Dirty Little Secrets

“My lady, I realize that you are able to cite numerous and frequent cases of women learned in the sciences and the arts. But I would then ask you whether you know of any women who, through the strength of emotion and of subtlety of mind and comprehension, have themselves discovered any new arts and sciences which are necessary, good, and profitable, and which had hitherto not been discovered or known. For it is not such a great feat of mastery to study and learn some field of knowledge already discovered by someone else as it is to discover by oneself some new and unknown thing.”

She replied, “Rest assured, dear friend, that many noteworthy and great sciences and arts have been discovered through the understanding and subtlety of women, both in cognitive speculation, demonstrated in writing, and in the arts, manifested in manual works of labor.” - Christine de Pizan, The Book of the City of Ladies.

The old woman chuckled, closed the thick book she’d been reading, and carefully placed it in it’s proper place on the shelf behind the counter of the shop. Lillian Melendy, a tall, thin woman in her sixties, was on her first day of retirement as a Professor of Classical Studies at nearby Coolavin College. Thirty years of teaching, numerous papers and books published, accolades from her peers, and her career had come to a pleasant and much-anticipated close. Today she began a new phase of her life as the proprietress of a cozy little book shop in the heart of the City.

Her eyes moved slowly around the shop, she smiled and flipped the “We’re Open” sign over on the window. Then busied herself making a cup of coffee, trying not to think about what this first day would bring.

“Let it all be a surprise,” she said to no one in particular.

Cup of freshly brewed coffee in hand, Lillian seated herself in front of the computer behind the counter of the bookshop, and flipped the switch. The monitor lit up with the familiar logo, the drive motors whirred, and the machine booted. She smiled.

Possibly she ought not to have studied so hard in the off-hours of her long career. Non-Euclidean calculus and quantum physics are enough to stretch any brain; and when one mixes them with old world folklore, mythology, and classical studies, and tries to trace a strange background of multi-dimensional reality behind the ghoulish hints of the Gothic tales and the wild whispers of the sylvan wood, one can hardly expect to be wholly free from technology. And she embraced it.

Her peers at Coolavin College, however, were completely unaware of her extra-curricular activities, having fitted their image of her into nice, tidy boxes labelled “Liberal Arts” and “Classical Studies.” She was content to let them keep those images intact. Years of study and reflection had taught her that the known universe of three dimensions embraces the merest fraction of the whole cosmos of substance and energy. In this case, an overwhelming preponderance of evidence from numerous authentic sources pointed to the tenacious existence of certain forces of great power; the probability of there being an infinity of other universes in other dimensions only served to drive her onward in her studies.

Her fingers moved deftly across the keyboard, hundreds of lines of code soon became thousands, and she immersed herself in a world of digits and ancient symbols and formulae. Things seen by the inward sight, like those flashing visions which come as we drift into the blankness of sleep, are more vivid and meaningful to us in that form than when we have sought to weld them with reality, but Lillian Melendy was bent on merging them together in a seamless interconnectedness of transcendental dimensionality.

*Author’s Note : There really is such a thing as transcendental dimensionality outside of the Dr. Who series. See : On Essence for a very detailed analysis. You might find that explanation difficult, yet interesting.

The pub was like any other pub, warm, noisy with conversation, a bit smoky, the clunk of mugs on the bar, laughter in the corner. He weaved his way through the crowd, a beer in each hand carefully balanced, never spilling a drop, to the back of the pub towards a large corner booth, seating for ten… or more… depending on how friendly.

There she sat, her eyes glowing from the screen of the laptop in front of her, typing away at her manuscript. She was writing a book, you see, the third in a series of five, so she was just -at- the good part when he came up to the table.

Typing away at the keyboard, she looked up from the screen just as he placed the mug of beer beside her laptop on the table. Their eyes met. He knew that look… he smiled and moved away from the table slowly, not looking away until the last minute when he turned and joined a group of dart players at the other corner of the bar. She paused in her typing, looking after him, smiled, then picked up the mug and drank deeply.

She put the mug down, her eyes glanced up from it only to find a stranger sitting in the booth with her on the opposite side of the table. A man, dressed in a dark suit, wearing an overcoat… nobody she’d ever seen before.

“Don’t look for help,” he hissed at her, though with the noise in the bar it was doubtful anyone would have paid any mind, “just act like everything is normal, we’ll do our business, and I’ll be on my way, Ms. Merriweather.” He glanced down at her laptop computer. “Still writing, I see,” he said matter-of-factly, “well, I’m here to change that.” He reached into the inside left front pocket of his suit and pulled out a checkbook, took out a pen, and stared at her.

She stared back, not comprehending, not believing that any of this was real. He pushed the mug of beer towards her and she took another drink.

“Name your price, I’ll write the check,” he said in a low voice.

“What are you on about?” she said, “And who the hell are you?”

He smirked, shook his head, then said, “You don’t get it, do you?” He paused, sighed, then noted the baffled look on her face. “I’ve been sent here to convince you to stop writing these books, and the people I work for want these books stopped… whatever it takes… understand now?”

No, she didn’t, but she certainly picked up on the menace behind those words.

“We are on a wild ride to an interesting destination, Ms. Merriweather, a local rate of computational change so fast and powerful that it must have a profound and as-yet-unclarified Universal effect. As a side effect of this hypergrowth, biological human beings will not be able to meaningfully understand the computer-driven world of the near future unless they make some kind of transition to “transhumanity.” Your books are an obstacle to that transition. Thus, they must be stopped. Now,” he said, “how much?”

She still sat dumbfounded, then seemed to slowly come out of it and looked over towards the dart players. The man reached into his right front coat pocket and “click.” Suddenly everyone in the bar vanished, leaving the two of them sitting there alone in silence. The man in the dark suit pulled a stopwatch out of the pocket and smiled.