[ +- ] Cards, 2nd entry
Queen Diamonds 💀, 5 Diamonds, 6 Hearts
OOC:
Two days, two face cards
The Riviera is was weirdly crowded tonight. Normally, once the temperature started to drop by the river the vagrants started to thin out for the winter, most looking to commit minor crimes that would land them in prison for the next few months, but not more. I knew Argyle would be one of those, and I didn't waste any time tracking him down.
He'd studied physics in university until late night meth binges to get homework done turned into a thing on their own. It didn't take long for him to bomb out of school after that, but he was still a smart guy, albeit very twitchy. I knew if I paid for fix, he'd help me until he came down. Looking at the tiny bag of powder I couldn't imagine how someone could throw everything away for such an absurdly small quantity of dust, but I'd never touched the stuff so what did I know. However, making my way through the crowd in the seedy part of the riverbank I knew I never wanted to find out what the attraction was.
While en route, I studied the journal. The schematics in the entries started to take on a pattern for me, and I began to feel like I'd began comprehending what I was looking at. Not fully, but then that's why I was off to see Argyle. If he couldn't point me in the right direction, I was probably out of luck.
I found him pacing in the shadows, away from a small fire a few people had going in a portable BBQ.
"Hi!" I said cheerfully.
"You look like shit. Find a new job or something?"
He just made a sour expression at me, and then asked,
"You got them? The journal, the glass?"
I handed both over to him, and the meth was basically gone before I could shake his hand.
He reeled for a few minutes, and I kept my distance until his eyes opened up a little too much and he beckoned me over.
"Not bad." he said looking at the empty bag.
"Decent stuff, especially since it was free for me." He grinned and started thumbing through the notebook like it was some kind of animated flipbook.
"What do we have here..." he mused to himself while looking over the equations on the page I indicated. He mulled this too a while, his ampetamine addled brain rolling it all over neurons by accelerated neuron. I couldn't tell for sure, but he seemed genuinely intrigued by what I'd brought him, then he looked at the blood before asking me,
"where you'd get this?"
"I found it at Suzette Zamor's place," I said.
"I got to it before the cops did. You think it looks like there's something there?"
He flipped back through to a few pages and said,
"I mean, there's something here Roach, no doubt, but I'm having trouble saying what. Some of the work that's been done required really high-level computations, but some of what's here just sounds like gibberish, and I should know about that." He grinned again.
"C'mon, let's take a walk. There are too many people here for my liking."
We left the apparent gathering and wandered down the riverbank. It was quiet, and eventually, we were alone.
"I'll need to hold on to this for awhile to really get a sense of it," Argyle said. The request hit me like a ton of bricks.
"No." I heard myself say quickly and assertively. More assertively than was probably necessary.
He looked at me funnily and shook his head.
"I'll need some time with it if you want my help," he said clutching it to his chest.
"No," I said again.
"It's mine." The words were a paradox. I knew it was wrong to say it, and that Argyle was being sincere, but it was mine and I needed to keep the journal with me.
"Let's just consider it here and see what we can come up with. No need to waste your good time doing math," I told him trying to sound sincere.
"Sure," he said, still clutching the journal.
We talked for hours about the contents, and he gave me some really useful insights about how what was presenting the notes made sense, but was incomplete.
"It's like a hacker's computer, sort of," he explained.
"It might run looking like this, but it'll work poorly. Just like a make-shift machine, it needs cooling and protection from the elements. Otherwise, you're just looking at a situation where it fails sooner rather than later."
He kept flipping through the pages and said,
"I can't say it makes sense, but let me hold on to it for a couple of days and I can probably come up with some ideas on how to crucnhy the numbers to get the circuits to work properly."
"No," I said harshly, watching him coddle the journal.
"Give it to me." I felt myself become insanely jealous in an instant and wanted it back.
"now"
"Roach, I'm your boy. Let me hold on to it"
"No" and at this point, I moved to take it from him. He tried to resist me, and we began to struggle with one another. I knew he was full of speed, but I didn't care. We broke into a fight, trading blows and rolling around on the dirty cement that paved the riverwalk. He pushed me off of him, and snatched up the journal, walking away as quickly as he could. I followed, but I couldn't keep up, at least at first. Then I saw an empty pint bottle of Jack Daniel's next to the trashcan and picked it up.
In retrospect, I don't know that he'd given me another choice. I bashed him over the head with it, but he didn't go down. Instead, he ran, screaming. The bastard still had my journal and all I had was the stub of a broken whisky bottle. I gave chase. At this point, no one would have that Argyle was the one that was high, but I didn't care. He had something that was mine, and I wanted it back. Luck turned my way when he tripped and fell.
I was on him in an instant, and the broken bottle I was surprised to find I was still holding finding its purpose. Repeatedly. It was jagged enough to puncture, and it made short work of Argyle. Blood pooled on the bank, but we'd walked far enough away from the others no one knew we were there. I stashed his body in some bushes and made my home with my journal. I'd scribbled down as much as I could remember from our talk. For a moment, I looked at a packet of meth I'd found in one of his pockets. It must have gold for Argyle, but for me, the journey of a thousand steps began with this tiny bag. I snorted the whole thing, and my nose bled profusely, at first before subsiding. I didn't sleep for a couple of days, but I got work done, and lots of it. Breakthrough, I'm not sure, but I made progress. Argyle made it possible. I hid the evidence in his honour.
