Jo was as good as her word; she steeled her resolve with her determination to do her job properly. Once she’d squared away what she’d been working on before, she dug into the odd-looking files.
At least, she’d thought they were odd-looking. The reality was just utterly bewildering. “Mike,” she said, after puzzling over the files for a while, “I can see the point to most of the files I’ve been looking over. Businesses, land deals, all the usual. But why do we have experimental files on contracted quantum physics reports? And how are they experimental?” He wasn’t anywhere near her physically, but their phones would allow them to talk as if they were right next to each other automatically.
“Beats me,” he said. “The company was into some weird stuff years ago, maybe it’s from then. There a date on ‘em?”
She frowned and scrolled around. “About 5 years ago.”
“Huh. I was around then, still pretty green, but I don’t remember any quantum physics projects. Someone was probably just working a deal on a lab setup or something, I wouldn’t worry too much about it.”
“Oooh-kay,” she said slowly. She wasn’t sure she bought that, but she didn’t have any real reason to question it, either. He’d sounded a bit like he was giving her the brush-off. “Thanks, Mike. Sorry to bother you.” He grunted, either in acknowledgment or as a goodbye, she wasn’t sure which.
She was tempted to let Quinn know what she’d found out, but decided it was better to leave it till after work. She went over the rest of the files she found in as much detail as she could stand. It was heavy stuff; there were at least a dozen sizable studies by several different groups and labs that all seemed to center around the ‘quantum entanglement potential of active dilectrite and related materials’ or something worded similarly. The studies were exhaustive, at least to her inexpert eyes.
“I am seriously going to need to climb again after reading all this,” she told herself.
If you're enjoying this story, you might enjoy Prices, a set of proto-Steampunk tales set in the same world as this story. They're available as a free preview eBook.
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