Syboleth ch. 22: Open House

Chapter 22: Open House

Valerie had finally found the perfect piece of metal. Her hands were bleeding from the effort, but she had broken off a slender shard of metal from a computer case in the building and she was confident that it was the perfect shape for fashioning a crochet hook out of.

Once it was less sharp.

She started grinding it against the concrete floor, trying to smooth the edges. She didn't have much luck, but it wasn't as sharp as a blade anymore at least. Garrett probably had something she could use to sand the edges down better.

He had left a supply package with her earlier in the day, but she hadn't opened it yet. She could in theory ask for a crochet hook and he would gladly provide it, but she tried not to ever request anything special that he would have to purchase. It was bad enough that he was paying for her meals.

And her tampons. And tissues. And more things than Valerie cared to recall at this moment, actually.

She returned to the cozy corner she had made up for herself two years ago when she first arrived in San Francisco scared and fragile, taken by Garrett to this old abandoned building that used to be the offices of an advertisement technologies firm that he had worked at before he started doing the MRI research and joined Perfluous.

Perfluous Research was one of those things Valerie didn't care to recall at the moment, but it was being recalled anyway.

Garrett was responsible for it. Not solely, but he was one of only a handful of researchers on the primary team that had debuted this "Thinker".

Of course she felt betrayed. But at the same time, there was a twinge of doubt within her. This thing sounded weird as fuck, from everything he had said about it. Organoid arrays and time crystals with MRIs in them? That wasn't a large language model. That wasn't even generative AI anymore. She didn't know what to make of that.

But she knew one thing, that it was just as capable of taking her job as the AIs that had done it to her already. So how could she not feel betrayed?

And yet she loved him. She loved him even more powerfully now. How could she not? He was her world, by her choice. A bit of a Hobson's choice, but not one she was that averse to in the first place.

Her attention returned to the pain in her hands. The blood was dripping onto the ground here and there. She was running low on bandages, but she should still have plenty of gauze. She should've asked Garrett to supply bandages this week, but it would have to wait until next week's supply drop.

She retrieved her first aid supplies from underneath the desk she ate on, and got the gauze out. There was no medical tape, so she took a strip of duct tape and secured the gauze after wrapping her hand. After that she did her other hand, and then she turned her attention to the supply package.

Opening it, she found three Granny Smith apples, a bunch of bananas, a loaf of multigrain bread, jerky, a facial soap bar, the conditioner she liked, and something else. Yarn.

How had he even known that she was trying to crochet? This building didn't have any operational cameras left. She knew that for sure after she had had her jewelry stolen and Garrett hadn't been able to help.

Either way, it was very nice to have this to use instead of the industrial twine she thought she was going to have to use. Now then, about those patterns...

Valerie had bookmarked several patterns she was interested in crocheting once she had a hook, and now she pulled them up.

Wait, had he known she was going to crochet? Why hadn't he given her a hook to use as well then?

She returned to the package, and moved things around. There, under the loaf of bread, was a pearlescent crochet hook. She didn't deserve this man.

She opened the messaging platform she generally contacted Garrett on. She had sent him a message thanking him for the supply package earlier, and now it felt foolish to have sent it before examining the contents. He had read it an hour after she had sent it, but no reply. Now she typed a new message.

Thank you so much for the yarn and the hook, it's gorgeous. I hadn't opened the package yet. How did you even know?

She sent it, and suddenly became aware of a white blur coming towards the supply package.

The blur went after the loaf of bread, and Valerie sprang into action. Lightning fast, she grabbed the waxed paper wrapper and it slipped out of the beak of the seagull that had found its impudent way into her living quarters.

Squawking, the seagull flapped off to another room. She got up and chased it with a broom down a hallway to an exit door and ushered it out.

Great. So there was another broken window somewhere in the building, she realized, unless seagulls had recently learned to open doors.

Another thing Garrett would have to take care of for her. She hated that almost as much as she hated his job.

And then Garrett messaged her back. She opened his thread eagerly.

Hey Val. I'm really glad you like the crochet hook. I'm at a social thing for Perfluous right now or I'd talk more...

Of course. He had just helped debut one of the most groundbreaking inventions in human history.

Meanwhile, she was living in the abandoned shell of his old workplace.

Fabulous.

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