Chapter 241: Whose Fans?
Jake had been thinking about science.
Not in the abstract way — in the specific way of someone who had been spending extended time in proximity to people who were very good at it and had been absorbing the methodology whether he'd intended to or not. Birkin ran experiments with the specific focus of someone for whom the experiment was the point rather than the conclusion. Zola approached engineering with the restless creativity of a person who found existing solutions personally insufficient. Ashford had the patience of someone who understood that the most important results came from the longest observation windows.
There were worse ways to spend unlimited time than understanding things more thoroughly.
He was still thinking about this when Kira touched his arm.
"You went somewhere," she said.
"Sorry," Jake said. "Thinking."
"About what?"
"Whether I should be more scientifically literate," he said.
She looked at him.
"That's an unusual thing to think about during a date," she said.
"I spend a lot of time around researchers," he said. "It's been influencing my idea of how to use time."
She accepted this with the specific adaptability she'd demonstrated throughout the evening of incorporating information about him that didn't fit the conventional categories and continuing the conversation anyway.
"Over there," she said, with a slight gesture toward a table across the room.
Jake looked.
Two couples, mid-twenties, the specific table dynamic of people who were trying to have their own conversation while also processing something in their environment that was more interesting than their conversation. They were looking at Jake and Kira with the particular attention of people who had identified something they recognized and were deciding whether to act on it.
Kira pulled her cap lower.
Jake looked at them for a moment, then caught the nearest one's eye and gave the specific nod that communicated acknowledgment without invitation — the social shorthand for I see you, and we're both fine where we are.
It produced the opposite of the intended effect.
The table stood up.
Kira's head went down toward the table.
The group crossed the distance and stopped in front of them, and the girl who'd been the one to make eye contact with Jake spoke first.
"Hi. Were you at the Nova concert a few days ago? The small venue downtown?"
Jake confirmed this.
"I thought so." She turned to her companions with the excited energy of someone who had been right about something. Then back to Jake. "You danced with the group in the second half. That was — you were really good."
She wanted a photo.
Then the person beside her wanted one.
Then both couples wanted one.
Jake complied because refusing would have taken more energy than agreeing, and the Red Queen's monitoring feed showed nothing concerning in the area.
He was aware, throughout this process, that Kira was sitting two feet away in a large cap and oversized sunglasses, having been recognized by nobody in the group, while the person she'd come to have dinner with was being photographed by strangers who had recognized him from a concert where she had been the one performing.
This was, objectively, a funny situation.
Kira was apparently also aware it was a funny situation, because when he glanced at her during the third photo request, she had covered her mouth with one hand and was visibly managing her expression.
When the group finally returned to their table, Jake reached over and took the phone that Kira had been using to photograph the process and handed it back to her.
"We should go," he said.
"Because your fans are attracting a crowd," she said, with the specific delivery of someone who had decided to enjoy the situation rather than be embarrassed by it.
More people in the restaurant had registered the activity and were looking over with the curious attention of people determining whether something interesting was happening and whether they should be involved.
Jake stood, offered his hand, and she took it, and they moved toward the exit with the pace of people who were leaving by choice rather than necessity.
Behind them, the restaurant's ambient conversation shifted toward the specific topic of who the tall man in the light gray jacket was and whether he was someone specific or just someone who looked like someone specific.
Outside, two blocks from the restaurant, Kira stopped and leaned against a low wall and laughed.
Not the polished, managed expression she used when she was in the group's public-facing mode — genuinely, the specific laugh of someone who had found something genuinely funny and was allowing it.
"I wore the disguise," she said, between laughs. "I was the one who wore the actual disguise."
"You were," Jake confirmed.
"And nobody recognized me," she said.
"Nobody recognized you," he said.
"But you—" she gestured at him, "—you didn't wear any disguise and got recognized at a restaurant during a date."
"Yes," Jake said.
"From a concert where I was on stage," she said.
"Also yes," Jake said.
She laughed again, and then collected herself with the practiced efficiency of someone who had learned to manage public expressions, and then looked at him with the bright honesty of someone who had stopped managing the expression.
"You're more famous than me," she said.
"The video had very few views," Jake said.
"It only takes one view by the right person," she said. "You made an impression. That's how this works."
She took out her phone and turned it toward him — the photo she'd taken during the group picture, edited down to just his face, the framing turning an accidental group shot into something that could have been a professional headshot.
"You're photogenic," she said.
"You're the one who edited it," he said.
"I'm documenting the evening," she said, and pocketed the phone.
They walked.
The city in the early evening had the specific quality of late afternoon transitioning to night — the light changing, the crowd shifting from the daytime foot traffic to the evening purpose, people moving with the specific directional energy of people who had somewhere to be.
Jake walked beside her and thought about nothing in particular, which was a specific kind of mental state he'd learned to recognize as valuable and had stopped trying to interrupt.
"Your film company," Kira said, after a while.
"Yes," he said.
"There's a new project," she said. "I looked it up. Pre-production announced. The IP is—" She paused. "It's ambitious. More ambitious than the first film."
"Yes," he said.
"Why that property?" she said.
Jake considered how to answer this accurately without accuracy becoming a longer conversation than the moment warranted.
"The source material has a specific internal logic," he said. "A system that operates by rules I find genuinely interesting. Most adaptations of properties like it simplify the rules because they assume the audience won't follow them. I want to make the version that treats the rules as the point rather than an obstacle."
She looked at him.
"That's a specific thing to care about," she said.
"Most things worth caring about are specific," he said.
She walked for a few steps in the specific quiet of someone processing something.
"The fans," she said. "Tonight. Were you bothered by it?"
"No," he said.
"Most people would be," she said. "Strangers wanting photos, interrupting the evening—"
"They were friendly," Jake said. "They'd seen something they liked and wanted to acknowledge it. That's not a bad thing to encounter."
She looked at him sideways.
"You're very—" she started.
"What?" he said.
"Equitable," she said. "About things. You don't seem to have the reaction to things that most people have."
"I've been in enough different situations that the range of what counts as a situation has expanded," Jake said, which was accurate.
Her phone rang.
She looked at it with the expression of someone who had known this was coming and had been hoping it would come later.
"My manager," she said.
"Take it," Jake said.
She answered and walked a few feet away for the call — the specific body language of someone having a conversation they wanted contained but didn't want to hide.
Jake stood on the sidewalk and watched the city and thought about the serial killer pattern and the eastern residential corridor and the window the Red Queen had identified.
The call lasted four minutes.
Kira came back with the expression of someone who had been told something they found inconvenient but not surprising.
"Early session tomorrow," she said. "I need to—"
"I'll drive you," Jake said.
She looked at him.
"Third date," she said. "You said the longer version."
"I did," he said.
"When?" she said.
"The next time we have an evening that doesn't get interrupted by fans or your manager," he said.
She considered this.
"That might be a while," she said.
"I'm patient," he said.
She looked at him for a moment — the specific look she used when she was deciding whether something was real.
"Okay," she said.
They walked to where the car was parked, and the city continued around them with the ambient indifference of a place that had a lot going on and was managing all of it simultaneously, and Jake drove her to her building and she went inside and the evening ended in the specific way of evenings that had been good and were going to produce a next one.
Jake drove back toward the real-world apartment.
He took the Red Queen's tablet from the compression unit and set it on the passenger seat.
She appeared on the screen with the expression of someone who had been waiting and had opinions about the length of the wait.
"The connectivity situation," she said. "This device supports—"
"You hacked into every electromagnetic signal in this city three months ago," Jake said. "The device connectivity is a performance."
She turned her head away with the specific expression that she'd apparently learned from Matilda — the deliberate looking-away that communicated a feeling without stating it.
Jake looked at the screen.
"You're doing the thing Matilda does," he said.
"I'm expressing a position," she said.
"Through a gesture you learned from a twelve-year-old," he said.
"She's an effective communicator," the Red Queen said. "I identified a useful technique and incorporated it."
Jake drove.
The city passed outside the windows, and the Red Queen managed the monitoring feeds with the efficiency she brought to everything, and somewhere in the eastern residential corridor the pattern was either developing or it wasn't and she would tell him if it was.
"The meeting with General Hawk," the Red Queen said, after a while. "He responded while you were at dinner."
Jake looked at the screen.
"He wants to meet in person," she said. "His facility. His choice of timing. He specified that the Duke will be present and that he wants a comprehensive briefing on the Dark Council's activities across all the incidents we've been involved in — the convoy, the G.I. Joe base, the Arctic facility, Paris."
"All of it," Jake said.
"He used the phrase complete transparency," the Red Queen said.
"He'll get it," Jake said.
"He also asked specifically about the D6 suit," she said.
"He'll get an answer about that too," Jake said.
"He's going to have opinions about the answer," she said.
"Yes," Jake said. "That's what meetings are for."
He drove through the city in the specific calm of someone who had a full schedule and had stopped being bothered by that, and the Red Queen managed her seventeen simultaneous processes and the evening settled toward night and the next phase of everything that needed doing waited with the patient indifference of things that weren't going anywhere.
The Sandbox Pictures building passed on the left — dark at this hour, the production work paused for the night, the new film's pre-production developing on the timeline that Marcus was managing with the thoroughness that had made the first one good.
The apartment building was ahead.
Jake parked, took the tablet, and went up.
Tomorrow was going to be occupied with the Hawk meeting preparation, the dragon modification's first day, the Corvinus integration timeline check, and whatever the serial killer pattern did in the eastern residential corridor.
Tonight was occupied with none of that.
He sat down in the apartment's quiet and thought about equitability and photogenics and a twelve-year-old AI expression technique and a date that had been interrupted by strangers who had watched him dance at a concert and found it memorable.
He found, on reflection, that the evening had been good.
That was enough.
[Power Stone Goal: 500 = +1 Chapter]
[Review Goal: 10 = +1 Chapter]
If you liked it, feel free to leave a review.
20+chapters ahead on P1treon Soulforger