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| [[Scarlett Kiteway]] began sending us updates on her investigation of the Cube and stuff. | | #REDIRECT [[Scarlett's Adventure Timeline]] |
| ''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 [[:Categorey:Conspiracy]]'' | |
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| ==15-AUG-05==
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| 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.
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| 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.
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| 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.
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| 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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| -----
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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.
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| 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.
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| 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.
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| 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.
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| 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!
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| 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.
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| 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?
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| 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:
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| Reynolds ionizers. Viendenbourg.
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| Pietro's Five of Cups article in the Sentinel
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| http://www.perplexcitysentinel.com/archives/2005/04/five_of_cups_ow_1.html
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| Here's what happened to poor Pietro :-(
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| http://www.perplexcitysentinel.com/archives/2005/06/salk_briefly_em.html
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| -----------
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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.
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| 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.
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| Until next week.
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| Scarlett
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| http://thescarlettkite.com
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| --------
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| ==22-AUG-05==
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| The story so far:
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| Hi. My name's Scarlett Kiteway, I'm 20 years old and I live in
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| Perplex City. Last year the Cube - a very precious object - was
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| stolen from the Academy where my dad (Sente) is the Master, and
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| concealed somewhere on Earth. We need to find the Cube and get it back.
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| Some pretty weird things have been going on in my life. It all
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| started last week, when I got a summer job working at The Sentinel,
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| the main newspaper of Perplex City. My friend Kurt happened to
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| mention that he'd done a search for something called a "Reynolds
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| ionizer" using his key (a kind of computer) and had been tracked by a
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| military trace. Then, when I went to look in the desk of Pietro Salk
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| - a Sentinel journalist who died a little while ago - I found a tiny
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| note scribbled on the back of a file. The note said: "Reynolds
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| ionizers. Viendenbourg."
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| There's a lot going on in Perplex City; maybe by sifting all the
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| clues that are out there, you'd find out who stole the Cube. But I'm
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| following my own lead. My story is here and you can follow it with me.
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| ----------------------
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| Viendenbourg.
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| I stared at the file for a few minutes, just to convince myself that
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| the faint pencil note was really there. Reynolds ionizers.
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| Viendenbourg. The word meant nothing to me, but I jotted it down on a
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| scrap of paper, and then carefully put the file back in Pietro's desk
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| drawer, where I'd found it. I left the office, smiling at the
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| security guard on duty downstairs, feeling like I had the biggest
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| secret in the world burning a hole in my brain. Pietro must have done
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| research into Reynolds ionizers, must have found out more than that
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| they're just "military tech". This was a lead.
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| Of course, the first thing I did when I got home was to check my key
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| for anything about Viendenbourg. Nothing. It's not the name of a
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| person, it's not the name of a place, it's not the name of a company.
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| I thought of putting out a request for information in a tech
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| chatroom, but that seemed like it'd draw too much attention to me.
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| I'd have to be more sneaky.
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| I had a long think the next day. Clearly, I was looking for something
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| that had *some* link to military technology. So perhaps someone who
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| knew about military technology could help me. My key hadn't brought
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| up any matches for the name Viendenbourg, but someone out there in
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| the city must know what it meant. Unless, of course, Pietro Salk had
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| just made it up. But something about the simple fact that I couldn't
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| find any information on the word Viendenbourg convinced me that
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| wasn't the case. If it were just a random word there'd be something,
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| somewhere. This felt like a cover-up.
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| So I put on my walking shoes (in fact my sister Violet's stylish
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| black leather kneeboots :-)) and went out to visit the Museum of
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| Perplex City where I know they keep a lot of military records. I
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| figured maybe Viendenbourg might be the name of some old general -
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| something that someone might tell me if I wasn't asking about
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| Reynolds ionizers in the same breath.
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| I love the Museum. It's clean and white, with high ceilings and lots
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| of light. They have a special room dedicated to the military archives
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| and there were about 20 people each sitting quietly next to a box
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| full of old papers, looking through documents. I was the youngest
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| person there by probably 40 years! I guess there are a lot of older
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| people researching their family histories. One white-haired man was
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| looking through a box of papers dated 5BC with tears rolling down his
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| cheeks. Military history must make moving reading.
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| I asked one of the research assistants if she could help me find out
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| anything about Viendenbourg. She was around 80 or 90 years old - lots
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| of older people volunteer as docents and advisors at the museum. She
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| was very sweet, but completely useless. She checked the museum key
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| system but found nothing, so we went meticulously through every
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| record in her physical index system. I felt terrible, because we were
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| talking pretty loudly and the room was really quiet. Everyone must
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| have heard what we were saying.
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| After about an hour, we'd exhausted the physical records and it
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| didn't look as if we'd got anywhere. So I thanked her for her time,
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| and she started to put the records away. As she walked off, I started
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| to gather my belongings together, so didn't notice the old man from
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| the 5BC box until he was right next to me. Up close, he didn't look
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| as old as I'd thought - maybe only 60. His eyes were very pale blue,
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| translucent as if their colour had been worn away over the years.
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| He said: "I think you dropped this" and put a tiny data-button into
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| my hand.
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| "Oh no, I didn't have one."
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| The elderly man looked up. The research assistant came closer. He
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| closed my fingers over the data-button and smiled:
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| "Yes," he said, "I think it belongs to you."
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| And as I was standing there, puzzled, he walked off. Surprisingly
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| fast for an old man.
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| I have to confess, I thought he must have put his contact details
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| onto that button, or some weird key virus, so I wasn't in a hurry to
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| open it up. When I got home, I set up an "airlock" function to
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| protect my data and opened it up. But it wasn't some old man's
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| details, but a map. Of an area near the Tanraga mountains. With what
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| looked like a small village marked with an x, and a little, scribbled
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| note. "Viendenbourg. Before everything changed."
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| -----
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| I'm planning to send you an email once a week about my investigations,
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| but I won't be offended if you want to unsubscribe. If you really don't
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| want to hear about my adventures, just send an email to
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| newsletter-unsubscribe@thescarlettkite.com.
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| If you think your friends would be interested in my emails, then you can send
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| them to www.scarlettkite.com and there's a signup box on the sidebar.
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| Until next week.
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| Scarlett
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| http://thescarlettkite.com
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