“Excuse me!” I shout, pulling out the mysterious business card and brandishing it in the air. “I happened to find this card for a gentleman who says that he can spin straw into gold and caesium into barium! I’m interested in having some transmutations done, and I was hoping to inquire about rates!” Only the silence answers me. I throw the card down on the counter with a soft slap and rest my chin on the knuckles of my left hand. “This is no way to run a business,” I mutter. All this way, I think. All of this hesitation. And for what? He’s not even here. And why would he be? No one else is. I scowl and take the card up in my free hand. “Maybe I have the wrong room?” I sigh. “Maybe you have the wrong life.” I stand suddenly rigid. The voice is a playful, taunting singsong—and it originates mere centimetres away from my ear. I spin around to face my interlocutor. He (for his appearance is just on the masculine side of androgynous) is tall and slight of build, with violet eyes, a tangled mess of fiery red hair and skin ranging in colour from silver to gold at the highlights. He is dressed in a forest-green tailcoat, his pointed ears (as well as just about everything else about him) instantly marking him as a member of “the Gentry”. I search in vain for words. My first inclination is to say “Rumpelstiltskin, I presume,” but I stay my tongue when I remember that that name almost got me killed the last time I said it to him. Instead, I finally settle on a flat: “Hello.” The gentleman grins; and then, in a single, fluid motion, he leaps up and lands with his hand planted on the countertop between his bent knees. “Julia Huiling Horschak-Chen!” he exclaims. “Born June 1st, 1988, Kitsilano, British Columbia, Canada. Honours BScs in physics and mathematics from the University of British Columbia, both awarded 2010; PhD in theoretical physics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, awarded 2016. Thesis on the holographic duals of perturbed, quantum-corrected, n+1 dimensional black holes with radially asymmetric vector hair—absolutely scintillating stuff, I’m sure.” “…You seem to have me at a disadvantage,” I reply, drawing back very slightly. My eyes dart quickly and almost involuntarily toward the exit—far too far away, and with him in between. I force a smile. “Oh, I have you at several disadvantages,” he says with a laugh, crawling forward slightly.
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