"Darn!" Dolly grumbled. "Thought Ah had 'im there. Sure did seem confused, though." If only Ah hadn't got cut off 'fore Ah could get a fix on his coordinates. Or were we purposely disconnected? Hard to tell."
After several failed attempts to regain contact, she realized she needed help. Unsure where to get it, she called David Hilbert. He knew everyone and everything Backstage, she figured -- he could tell her who to go to even if he couldn't help her himself.
"Oh, hello Ms. Parton," Hilbert said after she identified herself and stated her problem. "As it happens, I believe I can be of assistance. I'll put out an APB on the Imp Network -- they get everywhere, I'm sure they'll be able to locate your wayward Author if anyone can."
"Thanks, Mr. H, you're a pal!"
"I live to serve. Stay on the line and I'll put my phone on speaker, so you can hear any reports that come in."
Dolly waited. After a few minutes the first report came in. One of the service imps had seen Dabbler escorting JigSaw out of the latter's Lair towards the elevators. Minutes later, another report had them visiting The 70-Plus Club. Both old news, since Dolly had previously confirmed that Dabbler was no longer in the Ring. It was half an hour before more recent news was heard, from an imp attached to the club itself. The targets had 'ported out to go -- hiking? But where? Repeated inquiries could elicit no further information, until many hours later, late in the day, an unconfirmed rumor placed two individuals of the Authors' description in the Jungle of Confusion.
"Sorry Dolly," Hilbert told her. "If that's where they are, I have no further means of following them. There are no sure ways through the Jungle of Confusion aside from the Chain-Link Railway lines, and it doesn't sound like they were taking the train. Let me check with Adama, if anyone can say how you should proceed from here, he can."
Dolly waited impatiently as Hilbert buzzed Adama on another line. Since the speaker phone was still on, she could hear every word of the exchange.
"I'll see what I can do," Adama was saying. "I have full access to the AddVenture from my office, but I've just gotten my main indexing computer back from repair and not everything's up yet. Still, if you can provide the episode number where you last saw him, I should be able to tree Dabbler's current whereabouts from there. Assuming they've been written, that is."
Dolly quickly called up the requested data and gave it to Hilbert, who passed it on to Adama.
"Thanks," he said, inputting the data. The process went slowly, because all the indexing programs were being run in the background. It was well into the evening before Adama had tracked Dabbler and JigSaw through the Jungle of Confusion. "Oops, got a problem," the indexer told the querants. "Just as you feared, it seems they've strayed out of the Jungle and into the AddVenture beyond."
"I understand that's really easy to do from there," Hilbert noted.
"Is that serious?" asked Dolly, anxiously.
"Well, potentially," said Adama. "Straying beyond the Ring is rather like straying into the First Backstage, it puts you in a different state of consciousness. As Authors, they should be relatively immune to this phenomenon, but if they were inattentive or didn't realize where they were--"
"Quite likely, considering where they were," Hilbert interjected.
"--it could well have taken them by surprise."
"What do you mean?" asked Dolly. "What's happened to them?"
"I don't know this for a fact, mind you," Adama cautioned. "But there's a strong possibility they've been randomly Characterized, and don't even realize they're Authors any more."
"Oh no!" Dolly cried. "If that's so, how'll we ever get 'em back?"
"Don't worry," Hilbert assured her. "There are still things we can try. First, now that we know their general vicinity, we can try to punch a communications beam through to them again. It's hard to send one through the Jungle of Confusion, but with enough computing power we can do it. Then, if Dabbler just responds to his beeper, you should be able to get a fix on him with the 'porting equipment you have there and pull him back whether he knows who he is or not. Of course, so near the Jungle, that could be chancy too..."
"We've gotta try it," said Dolly gloomily. "Set it up, Hilbert. Ah'll do the rest."
"I'll leave you two to it," said Adama. "The indexing programs need my attention just now."
"Certainly," Hilbert said. "Okay, Dolly, key your pager to this frequency..."
Fri Jun 15 15:56:17 2001
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