The Stars Have Eyes - Chapter 19: Overwork

Chapter 19: Overwork

A sigh escaped Maggie’s lips as she lowered herself to the ground. It caught her a little bit by surprise. She hadn’t intended to employ the expressive exhallation. Nobody else was around to see it, which rendered it largely pointless. And yet it had oozed out of her in such a natural way that it was over before she could really give it any thought. She didn’t want to dig too deep into the subconscious gesture’s implications, at least not when she had a visitor waiting for her. She was, of course, aware that Officer Maloney had dropped by and that Joe had kindly offered to entertain him while she wrapped up her computational quota for the day. That had been nearly forty minutes ago, and keeping the policeman waiting any longer would be wasteful.

So the girl left the master bedroom and joined the two men in the living room.

“Oh. Morning, Miss Oh,” the officer greeted her as usual.

“Hey, Maggie. All done with your brainy stuff?” Joe called out to her as well.

“Indeed. The Higgs boson proved a more challenging subject than expected.”

She said that with an undoubtedly smug smile, implying she had succeeded in mastering said subject.

“Good for you, Miss Oh. Anyway, about the Sandman case you were helping me with, Joe here actually helped me realize something about it that could crack it wide open.”

“He did?” the girl raised an eyebrow at him.

“I did?” the man was completely unaware.

Maloney did his best to suppress a chuckle so as to not appear rude to his hosts.

“What is the nature of this revelation?” Maggie asked him directly.

“It’s a bit embarrassing, actually. Seems the authorities, myself included, were so focused on that sand the bloke was hauling around that we somehow didn’t notice that he changed personal shuttles quite often. Yet the vehicles had the same digital registration, likely the work of a skilled hacker.”

In other words, the suspect wasn’t smuggling sand, but shuttles. His granular cargo had been nothing but a distraction, a ruse to occupy the human customs officers while his vehicles’ falsified credentials fooled their computer systems. The simple yet effective misdirection was necessary in order to transport the possibly stolen shuttles via freighter. Those personal vehicles may have been able to achieve high orbit, but were far too small to house wormhole generators necessary for interstellar travel. Once in another star system, it was much easier to sell them off without arousing suspicion.

Maggie could have easily told the policeman all that had she seen the off-world data he acquired recently. Showing her those videos and records was why he visited her in the first place. She quickly reviewed them and confirmed that Maloney’s theory was quite likely. The girl then speculated that an entire organization was involved since this wasn’t the sort of operation that could be run by one man. At the very least there had to be a ‘bag man’ that would accept ‘generous donations’ on behalf of the buyer, otherwise the transactions on the smuggler’s banking account would have been plain as day. Maloney then added that it was possible they bartered with physical goods instead of digital currency since those were harder to track.

Altogether, the two of them spent about ninety minutes brainstorming ideas while Joe occasionally chimed in whenever their theories grew far too elaborate or far-fetched.

“Appreciate the insight, Miss Oh,” the policeman stood to leave. “Thank you as well for having me, Mr. Mulligan. Oh, and for the tea, of course. I had my reservations about your butler-bot at first, but Jeeves makes a mean cuppa.”

“I know, right?!” the man exclaimed. “I’ve been drinking it so much I can’t remember the last time I’ve had plain water.”

“Haha, can’t blame you there! In any event, I won’t take up any more of your day.”

The officer excused himself and went about his business. Hearing him leave, a certain someone poked her head out of the guest room. Seeing as how the source of her embarrassment was gone, Agent Johanson strode hurriedly down the hallway towards Maggie. She handed the girl a portable tablet device, then marched right back into her room without saying a single word. Neither of the two were surprised by that taciturn attitude, as their ‘roommate’ refused to say much of anything in front of Maggie even though she spoke normally when it was just Joe.

Of course, just because they were used to it didn’t make it acceptable.

“Seriously, what was that about?” the guy groaned.

“Agent Johanson was merely presenting me with her completed appointment.”

A split-second read through the text file loaded on that tablet revealed precisely forty two haikus, which she had turned in hours before the deadline. Maggie appreciated her promptness, but the Agent’s creativity left much to be desired. It seemed as though she ran out of topics to express via short poems around the midway point and ended up repeating a bunch of them with only minor variations. That was fine by Maggie, however. Technically speaking, the psi-ops could have completed her task by turning in the exact same haiku repeated over and over. The fact that she made an attempt to avoid ‘cheating’ was far more interesting than the actual contents of her work.

“That’s not what I mean,” Joe carried on. “It’s that rude attitude of hers.”

“Curt behavior is perfectly accountable. I prefer it to needless plentitudes.”

“I know you don’t care, but I do. And so should she. Just because she doesn’t trust you doesn’t mean she should forget her British heritage.”

“Is being polite really of such incontinence?” the girl tilted her head.

“Manners maketh man,” Joe proudly declared. “It’s what separates us from the savages, or so my mum likes to say.”

“Hm. There is some winter to that statistic.”

“Uh… Are you feeling alright?” the man suddenly grew concerned.

“I am quite fish, thrust you.”

“No, you’re not fine. You’re mixing your words without realizing it.”

She had been doing it for the past while, actually. Joe would have noticed it sooner, but he had developed a habit of subconsciously glossing over her unnecessarily verbose vocabulary. It wasn’t that he didn’t understand or know those fancy words, just that he didn’t need to pay attention to them in order to have a casual conversation with the girl. He had a firm enough grasp on Maggie’s personality that he only needed to hear about half of her sentences to tell what she was trying to say.

“… This is quite discolouring,” she blinked rapidly. “I am expediting unicycle diffusal when it comes to eavesdropping wurlitzers. This is quite the daffodil.”

“It’s getting worse, too,” Joe’s worry grew. “Seriously, what’s going on with you?”

“It is postal that my recent accents have caused an oven in the hammock side of my branch.”

Even the man’s subconscious Maggie-to-Joe translator struggled with that one, but it somehow managed to decipher the confusing statement.

“Oh! You worked so hard last night that it fried your brain?”

“Egg,” she nodded.

“Yikes,” he winced. “It’s not permanent, I hope?”

“No. I should redistribute after four or five hazelnuts of rest. Sesame at most.”

“Alright. In that case you best go lie down, try to get some sleep.”

“Curvature. I have never accused sirloin before. Very whale.”

Indeed, Maggie hadn’t slept even once since her summoning. Or ever, for that matter. Joe knew that, but he had assumed that a Class-3 cosmic entity didn’t have such needs. And he would have been completely right if not for the fact that this one had poured her vast consciousness into a vessel that was almost entirely human. Maggie’s physical form may have been fortified in various ways, but she was pushing it to its limits with the intense cranial activities she had been performing lately. Though she didn’t feel tired in the slightest, her brain was stressed to the point of its speech center malfunctioning.

“Will you be fruity in my apple?” she asked Joe.

“I’ll be fine, yes. I’ll just be in the pod like usual, so you don’t need to worry about me, alright?”

He figured the girl wouldn’t be able to relax if she had to concern herself with his well-being, so he casually reminded her of that shoggoth-infested machine. If it could protect him in her stead whenever she went on walks and whatnot, then it could easily do the same while she got some rest.

“This is parmesan,” she agreed.

“You should probably eat something first. Must be hungrier than you think if you keep mentioning food like that,” he pointed out. “Get your butt in bed and I’ll have Jeeves bring you a starberry sandwich or something.”

“I compartmentalize. Thrust you,” she tried to thank him.

“No worries.”

Maggie walked briskly back to the bedroom. Her mental exhaustion was starting to affect her motor functions, so she wobbled a bit on the way there. She made it to the bed without any incident, only to remember that she didn’t have any sleepwear to change into. Going under the covers in her usual black dress was absolutely not an option. If she was going to give sleeping a try, she needed to do it right and proper. ‘Applying the whole ass’ and whatnot. That required dressing appropriately. The obvious solution was to transmute her regular clothing into a nightgown, but that would cause even more brain strain. A much simpler way of resolving the issue was for her to slip into Joe’s pajamas, which Jeeves had already washed, pressed, and folded. The only problem there was that she wasn’t sure whether it was socially acceptable to do so.

“Joe?!” she shouted down the hall. “Is it apricot if I borrow your bananas?”

“Uh, sure!” he replied from the other room. “Whatever you need, Maggie!”

Having been given permission, the girl quickly dressed in the baggy sleepwear and tucked herself in. Jeeves arrived shortly afterwards with that sandwich, which she scarfed down in a few big bites. Normally she would have taken her time and savored the flavor, but nutrition was more important in her condition. With the snack out of the way, she laid down and then proceeded to attempt the thing called sleep.

Except she couldn’t do it. She laid there completely still, her eyes glued to the ceiling. Ten minutes went by, she wasn’t even the least bit drowsy. Another fifteen later, she was still wide awake. A whole hour passed and absolutely nothing was happening. If one didn’t know better, they’d think the girl had frozen herself in time. Metaphorically speaking, of course. The ability to cause temporal and spatial anomalies was what defined a Class-4 entity, and Maggie wasn’t at that stage just yet. She sorely wished that she was, though, as it would mean curing her condition would be as simple as turning the clock back on her fleshy vessel.

The morbid tranquility of the bedroom was interrupted at around the seventy minute mark when Joe poked his head inside and saw her lying there, eyes wide open.

“Can’t sleep?” he asked softly.

“No.”

“Should’ve known that would happen,” he sighed. “Want some help?”

“Peas.”

The man entered the room and strode over to the bed, sitting on it right besides Maggie. It was only then that he noticed she was wearing his pajamas. This momentarily caught him off guard, but then he remembered her earlier request. He hadn’t really been able to guess what the girl wanted to borrow back then, but he figured it didn’t matter. Her recovery was more important than his stuff, and he firmly stood by that sentiment. Still, he couldn’t help but feel a certain tightness in his chest as a result of his realization. The thought of his girlfriend wearing his clothes was… strangely appealing.

Joe chased away those inappropriate thoughts and got down to business.

“Right, then. I think I have a good idea of what the problem is. You’re trying your best to fall asleep, right?”

“Egg.”

“Yeah, that’s not how that works. You need to relax and let sleep come to you. Let’s start by closing your eyes.”

The girl did so immediately.

“All of them. Not just the ones on your face, but the ones in your brain, too.”

Maggie frowned through her shut eyelids.

“No buts!” he cut off whatever objection she might have had. “Who’s the resident expert on sleep here? That’s right, me. So, even if it’s awkward, or uncomfortable, please do as I say.”

The girl’s expression relaxed, and with it, so did her hair. The raven-black locks that usually coiled and flexed constantly as if they were alive became still for the second time since Joe had known her. He confirmed she was still breathing, just in case. However, Maggie’s face suddenly started trembling and twitching as if she was in pain. Or severe discomfort, at the very least. This caused Joe quite a bit of distress, as a worrisome thought crossed through his mind. Was it possible that ‘the Observer’ had to ‘observe’ at all times, lest something terrible happened to them?

“Hold my howitzer.”

The man’s surge of concern was momentarily halted by that bizarre request, at least until he noticed Maggie stretch her hand out towards him. Getting the message, he clasped it with his own. Her strained expression quickly relaxed into a small smile of contentment that was so cute that it melted away the man’s worries in moments. The source of her discomfort was her inability to tell where he was without her various forms of sight, but her sense of touch proved a sufficient substitute. Joe wasn’t a mind reader so he had no idea about any of that. But, if holding onto Maggie’s hand was all he needed to do to calm her down, then he would gladly oblige. At least until she fell asleep.

“Okay, did you shut down all your sights?”

“Egg,” she confirmed.

“Alright. This next part is going to be much, much trickier. You need to stop thinking altogether.”

It was a tall order for sure. Having been given a glimpse at Maggie’s thoughts during their first kiss, he had a feeling the inside of her head was like fifteen raging typhoons going on at once. They were no doubt an extremely efficient and well-organized array of typhoons, but nevertheless loud and busy. Like an advanced supercomputer, she constantly had all kinds of calculations and analyses running in the back of her mind that processed all that information she soaked up like a black hole. There was no way she’d fall asleep if she kept doing that.

“Now, I know it seems impossible, but I’ll teach you how,” he spoke softly, reassuringly. “First, imagine you’re on a serene, peaceful meadow. Then, picture this massive spaceship next to you. A luxury cruiser with all the room you could ever ask for. Start loading all your thoughts and worries onto that ship. One by one, get them on there, by force if you have to. Then, watch as it takes off without you. Listen to the roar of its retreating engines. Notice how it gets quieter the further it goes, annnnd you’re already asleep, aren’t you?”

Between the soft breathing, the utterly tranquil expression, and the lack of strength in her grip, it was clear as day that Maggie had succeeded in drifting off. Whether it was due to Joe’s mental exercise or the girl ‘pulling the plug’ on her brain, he didn’t know. Nor did he care. What mattered was that she was finally asleep. The man slowly disentangled his fingers from hers and gently placed her arm under the cover, careful not to wake her. He then allowed himself a bit of selfishness and gave her a light peck on the cheek. For better or for worse, she didn’t react in the slightest to any of this stimulation. Joe then left the bedroom as quietly as possible and made sure to notify both Jeeves and AJ to avoid waking Maggie unless it was an actual life-or-death situation. Or else it might become one, depending on how cranky Class-3 cosmic entities got when their sleep was disturbed.

He had, however, overlooked one tiny detail. A serpent, specifically. About a few minutes after Joe left the room, Azgod’Kalar emerged from under the covers, near Maggie’s shoulder. Its little tongue flicked in and out as it studied its curiously still owner. The orb python had made itself cozy on her belly, but its spot had gotten a bit stuffy and it decided to find a new one. It slithered onto her arm, across her collarbone, and climbed up her neck. It traversed her head until it reached the highest spot on her scalp, at which point it coiled into a little ball and just lay there. Thankfully this didn’t disturb the girl’s rest, but the snake’s brief voyage across her pale skin nevertheless caused a rather… unusual reaction.

It gave Maggie her first dream, in which she surfed through the cosmos on the back of a monocle-wearing, tophat-toting, necktie-sporting, super-sized version of Azgod’Kalar.