dduane:

petermorwood:

The dimensional rift at the top only opens on foggy days…

“I told you this was not a bright idea.”

"You told me! Excuse me, but what you said was  ‘Yeah, sure, I’ll trial one just to get Darryl off my case, he knows what I prefer in manuals but he’s not gonna believe it until I take the thing out on a test run!’”

"Yeah, well, did I or did I not hear you agree that this was probably a good thing because once one of us had done it then he’d stop bugging you about it too?”

"…Didn’t think you were going to take me seriously!”

“Oh didn’t you. So that’s my fault, is it! And what about this tiny little screen? Huh? How was I supposed to take that itsy bitsy i-with-a-circle-around-it seriously? Come on! It should have been a giant flashing red glowing text from one damn side to the other saying WARNING, DO NOT ENGAGE TRANSPORT FUNCTIONS WHEN LOCAL DIMENSIONAL RIFT PROBABILITY EXCEEDS 80%! But no, I get to catch the heat because some designer somewhere, somewhen, somewhatever, doesn’t want to spoil his pretty app’s screen real estate with some nasty blatant warning about how you could destabilize the worldgates for a whole damn city!” A moan and the sound of a head being clutched. “Carl is going to pitch a total Tunguska over this one, and Rhiow, oh God Rhiow won’t leave a stitch of skin on my body, I can feel the claws right now. We are in so much trouble.”

"Look, Neets, I’m not sure that — ”

“Don’t talk to me, don’t talk to me right now or I will— Oh God, how do I get out of this thing? It’s locked up. Please tell me I have not bricked a WizPhone, someone’s gonna be all over me for that. And Dairine, Dairine’s gonna laugh for weeks, she will never let me forget this, and neither will Spot, you haven’t been laughed at until you’ve been laughed at by a sentient computer. And look where we are!!”

"Look, I just stuck in this coordinate set because it jumps right out at you in the Google/Charmr interface, it’s a landmark, those pins always show up first and how can you blame me for—”

“Very easily, this is me telling the universe, I Blame Kit For This, Right There, He Did It! And now I have to figure out how to—”

"Neets.”

“—get us out of this mess, and with hardware I don’t understand, no less,  because if we don’t gate out of here the same way we went in things will just get more unstable, you can’t leave one of these apps running with an incomplete transit transaction, Darryl was real plain about that, and if we—”

"Neets.”

“— mess up the London gates at rush hour people are going to wind up everywhere from Chur to the Crossings instead of home for their dinners, and then Sker’ret’s gonna—”

“Neets.”

“What??”

“The capsule next to us?”

“Yes, what?”

"There are a couple of guys in it. And one of them is really staring at us.”

"Uhh…”

“Probably because this capsule was empty a minute ago? Because the Jumpr app has the usual safety offset built in, you saw that in the docs, and we couldn’t be in here it if it hadn’t been…”

"…empty…”

“Yeah.”

“…”

“…Shit.”

***

“…the best locked room murder ever seen, John. Bar none! Not merely a locked room but a glass locked room! Impossible to get into or out of once the capsule has left the boarding platform! No outside witnesses because every other capsule was empty because one of the suspects had rented them all! A full dinner laid out, twelve guests all with motive, at least three different possible causes of death before we even get near the autopsy results, and for once, for once the evidence untampered with! Oh, John this is going to be memorable, you have no idea—”

"Sherlock.”

“—been waiting for some decent intellectual stimulation all week, finally this will—”

“Sherlock.”

“What, John?”

"Those empty capsules on either side?”

“Yes, exquisitely observant as always, John, you—”

“Not so empty at the moment. One of them, anyway.”

“What? Ridiculous, the Eye has been static for hours since the murder and there’s no possible way anyone could—”

The sound of a throat being softly cleared as someone points at the capsule in question.

“…Oh.”

***

“No, you hold down the bottom button and the power button at the same time —”

“I am never getting one of these. Never. Never.”

“Oh God, now his friend has noticed too.”

“Why do these things take so long to reboot? It’s magic, for God’s sake, can’t a wizardly thing boot faster than this? Hurry up!”

“At least you didn’t brick it.”

“This is not much consolation when we’re giving the locals nervous breakdowns!”

"The short guy doesn’t look nervous. He’s interested but he’s not freaking out. The other guy kind of looks like he wants to claw his way through the glass, though…”

“Yes, yes, stop showing me the damn Apple already, I know who built you, can you just hurry the hell up—”

"Is there sort of an emergency hatch in the top of these things?”

“Oh thank heaven, yes, here we go, sweet Powers how many apps have they installed on this thing? Where’s the — okay, here we go —”

"Uh oh, I really don’t think he should be trying to climb up that—”

“Right, return journey, point of origin, countdown no, offset check yes, availability yes, why does this thing have so many options, finally, here we go, you ready? Now.”

***

"Sherlock.”

“John, come on, give me a hand, we have to find out how—”

“Sherlock.”

“—impossible, we have to discover what—”

“Sherlock. A little observation please?”

“What, John? What are you—”

A throat is cleared again.

“…Impossible.”

A long sigh. “So was the elephant, as I recall.” And then a thought. “Trick of the mist?”

A prolonged silence. “…When you eliminate the impossible…”

“Yes.”

“Well. …Time to consider this later. In the meantime, we’ve got a lovely crime scene that isn’t going to deduce itself…”

***

And somewhere else, some thousands of miles away?

“I am not giving that app any stars at all.”