%title Dr Carter Ramirez --- 2112
:writing:novel:chapter:fiction:scifi:post-self:qoheleth:

Johansson's hands dwarfed a pint of ale.

Once they had managed to find each other in the post-theater crush of the pub, they staked out a small two-top table crammed against one end of the bar itself. Johansson to lean to the side, away from the noise of too many voices.

He'd hardly touched the beer, but it seemed to take on an almost talismanic significance to him. Something to hold. Something to focus the thoughts. Carter drank her own cider slowly and waited, careful not to press her luck too hard. Johansson seemed slow to open up.

"Alright, so, RJ." His vocal cords unlimbered, a well-rehearsed baritone.

"Ey was your sound guy?" Carter backpedaled, eyes ducking to her glass. "Sound tech?"

There was a small smile tickling at the corner of Johansson's mouth, but he hid it a swallow of his thin ale, nodding. "Yep, lead sound tech. Best I've ever worked with, by a long shot. And don't worry. We still fuck up eir pronouns now and then. I know we did on the night ey...when ey...well, Wednesday."

Carter nodded. "And then you tried to pull em back out?"

"Nothing. It's like ey was still delved in even after eir contacts had been knocked out of place. We hit the panic button and called the docs. I guess some ambulance-chaser caught up with them, which is how you found out about us."

"Yeah. I'm not really in the habit of checking the tabloids myself, but I went out for lunch with a few coworkers and we got one pushed on us. The bit about you not being able to contact us got my attention, so I figured I'd make for the show tonight. Thought that might be my best bet."

"How'd you even manage that on opening night, anyway?"

"Oh, don't worry, it cost me plenty." Carter laughed. "Christ, this is so far out of the realm of what I'd do, too. I just feel like we're at an impasse."

"An impasse?"

"Yeah." Carter leaned back in her chair to gather her thoughts. "I've been on a few projects over the years. None were easy, but all the same, this one has a weird amount of interference. It feels like we're being made to trudge through mud. They won't give us access to the patients? Fine. That's PHI. We just need the data that they collect from them, right? So why is that always so heavily redacted. Why aren't we getting that? It's never been a problem on any other project.

"All we're getting are little tidbits. A few hours of monitor scans, little clips of logs from before the event, and that's it. I don't mean to creep on you or anything, but with RJ, we've come across something we hadn't had before. We found out ey was, well, you know..."

Johansson canted his head to the side. "An immersive tech? Genderqueer? Ace? A furry?"

"A furry, though those others are certainly interesting data points to keep in mind. We weren't totally sure ey was asexual, but it tallies."

"How did em being a furry help?"

"Ey's the second furry we've had come across our desks." Carter peered into her cider, then about the room. "In fact, it's caused a bit of a schism. Some of us are looking into possible...transmission vectors, while the rest are focused on cases individually. How could something like getting lost be transmitted from one person to another? It sounds like some awful drama; it's not a virus."

"I assume you're among those who doubt the transmission story?"

"Oh, no, I'm heading it up." She laughed. "But there are still convincing arguments to be made against it. Sanders, the leader of the opposition, such as it is, is dead-set against it. He thinks that we're wasting time chasing up this transmission tree. Valuable resources. We've got an agreement, though."

"What's that?"

"Well, we'll keep poking at this lead and if it dries up, we'll drop it."

Johansson hunched his shoulders, frowning. "Not much of a lead, I'll grant you that, but all the same, anything to get RJ back. Ey was more than just a tech. Sounds silly, but we all liked em. The tech crew, especially. We went through our share of fuck-ups tonight just getting by without em."

"Oh? I didn't notice any."

"You weren't on the headset. We had lights and sound arguing cues while stage desperately tried to keep them on track. It was a mess."

"All the same," Carter countered. "I thought it was delightful."

"Mm."

Silence.

It felt necessary. They both stared off into the pub. The room held the distinctly British dichotomy of being crowded and convivial, while also intensely conscious of personal space. The latter suffered as the night went on.

"You know," Johansson began, the rich baritone bringing Carter's attention back to the conversation.

"Hmm?"

"RJ wasn't one for relationships --- doubt ey would be --- but of all the people ey was close to, it was definitely those furries ey hung around. Come to think of it, I do remember em bringing up the lost with regards to them."

"Oh? Huh. It seemed like the two cases we have may be socially connected, but we don't have any proof."

"Yeah." Johansson shrugged. "Not much for relationships romantically, but certainly no shortage of friends. There was this one girl, Sasha, ey was close to."

Carter thumbed her phone on and swiped to a blank notes page.

"She was eir childhood sweetheart," Johansson laughed. "As much of a sweetheart as ey would confess, at least. She knew 'em both. RJ and eir friend who got lost."

Carter nodded, jotting down quick notes. "She's still out there, then? Not lost?"

"I assume so, I guess. You'd know better than I."

She shook her head, looking down at her phone as she scribbled the last of the note. "Mm, no. No female furries. A lot of 'net addicts. I suppose there's no small crossover, but we're talking way deep. DDR junkies and layabouts."

Johansson bristled, "RJ was no layabout."

She held up her hands disarmingly, shook her head. "Mostly, is what I'm saying. They don't have ties, or if they do, they don't hold them long. These last few --- the furries --- they have lots of contacts from what we can tell. Strong ones. That's where our two groups disagree most. I think that we're seeing something novel, even if it doesn't hold for the previous cases. 'I' being the leader of the group that thinks there's the possibility of a transmission vector."

"And the others?"

"They see it as chance. Too small an *n*. Too few cases to say one way or another. They say that there was bound to be both connected and unconnected folks among the lost. They'd say that it's a matter of chance, since those who use the 'net more would be more likely to wind up lost, regardless of social situation. Furries just use it more than most."

"Both make sense, I guess," Johansson hedged. "All the same, you know I have a vested interest in RJ, so I'm going to wind up seeing it from your point of view, since you're working with em. Never mind that you invited me out here. What do you need from me?"

Carter frowned, thinking. "I guess I need to know more about em. I have eir redacted stats, a portion of the dump from eir workstation and the time leading up to it. I had been assuming we're getting all of it, but perhaps that was too generous of me. It's got PII redacted, but I don't know if there's anything else missing. What I need to know is what's slipping through the cracks. I need to know about who RJ was. How ey interacted with the theater, I mean. And anything you can tell me about eir friends."

"Should you...?"

"Should I have all of that information? I don't know." Carter sighed. "Is it against the law for you to tell me? No, not at all. I don't know. Maybe. Is it unethical to further my own agenda with this project by consulting you? Probably yes. If I were on a bigger, more mature project, we'd probably be interviewing you anyway, though."

Johansson frowned, nodded.

"But is it because I think that the more we know, the more likely we are to get RJ and the others back? I'd say yes."

Johansson looked down into his beer. Then, with a decisive motion, drank most of it in a few smooth gulps, holding up the glass with the remainder, an obvious toast. "To RJ, then."

Carter felt a little silly toasting to someone she'd never met, with a man she'd only just met, with a full glass of cider to his mostly empty ale. It all felt so dramatic, so theatrical, until she remembered who she was toasting with. She raised her glass and clinked its rim to Johansson's.

"To RJ."
