankly, I think you had cause. I’m very proud of the way you acted when everyone turned against you and I’m still ashamed I was duped like that.”

“You apologised and I accepted,” Suohonn waved a hand dismissively. “As long as I get dessert ever second night, as a minimum, and you help me work it off, we’re good. Mind you, I think we’re good even without the dessert.” He looked directly at her, “I missed you when we weren’t talking to each other.”

“I wasn’t talking to you,” Kalhara corrected fondly, “or listening. You, on the other hand, never stopped trying to talk to me. Anyway, going back to the subject in hand, it seems the main conduit for Moid’s disinformation campaign is the ‘alternate news service’ run by Breslin. We can’t shut him down but Persis can put limits on him.”

“Well Persis is already auditing every decision Moid made in the last six years. Apparently he’d accrued more delegations than Persis and Hamily realised.” Suohonn grinned at his wife, “Remind me to institute a robust military audit function.”

“Yes, dear.” Kalhara clicked on a few more links. “For a start we can hope that in the audit Breslin loses his priority access to printer ink, now can’t we?”

I wrote this to lilfluff's prompt "Buying a magic talking pet seemed like such a good idea... now which of us is actually the pet?"

“This is not what I’m used to,” she stalked disdainfully through the house, sniffing everything as she went. “This place is barely fit for human habitation, let alone me.”

“This is what I could afford,” I protested weakly. Getting a talking pet for company had seemed like a great idea; it hadn’t occurred to me that it might have a personality that channelled everything in my family that I’d moved states to try and get away from. “Just like you were.”

“What?!” She rounded on me, leaping up on a chair to get closer to my height. “Explain yourself!”

“You were on special,” I told her. Bringing this up may not have been my best idea. “Getting you was cheaper than adopting a normal kitten.” The expression on her face made me pre-empt the question I thought I saw coming. “You were about half the price of the new kittens.”

“I am a purebred Marmota enchantica and I was not remaindered!” Her fur bristled.

“To bring up a probable sore point,” I interrupted, “how did you wind up at the animal shelter?”

“Sherilene died, after a long and debilitating illness, and she had no family.” She shook herself as if trying to throw off a bad memory and gave me a hard look. “I suppose you’re not too bad, a fixer-upper, rather like this house. We can work on that, unless you want to be a social island? I’m afraid I can’t recommend that.” She jumped down from the chair and began to stalk off again in the direction of the kitchen. “You may call me Telnardia and I think something died in one of these kitchen cupboards. You’d better bring your cleaning gear.”

I wrote this to kelkyag's prompt "Greens: gone missing from the garden."

“They were there.” Mrs Winton was almost in tears, she was so beside herself. ‘Big enough to pick and ready to eat. A week’s worth of meals in each one and now they’re gone. What’ll I tell him when he comes home? You know how tight money is these days with the funding cut backs up at the lab.”

“Yes, Mrs Winton, we all know.” Constable Place did know and was very glad that his salary wasn’t dependent on the financial status of Halcyon Labs. It didn’t help the district that Halcyon had worked hard to be the only employer of size in the area. “At least your husband still has work – they let go the entire Small Animal Division last week.”

“I know,” the housewife and gardener wrung her hands, “and if I knew it was someone out of work and they hadn’t taken all of them, I wouldn’t have said anything but I was counting on one of those cabbages for this week…”

“Well, let’s see what we can find in the way of clues,” offered Constable Place. He’d never have picked Ned Winton as a wife beater or a domestic bully, too tired and grey, but it took all types he supposed.

After five minutes of looking he said, “Well Mrs Winton, you’ve had a lot of rabbits in here, haven’t you?”

“Not a one, up until today,” she told him and then asked, “but where did that hole under my fence come from?”

“Wire cutters, it looks like to me,” said Constable Place, “and here’s wool from a knitted jumper caught on the wire. There plenty of room for a kid to get through this hole,” but Constable Place sounded doubtful.”

“With my cabbages,” pointed out Mrs Winton.

“Yes,” he agreed, “but I can see rabbit tracks, marks that look like cabbages being rolled and no tracks from children.”

“Constable you’re not suggesting that my cabbages were taken by woollen-wearing rabbits, are you? Mrs Winton looked annoyed.

“And waistcoat wearing, don’t forget that,” Constable Place picked up a piece of cloth with a button attached.

“That’s ridicu-,” she snapped then her expression changed. “The Labs let the entire Small Animal Division go…” Her face went pale.

Constable Place felt his own face blanch. “Best not be setting any traps, Mrs Winton, while I make some careful enquiries.” The sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach told him that community policing had just gotten a whole lot more complicated.

In response to kelkyag's prompt "Building (on the work of those before you)" from my Unthemed Bingo card, I wrote this.
For those with limited time or spoons, it runs to 2,214 words.

“This is the pre-existing, published work on the subject.” Lisa dumped a stack of journal article copies on the table in front of her two team mates.

“I’m all in favour of not having to do too much reading,” commented Sadira, “but it’s not as much as I would have expected.”

“Well,” sighed Rachel, “we did get the topic that made other people snigger about fairy tales. It could be worse, it could be cold fusion.”

“But it wouldn’t be cold fusion because we could, actually, get published if we were doing cold fusion,” Lisa told the other two. “I’ve included the notices where publications said they weren’t taking papers on our topic anymore.”

“Wait,” Rachel looked flabbergasted, “We’ve actually been assigned a topic that the scientific journals have said they’re not accepting submissions on? I thought this was supposed to ‘expand our perceptions of science’?”

“We are the only ones in the class who aren’t doing this module as part of their major or a declared minor,” pointed out Sadira. “Someone had to get the dud subject on the list, so why not us?”

“I still think it would have been fairer to draw the subjects out of a hat,” grumbled Rachel.

Lisa intervened, “To get back on track, I think we need to read the literature, find out where things were when they stopped publishing and decide where we want to investigate from there.”

“Sounds good,” agreed Sadira. “You got us a copy each of everything, didn’t you?”

“Of course.” Lisa handed out the stack in three sections. “They’re in date order from the back. How long before we get back together to discuss our next step?”

“I can do Friday after two,” offered Sadira. “My crazy uncle’s crazier wife is visiting him and we’re all trying to avoid her. She’s trying to match make for us and some people she knows overseas. My mum was really furious with her last night; she was going on about how no-one needed an education beyond the madrassah and us girls should get married instead of going to university. As mum said, she’s got three degrees so why does she want everyone else to not have the same chances and choices she did?”

“Some people are just crazy,” Rachel assured her. “Or maybe she feels responsible for these guys.”

“Whom I don’t know,” added Sadira, “but who know my crazy aunt. Oh, help!”

“So, we meet here on Friday at quarter past two to discuss our assignment and keep Sadira away from her crazy aunt.” Lisa put her reading material in her bag. “I have to go now, I’ve got a class over near Broadway in fifteen minutes.”

On Friday they met again with annotated journal articles and additional notes. “Well,” said Rachel, “Doctor Ayer’s conclusions in that last article weren’t very conclusive, were they?”

“The quality of the data he was working with wasn’t very good, was it?” Lisa flipped to a highlighted page in the article in question. “I mean, I’ve got better cameras than the one he was using and he doesn’t seem to have considered, or perhaps been able to afford, anything outside the visible light spectrum. Besides, all of us are carrying around more computing power than he had to run the experiment and analyse the data.”

“So starting by repeating his last published experiment with better recording equipment and better analysis tools might give us a better data set,” said Sadira slowly. “That, in turn, would allow us to draw a better conclusion and then, perhaps, propose a suitable further experiment.” She flicked through her own set of notes. “I could build this device of his. Do either of you know if the Professor is free now? We want to get started as soon as possible if we’re doing two experiments and we’ll need lab space and equipment.”

“I’ll tee up the cameras,” said Lisa.

Sadira asked, “Should we have microphones and recording gear too? Dr Ayer was probably lucky to have a tape deck.”

A week later the three of them met in a science lab. “So,” Sadira told the others, “once the Professor approves our experimental setup, I think we’re ready to go with phase one.”

“You must have been working on this almost full time to get it finished so quickly,” said Lisa admiringly.

“It keeps me out of the house and away from my crazy aunt,” Sadira shrugged. “My parents and my uncle want her to go back overseas to where she’s been living but she keeps saying crazy stuff about why she can’t go yet. If she calls me ‘a good Muslim girl’ one more time, I swear I’ll stop wearing the hijab.”

“Do we need to be worried about you?” Rachel was frowning.

“I don’t think so,” Sadira sighed. “I don’t have a passport and my parents don’t agree with her. Heck, my uncle doesn’t agree with her. It’s just, I sometimes…”

“What?” Rachel had asked but both of the other young women looked worried.

“This is my crazy aunt, remember? Who knows.” Sadira changed the subject, “So where do we want to set up the cameras and the recording devices?”

On Tuesday, professorial approval in hand, they ran their experiment.

Afterwards.

“Well, that was interesting,” said Lisa. “I’m glad we had the microphones and sound recording as well as the cameras. I’ll take copies of the picture files and see if I can enhance the background at all.”

“We have to tell the Professor about this, as soon as we can,” pointed out Rachel, “and decide what we’re going to do next.”

“I think we need to be careful about what we do next,” added Sadira. “I have a feeling that there’s an obvious pitfall we need to avoid.”

“Oh?”

“What?”

“I’m not sure,” Sadira admitted, “but I think part of what we saw was because people who’ve done what we did, and saw what we saw, then went and did the same thing as each other. Lisa, can you take another copy of those picture files and enhance the foreground detail instead of the background?”

“Sure.” Lisa smiled slowly. “That’s probably even better than enhancing the background.”

“We need both,” said Rachel firmly. “I don’t mind adding things to follow an interesting lead but we do need to include all our planned protocol.”

Two days later, at the soonest time their Professor could give them time to talk about their assignment, Lisa knocked on his office door. He surprised them by opening the door himself, instead of calling out to them from inside. He looked pale, dishevelled as if he’d been running his hands through his hair, and nervous. “Ah, you’re on time,” he said. “Please come in.”

Once inside his office they found that the Professor already had visitors: the Dean of the Science Faculty, the senior physics professor and an unknown man who stood in a corner with his hands behind his back. “Ah, ladies,” the Dean greeted them as the Professor closed the door behind them, “delightfully on time. I wish more of your fellows shared that trait and I am sorry that Professor Kelso can no longer offer you a seat due to our influx into his office.” He stopped being jovial. “I’m afraid I have some bad news for you.”

“Oh,” Rachel looked around the room. “What sort of bad news needs four people to deliver it?”

The senior physics professor took a deep breath and began, “I’m afraid Professor Kelso made an…administrative error when he gave you your assignment subject.”

“An administrative error?” Sadira looked at the Dean and asked, “What sort of administrative error?”

“Following several incidents in a number of research locations,” the man in the corner spoke, “that resulted in the death or disappearance of researchers and facility security officers it was decided that research into this subject would be reported only on a restricted basis and strictly controlled. Professor Kelso was, unfortunately, unaware of this when he selected assignment topics for your class.”

“And who are you?” Lisa asked that.

“I work for the organisation tasked with policing that decision,” the man smiled, “and that organisation sits almost directly under the UN Security Council, but quietly enough to be practically invisible – ask about us and you will be told we don’t exist.”

Rachel asked, “And the UN Security Council’s interest in suppressing science is, what?”

“The UN Security Council’s interest is that they don’t want to wind up fighting an interdimensional war started by some bright young mind focussed on getting themselves published or on winning the Nobel Prize for physics.” The man in the corner smiled again.

“Although I believe it would be an intersubspace war,” corrected the senior physics professor, “our visitor has explained why you are not going to be allowed to take the next experimental step and breach the subspace barrier.”

“But we don’t want to breach the subspace barrier,” interrupted Lisa, pulling out and flicking through the folder of photographs that she’d been carrying in her bag. “We think it would be a very bad idea.” She pulled out the image she’d been looking for and held it up to show the men in front of her. “I spent some time enhancing the background of the images we got when we ran the apparatus at 570.753 megahertz as Professor Ayer did.”

“That’s an impressive piece of science,” commented the man in the corner.

“It’s an impressive piece of photography,” corrected Lisa. “The science was the same as Dr Ayer’s but the recording devices, and quite possibly the equipment build, were better. These background figures can be enhanced in multiple frames from different cameras. I don’t believe they are an artefact.” She stepped forward and laid the photograph showing what appeared to be ranks of armed bipedal beings on the professor’s desk between the Dean and the senior physics professor.

“They match what I’ve seen in security footage,” added the man in the corner. Everyone in the room looked at him. “I did say we’d lost people.”

“By people,” replied Lisa, putting down another photo, “we’d assume you mean Dr Ayer,” and she followed with more photos, “Dr Sakharev who was pacing him on other subspace detection, these two gentlemen who appear to be Chinese, Dr Elizabeth Tremboth and this gentleman who appears to be a Japanese security guard, among others. We also have digital sound recordings.”

Rachel spoke up. “There appear to be more of our people in the images, but these were the ones whose faces could be most easily cleaned up with Lisa’s software. We got the names by matching faces to photos attached to published articles. Dr Tremboth’s name tag did tell us who to look for and that is the face attached to her articles.”

“If you don’t want to broach the intersubspace barrier,” asked the Dean, “did you have something you wanted to do instead or did you plan to ask for advice in this meeting?”

The students looked at each other and it was Sadira who spoke. “We thought about it and the impulse is to rescue these people but it occurred to us that maybe that was what led to so many of them getting, well, stuck there so we thought more data might be useful. For instance, it’s been decades but Dr Ayer and Dr Sakharev look almost exactly the way they did in the pictures attached to their articles. Also, all these people seem to have come from different places at different times.” The man in the corner nodded. “We wanted to move the apparatus around to generate the connection first, at a different point in much the same location and then at different parts of the campus and see if we see the same thing every time. Although Dr Ayer’s published pictures were very poor quality, we believe they show the same point in the other subspace as ours.”

“What we want to test,” said Rachel carefully, “is whether this particular subspace can only be contacted from our subspace at one point in their subspace. We would do this by reconducting the experiment at other points within the campus and analysing the comparable results.”

“If we do get the same scene in each location we want to compare data and see if we’re getting the same time point as well,” added Lisa. “Time may work differently between the two subspaces or we could be looking at some sort of recording…”

“You’d have no chance of it being published,” pointed out the Dean.

“Well,” replied Rachel, “Lisa’s a photographer, Sarida’s an engineer and I’m a historian. I think we can all cope without having a scientific article published.”

Some four and a half weeks later.

“An A?” Peter Buchanan sounded like a disgruntled four year old. “They didn’t even present in class and they got an A?”

“Hey, it’s not like they got a good topic and our group got an A too, so what’s the problem?” His team mate gestured broadly as he spoke. “Maybe they got it for being good sports and not making a fuss about the lame topic in class.”

“Who knows?” The third in their group shrugged. “We got an A and I’m going to have a coffee to celebrate. Coming with me?”