_STOCKAR CITY, SVEARIKA, 12 a.m._
Altair appeared in his apartment.
He stood at the edge of the dining room, near the sliding door that separated it from the living room.
He let out a deep breath, and leaned on the wall.
This silence, he didn't need it right now. It made him remember the videos.
The sounds in his head overtook the silence in the room.
*thwack* *tap* *spack*
The images clouded his vision for a moment.
He took a deep breath. His thoughts cleared, he tilted his head slightly to the left looking at the couch facing the TV.
He needed distraction, something with images… a lot of images, and sounds, to replace what kept coming up.
Plopping onto the couch, he grabbed the remote. The tele was soon on, and he raised the volume.
Sound high, he zapped through the channels, at first actively… but nothing seemed to catch his attention, so he just reflexively continued moving through.
The sound started annoying him. He didn't want that so, he cut the sound off.
Then, he felt hungry. Maybe it was something else.
He went to the kitchen, switched his clothes with the inventory and started preparing his ingredients.
The smell of ingredients slowly moved aside his preoccupations. By the time he started frying condiments, the combination of the smell and sound acted like a charm.
He was in a more relaxed state now.
Time went by as he stayed in the kitchen, relaxing to the smell and sound of food getting ready.
Then it was time to eat. But-
!Furniture replication complete!
He heard SAMANTHA's voice from his phone. It was so loud that he couldn't miss it.
'Did I not mute that phone?' He briefly wondered but pushed the thought aside. What he wondered more about was the time. It had not been four hours yet.
He looked at the food in the pot, then the plate in his hand.
He left the porcelain plate on the countertop beside the sink and changed his clothes before Slinging away.
.
He reappeared in the white meeting room, Ronald's office. It was empty.
'Where is everyone, am I the first here?'
With a slight breeze, James and David appeared in two flickers of red.
They were a certain distance away from each other and each had one hand placed on a tied bundle of four chairs.
Immediately, they started arguing over who appeared first.
"I got here first." David casually said while arranging his coat.
James raised an eyebrow. "Right, I bet you wish you did." Walking to his sofa he said, "You were nearly a second slower."
David scoffed. "No, what you saw was an after-image delay. Classic high-speed Slinging lag. Happens when you push a Sling past a thermal sync point."
"What?! That's not a thing." James became active.
"It is if you're fast enough."
"You're not. You can't just mix random weird terms together and confuse people to make a point.
Altair sitting in one sofa looked between the two of them.
"Are you really arguing over who teleports faster?"
"Not arguing." James said. "Just correcting historical inaccuracies."
"It's not about the teleportation," David said. "I arranged my chairs quicker than him and left before."
"Someone's delusional." James said with a spinning finger gesture.
Before they could argue further, the door slid open.
Ronald walked in, not in any rush, carrying two wall sconces.
Silence returned. Authority, had arrived.
Ronald took his seat and looked Altair for a moment.
"The replication is complete. Sooner than expected." He paused.
"It's 1 p.m., at 2:40, we get another window to move in. That's when we replace the furniture. SAMANTHA will handle that with her robots."
Altair raised his hand.
"Yes, Mr. Akroatís."
"I read that Slinging while carrying stuff contaminates it." He looked towards the chairs James and David brought in. "How do we get the robots and the furniture to Denton Black's apartment?"
"Allow me." David said. "That's true, but only to a certain extent. There is a program that you might eventually follow to do that. That is the reason why he and I." pointing to James and himself. "can Sling with items and people while you aren't allowed to. We can prevent the contaminations, and you can't."
"So, yeah, the two of us will carry the equipment directly into his dining room." He concluded.
"So, I am benched…" Altair said.
"That's one way to put it." James said. "Football fan?"
"No…" Altair shook his head.
"Bummer… anyway, don't raise your hand to talk here. That's the second time you do that." James remarked
SAMANTHA's voice came in.
!Denton Black has not returned to his apartment.!
Everyone's attention turned to the main screen. A satellite image of a location zoomed in quick successive frames and then readjusted.
Then the screen split and a video quickly generated showing Denton Black's car in a parking.
David furrowed his brows. "That looks like… the venue for his upcoming performance?"
After a short pause, James scoffed, a frown on his face. "Tsk. Of course."
Ronald said. "SAMANTHA, prepare the robots."
The floor opened at two locations and two large cases came out.
"You know what to do. Go." He said, his attention towards the two.
They nodded, and vanished with the eight chairs.
Then, they came back, took the sconces from Ronald's table and each placed a hand on one of the cases, just to vanish with them as well.
Altair was caught off guard by the sudden shift in atmosphere.
When he came back to his senses, only Ronald was left in the room.
There was nothing for him to do, since he could not Sling with someone or something in tow.
As for watching SAMANTHA's robots at work, he had seen that already when they patched his house after his rough first encounter with Ronald.
Remembering their first encounter, Altair suddenly felt awkward staying in a room alone with him. It was better to go watch the others get to work.
.
In the living room, the two cases, large enough to fit two people each, lay open on the floor.
Several robots of different sizes and forms moved about doing different tasks.
One wall had about five small robots clustered around the sconce, extracting it from the wall without damaging the wall.
The same thing was happening on the ceiling with the chandelier.
Some other small robots grouped together to lift each leg of the chair to carry it towards the right spot.
SAMANTHA had calculated everything, and the robots had the data to ensure each piece of furniture was exactly where it should, according to the pictures from earlier.
With so many things going on at once and the efficiency with which the robots worked, it took just about 15 minutes for everything to be complete.
The robots extracted the sconces and chandelier, replaced with the new ones, and carried the chairs out and placed in the replicas.
At the end, the robots brought all the original furniture in one place and packed them together.
They tied the chairs together in two separate bundles and left them in the living room across. The two sconces made another bundle with the chandelier on the table.
After packing, the robots moved and arranged themselves in their respective cases.
James and David Slinged back and forth, returning the furniture and robot cases to Ronald's office.
Altair returned to Ronald's office after checking that nothing was left behind.
.
When he appeared, the floor was closing, swallowing the cases into it.
The images on the walls reorganized and new content replaced older one.
The wall to the left was split in five. It showed a Denton Black's apartment building in a very close, focused satellite view. The four other squares showed the building from four different sides. The top view took a larger portion of this wall, and the other four were just below at the same size.
The wall to the right showed Denton Black's current location, the venue of the show. This time in six views, top, four sides and parking lot.
The front wall facing Ronald's table, split in four views. The top right was the smallest of all and it had information collected about Denton Black. His picture and the basic information contained in his file. Next to it, a video from the top of his dining room, and two other views from the sides.
Altair's attention lingered on this front wall, and he realized they had most likely installed cameras into the sconces and chandelier.
Leaning back in his seat, Ronald spoke. "Now everything is set. We establish contact once the target gets to the location."