Vanya's journal entries continue on the pages following, and for many more after that. The parchment sheets are considerably less cluttered than her previous journal, likely indicating she wasn't nearly as idle. The following entry is dated, but the first line is smudged, as Vanya appears to have traded her pencil in favor of ink, which she wasn't used to using. All you can make out is that it was written during year 207, Splint's reign, early spring.If Mr Frog is the Devil, then his laboratory (what he calls his room) ought to be considered hell. It is therefore ironic that I was so blissful those first few hours after arriving, and that his domain was such a wonderland for the inquisitive mind. Yet my enthusiasm gradually faded as I realized how hard he was going to push me, starting early the next morning.
"Get up! Get up!" someone cried, startling me out of my dreams.
Not even fully awake, and with no idea of what was going on, I rolled out of bed in fearful surprise, tripping over the covers in my attempt to stand. "What's going on?" I asked, bewildered. I had no idea where I was.
"It's time to get to work! I trust you slept well."
"What?" I mumbled, trying to figure out what was going on, as I clumsily pulled the sleeve of my shredded blouse back up onto my shoulder, as it had slipped downwards as I'd turned in my sleep. I blinked, trying to clear my bleary eyes, and made out a figure rushing back and forth as if doing morning chores. It was only then that I remembered all of the events of the previous day, and that I was in Mr Frog's guest room.
"I've brought you clothes that ought to fit," said Mr Frog, laying them down on a low stone table. "It's nothing flashy or 'pretty', you understand, but simply normal apparel, modified to be partially acid-resistant. You'll need it. There's a shower in the corner, as well as a sink, hairbrush, toothbrush, towel... get cleaned up and report to me promptly."
I rubbed at my eyes to clear the sleep from them. "Thank you," I said, trying to gather my wits, but Mr Frog had already left.
My first shower took me a little while to figure out, but eventually I managed. I'd never heard of or seen such a thing before - usually dwarves took baths. Still, it felt wonderful, almost like bathing in the rain on a warm summer day, without having to worry about catching a cold... but it’s very undwarfy: what dwarf likes standing in the rain?
Before long, I was clean, dressed in pants and shirt, my hair brushed neatly with a new beanie over it to cover my ears. And I had shoes -
new shoes, made from giant emu leather.
I opened the sliding stone door and walked into Mr Frog's main room - his laboratory. For a few minutes, I stood idly as I watched him scurry about from table to table with beakers of liquids, apparently doing some sort of experiment. Finally, I decided to ask, "What time is it?" It felt far too early to be up, and I still felt sleep-deprived. When you’re used to sleeping on a stone shelf without a blanket, lying on a bed can make it hard to get to sleep.
"It's half past six," he responded, sending a cold stare in my direction. "You spent forever getting yourself cleaned up. I hope you learn to be more prompt in the future."
"Are we going to eat breakfast first?"
"There's a sink in your room, and I placed a nutrition bar in your right pants pocket," he said, not even offering a glance in my direction. "Eat that and we'll worry about actual food when we have more time."
I felt in my pocket and found it - a little brownish bar that smelled vaguely of mushrooms, but without the sweet plump helmet smell. I nibbled at it, and found it substantially more edible than the stale biscuits I'd had as prison rations. Turning to Mr Frog, I asked curiously, "Why don't we have much time?"
He walked past me quickly with a bubbling beaker, headed to another table as he responded, "I
never have as much time here as I'd like. It's one of the fundamental flaws of this universe, not at all like universe Beta-17XG. There, you could spend hours doing nothing, and
still manage to accomplish exactly what you wanted within your preferred length of time."
The flasks he was mixing suddenly gave a huge puff of yellow smoke, and he looked on in satisfaction, pouring the concoction into an apparatus with a long, twisted neck. "That will need to boil for a while," he told me, walking hurriedly over to his computer desk. "We don't have much time
right now because the drug you consumed last night was experimental and posesses a short lifespan. Come over here and we can begin."
I sat down, and Mr Frog began assaulting me with questions. As he explained it, he theorized that my missing memories weren't gone at all, but only "altered to trigger natural automatic blocking". He'd said he wasn't sure how much I could recover with having been so close to my bracelet the day before, but he'd given me something meant to "counteract the alteration process".
"Think back over your memories of Wari," he said cooly, leaning against a pillar. "Do you remember her taking you anywhere?"
I thought back, my memories moving through my head rapidly like butter, as I grasped to keep hold of them. "I think I do..." I replied uncertainly. "I was terrified the whole time, wanting to beg her to let me go, or scream for help, but too afraid of the scalpel she held... and of it being found out that I was an elf. I remember her taking me somewhere, but it's all blurry - not at all like half a year ago in prison, when you gave me that other drink."
Mr Frog grimaced. "Blurry is fine. Do you remember where she took you? She would've taken you to her transdimensional portal. Do you know where it is, or what it looks like?"
"I..." I began, and suddenly stopped, looking at him in astonishment. "She took me to
your room! And she took me..." I stood, looking about the room as I reenacted in my mind what I could remember. As the memory reached its end, I walked and stood next to the hoop I'd seen so many times before - the giant oval of wood through which the air shimmered. "She took me here," I told Mr Frog, looking back at him. "The same place Carena went through. I remember she was working with the controls on this box to the left," I added, pointing at the button-covered console attached to it, "but I don't remember what exactly she was doing... it's too blurry."
Mr Frog regarded me carefully, a grave, concerned expression on his face. "That's my transdimensional portal..." he said after a moment. We'll have to try this again when the bracelet's effect wears off more, to see if you can remember what coordinates she input." He shook his head and began pacing about the room, scratching his beard in thought. "This is terrible news... If my room is being used by Parasol, Ballpoint,
and Eris, it's incredible that I haven't stumbled into anyone by accident yet... But now at least I know why I constantly find my traps disarmed."
I wandered back to where he was. "What would happen if someone happened to come through while you were in here?"
He only shook his head grimly in response.
On a whim, I tried to see if I could remember my sister any better, and though I had a dim memory of practicing swordfighting, there still didn't appear to be anyone else in the room. I was very disappointed, and diverted my thoughts elsewhere as quickly as I could to avoid becoming depressed. "How was I able to take down those four soldiers outside your room?" I asked. It was something I'd been curious about - and had never had explained.
He rubbed his forehead as if to clear his mind. "Honestly, I have no fitting hypotheses on that event at the present time. If Parasol implanted 'combat abilities' in your mind, then the increased distance from your bracelet for a year should have weakened them to the point that they wouldn't work at all. Not only that, but you should've been able to easily defeat me each time we fought. Instead, and contrary to what might be expected, your abilities seemed to
weaken as you came into closer proximity of the device. Now that it's destroyed, the abilities may eventually return, following the same behavior they did before... but I have no predictions as of yet on how long that will take.
"But come," he continued, picking up a notebook from the table beside him and scribbling notes down. "We have a mission that must be accomplished, not only for my continued and assured safety, but for that of Spearbreakers."
I didn't like the sound of "mission", but I was curious all the same. "What would that be?"
"There is a special, important device that I accidentally left at my old office at Ballpoint - however, they likely moved it to the storage facilities following my disappearance... It's a PEA - a 'Personal Electronic Assistant'. You've held one before..." His pencil slowed, and he looked at me from his notebook suspiciously. "Why
were you holding it, anyway?"
I wasn't completely sure what he meant. "What?"
He sighed at me. "It's metal, it's got a little screen on the front."
"Oh!" I exclaimed. "The little thing Talvi stole from you."
"Yes, exactly."
"I was... talking to Joseph..." I felt guilty about it suddenly, and Mr Frog's accusatory glare wasn't helping. "I didn't know who he was at the time!" I said defensively. "The PEA was buzzing and I accepted the call it on accident - I was trying to turn it off so it would stop making noise."
Mr Frog gave me a piercing stare for a moment, before turning back to his notebook, jotting something down. "Hrmph," he grunted, "You're currently incapable of lying anyway, thanks to what you drank last night. But before we sidetrack ourselves any further, let's get back to the matter at hand. You're going to need to infiltrate Ballpoint, posing as Carena - if you're any good as an actress, no one should question it unless they know her well, and few are likely to. At some point we'll need to investigate her, as she's our only link to Eris, but for now I just need that PEA. It contains blueprints for semi-automated weaponry and defense mechanisms that I
must have in order to adequately protect myself from intruding agents."
I shook my head in fright. "Me, at
Ballpoint?? I didn't think you were serious before!"
"I'm
always serious," he shot at me. "Either way, you have no choice in the matter, unless you'd like to leave my service and be handed over to Splint. He has an especial hatred of your kind, and I'm sure you wouldn't enjoy his brand of hospitality."
Thus, my training began. During the next few weeks, Mr Frog would have me study for hours and hours on end.
"I'll be compacting everything you need to know into concentrated segments. You'll need to keep an open mind, ignore everything you thought you knew up to this point, and pick up other things as you go along," he once told me early on. And that was exactly how it was.
The schedule was strict: Get up at six, get cleaned up in as short a time as possible so Mr Frog wouldn't yell at me for impromptness (later, I would learn to shower the night before to save time in the mornings), eat a nutrition bar (he kept changing the recipe) and help Mr Frog with various dangerous and potentially fatal experiments until lunch. I actually think he was training me in his field of study: wearing a lab coat and a pair of goggles, I would assist him in whatever way he requested, mostly mixing beakers and measuring out ingredients. Though I never saw his test subjects, possibly because he didn't want me to, many of the things we mixed were particularly nasty, such as a potion to separate the skin from the flesh. He taught me the various properties of the ingredients as we went along, occasionally testing me to see if I'd listened... but I guess bioneurological chemistry isn't my best subject: I pretty often answered wrong, to his extreme displeasure. But really, in all honesty, Mr Frog isn't a very good teacher. He expects me to know things without him explaining them first, and gets annoyed when he has to.
Following our typically late lunch, and all the way until he sent me to bed at nine o' clock, I studied, and I learned so, so much... for a girl who dearly loves books, the latter half of my days were a paradise. I sat at his desktop computer for hours on end, poring over article after article until my eyes ached. I learned about physics and electricity, different races I'd never heard of, the ways of Ballpoint and Parasol, but more than anything else, I learned about technology. It wasn't
actually magic, but at first, it did
feel like it... had I come across it a few years before, I would've probably believed it
was.
I learned about vehicles and weapons, how computers work, retinal scanners, thermal crystals, electric generators, different types of drives, robots - anything and everything... it was a whole world I'd never known existed.
Actually, it technically doesn't exist... well, not in
this world, anyway... we haven't invented it yet for ourselves. Mr Frog says there are seven dimensions: X,Y and Z are the first three - your location in space. Then there's Time, #4, and then there's Alternate Timelines(#5) and Parallel Universes(#6). Messing with the last three can be dangerous and create paradoxes and time loops (and is actually against interdimensional law, according to what I've read), but the final dimension is where Ballpoint and Parasol are located: space-time "bubbles". Basically, they’re artificial universes. Mr Frog says it doesn't count as an actual dimension in his opinion, and ought to be classified as #5.1 instead of #7, but he's not in charge of that.
It felt like reading the best fairy tale
ever.
~~~
My structured schedule continued until one day after Mr Frog came back from his work. "Come here, stupid girl," he ordered, walking in the door with a small wooden bin. He cleared a space on one of his cluttered tables and sat it down. "Stupid girl" was his nickname for me, and he clearly felt I'd more than earned it. I was used to it by then, and there were a lot of worse things he could've called me, anyway.
I walked over curiously. "What's going on?" I asked, hoping he wouldn't take too long to explain. I badly wanted to get back to reading about particle physics.
As he spoke, he laid out several dark gray garments on the table, along with a couple pieces of computer equipment and some oddly shaped mechanical devices. "I'm getting annoyed with the constant breaches in Spearbreakers security, and I fear it won't be long until Ballpoint launches an actual attack on me. I think... I
think you might be just about ready for the assignment. As a result, I'm sending you to Ballpoint Technologies." He didn't sound very sure of my abilities, and that didn't exactly help my confidence.
"Today?" I asked in dismay. Unlike him, I was
sure I wasn't ready.
"
Of course today, why else would I be bringing you this equipment?" was his terse reply. "I measured, and as I suspected, my old Ballpoint suit would be too large for you, even with adjustments made, so I had to custom-order a new one. Never mind where it came from."
"You
are unusually tall for a dwarf," I noted with a mischievous smile.
He only grunted in displeasure. His height was a subject he didn't particularly enjoy, and his response could've almost been out of spite at my comment: "I'm going to have to give you a haircut. You clearly haven't had one in forever, and nobody's going to believe that you work for Ballpoint with it reaching halfway down your back, well-brushed or not."
I recoiled, backing away from him and putting my hands on my beanie as if to protect my hair. I'd been growing it since even before I was a teenager, and I was proud of how long it was. More importantly, I
really didn't trust him with a pair of scissors. "No, you can't touch it!" I protested. "I'll just pin it all up under my beanie; nobody will notice!"
"You can't wear your beanie there," he retorted. He began to assemble a few pieces of machinery, tubes flopping about like tentacles. "People would notice you - hats aren't something normally seen at Ballpoint."
"Helmets are!" I argued, still adamant that he wouldn't touch my hair. "I read that on your computer. I'll wear a helmet, and you won't have to touch my hair!"
"Ha!" he said, unamused. "Only contractors and guards wear helmets, and Carena is a
spy."
"But my ears!"
"
Are something normally seen at Ballpoint - they have a number of elves employed, among other sharp-eared species," he finished for me, picking up the dark grey suit and holding it out with the command, "Go try this on."
Twisting my lip, I snatched it from him and stormed off to my room, closing the door behind me. As I slipped out of my lab clothes and into the suit, I tried to formulate some sort of plan to keep him from cutting my hair. Unfortunately, it wasn't long before I was more occupied with noticing how tight-fitting the Ballpoint clothes were: it seemed to hug my legs and body, and the fabric definitely wasn't made of pigtail fiber - it actually looked somewhat shiny. I'd never seen anything like it before; fabric wasn't something Mr Frog had wanted me to study.
Though the majority of the suit was a dark gray, the seams were dark blue. Several areas were reinforced on the inside (and that's as much as I'll go into that, in case Mr Frog reads this), but the sleeves at the lower arms were somewhat enlarged. In a show of defiance, I made sure I put my beanie back on before I left the room.
I walked back to him, feeling almost naked - when you wear heavier clothing and then wear something light, I guess you'd feel that way anyway, but it felt so...
alien. It almost felt like I
wasn't wearing anything, though in actuality, I was fully covered from my ankles all the way to my neck.
"Hold still," Mr Frog ordered, putting a hand on my arm to bring me to a halt. As he walked around me, looking me over with a sort of bland approval, I felt color rise to my cheeks. "Excellent," he said dryly. "A perfect fit. Ballpoint spy suits are designed for agility, which you should find preferential. Come, follow me."
We walked over to the table with the wooden bin, and he turned, grabbing my right arm and holding it upwards as he inserted the tubed machinery into my sleeve. "I'm not sending you in there unarmed," he explained as he worked. "I tested this earlier today during a small goblin raid, though my dratted dwarven crossbow failed. Shoddy manufacturing, I would say - during his reign, I warned Paintbrushturkey not to draft the better mechanics - such as myself - into the army, but he stubbornly refused to comply."
"What is it?" I asked, as he inserted a second one into my left sleeve.
"It's an invention of mine. It pumps a sodium thiopental mixture through elastic tubing directly into the target's bloodstream, rendering them unconscious almost immediately. You
do remember what sodium thiopental is, correct?"
It caught me off guard, and I wracked my brain to think of the answer. Sadly, I wasn't quick enough, and he pursed his lips in disapproval. "Stupid girl," he muttered. "Just make sure they're not already about to kill you when you use it, and you'll be fine. To fire, just flick your wrist upwards in the way that Spiderman does."
"Who?"
Mr Frog grimaced. "Never mind." He lowered my arms and patted my sleeves to make sure it wasn't too obvious the weapons were there. "Just don't flick your wrist unless you're trying to knock someone out, and stand close to compensate for the limited range. Also, it's not very accurate."
I nodded absentmindedly, thinking. "Why don't you just use those tripwire dart traps you made, but without the tripwire?"
"Because, that -" he began, but stopped midsentence. I could almost see the gears whirring in his mind as he thought about it. "Actually... that might work..." he said slowly, nodding cautiously with a raised eyebrow. "I'll have to look into that... it would definitely solve the range and accuracy problems, but sodium thiopental wouldn't work quickly enough with the smaller dosage. Still, excellent idea, Vanya..."
I smiled. His approval wasn't something I received often.
Suddenly he snatched the beanie from the top of my head, picking up a comb and pair of scissors from the table. "Now, let's get to work on that hair."
"No!" I begged. "Please, I'll just tuck it into the Ballpoint suit, nobody will notice!"
He actually laughed. "Ha! Contrary to your severely mistaken opinion,
everyone would notice. Turn around."
And so Mr Frog cut my hair, mumbling to himself from time to time about how it "wasn't perfect yet", while my hair was steadily clipped shorter and shorter. It took him quite a while to be satisfied, during which I shed more than a single tear, but he finally, finally finished. "Just a few inches past the shoulders... It's actually passable, for my first attempt, I believe," he said proudly, walking around me and admiring his handiwork. The words "passable for my first attempt" brought a few extra tears to my eyes, and I dreaded seeing how I looked. I especially didn't want to look at the floor: I was afraid I'd break down if I saw how much he'd cut off. But he seemed pleased with it, stepping back and looking me over with a smile. He stood there for a moment, his eyes seeming to glaze over as if lost in thought, as if reliving a memory of a different time.
I felt my cheeks redden again as he looked me up and down. He noticed, and the smile vanished. "You're going to need to quit that infernal blushing. That, more than anything else, will give you away. Other than that, you look like a normal Ballpoint employee now. Nobody will give you as much as a second glance."
I was upset, and for good reason. He'd just cut away at one of the few things I'd held dear. "How am I supposed to stop blushing?" I asked incredulously. "It's not exactly something I can control!"
"Incorrect!" he stated coldly, walking over to the little wooden bin. "
Everything can be controlled with practice. Well -" Mr Frog halted suddenly, sporting a thoughtful expression. "
Actually, typical dwarven stupidity might be an exception to that, but your blushing can be avoided simply by keeping your mind on your assignment. You
do remember everything I instructed you to do, yes?"
I nodded, and he walked back to me with a little card, putting it in my hand. I recognized what it was immediately - I'd studied it in one of the articles on Mr Frog's computer. It was an identification card; a forgery of Carena's real one, with
my picture instead of hers. It had a very official appearance. Looking up again, I saw Mr Frog standing at his transdimensional portal, pulling levers and pressing buttons.
"Come on!" he urged. The wooden frame of the hoop telescoped into a tall oval, the air within appearing to coalesce and ripple like water, the same way as I'd seen when Carena herself had passed through. It wasn't without a twinge of fear that I thought about it: Just on the other side, it wasn't Spearbreakers anymore, but Ballpoint - enemy territory.
"Just step through when you're ready, but best to do it quickly," Mr Frog said loudly over the whirring, buzzing noise it produced. "Avoid retinal scanners if at all possible; they'll give you away immediately. I don't have schematics of their headquarters, but as far as I remember this should drop you right in the middle of the storage area! Just accomplish your objective and hurry back!" Saying this, he slipped a circular device off the console - a return portal activation bracelet. According to what I'd read, without it, I wouldn't be able to get back.
"What if I'm not ready??" I asked worryingly, slowly backing away from the rippling light. "I may
look like a Ballpoint employee - in
your opinion, anyway - but I don't know how to act like one!"
"Common sense, stupid girl! Common sense." he said reproachfully, walking over and grabbing my arm to pull me towards the portal. "Also, don't talk to anyone you don't have to. Now get through there before you terrify yourself through overthinking everything!"
He placed the bracelet in my hand, and sent me through the portal with a shove. For a moment, everything went black, and I felt a broken, twisting sensation, almost as if I was a pencil seen through a glass of water. Then, just as quickly, it was over, and I had my first glimpse of the inside of Ballpoint Technologies.
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Topic: [34.11] Spearbreakers - It shudders and begins to move (Read 2196683 times)