Pyramid City, three days to the rise of the alicorns.
72 hours remaining.
-
"I still can't believe they picked us for the investigation. The theft of a priceless artifact- that's big", Björn said.
"Hold your horses, featherboy", Anka sighed, "It's just a little artifact, and the main reason it's "priceless" is that they couldn't figure out what to make of it."
The griffin and the anubian were on their way to the museum right now, their patrol vehicle slowly wriggling its way through the late afternoon traffic. It was hot today in Pyramid City- Anka thought it was about time the eggheads responsible for the weather generators did something about that. But no- it was tourist season, and that meant sunshine, sunshine, sunshine for weeks to come. 'Canicule', the dogish heat, that was what they had on the menu. As an anubian, she found that expression slightly racist, but she had to admit, it felt adequate.
She was glancing to the giant obelisk towering over all the other structures. It were these things, spread all over the planet, who provided the energy needed to run the weather generators- as well as the cities themselves.
"Did you hear", she said to her partner, "Congress has passed that new law, allowing the energy sector to upgrade the obelisks. A bad idea, if there ever was one."
Björn looked up from his bag of nutdos.
"Why's that?"
"Because it's dangerous. We hardly even understand how these things work, they have been built 3000 years ago, and they're already running at maximum capacity. Investing in alternative, newer sources of energy would have been safer. But try telling that to the obelisk-lobbies who own our government. Giving up a gargantuan, outdated, overprized, and, dare I say, potentially blow-up-and-end-all-civilization infrastructure? Please... But, you know. That's just my opinion."
He chuckled. "You're just saying that because you want to promote your dog-technology, instead of relying on the ancients. As you said, they have been running for 3000 years without killing anypuppy. Sounds safe to me."
Anka raised an eyebrow. "Anypuppy?"
"I might be a foreigner, but that doesn't keep me from cherry-picking the parts of your culture I find endearing. I mean, come on! 'Anypuppy'! That's just adorable! Nopuppy. Everypuppy! Somepuppy."
"Careful, partner. I'm not sure if I can allow you to say that. Maybe that counts as hate-speech."
She was teasing him, of course, and he knew it.
"Cute-speech, if you ask me!"
"That's not cute, that's my culture! I'll give you cute if you don't watch out..."
-
They arrived at the Pyramid of the Sun just after the last tourists had left the building.
The current director of the museum, a large female nerubian, was waiting for them at the entry. A smaller nerubian was by her side, probably her assistant.
“Good evening, officers... YOU! Get away from my museum, you filthy parasites!!"
The police people tensed up. But it wasn't them who the nerubian was shouting at. At the bottom of the stairs, several four-legged creatures with exotic accessoires were standing around, talking to random people passing by. Ponies, trying to make a living in the big city by sweet talking tourists out of their money.
"You want me let your children ride on my back? Only ten bits!"
"You, beautiful sir! You want me to sing song? I can sing song about cranky people walking away!"
"Look Lady! I found ring on street! Twenty bits and it will be yours!"
"Little money, friend, little money? Mama and Papa in Griffonia hospital."
When someone actually stopped to throw a few coins into their hats, he usually got them looking at his wallet with hungry eyes, saying things like "No! Please, sir... everything! Give everything!"
Björn chuckled. "Ponies. They crack me up."
He pondered.
"It's strange, though. When my parents grew up, ponies were thought to be animals, not nearly as smart as the zebras. But then they changed pretty much overnight. Intelligence doesn't evolve that fast, or does it?"
Anka merely shrugged. "As far as I'm concerned, they're just another ethnicity added to the salad bowl. As long as they do nothing more sinister than singing and dancing money out of a few stupid tourists, they're off my radar."
Anka was rather unique that way. Many other police officers, especially among the anubians, were borderline ponyphobic, and would try to find an excuse to arrest the strange quadrupeds whenever possible.
Since the ticksters didn't seem to be impressed by the spider lady's yelling, and since the police didn't seem to bother arresting them either, the director of the museum produced a small whistle and blew into it. The griffin didn't hear any sound coming out of it, and Anka heard only a very faint note, but the ponies dispersed at once, complaining about hurting ears.
Anka's eyes narrowed. An instrument tuned to cause discomfort to a particular species of people. She wasn't quite sure that sort of thing was legal.
Satisfied with the impact of her action, the nerubian put the whistle away.
"Sorry, I needed to take care of that. Please, follow me to the crime scene...”
-
At this hour, the tunnels of the ancient structure were lit by Anubian luminox runes, replacing an older lighting system that had been installed by the previous manticore civilization.
Poor manticores: their numbers had been shrinking for generations as they became too smart to reproduce. The result was that the last manticores alive were either arrogant hermits or the offspring of those least suitable to produce offspring, inbred morons who were at risk to degenerate completely into bestiality.
They arrived at the chamber were the artifact had been presented to the public.
“So... What can you tell us about this artifact, professor?”
The nerubian was clicking her mandibles.
“A truly peculiar treasure, I must say. It was a record stone... Let me show you something. Please step back.”
The giant spider-like arthropod walked to one of the walls and typed in a command to the touch-sensitive surface.
The floor started vibrating. Anka and her griffin partner were shocked as they saw something like a big well opening up in the centre of the room.
“Wow. Isn’t that dangerous? What if somepuppy fell in there?”
The nerubian made a gesture to dismiss her worries.
“Only the keepers of the pyramid know the code.”
“But what does it have to do with the artifact?”, the griffin asked.
“What you see before you is a particle accelerator. The Regular Things used it for truly mind-boggling experiments we still fail to reproduce to this day. The data needed to launch an experiment was stored in record stones. Imagine this machine as a door that leads you to different places, depending on which key you use. In order to even activate this thing, you need a special combination of several stones. Unfortunately, most stones have been lost over the millenia.”
“And the stolen artifact was one of them?”
“Precisely. It was a fine specimen, but of course completely useless by itself unless you are studying ancient codes like I do. I can only imagine some petty art thief has stolen it for some eccentric collector with too much money on his hands. Ach! It’s infuriating.”
It turned out the records from the security cameras where missing as well. The cameras where another funny thing: Nowadays no one knew where they were actually located, but still you could enter a command into the hieroglyphs and they would show you footage of the things that had happened in different rooms inside the pyramid on the selected day.
"How do you explain the missing footage?", Anka asked. "It appears to me that only a member of the pyramid staff could know how to manipulate the records."
The nerubian was dismissing the police dog's question with a wave of her front legs.
"No need to manipulate them! They have become quite glitchy over the centuries. We are looking into that. Most of the time the quality is excellent, but sometimes entire days drop out of the system, seemingly at random."
Anka frowned.
"How conveniant for the thief to pick just the day that would so randomly cover his deed."
"I guess so."
-
“The spider did it.”
Anka sighed and turned around to look at her partner. “You sound awfully sure about that.”
“It is pretty obvious, don’t you think? She was going on and on about her fetish of ancient puzzles. Her motive is kinda murky, but it’s the best lead we have.”
Anka was nodding. It was good to know she and her partner were on the same wavelength.
“Too bad she’s in such a high position. That’ll most certainly hinder our investigation at some point. I’m as patriotic as the next dog, but our respect of authority is one of the more unpleasant heirlooms of our pack-hunting ancestors.”
It was getting late. Most inhabitants of the city were already home, parked in front of their hologems, watching the recent products of the world-spanning media conglomerate.
“Can I invite you to a cup of coffee?”, Björn asked.
Anka shrugged. Sure, why not.
-
"Excuse me for a minute, I’ll have to look after my son. This is his room now..."
It was Anka who knocked and carefully opened the bedroom door.
"Hey there, little buddy..."
The kid looked up to her with its big, yellow eyes. Björn stepped inside next to her.
"Hello partner. This is Anka, a college of mine from work. Be nice and say hello."
"Hello... My name is Spatz..."
"Hello, Spatz. Nice to meet you."
"I'd give you my hand, but then you might be contaiged..."
"That makes you a real gentlemen in my book. I'll give you two a minute, I'll go to the kitchen and make that coffee. You are not hiding it in some elaborate way, are you?"
-
Later, they were sitting in the kitchen together, drinking coffee.
"Anka...”
It was obvious the griffin was nervous. There had been an ulterior motive for him inviting her over, and Anka believed she already knew what that was.
“I’ll have to leave the city this weekend. My wife’s heritage. My custody for the boy. Lots of nasty legal quarrels with my wife’s family- griffin law is rather grotesque that way. Would you... look, my son has to stay in bed for a few days. Would you watch him for me while I'm out of town?"
She raised an eyebrow. "You think just because I'm a woman that makes me a babysitter by default?" By then she already knew that she would say yes, but some things deserved o be clarified.
"No, it's just... I just moved here, and I don't really know anyone yet. You're the only one I can rely on."
She couldn't help but smile. "You better believe it, partner. "
His expression of infinite gratitude almost made her grin as well, but she tried to preserve a dignified expression. Griffin snouts were funny things: their structure had more to do with platypus beaks than the beaks of actual birds. That also made them more expressive.
"Do you... do you have kids of your own?"
"As a matter of fact, I do. But they're living with my ex-husband."
"I'm sorry, I didn't want to stirr up bad memories..."
She snorted. "You don't have to apologize for anything. You've lost your spouse. Mine is just a jerk. Not exactly comparable."
Björn said something that sounded like "Bury what was, handle what is". Anka didn't ask him to repeat it.
For a moment, they were just sitting there together, thinking about the past.
Somehow, Anka's thoughts drifted off to the obelisks... and the stolen artifact.