Evelyn read from the notebook in front of her. “The stadium, both strip clubs, the courthouse, that bar that does salsa dancing – don’t know what it’s called, and the county jail.”
“Am I supposed to commit a cri to get access to the jail?”
“It’s a jail, not a prison. You could get picked up for public intoxication and out the next day.”
Hector shook his head. “Hard pass. Do you have any idea if the energy levels recover after I drain them? And, if so, how long does that take?”
“It takes about two weeks for a place to recharge, on average. The more people who visit a place and the longer they stay, the faster the cosmic energy will build up.” Evelyn squinted at him. “Any idea why people are increasing cosmic energy levels, but only in the ntal bandwidth?”
Hector looked down at the notebook. “Maybe it’s chaotic locations?”
“A courthouse?”
“Human conflict,” Hector anded his theory. “Places where people argue.”
“Sports stadium, strip clubs, courthouse, jail – yes. What about salsa dancing?”
“It’s a bar, right? When people drink, they argue.”
“I guess. You did say the rooftop bar and Jimmy’s Watering Hole were good. What about the casino, though? They are pretty quick to kick out people.”
Hector turned that data point around in his mind. “Not necessarily. If we consider what happens in a courthouse to be argunts, then why wouldn’t people trying to take money off each other in a card ga count as conflict?”
Evelyn stared at the list on her notebook. “But why?”
“Maybe ntal chaos attracts cosmic energy.”
“So are these places drawing cosmic energy from their surroundings? Or generating it?”
Hector recalled the chaos that Volithur had absorbed. It had decayed into cosmic energy over ti – though not before causing so slight damage. “Maybe it’s other energies being transford by chaos into cosmic energy?”
“Are you telling or asking , because that sounded like a question, my fella.”
“I have no way of coming up with an actual answer.” He paused. Volithur had practiced the ‘twin touch’ ga for a while now, feeling the sa spot with tendrils of cosmic energy from both body and mind. Why couldn’t he do the sa thing with his aura and mind to get a sense of his environnt?
Of course, first he would need to practice with the normal version of the ‘twin touch’ ga. Hector extended the twin threads of cosmic energy into his right palm, prepared to be confronted with the wildness of primordial chaos.
Instead… he saw a blur. Hector restarted the ga, making an effort to use crisper threads of energy. The result proved only slightly better. Was there sothing different about Earth compared to the world of New Mart? Perhaps the underlying chaos existed in a more subdued state around here. Or maybe he needed to get stronger. Increase his soul to level three, put so effort into ntal enhancent, and everything might beco clear as day.
“Theorizing can wait for tomorrow. I have a list of places to be.”
“There’s no ga today, so you can’t get into the stadium. Strip clubs aren’t open this early. And you don’t want to go to jail. That leaves the courthouse or salsa dancing.”
Hector shrugged. “I’ll start at the courthouse. What are your thoughts on dancing?”
“You’re asking if I want to salsa dance? Not a chance, big guy. Sarcastic girl making fun of people in the corner is more my vibe.”
mories of sweaty palms, racing heart, and tentative stepping swirled in his mind. “We don’t have to dance if you don’t want to. Hell, you don’t have to ride along to watch cultivate.”
“What else am I supposed to do? My day job? I’m not going to make too much money before the world ends. Unless… do you think the monsters are from the bank? Are they going to repossess my car? This truly is the end of the world.” Evelyn mid clawing out her own eyes.
“You’ve seen the monsters co in your visions. What do they look like?”
Evelyn’s goofy overacting faded into the seriousness that had begun to characterize her more often as of late. “Like fucking monsters, Hector. They are like the final boss in Ghostbusters, they take on a form when they enter a world. Their appearances are all over the place. But there is one who’s always the sa. There’s a scorpion the size of an aircraft carrier. How do I know it’s the size of a naval vessel, you might wonder. Well, I saw it rip one in half with its claws. It also makes skyscrapers explode by stabbing with its tail. I rember seeing a news report where it survived a nuclear strike.
“That’s just the biggest one, though. There were millions of them slaughtering their way across the major cities. The local area gets a bull. He spends most of his ti destroying cars and running through walls like an evil Kool-Aid Man. Lots of man-sized spiders and bears and wild dogs. It’s a shit-show.”
Hector didn’t think he could help with the situation she described even if he entirely surpassed Volithur’s level of strength. He doubted he would even survive long against such opposition. The thought occurred, not for the first ti, that a better use of his remaining ti might be doing all the things he had never had the chance to cross off his bucket list. Except… what he wanted was to scale the heights of power that had been revealed to him.
“How fast do people die after the invasion starts?”
“My ability doesn’t work like that. I see glimpses, little isolated monts without context. I can tell you that a lot die. I can tell you that the monsters are crazy good at finding people who try to hide from them. I can’t lay out statistics for you.”
Hector chewed on her answer. They really didn’t have a lot to go on. And the reality of the situation was that he wouldn’t be enough to turn the tide, no matter how powerful he beca. “We need to get so Jinn working on a technological solution.”
“I can’t find any Jinn fighters. Just Drone Lady, and it’s really hard to find a person when all you know about them is what their silhouette looks like.”
“Then we don’t look for Jinn fighters. We look for Jinn who know useful things and put them in the sa room. They can make armies of robot warriors.” Hector snapped his fingers. “Jeremy from the warehouse knew how to build a fusion reactor. We’ll recruit him first. Go online and find soone who knows robotics. Not just the Earth stuff, Jinn robots. What else do we need?”
Hector took the notepad and pen off of Evelyn to make a list.
Jinn Recruits
1) Jeremy for fusion
2) Engineer for robots
3) Chemist for bombs
“Who else do we need?”
Evelyn put her hand over the list to stop him from writing. “What makes you think we can just throw together a team like this?”
“That’s literally how businesses function. You bring a team of people with the right skills and herd them in the right direction to produce results. We have to figure out a way to convince these people to work for cheap or preferably free, but we will worry about that after you identify who we want on the team.”
Evelyn groaned. “I do not have the skills to hire and manage people, Hector.”
“I can help you there. But we can’t just keep trying to power up. I’m not going to fight off millions of monsters by myself.”
“I know,” she said. “Can you do the recruitnt instead of ?”
“I can help. I still need to focus on my cultivation, so your availability is greater than mine. Start by searching for people and I’ll make first contact with them. You can look into the future and see if any of them are worth spending ti on.”
She nodded. “Yeah. I could handle that.”
“Good. Now I have to drain the courthouse of cosmic energy. Then the salsa place.”
“Hey, do you want to eat xican tonight?”
Hector paused. “Sure. All the talk about salsa dancing has craving chips.”
“I’ll see you later, then.” Evelyn hesitated, and there was an awkward mont where neither of them was sure if they were supposed to kiss goodbye or not. “Anyway… bye!”
Hector drove down to the courthouse, entered and walked through the various public areas before sitting in a courtroom. He drained the place in less than an hour without getting more than the occasional curious glance from security. Then he went to the bar with the large dance floor and ordered an appetizer of hummus to eat while he drained that area.
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