Chapter 290: Photographic Evidence
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"I don't know if this will work," said Sam, stepping through the portal. Sojourn closed it from the other side. He would pick them back up
"We've been searching for days," said Jazz. "We're running out of options and time, if we don't want it to fall into the wrong hands."
It had been days, however… "Three days," said Sam.
"Three is enough," said Jazz.
"We also have to face the possibility that the other side has already found it," said Danny, stepping forward to greet them. "Hi, Sam, hi, Jazz. Feels like it's been forever again."
"Speak for yourself, for me it has been forever."
"It's good to see you, too, Tucker," said Sam, giving both of her friends a brief hug, then trading off with Jazz. "Hi, Damien."
"Hi!" said Damien, brightly.
"Did you bring the film?" asked Sam.
"Yep," said Danny, putting a pack of film down on the table. "It was both weirdly hard and weirdly easy, you know what I mean? Like, it was hard to find a ghost Obsessed with polaroid cameras but once we did it was really easy to convince them to make us some custom film."
"Great," said Sam, sitting down at the table and loading it into her camera. "Remember, I've never managed to get a picture that wasn't around one of one of you guys before, and this isn't something I've been practicing." Seeing as it seemed to be something she could only do in the Ghost Zone and the special materials involved… although she should probably experiment with other cameras, just to see if there were different effects.
"Yeah, that's why we brought all of these," said Danny, heaving a bag up onto the table from underneath.
"Are those all-?"
"Cameras? Yeah."
"Did you get those from the same ghost?"
"No way," said Tucker. "That'd be like asking the Box Ghost to give up his collection."
"Not quite, but there's a difference between commissioning some film and… all this." Danny pulled a camera, a sleek digital model, from the bag and waved it to demonstrate. "Like, I could make some star models—" He flicked his fingers, something like a tiny blue sun blossoming between them for a split second, "—give them away, but giving up so many all at once, unplanned, and not for a reason that, you know, aligned, that would be difficult. Think about it in terms of your greenhouses."
"Oh, yeah," said Sam, remembering what they had looked like on her visit home. They'd been opened up to the community, she'd opened them up to the community, for the greater good, but it had been hard to see what that looked like without her guiding hand.
In retrospect, she could see that she'd micromanaged a lot, when she was still there.
"Yeah, now multiply that by about a hundred," said Danny nodding.
"Mm, yeah," said Tucker. "I get a little jealous about my tech, too, so…"
They all nodded together.
Damien sighed wistfully. "I think I'd like to have a thing like that."
"Don't you?"
"No, no, my Obsession isn't material." He pointed at Danny. "It's like his primary, more or less. But having a secondary like that sounds like fun. Like a hobby, almost."
"You'll probably develop one before too long," said Danny. "Swords, maybe?" He pushed some of the cameras over to Sam.
"I don't know. Maybe I'll ask Clockwork."
"Why aren't we asking Clockwork, actually?" asked Sam.
"We did. He's still seeing too many possibilities, forwards and backwards," said Danny. "Hence your clairvoyance being the next best option."
"Since all the other seers are either Observants, and in hiding, or still hiding from the Observants," explained Damien, cheerily.
"And no one trusts Desiree enough to make a wish," added Danny.
"And no one trusts Desiree enough to make a wish," repeated Damien with a nod.
"I don't know that I'd call this clairvoyance," said Sam.
"Spirit photography, then?" asked Tucker, innocently, propping his chin on his hands. "Kirlian even?"
"Oh, go wear a fake beard," said Sam. "You know that's just electrophotography."
"Insulting the garb of my people?" Tucker asked, miming fainting. "The horror! The cruelty! I do have one, though," he added, in a more normal voice. "A couple, actually."
"That's sort of cool, actually," said Sam.
"I can show you, after."
"Sure." She raised the camera. "Okay, here it goes."
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She went through the whole first pack of polaroid film before she even got a picture of something that wasn't in the Ghost Zone: her mother. Progress, but not nearly as fast as she would have liked. Then it was back to people she knew who were in the Ghost Zone – Clockwork, Ellie, Tucker's parents, Danny's parents (his reaction to that picture was… chilling, honestly), a group of kids from Harmony, and then the room they were in, but from a different angle.
"Maybe try to aim for Dmitri," suggested Danny, "he was in the White House before, right? Maybe you can, I don't know, leapfrog over?"
That was a decent idea, but Sam still made a face at him.
"Sorry," said Danny. "If I could help with more than suggestions…"
"I know, I know," said Sam. She massaged her temples. The repeated flashes of light were getting to her. "Let's try again."
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They went through all the polaroids. Then they went through the other conventional film cameras, with Tucker using a projector they'd brought to view the negatives. She'd started getting pictures of the embassy, even of the outside of the embassy, but not of anything anywhere near the White House.
Of course, they did run out of film eventually, and double exposures were… interesting, to say the least. They'd stopped trying that after she'd gotten a picture of what she was pretty sure was someone's internal organs.
This meant that they were on to the digital cameras. They were… Well, they were, for the most part, fine as cameras, and they didn't run out of film. But when it came to being focuses for magic… Yeah. Not so much. Few of the pictures taken by the cameras came up as things outside the room, and when they did, it seemed random, unfocused. One of the pictures was of New Jersey for goodness' sake. From space.
"Maybe you're just tired," suggested Tucker. "I know I can strain myself with my magic."
"Do you want to take a break?" asked Danny.
"I'm fine," said Sam. She was. She was only frustrated.
… Okay, maybe she was feeling a little worn out.
"Sojourn will be picking me up before too long anyway," she said, blowing a strand of hair out of her face and reaching for the next camera. "I want to at least test all of these."
In the end, it was the chintziest, flimsiest, pinkest digital camera that did the trick, and it seemed to do it entirely by chance, which was, well, it was par for the course, all around.
"That's it," said Danny, immediately.
"It doesn't look like much," said Sam, tilting her head to try and make heads or tails of the picture. It looked like a ceramic jar, but the graininess and glitches in the screen made it hard to tell its orientation. "Is it under a table, or…?"
"In a cabinet, maybe?" suggested Tucker.
"Might be a cabinet," said Danny, "or…" He trailed off, squinting at the pixelated screen. "Actually, I think the anchor itself might be in the jar, and… Is that a tag?"
"You'd think that the president would take price tags off his furniture," said Tucker.
"He's not the one actually picking out the furniture," said Sam, rolling his eyes.
"Okay, that the White House decorators or whatever," said Tucker. "It just seems like the thing to do."
Sam scowled. "I'm glad we got it, finally, but I don't know how useful this is for figuring out where it is."
"Everything is a clue," said Danny, still looking at the tag. "Hold up… I think this is actually on a shelf."
"That does narrow it down a little," said Tucker.
"Wait… Something just occurred to me," said Danny. "You know how I've been doing a lot of political reading? On diplomacy and the laws about what different heads of state can do. Ethics and stuff."
"Sure," said Sam.
"Me too," said Tucker. "Just… I'm not sure how that applies here."
"Well," said Danny, "there are rules about what the president can get as a gift, right?"
"Good thing you don't have those rule," said Sam.
"Why? Are you thinking about getting me something?"
"Yeah, Sam, are you thinking about getting him something? Maybe something that starts with a 'K?'" He made a kissy face.
"Shut up, Tucker," said Sam and Danny, affectionately.
"Anyway," continued Danny. "A lot of the stuff – most of it, actually – in the White House is technically owned by the country. Especially decorative and display pieces, and stuff with historical value. And when that stuff isn't being used, it goes back to the National Archives, right?"
Sam leaned back, wondering how this even came up in Danny's readings. It seemed tangential to diplomacy all things considered. "Sure."
"Don't give me that look. That book was structured like a Wikipedia binge. Normally, there aren't big redecorations, except for holidays, I guess, so stuff that belongs to the country is cycled out and stored at the end of a term. But if there was some reason to redecorate…"
"Are you telling me that the anchor got mistaken for a decoration and moved to the National Archives?" asked Sam.
"That would explain the tag," said Danny. "I will admit it's flimsy."
Sam sighed. "Well… There's a museum there, right?"
At least Dmitri would have fun with that.
