Morning musings

You head back to your room, and immediately call Neha. When she answers you, she's wearing one of your tee shirts (you couldn't even remember when she'd appropriated it), but you can't deny that it looks far better on her than it ever did on you.

"Hey, babe" she says, slightly cheerfully.

"Hey." you respond, drinking in the sight of her. You just can't get enough of this girl.

"So how was last night at Armand's?" she asks.

You smirk. "Pretty good. We had... wait for it... Astolfi's"

She gasps in outrage. "You little... I love Astolfi's." she says, faux outraged. "Stupid boys and their stupid boys nights and denying me my Precious." she grumbles.

You chuckle at her outrage, but then you get down to business.

"So, two things. First, let's talk tradecraft."

"Tradecraft. Ugh. We sound like the lamest larpers ever. But go on." she says, focused.

"If we need to talk about what we find out, I'm going to set up a p2p-secure chatline. It'll be like bittorrent - remember, that old thing that internet pirates used? - which will make it hard to track us. Nobody uses that stuff anymore, so that's an added layer of security." You're actually quite proud of that little bit of engineering. Had you been born 40 years earlier, it would've made you fabulously rich.

"Ok, so we can communicate and I'm guessing transfer files securely..."

"As securely as we dare. And we can do one other thing. The secret-keepers - we tell them a codeword. We'll figure this out in person."

Neha nods. "What was the other thing?" she asks.

"Business first, babe. Did you manage to find anything out?" you ask.

"No, not yet. Spent last night with the family. I was going to start now. You?"

"Same. Well, I did find out that apparently my Mom doesn't really mind one night stands. It was horrifying."

She squeals with laughter. "Oh, poor baby! Did you see them? Did you meet the guy?"

"Thankfully I didn't see them. I did, unfortunately, meet the guy. Saw him in the kitchen with his hand in my mother's robe. Then he called me 'champ' and 'sport'. Oh, and I found my mom's dress on the banister last night."

Neha is howling with laughter by this point. "Oh, you go Ellen!" she says, absolutely delighted. "About time, too!"

All you can do is grumble inarticulately under your breath.

Neha eventually calms down. "So we don't have any new information yet. But you said you had something else to talk about?"

"Yeah," you say. "What are you doing tonight?"

She frowns at you. "Nothing, I don't think. Why?"

"Let's go out somewhere. Best restaurant in town - Niobe's. And we'll spend the night in the Grand."

"That sounds... amazing. But..." she trails off, as she realizes your motivation. "So we're really doing this, huh?" she asks, her voice soft and sad.

"We have to." you reply. "But we deserve this last night as well... even if it's for a few months only. "

"You're right." she says. "Fuck it, let's do it." she says decisively. "Hmm... need to get a nice dress... and you better be wearing that black suit."

"No doubt."

She favors you with a smile. "This is going to be so good... bittersweet, I guess, but good."

You talk on for a little while, but she begs off, citing a need to find a new dress. In the mean time, you start your research.

You begin by searching for Zygmus Industries. There's a website - as you suspected, it's a legitimate company. The company focuses on AI powered electronics - high tech bespoke chips, on-site document analysis, VR/AR augmented by AI tools for entertainment and therapeutics... The last bit is something you're intimately familiar with. Yet it's all above board - they even advertise what appears to be the headset Selene used on you and Neha. And as for Selene, there doesn't seem to be any link with any of them, nor is there anyone named Ira in the public directory... maybe the board?

You find their corporate board. A bunch of old plutocrats of both genders... Mihail Orlov, Sheikh Abu Ibrahim al Nasr, Min-Xiao Wu, Daniella Veltrescamo... none of it rings a bell. You sigh, frustrated. More work, then - you search for Mihail Orlov. Wealthy Russian emigre oligarch. Huge yacht, football club in England, donations to museums, blah blah blah. Obese and thuggish looking - but you're not the judgy type. No, really, you're not. Serves on the board of a dozen different multinational supercorps. Bastion financial... interesting, but still nothing there.

You then do a search for Selene. Varhard University (bachelors in neuroscience, MD and PhD on top of that - serious credentials). Very distinguished career, loads of prizes for her research into the brain and sexual elasticity. Nowhere do you find any collaborator named Ira either. But... this is curious - she'd left Varhard-BCE-Slim Institute under a cloud. Part of that cloud was a massive donation from a problematic company named Intelligentsia - a general purpose AI company. You search for intelligentsia, and you find the link. On Intelligentsia's board, you see Mihail Orlov. And in the news, you see that Bastion financial had brought a huge minority stake in Intelligentsia. Between Orlov and Bastion's public facing unit, they owned Intelligentsia, and formed a bridge from Selene to Zygmus. So Selene was either in cahoots with Orlov for whatever reason, or was doing something for Bastion. The questions were: what linked Neha and your father with whatever cabal Selene was a part of?

Shaking yourself, you check the time. You're running late - you quickly call Niobe's for a reservation, and make a similar call to the Grand. You'll be working overtime to make up the bill (and probably begging your mom as well), but it will be worth it. After more fruitless searching, you give up the chase and start to get ready for your date.