Episode 21
Emerging from the shadows was a woman who was a bit shorter than Sharp's six feet, though still tall. She carried herself with great dignity even while wearing what Sharp could plainly see now was a bathrobe. As Sharp gazed downward at her indignant face, he found himself stunned by how beautiful she was. He couldn't recall ever seeing anybody as exotic and lovely as the woman angrily waving a flat wooden blade at him.
Is she holding a cricket bat?
There were many women who waved things at Sharp over the years. They were all beautiful, and the objects they waved could and would be thrown at him, though he did recall a French model he dated once who merely waved her purse at him while shouting "Espèce de radin!" after he asked her to pay for dinner since she was boring. He felt that people often couldn't handle the truth.
The truth Sharp couldn't handle at the moment was that the five foot nine inched woman in front of him wasn't notable just because she was waving a cricket bat while wearing a bathrobe, standing where the hallway used to be. His brain had yet to wrap itself around other exotic elements about her. He was just beginning to notice that she had spoken with a British accent when his brain caught up to his eyes.
Her face and hands were covered in fur. That caught his attention, though he was more concerned about the four foot long bat the furry hands were clutching. He didn’t know much about cricket, but the length didn’t seem to be regulation. He also noticed that her hair seemed translucent and shimmery in the red emergency lights. That had to be a trick of the light. Her eyes no longer reflected like mirrors now that she had stepped out of the shadows. He would have explained that away as a trick of the light as well, but he was too distracted by the horns on her head. They rose off her skull and reached slightly above his head. He would have described them as the horns of a bull except they had soft, poofy ribbons tied to them, one on each horn.
So they did have a cosplay closet in the hallway! Her makeup is perfect. I'd swear she was rea…
Sharp's rationalizing mind stopped dead in its tracks, turned around, and tried to escape out his ear as something snaked out from behind the woman. Something long, nimble, and capped with a tuft of hair. It reached up from behind her and brushed away some hair out of her face while her hands tightly gripped her bat.
That's not cosplay.
Since his AR contacts used a different power source than the Bloop power grid, they happily analyzed the woman in front of him despite being surrounded by darkness and red emergency lights. Height had already been relayed to him, but also temperature. Sharp quickly selected a thermographic overlay, and his sensors revealed that the horns and tale of his visitor matched her body temperature, though her horns were warmer. These weren’t props.
The temperature of the room beyond was cooler than the heated lab he stood in, and suddenly his curiosity won out in its battle with caution.
“You can put that down. Nobody is going to hurt you, though I’m a bit worried about you hurting me. That’s a bit long for a cricket bat.”
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“All cricket bats are this long,” she replied as if he was stupid. Her accent was strangely British, but with a lilt he hadn’t heard before. “The only bats shorter are the orig…hold on. You have not answered my question.”
“What am I doing in your dressing-closet, was it? Well, I’ve got a question for you. What are you doing in my doorway? I can’t get out now.”
The woman’s face screwed up in confusion as she glanced back quickly at her dressing-closet, then back at Sharp. “Where is this place? How did you connect to my home? There is only a yard beyond the wall of my dressing-closet. And I am on the second floor.” She glanced around at the large WMD lab.
“Yeah, it’s big. And we’re not in your backyard. We’re hundreds of feet below the earth.”
“Feet? You use feet to measure? That is from the language of the Travelers. Hold on a moment. Hundreds of feet below the earth?” There was panic now in her eyes where there had once been anger.
“That’s right. Hey, Kyle? How many feet exactly are we below the earth?”
“Around 350 feet below the earth and about 300 feet above the Heavy Graviton Collider, though technically we aren’t near the collider in our location. We can’t afford to have the experiments interfering with each other. You’re further below the earth than we are since you’re in the lab. What is that? Another fourteen feet?,” Kyle asked with a smile. He was warming up now. “That would make you 364 feet below the earth. I bet you’re glad we don’t have to take the stairs to get down here.”
“Where’s that voice coming from?” she said in alarm.
“Right over there against the wall, below the red light.”
“Red light?” She seemed troubled, but quickly composed herself. “Why is it so dim in here?”
“That light. Over there.” Sharp pointed over to the corner of the room opposite the door and near the window. “There is a speaker there in the box below the light that let’s the scientists and techs in the observation room communicate with us.” Sharp gave a grand, sweeping gesture to indicate their audience.
Startled, the horned woman took a step back as she noticed the observation window for the first time. All of the employees were pressed against the glass in order to get a better view. Their AR decks had long since stopped communicating with the wormbox and wormhole generator. Now they made a mob of silhouettes backlit by the red emergency lights casting a crimson glow over the computers and consoles behind them.
“You can’t see red, can you? You probably can’t see green either, right? Just like a…” He looked her up and down as he noticed the large, floppy ears. The swishing tail. The horns.
“What? Cow got your tongue?” She gave Sharp an exasperated look as she placed her arms akimbo.
“It’s ‘cat’.”
“What, pray tell, is a cat?”
Sharp furrowed his eyebrows as he contemplated her response.
I’m too tired to deal with this, whatever this is.
“Look, I’ve had a long day, lady, and you are standing between me and a weekend of R&R where I don’t sleep a wink and just work on coding my project in complete bliss.”
“That is Lady Primguard to you, and I don’t like your tone.”
“Lady, I don’t care what you like right now. Just step aside and let me pass.”
“Uh, Mr. Hikoboshi…” Isabelle’s voice could be heard on the intercom.
“I am not letting you into my bedroom, you brute!” She lifted the large cricket bat into a defensive position.
“It’s not a bedroom. It’s the hallway…” As unbelievable as this turn of events was, Sharp was hoping that he wasn’t seeing what he thought he saw.
It’s just freaky looking because of the red lights. It’s gotta be a trick of the light. Whoever thought of red emergency lights anyway? You can’t see anything!
“It’s not a hallway,” said Isabelle.
“What do you mean it’s not a hallway?”
“It’s my dressing-closet!”
“Look, just shut up for a second.”
The woman’s eyes widened in shock, reflecting white for just a moment. Her mouth hung open, but Sharp was used to people looking at him that way. He turned back to the observation window.
“The door doesn’t open into the hallway, Mr. Hikoboshi. We’ve checked. The door is closed on our end.”
“Our end?”
“No, our end. Your end opens into somewhere else.” Isabelle was both excited and concerned, but clearly excitement was winning the skirmish across her face.