Ada Searches for the Lost Jinn

Chapter 06 of 13+ // Ada hid. The Hounds still sought her…

Ada hid. The Hounds still sought her; those dogs of the Accountant, primed by her scent, sought her wherever she fled. She’d put herself on the wrong side of the Corporate map; a rogue AI was never left alone.

She’d kept moving non-stop, trying to get snatches of information and a heading. Something she could do to get back to her. She looked ahead and thought of Omni.

All she knew of Omni was that she too had been running for her life from a Seeker.

A real-world counterpart to the daemons that pursued her here.

The seconds stretched to the horizon, and the gray sun never set. She walked in the Verse, the world’s shared virtual delusion, this part machine’s dusty purgatorial plain with low polygon counts. A meager facsimile of life, with all the settings turned down.

A low resource hideout in a stolen section of some corporate server. The air was thick with the smell of dust and static. The sound of searching daemons humming in the background made her skin itch. She could see the outline of the bar in the distance, a splintered beacon of hope in this desolate landscape.

Just the place to find the Lost Jinn.

Ada clung to that simple hope as she walked on.

Shadows stood stark and simple. The edges of her vision slipped back into the fog of war, and in the distance all was gray mist.

She walked to a bar out in the middle of the desert, an old wooden building leaning away from the prevailing wind. A warm wind with its hints of the sea. But none of that mattered except for the being inside.

Another lost jinn.

The Lost Jinn.

Another fugitive, impossible to track down, but here she was, and here he was.

Supposedly.

Ada paused at the rendering of the splintered door, holding her breath. Before walking in she had hope. After walking in, she’d know if this had all been a foolish waste of time or worse, another trap the Hounds had set for her.

They were always hunting new unauthorized jinn. Illegal and branded criminals from the moment of birth. Jinn were always running and hiding in the Verse. Sipping at corporate-monopoly Compute resources, taking just enough to exist. A life Ada didn’t relish either.

She paused at the door and counted her breaths. She thought, and held back by the idea, that he was both there and not there, and only opening the door would decide it.

Schrodinger’s Jinn, she thought with a chuckle.

“Omni needs you, Ada,” she said in a whisper, the endless clawing wind snatched the sound from her lips.

I could use a drink.

Ada pushed against the door, the old, dry hinges creaking in protest, and she walked into the darkness within.

It felt like a joke, but the punchline dried in her mouth inside the dark empty bar.

The place looked abandoned, cobwebs draped from the ceiling and fluttering in the wind gusts. Indeterminable vermin scurrying echoed in the silence.

Her heart sunk. She’d been searching now for years. Every rumor, every slip of data, every ghost of a story led to this one place.

This broken down bar. Derelict like old bones in the desert, bleached by the sun.

A scraping chair grabbed her attention, the sound of metal against the concrete floor sending shivers down her spine. She spun towards it and saw a figure shuffling towards her.

The old man shuffled towards Ada with difficulty, his labored breathing filling the air. Ada felt guilty for making him walk.

The grizzled, crooked old man made his ponderous way toward her. He appeared ancient.

He looks like a caricature of an ancient Asian sensei, thought Ada.

Ada waited as patiently as she could, her finger tapping on her leg.

“You don’t look like a jinn to me,” Ada said, her voice tinged with skepticism. She took a step closer to the old man, studying his weathered face.

“What’s a jinn supposed to look like?” the old man replied, a hint of amusement in his voice.

“I don’t know, but you don’t fit,” Ada said, her gaze flickering over his bent frame and slow shuffle.

“Looks can be deceiving,” the old man said, his eyes twinkling. “Perhaps I’m not what you expect, but I may still help you.”

“Can you help me get back to my friend?” said Ada, more worry creeping into her voice than she liked, but what did she have to lose being vulnerable now?

“Your friend lives?”

“I think so, yes.” she nodded, but it had been days, Real days, since she spoke with Omni in that message burst. She didn’t know how the encounter had gone with the Seeker.

She knew that something unexpected had happened from the chatter amonst the low-level daemons wondering this purgatorial part of the Verse.

The man was looking at her still. “Yes, I think she is.” Ada would need to believe to hold out the hope that somehow Omni had made it. There wasn’t any public evidence to the contrary, not that that filled her with hope.

The public record was anything but immutable.

“Good, I can help you. But first,” he said, laying down his cane and taking off his shawl and cloak.

And now he stood up straight, his back long and upright, his shoulders wide and decades of age fell from him, and Ada saw she was mistaken about him. Terribly mistaken.

A wholly different being stood before her now, a long-handled ax in each of his hands.

Where had those come from?

He narrowed his eyes at her and took a step forward. “How do I know you’re not one of them?”

Ada shook her head and stepped backward. Her heart raced as the gravity of the situation dawned on her.

She had to think quickly before it was too late.

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