After dinner, the cupboard contained a sink, some washing-up liquid, a scrubber and a cloth. Apparently we didn’t need a dishwasher.
The water and power were both off in the abandoned building, of course (though not wherever the cupboard led to). So when it started to get dark, not long after the washing up, even though it was the middle of the day for us Marie wanted to go to sleep. We were apparently in approximately her timezone. We might even be in Toronto, for all we knew.
She got her own air mattress and sleeping bag, and some pillows and blankets for all of us, out of the magic cupboard. She then opened (and propped open) a door to a toilet somewhere that got more illumination from streetlights than the old industrial building did, and which flushed. She took off her shoes and climbed into her sleeping bag.
Kevin and I sat up in our bags and talked quietly for a while until she pointedly told us to shut up or she’d open a door to a meat packing plant and push us through. We knew she couldn’t, but we got the message. I did finally manage to sleep a little before dawn, but I spent most of the night on the hamster-wheel of thoughts about our situation.
After breakfast, the cupboard contained a computer, which produced a spontaneous cheer from us all. Since Marie was the person who’d provided it, in a sense, she booted it up. We apparently needed a Mac running Firefox, which started automatically. It seemed that mysterious benefactors were into open source, but weren’t ideological about it.
Marie opened her Gmail, and things became spooky. The first email was addressed “to whom it may concern”.
“If you are reading this,” it said, “it’s because you are like me. I’m hoping you are able to help me (and no, this is not a Nigerian scam, no bank accounts involved). I can do unusual things, and now there is a very odd man called Mr Brown who wants to take me away from my school. Fortunately that requires a lot of paperwork, but he will be here for me this afternoon. If you have any way to extract me so that I can join you, please use it, otherwise I will have to take steps of my own.”
It was signed “Jane”.
While Kevin and I were still staring at each other in surprise, Marie hurried to the nearest closed door and heaved it open. On the other side was a tall, skinny blonde girl with thick glasses and a laptop computer. She closed the laptop, grabbed it, and was through the door in an instant, no questions asked. Marie slammed it behind her.
“You took your time,” she said, in an English accent. “He was nearly there.”
“You’re welcome,” said Marie, somewhat snidely. “We’ve just woken up. I don’t think we’re in the same time zone as you.”
“Oh, sorry, thanks for the rescue,” the girl said, belatedly. “You got my email, then?”
“Yes.”
“How did you do that?” I asked. She glanced at me perfectly normally, without startlement, and said, “It’s my talent. Machines. What’s yours?”
“You can’t tell?”
“No, you look perfectly normal to me.”
“People usually can’t see me. Or notice me.”
“Ah, that will be the glasses. I think they show me what’s really there.”
“You’re not sure?”
“No, but that seems to be what they do. Any piece of equipment I own seems to just do whatever it does, only really well.”
“So… your laptop sends emails to people you don’t know?”
“Yes, and you should see what I get when I search on it.”
“What?”
“I’m not certain, but I think I get anything that’s written down anywhere about what I want to know. Not just what’s on the web. Anything.”
“Now that sounds useful,” said Kevin. “I’m Kevin, by the way, and I assume you’re Jane?”
She blushed. “Yes.”
“This is my mate John, and over there is Marie. We just got away from this Mr Brown guy ourselves.”
“Then he is rounding up Talents.” She put her laptop down on a nearby table, too rickety and damaged to have been taken away when the place was abandoned, and opened it up. Without her touching any keys, it opened what looked like a browser window with no menus or icons, and with a single field on the open page, like Google but without the logo or buttons.
She typed in, “Who is Mr Brown looking for?”
There was no World Wide Wait on this computer. As soon as she finished typing, the page displayed instantly, all at once. All four of our pictures, our full names, and brief descriptions of what we could do.
It was alphabetical by last name.
Gray, John, not noticed, remarked or remembered.
Link, Kevin, locator of people and things.
Smith, Jane, enhancer of technology.
Porter, Marie, opener of doors to what is needed.
That was all.
“It’s just us, then,” said Kevin. I didn’t say anything; I was brooding over the accuracy of “not noticed, remarked or remembered.”
“Your name is Porter?” said Jane to Marie. “And you open doors? That sounds a bit coincidental.”
“How about ‘Smith,’ then?” she retorted.
“I think someone’s been having a big joke,” said Kevin. “Just wish I knew who.”
The page in front of Jane went back, apparently by itself, to the search box, and she typed, “Who is behind all this?”
The page went completely, featurelessly blank.
“I don’t think they’re ready to tell us,” said Kevin.
“Or to put it another way,” I said, “we don’t have ‘need to know’ status.”
Mike Reeves-McMillan lives in Auckland, New Zealand, the setting of his Auckland Allies contemporary urban fantasy series; and also in his head, where the weather is more reliable, and there are a lot more wizards. He also writes the Gryphon Clerks series (steampunk/magepunk), the Hand of the Trickster series (sword-and-sorcery heist capers), and short stories which have appeared in venues such as Compelling Science Fiction and Cosmic Roots and Eldritch Shores.
