"Letters"
by Acey
Disclaimer False Depression: I *sniff* don't *sob* own DBZ. Waahhh!
Acey: Remember the word "false," please.
The shoutouts:
Manda-Chan: Android info? ^__^ There's some in this chapter.
Chuquita: Yeah, knew the total before the clerk did-- she's not stupid.
And now, chapter fourteen. I really do hope you like it.
She left, awkward teenage bagboy following closely behind, metallic wheels of his upright buggy flashing slightly in the sun. A part-time job, no doubt a job he was forced into by parents, but all the same he was far from a mediocre bagboy; you could tell by the way he watched the woman, paying her attention to ensure that he didn't lose track of her and have to go all around the parking lot looking for his customer. He didn't lose track of her now, as she turned straight from the where the aircars were parked and back to the store.
The front of the store, at least. The bagboy glanced at her, figuring she had left something there.
"Ma'am?" he said respectfully, "did you leave anything?"
The kidnapped posters. She was looking at the kidnapped posters. He stole a look at them as well, wondering if one of the children on the wall was her grandchild. 'Better not to ask,' he thought as he scanned the photographs like he'd done ever since coming to work at the grocery store. You never could be too careful (though in his experience he'd never actually seen a single missing child), and anyway, it was the right thing to do.
She was looking for one in particular, he realized when she asked if there were any from January somewhere. The bagboy reponded by taking her back inside the store and pointing to a wall with posters of missing children of months and years before. Mostly it was a custodial thing, the parent who didn't have the kid full time would take him or her and leave, but there were other cases on occasion, posters that said at the bottom"kidnapper unknown."
Like the one she was pointing at.
"That one, ma'am?"
Twins, the words on the bottom saying who they were smeared by an unexpected rain (or a janitor's spill of cleaning fluid), fall school pictures, probably in junior or senior year, both facing the photographer's camera with an annoyed expression, blue eyes daring. Obviously rebels. He had the type at his school more often than he would like, but--
He decided to ask her anyway, be it polite or not.
"Are they your-- your grandkids?"
"No," she said quietly. "No."
**********************************************************************
"No" could have been the word to describe her whole feeling that minute. She had found them, come so close. Smeared ink was all that kept her from saving them somehow this very minute.
'Not just the smeared ink,' the ever-logical, ever-annoying part of her brain reminded her. 'You couldn't have helped them even then. You still don't even know where his lab is, you fool.'
Perhaps she didn't, she thought in retaliation as she told the patient bagboy that they could go to her aircar now, and paid him the two zene more that he deserved when they got there and he packed the groceries in the trunk, but she would.
The woman pulled the last letter from her coatpocket.
She would.
**********************************************************************
My dear ___________, February 21, 760
You know this is the last letter. I hope you have enjoyed our lengthy correspondence-- my lengthy correspondence, really. I hope it amused you, intrigued you, as you and I go into the twilight years of living. Time is such a hateful, ugly thing.
I won't give you a long essay with thrown-in hints like I've done in the past. Essays are for college students, after all, and though you and I graduated from that place with high honors; it is safe to say that our dear old Western Capital alma mater has no further need of our compositions. The college kept most mementos; we kept only the memories and a cap and gown and diploma.
You'd think it would be more damp in here where I write to you, but fortunately, this place is fixed up more or less like my old laboratory back with Red Ribbon, though it still has its old, rather rocky exterior. There's even air-conditioning in here now, not that it needs it. The environment here is as sterile as a doctor's office, which is not only enormously more pleasing than the way it was when I first came here, but is necessary, gives much less chance for error. After all, we're both doctors. You could, if you wanted to, consider this my own office, the office of one whose services go unpaid for which there is no real award but a feeling of success unshared by the rest of the world. Dear, you know how it is. You're the only scientist left that doesn't work single-mindedly for or with anyone but yourself. Your discoveries remain your discoveries, as mine will remain mine. The Capsule Corporation with its countless employees and sheer monopolization can't take credit for your advances in the field of genetics when they were made before it was even a company.
So with those parting thoughts on paper and in mind, I say my farewell, dear. Whether you figure it out or not, I bid you goodbye and send highest regards, and even a few selfish wishes that things could have gone better for both of us.
I end this final letter now.
Your old colleague,
Doctor Gero
**********************************************************************
Disclaimer False Depression: I *sniff* don't *sob* own DBZ. Waahhh!
Acey: Remember the word "false," please.
The shoutouts:
Manda-Chan: Android info? ^__^ There's some in this chapter.
Chuquita: Yeah, knew the total before the clerk did-- she's not stupid.
And now, chapter fourteen. I really do hope you like it.
She left, awkward teenage bagboy following closely behind, metallic wheels of his upright buggy flashing slightly in the sun. A part-time job, no doubt a job he was forced into by parents, but all the same he was far from a mediocre bagboy; you could tell by the way he watched the woman, paying her attention to ensure that he didn't lose track of her and have to go all around the parking lot looking for his customer. He didn't lose track of her now, as she turned straight from the where the aircars were parked and back to the store.
The front of the store, at least. The bagboy glanced at her, figuring she had left something there.
"Ma'am?" he said respectfully, "did you leave anything?"
The kidnapped posters. She was looking at the kidnapped posters. He stole a look at them as well, wondering if one of the children on the wall was her grandchild. 'Better not to ask,' he thought as he scanned the photographs like he'd done ever since coming to work at the grocery store. You never could be too careful (though in his experience he'd never actually seen a single missing child), and anyway, it was the right thing to do.
She was looking for one in particular, he realized when she asked if there were any from January somewhere. The bagboy reponded by taking her back inside the store and pointing to a wall with posters of missing children of months and years before. Mostly it was a custodial thing, the parent who didn't have the kid full time would take him or her and leave, but there were other cases on occasion, posters that said at the bottom"kidnapper unknown."
Like the one she was pointing at.
"That one, ma'am?"
Twins, the words on the bottom saying who they were smeared by an unexpected rain (or a janitor's spill of cleaning fluid), fall school pictures, probably in junior or senior year, both facing the photographer's camera with an annoyed expression, blue eyes daring. Obviously rebels. He had the type at his school more often than he would like, but--
He decided to ask her anyway, be it polite or not.
"Are they your-- your grandkids?"
"No," she said quietly. "No."
**********************************************************************
"No" could have been the word to describe her whole feeling that minute. She had found them, come so close. Smeared ink was all that kept her from saving them somehow this very minute.
'Not just the smeared ink,' the ever-logical, ever-annoying part of her brain reminded her. 'You couldn't have helped them even then. You still don't even know where his lab is, you fool.'
Perhaps she didn't, she thought in retaliation as she told the patient bagboy that they could go to her aircar now, and paid him the two zene more that he deserved when they got there and he packed the groceries in the trunk, but she would.
The woman pulled the last letter from her coatpocket.
She would.
**********************************************************************
My dear ___________, February 21, 760
You know this is the last letter. I hope you have enjoyed our lengthy correspondence-- my lengthy correspondence, really. I hope it amused you, intrigued you, as you and I go into the twilight years of living. Time is such a hateful, ugly thing.
I won't give you a long essay with thrown-in hints like I've done in the past. Essays are for college students, after all, and though you and I graduated from that place with high honors; it is safe to say that our dear old Western Capital alma mater has no further need of our compositions. The college kept most mementos; we kept only the memories and a cap and gown and diploma.
You'd think it would be more damp in here where I write to you, but fortunately, this place is fixed up more or less like my old laboratory back with Red Ribbon, though it still has its old, rather rocky exterior. There's even air-conditioning in here now, not that it needs it. The environment here is as sterile as a doctor's office, which is not only enormously more pleasing than the way it was when I first came here, but is necessary, gives much less chance for error. After all, we're both doctors. You could, if you wanted to, consider this my own office, the office of one whose services go unpaid for which there is no real award but a feeling of success unshared by the rest of the world. Dear, you know how it is. You're the only scientist left that doesn't work single-mindedly for or with anyone but yourself. Your discoveries remain your discoveries, as mine will remain mine. The Capsule Corporation with its countless employees and sheer monopolization can't take credit for your advances in the field of genetics when they were made before it was even a company.
So with those parting thoughts on paper and in mind, I say my farewell, dear. Whether you figure it out or not, I bid you goodbye and send highest regards, and even a few selfish wishes that things could have gone better for both of us.
I end this final letter now.
Your old colleague,
Doctor Gero
**********************************************************************