"It was on that RedCord Server someone told me about."
Jack was in the bathroom with the door locked and talking on his phone which he had piggybacking the wifi. For all his technopathy, cellular phones remained outside his ability to spoof. He suspected it was because of how the government kept track of everyone so the cell phones were very secure. He didn't like the fact that WASP knew that both of him were the same person, but doctor Brown seemed to be a woman of her word and, at least for now, his lives were being kept separate.
Ivy sounded a little suspicious, "Oh? Usually they lock this sort of thing down. The death toll was rather high."
"Well, in my line of work, you have access to all sorts of sources of information. Lexus Nexus is the goddamn bomb in any universe, apparently. Anyways. I still wanted to sneak away from work long enough to congratulate you."
Ivy sounded placated with his excuse, "Well, thank you. I didn't do much."
"You turned an entire downtown metropolitan structure into an ivy league college in the space of a half hour. That's 'much'. Very 'much'."
Jack could almost hear her grinning over the phone, "Thanks. Why you working so late?"
"Eh... I'm trying to get this collection agency off the ground. You can legally call up to nine pm, but that's by timezone, so as long as we got accounts to hit on the west coast, we keep calling until midnight." Jack squinted at his reflection as he continued, "Your universe's legal system is whacked, but in a good way for me. Your laws are so simple that it's a breeze to navigate."
"That's because of the legal reforms of ninety eight. The drug wars of the nineties was a result of the power vacuum left over after the whole end of the world thing. The battle of empire city left the whole north east screwed. We basically had warlords for about five years there, I'm told. When judges kept getting assassinated, they did the great upgrade in ninety eight."
"Ah. Simplified criminal laws and what not?"
"That and upgraded the judges to include ceremonial power armor."
"Yer kidding."
"Uh. No. Although as more capes retired they started running for office. I'd say at least half the judges these days are meta active in some way, shape, or form and don't need the power armor... but as I said, it's become a ceremonial thing."
"Well, sorry I'm stuck at work, but maybe this weekend we can get together or something?"
"Err... I'm on monitor duty this weekend. Jobs are assigned by seniority and I'm the newest hire."
"Ah. So you're getting stuck with the crappy shift. Got it."
"BUT!" She hastened to add, "You... could come over and visit. I'm sure I could get an hour or two off for lunch and then I'll give you the tour."
~Ooo! You should bring her a gift!~
"Ah. let's do that, and I'll bring you a gift to celebrate your first successful mission."
"Oh? May I ask what you'll bring?"
~Cupcakes!~
"Cupcakes."
Ivy burst out laughing, "Cupcakes? I haven't had cupcakes since middle school."
Jack realized that what he just said sounded a tad bit childish, "Ooo... err... sorry. Just the first thing that popped into my head." He held up a middle finger to his reflection, who stuck out its tongue in response.
"Ooo. Uh. Actually... I'd love to try your, ahem, cupcakes." Her voice sounded like she was trying to contain her laughter, "I'm looking forward to it."
Jack cleared his throat and mentally started ticking off where he was going to order cupcakes from, "Okay. It's a date then. Look forward to the tour." Just then Jack got a notification that he had another call coming in. He eyed his phone for a second and saw it was 'Doctor Brown', "Uh. I think I need to get back to work. Talk to you later."
"Later. And... thanks for calling."
Jack hung up on Ivy and took the other call, "Yo."
"Jack Cooper? You are on speaker phone. This a good time to talk?"
"Uhhh... no. Not real-"
A voice jumped on the line, interrupting Jack, "This is Professor Felix Fleaman. I need you to come to my laboratory immediately!"
Jack eyed his phone, then the door which had Grease right on the other side, "That's not going to happen. I also got a meeting tomorrow for lunch. The weekend isn't looking good either. Tomorrow morning might be possible."
"Not good enough! I need to get samples from you as soon as possible!"
"Why?"
Brown's voice came back on the line, "Professor Fleaman is the world's foremost expert on the new cutting edge field of Physical Monadics. He's the one I sent your monad samples to for testing."
Felix came back on, "You see, you may not be aware, but each cell in your body carries a physical representation of monads-"
Jack rolled his eyes, "You mean DNA? Yeah. Every five year old knows what DNA is. Get to the point. You got about thirty seconds."
There was a pause before Brown spoke, "What's DNA?"
Felix sounded rather stunned, "Well... is that an abbreviation? Now that you mention it, Ribonucleic acid combines with... huh."
Jack rubbed his eyebrow, "That's RNA. You get that sort of thing in viruses. We've... all had to learn more about viruses in my world after a recent outbreak of a rather nasty one that's been bouncing around the last two years."
Felix sputtered a bit, "Wow! I really need to get you into my lab! I compared the original blood sample you gave when you arrived to the two samples doctor Brown sent me. You definitely have Janus Syndrome. The thing is, your original sample only had FOUR NUCLEOTIDES. But that's not the truly insane part. You have over twenty thousand different physical monads! No human on this planet has more in his monad code! Hell we don't know of an alien species with so many!" Felix continued to speak faster and faster with every word, "And out of the physical monads, if you break it down, you have over three billion individual pairs of nucleotides! You are a monadic miracle!"
Jack rubbed his forehead, "I don't understand. I thought every human had that many."
"Nope!" Felix had the tone of a child in a candy store, "Most people barely reach two thousand physical monads and maybe a hundred and fifty million nucleotides. Those that have more are usually metas and have all eight nucleotides. You only have the base four that everyone is born with. You don't have any maturation nucleotides... until we checked your latest sample."
Jack rubbed his face while trying to keep his voice down, "Hold it. Look. I really can't talk here. I need to go. Is this a life or death matter, or do you just want to get your mad scientist on?"
Felix continued with a hurt tone to his voice, "Well... the sooner we get more samples to compare the better... but no. Not life or death."
From the other side of the door, Jack hear a groggy voice, "Angel?"
Jack looked up and hissed, "Shit!" He looked back at the phone and whispered, "Gotta go!" And stabbed the disconnect icon with his finger, then hit the power button to turn the phone off entirely for good measure.
The door opened up and Grease poked her head in. She was wearing a blue bathrobe and her hair was totally disheveled. Adam looked up from sitting on the toilet, "Sorry. Had to take a call."
Grease blinked and looked at Adam, sitting naked on the toilet, "Uhh... how? Incoming prayer from god?"
Adam froze for a second then looked off to the side, "The... call of nature?" He flushed the toilet with his elbow, "Sorry. I find that more polite than saying I had to poo." He paused, "Excuse my French."
Grease hid her smile behind the back of her hand as she tried not to laugh, "Poo, you say?" She walked over to ruffle his shiny hair, "My you have quite the potty mouth, don't you?" Her smile faded almost immediately as she stared into his eyes. She sounded much more serious as she continued, "Are you real?"
Adam blinked, "Huh?" He looked down at himself and touched his chest, "Feels like it, but sometimes, I'm not so sure." He looked back up at her, "I could be a figment of someone else's imagination."
Grease cupped Adam's cheek, "I was more wondering if you were an actual angel sent by god."
Adam blushed, "The sex wasn't THAT good."
Grease hid her smile again, "I think I'll be the judge of that." In a blur she scooped him up in her arms in a prince carry, "You done with the bathroom, I assume?"
Adam let out a little surprised yelp, then nodded. In a flash, Grease carried Adam back to the bed and laid him down in the middle of it. She was straddling him, her bathrobe now falling open, "This... is just a casual thing, right?"
Adam blinked as he adjusted to his new location, "Uh... yes?"
Grease had a slightly sad look in her eyes, "Pity. I'd really like to chain you to my bed and keep you here forever."
Adam's eyes went wide, "Uhhhh..."
Grease suddenly burst out laughing. She closed her eyes and rubbed one eye, "That's a joke." She looked at him with one eye, "However, I wouldn't mind getting more serious. You are... like the only man who... uh..." She abruptly laid down next to him and put an arm around him while pulling his head onto her shoulder, "Sorry. Just I haven't felt this good-"
The security door went beep.
Grease lifted her head to look at the door, "Wha-"
The door started to open as Sass came walking in.
Grease glanced next to her and saw that the bed was now empty. Grease blurred and got dressed to meet Sass, "Hey! I like sleeping naked! Knock next time!"
Sass stalked in, heading straight for the bed, "Adam is missing." She eyed the messed up bedsheets then looked at Grease, "You were the last one with him."
Grease looked up at Sass, then noticed movement out of the corner of her eye. It was behind Sass. From the bathroom door, Adam was standing with the door slightly cracked open, peeking through. He put his hooked thumbs together to make his hands look like a pair of wings, 'flapped' them, then pointed to the ceiling.
Grease looked back at Sass, "Yeah. And resisting temptation for that long was difficult." She reached over to pick up a remote and turned on her TV. It was a porno paused on one of Grease's favorite scenes, "Needed to take the edge off. If you showed up about ten minutes sooner, you would have gotten quite the show."
Sass recoiled with no small amount of disgust, "Ugh! You don't have to put that picture in my mind!" She suddenly narrowed her eyes, abruptly turned and rushed the bathroom, quickly shoving open the door.
It was empty.
Grease folded her arms, "I'm hurt Sass. I'm really hurt."
Sass glanced back at Grease, "We both know the only feeling you ever have is horny."
Grease raised a finger, "And hungry."
"Where is he?" Sass demanded.
Grease rolled her eyes, "Not a clue. All I know is, he said he had to clear his mind and went for a... Soar? A Flap? I have no idea what you call when you just fly around to clear your head." She gave Sass a light punch in the shoulder, "Look. I'm sure he'll be fine. He was just really shook up about things. Give him a day or two."
Sass stared back for a few moments, then nodded, "Yeah... I guess I'm just being paranoid. Wanted to talk to him before tomorrow."
Grease started to push Sass out of the room, "Well, he's not here. He did say he'd be back by midnight. Why don't you check his room again?"
Sass allowed herself to be pushed out, but paused at the door, "Grease... sorry for not trusting you. Just really worried about all this going south."
Grease nodded, "Oh. C'mon! You know me!" Then tapped the button to close the door before Sass could respond. She turned around to lean back against the door and let out a long breath, "Whew." As she wiped her forehead with the back of her hand.
She stared at the bed as she thought about the past few hours she just spent with Adam, ~You devilish angel... you had better be careful.~ She let her head list to the side as a goofy smile spread across her lips.
~A girl could fall in love with you.~
"It was on that RedCord Server someone told me about."
Jack was in the bathroom with the door locked and talking on his phone which he had piggybacking the wifi. For all his technopathy, cellular phones remained outside his ability to spoof. He suspected it was because of how the government kept track of everyone so the cell phones were very secure. He didn't like the fact that WASP knew that both of him were the same person, but doctor Brown seemed to be a woman of her word and, at least for now, his lives were being kept separate.
Ivy sounded a little suspicious, "Oh? Usually they lock this sort of thing down. The death toll was rather high."
"Well, in my line of work, you have access to all sorts of sources of information. Lexus Nexus is the goddamn bomb in any universe, apparently. Anyways. I still wanted to sneak away from work long enough to congratulate you."
Ivy sounded placated with his excuse, "Well, thank you. I didn't do much."
"You turned an entire downtown metropolitan structure into an ivy league college in the space of a half hour. That's 'much'. Very 'much'."
Jack could almost hear her grinning over the phone, "Thanks. Why you working so late?"
"Eh... I'm trying to get this collection agency off the ground. You can legally call up to nine pm, but that's by timezone, so as long as we got accounts to hit on the west coast, we keep calling until midnight." Jack squinted at his reflection as he continued, "Your universe's legal system is whacked, but in a good way for me. Your laws are so simple that it's a breeze to navigate."
"That's because of the legal reforms of ninety eight. The drug wars of the nineties was a result of the power vacuum left over after the whole end of the world thing. The battle of empire city left the whole north east screwed. We basically had warlords for about five years there, I'm told. When judges kept getting assassinated, they did the great upgrade in ninety eight."
"Ah. Simplified criminal laws and what not?"
"That and upgraded the judges to include ceremonial power armor."
"Yer kidding."
"Uh. No. Although as more capes retired they started running for office. I'd say at least half the judges these days are meta active in some way, shape, or form and don't need the power armor... but as I said, it's become a ceremonial thing."
"Well, sorry I'm stuck at work, but maybe this weekend we can get together or something?"
"Err... I'm on monitor duty this weekend. Jobs are assigned by seniority and I'm the newest hire."
"Ah. So you're getting stuck with the crappy shift. Got it."
"BUT!" She hastened to add, "You... could come over and visit. I'm sure I could get an hour or two off for lunch and then I'll give you the tour."
~Ooo! You should bring her a gift!~
"Ah. let's do that, and I'll bring you a gift to celebrate your first successful mission."
"Oh? May I ask what you'll bring?"
~Cupcakes!~
"Cupcakes."
Ivy burst out laughing, "Cupcakes? I haven't had cupcakes since middle school."
Jack realized that what he just said sounded a tad bit childish, "Ooo... err... sorry. Just the first thing that popped into my head." He held up a middle finger to his reflection, who stuck out its tongue in response.
"Ooo. Uh. Actually... I'd love to try your, ahem, cupcakes." Her voice sounded like she was trying to contain her laughter, "I'm looking forward to it."
Jack cleared his throat and mentally started ticking off where he was going to order cupcakes from, "Okay. It's a date then. Look forward to the tour." Just then Jack got a notification that he had another call coming in. He eyed his phone for a second and saw it was 'Doctor Brown', "Uh. I think I need to get back to work. Talk to you later."
"Later. And... thanks for calling."
Jack hung up on Ivy and took the other call, "Yo."
"Jack Cooper? You are on speaker phone. This a good time to talk?"
"Uhhh... no. Not real-"
A voice jumped on the line, interrupting Jack, "This is Professor Felix Fleaman. I need you to come to my laboratory immediately!"
Jack eyed his phone, then the door which had Grease right on the other side, "That's not going to happen. I also got a meeting tomorrow for lunch. The weekend isn't looking good either. Tomorrow morning might be possible."
"Not good enough! I need to get samples from you as soon as possible!"
"Why?"
Brown's voice came back on the line, "Professor Fleaman is the world's foremost expert on the new cutting edge field of Physical Monadics. He's the one I sent your monad samples to for testing."
Felix came back on, "You see, you may not be aware, but each cell in your body carries a physical representation of monads-"
Jack rolled his eyes, "You mean DNA? Yeah. Every five year old knows what DNA is. Get to the point. You got about thirty seconds."
There was a pause before Brown spoke, "What's DNA?"
Felix sounded rather stunned, "Well... is that an abbreviation? Now that you mention it, Ribonucleic acid combines with... huh."
Jack rubbed his eyebrow, "That's RNA. You get that sort of thing in viruses. We've... all had to learn more about viruses in my world after a recent outbreak of a rather nasty one that's been bouncing around the last two years."
Felix sputtered a bit, "Wow! I really need to get you into my lab! I compared the original blood sample you gave when you arrived to the two samples doctor Brown sent me. You definitely have Janus Syndrome. The thing is, your original sample only had FOUR NUCLEOTIDES. But that's not the truly insane part. You have over twenty thousand different physical monads! No human on this planet has more in his monad code! Hell we don't know of an alien species with so many!" Felix continued to speak faster and faster with every word, "And out of the physical monads, if you break it down, you have over three billion individual pairs of nucleotides! You are a monadic miracle!"
Jack rubbed his forehead, "I don't understand. I thought every human had that many."
"Nope!" Felix had the tone of a child in a candy store, "Most people barely reach two thousand physical monads and maybe a hundred and fifty million nucleotides. Those that have more are usually metas and have all eight nucleotides. You only have the base four that everyone is born with. You don't have any maturation nucleotides... until we checked your latest sample."
Jack rubbed his face while trying to keep his voice down, "Hold it. Look. I really can't talk here. I need to go. Is this a life or death matter, or do you just want to get your mad scientist on?"
Felix continued with a hurt tone to his voice, "Well... the sooner we get more samples to compare the better... but no. Not life or death."
From the other side of the door, Jack hear a groggy voice, "Angel?"
Jack looked up and hissed, "Shit!" He looked back at the phone and whispered, "Gotta go!" And stabbed the disconnect icon with his finger, then hit the power button to turn the phone off entirely for good measure.
The door opened up and Grease poked her head in. She was wearing a blue bathrobe and her hair was totally disheveled. Adam looked up from sitting on the toilet, "Sorry. Had to take a call."
Grease blinked and looked at Adam, sitting naked on the toilet, "Uhh... how? Incoming prayer from god?"
Adam froze for a second then looked off to the side, "The... call of nature?" He flushed the toilet with his elbow, "Sorry. I find that more polite than saying I had to poo." He paused, "Excuse my French."
Grease hid her smile behind the back of her hand as she tried not to laugh, "Poo, you say?" She walked over to ruffle his shiny hair, "My you have quite the potty mouth, don't you?" Her smile faded almost immediately as she stared into his eyes. She sounded much more serious as she continued, "Are you real?"
Adam blinked, "Huh?" He looked down at himself and touched his chest, "Feels like it, but sometimes, I'm not so sure." He looked back up at her, "I could be a figment of someone else's imagination."
Grease cupped Adam's cheek, "I was more wondering if you were an actual angel sent by god."
Adam blushed, "The sex wasn't THAT good."
Grease hid her smile again, "I think I'll be the judge of that." In a blur she scooped him up in her arms in a prince carry, "You done with the bathroom, I assume?"
Adam let out a little surprised yelp, then nodded. In a flash, Grease carried Adam back to the bed and laid him down in the middle of it. She was straddling him, her bathrobe now falling open, "This... is just a casual thing, right?"
Adam blinked as he adjusted to his new location, "Uh... yes?"
Grease had a slightly sad look in her eyes, "Pity. I'd really like to chain you to my bed and keep you here forever."
Adam's eyes went wide, "Uhhhh..."
Grease suddenly burst out laughing. She closed her eyes and rubbed one eye, "That's a joke." She looked at him with one eye, "However, I wouldn't mind getting more serious. You are... like the only man who... uh..." She abruptly laid down next to him and put an arm around him while pulling his head onto her shoulder, "Sorry. Just I haven't felt this good-"
The security door went beep.
Grease lifted her head to look at the door, "Wha-"
The door started to open as Sass came walking in.
Grease glanced next to her and saw that the bed was now empty. Grease blurred and got dressed to meet Sass, "Hey! I like sleeping naked! Knock next time!"
Sass stalked in, heading straight for the bed, "Adam is missing." She eyed the messed up bedsheets then looked at Grease, "You were the last one with him."
Grease looked up at Sass, then noticed movement out of the corner of her eye. It was behind Sass. From the bathroom door, Adam was standing with the door slightly cracked open, peeking through. He put his hooked thumbs together to make his hands look like a pair of wings, 'flapped' them, then pointed to the ceiling.
Grease looked back at Sass, "Yeah. And resisting temptation for that long was difficult." She reached over to pick up a remote and turned on her TV. It was a porno paused on one of Grease's favorite scenes, "Needed to take the edge off. If you showed up about ten minutes sooner, you would have gotten quite the show."
Sass recoiled with no small amount of disgust, "Ugh! You don't have to put that picture in my mind!" She suddenly narrowed her eyes, abruptly turned and rushed the bathroom, quickly shoving open the door.
It was empty.
Grease folded her arms, "I'm hurt Sass. I'm really hurt."
Sass glanced back at Grease, "We both know the only feeling you ever have is horny."
Grease raised a finger, "And hungry."
"Where is he?" Sass demanded.
Grease rolled her eyes, "Not a clue. All I know is, he said he had to clear his mind and went for a... Soar? A Flap? I have no idea what you call when you just fly around to clear your head." She gave Sass a light punch in the shoulder, "Look. I'm sure he'll be fine. He was just really shook up about things. Give him a day or two."
Sass stared back for a few moments, then nodded, "Yeah... I guess I'm just being paranoid. Wanted to talk to him before tomorrow."
Grease started to push Sass out of the room, "Well, he's not here. He did say he'd be back by midnight. Why don't you check his room again?"
Sass allowed herself to be pushed out, but paused at the door, "Grease... sorry for not trusting you. Just really worried about all this going south."
Grease nodded, "Oh. C'mon! You know me!" Then tapped the button to close the door before Sass could respond. She turned around to lean back against the door and let out a long breath, "Whew." As she wiped her forehead with the back of her hand.
She stared at the bed as she thought about the past few hours she just spent with Adam, ~You devilish angel... you had better be careful.~ She let her head list to the side as a goofy smile spread across her lips.
~A girl could fall in love with you.~
