This is just for my reference and is all subject to change at the writer’s whim. Thought I’d share a few chapter outlines with you. Enjoy!
Chapter 5 notes
Evidence: Glenn’s PC image
Brings Chinese take out for Trish and Dancia. Fills in Dancia about what he’s learned, but not in front of Trish. They retreat to Dancia’s room to converse. Trish is openly convinced they are more than friends.
They start trolling IRC channels and reading logs. Joshua wonders if he can hack into Glenn’s box at home. They look up his address and then go for a night drive to his house to see what they can find. Describe Dancia’s Karman Ghia. He lives in the burbs on the East side. He lived alone, in an old house and it was all dark. They ponder breaking and entry to get to his computer. Joshua mentions that he was not big on security perhaps a door was left unlocked. They notice a car in the driveway that was not there on the first pass. A light on inside.
Dancia is not shy. She pulls up out front and they get out to see who it is. They decide to play dumb and not know he’s dead. He was going to go out to a LAN party with them.
An older woman answers the door, turns out she is his aunt from Nampa. The woman is strange and possibly a little nuts. (yet to be determined) They ask her if they can look around in his computer room for some cd’s he they had loaned him.
They have to endure the Aunt’s trials and trivializations about selling the house and cleaning it up by herself. Yawn.
Describe Glenn’s house. Sparse furniture, messy kitchen, lots of sci-fi books and several cats. Spare bedroom full of novels and comic book boxes.
Bingo, she lets them in his room and retreats to the kitchen to continue cleaning. Inside Glenn’s room they capture his PC’s image onto a pen drive using Ghost (google email search – usb) and sort through his cdroms, books and other tech stuff. Then they decide they had better leave. Dancia picks up some blank discs and waves them as they say goodbye to the aunt.
Might be too long, break this into
Chapter 6
Clues: Shemp slips Flash hypnosis
They go back to Dancia’s room and start trolling IRC channels and reading logs. They spend most of the evening doing this, pausing sometimes to play with Dancia’s x-box.
Clues – Learn about Glenn’s on line pals, meet shemp and others. Dancia pretends she’s a guy. (a common thing for her, so they don’t hit on her) Shemp lets slip some details about Flash hypnosis.
One time they go for a walk to the corner store to get some caffeine. Big Gulps. Just like in high school. Joshua starts to look at Danica a little different. She’s cute and very smart and he finds himself enjoying her company a little too much for comfort.
He finally falls asleep around 4 am on her bed. She makes room for herself and gets in her bed and eventually goes to sleep herself. This makes for a good opener for the next chapter.
Chapter 7
Romance? Uncomfortable Sunday afternoon. Then back to the mystery solving. An odd reference to a strange number from shemp. Joshua’s ham friend on-line recognizes the frequency. They ask if they can come over and see his radios. Sure. This time Joshua drives. He shows them how to look up call signs.
Describe the Ham’s house, equipment, computers. He lets them borrow a radio receiver and gives them a dipole antenna. They go back to Joshua’s apartment and set it up.
They get it tuned up and start listening. Then they realize that it may take several days of monitoring to actually catch them talking. They work out a shift schedule that necessitates that Dancia live at his place for a few days. He takes her back to her place and drops her off. She grabs some clothes and essentials and then follows him back to his place.
Trip is at the apartment, playing with the radio. When they tell him what they are doing, he volunteers to help out, but then retracts when he realizes maybe they want to be alone. Third wheel thing. Joshua insists it’s ok, but Trip just says he’ll check up on them to make sure they keep it on the level. Wink wink. The one thing Trip offers – defines Shemp for them. Trip finds Sex gum on table. Trident Cinnamon.
Another late night, listening to the radio and talking. Sometime around two am, Joshua falls asleep. Dancia still listening tunes around and then finds them talking. They are speaking French. She records it with a patch into his PC.
She wakes up Joshua. They listen. She translates. They are discussing poetry and and frequency conditions. Normal stuff. One guy is older the other younger. Just before they sign off, they give their call signs. Joshua looks them up. One is Canadian that fits with shemp and the other is American. The American lives in Idaho! The name is unfamiliar to either of them. They look his address up on Google. Make plans to drive out to the house Monday afternoon. Joshua takes some time off work.