Chapter 19 – Nimzovich's Defense and Capture
The realm of wonders
Apparent in picturesque towers and terraces
Inside the old building, sparks of inspiration
Beat old ideas into new
New melodies dance to old rhythms
As though calling to the future generations
The dancers compete in song
Jinling Lan crept through Samsara's dark, abandoned suite over to her desk, swept a pile of crumbs off of the chair, and sat down. She silently scolded herself for pushing aside the crumbs and thereby leaving evidence that she had been in the room while Sam was away, but there was nothing she could do about it anymore, and as long as Sam had no reason to be suspicious, then she hoped a few crumbs would go unnoticed.
Another stab of guilt struck as she questioned why there would be crumbs on the seat of the chair instead of down beside it on the floor or over the keyboard, but Jinling wrote this off as paranoia. She had been careful so far, and Sam would have said something had she thought someone had been prying into her private computer files.
In any case, Sam was away at a conference for the weekend, and that meant the odds of being caught doing anything she wished in the room were relatively low, and even were they not, the allure of reading more correspondence with the mysterious Nimzovich overshadowed all else in Jinling's mind.
Jinling flipped the power button the computer and waited while for the first menu to pop up, prompting her to choose which boot pattern to use. Jinling picked the one she knew Sam used for her work, most of which she did on the less user-friendly operating system of her dual-boot system. A few seconds passed as the machine ran through its diagnostic checks and loaded up all of the system files, drivers, and other devices needed to keep itself running, and then it displayed a box asking for a login name and password.
This part would have been more of an obstacle to Jinling had she not planned carefully for the event. All of Sam's music was turned off at the moment, with her gone, but Jinling knew Sam would never trust herself to remember which piece to play when she came back. Thus, all Jinling needed to do was to play Sam's music playback device and identify the composer of the piece to which the machine would default.
Jinling fumbled around for the power switch to Sam's music player and leaned back as the desktop speakers immediately massaged her ears with the complex tonal work of a Wagnerian opera.
W-A-G-N-E-R, Jinling typed in at the password prompt, and the monitor went blue as the computer finished logging her in.
With less of an immediate threat of discovery hanging over her head, Jinling allowed herself a moment to soak in the music before she set about reading her friend's email history, but the strains of Das Rheingold melted away and reality once more drew her in when she remembered that she should check the movement number of the recording so she could reset everything to the way it was when she finished.
Jining bit her lip as she strained her eyes at the liquid crystal display marking the passage of the music from one track to the next. Unable to make out the letters in the poor light, she tilted the monitor to the side and let it illuminate the numbers. Making a mental note to turn the player back to the third track, she continued with her investigation.
Opening Sam's email folder revealed more of the usual junk to sift through. A few departmental emails dotted a landscape of advertisements for products that probably did not exist, calls to give credit card numbers to random strangers, and requests to enter passwords and personal data at strange websites. Of course, there were a few emails Jinling herself had sent; most of these were nothing more than small talk to help the both of them survive long days of grueling research into the esoteric boundaries of knowledge, though a few of them contained series scientific questions.
None of this mattered much to Jinling so much as what Nimzovich had to say and why someone she had never met would take such an interest in Sam's mother. The whole world owed something to the genius of Lucca Ashtear, of course, but that hardly meant people bothered her daughter much, and most of Lucca's work could be found rather easily in any academic library. There had to bad some personal angle to all of this secret discussion, though just what it might be eluded Jinling.
At last, she found one of Nimzovich's emails. The content was relatively disappointing.
"1. d4 Nf6 2. c4 e6 3. Nc3 Bb4 4. Qc2 d6 5. Bg5 Nbd7 6. e3 b6 7. Bd3 Bb7 8. f3 Bxc3+"
Jinling shook her head and scanned for more emails. The next one she found proved to be more enlightening.
"Samsara Ashtear,
"You are close to something big. I know it, and you know it. I also know what you are hiding, and I want in on it."
Jinling gasped, mildly surprised that her intuition had been correct. Something was up, and this Nimzovich fellow was not to be trusted. But why had Sam not told her? Jinling continued reading.
"I know about the working model, and I know your friend has been working on a prototype. I want to try it out, and if you don't invite me to do so, I'm going to come uninvited. This is bigger than either of us. This is the biggest breakthrough since the Ashtear Circuit, and you know it.
"I've been polite so far, but I only have so much patience. Don't snub me on this one. See you tonight.
"-Nimzo"
Jinling felt a trickle of sweat run down the side of her head, followed by a flood of anger. This creep had been stalking Sam! And for what, to scoop her results? What a lousy...
Jinling looked at the timestamp on the letter: 5 pm that very day. "See you tonight..."
Some instinct kicked on in Jinling's brain, whether a survival instinct or a protective, territorial instinct or a tribal urge to protect those people close to her, she wasn't sure, but she knew the next thing she had to do was to shut everything down and then run to where the prototype Golden Days was being stored. No one was going to rob Sam—or Jinling!—of years of hard work, and no one was going to get hurt, except maybe the stalker.
In a flash Jinling had all of the computer's windows closed down, and she flipped the power off without even bothering to log out. Unsure of just how large or dangerous Nimzovich might turn out to be, she dug into the desk drawer, retrieved the small handgun that Sam kept there in case of emergency, and stuffed it into her jacket's inside pocket.
Before she could decide on a next move, a knock came at the door. At first Jinling thought it might be Sam, but why would she knock on her own door? It had to be someone else. It had to be Nimzovich. A quick survey of the room confirmed that there were only two ways out: the front door and the window. However, the window was considerably less practical, and she felt sure he would just follow her if she left that way. But did she have to leave?
She decided against it. The room's light was already off, thanks to her habit of keeping it dark while snooping (which, she realized, was not necessary while Sam was out of town, but which turned out to be a useful accident), so if she made absolutely no noise, maybe he would just go away.
Another knock sounded, this one louder and faster than the first. Jinling held her breath for as long as she could. When she finally had to breathe, she let air seep in through her nose as slowly as she could manage so as to avoid gasping for air and thereby making noise.
The visitor at the door knocked a third time. "Samsara Ashtear?" a male voice called. Something about the voice made the hair on the back of Jinling's neck stand on end. Her muscles tensed up, and she bit down on her tongue to keep herself quiet. She squeezed her eyes shut and clenched her palms.
A fourth knock came, this one sounding like a heavy boot kicking the lower portion of the door. The voice behind the door swore violently, using mostly words that Jinling had never even heard before. As someone who had spent many long years in college, she figured she had heard just about all of the popular swear words, but this guy could make even her jaded ears bleed.
The front door's handle rattled and shook as Nimzovich shook it with all his might, cursing the knob, the door, the darkness, and Samsara. Finally she heard an extra powerful bang on the door, followed by the sound of footsteps fading down the hallway. Jinling waited a full ten minutes before daring to move again.
When she was confident that she was alone, Jinling sucked air into her mouth in thick, greedy gulps. She leaned her body forward, resting her hands on her knees, and then she sat down on the floor in the middle of the room, glad to have escaped without having to shoot anyone. She rubbed a clammy palm across her forehead and waited for her heartrate to slow before standing up again.
Moonlight shone in through the open window shade, casting a tall, powerful shadow image of Jinling across the floor of the room. Jinling pondered the image for a minute, imagining herself a famous inventor, an explorer, a pioneer of the unknown who had just overcome a life-threatening situation, victorious.
A lump formed in Jinling's throat, but it was one of pride and confidence, not fear.
But then, Nimzovich wanted the prototype, not Samsara, didn't he? She still needed to go protect her precious machine, protect it from that raving psycho who had just tried to break down Sam's door. Mustering up her courage, Jinling undid the door's lock, stepped into the hallway, relocked the room, and walked away, her pace quick yet controlled, her head constantly looking back over her shoulder.
Once outside her apartment, she looked around once again, although she felt slightly safer if she assumed Nimzovich had no idea what she looked like. He might have looked up Sam's picture, but what were the odds he would have bothered with her? In any case, she couldn't see anyone suspicious anywhere, much less anyone who look like he had just had a fit of door-kicking spasms.
The streets this time of night were surprisingly empty for a modern city the size of the Chronos Dome, and Chronos was even more modern than most. It had been founded by Balthasar himself as a research colony, but over the years it had grown into a college town and then a full fledged center of commerce, eventually replacing the orbital station as the site of the main campus of Balthasar University. The apartment complex where Jinling and Samsara lived was one of the older, plainer buildings located nearer the heart of the university. Parts of the building were even made of brick, like many of the highrises sharing the street. Inside they were modern enough to have locks and elevators and cooling systems governed by the best technology had to offer, but from the outside they looked like relics. They looked almost trashy, like the pictures of the 11th century Ashtear home Sam had shown Jinling a few times.
Asphalt streets, also relics, stretched in either direction, lined with more ugly, poorly lit brick buildings and uglier, darker alleys. Jinling walked as close to the street—and as far from the alleyways—as she could manage. Her goal was to get to the subway system, which could take her to the little laboratory she and Sam rented for their construction work. There was a station at the end of the block, so she did not have far to go.
A few mechamobiles whirred by as she walked, hands in pockets, down the side of the road. Light from the neon streetlamps hit her from several directions at once, and the split shadow patters, projected in four directions, reminded her of the moonlight image she had seen at the apartment. This kept her spirits up until she got to the stairway leading to the underground. Checking around her to make sure no one was following, she dipped through the shadowy entrance to the subway and followed the stairs into the main concourse, which was thankfully as bright as during the daytime.
Now feeling more relaxed, Jinling skipped the ticket lines, instead slipping her subway card through the terminal gate. When the correct train glided up, the green line northbound, she stepped on, sat down, and waited for her stop. She could not help but feel slightly nervous when looking at the sheer number of strangers, half of them hidden by newspapers, sitting all around her, but Nimzovich could not have predicted her train before she even got on, so she told herself to stop worrying. Somehow, though, even a nearby seat that was empty except for a computer magazine managed to appear threatening.
When she reached her stop, Jinling walked quickly through the exit and then hurriedly slid her subway card through the reader at the exit terminal. A few strides forward and a few glances backward, and she was at the exit, thus far without incident.
The neighborhood into which Jinling emerged was quite unlike the one where she lived for the simple reason that it was not so old. Renting property in the old district could be expensive, but the ever-expanding city welcomed development along its fringes, so she and Sam found a fairly affordable place for the practical portion of their work, nestled among modern, shiny metallic buildings, glowing advertisement screens, hip theater buildings, coffee shops, book stores, grocery outlets, music clubs, restaurants (oh, the restaurants!), parks, video amusement centers, animal habitat viewing outlets, convenience markets, indoor sporting arenas, concert halls, and more. Anything a young student might wish to do on a weekend could be found within a block of at least one subway station in one of the fringe districts, making Chronos one of the more attractive spots for upwardly mobile members of the younger generation.
Jinling's lab building's exterior did little to draw attention to itself. Lacking even a nameplate above the front door, none who did not know of the building's real purpose could have guessed it to be anything more than a storage facility, and that was one of its great virtues. About the only distinguishing feature on its front was a card reader on the door, connected to an electronic lock, along with an emergency keypad into which she could type the 15-digit pass code if she forgot her card. As crude as a numerical code might have sounded, it was truly only a last resort, as any attempt to enter a code, even the right code, would cause the lock to freeze for an hour, although the correct code would cause the door to open briefly first.
Jinling opened the front door with her card and peered in. A feeling in her gut told her that she ought to look out behind first before entering, but upon checking she saw no one. She sighed and closed the door behind her. It locked automatically, but she checked the lock just to be safe. Then she turned on the light.
In the middle of the room stood her greatest triumph, a machine surpassing even Balthasar's Epoch, the invention that would define her career once revealed to the public. It was her life's work, and to a lesser extent Sam's. Sam had other projects going all the time, but Jinling loved Golden Days more than anything, and she worked on very little else.
Its outward appearance was simple. She had eschewed the clunky aerodynamics of the Epoch's design, instead adding modern hovering technology like that used in mechamobiles to enable flight. She also made sure the cockpit was completely covered. This gave it the look of a subway car more than the look of the application of the greatest advance in temporal mathematics since the classic collaborations between Balthasar and Lucca, but when traveling through holes in spacetime, one rarely encounters outside observers, so making it look like something out of a bad science fiction movie landed somewhere lower on the list of design priorities. Not that Sam hadn't tried for something less practical.
Jinling once again allowed her muscles to relax and her heart to slow as she looked ahead at the machine and then back at the door one last time, finally satisfying her need to be perfectly sure Nimzovich had given up.
When she turned to face her machine again, she found herself staring directly into a face that was in the process of materializing, literally out of nowhere. For a split second, she saw the world's ugliest mouth contorted into an arrogant toothy smile. She had no time to process the stunning pistol held in the man's hand.
She didn't feel a thing as she lost consciousness.