02.03 - The Slow Thaw

Telly and R/D followed Smith as he floated out of the lecture hall and over to the elevators. Outside of the public concourse was the transit terminal. A private shuttle was waiting to take them all to the Seat of Albe government building. 

Now mostly a museum, it housed the frozen effigy of Gorluun the Third for gawking visitors and tourists. His actual body was located on the upper floor of the building, in the Grand Hall, which was off limits to visitors and carefully monitored. Smith's distant link to the Gorluun blood line provided him with an office on one of the lower floors and an access pass to just about anywhere in the building. 

Because this request had come in unofficially and was written by hand, Smith had reason to exercise caution. In fact, caution was his default mode of operation. Notes like these were intentionally used for their inherently-plausible deniability, and thus used to protect both sender and receiver from one another. And, in that spirit, as Smith and Co. encountered the security officer ensconced on his stool near the 2nd Floor Access door, Smith went in to leave-no-trace mode. 

"Three to see the king!" he jested, smiling cheerfully at the barely alert guard. Patting his pockets and feigning a look of agitated dismay, he changed his tone to one of apologetic senility. "Blast, I've left my badge in my offices downstairs." Turning to his companions, he began preparing what looked to be a long-winded apology and plea for their patience whilst he returned downstairs to fetch it. "It won't take me more than—", pause for dramatic effect, "twenty minutes. I'm sure it's sitting in my locker right where I left it. I DO apologize. If I had known..."

Smith had made a habit of feigning these sorts of episodes with every staff person he met, whenever he met them. It was his way of determining where the lines would be drawn, with whom and what kind of lines they would be, and how and where they could be manipulated.

This guard must be new, but he was of the most malleable kind. He didn't even wait for Smith to finish speaking, he just drew out his own badge, slid it through the security slot, and sat back on his perch, thoroughly unimpressed with any of it. 

Smith pretended to be unable to find the words to express his gratitude to the guard while at the same time appear to regrettably swallow his pride. Telly and R/D entered the hallway. Smith followed.

The stairs were broad and shallow, about one and half paces to the step. As a result, it took a great deal of time to reach the landing, and another equal length of time to achieve the second floor. The Grand Hall.

The group approached the Royal Stasis Chamber. The stasis chamber was protected in a hermetically sealed room made of transparent, starport-grade plasteel. The doors were controlled by synchronized keypads on opposite walls; requiring at least two people to open the doors—for accountability. 

There was some confusion as Smith and Telly tried to simultaneously punch in their respective door codes, but eventually they succeeded. Once they were in the chamber, thawing the emperor was simply a matter of pushing the big shiny THAW button and letting the computers take it from there. 

R/D may have exclaimed, "well if that don't beat all," as life returned to Gorluun's inert body. 

After a wave of anticipated nausea, Gorluun the III regained consciousness and, as he always did, stared at his liberators through weak, watery eyes and awaited further instructions.

Smith opened the SHS questionnaire, it was multiple choice, and recorded Gorluun's answers. These questions were extremely focused on 400 year old socio-politico-cultural minutiae. The answers, at least the ones Gorluun had to choose from, were so seemingly insignificant that warning bells started to go off in Smith's guts, so much so that his guts were vibrating.

Actually, all three/four of them had vibrating guts as their respective data pads were abuzz with breaking planet news. 

THE EMPEROR IS DEAD, LONG LIVE THE EMPEROR and GORLUN III, ASSASSINATED!