Infinity Curve - Lamentations to Unseen Friends Across the Vastness of Space

EP. 60 - ON UNFORTUNATE CIRCUMSTANCES

SOFIA KNOCKED ON RICK'S door.

"Come in," he beckoned.

She opened then quickly closed the door before the dogs could rush in and disrupt things.

"Just wanted to give you a status update on the inquiry. That I can tell, my resolve not to have this local person come out to visit is working. I plugged-in the kitchen monitor unit and set the fan beside it. The fan is buzzing away happily and noisily as we speak. No word back from the snoopy bastards."

Rick smiled. "I noticed the dogs barking more. Though that door is thick and soundproof, it's not like an audiologist's booth. I can still hear six dogs blasting away, but just barely. It might even be more the vibration of their noise through the ground, rather than the barks themselves."

Sofia chuckled. The sound of barking dogs never bothered her as it did Rick. She well might have worked in a kennel all her life, though kennels were in short supply after the Debacle. The same agent that killed so many humans had a similar effect on others in the animal kingdom, particularly mammals.

"I'm sure those bastards are hearing a good dose of noise on the other end as the AIs try to decipher just what the hell is going on. They must think I'm the dog version of a 'cat lady,' living wretchedly in a home doused in urine and feces."

"Ooh," Rick shuttered. "I appreciate that you have to manage them while I can't."

"No problem."

"Then is there a new issue?" he inquired, watching her expressions.

"Not really." She paused to pick up an autographed baseball on his desk.

"Careful, please!" he requested. "No smudges on the names."

"You know you can't take this with you when you go."

Rick smiled. "If heaven is as your old Catholic teachings describe, then I'll be able to play ball with these Brooklyn Dodgers and other great and not-so-great players in history. You'll not get me off that field except to eat whatever they feed you there."

"Never gave much thought to what people eat in heaven. I'm sure it's not gruel."

Rick dropped his chin and stared up at her as she stood near the door. "Still, you look concerned."

She sat on her usual chair, adjacent to the door. It was ten feet from Rick's desk to allow for the dogs to surround her as she spoke with him. "Um, it's a bit concerning. I sent them the email back that I had plugged in the intercom speaker."

"And?"

"The response thanked me, but they also asked about the gardens business and how it was going."

"And? Not the full story?"

"I'll get there. It implied they might want to send out a person to review the gardens and surroundings. I'm not sure if this is tied into the earlier inquiry on the intercom or a separate issue. You know, it's not an unusual request. They're only trying to assess if the business is on the up-and-up and all of our financial transactions are visible to them."

"Yeah, I know. Remember that visit you had four years ago? We thought they'd found us out. And it was only their concern that barter was happening on the reservation to a much greater degree than anywhere else, and they needed to tamp that down or get their unfair share of taxes and skim."

Sofia stood, signaling she needed to get back to the dogs barking outside the door. "Yep. And no tamping has occurred, not that I can see. Our Navajo friends continue to openly defy this autocratic control by the oligarchs and our laughable relic of a constitutional democracy. I don't blame them for their courage. They've lived through external imposition on their lives for the last five hundred years. This is just the latest version of a government screwing them out of something."