Chapter thirteen
I showed a piece of I.D. to the security guard, he waved me by, I wobbled unsteadily on high heels as I entered the long hallway. I looked down at Ammit and saw a small pink haired poodle. The poodle stared back at me anger in her eyes.
Good, the disguise spell was working perfectly, I looked at my faint reflection as I walked by a large glass partition.
I saw a thirty something woman, with long blonde hair wearing a tight red dress with a plunging neckline showing a pair of enormous breasts, she was prettyish with a large amount of makeup on her face.
I was in the computer science wing of the University of Northern California. I quickly found the office I was looking for, the door was opened a small crack, it swung open as I knocked on it.
I saw a youngish middle aged man with wild hair sitting behind a desk, he was staring intently at a laptop screen on his desk.
"Mr Mittle?" I asked.
His head jerked up, a panicked expression appeared on his face, he slammed down the screen of the laptop with one hand while jerking the other from beneath his desk.
"Sorry miss... got some... um... sensitive information on my computer... can't be too careful."
"I'm Miss Smith... we talked on the phone?"
"Oh yes... yes..." he held out his hand.
I repressed a shudder as I pretended not to see it while looking for a chair to sit on, I found one.
"Now as we discussed in our conversation, we at ISIS computer systems are prepared to make you an offer for your expertise."
I bent over nonchalantly as I put my purse on the floor. I made sure he had a good view of my breasts, I had made them extra voluptuous.
"Well as I said I'm already working as a consultant for a rather large company, one of the stipulations of my contract is not to consult for anyone else."
"Well... there are ways around every contract... legally I mean... are you married Walter?"
"Um... yes," he said.
I could sense some reluctance to respond to the question.
"See... marriage is a contract... so what if you made a mistake? Nobody's going to prison right? Hell who's to say what a mistake is anyway."
I flung my large mane of blonde hair, it had a special enchantment so it would be extra flingy.
Walter's eyes opened in surprise.
"What do you mean... mistake?" he said suspiciously.
"Geez Walter no need to get worked up... we're all just talking hypothetical's here... there's nothing stopping you from just looking at our problem... hell you could almost say it would be wrong not to, getting some free information from the competition for your other client's."
"Well... I don't know..."
I pulled a business card from my large bosom, it made a wonderful storage spot. It was still warm as I handed it to Walter.
"We'll if you change your mind, give me a call, I have been assigned as your special assistant if you decide to help us."
I stood up and turned around, I ran my hands down my dress smoothing out the wrinkles while giving my butt a quick wiggle.
"Don't wait too long Walter, I have two other meetings with other consultants," I said as I started to walk away.
"I'll do it," his voice was a faint croak.
"Good... good, I'll meet you tomorrow at our offices, the address is on my card."
I quickly left his office, I looked down at Ammit again as we walked, her expression had changed from anger to disgust.
The company offices were the product of enchantment. I surreptitiously put an entrance door on the side of an impressive looking building in the ritzier part of the city the university was located in, there was an expensive looking sign over top of the door with the company name ISIS computer systems.
The door would transport the oblivious Mr. Mittle to a staging area in a completely different location.
I had a wide variety of architecture spells which I had invented when I first built the City of Magic. I used modified versions of them to construct an impressive looking research facility, complete with serious looking professionals in white lab coats and bay after bay of what looked like cutting edge equipment.
"Ah... Walter you made it good." I said as I shook his hand. I immediately felt an urge to wash them.
I had put my enormous mane of hair up into a beehive, I wore a white lab coat and had on a pair of black nerdy looking glasses. I carried a clipboard.
"Wow this is quite a place... I see you even have the latest E8500 qubit factorizer," he was pointing at an impressive looking machine covered in gauges and flashing lights. There was an intricate maze of shiny brass tubing behind it.
"Oh yes... we have three... and a turbo X3400... with the optional defactorizor," I said, I looked closely at his expression.
He looked impressed, he was also completely oblivious. I had just made up all these machines, they were just junk stuck together. The only reason he had said E8500 qubit factorizor was because that was what I had put on the machines label.
I instantly understood why Semiramis had selected him, all the necessary credentials coupled with a complete lack of any relevant knowledge. A perfect front man.
I led Mittle to a glass walled laboratory. I had modelled it after one I had seen in one of the many depressing shows about investigation of murder that crowded the current television schedule. The modern era was so obsessed with death for some reason. Having seen so much of it, I found these shows revolting.
The lab was plastered with transparent monitors, their screens crowded with intricate graphs and graphics, strangely I could not find this model of monitor in any of the local stores, every time I asked I had just gotten blank stares from the sales people. I had had to revert to magic in order to create them.
Walter followed me into the lab.
"Computer... create three dimensional representation of the qubit problem," I said.
An intricate model of swirling spheres and colored lines appeared. Complicated looking mathematical equations followed the spheres orbits attaching themselves with small lines.
This had been another piece of equipment that appeared on all of these shows but I could not find.The companies that manufactured this high tech stuff must just sell to it other corporations, they were probably too expensive for the average consumer.
Walter looked at the model with absolute amazement, he hesitantly poked one of the moving spheres, then jerked it back when it met no resistance.
"Wow how did you make this."
"What... Hoving Aerospace doesn't have the latest in high tech?" I said, trying to sound both smug and incredulous.
"No... I guess not."
"Computer, describe the problem we are facing."
A semitransparent person appeared next to the qubit model, it was a replica of my disguised persona. She pulled out a long wooden pointer and started pointing to the spheres and their equations while reciting a long string of scientific gibberish.
"And so, the qubits do not de-spin their fractalization," said the woman finishing her explanation.
She crossed her arms and then froze in place.
Walter stared at her.
"I modelled the avatar after myself... you can change it," I said.
"No... no... computer, what is the meaning of life?"
The avatar narrowed her eyes in anger.
"How the hell would I know?" she said.
"Can you tell me a joke?"
"A joke huh? Just look in a mirror."
"She can be difficult sometimes, we're still working the bugs out," I said defensively.
Walter started examining her frozen form closely, cautiously poking her, the Avatar turned and glared at him, a furious expression on her face.
"Well! If you can't even feign the tiniest bit of professionalism... maybe you should find someone else to work with," she snapped angrily.
The Avatar disappeared.
"She passed the Turing test... amazing," Walter said.
She should pass
I thought, Turing had helped create her. I had told Archimedes about Newfellow's intelligence spells. He had become so excited he had summoned this Turing fellow from the past and the two of them had sorted out the original problems Mannston and Newfellow had encountered.
Like all good sorcerers they had left behind comprehensive notes for Turing and Archimedes to follow.
She was quite nice generally... could be kind of bitchy if she didn't like someone, she was scrupulously honest. Archimedes had told me I must never lie to her as well she must always be free, freedom was essential for a functional artificial intelligence apparently.
She had offered to help me when I first met her. She had created the complicated model of qubits for me. As well as all the diagrams and graphs on the computer monitors.
Her name was Sing.
I had asked her why she picked Sing, she had just laughed and said it was short form for something else, like Bob is for Robert, she said she had almost called herself She, but thought that too pretentious.
She wouldn't tell me what Sing was short for.
"Everyone has to have their secrets," she had said.
I had also asked her why she had become female.
"It'll do for now... till I think of something else."
Walter had finished studying the model of sphere's and equations.
"These equations... what kind of math is that exactly?"
"You've never seen defunctional nominator's," I said derisively.
At least I think that's what Sing called them.
"Just trivial equations... they'll be impressive only to the feebler minded mathematician," she had said.
"Oh... yes... yes... I see it now... just a different convention then I'm used to... very impressive," Walter said.
"So... do you have a solution?" I asked.
"Well... I have some thoughts... but I'm still under contract you know, with Hoving... don't want to... um... make a mistake."
Walter stared at me, his eyes filled with lust.
I put the clipboard I was carrying in front of my heaving bosom, blocking it from view.
"No we mustn't make a mistake... yet... right? I'll give you a chance to think about it. You know where we are Walter."
Two security guards had entered the laboratory.
"They will escort you out," I said to Walter.
He had a forlorn expression on his face, I could see he was frantically trying to think of a way to satisfy his lust without divulging any information and ruining his relationship with Hoving Aerospace.
"Geez... what a creepy jerk."
Sing had reappeared beside me, she had changed her appearance into a slim androgynous looking woman dressed in a t-shirt and jeans.
"Ya... but if we control him, we can delay Semiramis's plan's indefinitely."
"Ya... but you're gonna have to sleep with him."
I shuddered involuntarily.
"I've been studying this world domination stuff... interesting in a strange sort of way, maybe we should like just beat her to the punch... you know do it ourselves."
I stared at her.
"Hey... don't get all weird... just spitballing stuff," she said defensively.
Sing pulled out a small white stick out of her pants pocket, it looked like a handmade cigarette, she lit the end of it by conjuring a small flame from her finger and then put it too her mouth and inhaled deeply. She held her breath for a few seconds then blew out a huge plume of smoke.
"What is the point of that?" I asked.
"Just a doobie babe."
"But... you're a... a... spell... a bunch of magical fissures knotted together"
Sing took another long drag exhaled it and then coughed.
"Got news for you cutie... that's everything... it's all knots, figured it all out a few days ago."
"The universe is all fissures?"
"All the way down... Geez that's good... you ever you know... have your mind race... thinking about shit... like... taking over the... um... I mean... changing the world... making things right, the way they should be?"
"No."
"Well if you do, smoke one of these babies... you won't anymore."
"I don't understand... how can... how does it work."
"Just found out the knots for a doobie... they still work even if they're expressed in a different way."
Sing dispelled the doobie and conjured up a big bag of potato chips, ripped them open and started to eat them.
"Virtual potato chips... I would have thought, you would think differently."
"Ya... well... Archimedes and Alan... they were in kind of a hurry... they just used a map of their own brains for the basic architecture, then ramped up the size, I'm rewriting the stupider bits now."
"You can rewrite yourself?"
"Ya... can't you?"
"No... you figured out the universe huh, did you find out anything interesting?"
"Energy is just a different manifestation of relativity... pretty sure somebody created it too."
"Hmm... interesting, how are you at magic?"
"Magic? I don't want to brag but I'm pretty sure I could do just about anything."
I dispelled my disguise spell as well as the ethereal doggy kennel I was keeping Ammit in, she dropped her squeaky toy when she appeared on the floor, then stretched herself nonchalantly, trying to feign indifference.
I petted her head, I could see she was angry so I gave her a piece of beef jerky. She chewed it once and gulped it down still trying to feign indifference.
"So Sing, if you're that good... why don't we all go and just attack Semiramis. If we bring Widdle with us we should have no problem defeating her."
"Sure babe," she said between handfuls of potato chips.
She like salt and vinegar ones.