The Price of Entanglement - Chapter 5, pt. 1

The next day, Jo got the call she’d been waiting for, and spent the rest of the day celebrating her new-found employment. Celebrating in this case meant doing some proper shopping for real groceries; even the return of the rains couldn’t dampen her spirits.

She was to start work the next week, and she wasted no time making sure she was prepared with all the right wardrobe items for her first day. She spent a lot of time badgering Quinn to make sure he was ready as well; he’d been hired for the original position, apparently along with several other new employees. He didn’t really need to be pestered to get ready, she knew, but she couldn’t help herself; it was good for him, she was sure.

Finally, the big day arrived. The leaky gray skies and relatively drab mail room did nothing to lessen her enthusiasm; real food could do a lot for your mood, she realized.

Dunn was her reporting manager, it turned out. He was much more dour than he had been the previous week, but then, it was Monday. There were three other people in her group, and a half dozen in Quinn’s, plus him and two new additions. Quinn’s group was the more traditional ‘mail room’ type staff; her group, in contrast, were the site inspectors.

She found it strange that there were so many site inspectors, but when she asked Mike, the most senior of them, he explained, “We’re actually a bit understaffed. The trading volume the company does is pretty huge, and with only a small handful of us, it can be hard to keep up with everything. We’re glad to have you on board!”

“Thanks, it’s good to be here. What am I going to be doing first?”

“We’ll want to get you out in the field as soon as possible, but it’s important that you get to know things around here for a while. You’ll spend this first week working in our archives, getting a sense for what holdings we have, the sorts of things we look for in our investments, the types of issues we flag and so on and so forth. Next week we get you out in the field.”

“That fast, huh?” She was startled.

“Don’t worry, you’ll be with one of us at first. We move quickly, but we don’t move that quickly with first-timers.”

Determination

By Gordon S. McLeod

$0.99

If you're enjoying this story, you might enjoy Prices, a set of proto-Steampunk tales set in the same world as this story. They're available as a free preview eBook.

You might also enjoy Determination, which you can buy over at Amazon if you'd like to help support the site. If you can't or don't want to buy it, you're still welcome to read it, on me.

Either way, I hope you keep enjoying my work!

The Price of Entanglement, Chapter 4, pt. 4

“Hadn’t thought about it that way before, but it makes sense,” she said, considering. Dunn stopped by a door stood slightly open, leading to what looked like a small interview room.

“Here we are,” he said, opening the door for her.

The interview was a relatively quick twenty minutes or so, covering all the usual job interview stuff. After the initial interesting and unusual conversation, it was a breeze, and she walked out of the place with a bit of a spring in her step, confident that things had gone well.

She waited around for a few minutes but didn’t see Quinn anywhere. The young man at the reception desk hadn’t seen him either when she asked. She considered sending a message for a second, but dismissed the thought; if he was still talking, it could throw him off. Instead, she signaled for a cab.

She’d been en route for no more than five minutes when her phone buzzed her.

Sorry I missed you, just got out. Went well. How ‘bout yours?

Went great! Glad yours did too.

Capital Cappuccino again?

Sounds good, could use one. Rerouting; see you there in a few.​

Determination

By Gordon S. McLeod

$0.99

If you're enjoying this story, you might enjoy Prices, a set of proto-Steampunk tales set in the same world as this story. They're available as a free preview eBook right here.

You might also enjoy Determination, which you can buy over at Amazon if you'd like to help support the site. If you can't or don't want to buy it, you're still welcome to read it, on me.

Either way, I hope you keep enjoying my work!

The Price of Entanglement - Chapter 4, pt. 3

“It’s not the mail room, I take it?” She tried to hide her surprise, probably not well enough. He smiled.

“Actually it is, more or less. ‘Mail room’ is such an antiquated term, don’t you think? Yes, we still do move physical pieces of mail around, though we don’t do that much of it. We use the term loosely here.”

“Okay, I’ll bite—how do you use it?”

“It serves a variety of purposes, from pickups and deliveries, as you’d expect, up to serving as a sort of in-house investigation branch.”

“Like spies?” Her eyebrows rose sharply, but she smiled.

“Nothing so dramatic, I’m afraid,” he grinned. “We deal mostly in property holdings, so our investigations are usually site inspections and trips to the public archives to fact-check and dig into details. We go out, we get information, we deliver it back to home base.”

She nodded. Made sense, sort of. “Okay. Doesn’t sound like something you need to be seriously athletic for, though.”

“True, for the most part. Most of our staff are average in that respect. It can come in handy for the on-site inspections of older buildings though, and we do have some projects coming up that would benefit from a representative who knows the ropes, so to speak.”

Determination

By Gordon S. McLeod

$0.99

​If you're enjoying this story, you might enjoy Determination, available here for free, or maybe you'd like to help support the site by buying it for $0.99 over at Amazon. Either way, hope you keep enjoying my work!

The Price of Entanglement - Chapter 4, pt. 2

Jo waited less than two minutes before her contact arrived to collect her. He was tall and sharp dressed; sharp-featured, too, she noticed, though he seemed pleased to see her and gave off a generally warm and friendly sort of feeling. “You must be David’s friend!” he started off. “I’m Gerrold Dunn. It’s a pleasure to meet you, Jo. I’ve been hearing a lot about you,” he said, giving her an appraising look.

“Nothing too terrible, I hope?” she offered. The look wasn’t surprising; she wasn’t unattractive. She got the feeling, though, that he was sizing her up rather than checking her out.

“No, certainly not,” he said with a smile. “In fact, quite the opposite. You’ve had quite a career these last few years, and an impressive suite of hobbies, too. Your reputation as a climber precedes you. We can use someone with your talents, Jo, if you think you’re up for the challenge. I’m here to walk you through our proposal.”

The Price of Entanglement - Chapter 4, pt. 1

A week later she and Quinn arrived a little early for their first day on the job. The Westall Holdings office reception was well appointed, with a large front desk staffed by a professional-looking young man dressed business casual. They’d been given instructions to dress similarly; seemed to be the culture at this place. David usually wore a suit, Jo knew, but he was much farther up the company ladder than they were.

The young man acknowledged them with a nod as they entered, and with another, directed them to a couch that looked like it had been bought for appearance rather than comfort. Sitting in it confirmed that impression; she hoped they wouldn’t have to use it too long.

The rest of the place looked similar; everything seemed designed to look good at a glance, but didn’t invite you to stay for long. She found herself on the edge of her seat, partly out of a subconscious desire to get moving, and partly because it was actually more comfortable than trying to relax in it would be.

A little more than five minutes later, the young man apparently received a signal. “Quintrell Hickson? If you’ll come this way, sir.” Quinn looked at her in surprise; they’d been under the impression they’d been hired to do the same type of work. “Josie Rush? Your contact is on his way down to greet you,” he continued while Quinn got himself up off the chair to go.

“I’ll catch up with you in a bit then, I guess,” Jo said to Quinn when he looked back.

“Sure thing! Try not to climb the walls,” he called back as they vanished out a door to the interior of the building.

The Price of Entanglement - Chapter 3, pt. 4

The city spread out below her like a carpet of lights in the night, mesmerizing in its intensity. In order to avoid light pollution that would impede the progress of science, some long-gone ruling body had decreed that lights should be blocked from shining into the sky. The results were a boon to astronomers, but it was just as lovely from on high. Jo's vantage point at the top of an old apartment complex let her look down on a big swath of the cityscape; from a distance it looked like stained glass.

Even the air felt fresher than usual. Maybe she'd climbed high enough to rise above the smog, or maybe it was all the rain; it had just about stopped, but a misty drizzle still made itself felt. Instead of feeling damp and depressing, she felt somehow more alive.

Maybe that was due more to the interview; she had shown up with Quinn and talked with a company representative for fifteen minutes. She'd left feeling buoyed, sure that she'd landed the job.

The line of questioning had started off standard enough, but as the interview progressed, the rep seemed more and more interested in her athleticism, especially her climbing hobby. She'd spent the last five minutes describing past climbs in detail, and she was sure the woman she'd been talking to had taken more notes during that time than at any other point in the interview.

How'd yours go?

Quinn. She hadn't seen him after her interview. Went well, how was yours? she sent back.

Pretty much what I expected. Very straight forward, very easy. Do you think you got it?

Yeah, I think so. She paused a moment. Did they happen to ask you about climbing or anything?

No, just the standard stuff. Why?

No real reason, she just seemed real interested in my climbing. Guess it's nothing. She paced the rooftop as she messaged. Her home lay to the south-west, toward old town. A dark spot in the glowing stained-glass city caught her eye out beyond where she lived. She was just thinking it must be the old ironworks when a tiny spark dragged her eyes to itself; a blue spark, out in the middle of that patch of darkness. She frowned and tried to image it, though it was hopeless at this distance without a tripod for the imager. She got about a second of it before it winked out. She felt a touch of that creepy dread she'd experienced walking out in front of the place the other day and shivered.