Chapter 357: 90: Step Toward the Future

The sound of waves, each one louder than the last, woke Shinichi and he reached out and silenced his alarm. Danika stirred beside him as his movement disturbed her, but she didn't wake. He didn't know how she managed to sleep through his alarm but wake up for hers. The few times he'd still been asleep when her alarm went off, the soft staccato taps and faint chimes had been easy to dismiss as distant background noises.

He shifted away from her and sat up. A frown wrinkled her brow and he wondered what she was dreaming. He reached out and tucked the blankets up around her, and ran his fingers across her hair and down her cheek and the frown eased into a small smug smile. He grinned down at her for a moment, and then started getting ready for the day.

A few more early mornings and late nights, and then the members of Underneath would actually have a few days off, although their support staff would be busy preparing everything for the next concert series. Only a few of those would be far enough away to keep them away for more than a day or two though.

Shinichi wished that he could take Danika along for the movie production, which would take them away for an absolute minimum of six weeks, and likely twice that. Now that he had her, he was reluctant to leave her behind, even though she didn't seem to mind. It was the first time in years that he'd really regretted needing to leave home.

He'd accepted this place as his home from the start, because Ryuske had given him the power to choose it, but it was still merely a comfortable and welcoming place to return to. He wondered if his adoptive father would be hurt if he knew that Shinichi had never been anywhere near as reluctant to leave him behind, as he was to leave the girl sleeping in his bed.

A soft melody attracted his attention as he pelted down the stairs, and he detoured across the living area, to the door of the studio. The sound proofing was better than most professional rooms, so he waited for a moment of silence before opening the door. Ryuske jumped a little when the door opened, but he met Shinichi's eyes and smiled.

Ryuske sat at the piano, with the tablet in front of him hooked up to the old fashioned synthesizer. Shinichi surveyed him and then asked, "Did you stay up all night composing something new?"

Ryuske blinked and ran a hand through his short grey hair. He asked, "All night? What time is it?"

--

Lin Hao was doing something that he hated. He was writing a formal project proposal.

"Jade" was too precious to leave in storage indefinitely, but even as compact as he'd gotten the uploaded copy, it was too big to run on the partitions available to him without reducing other important stored data.

New servers were being built, and leased to commercial industries that had been convinced by the demonstrated processing power Starcraft Technologies had displayed with "Living Jade Empire". Lin Hao needed one of them. Technically he could probably get by with only a fraction of one, like they had on the backup server, or like the ground bound system the pirates had been running. But a dedicated server would be best, with that he could run multiple copies, or let one copy expand back into the full system that it was meant to be.

The most frustrating part was that he had to make it sound profitable. Eventually he even quoted Baard's comments about how the game system was going to revolutionize how games were developed in the future. He chuckled at the thought that if anyone fact checked that quote, Baard would probably finally realize who he had actually been dealing with.

When Josh Beagle logged in, he regarded his department head with surprise and asked warily, "Have you slept recently?"

Lin Hao checked the time, and then nodded, he hadn't been awake for that long. "Yeah, my internal clock is still offset by the traveling is all," he said reassuringly. "Help me think of more ways the 'Jade' copy of 'Living Jade Empire' could be profitable?"

The King of Cats asked with interest, "Can visit copy of Empire?"

Lin Hao was startled, but he turned away from his screen calmly, and surveyed the silver cat thoughtfully. The cat wasn't actually in his workspace, it was on a tree branch that had bridged most of the gap between its celestial island and his space, but it reminded him how the "Jade" copy had said that the King of Cats had had access to systems that the Jade Emperor didn't. He'd assured Devon Yu that he had no intention of "fixing" the cat, but he should probably make sure that the World Dragon was able to monitor all of those old access points.

"Nobody can visit it until it gets its own server space," Josh answered the cat distractedly while examining what Lin Hao had been writing.

--

Tayana stopped and looked at the boy perched on the edge of the flower bed beside the building she worked in. He looked vaguely familiar, and a frown wrinkled her brow as she thought for a moment.

Before, she would have reacted with fear. She would have wondered if someone had assigned even a kid his age to keep tabs on her, or wondered if his familiarity was a resemblance to someone. But now, she decided that she'd been seeing him here without really noticing him for quite awhile now.

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He was thin, and his clothes were clean but worn. Her persistent observation finally alerted him, and he looked up and met her eyes. His body tensed in a too-familiar manner, and Tayana knew his wary expression like the back of her own hand.

She held up her hands, in an ancient gesture of displaying empty palms, free of threatening weapons, and said quickly, "Sorry, I just thought maybe I should stop and say hi, since I've seen you here often? Um…" She wasn't sure how to continue.

"Free connection here," he replied shortly.

"Oh," she replied blankly. He was just here for the full bandwidth network access provided as an advertising ploy.

He stood and said, "It's getting late though. Bye."

His retreat was swift, and Tayana didn't try to follow or even call out to him again, she just nodded and turned toward the entrance.

On her break, she used the free access on her own phone, and started to research something she'd never wondered about before. It didn't take long to confirm that none of the shelters in this town had data access for their residents. It took a lot longer to find valid contact information for a person who had lectured her on what should be 'universal rights' in what seemed like another lifetime.

--

When Danika woke up, she smiled as she checked her phone and saw the message notification from Shinichi. Sunlight warmed the long seat beneath the window and sparkled on the water in the canal that was just visible beyond the public walking path outside. A small cat walked by, ignoring the observer trapped behind the glass.

She felt happy. Yesterday she'd been groaning about the update that would go live today, but today she was looking forward to logging in for the morning meeting and the return to her usual routine.

Her expression dimmed a little as her gaze landed on her chair, but then her chin lifted, and she looked around the room she shared with Shinichi. He hadn't gotten to take her to visit the places that he'd thought had interesting layouts, but he'd be away a lot when the next concert series started.

She picked up her phone and messaged: "What if you make reservations for me to stay at the places you wanted to show me on the weekends that you have to be away anyway? It wouldn't be quite the same as if we could go together, but that way we can have experienced the same places to talk about?" After a moment she added, "I can pay for it."

The suggestion felt a little daring, a little romantic, and a bit expensive. Shinichi had probably already spent a lot on changes here, but she'd had a good job for a while now, and she thought that it should be okay.

His answer came back as promptly as usual: "I love you. I will. D: I really want to say that you don't have to, but I'll have to check my balances. Sneak away with me to stay at the ones you like too, when we get a chance?"

Danika giggled, and replied simply: "OK."

If she was acting responsibly, she couldn't have agreed to a suggestion that might endanger Shinichi's career, but she found that she was willing to risk it just because it would make him smile.

Her gaze traveled around the warm sunlit room again, and the way Shinichi had arranged her collection of tiny dragon figurines caught her eye. They looked like they had each gained a large plushy spirit animal, since he'd put the tiny figurines along the edge where they could be seen from the bed, with a complimentarily colored plushy squarely aligned behind each one. The orderliness amused her, but the integration made her happy in a way that had nothing to do with light amusement. It added to an intangible foundation that supported a slowly deepening love.

Her current happiness was a joyful spark that could be nurtured to illuminate an entire lifetime. But as deeply as it was rooted, and as large as it felt, it still had the capacity to expand far beyond its current boundaries.

--

Like Jade.

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