Chương 12: Chapter Eleven

Sunday October 9th I spent most of Sunday practicing. I wasn't so bold as to continue to use my bank account but I worked through some other things. First I found some blog posts that no one would care about, well probably almost no one. They were for various recipes that I was interested in cooking. I, myself was not a huge chef, however as a person of limited responsibility I figured now was as good a time as any to begin learning.

The problem was the recipes were buried inside paragraphs upon paragraphs of pointless prose. So, I tweaked and I pushed and I bled until there was a recipe on a blog post that was just the list of ingredients and cooking instructions. I didn't delete the story or whatever it was that was clogging up the important bits. Instead I moved them around, added characters, changed color, mirrored things and just generally had fun finger painting on someone's masterpiece.

When I was good and tired I sat down on my plywood couch and frowned. Even with the addition of the teddy-bear-soft pillows I was uncomfortable. And so began my forray into furniture manipulation. I did not know what (if any) symbol correlated to comfort. So, I started with what I did know, I changed the color of the couch to the same brown as the pillow. I went back and forth between the two looking at similarities and differences in the symbols, like my new codebreaking book suggested.

All day I tweaked at the couch matching one value to one on the pillow. In the end, it was not a good looking couch by any means. I'd managed to change the fabric of the couch to a close-knockoff of the pillows so that it was plush and fluffy.

I'd managed to increase or adjust the filling of the couch but between those two adjustments the couch had now taken on the appearance of three bean-bag chairs that had gone through the dryer several times too many and came out the other side stretched in some places and bulging in others. My once picturesque and uncomfortable couch was now hideous. It was also like sitting on the worlds biggest marshmallow and I loved it. The fae romantasy played in the background while I had been 'working'.

The main character, Aurora, had escaped the clutches of the sun king and seemed to be hanging on the fae of night's every word.

"Aurora looked into his dark eyes. She felt the world drop out from beneath her as he scooped her into his strong and bulging arms. As they took flight Malikai gruffly whispered into her ear, 'Now, let me show you my kingdom.'" Aw yeah Malikai, that's right. Let's go gill on Aladdin here. I can show you the world baby, let's go. Chuckling I went back to my now brown blob of a couch and decided to have a celebratory glass of wine. Kate was coming over tomorrow and I should probably have a plan.

Something that didn't involve.

"I can make his office chair ugly but cozy" or "I can really fuck up his blog posts if he has a blog." I should probably also have an excuse for, I looked around, all of this. Well, one out of two ain't bad. Let's just chalk this up to a midlife crisis. I shrugged and sipped my wine as I went back to focusing on Aurora and Malikai's steamy 'carpet-ride.' Monday October 10th Monday began much like Sunday had. I spent the majority of the day ignoring the outside world and focusing on training my newfound abilities.

I made identical cups of coffee and allowed them to sit for varying lengths of time to find the symbol for temperature. Once I had I managed to begin manipulating it. It was harder than color because of how finicky it was. I'd only managed to destroy one and a half mugs before I'd gotten the general hang of it. I worked on changing the shape or size of things and my small successes were increasing the pocket size of my jeans and the volume my wine glasses held. Small victories.

By the time Kate showed up I'd also managed to make my window sill plant wilt. It was not a fan of size or temperature change and no matter what I did it only seemed to make it worse. I'd in a fit of desperation even tried to brighten up it's green. That may have been it's final straw.

"Sorry I'm late," Kate set the wine bottles down.

"Chaos has lost his mind. He sat in the middle of the hallway just staring at me today, and when I tried to pick him up, he growled at me!"

"Maybe he saw a bug."

"I don't have bugs." Kate began.

"Either way, he's never once growled at me." She uncorked the wine.

"He's been off for a few days. I think he can sense my stress level or something." I squeezed her hand.

"You don't need to be streesed for me." She sighed and topped off both of our glasses before she made her way past me to the ugly couch and looked around the living room. There was nothing short of awe on her face.

"I dont'? If I don't stress for you Sam, you may become—I don't know. You won't become anything it's just. This—" she gestured around.

"This is a lot. I mean I know I've been hounding you for a long long long long time to do this. So I shouldn't complain." Her gaze lingered on the wilting plant.

"You bought a dead plant?"

"Well it wasn't dead when I bought it."

"When did you buy it?"

"Saturday."

"You killed a plant in less than 48 hours?"

"Do you think that the color of the plant if affects it's chloroplasts? And if so—how do I get them back?" Kate stared at me increduously.

"Are you high? I mean I wouldn't—""No. I'm not high. It was a joke. I just went shopping. This one must've been unhealthy when I bought it."

"You went shopping?"

"Yeah?"

"Like in a store and not online?"

"Yeah? Is that no longer a thing?"

"I've known you eight years and I've never known you to voluntarily go into any store that wasn't for food. You got fired—sorry placed on leave," she made a face, "less than a week ago. Most people would be lying in bed eating ice cream from the container, not going on a shopping spree and redecorating."

"I was lying in bed, and then I got bored." You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author. Kate's eyes narrowed. She had the look that she got when she knew there was more to the story but also that she knew better than to push.

"I believe that you got bored. When did you paint the walls though?" I pretended to think.

"Thursday."

"I was here Thursday and they were already blue." Shit"Wednesday, sorry the days are all wacky when I have nowhere to go." I feigned sadness.

"Fine. Keep your secrets. But, speaking of nowhere to go let's talk about Daniel." Oh thank god. Finally a topic I could talk about without having to lie. Kate plopped down on the couch.

"Holy shit Sam. Where did you get this couch?" Well, that didn't last long.

"Marketplace."

"It's ugly as sin but it's so comfortable."

"Right?" I cozied down onto it. Kate opened up her laptop on the couch between us. She rubbed at her temple as she opened up a folder. The folder had file after file of metadata manipulation, corporate espionage, wrongful termination lawsuits, how to prove your designs are not ai, and a file called Daniel Park.

"What's that one." I said pointing at the Daniel Park file.

"That's the weirdest one. So I did some digging. Daniel Park's socials look completely normal at a glance, but, I called his "previous employers" from his linked in. No such person worked there. The place he graduated from? No such student. Every friend on his social accounts from before 3 months ago are all fake accounts with fake posts. It's like he just popped up and assumed this life." I sat back.

"What the hell does that even mean?"

"I don't know. All I know is, he's not who he says he is."

"So, we show HR that he isn't a real person?"

"Maybe, but that doesn't clear your name. What we need is to tie Daniel to this PA company. Then we need proof that you had been working on this design well before Daniel says you that you faked it'""Oh!" I exclaimed "I have that proof. I have backups of all of my work in progress on my cloud. I can easily show that."

"Samantha Marion, you are a genius. This would even be better if AllMart corroborates. I'll have to see what I can do on that front." Kate continued scrolling her notes, "We need to reach out to a lawyer, I think with all of this proof we have a real case."

"I think we still need to find concrete evidence that ties Daniel to the Allegheny whatsitcalled." Kate's smile was sharp.

"I think I have a plan for that."

"What does that mean?"

"It means that I've been cozying up to Daniel this week and I think I can go out on a date with him. I think that he's overconfident and willing to bet that his new role gives him the leg up to date above his paygrade." I felt a cold twist in my stomach.

"You want to date Daniel?"

"I want to fake date Daniel."

"You just told me he's not even real. Kate he could be anyone. This is dangerous."

"That's why you'll be my back up. I'll stay in contact with you on my watch and you can follow us back to his place. If I get the evidence or if I get into trouble you can be there to back me up or be my getaway driver." I rubbed at my eyes.

"Kate—""No, no Kateeee. I'm doing this whether you help me or not. Although I hope that you help me."

"Of course I'll help you. But I don't like it. And what do you mean—his new role?"

"He is being allowed to present to AllMart." I felt my blood boil. I spent years working my way up to being allowed to take on a huge client such as this. Then, not only did Daniel or whoever he was swoop in to take it away from me—somehow the little worm took the biggest client we've had for a decade and he's barely been there for a full quarter.

"Let's take this douche canoe down." We clinked our glasses together and after polishing off the glass I got up to pour us refills. We formulated a plan complete with code words and emojis. She was changing my name in her phone to May. I was supposed to tail them to the restaurant, and then his house. If things went south she'd text me a red heart. That meant I should call and claim I was in desperate need for her to come quick (ie family emergency). If she texted a green heart that meant things were going well.

If she texted a pink heart it meant she was calling an uber (me) because she needed to go and I should start the car and drive around the block to pretend to pick her up. If she texted a black heart or didn't check in for over 15 minutes once she was in his house it meant call 911 and tell them she was in mortal danger. The last was one neither of us really thought would be an issue, but we included it just in case.

After we were well into the second bottle of wine and we were just catching up and chatting Kate blurted out, "So what's the deal with Sarah?" I choked on my drink.

"What? Where did that come from?" Kate nodded to the table where our class graduation picture hadn't yet been put away.

"You've had that photo on your desk for eight years but I've never seen or even heard about you guys talking. So there has to be a story there. Some big falling out?"

"There's no story." She looked at me, and I could see the hurt in her eyes. She hated when she knew I was lying to her. Something about her childhood that I never pried into. I sighed. Kate had a talent for finding every crack in my impenetrable fortress. It was annoying but it was also why we were friends and I would do anything for her.

"Sarah was my roommate in college."

"I know that. I also know that every time she comes up you change the subject." I stared into my wine glass. The red liquid was so dark, almost a deep burgundy in the low light. I could see the static when I tried, I wondered briefly if I should change the color and show Kate what I could do.

"We were close." I said instead.

"Really close like finish each others sentences close. Stayed up all night talking about nothing close. I'd never had any good friends growing up so it was a whole new experience for me. No one ever just got me like that." Kate was quiet, waiting. Almost forlorn.

"And then—" I took a breath.

"Things got confusing. I started feeling things that I didn't know how to handle. And instead of figuring it out, or talking about it. I just—pulled away. I took on more shifts at work. I stayed late every night at the library. I made myself too busy to be around her."

"Sam…"

"By graduation we were basically strangers. We'd pretend when we were together but something had shifted and it felt, awkward. She moved to Seattle after and we don't talk. We exchange Christmas cards or sometimes a funny meme. That's it."

"Do you still have feelings for her?" I shook my head.

"No. I mean, I don't think so. It's been eight years. I've only ever dated guys. I like guys It's just—" I struggled to find the words.

"with Sarah, it was different. She was different. Maybe it was just that she made me feel special. But I was too young and too scared to understand what that meant."

"What do you think it meant?"

"I don't know. Maybe I'm bi? Maybe she was a special case? Maybe it was just over-attachment because my mom sucks and I didn't have anyone to talk to. Maybe I'm just too emotionally constipated to form connections with anyone regardless of gender." I laughed but it came out bitter.

"My mom certainly has theories. She called just the other day to remind me about Thanksgiving and to make sure I bring my boyfriend this time so that no one thinks I'm a—" I lowered my voice into a stage whisper, "—lesbian." Kate snorted, "Your mom. Always the delight."

"She means well, I think. She just has very specific ideas about what success looks like and 'single graphic designer who got fired for suspected intellectual property theft' isn't on the list."

"Neither is queer, apparently."

"Definitely not." I finished my wine and reached for the bottle.

"The thing is with Sarah—I've never told anyone else about that. About my confusion or how I felt. It's always just been easier to focus on work and keep people at a distance, you know." Kate squeezed my hand." I hope after all of this time you know you can tell me anything. And," She added playfully, "that keeping me at a distance is impossible. Plus, not being the only bisexual woman would be interesting." She continued quickly.

"You're my friend. That's all that matters to me. Now let's finish this wine and then finish the plan to destroy Daniel's life!" I snorted and then leaned in close.

"Kate, that is the most romantic thing anyone has ever said to me." She shoved me, "Get back. I'm about to be a spoken-for-woman, you home wrecker." We both erupted into fits of laughter and I could almost forget that everything would be changed forever.