Pretty: Link

How many drinks had he had so far? Jack looked at the bottle: it was half-empty. Did he remember opening a fresh one when he came back from visiting Mitsunori? He wasn't sure, but that very level of uncertainty meant that he was certainly doing the right thing with his drinking. He poured another.

Jack looked around the room that served as his office, and frequently his flop. Not very spacious, but big enough to house his desk, a few wooden chairs, and a sofa off to the side of the room where he spent the night more often than not. He got back to his real apartment once in a while, when he really needed a shower, for example. He wasn't a bum, no sir. He might have a thing for the bottle, and perhaps rambling on now and again, but he kept himself clean. Mostly.

Sitting on the sofa was the package he had received this morning, or whatever time it was when he woke up. Still empty, still mysterious, still information-free. Jack poured himself another drink and got the old neurons good and lubricated. Given his line of work, and considering his past, a mysterious empty box shouldn't be just ignored. He cogitated. Then he thought. Then he drank a little, followed by some rumination. He had gone through the mulling phase and was in a full-on contemplate when his skittering thoughts hit on something Mitsunori had said earlier. He was being pulled in to a big, information-dense case. Someone had made contact, but he couldn't tell who or how. The box must have been the contact. He had a drink to celebrate that little breakthrough.

If someone were going to contact Jack in such a way, it would be to bypass Infomancer snooping. The package itself was very information-neutral. It had little inherent meaning or content, especially to a third party. There would be no hidden compartment or invisible ink, that kind of dodge wouldn't fool the little birds. No, this would be a straight up empty box, whose only purpose in life was to get Jack thinking and drinking enough to cast his memory back to the whole reason why he had started drinking in the first place. The reason he was in this dump, living a half-baked, half-boiled, and wholly empty life.

His scotch bottle was empty, but that was okay with him. He didn't feel like drinking anymore. He laid down on the sofa, uttered a single word and drifted off into an oblivion he was thankful for.

"Leah"

(the end of chapter one: introductions and excitement)

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