Listening For Morpheus: Chapter 2

Foster’s first point of contact had been a brief message left by a sexless synthetic-agent voice. Nothing unusual there; the corporations and occasional government searching for a Solver rarely wanted their purposes known, or traces of their requests left lying around for competitors’ grey-market investigators to find.

Past a certain level, all Puzzle data was on-site and never left, so to be a Solver meant travel. Because the value of the messages Foster intercepted had a half-life measured in at most weeks, and sometimes hours, he had to be ready at a moment’s notice. He kept two travel bags packed and ready: warm climate, and cold. Foster’s air miles would already have gotten him to the moon and halfway back - or would have if he ever bought the tickets.

But Foster felt every mile of that virtual trip to the dead satellite, and wished desperately that the uncertainty and tedium of his work were still punctuated by the exhilaration of Solving. At the top of his game, Foster’s drive had abandoned him, like a master poker player who tires of fleecing Vegas tourists out of their mad money.

But that didn’t mean Foster didn’t still have to pay the rent.

The message had an obviously forged caller ID, but the contact information was good. A thankfully brief flight but long ride later Foster had found himself in a very sterile, very well-lit room. Paperwork over, Foster looked at the walls and waited. Just because it was missing the cliché of the two-way mirror didn’t mean that they weren’t watching. That was standard. It never did them any good - otherwise Foster would have been out of a job a long time ago – but it always bothered him. He fought the suspicion that an amateur was watching, voyeuristically hoping for the clue that would take them out of the sad world of sudoku and New York Times crosswords and that would transport them to the big leagues. Why is it everyone thought they could be Solvers? It kept rates down, and made for begrudging clients.

A tall man with dirty blond hair briskly entered and shut the door. “Theo Foster? I’m Jack Murphy. I’ll be your liaison for this… project.” Slight pause. Strong handshake with the frank charisma of upper management. Teeth so white and regular that Foster flashed on Arlington Cemetery. Correction. Make that top management.

“Right. A pleasure, Jack.” Foster had the quiet confidence of the world-class expert, and his subdued demeanor clashed with Murphy’s Type-A extroversion.

Murphy squared his shoulders in his Boss button-down and rested his hands on his smart-casual, four-figure slacks. “Standard retainer arrangement, right? You were in Atlanta for us last year on the chemist project.” It wasn’t quite a question. The Atlanta job had been a moderately difficult Puzzle that pivoted on a non-CuRe main reference. Once the chemist’s Puzzle was caught by an eye of their ubiquitous internal camera network, upgraded surveillance software with new detection filters flagged it for investigation. When the tapes were reviewed Foster was immediately called in. The Puzzle was pulled from the chemist’s secure files where it had been hidden and Foster set to work on it. In the end it took a quiet interview with a bribed HR manager from the firm suspected doing the espionage to Solve. It had been a bread-and-butter job: the main references stayed in a work context. Cheaper and simpler to produce, but easier to Solve given enough resources.

Foster nodded, “Did you wind up prosecuting?” Third tier drug trial results came out of the end of a billion-dollar pipeline of tests. Intending to hand such valuable information over to the competition generally meant for a great deal of ill will, but Foster had never heard anything. Even from the invitation-only quid-pro-quo blogs at the industry’s edges where every tidbit of gossip came at the cost of a similar submission. The qlogs - everyone pronounced it "clogs", which made for sly Dutch references - were actionable if discovered. But what wasn’t these days? “Erase the trace” was the byword so many worked by to get by.

Murphy glanced at the quarter-inch thick NDA Foster had just signed that was lying on the gleaming tabletop, “We… came to an arrangement.”

It was then the interview shifted, and gave Foster the first hint of the trouble to come. The trouble that would grant his unvoiced wish, one last time.

Murphy leaned back, crossed his arms, and the cemetery teeth disappeared. Look of Thoughtful Concern. “Well, this is a bit different from our usual requests, which is why I’ve taken a personal interest. I’d like to take you through the situation and confirm our requirements before we continue.”

Stirrings of... excitement? Be careful what you wish for, Foster. “By all means, Jack. Go ahead.”

Chapter 3


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