A Spot Of Headhunting
Echo Minus Eighteen / 1024Late May, 2018 (Zero-Zero relative)
“Doctor Cooper? Draco Malfoy. A pleasure to meet you, sir.” The blond man smiled pleasantly and stuck out a hand, but Dr. Sheldon Cooper only looked at him with a dubious and affronted expression on his face. Malfoy kept his hand out for another second before putting it away with only the tiniest of shrugs.
“Draco Malfoy is a character from a series of sub-standard fantasy novels written for the lowest common denominator,” Sheldon informed the man. Malfoy twitched a little at his righteous assessment of the Hermione Granger novels. “Your bizarre and childish spy antics are transparent and I’m only doing this because the head of the department asked me to.”
Malfoy sighed a little and mumbled something under his breath. Sheldon couldn’t quite make it out, something to do with Morrison’s paradox, whatever that was. Some new theorem, maybe? “Well,” Malfoy said. “You do live up to your reputation, doctor. Let’s get down to it then. My organization, the Mobius Group, has an interest in theoretical physicists like yourself and dispatched me to evaluate your work.”
“I highly doubt that you’re capable of understanding my work,” Sheldon said loftily. Malfoy shrugged.
“That’s as may be, but evaluation’s not the same as understanding. If I may?”
Sheldon acquiesced with bad grace and allowed Malfoy into his office. On every wall there was a whiteboard, and every whiteboard was covered with dense mathematical notations. Having let the interloper into his office, Sheldon promptly tried to ignore him, retreating to the furthest whiteboard. Malfoy examined the equations for a moment, pulling out his phone and calling up a set of images for comparison. “Hmm,” he hmm’d. “This is interesting, yes. Parallel evolution.” Overhearing Malfoy’s mumbling, Sheldon looked up from his own work to see the man fumbling around with a smartphone near some of his more interesting equations.
“Hey!” he yelled. “That information is proprietary! You are not authorized to take photographs or recordings of my work! Police! Corporate espionage!”
Malfoy looked up from his phone. “Oh, sorry, not taking pictures,” he said. “Just comparing notes. See?” He flipped the phone over so Sheldon could see clearly the equations. Equations that weren’t photographed from his whiteboards, but also weren’t from his published papers either.
“That’s, that’s,” Sheldon gaped. “Where did you get that!? Those equations weren’t in my paper! How did you get a published version of something not in my paper?”
Malfoy smiled mysteriously. “There are more things in heaven and earth, Dr. Cooper.”
“Quoting Shakespeare as a rhetorical evasion doesn’t explain how you got my equations. I demand an explanation!”
“Hm. For one thing, this isn’t your work.”
“Are you suggesting that I, I plagiarized my work?” Sheldon squeaked in outrage. “Why am I arguing this with a man pretending to be a wizard? Get out!”
“I didn’t say that, doctor, please. The situation is a bit more complex, but think of it as Newton and Leibniz inventing the same math. Based on this,” Malfoy gave Sheldon what he assumed was a placating smile, “I’m authorized to offer you a long-term consultant position with the Mobius Group.”
“Not interested.”
“Please hear me out, the position is very well paid and–ah.” Malfoy held a hand to his ear. “Ah. I see. Dr. Cooper, I’m afraid we’re going to have to skip the job offer and go straight to the ‘mortal peril’ part of today’s program.”
“Wait what?” Sheldon started to say, but Malfoy had already grabbed him and hurled them both out the office window. And the office had exploded into a cloud of thick purple smoke.
“See the infinite worlds Maico,” she muttered. “Go to new and interesting places, kidnap innocent scientists and destroy their work because Homeline doesn’t want their monopoly endangered. Yeah, this is what I wanted to do with my life.”
“You say something, boss?”
“No, not really.” Special Agent Maico Tange, Interworld Intelligence Service, sighed quietly. “Are we ready?”
“Just about,” her teammate replied. “Wells and Kirkland are moving up to your position. Give it another minute.”
“Copy that.” Maico touched her earbud, muting the feed for the moment. At least this particular worldline was advanced enough she could walk around without attracting attention. The last Coventry run she’d been on involved a world still in the 1950s - poodle skirts everywhere, the horror - and the kind of advanced communications gear Infinity favored didn’t mesh well with the surroundings. Maintaining a good solid undergrad slouch, Maico made her way to the right wing of the Physics department. The halls were generally empty, as expected for a university at this time of year and day. As she entered the building Wells and Kirkland, disguised as ordinary students much like herself, fell into step behind her.
Maico unmuted her comms. “Okay, Rogers,” she said. “You’re on cop-watching duty. What’s our ETA for police action here?”
“Ten minutes from the word go,” Rogers replied crisply. “Campus cops first, then LAPD.”
“Let us know the minute they show up,” she ordered, then turned to her compatriots. “Okay, we need Cooper alive, so non-lethals only. We sure he’s in the office?”
Kirkland nodded. “Bugs picked up activity a minute ago.”
“All I needed to hear. Tasers out, gentlemen. Wells, grab the stun bombs.”
The three Infinity agents sidled close to Dr. Sheldon Cooper’s office. The lights were on and Maico could hear a low current of voice from inside, clearly the good doctor talking to himself or someone on the phone. She made a sharp gesture and Kirkland took up position on the other side of the door. Wells stood in front of her, pulling a pair of gas grenades out of his UCLA fanny pack. Maico mentally counted down the next few seconds.
Three…
Two…
One. She clapped Wells on the back, and he kicked open the door and pitched the grenades through the gap. The room vanished in a cloud of purple smoke. Thirty seconds later the smoke cleared and the Infinity agents strode into the room, tasers at the ready.
“Clear!” Kirkland barked.
Maico took a look around, seeing no sign of Cooper. “Where the fuck is he?” she asked.
“Maybe he stepped out for a leak?” Wells suggested.
“Goddammit. Kirkland, check the john. Team One, target is not, I repeat not in position. Where the hell did he go?”
“Hey boss, check this out.” Wells nodded at a windowframe that had obviously seen better days. “Maybe he spotted us and ran?”
“Huh,” Maico said. “I read our guy’s dossier, never would’ve expected him to be that hardcore.” She looked around the office, searching for a sign of some sort that might explain why their target had escaped, or maybe where he was going. The room was Spartan, covered in whiteboards Cooper obviously used for his work on pandimensional physics. Not much else, few books, a desk and a set of neatly stacked papers…
Hang on a second.
On the desk, Maico spotted something that didn’t belong. Tossed haphazardly on top of the obsessively-orderly pile of paperwork on Cooper’s desk was a lone business card. She picked up the card, giving the name a casual scan (“DRACO MALFOY,” so somebody with a sense of humor apparently) and noticing the faint impression of a watermark. Holding it up to the light, Maico’s breath caught when the faint watermark resolved into the image of a mobius loop.
“Fuck,” she said softly, crushing the card in her grip. “Fuck. Fuck!” Maico grabbed her radio and yelled into the microphone. “Rogers! Park! Michaels! Spread out and start searching on all bandwidths! The fucking magpies got here first!”
Cooper was quiet. Maybe a little too quiet – since the moment that Draco had pulled him out of the office bare seconds before as-yet unknown persons dropped enough stun bombs to tranquilize half of LA, Cooper seemed somewhere between confused and catatonic. Probably ontological shock, Draco mused. Oh well. He’d keep until they got to the desert, back to the saucer and a quick sidestep home.
And on that note... Malfoy slotted his phone into the car’s dash and punched a key. “It’s me,” he said. “I got Cooper but there’s complications: somebody sent a snatch team, probably Infinity. I managed to scarper but they’re gonna be out for blood. Tell the crew to grab the rest of the acquaintance web now and head for exfil. Be there as soon as I can, Malfoy out.”
Mr. Fnord interdimensional man of mystery
FenWiki - Your One-Stop Shop for Fenspace Information
"I. Drink. Your. NERDRAGE!"
Echo Minus Eighteen / 1024Late May, 2018 (Zero-Zero relative)
“Doctor Cooper? Draco Malfoy. A pleasure to meet you, sir.” The blond man smiled pleasantly and stuck out a hand, but Dr. Sheldon Cooper only looked at him with a dubious and affronted expression on his face. Malfoy kept his hand out for another second before putting it away with only the tiniest of shrugs.
“Draco Malfoy is a character from a series of sub-standard fantasy novels written for the lowest common denominator,” Sheldon informed the man. Malfoy twitched a little at his righteous assessment of the Hermione Granger novels. “Your bizarre and childish spy antics are transparent and I’m only doing this because the head of the department asked me to.”
Malfoy sighed a little and mumbled something under his breath. Sheldon couldn’t quite make it out, something to do with Morrison’s paradox, whatever that was. Some new theorem, maybe? “Well,” Malfoy said. “You do live up to your reputation, doctor. Let’s get down to it then. My organization, the Mobius Group, has an interest in theoretical physicists like yourself and dispatched me to evaluate your work.”
“I highly doubt that you’re capable of understanding my work,” Sheldon said loftily. Malfoy shrugged.
“That’s as may be, but evaluation’s not the same as understanding. If I may?”
Sheldon acquiesced with bad grace and allowed Malfoy into his office. On every wall there was a whiteboard, and every whiteboard was covered with dense mathematical notations. Having let the interloper into his office, Sheldon promptly tried to ignore him, retreating to the furthest whiteboard. Malfoy examined the equations for a moment, pulling out his phone and calling up a set of images for comparison. “Hmm,” he hmm’d. “This is interesting, yes. Parallel evolution.” Overhearing Malfoy’s mumbling, Sheldon looked up from his own work to see the man fumbling around with a smartphone near some of his more interesting equations.
“Hey!” he yelled. “That information is proprietary! You are not authorized to take photographs or recordings of my work! Police! Corporate espionage!”
Malfoy looked up from his phone. “Oh, sorry, not taking pictures,” he said. “Just comparing notes. See?” He flipped the phone over so Sheldon could see clearly the equations. Equations that weren’t photographed from his whiteboards, but also weren’t from his published papers either.
“That’s, that’s,” Sheldon gaped. “Where did you get that!? Those equations weren’t in my paper! How did you get a published version of something not in my paper?”
Malfoy smiled mysteriously. “There are more things in heaven and earth, Dr. Cooper.”
“Quoting Shakespeare as a rhetorical evasion doesn’t explain how you got my equations. I demand an explanation!”
“Hm. For one thing, this isn’t your work.”
“Are you suggesting that I, I plagiarized my work?” Sheldon squeaked in outrage. “Why am I arguing this with a man pretending to be a wizard? Get out!”
“I didn’t say that, doctor, please. The situation is a bit more complex, but think of it as Newton and Leibniz inventing the same math. Based on this,” Malfoy gave Sheldon what he assumed was a placating smile, “I’m authorized to offer you a long-term consultant position with the Mobius Group.”
“Not interested.”
“Please hear me out, the position is very well paid and–ah.” Malfoy held a hand to his ear. “Ah. I see. Dr. Cooper, I’m afraid we’re going to have to skip the job offer and go straight to the ‘mortal peril’ part of today’s program.”
“Wait what?” Sheldon started to say, but Malfoy had already grabbed him and hurled them both out the office window. And the office had exploded into a cloud of thick purple smoke.
~***~
Ten Minutes Earlier…“See the infinite worlds Maico,” she muttered. “Go to new and interesting places, kidnap innocent scientists and destroy their work because Homeline doesn’t want their monopoly endangered. Yeah, this is what I wanted to do with my life.”
“You say something, boss?”
“No, not really.” Special Agent Maico Tange, Interworld Intelligence Service, sighed quietly. “Are we ready?”
“Just about,” her teammate replied. “Wells and Kirkland are moving up to your position. Give it another minute.”
“Copy that.” Maico touched her earbud, muting the feed for the moment. At least this particular worldline was advanced enough she could walk around without attracting attention. The last Coventry run she’d been on involved a world still in the 1950s - poodle skirts everywhere, the horror - and the kind of advanced communications gear Infinity favored didn’t mesh well with the surroundings. Maintaining a good solid undergrad slouch, Maico made her way to the right wing of the Physics department. The halls were generally empty, as expected for a university at this time of year and day. As she entered the building Wells and Kirkland, disguised as ordinary students much like herself, fell into step behind her.
Maico unmuted her comms. “Okay, Rogers,” she said. “You’re on cop-watching duty. What’s our ETA for police action here?”
“Ten minutes from the word go,” Rogers replied crisply. “Campus cops first, then LAPD.”
“Let us know the minute they show up,” she ordered, then turned to her compatriots. “Okay, we need Cooper alive, so non-lethals only. We sure he’s in the office?”
Kirkland nodded. “Bugs picked up activity a minute ago.”
“All I needed to hear. Tasers out, gentlemen. Wells, grab the stun bombs.”
The three Infinity agents sidled close to Dr. Sheldon Cooper’s office. The lights were on and Maico could hear a low current of voice from inside, clearly the good doctor talking to himself or someone on the phone. She made a sharp gesture and Kirkland took up position on the other side of the door. Wells stood in front of her, pulling a pair of gas grenades out of his UCLA fanny pack. Maico mentally counted down the next few seconds.
Three…
Two…
One. She clapped Wells on the back, and he kicked open the door and pitched the grenades through the gap. The room vanished in a cloud of purple smoke. Thirty seconds later the smoke cleared and the Infinity agents strode into the room, tasers at the ready.
“Clear!” Kirkland barked.
Maico took a look around, seeing no sign of Cooper. “Where the fuck is he?” she asked.
“Maybe he stepped out for a leak?” Wells suggested.
“Goddammit. Kirkland, check the john. Team One, target is not, I repeat not in position. Where the hell did he go?”
“Hey boss, check this out.” Wells nodded at a windowframe that had obviously seen better days. “Maybe he spotted us and ran?”
“Huh,” Maico said. “I read our guy’s dossier, never would’ve expected him to be that hardcore.” She looked around the office, searching for a sign of some sort that might explain why their target had escaped, or maybe where he was going. The room was Spartan, covered in whiteboards Cooper obviously used for his work on pandimensional physics. Not much else, few books, a desk and a set of neatly stacked papers…
Hang on a second.
On the desk, Maico spotted something that didn’t belong. Tossed haphazardly on top of the obsessively-orderly pile of paperwork on Cooper’s desk was a lone business card. She picked up the card, giving the name a casual scan (“DRACO MALFOY,” so somebody with a sense of humor apparently) and noticing the faint impression of a watermark. Holding it up to the light, Maico’s breath caught when the faint watermark resolved into the image of a mobius loop.
“Fuck,” she said softly, crushing the card in her grip. “Fuck. Fuck!” Maico grabbed her radio and yelled into the microphone. “Rogers! Park! Michaels! Spread out and start searching on all bandwidths! The fucking magpies got here first!”
~***~
Somewhere in Los Angeles…Cooper was quiet. Maybe a little too quiet – since the moment that Draco had pulled him out of the office bare seconds before as-yet unknown persons dropped enough stun bombs to tranquilize half of LA, Cooper seemed somewhere between confused and catatonic. Probably ontological shock, Draco mused. Oh well. He’d keep until they got to the desert, back to the saucer and a quick sidestep home.
And on that note... Malfoy slotted his phone into the car’s dash and punched a key. “It’s me,” he said. “I got Cooper but there’s complications: somebody sent a snatch team, probably Infinity. I managed to scarper but they’re gonna be out for blood. Tell the crew to grab the rest of the acquaintance web now and head for exfil. Be there as soon as I can, Malfoy out.”
Mr. Fnord interdimensional man of mystery
FenWiki - Your One-Stop Shop for Fenspace Information
"I. Drink. Your. NERDRAGE!"