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jdagger11 June, year uncertain
With the arrival of a visitor, I stood up from the table and headed to the bathroom. I looked over my shoulder at Talia, and said “Try to keep them entertained while I sort out my clothes.”
I walked into the bathroom and slid the door closed behind me as Talia opened the main door to usher in our guest. Then I was posed with the next question of what I had to wear. The linen cabinet revealed several choices that I had previously either overlooked or ignored, so I slipped on a charcoal colored skirt and a white button front shirt. I looked in the mirror briefly, and mused to myself that while the skirt was far shorter than I had been used to, and far closer fitting, it was apparently passable for ‘now’. It did give me another moment of pause considering that exposing your ankles was considered naughty, and bare calves were utter scandalous in New Victoria, and now here I am.
I gave the skirt a final smoothing and tug downwards before walking back into the room. As I exited the bathroom, Talia dutifully opened the door to our visitor. The caller stepped in and our eyes met, and I could tell that we both spent that initial moment getting each other’s measure. She was just slightly shorter than me, her deep brown hair pulled back into a ponytail. She was wearing a dark colored suit, with a leather portfolio tucked neatly under her left arm, and a pair of half-rimmed glasses perched midway down her nose. I surmised that they were more to soften her appearance than for actual utility and to lend a more bookish edge to her serious demeanor.
“Good morning Ms. Dagger, I hope that you have a moment to speak with me. My name is Yelena Voss, and I am here on behalf of the Templar Institute.” Her voice was precise, measured, and carried hints of multiple accents I couldn’t directly put my finger on. I gestured to a chair at the table and she sat as Talia moved back away from her. I joined her at the table as she opened the portfolio which held two display panels on each side.
“I hope that you have adjusted to your accommodations, and I see they assigned a C-series to you.” Yelena said, and this statement seemed to elicit what would be seen as a moment of shyness in a human. Talia lowered her gaze and moved over to the sofa, where she took a seat, tucking her legs underneath her. This surprised me, as normally she would just stand somewhere close to me with her hands folded. Seeing her seated like that reminded me of my first girlfriend, and also that this was something I had not mentioned in conversation previously.
“You are currently onboard the Rift transit station. Without getting into a very deep explanation of what the Rift is, suffice it to say it is a phenomena that many different locations and times together. Your party’s arrival here was unplanned and by all accounts accidental, so it did cause a bit of a stir, thus all the …precautions you have experienced.” Yelena looked directly up from her portfolio and we locked eyes for an instant. “So now we were presented with the group, a school marm, a bartender, a madame, a doppelganger, and you. I have to admit that you presented quite the challenge for the screeners. I know by now you have been rather curious as to why you are still here…”
I looked at her and returned the emotionless stare. “Yes, not sure whether I was in detention or under observation like a laboratory specimen.” This caused her to waver imperceptibly before she continued.
“The others,” she continued “have been processed and given a place within the local society. Today we’ll see about what we’ll be doing with you.” Yelena flicked her finger across one of the displays on her portfolio and began reading off the list.
“Your background was quite a bit longer and more intriguing than the others. You can understand why we were given a bit of pause since all your comrades simply said that you were just the assistant headmistress of the school and taught cryptography classes, and our records told us there was quite a bit more about you than just your administrative background.” Yelena paused for a moment before reciting what she had listed on what I assumed was my dossier.
“Born in Virginia, your father was an Army officer assigned to the consular staff as a military liaison, your mother died just prior to your 1st birthday, by which time your father had been reassigned to the Indian station. Raised by your grandfather and your aunt Prudence until you were 6, at which time your father took you to his duty station. You lived there until the age of 14 when you were sent to London and attended a boarding school and subsequently enrolled in university. Your father had remarried by that time, a local by all accounts, and produced 2 siblings.” Yelena paused and looked up at me, her eyes skimming over the tops of her glasses with an expression that told me she was gauging my reaction to what she had just said.
“My stepmother was cordial enough, but Father frequently said I was just like Mother, which bothered Suri to no end.” I paused for a moment, feeling that old hitch in my chest when I recalled those times before I was shipped off to school. She continued without skipping a beat.
“You took a position in the Foreign Ministry office after graduation as a ‘reading clerk’…”
I interjected “Yes, I was amongst the clerks who read all the newspapers and periodicals from various countries of interest and compiled information and made projections based on what we were able to gather. Crop yields, industrial trends, things like that, so that information could be used to make better informed policy decisions.”
She nodded and then continued. “You were recruited by your father’s old schoolmate to become a Field Officer. Apparently this was quite the controversy at the time…”
I cut her off again, this time perhaps a bit more sharply than before. “Sir Henry felt that female operatives should have the same skills as their male counterparts. Prior to this the majority of the females were either doxies or domestics, given the notion that their only utility as agents were either on their backs or serving sandwiches at afternoon tea.” She raised her hand and looked back at me with a comforting expression on her face, waiting until I had settled back in my chair before continuing.
“You graduated 3rd in your class, and by our analysis of the data this was not correct. By academics you should have easily graduated first.” Yelena looked back up at me to see my reaction, and this time I was back to my usual state to answer.
“Sir Henry knew the higher-ups were not pleased with his decision to ‘force petticoats into men’s work’, so he quietly added a requirement that I could not possibly meet. Not enough to fail, not enough to discredit everything else I had done, but something that would be a bone for the baying hounds that wanted me to quit. They added a deadlift to the physical requirements. So this gave the thicknecks one thing they could beat me in.”
She looked up at me again, and somehow I could sense just a faint movement at the corner of her mouth as we locked eyes again.
“So you spent the next eight years as a field officer, and by all the accounts we accessed were quite good at your job. Then you retired, moved to the colonies where you were employed as a mercenary naval officer, a private investigator, a local militia officer, and apparently formed a shell corporation that owned two competing steamship companies. The last piece of information we have was your arrival in New Victoria and the position at the school.” She stopped, folded her hands and waited.
I leaned forward and took in a breath. “My questions now are quite simple. How did you come to know all this, and does what you found out have a bearing on why I’m being kept like this?”
Yelena interlocked her fingers, first propping her elbows on the table and resting her chin on her hands.
“The Templar Institute is dedicated to the gathering and processing of information. Our organization is the guardian of the Delphian, an allocution rendition engine of great power and nearly unlimited scope. It holds a vast pool of information, gathered from trillions of pages of documents and other sources of data. When we received the request to background the party you arrived with, all the others had very brief profiles, but yours? Well, let’s just say that the station administration and my superiors were intrigued. Our initial recommendation was to wait and see how you reacted. Now that you seem to have adjusted to your new circumstances, the Institute wants to offer you an opportunity.”
I took a moment to let everything she said settle in before speaking. “Somehow the station leadership felt that I would pose some sort of a problem?”
Yelena didn’t move but finally let that small wry smile creep out to the corner of her mouth. “There are many entities that might wish to disrupt the current way we handle the Rift. Your arrival armed as you were, despite the age of your arms, was viewed as a potential hazard. I can say your seeming compliance at the time was to your benefit.”
I smiled and nodded “So where does that leave me now?”
She stood and offered me a hand. “If you are willing, I think we can offer you a position more fitting to your experience and aptitudes.”
I rose, took her hand and shook.
“Welcome to the Institute.” Yelena smiled and then paused for a moment. She dug in her jacket pocket for a moment and handed me a small silver bar. “Slip that under your pillow tonight, and I’ll be in touch later this week to make your moving arrangements.” With that, she gathered her portfolio and walked out the door.
I looked at the object she gave me. It was about the size of a gum eraser, not exceptionally heavy but seemingly made from a single piece of metal with a string of characters embossed on the narrow edge. I tossed it onto my pillow and moved onto preparing myself another cup of coffee.
The day moved on through my now normal routine of reading and light conversations with Talia, today seemingly focused on my particular dislikes for meals. I had begun to understand that part of her job was to discern my tastes, since our rather lengthy discussions about clothes had resulted in an unexpected swap of hangers in the closet.
I felt tired after supper and decided to turn in early for the evening. I plopped onto the bed and rolled under the sheet, as was my usual form, adjusting the pillow and settling in before Talia dutifully clipped off the lights. I found the small bar and paused, holding it in my hand before slipping off to sleep.
That night I dreamed of a sinuous girl, clad in a diaphanous toga that floated around her as she danced slowly in front of me. Her long white-blonde hair swirled in an unfelt breeze, as she reached out and touched my forehead with a slim finger. She looked long into my eyes, her crystalline gaze meeting mine with a soft smile before she evaporated in a vaporous cloud.
I woke up, and slowly inhaled. I exhaled at the same pace, keeping still as my mind suddenly raced at a newfound realization. I knew. At this moment, I now knew.
With the arrival of a visitor, I stood up from the table and headed to the bathroom. I looked over my shoulder at Talia, and said “Try to keep them entertained while I sort out my clothes.”
I walked into the bathroom and slid the door closed behind me as Talia opened the main door to usher in our guest. Then I was posed with the next question of what I had to wear. The linen cabinet revealed several choices that I had previously either overlooked or ignored, so I slipped on a charcoal colored skirt and a white button front shirt. I looked in the mirror briefly, and mused to myself that while the skirt was far shorter than I had been used to, and far closer fitting, it was apparently passable for ‘now’. It did give me another moment of pause considering that exposing your ankles was considered naughty, and bare calves were utter scandalous in New Victoria, and now here I am.
I gave the skirt a final smoothing and tug downwards before walking back into the room. As I exited the bathroom, Talia dutifully opened the door to our visitor. The caller stepped in and our eyes met, and I could tell that we both spent that initial moment getting each other’s measure. She was just slightly shorter than me, her deep brown hair pulled back into a ponytail. She was wearing a dark colored suit, with a leather portfolio tucked neatly under her left arm, and a pair of half-rimmed glasses perched midway down her nose. I surmised that they were more to soften her appearance than for actual utility and to lend a more bookish edge to her serious demeanor.
“Good morning Ms. Dagger, I hope that you have a moment to speak with me. My name is Yelena Voss, and I am here on behalf of the Templar Institute.” Her voice was precise, measured, and carried hints of multiple accents I couldn’t directly put my finger on. I gestured to a chair at the table and she sat as Talia moved back away from her. I joined her at the table as she opened the portfolio which held two display panels on each side.
“I hope that you have adjusted to your accommodations, and I see they assigned a C-series to you.” Yelena said, and this statement seemed to elicit what would be seen as a moment of shyness in a human. Talia lowered her gaze and moved over to the sofa, where she took a seat, tucking her legs underneath her. This surprised me, as normally she would just stand somewhere close to me with her hands folded. Seeing her seated like that reminded me of my first girlfriend, and also that this was something I had not mentioned in conversation previously.
“You are currently onboard the Rift transit station. Without getting into a very deep explanation of what the Rift is, suffice it to say it is a phenomena that many different locations and times together. Your party’s arrival here was unplanned and by all accounts accidental, so it did cause a bit of a stir, thus all the …precautions you have experienced.” Yelena looked directly up from her portfolio and we locked eyes for an instant. “So now we were presented with the group, a school marm, a bartender, a madame, a doppelganger, and you. I have to admit that you presented quite the challenge for the screeners. I know by now you have been rather curious as to why you are still here…”
I looked at her and returned the emotionless stare. “Yes, not sure whether I was in detention or under observation like a laboratory specimen.” This caused her to waver imperceptibly before she continued.
“The others,” she continued “have been processed and given a place within the local society. Today we’ll see about what we’ll be doing with you.” Yelena flicked her finger across one of the displays on her portfolio and began reading off the list.
“Your background was quite a bit longer and more intriguing than the others. You can understand why we were given a bit of pause since all your comrades simply said that you were just the assistant headmistress of the school and taught cryptography classes, and our records told us there was quite a bit more about you than just your administrative background.” Yelena paused for a moment before reciting what she had listed on what I assumed was my dossier.
“Born in Virginia, your father was an Army officer assigned to the consular staff as a military liaison, your mother died just prior to your 1st birthday, by which time your father had been reassigned to the Indian station. Raised by your grandfather and your aunt Prudence until you were 6, at which time your father took you to his duty station. You lived there until the age of 14 when you were sent to London and attended a boarding school and subsequently enrolled in university. Your father had remarried by that time, a local by all accounts, and produced 2 siblings.” Yelena paused and looked up at me, her eyes skimming over the tops of her glasses with an expression that told me she was gauging my reaction to what she had just said.
“My stepmother was cordial enough, but Father frequently said I was just like Mother, which bothered Suri to no end.” I paused for a moment, feeling that old hitch in my chest when I recalled those times before I was shipped off to school. She continued without skipping a beat.
“You took a position in the Foreign Ministry office after graduation as a ‘reading clerk’…”
I interjected “Yes, I was amongst the clerks who read all the newspapers and periodicals from various countries of interest and compiled information and made projections based on what we were able to gather. Crop yields, industrial trends, things like that, so that information could be used to make better informed policy decisions.”
She nodded and then continued. “You were recruited by your father’s old schoolmate to become a Field Officer. Apparently this was quite the controversy at the time…”
I cut her off again, this time perhaps a bit more sharply than before. “Sir Henry felt that female operatives should have the same skills as their male counterparts. Prior to this the majority of the females were either doxies or domestics, given the notion that their only utility as agents were either on their backs or serving sandwiches at afternoon tea.” She raised her hand and looked back at me with a comforting expression on her face, waiting until I had settled back in my chair before continuing.
“You graduated 3rd in your class, and by our analysis of the data this was not correct. By academics you should have easily graduated first.” Yelena looked back up at me to see my reaction, and this time I was back to my usual state to answer.
“Sir Henry knew the higher-ups were not pleased with his decision to ‘force petticoats into men’s work’, so he quietly added a requirement that I could not possibly meet. Not enough to fail, not enough to discredit everything else I had done, but something that would be a bone for the baying hounds that wanted me to quit. They added a deadlift to the physical requirements. So this gave the thicknecks one thing they could beat me in.”
She looked up at me again, and somehow I could sense just a faint movement at the corner of her mouth as we locked eyes again.
“So you spent the next eight years as a field officer, and by all the accounts we accessed were quite good at your job. Then you retired, moved to the colonies where you were employed as a mercenary naval officer, a private investigator, a local militia officer, and apparently formed a shell corporation that owned two competing steamship companies. The last piece of information we have was your arrival in New Victoria and the position at the school.” She stopped, folded her hands and waited.
I leaned forward and took in a breath. “My questions now are quite simple. How did you come to know all this, and does what you found out have a bearing on why I’m being kept like this?”
Yelena interlocked her fingers, first propping her elbows on the table and resting her chin on her hands.
“The Templar Institute is dedicated to the gathering and processing of information. Our organization is the guardian of the Delphian, an allocution rendition engine of great power and nearly unlimited scope. It holds a vast pool of information, gathered from trillions of pages of documents and other sources of data. When we received the request to background the party you arrived with, all the others had very brief profiles, but yours? Well, let’s just say that the station administration and my superiors were intrigued. Our initial recommendation was to wait and see how you reacted. Now that you seem to have adjusted to your new circumstances, the Institute wants to offer you an opportunity.”
I took a moment to let everything she said settle in before speaking. “Somehow the station leadership felt that I would pose some sort of a problem?”
Yelena didn’t move but finally let that small wry smile creep out to the corner of her mouth. “There are many entities that might wish to disrupt the current way we handle the Rift. Your arrival armed as you were, despite the age of your arms, was viewed as a potential hazard. I can say your seeming compliance at the time was to your benefit.”
I smiled and nodded “So where does that leave me now?”
She stood and offered me a hand. “If you are willing, I think we can offer you a position more fitting to your experience and aptitudes.”
I rose, took her hand and shook.
“Welcome to the Institute.” Yelena smiled and then paused for a moment. She dug in her jacket pocket for a moment and handed me a small silver bar. “Slip that under your pillow tonight, and I’ll be in touch later this week to make your moving arrangements.” With that, she gathered her portfolio and walked out the door.
I looked at the object she gave me. It was about the size of a gum eraser, not exceptionally heavy but seemingly made from a single piece of metal with a string of characters embossed on the narrow edge. I tossed it onto my pillow and moved onto preparing myself another cup of coffee.
The day moved on through my now normal routine of reading and light conversations with Talia, today seemingly focused on my particular dislikes for meals. I had begun to understand that part of her job was to discern my tastes, since our rather lengthy discussions about clothes had resulted in an unexpected swap of hangers in the closet.
I felt tired after supper and decided to turn in early for the evening. I plopped onto the bed and rolled under the sheet, as was my usual form, adjusting the pillow and settling in before Talia dutifully clipped off the lights. I found the small bar and paused, holding it in my hand before slipping off to sleep.
That night I dreamed of a sinuous girl, clad in a diaphanous toga that floated around her as she danced slowly in front of me. Her long white-blonde hair swirled in an unfelt breeze, as she reached out and touched my forehead with a slim finger. She looked long into my eyes, her crystalline gaze meeting mine with a soft smile before she evaporated in a vaporous cloud.
I woke up, and slowly inhaled. I exhaled at the same pace, keeping still as my mind suddenly raced at a newfound realization. I knew. At this moment, I now knew.
