Letters from Scarlett

Scarlett Kiteway began sending us updates on her investigation of the Cube and stuff. This page may get broken up into several seperate pages as more correspondece fFlutters in. Also, this page become prone to adding to several categories, such as Category:Conspiracy

15-AUG-05

Hi. My name's Scarlett Kiteway, I'm 20 years old and I live in Perplex City, which is... well, it's not on Earth. If you're wondering how I got your address - the truth is that I took it from my dad, Sente. He doesn't know, but I just needed someone to talk to - there have been some pretty weird things going on over here. I need to talk about what's going on, but I can't really tell anyone in the City about it.

We Perplexians have been following the goings-on on Earth for a while, but we haven't contacted you until now. Why now? Well, last year the Cube - a very precious object - was stolen from us and concealed somewhere on Earth. We need to find it and get it back.

Or, wait, no, this isn't the right place to start. I should start a long time ago, when the Cube was originally found, when the scientists at the Academy tried to investigate it. They couldn't find out much about it. Some of them died in the process. Or, no, maybe I should have started by saying that my father, Sente, is now the Master of the Academy, that he's been asking people on Earth to find the Cube.

As you can see, this is a story that has a lot of starting places. Perhaps the best thing is to tell you where it starts for me. It's very simple really. I'm a student and I got a summer job. I started last week, and now I find I'm on a journey. I can't quite explain what I'm doing, even to myself, but I can't stop now. And because I can't tell my friends or my family, I'm telling you. I'll send out an email every week. There's a lot going on in Perplex City; who knows, maybe by sifting all the clues that are out there, you'd find out who stole the Cube. But as for me, I'm following my own lead. My story starts here and you can follow it with me.

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The Sentinel's a weird place to work. It's Perplex City's leading newspaper, so everyone's serious and focused, but at the same time there's an "atmosphere of trust", so it's OK to take long lunches and wander off for hours at a time. Which, I have to say, I do tend to do sometimes, being an intern. It's been kind of a dull week, all things considered, only punctuated by long lunches with friends and colleagues. Except for last night, which wasn't dull at all. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

Monday was pretty standard. Iona Rodie, my friend here at the Sentinel, took me round to introduce me to the staff as the new intern. We passed by Pietro Salk's desk - he was a Sentinel reporter who died a few weeks ago. It was really sad; he was young and his death was completely unexpected, just a sudden stroke, they said. His desk has a picture of him on it now, and some flowers. It's a strange empty place in the middle of a busy office. People go quiet every time they walk past his desk.

Wednesday, my sister Violet and her friend Kurt came to see me. Kurt's one of the few other people in Perplex City to have a website that can be viewed from Earth. We love to talk about the letters we get from people on Earth and compare thoughts but on Wednesday Kurt seemed sort of rattled, which was odd. Apparently last week one of his Earth correspondents had asked him to find out what a "Reynolds ionizer" was. He drew a blank, but his key (the all-purpose sort of computer we use here) detected that a military trace was being used to find out who he was. He thought he'd blocked it, but he's been finding a couple of odd things on his key since then, which makes him think that maybe something got through and he's being tracked.

I have to say, I didn't think much about it after that. Kurt's really cool, and excellent with technology - I was sure that his key couldn't have got infected with anything too damaging. Thursday, no one came to see me :-( So I spent my lunch hour checking through some of the email *I'd* received from people on Earth. Strangely, quite a few people wanted me to go and have a look at Pietro Salk's desk, to see what I could find out about him. I guess whenever someone dies unexpectedly, you always want to know what they were like, to understand what happened. Anyway, I didn't mind, but I thought I should probably wait until everyone else had left the office.

That was the hardest part, really, staying in the building long enough to do it. I often stay until 8pm or 9pm - everyone does, it's just part of the job. When the first people left, I said I was "finishing something up". Then when a few stragglers were leaving, they kept asking what I was working on that was so urgent. I said it was schoolwork, and they rolled their eyes. At 11pm, the Sentinel's editor Michiko Clark herself wandered through the office; I think she was quietly impressed to see me still working, but she didn't say anything and I felt too guilty to say hello!

But by 11.30pm the floor was silent apart from the hum of the air conditioner. I walked over to Pietro's desk. The office was eerie - the only movement was my reflection in the dark windows. I kept thinking that a security guard was going to find me, or that someone in a neighbouring office block would look over and see what I was doing. But the floor was quiet. I stood in front of the desk - there was nothing on it apart from a floral display and a big picture of Pietro, smiling. I turned the picture face down on the desk.

I sat down in his chair. That felt weird too. No one sits at this desk now. I pulled open his file drawer. It was mostly empty. A few old case files lingered at the back, for stories of his that are over and done with: Zindian Trials, Tompeka and Lode, Five of Cups. I remember that story - it's recent. A guy got murdered in his bar and they found technological equipment stashed there. I pulled the file out and opened it, but there was nothing in it. I don't mean that there was nothing interesting in it - I mean that it was empty. I didn't quite understand that. If someone had taken over Pietro's files, why hadn't they taken the file folder out as well?

I put the file folder back down on Pietro's desk and stared at my reflection in the window. Nothing seemed to make sense, and I'd wasted a perfectly good evening searching through a dead man's desk. I felt ashamed of myself. I went to put the file back in the file drawer, to leave everything as I found it. Which was when I noticed something. A tiny note written in pencil but definitely in Pietro Salk's handwriting. On the back of the file folder, just by the metal hanging rod. It said this:

Reynolds ionizers.  Viendenbourg.

---

Pietro's Five of Cups article in the Sentinel http://www.perplexcitysentinel.com/archives/2005/04/five_of_cups_ow_1.html

Here's what happened to poor Pietro :-( http://www.perplexcitysentinel.com/archives/2005/06/salk_briefly_em.html

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I'm planning to send you an email once a week about my investigations, but I won't be offended if you want to unsubscribe. If you really don't want to hear about my adventures, just send an email to unsubscribe@thescarlettkite.com.

If you think your friends would be interested in my emails, then you can send them to www.scarlettkite.com and there's a signup box on the sidebar.

Until next week. Scarlett

http://thescarlettkite.com

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22-AUG-05

The story so far:

Hi. My name's Scarlett Kiteway, I'm 20 years old and I live in Perplex City. Last year the Cube - a very precious object - was stolen from the Academy where my dad (Sente) is the Master, and concealed somewhere on Earth. We need to find the Cube and get it back.

Some pretty weird things have been going on in my life. It all started last week, when I got a summer job working at The Sentinel, the main newspaper of Perplex City. My friend Kurt happened to mention that he'd done a search for something called a "Reynolds ionizer" using his key (a kind of computer) and had been tracked by a military trace. Then, when I went to look in the desk of Pietro Salk - a Sentinel journalist who died a little while ago - I found a tiny note scribbled on the back of a file. The note said: "Reynolds ionizers. Viendenbourg."

There's a lot going on in Perplex City; maybe by sifting all the clues that are out there, you'd find out who stole the Cube. But I'm following my own lead. My story is here and you can follow it with me.

---

Viendenbourg.

I stared at the file for a few minutes, just to convince myself that the faint pencil note was really there. Reynolds ionizers. Viendenbourg. The word meant nothing to me, but I jotted it down on a scrap of paper, and then carefully put the file back in Pietro's desk drawer, where I'd found it. I left the office, smiling at the security guard on duty downstairs, feeling like I had the biggest secret in the world burning a hole in my brain. Pietro must have done research into Reynolds ionizers, must have found out more than that they're just "military tech". This was a lead.

Of course, the first thing I did when I got home was to check my key for anything about Viendenbourg. Nothing. It's not the name of a person, it's not the name of a place, it's not the name of a company. I thought of putting out a request for information in a tech chatroom, but that seemed like it'd draw too much attention to me. I'd have to be more sneaky.

I had a long think the next day. Clearly, I was looking for something that had *some* link to military technology. So perhaps someone who knew about military technology could help me. My key hadn't brought up any matches for the name Viendenbourg, but someone out there in the city must know what it meant. Unless, of course, Pietro Salk had just made it up. But something about the simple fact that I couldn't find any information on the word Viendenbourg convinced me that wasn't the case. If it were just a random word there'd be something, somewhere. This felt like a cover-up.

So I put on my walking shoes (in fact my sister Violet's stylish black leather kneeboots :-)) and went out to visit the Museum of Perplex City where I know they keep a lot of military records. I figured maybe Viendenbourg might be the name of some old general - something that someone might tell me if I wasn't asking about Reynolds ionizers in the same breath.

I love the Museum. It's clean and white, with high ceilings and lots of light. They have a special room dedicated to the military archives and there were about 20 people each sitting quietly next to a box full of old papers, looking through documents. I was the youngest person there by probably 40 years! I guess there are a lot of older people researching their family histories. One white-haired man was looking through a box of papers dated 5BC with tears rolling down his cheeks. Military history must make moving reading.

I asked one of the research assistants if she could help me find out anything about Viendenbourg. She was around 80 or 90 years old - lots of older people volunteer as docents and advisors at the museum. She was very sweet, but completely useless. She checked the museum key system but found nothing, so we went meticulously through every record in her physical index system. I felt terrible, because we were talking pretty loudly and the room was really quiet. Everyone must have heard what we were saying.

After about an hour, we'd exhausted the physical records and it didn't look as if we'd got anywhere. So I thanked her for her time, and she started to put the records away. As she walked off, I started to gather my belongings together, so didn't notice the old man from the 5BC box until he was right next to me. Up close, he didn't look as old as I'd thought - maybe only 60. His eyes were very pale blue, translucent as if their colour had been worn away over the years.

He said: "I think you dropped this" and put a tiny data-button into my hand.

"Oh no, I didn't have one."

The elderly man looked up. The research assistant came closer. He closed my fingers over the data-button and smiled:

"Yes," he said, "I think it belongs to you."

And as I was standing there, puzzled, he walked off. Surprisingly fast for an old man.

I have to confess, I thought he must have put his contact details onto that button, or some weird key virus, so I wasn't in a hurry to open it up. When I got home, I set up an "airlock" function to protect my data and opened it up. But it wasn't some old man's details, but a map. Of an area near the Tanraga mountains. With what looked like a small village marked with an x, and a little, scribbled note. "Viendenbourg. Before everything changed."

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26-AUG-05

Hi. My name's Scarlett Kiteway, I'm 20 years old and I live in Perplex City. Last year the Cube - a very precious object - was stolen from the Academy where my dad, Sente is the Master, and concealed somewhere on Earth. We need to find the Cube and get it back.

Some pretty weird things have been going on in my life since I got a summer job working at the Sentinel, the main newspaper of Perplex City. First my friend Kurt did a computer search for something called a "Reynolds ionizer", and his computer was targeted by a military trace. Then I found that same phrase written on the back of a file belonging to a journalist who died recently, along with another word, Viendenbourg. When I went to the military archives to investigate the word Viendenbourg I found nothing, but as I was leaving an old man I'd never seen before handed me a data button with a map on it. It was a map of the Tanraga mountains region, with a scribbled note: "Viendenbourg. Before everything changed."

There's a lot going on in Perplex City; maybe by sifting all the clues that are out there, you'll find out who stole the Cube. But I'm following my own lead. My story is here and you can follow it with me.

---

Viendenbourg. Everything keeps coming back to that name. First, a mysterious note written in pencil on the back of a dead man's file. Now, a name scribbled on a map given to me by a stranger in a museum. Things are just getting weirder and weirder.

Of course, the first thing I did was to go back to the museum, to try to find that old man again. The very next day, I went back and asked around. The lady in the military archive room said she'd seen him a couple of times before, and that he uses *paper* ID, rather than using a key. She didn't seem that surprised, said a lot of the older people prefer to use paper ID. She thought his name was Peter something - not very helpful. She wouldn't look it up for me, and she wouldn't tell me what he'd been examining. I was about to leave, frustrated. Then I had a brainwave.

I said: "I saw he was looking at a box labelled 5BC; it must be a very moving set of material." And she said: "Oh yes, he cries every time he looks at it." And then she put her hand to her mouth, as if she shouldn't have said anything. I checked on the military archive database; there are 7,968 boxes for 5BC, so that doesn't get me very far, but at least it's something.

On the way home, I stopped at a map store. I'm going on vacation soon with my friends Margot and Sanj and... my boyfriend Brede! We've only just started going out, so I'm still a bit overexcited. He's great, so kind and sweet. I worried it might be a bit weird going on vacation together now that we've started dating, but I think it'll be fine. Anyway, I'd promised the guys that I'd get maps for our trip to Tanraga, so I bought the most detailed, most close-up ones I could; downloads for my key as well as paper maps. The map the old guy had put onto that data button wasn't the most accurate in the world, just a sketch-map really, but he'd put in a few key landmarks: the Grey Towers, Veldet Lake, Iskara Peak, the Sunken Island, so I thought I could probably work out where Viendenbourg might be on an up-to-date map.

As I walked home, I thought about what all this could mean. Obviously that guy in the archives was doing historical research, so he probably knows all about old place names. Maybe he wanted to tell me where Viendenbourg was, but didn't want to get into conversation with me, or talk to the archivist. Maybe he was just being old-fashioned and charming. But I couldn't help having a prickling feeling at the back of my neck. Maybe he knew I'd be there. Maybe he'd been waiting for me, or for someone, to come round asking about Viendenbourg. How did I know the information he'd given me was accurate, anyway? Maybe he was just some mad old guy who heard me saying this weird word and made up an explanation for it. How could a whole place be forgotten anyway? If Viendenbourg was the name of a village, even an old name, why wouldn't it be in the records?

When I got home, I looked carefully at the map the man in the archive room had given me. Viendenbourg. It's in what looks like a deep mountain ravine, with a small lake to the north. North of Iskara Peak, to the west of Veldet Lake, almost surrounded by the spiky range of the Grey Towers. It's not a place you'd really go to on vacation - Veldet Lake is beautiful and lush, Iskara Peak is magnificent but the Grey Towers are bleak - stunning from a distance but no fun to hike - just miles and miles of shifting shale. I mean, people go there, but not *many* people. And this place is right in the middle of them. You wouldn't even get a good view! Still, it was pretty well identified on this map.

So, I brought up my up-to-date maps and overlaid them, matching peak to peak, ragged lake shore to lake shore, slowly bringing the two maps into line with each other. And I looked. And there, on my modern map, where a village called Viendenbourg should be there was... nothing. No ravine. No small lake. No village. Nothing.

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02-SEP-05

Hi. My name's Scarlett Kiteway, I'm 20 years old and I live in Perplex City. Last year the Cube - a very precious object - was stolen from the Academy where my dad, Sente, is the Master, and concealed somewhere on Earth. We need to find the Cube and get it back.

Some pretty weird things have been going on in my life lately. First my friend Kurt's computer was targeted by a military trace when he searched for the phrase "Reynolds ionizer". Then I found the same phrase in a note written by a dead journalist, with another word, Viendenbourg. When I went to the military archives to investigate, an old man handed me a data button with a map of the Tanraga mountains, with a place marked Viendenbourg. But I checked this map against maps I bought of the same area and found nothing there - nothing at all.

There's a lot going on in Perplex City; maybe by sifting through all the clues that are out there, you'll find out who stole the Cube. But I'm following my own lead. My story is here and you can follow it with me.

---

I'm setting off for Tanraga tonight. It's all happened so quickly - my friends Margot and Sanj have made the final arrangements for the accommodation, my boyfriend Brede has finalised our itinerary - when we'll be taking the train, and when we'll be walking. And tonight I'll be on that train heading out west. I love trains; there's an old- world elegance about them. The ones that accompany the Tanraga walking tours are fitted out in the original style of 300 years ago; they have sleeper compartments and dark velvet seats and tiny bathrooms fitted out in brass and chrome. Beautiful. So tonight the four of us take the midnight train. It's scary and exciting. For me more than for my friends.

I haven't told them about Viendenbourg. I'm not sure why, except maybe that it sounds so crazy that I wouldn't know where to start. I've said I might want to take a detour. I'm not sure I really want to do that either. Of course, my friends said: a detour? Is it somewhere cool? Can we come too? And I couldn't tell them. I pointed in the general area on the map, told them I had a history project that had to do with that location. They looked at me strangely. Brede said: "what history project?" And I said the first thing that came into my head: "Family history." It must have been obvious that I didn't want to talk about it anymore, because they all went quiet. Maybe they think I have some terrible family secret.

In the past week, I've been trying to find out more about Viendenbourg, or Reynolds ionizers. Viendenbourg brings up nothing, literally *nothing* on any kind of search I try. I've been to five different libraries around the city, and I've even asked my sister Violet to do a search in the Academy library where she works. Nothing. She says she's going to keep looking while I'm away, though. About 30% of the Academy's material is still in hard-copy only. Maybe she'll find some clues.

Perhaps the only other lead is Kurt's key. I haven't told him what I'm doing, but I asked him, as if it was nothing important, whether he'd managed to solve the problems he'd been having with his key. He said he had to dismantle the system to get rid of the embedded programmes of the military trace. And while he was doing that, he managed to make them spit out a location code. It's a military code, so it doesn't give much location information, but he said the general area is: Tanraga. Of course the Tanraga area covers hundreds of square miles. Still, it makes me feel like I'm going to the right place. Or maybe the wrong place.

There is one other thing. I had a farewell dinner with my dad (Sente) and Violet last night. I didn't bring Brede - not after the last time when Vi and my dad had a big argument, but actually it was nice, just the three of us, like when Vi and I were children. Vi was heading out to poker afterwards, and wanted to arrange to meet Kurt for a drink, but she had to call him on his temporary key, because he's been having all these problems. She told my dad the whole story, about how Kurt had been looking for Reynolds Ionizers, and been stung by a military trace and wasn't that a disgrace? My dad just went really quiet, and after a few moments he said:

"Tell Kurt to keep his mind on his job. That's my advice. Tell him to get a new key, and stop worrying about any 'military trace'."

And he gave Violet one of his "I'm serious about this" looks.

I don't know what that means. Maybe nothing. But maybe soon I'll find out. My rucksack is all packed, waiting on the floor of my bedroom. And tonight I'll be taking the train.

---

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09-SEP-05

We've been travelling for a week now, but we haven't got very far. It's all in the plan - we stopped over for three nights at Elmness, to see the artiak migrations at the waterfall. And a night at Brede's aunt in Peterfitch for berry-picking and general rustic charm. We spent all day picking - and when the juiciest berries seemed just out of reach, I sat on Brede's shoulders to get them. It's been so great just to spend time together, having fun. Still, we've had three nights on the train in the past week, and four solid days staring out of the window at the scenery passing by, getting less and less inhabited, further and further away from home. I like the feeling: a combination of desolate and cosy. Outside are miles of wooded forest, punctuated by the occasional small village or town. Inside I'm sitting in my comfy window seat with my guy next to me, feet curled under me, sometimes reading but mostly just staring out. This is now officially the furthest I've ever been from the City. It feels weird. I'm not out of key range or anything, but just... I feel like I'm out of range of myself somehow. Like all that stuff that happened in the City was just a dream.

It wasn't, though. I haven't said anything to Brede, but I think someone might be following us. The night before last, at about 2am, someone tried the handle of our door. I know it could have been a train official - although I can't think why they would - or someone mistaking their room in the dark, but I don't think so. The handle turned really slowly, as if whoever was on the other side knew we'd be asleep in there and was trying not to wake us. I was awake, looking at the stars flying by out of the window, but Brede was asleep, he didn't see. I can't stop thinking about it though, that handle turning so slowly. Luckily, we lock the door at night. When the door didn't open, the handle was raised again, very slowly.

And then, today, when we came back to our compartment, after spending a couple of hours sitting in the restaurant, I was sure that my belongings were out of order. It's nothing anyone else would notice, but my sweaters were less neatly arranged than I'd do myself. (My sister Violet would laugh if she saw me write that, but I like to be tidy when I travel.) I've kept everything about this Viendenbourg mission on my key, though, and I always keep my key with me, so if someone was trying to find out what I've been doing, they wouldn't have found anything. I let out a little noise when I saw the disorder. Brede said: "Is something wrong? Are you OK?" Because he worries about me like that. But I couldn't tell him. He'd think I was crazy.

And even more so, I can't tell him the thing I think I saw a few moments later. The trains are arranged in compartments, with a corridor to one side running down the length of the whole train, and a window in the door at the end of each corridor. This means that if you stand in the right place you can almost see down the whole train from the corridor outside your compartment. As long as there's no one standing in the way, of course. As soon as I saw that my sweaters had been moved, I went out into the corridor to see if I could see anyone nearby. I don't know, maybe I'm just paranoid. But I'm pretty sure I saw the figure of a tallish man with white hair walking away, three or four carriages further down. He turned and walked into a compartment, seemed to be saying something to someone inside. And, I'm almost sure, as he walked inside, he turned his head slightly and saw me, seeing him.

Codenames "V", "Q", "K" and "C", were hired to do the Theft. They are tied to the deaths of Fran Mendling, Bernardo Holyoke, Pietro Salk, Monica Grand, Isaac Cymbalisty, Anna Heath --- but someone else got to The Cube first. Who? And Why? "We never held it, It was already gone."