HEART, AND EAR, AND EYE
Job 1: Tea and Recon
London, England
1875
The safe-house appears to have been more than one room, once; the crumbled remains of walls can be seen around the characters. They sit around a table, in rickety chairs that have seen better days, sitting on cushions that must have been stolen from the van's seats. Gray light filters in through the boarded-over windows, and rain dribbles through one. An umbrella stand sits by the door. Carmelita has the chair closest to the leaky window, where she seems to be adding water protections to her shock pistol. Beside her, Bentley is going over the gadgets on his chair, testing that their waterproof seals are intact. Murray sits next to Bentley with a mixing bowl of hot soup in front of him. Sly jams his hat a little further down on his head and heads for the door. Carmelita offers him an umbrella, but he shakes his head and leaves without taking it.
The world outside is a dreary mess. Between the flat gray of the clouds and the rain coming in steady sheets, it's hard to say whether it's night or day. This area of town seems given over to the poor and downtrodden, with squat houses that lean against each other and boarded-up windows giving the look of a pirate gone to seed. Sly leaps to the roof of the safe-house and goes from roof to roof, avoiding the worst puddles and mud, and heads south, into town. Only a single wolf patrols the poor area where they've set their safe-house, his flashlight cutting through the dark; Sly avoids him.
The further Sly goes into the city, the higher the buildings get, into apartments three and four stories high. The quality of construction never changes from benign neglect. Owls patrol the top of one roof. He leaps from signs advertising a new theater, bounces off a box of tea, and climbs a slippery drainpipe to the top of an apartment building: the start of his first job.
Sly pulls out his binoc-u-com and looks around, pausing for a moment to zoom in on the new clocktower. Big Ben chimes the hour: nine. Thunder rumbles in the distance. "Is there a reason this can't wait until it's dry, Bentley?"
"Based on my knowledge of historical meteorology, this storm is going to last at least another few weeks." Bentley adjusts his glasses. "None of us are going to like it. You could've worn a rain hat, you know."
"Not my style." Sly may be wet, but nothing he wears is going to get in his way, blow off, or squeak. "So, what did you have in mind?"
"Recon photos," says Bentley. "I looked up maps of this period, but a few things weren't on them. And there are others that definitely shouldn't be here." Sly moves his binoc-u-com as Bentley speaks, focusing on a large fissure to the south. It cuts this edge of town off from the rest of London; it also can't be new, as there are lots of warning signs around it, and what looks like the beginnings of a bridge. "I also haven't found any indications of where our newest mark is hiding. Rajan and General Tsao both had humongous towers as their base of operations, but the only thing that stands out here is the clock."
"And we all know that's supposed to be here," murmurs Sly. "I'll check it out."
Sly tucks his binoc-u-com away and looks around. The fissure seems like a decent place to start. He looks around, checking the tops of the nearby buildings for patrolling owls and porcupines, then leaps. His paraglider catches the wind and he glides a fair way.
A building catches his eye, and he swerves to land on a nearby roof and take a picture. "A pawn shop?" asks Bentley. "Can't you go through one city without finding the pawn shop?"
"You didn't complain about it when I used them to fund your first laptop."
Bentley sighs. "I just thought we'd moved past that point in our lives."
"Past pawn shops? Never." Sly continues on his way, grinning as Bentley groans.
One more long glide gets him to the fissure. He pulls out his binoc-u-com and takes a picture. "Interesting," Bentley says. "If my calculations are correct, that fissure is exactly the same width as the one in Ancient Egypt."
Sly walks along it, dodging around guards and picking pockets as he goes. The fissure turns a corner eventually, but never seems to get any less wide. He takes another picture. "West. West and south. Wait a minute... Sly, the fissure in Ancient Egypt went along the north and east. If you put it together with this one, you'd have a full-on moat!"
That's... actually an interesting fact, though why half a moat would go to Egypt and the other half to England is a thought for another day. Before leaving, Sly takes one more picture, of a building set up right on the corner of the two fissures: some sort of 1800's truck stop.
"Early buses are stored there for the night," Bentley says in his ear. "Good to know we have some unobstrusive transport if we need it."
Sly puts away the binoc-u-com and gets back on the roofs. The lightning rod at the top of one apartment glows red; Sly jumps to another roof before it can discharge the lightning strike and hurt him. After a moment, he stops to take a picture of the lightning rod, and the bakery it's on top of.
"Now that's fascinating," says Bentley. "Sly, do you see that?"
"What, a lightning rod?" asks Sly. "I just thought you'd be relieved to know we have some protection."
"Not the lightning rod, Sly, the wires." Now that Bentley mentioned it, Sly zooms in: there do seem to be wires wrapped in a spiral around the rod, leading into the building itself. "That isn't a normal electrical discharge system. No, the lightning is being used to charge something. But what?"
"Beats me," says Sly. "I wonder why this guy just doesn't go wireless."
"Very funny. If you see any more of those, take a picture. It could be useful information."
"Now that's a shock," comments Sly. Bentley doesn't even dignify that with a groan.
Sly continues making his way around town, taking a picture of another lightning rod on another bakery as he goes. For lack of anything better to look at, he makes his way back towards the safe-house. On the very edge of town, where the old shacks meet with the river, there's some sort of lightshow. Spotlights, torches, and lasers flicker on and off in dizzying patterns.
Sly takes out his binoc-u-com for a picture but stops before he can take it, mesmerized and unmoving for several moments. Only when another flash of lightning interrupts the pattern does he take the shot and turn away.
"Fascinating," says Bentley. "I'd say it's an old form of optical illusion, except lasers don't belong in this time period. But why would they just have it up on the edge of town? Is there anything else around here you can look at, Sly?"
Sly jumps from the roof and looks at the ground. Almost unnoticed amongst all the lights is a large billboard advertising a play; Sly almost gets mesmerized again taking a picture of it. "This could be a problem," he tells Bentley.
"Maybe you should get an eyepatch," Bentley says. "Historically, it worked for Henriette."
"Wrong time period," says Sly, but he looks at the sky in any case. Clockwerk is still alive in this time period, and he could be anywhere: hovering amongst the clouds, peeking from an alley, or even looming at him from the top of Big Ben. "But I'll keep it in mind. Do you think this play is important?"
"Variations on The Spider and the Fly: An Ode to Moral Poetry," reads Bentley. "See if you can find the theater it's at."
Seems like a weird request, but hey, it's Bentley. Sly trudges back into town. On his way, he notices—and takes a picture of—an old-timey shooting gallery. "Really, Sly?" asks Bentley.
"Hey, if we have spare time, I'd love to enter Carmelita," says Sly. "I bet she'd win something."
He takes another picture of a wire-covered lightning rod, then pauses and zooms in close on the shop beneath it: a tea parlor. "We'll need to come back to this place," Bentley says. "My scanners detect high levels of radio activity from inside that shop."
"I'll make a note," says Sly. He continues on his way.
Near the eastern border of the town is a tailor's shop, one of a nearly impenetrable line of buildings. He gets a shot of it. "People in this era did like their clothes," Bentley comments.
So, not important, then.
It's not much later, when Sly takes a picture of a fourth lightning rod, that Bentley speaks. "These rods form a square around town. Can you see what's in the center of it, Sly?" A new waypoint pops up on his binoc-u-com.
"Nothing I'd like better," Sly says, running across some ropes of laundry. Getting to the center of town takes only a moment.
And what's in the center of that square?
A very large theater, with advertisements for a play. Billboards cover it on three sides, each showing a variation. A spider and a fly. A fox and a mouse.
An owl and a raccoon.
"This is it, Sly," says Bentley. "Whoever's messing with this time period, they're in that theater. And it appears there's an event going on." Sly zooms in as a horseless carriage draws up: a pair of weasels get out, dressed to the nines. "We're going to have to investigate this."
JOB COMPLETE
Sly starts a victory pose, sneezes, and rings out his cap before plopping it back on his head.