Chapter 15 – Queen's Pawn Opening
Samsara hardly glanced up from her computer's monitor when a knock came to her bedroom door. She ignored it the second time, and the third, but it persisted.
"I'm busy," she said loudly enough for Jinling to hear outside.
"You've been in there all day," came Jinling's reply. "Seriously, you're going to fall behind on your other work, and I'm going to starve. It's your turn to buy groceries, remember?"
Samsara growled at the door and returned her attention to her computer, but Jinling's knocking and her voice grew louder.
"If you don't come out here and at least go with me to the grocery store, I'm going to have to break down your door and feed your computer to Dr. Turing's pet Doberman. You hear me, Sam? I'm serious this time."
A pang of hunger in Samsara's stomach finally pushed her over the edge. She folded up a few sheets of paper on top of her desk, locked her computer system, and slipped her notepad into her pocket. The notepad stuck out over the top, so she pulled on her favorite red coat and hat before opening her door.
Unfortunately, she picked the second Jinling was about to knock again to open the door, and Jinling, hardly paying attention by this point, banged her knuckle against Samsara's skull instead of the hardy wood of the door.
"Ouch!" Samsara cried. "Watch where you're…."
"Oh, I'm sorry," said Jinling, suddenly concerned about someone else's welfare. "I thought you were still at your computer."
"Never mind," said Samsara. "Just let me know what to pick up. Geez, they're paying you enough now that I'd think you'd just hire someone to go shopping for you."
Jinling grinned, too broadly. "What're friends for?"
"The one doing the favor is supposed to be the one who says that!" Samsara stomped down the hallway toward the front door and left without saying goodbye.
XXX
"How long has she been at it today?" Jinling wondered to herself. "This isn't like her. Not when she's had sleep and coffee, anyway. Hmm. Just what was she working on?"
Jinling thought for a moment about the rules of etiquette toward roommates, about her friendship with Samsara and all the challenges they had met together and overcome, about her own moral and ethical standards, and about how hard she judged Samsara could punch her if she got caught, and she decided to take a risk. After watching the front door shut and hearing the lock click into place, she turned the knob to Samsara's room and pushed the door open.
The inside was mostly dark, but Samsara's monitor had not yet switched into powersave mode, so its flickering blue light partially illuminated the desk and floor sections of the room. Samsara had left in a rush, so the desk chair was not pushed properly back into place, and an incriminating energy bar wrapper lay on the floor next to, as opposed to inside, the waste bin. Samsara's open closet doors stared Jinling in the face as if warning her that she was in forbidden territory.
A lump formed in Jinling's throat. She fumbled about with her hand in search of the light switch, and when she found it, she flipped it on as quickly as she could.
Fzzzt, pop! she heard. The overhead flashed on for a split second before fizzling out and leaving the room just as dark as before.
"Wrong bulbs again," Jinling whispered to herself. "That girl can do just about anything she wants, but she couldn't find the right lightbulbs to save her own life. Five minutes of thought could save her how many trips to the store?"
Jinling stepped over to Samsara's computer, nearly tripping on a pile of unfolded clothes lying in the middle of the floor. Atop the desk lay a few notebooks, about half of which Jinling recognized as some of Samsara's work on temporal mathematics. These had the official seal of Balthasar University on their covers. Most of the rest looked somewhat less formal. A few even had doodles on their covers.
Jinling snickered. So Samsara's playful side did come out at work, at least when no one else was watching.
Most of the doodles were of a robot. They were probably all representations of the same robot, at least on a crude level. It was vaguely humanoid, though it resembled a round human or a bowling ball more than a normal, healthy human. Its eyes were large and round, and the rest of its head was short and flat. Its legs were run of the mill for a science fiction robot, but its arms ended in what looked more like claws than hands.
"Is this her work on artificial intelligence? Did she… build this?"
Jinling shook her head. "This isn't hers. This is her mother's robot. R66-Y, was it? Maybe the computer will tell me something."
Jinling look up at the monitor and groaned. "It's locked, and I don't think I know her password. Time to guess, maybe?"
Jinling typed. P-R-O-M-E-T-H-E-U-S.
The computer beeped an indignant reply and spat the lock screen back up at her.
"Well, that's not it. Hmm. What else is there? She's got to have it lying around, I would think. I doubt she would trust herself to remember something she couldn't look up."
The last thing Jinling wanted to do was dig through half a dozen notebooks for a password, so she looked back at the computer. She noticed something.
"That's funny. Sam isn't the type to leave the volume turned off. I thought she listened to some sort of music while doing her work. Maybe if…."
She turned the appropriate knob on the monitor and felt a wave of sound pour out from the desk speakers and wash over her. The music was soothing and upbeat at the same time, mostly with a full orchestra but with a few playful moments of mostly strings and some sort of chime. It was as if the orchestra were imitating a music box.
"Could it…?"
Jinling tried another password. D-E-L-I-B-E-S.
The computer let out a happy chime, and the lock page vanished.
"Way to go, Jinling," she congratulated herself. "For future reference, Sam keeps an audible record of her password. Now, what's this, A.I. stuff? No."
Samsara had left several programs running. Of course she had her mathematical software, but she also had a window for her programming environment and her email.
"Sam would kill me if she saw this. Oh man, this is bad." Jinling actually shivered, but she regained her composure and brought herself to read down a list of emails. Half of them were from her, and a good portion of the rest were from faculty of Balthasar University, but a few of the remaining messages came from someone Samsara had never mentioned.
"Nimzovich at cs dot balthasar dot edu. Interesting. Why don't I know him? Does Sam actually…? No, it couldn't be. Does she have a boyfriend?"
Jinling laughed out loud.
"Naw, she would have told me something like that. This has to be something even more mysterious. Still, what could be more mysterious than Samsara Ashtear's romantic history? Does she even have one of those?"
Jinling giggled again, this time for nearly half a minute, before continuing with her speculation.
"It looks like someone from the computer science department. Is he helping her with her A.I. project? Is he a friend or colleague? How long have those two been talking?"
The emails from Nimzovich had blank subject lines, so Jinling contemplated whether or not she should read them. She couldn't quite justify clicking on one at random, so she told the computer to sort them according to sender and then according to subject, in order to see if Nimzovich sent anything without a blank subject. It turned out he sent only one.
"Lucca," it read.
"Her mother. This person must be interested in her mother's research. What kind of research, though? Physics? Mathematics? Robotics? A.I.? Oh, Jinling, stop tempting yourself. It's got to be the computer stuff if he's in the CS department."
But her hand did not listen to her conscience. Instead it guided the mouse, moving the cursor over to Nimzovich's email, and clicked twice.
A new window popped up onscreen. Inside, at the top, was a picture of Lucca Ashtear. Below that was a lengthy message, which Jinling could not bring herself to read. If it were anyone but Sam, it wouldn't be a problem, but she felt guilty enough even invading the room without going through private emails about Sam's family.
Unless it was about Lucca's work, of course, in which case it would all just be innocent curiosity. Intellectual curiosity. Sam would be happy to see that, wouldn't she?
A few sentences into the email, it became apparent that Nimzovich was a big fan of Samsara's mother. He seemed to know all about her work, and he wanted to make sure Samsara knew that as early as he could. Consequently, the first couple of paragraphs consisted mostly of computer science jargon that Jinling wouldn't have been able to decipher if her life depended on it.
"I don't understand the appeal of this no matter how many times she explains it in depth. I just don't." Jinling squinted at the screen and scrolled down in search of more interesting text.
She found none, however. The rest of the email contained a few equations and some computer code, and the very last line read, "Your move."
"Funny way to end things," Jinling thought. "I'd have been a bit more polite. I think. Maybe not to Sam."
She closed the window and clicked on the next email from the same sender. Like the rest, it had no subject line, and curiously enough, the only text inside consisted of a couple of numbers and letters: "1. d4 Nf6"
Jinling puzzled over her discovery for a few seconds, but then a clicking sound from the front door startled her. In a rush, she closed the email window, threw some of the notebooks back into a pile on the desk, turned down the computer's volume, and locked the screen again. Before Samsara could make it inside, she darted out, shut the door, rushed into the kitchen, and pretended to care very much about making herself a sandwich.
When she remembered that the food was all gone, she left the mayonnaise jar out and ran to her room. She heard Samsara call a greeting out to her, but before she went to reply, she dug a scrap of paper out from her own desk and scribbled the contents of Nimzovich's second email down for later contemplation.
XXX
Beyond Time
When the light finally faded, only Crow was left standing. Paem was in the best shape of the rest; she managed to struggle to her knees. Chrono lay on his back, gasping and panting. Coppelia didn't move at all. But Crow, despite being the only one on his feet, looked worse than everyone else. The blast sapped most of his strength, to the point where he feared further attacks even from a weakened and weary Chrono. As quickly as his injured body would allow, he stalked over to the boarding plank leading back to his ship.
Unfortunately for him, he did not make it all the way before Coppelia recovered enough strength to lob a rock at his head. She scored a direct hit, dazing him further. Now hobbling around like a drunken sailor, Crow took one too many steps to the left and missed the plank entirely. With a curse, he tumbled over the edge and splashed into the water below.
No one said a word until Coppelia finally stood up and then helped Chrono and Paem to their feet. When everyone could confirm no major injuries, they began to discuss the situation.
Paem was the first to point out, "That man was a blowhard!"
"And you've never seen him before," Chrono added.
"That's right. The others are regular nuisances, but he's new. He scares me, too. All that power."
"Miss Paem," said Coppelia, "if those others cause trouble on a regular basis, do you mind informing us what their motives are?"
Paem shook her head. "I don't know for sure. Conquest, maybe. They always travel through Gates, so I don't know just where they come from. Maybe it's a rotten place and they want to settle in greener pastures, so to speak."
"It must be really rotten to look green compares to here," said Chrono.
Paem sighed. "Please remember that this is my home."
"Sorry," said Chrono. "It just seems a little dreary to me."
"Dreary to one is cozy to another," said Paem. "I prefer to stay away from the light if I can, so the colors here suit me. And this place isn't so bad if you get used to it. Not that I mind traveling once in a while."
Chrono nodded. "I know how that is. Wanderlust, I think it's called."
Coppelia changed the subject. "Miss Paem, we previously read what we believe to be a foundation myth for these lands, and in that myth were characters named Plum Blossom and Yu the Fisherman. Do you have any idea if there is any connection between the characters in the story and the assassins we just fought?"
"The original Plum Blossom and Yu are either fictional or long gone," said Paem. "Whoever these guys are, they probably read our myth and then assumed the names in order to intimidate us."
"That or they were written into the myth as villains," Chrono suggested. "Just how old is the story, anyway?"
"The story is much older than our enemies," said Paem. "I can guarantee that. And the characters in the story are not evil. Do you remember? They were good friends of the King of the Dead until they vanished."
"This may sound like a stupid question," said Chrono, "but is the King of the Dead at all related to the Princess of the Dead? The Fairy Disenchantment said something about her, so I wouldn't mind knowing more."
"The Princess of the Dead, called Giselle, is as her title suggests a part of the royal family, although families here do not work the same way as families of living people. She is most likely an adopted daughter."
"And Miss Orchid?" asked Coppelia. "Plum Blossom seemed to know of her. Are you certain you do not know more about her?"
Paem hung her head. "I don't. I don't know anyone called Orchid. These mysterious invaders have been coming by for many ages now, so I am quite familiar with most of them, but I do not recall any named Orchid. Four of them are named after the Four Flowers from the myth, but those are Plum Blossom, Cherry Blossom, Chrysanthemum, and Bamboo. Actually, with Crow the newcomer to their group, I wonder if they haven't expanded recently. Your Orchid could be another new member. That would explain why she is supposedly about to lead a raid on the western province. If not, then I don't really know what's going on. Two attacks on different areas in such a short period of time indicate that something big could be brewing. If some new leader took over for them, maybe we will have to rethink our defensive plans."
"Be that as it may," said Coppelia, "I intend to go west to find out about Miss Orchid. That is my mission."
"If you don't mind," said Paem, "would you like to come with me to speak with Kuei first? I think we should all carefully consider our next move. I would also like to check on my friends Sajo and Mal. I'm sure they're okay, but they may be able to tell us more about what Crow is up to. Chrono, do you agree with my plan?"
"I do," said Chrono, "but only if the meeting is brief. I want to go along with Coppelia, but I think we will both be better off if we learn as much as we can before we go. Since you seem to be quite good with information, we'll stick with you a little longer."
"Excellent," said Paem. "Then follow me. We're going back to town."