The Muse
Silence can hurt. And though the room's silence wasn't real silence - though Rick had never experienced real silence, except in the sensory-deprivation cell of a certain Muse police-station - though Rick could hear the heater's hum and the rain's percussion and the scrabbling of something small and feral in the wall behind him... despite all this, Rick was unnerved. Rick had an ongoing problem - he didn't like company, and he didn't like his own thoughts. But he also didn't like sitting in his office, waiting for a client with another no good job.
Rick new the kinds of jobs he got nowadays. Jobs you knew the moment you saw them couldn't end well. Infinite jobs jobs without end. To find someone unlocatable... to trudge across London, or across the world, looking for a person who didn't want to be found, and who'd made damn sure they couldn't be. Rick'd had enough of jobs like that. But he'd also had enough of waiting. He wanted something to take his mind off the bottle in his desk's top drawer. And, of course, he needed money. Rick had savings, and he had his wits about him. But savings run out eventually. And wits can't be relied on. The more Rick learned about wits, the more he thought they were mostly luck.
The scrabbling in the wall stopped for a moment, and a sickly rodent rasp interrupted Rick's thoughts. Rick waited for a moment longer but silence. The room was still and dense with heat and thought. Rick followed with his mind's attention a droplet of water, which rolled slowly down his brow and picked its way through stubble to his chin's extreme base. Rick's scalp was crying. He mopped his brow again.
Does Rick:
Rick new the kinds of jobs he got nowadays. Jobs you knew the moment you saw them couldn't end well. Infinite jobs jobs without end. To find someone unlocatable... to trudge across London, or across the world, looking for a person who didn't want to be found, and who'd made damn sure they couldn't be. Rick'd had enough of jobs like that. But he'd also had enough of waiting. He wanted something to take his mind off the bottle in his desk's top drawer. And, of course, he needed money. Rick had savings, and he had his wits about him. But savings run out eventually. And wits can't be relied on. The more Rick learned about wits, the more he thought they were mostly luck.
The scrabbling in the wall stopped for a moment, and a sickly rodent rasp interrupted Rick's thoughts. Rick waited for a moment longer but silence. The room was still and dense with heat and thought. Rick followed with his mind's attention a droplet of water, which rolled slowly down his brow and picked its way through stubble to his chin's extreme base. Rick's scalp was crying. He mopped his brow again.
Does Rick:
You have 3 choices:
- Continue silent and still, moving only to minutely change the angle at which the desk's reflective surface can be seen, refracted light from the lamp above splintering in different intersecting patterns as his head minutely moves.
- Walk, with purpose but uncertainty, to the chilly window, and observe the dispersal of light from the street below through amorphous shuddering rainfall.
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