"You said that Dawn went off with Phoenix to Japan."
    "Yeah. I assume she's still with him."
    "It's just very strange," he said meditatively. "Emily's been staying at my place. In her sleep she keeps breaking out in Japanese and it's not her voice. It took me a little while—it's Dawn's voice."
    "Oh." More of what Phoenix would call weird shit; it's been following that woman ever since we met her as her former self. "You have anybody there who knows Japanese?"
    "No. Well, I'm sure that Steel knows it, because I haven't run into a language yet that he doesn't speak, but normally he only knows how to say, 'Can you tell me where the machine guns are?' and 'When does the guard change?' so...."
    "Very highly specialized. Well, sorry I don't really know anything about it," I told him regretfully.
     "I was hoping you might. Have you heard from them recently?"
    "Not a word. You'd think the boy would write."
    Trent sighed. "It's just very strange. Things going well there?"
    "They're keeping us busy."
    "What did you end up doing with whats-his-name?"
    "Travis? Talked a little."
    "And?"
    "He told me a few useful things. So how's everything out your way?" I changed the subject.
    "Not bad, it's been pretty quiet the past couple months. Had a brief instance of squid monsters coming up out of the lake, but that happens every once in a while. Means Dr. Twilight was around and we never even got close to him, but we stopped the squid monsters. I just hate it when he shows up."
    "I can imagine that's not really very comfortable." Given that, as far as I know, Dr. Twilight is for him what Zed is for me.
    "Same old same old. We should arrange some sort of picnic or something this summer," he added. Caught off guard, I laughed, enjoying the mental picture. "I just envy you guys, you have a team, and you probably even had a team meeting today."
    "How'd you guess?"
    "I just assumed you do."
    "Well, this was kind of the first one. Got a few things straightened out. Really," I assured him dryly, "it's not that exciting. Work closely with people, you have a lot of interpersonal..."
    "Problems, I know, that's why I have an office by myself."
    A lull descended. I almost started to say something, to broach the topic of my recent worries, then reconsidered. This wasn't the time for it, I was too tired, I rationalized.
    "All right," he said at last. "If you hear anything or find out anything, let me know, because its obvious that there's something going on here."
    "I'll keep my eyes open. If they get in touch I'll let you know."
    "Much obliged."
    "How is Emily otherwise?"
    "Disappeared again."
    "Oh."
    I must have sounded somewhat alarmed, and he hastened to add, "That doesn't worry me very much, she does it sometimes, she'll just be gone for weeks on end. It makes treating her difficult, but the real problem there is that I can't read her mind."
    "Really?"
    "There's something about it, there are some people who are just particularly strong-willed or particularly intense or there's just something about her power, but something's blocking me, which makes it far more difficult, because I have to go through conventional methods to try to figure out what happened to her memory."
    "Interesting. Did you try reading Dawn ever?"
    "I don't scan people without permission."
    "That's very polite." I can't say that I would be that ethically strait-laced, given his abilities.
    "Well, except in a combat circumstance. It's like saying you don't hit people without permission."
    "Just wondering."
    "In any case, if she happens to turn up out there, tell her to give me a call."
    "I'll do that."
    "Take care of yourself."
    "You, too."
    So that was my day. Rather long, and oddly suspended-feeling. I was expecting more to happen; we'll see what tomorrow brings.

April 29, 1987

I slept for nine hours and it felt very good. If I had any dreams, I don't remember what they involved.
    The newspaper was disaster-free again, with a passing mention of our presence at the mass arrest last night. There was also a small photo of Vincent, surrounded by his protective entourage of lawyers and doctors, as he was moved out to his Cape house.
    The four of us met up briefly in the morning to go over plans for the day. Hans suggested we make up a status board to indicate what was going on with our current problems at any given point, and delegated its creation to Scott. The robot accepted the task with his usual good cheer, then returned to helping Dr. Scott test devices to stop Silverblood; we can't be 100% sure that any of them will work, but he's the best shot we have. Jeffrey has conjectured that the weapons systems TECH added removed some of the robot's plasticity, and it probably can't turn itself to gas without losing said systems; this removes a lot of its flexibility. I think we're all pretty much agreed, though, that the best strategy we can adopt will be to find the people controlling the robot, rather than fighting Silverblood directly. Hans hasn't turned anything up yet, but he's still looking.

[Perspective switch: The Scotts]

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