Name: kay_brooke
Story: David/Cleaner
Colors: Cinnabar #20 (Charlton), Crane White #3 (meet me on my last veranda), Fish Blue #1 (coelacanth)
Styles/Supplies: Canvas, Seed Beads
Word Count: 1,167
Rating/Warnings: PG-13; no standard warnings apply.
Summary: Alice has something important to show Edgar.
Note: Constructive criticism is welcome, either through comments or PM.


“What is so important that you had to call me all the way down here?” Edgar yanked on a lab coat only after Alice waved impatiently at it hanging on the hook. “Fine. So I take it I’m going to be here awhile?”

“Depends,” said Alice, turning her back and gesturing him over to her table. Edgar stepped across the room, sighing heavily. Alice had a purple velvet cover spread across the table, and upon it glittered what at first looked like gems, but as Edgar moved closer he saw it was only pieces of quartz rock, carefully separated into even rows.

Alice grabbed a pair of tweezers and picked up one of the larger pieces as if it was the finest of jewels.

Edgar frowned. “I'm still here.”

“I know,” said Alice. “Come look at this.”

“You brought me down here to look at some quartz?” Edgar thought of his abandoned dinner, sitting in his flat on the thirtieth floor of West Tower. It was fish night, salmon delivered directly to his door from the fishery. Once a month he got to enjoy it, and now it sat on a plate, growing cold, while he was standing in a basement lab on the edge of the city.

“It's not quartz,” said Alice. “Well, it is, but it's a special kind.” She held the piece out for Edgar to examine. He did so, and concluded it looked like a piece of rock.

“What's so special about it? And why did you call me?” He and Alice had been colleagues once, soil testers recruited by the Corporation to assess the feasibility of farms outside the city walls. That project had gone nowhere—the soil was too acidic to support crops, and even if they could have worked around that, no one was willing to leave themselves or their property exposed to the outlaws who lived in the rurs—but the Corporation had absorbed them both into its operations. Allowed to branch into their interests, they had grown in different directions. Alice had become a researcher, studying the geology of the area, and Edgar had taken what he learned from the farm project and become part of the hydroponics development team in the agricultural division of the Corporation.

“Because I trust you won't tell anyone,” said Alice. “I'm pretty sure I'm right about what this is, but no one can know.”

“You still haven't said what's so special about it.”

“It's illuminating quartz,” she said.

Edgar snorted. “You've been down in this lab for too long, Alice. That's a myth.”

“So you know the stories.”

“Of course I do.” Illuminating quartz, said to act like a prism, but not for light. “And they're just stories. Bullshit parables spun by the priests.”

“Maybe not,” said Alice. She gingerly placed the piece of rock back down on its velvet. “But I've done a lot of studying of those stories, and this looks like what they described, down to every property.”

“That just tells me the stories describe common quartz,” said Edgar. “Just because some folk tales say it has magical properties doesn't mean it does.”

“Not magical,” said Alice. “I'm sure there's a scientific explanation.”

“Alice, they're supposed to show a dying person the way into the afterlife.” Edgar shook his head. “You know better than this. Have you gotten religious in your old age?” If she had, and if she wasn't willing to keep it to herself, he might have to cease contact with her. The Corporation didn't look kindly on temple sympathizers, and there was nothing worse to one's career than association with someone who had fallen out of the Corporation's favor.

“No,” said Alice with an impatient huff. “But there's something to the stories, I know it. It doesn't necessarily show the way to the afterlife, but maybe it shows us something.”

“Fine then, make it show us something.” Edgar crossed his arms. “You called me away from dinner. Impress me.”

“I don't know what the right conditions are,” said Alice. She looked mournfully at her common treasure. “That's another thing the stories mentioned.”

“You're very concerned with the stories,” said Edgar. “I think you should be more concerned what people will think about you ignoring the science in favor of fables.”

“Fables are nothing more than the attempts by less knowledgeable people to explain worldly phenomena,” said Alice. “They're not a replacement for science, but they can be a starting point.”

Edgar threw up his hands. “I've had enough of this. You can keep trying to glimpse the spirit world through your little rocks, but I'm going home.”

“Tell me this,” said Alice, turning to face him, the empty tweezers still clutched in one hand. “If this was just common quartz, then why was it wrapped so carefully and marked for shipping to Central Tower? To the physics labs, no less?”

“How should I know?” said Edgar. “Maybe they need the raw material for some process. I'm not a physicist, and neither are you.”

“If they needed such an abundant and common material, they wouldn't be handling these with silk gloves,” said Alice. She gestured to the spread in front of her. “Pieces of a rock. Nothing special about them. So why the special wrapping and handling instructions?”

“You tell me,” said Edgar. “This is your department, not mine.”

Alice flushed at that, and looked at the floor.

“You didn't.” Edgar backed away, as if any moment someone might come through the door and find him standing too close to stolen property. “And you brought me down here. You made me an accomplice to your espionage!”

“Oh, relax,” said Alice, curling her lip at him. “No one else is here, and no one will know that I peeked. I'll put everything back the way I found it, packaging and all.”

“No,” said Edgar. He knew he shouldn't have left his flat. He had come because he and Alice were friends—true friends, not like his coworkers, every one of whom would trample him if there was a promotion in it—but she was on the verge of getting herself and possibly him fired, and that was pushing the bonds of friendship too far. “You are going to put that away right now before someone finds you. I am going home to my dinner. And neither one of us is ever going to speak of this again.”

“They're using this for something,” said Alice.

“I don't care.”

“Don't you want to know what it is?”

“I said I don't care.” She had been working for the Corporation for as long as he; didn't she understand the seriousness of what she'd done? He backed all the way to the door, unbuttoning the lab coat as he did so. “Good night, Alice.”

“Fine,” she said with a sniff. “I just won't tell you what I find.”

“I'd appreciate it,” he said, yanking open the door, leaving the lab and all of Alice's criminal activities behind him.