Episode Ten
[audio:http://www.archive.org/download/BeautifulRed-10/BeautifulRed-10.mp3]Jack found herself in a small vestibule before a locked metal grating at the bottom of a long, narrow, straight stairwell. A voice crackled from a speaker in the ceiling.
“There’s network here. Upload the map you were given so we can confirm the checksum.”
Jack drew a deep breath and turned her system on. She was, indeed, online, though the signal was weak. She found that an address had been sent to her, and she replied with a copy of the map. The upload seemed to take forever, but almost immediately as soon as it was done a buzzer sounded and the grating in front of her swung open. Jack walked up the stairs, jumping as the grate behind her clanged shut. She checked the monitor to discover the already weak signal getting weaker with each step she took. By the time she reached the top of the staircase, she was offline again.
Music:
- low level format by Bjorn Fogelberg
some sonics provided by The Freesound Project
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Whoa. Sex with androgynous stranger in broom closet. Creepy. Morbid. Definitely demonstrates what a sterile, soulless life Jack and her fellows live, if that was the most intimate experience she’s had in 20 years. She has my pity.
Now I wonder, if Jack is so easy to manipulate, how far is she going to be able to get in cracking this conspiracy? If she’ll let the first person who asks put their hand down her pants, no questions asked (and while she’s in the enemy’s lair, no less) then any potential assassin is going to find her a very easy mark.
mr. tweedy, jack’s first physical lay in almost 20 years equals “she’ll let the first person who asks put their hand down her pants”?
i don’t think jack having sex with a stranger in possible enemy territory necessarily conflicts with her primary purpose, or proves her easily manipulatable where it counts. might be the best action she could’ve taken, serving both her immediate and long term wishes. my only complaint is that there was no wah-wah pedal guitar in the background… and maybe the word “panties” might have been used without sounding gratuitous.
Well, yeah. He/she was, literally, the first person who asked, whatever significance you do or do not attach to that fact. And it was stated in the narration that Jack knew she was being manipulated.
I suppose screwing a stranger could be the pragmatic thing for a spy to do, in a different circumstance, but in this case it was pretty clear that Jack was just letting herself be played, didn’t have any pragmatic purpose and was probably acting against her better judgement.
My thoughts on why this is dumb: In a world with so much micro-sized tech, a broom-closet encounter would be a perfect opportunity to plant malicious hardware on a person. They swapped saliva: That sounds like an ideal way to introduce microscopic tracking or recording devices, or to deliver tiny capsules full of poison that will crack open in response to a signal. Perhaps Pheonix has just delivered the very mind-controlling nanobots that create the zombies Jack is looking for!
I doubt any of those things is actually the case (since Jack is obviously going to be around for the whole story) but it seems like those are things that she would have thought of. There are a million and one reasons why Jack should be suspicious of a person like Pheonix. Jack puts herself totally in this person’s hands. She lets her guard down and gives complete trust to someone of whom she ought to be wary. Even if Jack hasn’t got any moral qualms with screwing androgynous strangers, she should still be smarter than to make herself so vulnerable to someone who is quite possibly an enemy.
first person who asked in what time period? isolated to one evening, plenty of people screw the first person who asks, deflating the implied derision of the construction. make it a short enough period, and it applies to pretty much all consensual sex where an offer was made. without the period, it’s a meaningless insult attempt. however, if a ~20-year period of nobody asking was specified, i missed it. only listened once so far.
jack knowing she was being manipulated tends away from your opinion, not toward it. regarding her apparently absent plan, she may have been following nothing more than sound instinct. or nothing. i don’t think it’s clear at all.
doh! i hope you didn’t influence the story with that nanobot theory. darusha, don’t look.
good thing to think of, but i doubt, if things are that advanced, that anyone needs to get in jack’s drawers to make it happen. i do hope there are more attempts, regardless.