Fairy III: A Day In The Captive's Lives free porn video

It's all done with mirrors... The Congressmen walked into the building, led by Stanhope Carter, the Public Relations official assigned by NASA. "Thanks to our new missions, The Signal Imagery section has become the most important part of our new work," Carter told them. "Working with the FBI and National Reconnaissance Office, we have developed some of the most efficient programs for boosting and adjusting data ever imagined." "And some of the most expensive," one of them, from Mississippi snarled. "With what you spent in this building, we could have housed a thousand families in Biloxi!" "That is true, Congressman. However finding ways to avoid another Katrina, or the Big one in California, or a tsunami hitting the US should be considered more important than a thousand families. The money that has been spent has saved lives, caused criminals to be captured, and given our nation a peek at what our enemies are doing." "That may be true-" "Plus all of this money was appropriated in some cases as much as ten years ago, sir," Stanhope overrode him. "When the state of Louisiana voted against strengthening the dykes because of the expense." The man sputtered as they went on. Carter had expected him and the other two liberals on the committee. You can always argue that spending money to help people is smart. But not when you wanted to gut the entire budget to do that alone. They entered the SIP control room, where dozens of your men and women were busy working on data that was arriving. "Now thanks to the Cassini orbiter and the Mars rovers, we have a lot a data coming in right now. The data comes in through the broadband connections into the first stage processor team there." He motioned to a few people were scanning in the digital pictures. "They first download the images, then use basically the same program you use to draw pictures on your computer at home to clean them up." As they watched, the picture fuzzed out a bit then came back sharper. It was a ring segment of Saturn. "Once they have done that, they send it to the second stage, where the picture is worked on by our resident software genius team. Mr. Wang and Ms Chambers," he motioned. "Mister Wang? Could you tell our visitors what you're doing?"" Tao Lin Wang waved his hand, but didn't look away from the screen before him. He looked impossibly young for his duty. The Taiwan born immigrant was the senior processor on this shift. "One moment please." He spoke in soft barely accented English. "Myra, coming to you," he called. "Bring it on, baby!" Myra Chambers looked barely old enough to be a cheerleader. Her pop bottle glasses leaned toward the screen. Most people looked at the earnest young face first. If they had bothered to look down, they would have seen a body worthy of Aphrodite. Wang turned around, and stood. "Tao Lin, could you explain the processing of an image to these men and women?" "Of course, Mr. Carter. The process first looks for layering, to verify that is an authentic picture." "Layering?" the Congresswoman from California asked. "Yes. Tell, me honored representatives, have you ever seen the television show Star Trek, and the movies in the Star Wars series?" Most nodded. "Good, I can use them to show you what I mean." "Normal photographs are single layered. Everything you see was there when the photo was taken. If you scan it into a computer, the computer will read anything with the exactly equal co-efficient as parts of a single layer because everything was there, and is indexed by the computer as a single image." He sat, spun his chair around, and brought up a picture of the first moon landing. "July of 1969, Apollo delivered to men to the moon. Note that the pictures are grainy, the images blurred. This is due to the fact that for the first time, digital imagery was being used." He tapped a button. "However there have been claims that the pictures were faked, which quite honestly, was barely within the capabilities of the special effects mavens of the time. While the ground-based shots could have been faked, the operational shots of the spacecraft were not. We would not have the capability for almost ten more years to duplicate even a single frame of the LEM returning from the moon." He brought up a picture of the Original Star ship Enterprise. "Special effects require layers because a lot of what you see does not exist has been added afterward or were not there in the context you see. This scene from the original series has two layers. The first is the background projection. The second is the ship itself. When the weapons fired, you had a third layer. Each is distinct. If I ran this through our system, it would show and identify each layer because of the differences in things such as lighting and motion. Anyone who remembers the series also remembers the stars sometimes seem to slide into the ship before disappearing. In a real object this does not happen. The light is immediately occluded. "As Hollywood special effects got better, they also got more complex. In this scene from the Star Wars movies, you have a miniature before what is still called a blue screen. The camera moves instead of the model, giving you the illusion of the ship moving. Instead of two layers, you now have five. One of the spacecraft, one of the outline of the ship in white, another in black, and the background, which shows on the blue screen, and the blue screen itself. The blue screen effect will make anything of that same color disappear when filtered. While the image looks perfect to the human eye, the computer again can differentiate between them. "If you have seen a more recent film named the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen you will remember their invisible man. Having all of the background already in the processing center for the film, and dressing the man in a suit made of spandex that is the right color did this. He is there, and you know it from objects he interacts with, but the suit renders him invisible when the film is processed. "When they made the newer forms of the Star Trek series and the newest movies, they had gone as far as seven to ten layers, and to the first computer generated imagery. The eye is more efficiently fooled, but the computer again reads the layers and even reads when a computer has generated the object. In this pass by the Star Ship Voyager, the layers are the ship, the white matte, the black matte, the lights of the vessel the engines, and the background. Each laid down separately on their own track. Five layers in all." "But why is this important?" the California senator asked. "And why are you doing that here?" "To verify authenticity. We are not adding layers here; we are verifying that no one has added any during processing. The original shots taken on the moon as I said were challenged on the grounds that the pictures had been fake, which quite honestly was beyond the capability of those technicians. So part of our tasking is to verify that no one is doing it here on Earth. But we can have fun with it as long as the pictures never leave our laboratory. Look at this picture we put together in the lab here." It showed a Mars scene from the Pathfinder drone on Mars. "What is wrong with this picture?" The people bent down, looking at it. "I can't see..." The Mississippi Congressman pointed. "Are those footprints?" Wang smiled. Yes. And if you look right here..." He brought up a section of the photograph where what looked like the edge of a soda can appeared. The people chuckled. "One way we checked the system when it was originally installed was to take those old 35mm shots by the astronauts themselves, and 'fix' them." He brought up a copy of the picture of an astronaut saluting the flag on the moon. His suit had been colored green, there was a peace sign where the flag patch on his suit had been, and his upraised hand held a roach clip. The visitors chuckled. "Now watch. Myra, slugging to you." "Got it." The picture appeared on her screen. She touched a few buttons and the computer came back. ANOMALY! LAYERS: 4. "The system detected the layering we did. Now I remove the roach clip..." ANOMALY! LAYERS: 3. "Remove the peace sign..." ANOMALY! LAYERS: 2. "Now change the color back to what it was..." LAYERS: 1. "While we are the primary users of this software, we are by no means the only ones. As Mr. Carter has no doubt pointed out, the National Reconnaissance office, which supplies satellite imagery to Homeland Security, uses it to check troop and equipment movements. Look at this." The desert of Iraq appeared. "This was taken during Desert Storm from 300 miles above the earth with what is called a synthetic aperture array camera. It is a series of mirrors, and the signals are bounced between them to convince the computer that the mirror is much larger with a greater focal length." In the center of the photo, a group of tanks were maneuvering. "We can even ID the types by scans of the database." He hit a button, and a series of photo flashed. Then one flashed red on the screen, and stayed. "T72." He identified them. He brought up the interior view of the mirror. "This opening is only about five centimeters wide. A little smaller actually than the average lens of a 35mm camera. But the light bounces from this mirror to this one then to this one, then finally to this one. By the time the light has reached the computer which records the image, the computer believes that the lens is over a meter in width with a focal length of about 100 meters from the satellite. What this means is that the pictures are clearer, with less distortion. "In the seventies using standard lenses, we were limited to areas of two square meters in area. That means if an object is less than two meters square, the block appears in the color of whatever is the major component of the photo. Aircraft for example, are shown as a series of block shapes with saw like shapes coming off where the wings are. Only very large aircraft such as the B52 and the wide-bodied jetliners come through with any clarity. "But with the development of the synthetic aperture array, the definition is down to 10 centimeters, about four inches square. This means you can see humans on the ground clearly. You do not yet have the resolution to show faces, but that is coming as our technology improves. "But it also has other uses. Look at this tape of a ransom demand." A woman sat, bound to a chair. In the forefront a man stood, demanding money. It froze. "When this arrived at the home of the victim, the FBI sent copies to us for analysis. It was discovered that the sections of the tape were taken separately, and put together. The room is one layer, the woman in the chair another, the man making the demand the third. The lighting was off sufficiently that each was clearly marked as a layer. The woman had been photographed in a room with light artificially added to make it appear she was in a different room. "Acting on our information, the FBI reacted as they would when it was known that the victim was already dead. Their attempt to use this very imagery in their defense was shot down." He looked at his attentive audience. "What I am most interested in on my own time is new technologies for image enhancement and adjustment." He brought up the video. "This is a Japanese Pop duet named Chocho. A studio named Nakimaru in Tokyo Japan put it together. I know there are layers, but our computer claims there are none." The people looked as the Faerie flew around a group of people on a fishing boat, and those people began to shrink. "Oh be real," a congressman from Texas snorted. "That is what I am saying, Congressman. Whoever created this video did what we would consider impossible. Created a fictional scene that reads as real in every way." ***** Myra glared as she watched the video for the tenth time tonight. Her computer purred through the scenes, then came back LAYERS: 1. "Oh you stupid bitch," she snorted. "I know there's at least five!" She changed the scanning parameters. LAYERS: 1. She cursed, changing the timing parameters. LAYERS: 1. She changed the lighting parameters. LAYERS: 1. "I give up!" she shouted. Ripping off her glasses, and rubbing her eyes. Wang looked across at her. "Maybe we're going about this the wrong way." He said. "Let's assume that it's all real. Where do you get the hang ups that tell you it's wrong?" "The video line being pulled out then put in," she answered immediately. "There's an old movie my mom loved called 'Daughter of the Mind' where someone uses stage magic to create the illusion that a nuclear scientist's dead daughter has come back as a ghost. One of the characters said 'this is what I want to create. How do I go about it?'." "Fine. What do you want to do?" "Maintenance has that fifty-meter fiber optic camera lens they use to check the sewer lines." "Let's borrow it." After a week of using the line, running it out and into a room, they were no closer. "In this scene, the hands don't look normal sized. If it were a real person, I'd say this one..." She touched the screen of the video with their own version beside it. "Was less than six millimeters across with a span of about eleven. But this cable is only about 40 millimeters across meaning it would be like a man wrestling an anaconda. I could tell it was your hand in our film. But that would make the tunnel..." she considered eyes squeezed shut. "Less than 150 mm across in the original." They tried it using a prairie dog burrow, which was slightly smaller, but ran into trouble immediately. They couldn't guide the tube well enough to get it into the hole more than a meter or two before it dug into the dirt. They finally got it ten meters down by the expedient of twisting and jockeying the view head past obstacles but it was far slower than the Japanese film. "Going out it matches the picture exactly," Wang mused. "But going in we still don't have the motion right." "They had to have something pulling it in. But there's no lines or wires on the screen, no sign of even a thread. Just these tiny hands." "Yet assuming the maker of the video had used a standard fiber optic line like this one, the tunnel they had filmed had to be at least 20 meters in length and whatever had pulled it through the hole had to be something perhaps 100 millimeters in height. The size of a small rat or large mouse." But on the film, all they had were the flashes of naked female bodies. "The wings bother me a lot too," Myra commented. "Look." She brought up the Taiko band. They were all dressed only in Fundoshi and bandeaus over their breasts. But as the lead drummer took her place, her wings flexed away from her body. As the drummers played, they noticed that the wings would flex then tighten back, always in symmetry. However each set of wings on different women moved differently at different times. Also some had pairs, while others had sets of pairs. "Why would they have this woman have two pairs, but the woman beside her of about the same age has only one?" she asked. Wang looked at the film then blew up the scene of the naked back of the woman playing the huge drum at the rear. "Shit, look at this." He adjusted it for a different parameter. The muscles on her back were moving along with the wings, as if they weren't just attached. They were part of her. "No one I have ever heard of puts that much effort into duplication of motion. Even when the entire thing is computer generated. It's like... It's like drawing a picture of a sailing ship from the age of exploration and adding the garbage they threw overboard floating away as they sail on. It's more lifelike, but it's also more effort for something no one would notice unless they look for it!" He sighed. "This is going to drive me crazy." He watched again. "Damn it the muscles even flow correctly, and are heavier than a human being. That suggests prosthetics. But..." He ran the filter again. "No sign of joins anywhere. The mechanisms required to create that motion in a live action shot would make her back at least five to ten centimeters thicker, That's two to three inches of extra body. But there's no sign of any additional thickness when she standing still in any other shot or when she moves enough to show her from the side!" "So what do you want to do?" "How's your vacation time looking?" "Mine?" She stopped. How much did she have? The government sanctioned a month per year. Unlike a lot of people, thanks to some technicalities of Federal service it didn't just disappear, it rolled over. "Sixty-five days." "I have almost three months." He shut down the system. "Want to take a trip to Tokyo? We can ask the horse." "Horse?" "You know the old American Slang, 'from the horse's mouth'." She looked at him. "Tao Lin, I haven't been taking my vacation time because I'm taking all of it at the end of next month." "Oh." "It's not you. I don't have any great and glorious plans." She looked down, her long honey blonde hair fig-leafing her face. "It's my eyes. I have astigmatism linked to hyperopia. What most people called being farsighted." She took off her glasses. "To me right now you're a blur. You have been for almost three years now. It's bad enough that I've put in for a medical retirement." "Well you can get Lasik-" "Too far gone. I was almost this bad before I got out of grade school, and my family couldn't afford it back then. When I went to work here, I had my eyes examined, and they said I'd have to wear these-" She held up the glasses, "-and get my prescription checked twice a year. I am almost clinically blind now. That's why I get a lift to work instead of driving. I can't see well enough even with the glasses to handle a car." "Oh shit." "Yeah." She husked. "Oh shit. This is my dream job!" She cried. "I wanted to work for NASA when I was still a little girl! I can't go into space because of my eyes, and before long I'll have to stand in the corner halfway across the room to even see the fucking screen! That is if NASA will buy the wide screen plasma monitor from hell for me." He reached out, touching her hand. "Myra, I'm sorry." "Why?" She slid the glasses back on. "Because I work well with you and hate the idea you will not be here any more. You make my day brighter just being in the same room." "So why haven't you asked me out?" "I though you would say no. A beautiful woman like you must have hundreds of men circling you like the first flower of spring." "First flower of spring... That's almost poetic." "The problem with learning English as a second language. Back home I would call you Siu Fa Yat. Little flower of the day." She blushed. "Little?" "Well..." He blushed. She gave him a deep-throated chuckle that sent shivers up his spine. "I don't have a passport." "I think we can get there by flying to Kadena Air Force Base. I just have to let the bosses know. When they ask, I tell them the truth. They seem to have an image processing software at least three generations ahead of ours, and I want to see about buying it." "You, talking to the bosses? Do the word's 'great tubs of yak butter' strike any memories?" He blushed again. One evening when they had been leaving, one of the men from the General Accounting Office had come around. He had been complaining that Wang had requisitioned 300,000 for some imaging software, and wanted an accounting of it. Worse yet, he had bypassed the bidding process so close to GAO's heart. Wang had spent three and a half days walking the idiot from office to office showing him exactly where all 350 copies had gone. He had muttered the curse under his breath, and he'd thought no one had heard. At least, no one who spoke Cantonese. He looked at her. "Remember photographic memory." She tapped her skull. "You say it, I see it and remember it." He started to curse again, then stopped. No, he wouldn't give her more fodder. "But I have a friend in disbursing, and if I tell him I'm going with you, and will assure you clear any such purchases before you make them..." "Then you will go?" "I have heard Tokyo is terrible this time of year, but hey, I'll suffer. Besides, we can do in on the clock. That way maybe you'll spend some of that hard earned vacation time on me." "Well if you insist." "Boob." He repeated the word. "Isn't that another name for-" "Knock it off. I'll call disbursing. You figure out what this software has to be able to do. But why fly into Okinawa?" He paused. "That is right. The US has a base in Japan doesn't it?" "Yokota Transport command base outside of Tokyo. Where is this company located?' "The Ginza." The red light district? She looked at him with a smirk. "Trying to see a few of the more interesting Asian sights while you're there?" He stared after her in shock. ***** Tokyo is Japan's capital the country's largest city and also one of Japan's 47 Prefectures. The metropolis of Tokyo consists of 23 city wards (ku), 26 cities, 5 towns and 8 villages, including the Izu and Ogasawara Islands south of Japan's main island Honshu. The 23 city wards (ku) are the center of Tokyo and make up about one third of the metropolis' area, while housing roughly eight of Tokyo's approximately twelve million residents. Nestled not far from the Imperial Palace is a district many American service men have heard of. The Ginza. For the locals of the city the 1920's were the heyday years for Ginza. Men striving to be at the very height of fashion and sophistication flooded in. The cafes were the big attraction - where pretty women served the drinks in the Geisha houses. Back during the forties and fifties, American servicemen went to what was then the most famous red light district in Asia. As the servicemen came it changed, becoming more raucous and alive, but in the 80s and 90s as other districts such as Shinjuku tried to outdo it, the Ginza settled back into a more sedate nature. The Ginza has the honor of being the most expensive place in the world to buy land. A square meter of the town is listed at over one million yen, a staggering $100,000. Marunouchi with neighboring Otemachi, to the west are home to the headquarters or Tokyo branches of many of Japan's largest companies, particularly from the financial sector. But the Ginza is still rocking in it's own way. It is now home to a lot of famous record labels and other entertainment organizations of the Japanese capital. Wang and Gomez didn't bother with a cab. For an American riding a Tokyo taxicab is sort of like Russian roulette. The design of the back doors to snap open when the drive flicked a switch at your stop to the breakneck pace everyone deemed to drive can be unnerving. It was decided by both that they would merely walk from the subway station to where the Nakimaru digital Video Company had offices. The secretary spoke excellent English, and asked them to wait as she called in to the offices. Akira Tamigawa of marketing came to meet them. He was a tall slender man dressed in expensive clothes that would have looked perfect in a bank anywhere in the world. "Please come in," he said. His accent was heavy, but he spoke slowly and clearly. Wang showed him the ID from NASA then opened his briefcase. "Back at the Johnson Space Center, we do verification of satellite photos," he told the man. "To show that they haven't been faked." "Ah so." "Yes. I happened to take an interest in one of the videos worked on by your company." "You did?" The man was impressed by that fact. This was high recognition! "Which one was it?" "Yosegai Ogoru." The smile slipped. "I see... And you are here because?" "We wanted to ask what imaging software you used for the video." Tamigawa sighed. "I cannot help you," he said. "It is not that I say I will not, it is that I cannot assist you. The film was only edited in our offices. We had only the raw footage to work with." Wang looked at him for a long moment. "So who did special effects in the footage?" "By the Shimatsu sisters or perhaps by the American that was with Midori Shimatsu when she delivered the footage to our labs." "An American?" "Yes. I did not handle the actual editing, but Miss Fujiyama has the names of the crew that did." He leaned down, talking to his intercom. A moment later, a woman came in handing him a sheet of paper, which Tamigawa handed to them. "If you would like, I can ask Toshiro Mitsuo, the senior technician to talk to you." "Please." The salesman got on the phone then flipped the paper he had handed them, drawing a small map on the back. "Up two floors, turn left third door on the right. If the red light is flashing, do not enter." The pair went up, followed the directions then waited until the red light stopped flashing. The room looked like any visual arts mixing studio they had ever seen. A small man was hunched over the control board. "Close the door," he snapped. He didn't look up from the panel as he worked. Since both of them were pretty much the same way when they were working, neither complained. Finally the man turned around. Like Myra, he had thick glasses. In fact if he had been sent by an agency to a movie production about the Japanese set in the forties, he would have been sent back with a blistering comment on stereotyping. "I'm busy," he snapped. "We understand sir," Myra said softly. "We are looking for information about a video you were working on." "Must be Yosegai Ogoru. That is the only recent work anyone wants to ask me about," he snapped. "Are you with one of the American entertainment papers?" "No. We're with NASA." "NASA? Which one?" "The American space agency." Toshiro chuckled. "Please, sit." He motioned toward some chairs. He brought up the work he had been doing. A Visual Kei band, heavily made up in Kimonos sang. As they watched, the people began to shrink. "Ever since that video came out, we have been trying to duplicate the effects they used. My boss would kill to know how the Shimatsus did it," he hissed, stopping the film in mid frame. "Look at that. When first Kika then Midori shrank, it looked like they really did. That is the best I can do, and I can tell it doesn't look real." Myra looked at the screen. "Try adjusting the x-axis to compensate." He looked at her for a long moment then tried her suggestion. It was better, but still not perfect. "Thank you very much, miss?" "Chambers. Myra Chambers." He made a note. "Since you helped, you get part of the credit. Now, why would two people with such skills be investigating a music video of all things?" Wang explained. Mitsuo nodded then went to a cabinet. "Mister Tamigawa was correct; we shot none of the original footage. All we did was splicing and editing. The raw footage we have is here." He took out the data cards from the cameras that had been delivered. "They came separately. The vocal tracks were laid down three days before we received the video footage. The footage shot off the shores of Hokkaido near Abashiri came by mail. Midori Shimatsu and an American delivered the remainder. The only name I got was Rob. He didn't speak Japanese, or at least did not speak it where I could hear him." He slotted the first disc into the reader, and brought up the boats sailing toward the horizon. "This as I said came by mail. You will notice that we used almost all of it in the video itself. The remainder was on six different cameras, and they are here as well." He held up each disc marked in Kanji as he spoke. "This is the tripod camera at Shiretoko, this is the fiber optic camera, this is the first stationary camera of the Taiko band, this the second. This is the first hand held camera aboard the boats, this second." "How much of the footage did you use?" "For a four minute video, less than five percent. Miss Shimatsu ordered the cuts herself. She also took the original discs when she left. However my system records the entire disc before beginning, so I have copies of all of them." He looked at them for a long moment. "What do you do for NASA?" "Visual data verification. Pretty much what you do, but the stars we look at are in space and we make sure the pictures are real," Myra told him. "Then perhaps you can figure this out." He threaded the next disc. "This is the opening intro of the film shot in Shiretoko before the song has begun." A shell leaned against a rock. He waited. A figure moved down beside it. She was a strikingly beautiful woman. Her hair was the brown of autumn leaves. Two pairs of wings fluttered as she shifted her balance, one foot going forward the other leg arching back as if she were doing a slow motion lunge. The same position as a Taiko drummer beating a massive 1.5-meter diameter 2.1-meter length O-Shime Daiko. She lifted the horn, balancing it with both hands, lifting the mouthpiece to her lips and blew. The horn sounded, deep and resonant. "There is a problem with this scene." He brought up his diagnostics. "The sound has been frequency altered. "The shell," he pointed out, "is not a Pacific Triton shell, which is what people use for trumpets. But the pitch has been altered through almost three octaves so that it sounds like one. "This is the Taiko band, stationary camera two." The Taiko band was shown from the side paused at the moment. Then the video feed began, drumsticks whirling as they whipped in to strike the drumheads. They listened appreciatively, noticing the artistry of the movements. Then the music stopped. A man with wings walked out, His voice was impossibly deep. "What the... Frequency shifting again?" Wang asked. "Yes. I think it was done to bring the sound of the drums down to what would be normal." He reversed, adjusting a slide. The drums sounded small and tinny. Now adjusted to a more normal vocal range, they heard the man. "All right, we'll hold the tape there until the others arrive," he said in English. Beside him a woman with wings and scarlet hair spoke swiftly repeating him in Japanese. He turned, and the video froze with the face clear in the lens. "That," Mitsuo said, "is the man I knew as Rob." He began the show again. Now there were over a hundred people there, men women and children, all with wings, though most only had single pairs. The same woman that had spoken before was speaking very rapidly. "We want you to dance as you would if this were a local Taiko band," Mitsuo translated. "Yes, they are locals!" a young man shouted, and a lot of the people laughed with him. "But still hidden Shiri," another man in his thirties commented. The younger man bobbed his head. "Yes, Grandfather. I am sorry." "Grandfather?" Myra leaned away from the screen. If there's five years difference between those two I'll eat the disc." "Yes." Mitsuo ran the film on. From this angle, the two women of Chocho stood side-by-side, hugging, and singing. Mitsuo stopped the scene again. "While the face is definitely Kika Shimatsu the body is not." He brought up another scene from another video. Kika Shimatsu was standing in a stylized oriental dance pose dressed in a dancer's leotard. Her breasts were much smaller in the older video. "What, two cup sizes?" Wang asked. "Only men would judge a woman's size by 'cup'," Myra snorted. "But that's about right." The two men looked at her grinning. "There is much more, but I have videos I must edit." Matsuo ran off copies of all of the discs. "I ask only one thing." "Yes." "If it is special effects, please tell me. But is it is Yosegai... That I would truly wish to know." Wang took the discs, and the pair left. ***** Back in Houston, they began working on the discs. The 'four minute' video had been composed of scenes from over three hours of digital video format. Every second of data had been analyzed, and there was no sign of any tampering beyond the sound of the drums and the horn. They worked on the discs for over a week, and still could find no trace of any other alterations. Everything else was exactly as it had been filmed. Most of the scenes on the boats were incidental. Children moved around playing with peals of laughter, and the adults watched them to assure no one came to harm. A lot of it was repeated because each of the handheld cameras had been on separate vessels. They had flipped the camera on and off, the way tourists might just play with the controls, filming such important things as the sea flowing past, or a sea gull. But aboard both ships, someone took control, and the cameras stopped filing. Then they started again. The cameras had been mounted on tripods, and aimed toward the bow of the boat they happened to be on. Everyone from the aged grandfathers to the youngest child stood there silently as the oldest man of them all spoke. They had borrowed a phonetic translation program from the NSA, which translated voice rather than printed material. "Wait." Myra stopped the program running it back. The man was saying. "Now you young ones, do not be frightened when they appear..." She stopped it. "That is the younger man we heard called 'Grandfather' on the other disc." "Are you sure?" "Photographic memories include perfect pitch. Yes, I'm sure." They started the program again. "...They are our sisters of blood, since so many of them are born of our families..." "What does he mean by that?" Wang asked. He made a motion spanning a distance with his fingers. "The figures we see on camera are what, about ten centimeters in height?" "On average. They are between 85 and 107mm." He nodded. Wang was sipping tea looking at the screen when Myra came in. "I sent the picture of the woman blowing the shell trumpet to a friend of mine at the Smithsonian. He told me it's impossible." "Huh?" She handed him a picture. He looked at it then brought up the scene. It was the same type of shell. "So she'd blowing some other type of-" "The Hora Gai as the Japanese call it uses Charonia tritonis, the Pacific Triton shell." She told him pedantically. "The ones used are for trumpets average over 36 cm in length with a bell opening over 19 cm. That is actually Sassia ponderi, an Australian variety-" "But it's the same type!" "Which is only 16 mm long," she finished. He stared at her, then at the screen. "16 millimeters. Yet it looks what, just about ten inches long?" She bent down, looking at the screen. "If that." He leaned back, looking at the screen, rolling the chair back and forth as he thought. "We need to find this man Rob." "Mitsuo didn't know where Midori Shimatsu went. But he knew she was leaving show business." He stood, taking the discs, and slipping them into sleeves. "Come on, we're going on vacation." "What?" She stared at him in shock. "But Tao Lin, you know-" "Myra, we may have accidentally stumbled on one of the biggest secrets since the Manhattan Project. Remember what Mitsuo said before we left?" "He said 'If is it is Yosegai'," Myra murmured. Then she stared at him "Tao Lin, are you saying it is real faerie?" "I don't know," he whispered. ***** Instead of taking time off, Myra worked her magic yet again. They arrived at Yokota, and Wang immediately called Nakimaru. The company had an address for Sho Kimatsu but it took them three days to find the music promoter. "She joined an organization named Innerworld based out of Chicago." Wang reported finally. "Mr. Kimatsu is not sure where she is, but believes she and this man Rob are in Fujigoko." They packed for a camping trip, and caught a train to the park area. Fujigoko, or the Fuji Five Lake region, is located at the foot of Mt Fuji. They looked up at the symbol of Japan in wonder. Then realized their problem. The park area was huge! Three days later, Tao Lin got off the payphone in disgust. "She's still here according to Kimatsu." "Maybe we're going about it the wrong way." Myra turned to a pair of young girls that was walking past. "Do you speak English?" "A little," one girl replied shyly. "I am sorry for interrupting your conversation, but I heard there was a rock and roll star in the park." "Not that I know of," the girl said. "Do you know of a woman named Midori Shimatsu?" The one that didn't speak English seemed to know the name. She giggled, and then spoke rapidly to her friend. The other also giggled. "My friend had said to me that she saw a woman she believes was Midori Shimatsu with a Gaijin over near Saiko yesterday." "Saiko?" "So sorry. Word 'ko' Means Lake "So over by lake Sai?" "Hai." "Domo Arigato," Myra said, bowing. She opened the tourist map, poring over the words. "Here. The westernmost lake. There's a tram." Saiko (literally "Western Lake") is smaller and much less developed than neighboring Lake Kawaguchi. Wooded mountains surround it, including both forests and several areas set aside for camping. The views of Mt Fuji from the lakeshores were partly blocked by a mountain range south of the lake, from where they disembarked. A network of pleasant hiking trails covers the mountains and hills surrounding the lake, as well as the Aokigahara Jukai, "Aokigahara Tree Ocean", an expansive forest south of the lake, famous for people getting lost. Wang and Myra found the lake, then the forest, then, as many had before them, got lost. They finally stopped to rest. "I have not seen forests like this since I was on vacation in Massachusetts during my senior year," he moaned. "Well it could be worse. We could have found Midori and been told that she didn't know what the hell we were talking about." Myra laughed. Then she leaned forward, a firm breast pushing into his arm. "Don't look, but there is a Fairy in the tree directly ahead of me." "How can you-" He shrugged. "That's right, far sighted." "Yes. The oak in front of us, about fifteen meters away, five meters up, on the branch overlooking the trail." He yawned, pretending to look around. Maybe it was a Fairy. Maybe it was just a white leaf. "Any idea what we can do?" "If the Shimatsu sisters filmed a video with them, perhaps these will come out?" Wang shrugged. They had downloaded the song onto his I-pod, and he'd brought a pair of speakers that would plug into the unit. He rigged them up then started the music. The song began, and they listened. Myra leaned into his shoulder companionably, but her eyes were on the tree. "There are more of them. They seem to be enjoying the music." The song ended. They sat for a long moment, just enjoying the summer air. Then from the shadows they came. The Faerie were armed, but they didn't seem to mistrust the humans. They fluttered closer, and one of them spoke in a smooth soprano. "Oh god, they're real," Wang gasped. The fairy looked at him but didn't seem to understand what he had said. "We don't speak Japanese," Myra said to her. "Wakaramasen?" the small woman asked. She made a motion as if sitting. "Dozo." She turned, speaking rapidly to another. That one commented back then flew into the woods. They sat, watching the faerie patrol around them. Then from the trees came another group of Faerie. They settled down. Among these oddly enough were two women that looked like twins. In fact, they both looked like Toni Braxton except one was well along in a pregnancy and the other was holding a young baby in a by-god baby carrier. "Can we help you?" the one with the carrier asked. Myra leaned forward. "We're looking for Midori Shimatsu." The twin Braxtons looked at each other. They leaned together, talking. Then they looked back at them. "Why are you looking for her?" "I am Tao Lin Wang. My friend is Myra Chambers. We're signal analysts from NASA. That's-" "The National Aeronautics and Space Administration." The Braxton holding a baby said. "We've heard of it." She looked down as if thinking. "Signal analysts?" "Yes. We work with visual imagery." "Pretty far out of your bailiwick aren't you?" "We were trying to find out what special software Midori Shimatsu used when she and her sister made the video for the song Yosegai Ogoru." He sighed. "But we discovered other anomalies. The shell used by the Fairy as a trumpet is from a species that is only 16mm in length. That told us that the Faerie are real." The figure looked at them. "So what, you've notified NASA and they want to use them for space mission?" "Nothing of the sort!" Myra replied aghast. "We haven't told anyone!" "But I am willing to bet that the Russians Chinese, French and Japanese are very interested." Wang said. "They have people who do our jobs, and anyone who has seen that video would want to know how it was done." The twins shared another huddled conversation. "What do you want?" Myra waved helplessly. "I...we want to help." The twins shared yet another conversation. "Let's talk somewhere more comfortable." ***** The small lava tube was near the three caves that had been opened for public display call the Wind Ice and Bat cave respectively. The tube they were using though was small enough that a cat would have trouble getting into it, though it connected near the inner end to the bat cave. Myra had been bothered when she shrank enough that her glasses fell off, but her eyes widened in wonder before she was fully faerie sized. "I can see clearly!" She almost screamed in excitement. She spun, hugging Wang, who at about 100 millimeters tall still felt a rush of excitement that made him grasp his crotch. The faerie around him laughed, and they spoke to each other in an obvious manner that made him blush even more. They passed a trio of women outside the entrance who had hung a small doe rabbit by its ears as they gutted it. One of them spoke to the group with them, and then went back to their task. The smooth tube ran inward, then doglegged, making an area large enough for a full grown human to lie on his side. The Faerie had patiently carved rooms out the obsidian glass making it a home. The Toni Braxton look alike that had told them he was Rob stopped them in a room filled with Faerie. They were busy weaving silk fresh from the cocoons and chattering among themselves. A woman walked over, and Wang recognized her. "You were in the video outtakes!" He looked at her oddly. "But you had only a single pair of wings then." "Yes." She looked at him with a cold expression. "I am Orchid. When one of our kind mates for the first time, she gains a second pair. You are?" Rob made the introductions. Orchid nodded. "Please, you must speak with the Queen of this realm." She motioned toward a chamber carved into the wall. "Please." The two visitors walked into the chamber. The woman sitting on a separate throne carved from the obsidian looked at them coolly. She wore a kimono of scarlet with a pale yellow under tunic. Orchid knelt, speaking rapidly in Japanese. The woman looked at her, then at the visitors. "Nanja?" Orchid motioned to the visitors, giving their names. The Queen spoke then looked at the pair. "This is Ume, Queen of the Aokigahara realm. She asks why you have intruded into their lands." Myra sensed that they would accept her better, so she explained. Ume listened impassively. "Know you humans that our kind has lived here near this mountain since the eruption of ten thousand years ago. If you do not wish to remain here forever, you will conclude your business and leave." "Why is she so angry with us?" Wang asked. "I told her you were Americans," Orchid said. "She remembers the city burning from Curtis Le May's bombers." Orchid looked at them. "More people died during the firebombing of Tokyo than died at Hiroshima or Nagasaki. She and her people remember this." "We were not alive when that happened," Wang replied. "Besides I was born in Taiwan." "Do you think I should tell her that?" Orchid asked. "She remembers the original Kamikaze Taifun that destroyed the Chinese fleets in 1274 and 1281." "She does?" Wang thought furiously. "Does she remember Yi Soon Shin?" Orchid looked at him, then turned, asking a question in Japanese. Ume waved a hand, and Orchid translated what the woman had said. "Speak to those in Chosun about such things." "What does she say about our being too young?" Orchid spoke again then replied. "She has said she will not blame you for such things. But asks that you ask before entering her realm again." The translator wrote carefully using a tiny brush, handing a piece of rice paper to them. "That is the e-mail address of the unit that was given to them by Rob." They were shooed out. A Japanese Fairy stopped them, looking at Wang with a proprietary air. She spoke to Orchid, who shrugged, speaking rapidly. "She wishes to know if you are available for this evening." "She what?" Wang stared at the Fairy in shock. Orchid sighed, and explained. By the time she was done both Myra and Wang were the same color of red. Myra pushed him. "You had better go. If they need human men to breed, every man they get in a nest is worth his weight in gold." She watched as Wang was led off by the Fairy, and sighed. "Problems?" She turned, and the pregnant woman holding a child looked back at her. "I..." She looked after Wang, and she dashed the tears from her eyes. "I wanted him for myself, Damnit!" The woman put a comradely arm around her. "Come on." They walked back into the common area, then into another small alcove to the side. Rob stood there at a massive Treo palm computer. He was typing as they came in, and looked at them before returning to his work. "Be with you in a moment." He continued typing, then signed off after reading the message. "Henry and Erika are on Dhodhekanisos. Lady P and Martin are in Pembrokeshire. And Morgan and Charles are in Uman." He stretched, smiling at Myra. "Takes a bit of getting used to, doesn't it?" "Could I look at your back?" Myra asked. The female smiled, turning. Myra bent, running her hand across the area between the shoulders. While she did, she asked Rob to extend the wings as if ready to fly, flap them slowly up and down, then in the rowing style motion used to hover or fly backwards. "Tao Lin was right. He noticed there is a significant change in the musculature of the back to support the wings." She turned, and made Trillium turn so she could check her back as well. "The muscles in your back are different from hers-" "His." "His?" Myra looked at Rob confused. The pair explained the mating cycle, and Myra just shook her head. "I don't know how that could happen. There is no logical reason why there should be a sex change-" "Actually there is," Rob told her. "After about five and a half hours, a male that is fairy sized shows an appreciable level of mental retardation." "Do not remind me, my love," Trillium said, hugging her husband. "This last winter, our associates tested the problem." "We've seen some men literally go from average to moron in about an hour," Rob told her. "Trillium's father ran afoul of their justice system, and he never even thought that an owl would be able to kill him." He hugged the girl, pecking the sleeping baby on her cheek. "So we tested it. "We used the same criteria the military uses for testing short-term memory when teaching newbie pilots about hypoxia. Expose the person to the conditions, and test them on a rigid schedule. After about three hours you start losing some coherence, though by concentrating, you can maintain control. But it starts slipping away about five hours along." "I had to hold him like my child after seven hours," Trillium whispered. "He kept being distracted by things he could see in motion." "She showed me the film of me at eight and a half," Rob said. "I was amused by something as simple as the nose game you use with babies and younger children." He pretended to grab his own nose. "They kept me laughing for about an hour. Until I couldn't remember why it was supposed to be funny." He shuddered. "The worst of it was when I came back to human size, I remembered every minute of it." His shudder was deeper. "Have you ever read the book 'Flowers for Algernon'?" Myra nodded. "Remember the way Charlie went from moron to super genius to something even lower than moron? That was what it was like for me." "But you said Trillium's father did the same in what, less than an hour?" "We think it was the method." Rob told her. "With me, I was just sitting around, trying to be normal with a bunch of people telling me what to do every half hour or so. Her father however had sex, but not what would be procreative." Myra looked at him. "Could you be a bit more specific?" "One of the local women sucked him off, but made him drink his own seed." Trillium told her. "Even though he was my father, I was horrified by the change in that short a time. As horrible as it was, his death was a mercy." "So if he had not gone off with the woman..." "He would have been the poster kid for the Special Olympics when it's time to grow back to normal tomorrow around sunset. And remembering every little stupid thing he had done in the meantime." Myra pictured Tao Lin staring at light reflecting off a lake in wonder, and shivered. "Then maybe I should have taken my chance to be with him." "Not if you ever want to be human again," Trillium told her. "I chose to become Fairy, and the process for a woman our size is more direct." "Yeah, just ask 'Awapuhi," Rob snorted. "You're still mad because she was going to be your first real partner, and she decided to indulge herself." Trillium commented with a laugh. "I just wanted some warning," Rob commented. "When a woman decides to have a baby, the man must merely lay there and deliver," Trillium pontificated. "Yeah, like the old joke 'an what am I to do when I wake up and find the wife is helpin' herself?'" Rob commented dryly. Myra laughed. A woman walked in and she stared at her. She had seen the face... "Holy shit," Rob commented. "What?" the woman said. Then she turned to Myra. "I was hoping you and I would get together, but Tsutsuji explained what might happen." Myra stood. Except for the salmon color of the upswept hair... "Tao Lin?" The woman tossed her head. "I know I'm a woman at the moment, but have I changed that much?" Myra stared at her, then at Rob and Trillium. Two pairs of brown eyes looked at her from beneath cinnamon hair. "She doesn't understand," Trillium said. "Hell, neither did I," Rob commented. The newcomer snorted. "Will someone please tell me what the hell you're talking about?" "Sit down, Tao Lin," Rob said. The woman sat with instinctive grace, her single pair of wings fluttering up out of the way. Rob stepped out, and came back with a dusky skinned Fairy. "Kaunaoa, make me a mirror." The Hawaiian made a circle with her right hand, and the area she had circumscribed rippled. "Tell me what you see," Rob said. The woman leaned toward the surface, and stared at it. She touched her face then looked at Myra. "Why do I look like you?" Rob explained the process, and how men became their ideal women during the change. Tao Lin merely stared at his new face. They left him and Myra alone after that. It seemed like the best thing to do. ***** The senators walked through Johnson Space Center, coming finally to the Signal Image Processing center. Tao Lin Wang walked them through the images, showing them faked images, and real ones. "We had problems with the recent release of a music video entitled Yosegai Ogoru but checking with Nakimaru Digital in Japan showed that the layers were more subtle than normal." He turned. "Myra?" The woman looked up. Without her glasses, everyone could see the soft expression she normally wore. "Up now," she reported. The video began to play. On Myra's screen the video stopped, and the computer beeped. ANOMALY! LAYERS: 7. "As you can see, the developers of this video used a new process that created what I am calling micro layers, which read as background when attached..." On the Home Front Frankie rubbed her eyes, looking at the invoices yet again. Since she had worked at her father's shipping warehouse briefly, Monica had saddled her with handling the shipping and receiving for the organization she had joined named Innerworld after the incident at the college. Really was it her fault she liked guys? The man had been a hunk, and she had flirted with him almost instinctively. How was she to know that he was married? The ring might have given her a clue... She had promised to be good, and Monica had been adamant. Frankie would work out of the mansion she would keep her hands off the staff and behave. The only other option was to go back to her Father's home. That was telling a three-time loser that he was on his last fall, and unlike a mere murderer, she most definitely did not want to return to that specific prison. The mansion had become a central clearinghouse for a lot of odd things in the last year. A supplier in Vegas sent something like 100 pounds of miniature swords and sectioned pikes every few months. Another supplier (A medical supply house her father sometimes frequented for illicit drugs) supplied liquid medicines in bulk, and a lot of different places supplied small packets of cloth and tiny bone slivers or small bundles of what would have been straps if they were a lot larger. Another supplier sent rolls of thinsulate insulating cloth in bolts and yet another sent occasional shipments of empty dram and half dram sized bottles. When she signed for them, a number of students and ex-students would take the packages carry them down into the basement and smaller boxes would be delivered back to Frankie for shipment. There were fifteen places she sent them in the US right now, three in England, two each in France Japan and Mexico, and one in Italy. Crete had been added just last month, along with an island whose name she couldn't pronounce. What she couldn't figure out was what she was sending out. She was not allowed in that room below when the students were here. She hated secrets...unless they were her own. She finally decided she just had to know. Monica was at the college the students except for Matt Holmes who acted her secretary for the organization were not here. The only staff present were two of the maids and Madison the butler, and none of them would stop her... she hoped. She signed for the most recent set of boxes shipping out, and stepped out of the first floor room that was her office. One of the maids was in sight, but she was walking away, and disappeared after a moment. Frankie took a deep breath and walked into the foyer. The entrance to the basement was in the kitchen and she walked that way. Madison was putting together a small plate of fruit, and she hid until he left. Then she went to the door, opening it. The stairs led down to a landing with a door. She pushed it open, feeling like a juvenile mystery novel heroine. The room looked so... ordinary. Three tables were set in a U shape, and the walls were covered in maps. She walked over, and looked at the one for Mexico. There were two flags at Tampico and Vera Cruz. Each had a number, and she saw a book hanging on a string below it. She lifted the book. TAMPICO: CONTACT HECTOR VELASQUEZ, 321 DIAZ MIRON, TAMPICO TAMAULIPAS, MEXICO Intrigued, she went to the map of England and looked at the book hanging below it. RYDE: CONTACT JENNIFER MORAN, 417 NORTH WALK. RYDE, ISLE OF WIGHT. "Finding everything you need?" a voice asked. She spun staring at Matt who was standing relaxed in the doorway. "I-" Frankie stopped. "I just got curious." "You know the old saw about curiosity and cats," he told her gently. "If you really want to know what is going on down here, it's a lot easier to ask." "But Monica won't tell me!" "She probably feels you're not ready yet, Frankie." "And when will I be ready?" she snapped. "When Monica says so." She let the book hang back down. "You know, like Monica, I come from a family on the wrong side of the law. Shall I make assumptions? Carboys of laudanum among other things?" "Frankie, don't push this," Matt warned. "Monica probably has a good reason why she hasn't told you yet." "Oh really." Frankie gave him a grin. "Then maybe she will have to come up with a reason why I should be told. Before I say the wrong thing to the wrong people." He sighed, and then pulled out a cell phone. He put it to his ear. "Professor Braziani please." He waited. "Monica, this is Matt. Frankie is down in the disbursing room. She was looking at the England index when I arrived." He waited. "I don't know. We might have to do that, but it's your decision." He nodded then closed the phone. "Monica said pack your bags, and be out by tonight." Frankie stared at his back as he walked out. ***** She found herself crying as she carried her bags down. She had snarled at the servants that had tried to help her, and sat on them by the door when Monica came in. She ran her fingers through her windblown hair then looked at the forlorn figure in the foyer. "Why?" Frankie asked. "I told you to behave Frankie," Monica replied levelly. "You instead decided to stick your nose where it didn't belong, and made threats." Her head cocked. "You know me well enough to know how I react to threats." "I just..." Frankie looked at her with tears gleaming in her eyes. "I wanted to be part of it. To feel like I belong. Do you think my father is any better than your grandfather to live with? I was feeling like I did at home. Everything arranged and nothing allowed!" "What we're doing here is important, Frankie. Not only to me but to almost a million people worldwide. What makes you think you have a right to know what we're doing?" "Maybe I don't," Frankie admitted softly. "But have you given me a chance to prove I am?" Monica looked at her for a long moment. "It's against my better judgment, but I'm going to give you that chance. Come with me." The older woman walked down the hall to her office, and tapped the intercom. "Matt, bring the East Side package up here." A few moments later, the young man walked in carrying a box about the size of a lunch box. He looked at Frankie then set it down on the desk. "There you go Frankie. All you have to do is deliver it to the address on the box then come back here." The young woman looked at the address then picked it up. The address was in a rough neighborhood, and ended with THIRD OAK TREE LEFT SIDE FROM SOUTH ENTRANCE. She drove sullenly to the area, and got out in the deepening twilight. The address was a community park. Shrugging she walked in until she came to the tree. There was a hollow large enough for the box to fit in, and she wedged it in. She turned, and froze. There were some figures standing at the entrance of the park. One had what appeared to be a baseball bat. "Looks like easy pickings," one of them growled. The four men started forward. A voice beside her ear whispered, "Stand still. We will deal with them." If she had been able to change into a statue, she would have. The men were coming toward her in an inexorable pace. The one at the back slapped at his neck, and she could have sworn she had seen a large insect near his head. Then from all around them came a swarm of large insects. The men shouted, the bat-armed man waving it frantically. Then before her eyes they seemed to shrink. The leader was down, and the insects had latched onto his arms and legs, stopping him from leaping up to flee. The bat wielder was down on his back, and the insects seemed to cover his front. "I think that about does it," the voice said again. Only now did she turn her head. A figure in black leather stood on her shoulder, and looked back at her in appraisal. "You reacted much better than our usual contact," the figure said. "He likes to fight them before we arrive." The woman chuckled, shaking her head in wry amusement. "I am Forget Me Not. What is your name?" "Francesca." "Is that what friends call you?" "My friends call me Frankie." She looked back. The men had been shrinking, and now they were being professionally trussed up by what she could see were women the same size. "What about them?" "There are some humans that never seem to learn. Those four will supply their seed to our gene pool, and one day, perhaps, they will join us. Until then, we will keep them for our own needs." "Won't they be missed?" The fairy laughed. "Matt did some checking. Did you know half a million people disappear every year? Over ten percent are never found. A good portion of them are around you now." The Faerie had lifted off, hoisting their struggling captives into the air. Now they hovered in a mass before her. The small woman lifted gently into the air. "Monica called, and had a discussion with us concerning you, Frankie. She feels you are too immature to keep our secret." "The secret..." She looked around. "That you are real. That is the secret." Frankie looked at them. "I just wanted to know what was happening." "We understand curiosity, but threatening us does not help the matter," the small woman motioned. "Thanks to Monica, our warriors are well enough armed that we lose fewer of our kind to hunting accidents. The medicines she supplies have saved the sick. You have threatened that in a childish bid for attention. Now we must decide what to do with you." "With me?" "Yes." Forget Me Not looked into her eyes. "We will make that decision for Monica. She cares too deeply to want to use the best alternative if we decide against you." "Best alternative?" "That you die or disappear," Forget Me Not told her bluntly. "She knows how much it would distress your father either way, and would feel responsible for what happened. Whereas we will do what must be done either way. It is our nature to be pragmatic about danger to our people and lives. But the final decision is yours." "You mean I still have a chance to live?" "Yes, but again, there are two edges to this blade," Forget Me Not said. "One way you return to the mansion, and actively help Monica with what she is doing. The other..." "The other?" "You return to your father's home. Tell him what you wish, for from that day forward our people will shun you and all within that household and all people you speak to that we do not already trust. We will never be there to be seen, and soon you will be considered quite mad. You will end your life telling all you wish to talk to that we exist yet no one will ever believe you." Forget Me Not sighed. "That last is most likely. You have done nothing to harm us. If your joined us it would not be willingly. Unlike the bulk of humanity we abhor force when it is not just to use it. Monica did not suggest this to us, but we know it would be more to her liking." The woman set her hands on her hips as she hovered before Frankie. "So what shall it be? To help, or to be thought mad?" "I want to know you exist." She sighed. "I think..." She looked at the silent mass that watched her. "I think I finally grew up." "Remember, Frankie. We will be watching still. Our trust in humanity, even in such as Monica and the others is still new." The woman whistled, and they just...vanished. Frankie stared around her, then stood, thinking for a long time. Then she walked to her car, and drove to the mansion. Madison opened the door. "Miss Fanducci," he said. "Miss Braziani is in the library." Frankie walked to the door, pausing, leaning her head against it. Then pushed the door open. Monica sat near the fireplace, a roaring fire heating the room. Matt sat in a chair nearby, as did a couple of the students that worked downstairs. "Frankie." Monica looked at her coolly. "Back to pick up your stuff?" "No." She took off her coat then picked a chair. "I came back to find out what I can do to really help." "Is that so?" Matt asked softly. Frankie looked at him. "I just wanted to know what was really happening. If anyone knows how I felt, it is Monica. I hated being on the outside when it was father doing business. I hated it more when the woman I thought was my best friend w