And now Cydia gets interesting.

Word Count: 85,093

But Variable persisted. Eventually, Graham and Ames joined in one the search, but it was fruitless. There were only five rooms – one main room and four rooms that shot off the main room in every direction, like a compass rose. Variable was already searching the southwest room; Graham and Ames started searching the northeast room.

The northeast room – a bedroom – was caked in filth. The bed was hardly visible and all other objects were covered in layers of dust, as if they had not been touched in months. No sign of any human being, in a fetch or otherwise, unconscious or fully awake, in the bedroom.

The next target was the southeast room, a storage room containing knickknacks and odds and ends, and hundreds of scientific journals and notebooks, adding to Graham’s suspicion that this was indeed a penthouse turned research laboratory. Whoever Maiya was, she was clearly interested in the sciences, a common trait of nearly every being on Cydia. Graham wondered if there was a single entity on the planet that simply enjoyed Cydia’s level of technological achievement and relaxed, but with the universal knowledge sharing system inherent in The Collective, this was highly unlikely.

The journals were spread across the floor, in no particular order and certainly not in any neat fashion. It was as though a train and wrecked its way through the room, knocking over desks and books, destroying all semblance of organization. Underneath the books were several human-sized chambers, completely empty, with a glass covering. Graham and Ames had no idea what they were for, and ignored them. Either way, there was no sign of Maiya.

They walked out into the main room, where Variable was leaning his head against the cold metal wall.

“She’s not in either of these rooms,” Ames said, pointing to the two empty rooms behind her. “Though she doesn’t make searching easy for us. She could be under any one of the multiple piles of rubble in those rooms.” Ames rolled her eyes, knowing that Variable couldn’t see it with his back turned to them.

“Yes,” Variable said, “the place is unusually messy. I’ve never seen it this way before. The fourth room of this penthouse is locked, I can’t get to it; something important must be inside, but I don’t know what.”

“You mean that fetch can’t see through walls?” Ames said, laughing.

“Funny – but no, it cannot. If it could I would have been able to scan this entire apartment in seconds, and this fetch has nothing extravagant that would allow me to do so by other means.”

“Could she just be away?” Graham chimed in.

“That was my first thought as well, but in the many decades I have known her since she left The Collective she had never left this apartment. She is a very dear friend, honestly, and has aided me in avoiding several grim fates in my past. But she’s also an introvert of the highest order when in her fetch; people in their fetches are entirely different beings from those inside The Collective. Uploading your consciousness into a fetch restores your humanity and personality, you could say. Nevertheless, due to this she never left her apartment.”

“Well then, where is she now? Clearly out of her apartment,” Ames said. “If we could check the locked room, we might find something. I’ll be it’s soundproof so that she can’t hear us calling out to her. If that’s the case, all we need to go is get the door busted down and everything will be fine; if not, and if what you say is true, then our little helper might have finally packed up her things.”

“I don’t think she’s in there. Soundproof walls can only go so far, and I can easily turn up my hearing.” Variable moved his head from the wall to the northwest offshoot from the main room, and pressed his ear up against the door there, listening for the smallest noises – but returned shrugging his shoulders and scratching his head. Not a sign of Maiya anywhere.

“I know this sounds like a long shot,” graham said, “and perhaps my experiences in Talos have forced me to fear the worst, but the widespread destruction about the apartment might indicate that she’s been forcibly removed from the premises. The books and journals in that room,” Graham pointed, “were scattered all about, and even covering up some glass chambers. Her bedroom was a complete mess, and dust had gathered. If I had to make a guess, I’d say she hasn’t been here for at least two weeks.

“Impossible. That’s impossible! She never had any books or journals. Books are obsolete pieces of shit; production ceased when the last tree was killed thousands of years ago, and once better technology became available all books were converted, banned and destroyed. There’s no way that Maiya had any books, or journals, or paper for that matter, that wasn’t artificial or digital.”

“Well, you said she’s a Variable like you, right? She left The Collective,” Ames said, “so I’ll bet she was hiding something from you, just as you are from us. Would possession of print literature be cause for alarm or arrest? I haven’t even seen any police around Migard or Salvia, though.”

“Check under the microscope,” Variable said, his grim face pinned once again to the cold metal wall.

“What?” Ames asked.

“Check under the damn microscope. She could still be in this apartment, we’re just not looking hard enough.”

“Why would she be under the microscope? That’s impossible, Variable. Please calm down, we’ll find her one way or another.”

“If you’re not going to look there, I am. She’s still here! It would be impossible for her to get arrested here – the police force rarely interact with even the most dangerous criminals; their presence is a formality, nothing more. I refuse to believe that the police have abducted my dear friend Maiya, and I find it shameful of you two to talk me into such an idea! Now, check under the goddamned microscope! Ah, I see you won’t. Out of my way, then!” Variable ran up to the hulking object in the northeast corner of the room resting on the metal table. It was an enormous, pristine white structure that towered nearly all the way to the ceiling of the room, and diminished in radius until it was very close to the surface of the table. At this point, its radius was only about a centimeter wide, and the lens was focused on an object that resembled a slide with an object embedded inside.

The hulking microscope, however, had no viewfinder; instead, variable called up a glass screen, which displayed a picture of the cellular mass below. He began touching the glass screen, moving its image around in search of Maiya, while the two travelers looked at him with deep concern.

“Does he realize what he’s doing?” Ames asked Graham. “She’s a human being, she can’t fit on a microscope slide, even on Cydia. I’ve seen some pretty amazing things, but I’m still sure that Variable’s off his nut right now. We need to stop him.” Graham nodded in agreement, and together they pulled Variable away from the microscope.

“Dammit man, she’s not under the microscope. That’s not even physically possible!” Graham shouted, forcing Variable to stand up for his claims.

“With the right fetch, she could be under there. I’ve heard of quantum fetches, why not microscopic? She was always doing research as well. I simply thought that her curiosity with the remaining natural world might have gotten the better of her – she wanted to research ancient history, last I recall, and began gathering decrepit old skin samples from long-extinct animals. It was a project related to her work in The Collective’s research centers.”

“You may‘ve heard of such fetches, but have you ever actually seen one? Listen, I understand your need to rationalize the situation, but you have to regain your composure. She wouldn’t be under the microscope; if she were, I’d imagine she’d have some kind of notification system set up where she could see and respond to people entering her apartment. You would have known that she was there, and she would have noticed two fresh new intruders. Variable, she’s not under the microscope.”

Variable sighed and slumped down to the ground. “I’ve known her for so long, to see her gone from this place seems like a logical impossibility. But let’s still not ump to conclusions.”

Graham and Ames both rolled their eyes.

“I can tell you both scoffed at me behind my back. But if we go to the ground level we can ask the service how long she’s been gone for. If any authorized police took her away, the service would say that the room has never had a resident. Otherwise, she’s simply left for who knows how long, and we could probably coerce them to let us know for what length of time she’s been missing.”

Graham shivered. “Would it be alright if I waited up here?”

“Not at all.”

“Oh, thank you. Those elevators—”

“I said ‘not at all,’ not ‘stay here and enjoy yourself.’ You’re coming to ground level with us,” Variable said. Ames look said that she approved of this much more rational approach to finding Maiya – and once they located her, they could sap her for all the information about The Collective as possible.

Nobody locked the front door on the way out; Variable explained that identity verification was all processed through the fetch’s artificial skin, which contained a special fingerprint-like electronic signal embedded in a chip. This chip was always inserted into a randomized location so that no thief could locate the chip and steal it along with the fetch’s identity. In addition, variable stated that the chip did not show up on any scans of any sort due to its atomic size and the special coating around it.

Ground level was only a step away – and Graham was still not used to otherworldly elevator travel, and there was serious doubt that he ever would be. On ground level, Graham was surprised to see people working at desks, just like those on Earth. “Why are there still people working those jobs?”

“You have to make a living somehow,” Variable said. “The incredibly unimportant jobs are always available for human labor. Business owners find it drives customers, so they get rid of the machines and hire real people when they can. Which is just as well for us, since they might have seen Maiya exit the building sometime ago if she merely left.

The help at the front desk turned out, however, to be little help at all – not only did the records show that Maiya was still a resident of the apartment complex, but that she had never checked out at any point since she bought the apatment over fifty years prior, which agreed with Variable’s statements. This put the group in distress, for this meant that something even further was wrong beyond mere capture by the police – Maiya’s absence was unexplained by every theory the group had had, and their only recourse was to go back to the room and look for traces of Maiya’s awkward departure. Had she jumped out a window and destroyed her fetch? Had she been taken away by force by someone other than the police that had gained access to her apartment? Or were they al simply blind, and she had been behind the locked door all along?

Back in the room, they all leaned against the table rummaging through these theories, looking for one that accurately fit the condition of the surrounding rooms. Suddenly, variable jumped up.

“Show me the room with the books.”

Graham and Ames led him to the southeast room, where Variable stepped all over old, blank journals with contempt. “I cannot believe she hid this from me! These were never here earlier, and this room was always so neat and tidy. This was not her doing, I am sure of it; Maiya was quite obsessive compulsive; everything in the house was neat and tidy whenever I came by in the past. Granted, it’s been over half a year, but I could have never imagined it was this bad.”

“Do you think someone could have wanted the books?”

“Without a doubt. I’ve never seen anything like this before. This is a historical collection. It may be the only collection of blank paper and printed literature in the world. But what’s that underneath all of this?” He pushed some of the book away, revealing a glass container, about the size of a human being. “Oh, no…” he said, quietly.

“What is it?” Graham and Ames said together.

“There are four of these containers about the apartment, and all of them are empty. I saw one, but I wasn’t sure what it was until I counted the number. Due to her work with The Collective, Maiya was by no means poor. She owned four different fetches, and created a custom fetch storage device that she made four times over. These are those storage devices. There are two under these books, and it looks like they’re completely empty. Somebody stole her fetches.”

“And that means…”

“That the same person also stole Maiya.”

Nobody wanted to believe it; nobody wanted to think that Maiya had killed herself, or worse, been taken away against her will. But as they continued searching the apartment Variable found strange footprints that he knew were not Maiya’s; Graham found a torn piece of cloth, which Variable called “impossible” like everything else; Ames determined by the amount of dust on all the items in the house that it had been nearly two months since Maiya had gone missing, if she was indeed as much of a neat freak as Variable said she was.

Variable took a swap of the footprints and the piece of cloth from Graham. “I’m going to use the available equipment here to run a location analysis of these items. I should be able to trace their origins.” Suddenly, Ames and Graham were relieved greatly – they might still find out what they needed to know from Maiya after all, in due time. “Follow me,” said Variable, motioning his way over to the locked door. “This room contains a bunch of lab equipment. If we could somehow break down the door, I could run the analysis. Otherwise, my fetch has some primitive components, but true accurate data takes up space, and as you can see this fetch is quite slimming.”

“We’ll have to break it down,” Graham said. “It looks like a normal door to me; I’m sure we can do it with enough force.”

“Hah! Did you really think I would break the door down? I have a card key from the man at ground level. He does know me, after all – it’s only been, like I said, about six months since I’ve been here, and it is always to visit Maiya. I’ve earned his trust enough to get this one card key. Not nearly all I think I deserve, but what can you do? It should open that door, and that door only.”

Graham half-expected Variable to pull out a real, plastic card key – but it was virtual, just like everything else. Variable pulled this virtual card key out of a virtual pocket and pressed it against the door. It melted into the door, and a clicking noise sounded thereafter – the door was open. Inside, the lab equipment looked untouched.

“Magnificent. It looks like the intruder didn’t care to unlock this door if they already had Maiya by a certain point. Now, help me out here – James, grab that beaker there. Yes, that one, and brink it here.” Variable rushed around the lab maniacally; he was so sure of everything he was doing, as though he’d done it ten thousand times over, that he did not double check – r even single check, for that matter – the steps he was taking to perform the location test.

“Christ, Variable,” Ames said, hoping not to interrupt him except when he needed a small tool from her, “was this your profession at some point? How do you know how to do this test?”

“This,” Variable said, “is something I picked up during my short stay in the collective. As I’ve told you, The Collective grants you access to the entirety of human knowledge up to present day. That is the reason why Maiya was able to use this equipment so effectively; she did incredible and valuable research for The Collective. I suppose all I know is theory, though.” Variable continued running around the lab, mixing chemicals and letting other solutions come to a boil before dipping the torn fabric into one of them.

“How will you know where the fabric came from by boiling it?”

“I’m not boiling it. This is location fluid. You aren’t familiar with… ah, never mind. There’s no time to explain. I should have the results momentarily. The results for the footprint are actually coming into view as I speak. Come, I’ll show you.”

Variable led them across the room where a piece of what appeared to be paper – but could not be, for paper was no longer produced and sold on Cydia – rested against the laboratory table’s metal surface. A number was slowly coming into view across the sheet – within two minutes, the number”199” was fully visible in large type, spread across the entire slip of white material. “Well, it looks like this won’t help us. According to this slip, the footprints came from a fetch whose origin was this apartment. That means whoever was here used one of Maiya’s fetches to capture her – if she was captured, of course, assuming the worst.”

“I don’t see an address on that card,” Graham said.

“The address is encrypted within the membrane of the card. Unless you know the card’s hash sequence, and are in a fetch, you won’t be able to figure it out. That’s a security measure, I’m afraid. Ah, it’s time for me to prepare the slip for the fabric. Give me a just a moment.”

Variable used metal tongs to remove the fabric from its break, and then poured the contents of the beaker all over another slip of white material. After several minutes, the room began to reek of location fluid, and another number formed atop the material. “No, I must have done the test incorrectly,” Variable said.

“What is it?” The other two asked simultaneously.

“Well, if we are to believe the results of this test, then your source of information and my dear friend were taken by someone from Country 200 – a country that has been abandoned for a thousand years. Country 200 is far removed from the atmosphere of the planet, and rests beyond the pink glow of its natural, breathable gasses. The entire district is really a large space station, but is not set in orbit around he planet. It simply hovers where it is, peacefully, abandoned, completely empty and devoid of all life. So my test must have been wrong, you see, for nobody can be from Country 200 – it’s just not possible.”

Yet, deep down, Variable knew he had done the test right – and if he was ever to have hope of seeing Maiya again, he would have to take his two travelers to Country 200, a place where no Leaf Transport Vehicle would take them, a place far away from Cydia’s core and the rest of civilization – a place of death and abandonment. And, scared out of his mind, Variable held his forehead and told Graham and Ames that he was redoing the test and that they should leave the room for a bit. However, in reality he used this extra time to gain his composure, and prepare to announce that the group would have to hijack an old space shuttle on Salvia to get to Country 200 as quick as possible, before the unspeakable became of Maiya.