Her bright green eyes lit up as she decided to investigate, to buoy her knowledge (as they say) and open the lid of the tabernacle of knowledge. Because she lacked the technical or detective skills to conduct the investigation herself, she walked to the office, which housed both a phone and the book that would lead her to the answers she sought - and there was a hint of dance in her walk, rhythmical surges of electricity, igniting her world in rainbows of possibility and potentiality, and the gold at the bottom was hidden at the bottom of her feet which left the slightest stain on the lightly-speckled white carpet.
The office was a small room, added to the old house after computers started gaining popularity but before it became common practice for each family member to have one. Like so many other upper-middle-class families, Jenn's had wanted to devote an entire structure to the glory of this new machine. At first, only the monstrous tower, the same speckled color as the carpet, its accompanying monitor, and the even larger instruction manuals dwelt in the new room, but it slowly filled itself with articles of life and technology - a neglected toy here, a printer there - and eventually became an extension of the traditional office upstairs. Presently, Jenn's mother, an architect, was working on a new plan, so the desk opposite the computer was covered with large sheets of paper, a giant square and various grades of pencil. Jenn walked to this desk, opened the top drawer, and retrieved the phone book - a yellow artifact, which looked like a tiny monarchy, power-hungry in its decline and jealously observing the computer. There was a face drawn hastily on the bottom of the cover, a relic from a long-forgotten conversation. Now, it peered vehemently at Jenn as if whispering, "I could have licked him once... I could have done it without trying. Nobody could have survived without my benevolence, but now." A brief silence. "Now..."
Jenn opened the book, looking under "Detective." Men's faces under mysterious large hats glared up at her. One of them chewed angrily at a straw, with the words, "Find out who your spouse is really sleeping with... Dan Spitz - I fight for you," bolded next to him. On the next page, a wiry man stood, smiling and holding a long, thin chord. Next to him floated the words, "Don't get stuck with muscle and gruff; a computer means hustle for your stuff: Linus Little." Jenn smiled back at the man and wrote his address on her hand.
Linus's office doubled as his home. It was an apartment a few blocks from downtown, part of a building that was famous for once being the oldest remaining apartment building in the contiguous United States. It smelled of age and urine and rotten fruit, all blended together into the musty odor we associate with tradition. Linus lived on the third floor, and the elevator was either broken or non-existent - the sign, "Elevator Temporarily Gone," that hung at the entrance to the building left many questions unanswered - so, Jenn walked up the echoing stone stairs, fiddling with the remote in her pocket, wondering what would happen were she to trigger it accidentally. Would the building shrink? Would she shrink? Again, a rush of electricity flushed her cheeks and propelled her forward, so that she almost tripped as she danced lightly up the two flights of stairs.
She arrived at the third floor. The same stone clicked beneath her feet as on the stairs, and there were six wooden doors, in clusters of three, on either side of the hall. Directly in front of Jenn was a window so streaked with brown that the world outside looked as though the ground beneath the city had finally erupted in revenge at its neglect. Jenn found the apartment - 33 - and was about to knock on the door when she saw a note tacked on, written in the scribbled script of an intellectual in haste. It read, "Departed. Strange things. Back later. LL."
Jenn stared at it for a second, perplexed. She knocked on the door three solid times, her hand aching at each abuse, in the hopes that the note has lied to her. She heard an unidentifiable noise from inside, a faint thud muffled by walls and the door. Jenn waited for a response to the sound, but none came. She looked around her, as if the other doors, each more barren than the last, would present a solution, and then she...
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