The Actor

May I suggest the Snowden Café?

Jenny 

Jenny heard a rap of knuckles and the sound of the door opening behind her. A male voice: "Oh sorry Prof., I didn't realize you had company. Do you want us to come back later?"

Professor Singh pondered for a moment. "No, come in. Is Travis with you?"

"He's on his way. There is someone with him we want you to meet."

"Snap." The professor beamed at this little witticism. He turned to Jenny, "Do you believe in coincidence, Ms Johnston?"

Jenny appeared unprepared for the question. "Coincidence? I'm sorry, ..."

"You don't understand? Well of course you don't. You aren't meant to with a coincidence, are you. It is a violation of cause and effect." He turned to Alex. "This is Jenny Johnston. She is from Internal Security ..."

"Are you serious?"

"Deadly. As, I'm sure is she. Ms Johnston, may I introduce Alex Higendorf, a colleague of mine from the computer science department, with interests that include cryptography. A sender of suspicion-invoking but in truth entirely innocent encrypted e-mails. I expect he only does it to tease your agency. Alex, your e-mails had Ms Johnston wondering if perhaps I was getting up to my old tricks again."

"Old tricks?"

"You know. Inventing good stuff that bad people can use. I have convinced her that I don't do that sort of thing anymore."

Alex looked bewildered.

"But the connection is not quite as spurious as I am making it out to be. Ms Johnston, like you, is interested in brain maps. Like you, she thought that I might be of help."

"But that's ..."

"A bizarre coincidence? Or just a sign that certain ideas are in the air."

"You are interested in brain maps?" asked Jenny.

"More than that, Alex is an associate of Graeme Williams, the source of the whole kerfuffle."

"You are? In that case ..."

The door opened again, interrupting Jenny mid-sentence, and this time without the preliminary knock. It was Travis. "Evening Harpal," he said letting himself in. Behind him, Chris halted in the doorway, the room having become suddenly crowded.

"Professor Singh, this is the man I mentioned in that e-mail." Alex gestured at Chris, who nodded in greeting. The professor then introduced Jenny once more for the benefit of the two newcomers, emphasizing what she did for a living.

"You're some sort of policewoman?" asked Chris, looking uncertain.

"Off duty," Jenny replied.

"And you're interested in brain maps?" Chris lumbered past Travis to reach where Jenny was sitting, clasping her briefly by the hand in greeting. In the process a stray elbow set one of the molecular models wobbling on its stand, causing him to turn round abruptly, nearly upsetting it a second time.

"Yes, I'm interested in brain maps," said Jenny, smiling uncertainly at the newcomer who suddenly seemed to be taking up more than his fair share of the professor's office.

"That seems to be what we all have in common," said Travis.

"Oh not me," said the professor, cheerfully. "I couldn't care less about the damn things. I'm just this person to whom people interested in brain maps seem to gravitate, heaven knows why."

Nobody had an answer to the professor's declaration. Alex used the ensuing silence to direct a look at the Prof. seeking eye contact and perhaps some information. Chris used it to sneak a furtive glance at Jenny. Travis smiled softly to himself.

"Well, you are all welcome to stay, of course," said Professor Singh, flashing a brief quizzical smile at Alex, "but the campus has more comfortable venues for a conspiracy. May I suggest the Snowden Café?"

Conversation broke out again with various people talking over one another. The professor's plan was endorsed and the group filed out of the office. "It's called the Snowden Café because it doesn't have surveillance cameras," Travis explained to Jenny as they exited.

Unlike most of the university, which had succumbed to the modern architectural obsession with shininess, Professor Singh's Biochemistry Department was housed in an old building that owed its continued existence to a web of historic structure protection statutes. Full of long narrow corridors with paint-on-plaster walls, it emitted a peculiar aura of slow time, with an atmosphere like that of an old hospital populated by wall-eyed porters pushing trolleys. Its influence operated at a subliminal level, leaving the susceptible visitor feeling like he was wading through air from another time, air that had congealed with age. The less sensitive, meanwhile, were left perplexed as to why they seemed to draw the curious gaze of bystanders who would look on with puzzlement at their anomalous haste.

Alex and Jenny were among the immune, having several times to slow down for the dawdling Professor Singh and Travis to catch up. Chris too appeared to be one of the sensitive. Battling the building's baleful influence, he seemed continually to be scuttling forward, seeking to keep pace with Jenny.