"What we are dealing with," Kovech paused, relishing the rapt attention of the CSI guys, the Boss, and Roy. "Is the world's first psionic serial killer." He clicked the slides on showing both crime scenes.
There was a general murmur from the assembled team. Roy, in his ratty 'undercover mode' Tee shirt stared daggers into his partner. The Boss arched an eyebrow and leaned back in his chair with his arms crossed, muscles flexing under his tweed suit jacket.A patrol officer in the back shook his head. Whatever, they were not going to stand in the way of his findings.
Fuckers.
He clicked the slides forward to show the photo of the woman staring into the camera. "At 11:15 today this woman entered a poor upstanding small business owner's store." He then played the clip of her shutting down the camera, smiling. Roy leaned forward, tilting his head to one side. The Boss was impassive, stonewalling him probably. There was more whispers. Power though, Jeffry, power though.
"From there the door is unlocked, and there is a massive blood spatter over most of the backroom workshop. My working theory is she approached Roger as a customer." Roy raised a hand. Clench teeth. Don't change expression. Nod and smile.
"Why is that?" Roy asked innocently.
"I think its fairly clear she wanted something from Roger." He rubbed his hand over his chin. Bristly, monstrous. "Why go through the trouble of entering from the front and disabling the camera?" Hold firm, stay the course. "She killed the first subject in a locked apartment."
"I dunno," Roy persisted. "What if she wanted to see the light die in her victim's eyes?"
Kovech was doing everything in his power to not visibly shake at the questioning of his logic. Perverse fantasies of shooting Marin Roy dead flashed across his mind. Had to keep the wolf leashed. Had to clam down. "Good question." The smile never reached his eyes. "For one thing the CSI team," He nodded their way. "Have good evidence that Roger was holding a screwdriver when he was killed."
Roy looked thoughtful. "The crime scene is just blood right? No viscera?"
Larry, the CSI lead spoke up. "Kind of, Enough blood to fully exsanguinate a man of Roger's build, plus dermal particles. Like a skin balloon full of blood." Fuckin' Larry. No need to get poetic.
Roy bit down on his knuckle, his dark baggy eyes staring into the shag carpet. "Jeffry's right." The Boss looked over at Roy, impassive, but Kovech could feel the worry radiate from him. "Between the two incidents this has got to be something supernatural. Keep going."
Suddenly, the room was on his side. People were watching him attentively ready to hear about the next bit in his chain of conclusions. Wanted to throw up. To run. To tear off his cloths and show them what a wolf he really was.
He clicked to the next slide "There was some extremely specialized equipment on the table, I looked it up and....."
~~+-0-+~~
It wasn't often that Roger got to make custom radios for people. He tried to smile reassuringly as he led the, clearly nervous, young woman back to the workshop in the back room. "You're lucky you know." He mused.
The Young Lady flinched a bit. Her verdant overalls contrasted well with her black band tee, a confident fashion choice especially with how short her hair was. And yet, she was so nervous, so jumpy almost like a frightened fawn. She probably just had nerves about meeting a new person, but that didn't stop him from feeling like a creepy old man.
"O-oh?" She managed, looking curious and scared. He couldn't help but feel like a predator.
"Yes!" Rogers said with false enthusiasm. It wasn't often that he felt such shame for his gender ("his" gender, HA, pathetic excuse for a man he was), but k6df had said some things last night, and now this lady was acting like he was going to lock her in his tool shed. "Not 20 years ago in... was it '06? Me and the Contra Costa Radio Club built a 3mm dish. It's not too hard to make the dish less sensitive, so..." The young lady cocked her head. "We can use in your build!" That damn thing had taken forever to make, and because it was so hard no one actually used it for anything but astronomy.
"Really? Is it okay if I borrow it?" The Young Lady asked, light filling her striking gray eyes once more.
Roger smiled, she was still so naive and pure. Maybe she wasn't as beaten down by the world as her nervousness implied. How could he ever say no? He raised a finger like an over indulgent mother. "Only if you give it back when your done."
"Shit, how can I thank you?" She said with palpable excitement. He smiled, wistful and nostalgic for the days where he could just feel.
He picked out a large bread board and laid it on to work table. "Help me rough out the circuit!" The empty rows of wire shaped holes glared up with the aggression of a blank canvas.
"Oh I get it." The Young Lady said looking at the board. She pointed at the holes. "You put the components in these things to have this hunk of plastic act like a circuit board."
Roger beamed, thrilled to be explaining, not moldering. "Yes, exactly!" He wandered over to the beat up old Macbook, and pulled up the plans for the 3mm radio, and made the necessary adjustments in the schematic editor. He called out parts for the Young Lady to grab as he did the math for each part of the radio. Once she had all the parts out assembly was fairly simple.
"You know," Roger mused. "I never got your name." He put a transistor into place.
The young lady studied the tines of a capacitor trying to find the longer positive side. "Oh, I'm Circe, its nice to meet you...?" She wigged back and forth on the metal stool, trailing off clearly realizing she hadn't got his name either.
"Haha, I'm Roger, but most of my friends call me kb6zz." He grabbed the leads from the antenna and slipped them into place. "Thank you, for coming to me for your radio problem, Circe."
Circe, what a name! She slipped the capacitor into place, backwards. She demurred swatting her hand at nothing. "No, thank you, Roger." She noticed her mistake and swapped the part the right way around. "I'd be lost if I had to do this myself."
"Well," He slipped the lines of the power source into the array. "It looks like were done!" The speaker could've been higher quality, but he thought the recalibrated herzometer was very clever. "Let's give'r a spin, huh?"
Circe smiled and flipped the Variable DC power source on and dialed it up to the right voltage. There was static, the herzometer read, 72.5 GHz.
"Well I certainly can't tell if its working." Circe said with a giggle.
Roger chuckled along with pride. "Ah, but you tell based on the texture of the static if what you're listening to is is the sound of the power in the machine or the ambient radio waves." He increased the volts drawing up the herzometer. He was nodding his head, staring to understand the texture of the band, and was convinced it was working when they received a broadcast.
"-HEAD. WARNING!" Circe looked up with a horrified jerk. Roger paused, noting the arrow had them at 75.5 GHZ. The automated voice barreled on "WARNING! COGNITOHAZARD AHEAD! PLEASE RESTRAIN ANYONE ATTEMPTING TO REACH 76.59 GHz! COGNITOHAZARD AHEAD!" Circe bit her lip. Roger froze. The holes in her story suddenly hit him like a brick.
"I'm sorry Roger." Circe said wincing. Suddenly Roger felt like the gravity had been turned up on him. He grabbed the screwdriver out of his apron to try and damage the dish, but it was too late. He landed on the floor with surprising gentleness, set down by invisible weighted blankets.
"I need to know." She said standing over him, a neutral expression on her face. "I won't let you, or this fucking warning, stop me." Roger could only stare up from his workshop floor, horrified, as the warning message repeated itself over and over. He had read sci-fi since he was a kid, he knew what this meant. Had he doomed humanity? Would this cognitohazard spread from a device of his own creation enslaving California? America? The World?
As Circe dialed ever closer to the frequency. Roger closed his eyes, how had he not seen through this? 'Science-y stuff'? Really? He wished he could cry in frustration. The static increased and the warning faded away. Roger bit his tongue trying to get the force necessary for him to bleed out, trying to overcome his body's self preservation instinct.
It was too late.
The static was in his mind.
He could feel it crawl over every surface,
through every memory,
into his spinal column.
He felt the surface tension holding his body together swell and bloat.
Nausea.
Building pressure.
Pleasure.
Horrible pain.
This is how it breaks you.
Roger felt a disgusting popping sensation all around his body. It was... over? He inventoried his mind. He didn't feel like anything was different, the texture of his thoughts felt just as warm and comfortable as the day before.
He opened his eyes. Roger was laying in a pool of blood. Quickly he scrambled to his feet, no longer bound by whatever weird magic Circe had used on him. The workshop was covered in blood. Circe was rigid on the stool she had been sitting on, eyes rolled back into her head. He was relived that he still found it creepy.
Ok, Roger, breathe. Do you feel any urge to serve this Circe? No.
Do you feel any urge to serve a higher power? Not since High school.
Do you feel like broadcasting that static? Absolutely not!
Well then. What did he want to do? Roger looked down at his gore soaked hands. These were... smaller then he remembered. Wait, where did all that blood come from, and why wasn't he freaking out about it!
The puddle was centered on him.
This was his blood.
He shucked off his apron and inspected his body- That of a thin wiry old lady.
Uhhh.
How was he gonna explain this to the relay league?
~~+-0-+~~
A space whale. A fucking space whale. Existing outside time space and matter. Feeding on entropy.
The moment the frequency was broadcasting she knew this intimately. Something in the pattern of static unfolded, like a compressed package of long worn knowledge. She felt blood trickle out of her nose, she hoped she wouldn't have to deal with crying blood anymore.
It's been calling for nearly a century, trying to create a being that could free it. Apparently the way our biosystem recycled energy from the sun was both very attractive for the animals (do sentients made of dark matter count as animals?) but also very dangerous as the concentricity of the system could entangle their bodies in enthalpy.
The very fabric of the Earth was distorting due to the Whales presence. Neither the whale nor her knew what would happen to the world if the situation was allowed to persist. Instinctively she detached herself from her physical form. The moment she was free from her electrochemical mind, memories and understandings flowed back into to her, like they were waiting just outside physical reality.
The thing itself didn't look too much like a whale, but she understood how the shadowy blimp of tendrils and indescribable geometry related to the aquatic mammal. She reached out to it's mind to question it, as she slowly and carefully slipped a loop of enthalpy over the higher beings head. "Hello."
The thoughts of the whale were alien, and had she still possessed a spine it would be shivering at its response as it forced its way back along the connection and wormed its way deep in her mind. "Obligatory customary greeting, progeny." With it was a packet of parental joy and humor, as if it was congratulating a child for catching an interesting beetle.
Progeny, huh? It made sense. From her matterless form Circe knew her neurology had been irrevocably altered and twisted- long before her clumsy reentry yesterday. To a certain extent she was meeting with the architect of her new mind. To put another way, her parent.
It was already a better guardian then her father.
The being seemed content to let her work on freeing it, but even in her state of near-omniscience when it came to the matter universe, she knew nothing of herself and the space whale's powers. If she was ever going to give Brie the body she needed...
"Can you teach me other ways to use my new physiology?" She asked and then braced for the Whale's transmission.
Surprisingly, this time it felt like a hug. "What do you progeny want to accomplish?"
I don't know if the repeated author's note was intentional, but it works well hehe.
God I'm actually starting to get disco Elysium vibes from kovech in a very good way. Deeply enjoying everybody f*cking hating that he has a point
COGNITOHAZARD AHEAD!
Yes good
Obligatory customary greeting, progeny.
I love you space whale parent
Would you live forever with the horrible knowledge that your world had been set on this path by forces outside humanity? or would you shoot it with a harpoon like some sort of space Ahab?
I for one, welcome our new benevolent parental eldritch space whales
Hug Mommy SpaceWhale!
OH THAT'S COOL