Turing Tested (Closed)

[Obuzeti]

The top floor of Moresby Innovations is nothing like the rest, which is such typical office space that the floor plan is identical from ground to penultimate. The top floor belongs to Farridan Calder, and like everything else the man involves himself in, is so off-kilter as to be unrecognizable.

The elevator doors open onto dark-tinted glass, sliced diagonally across the level; visitors can stare down into the city below, the glass translucent under their feet, and follow the walkway around and up a half-spiral into Farridan's domain proper. A set of visors await visitors, and then the floor opens up onto the Green Room, where the man accomplishes most of his work. The walls and floors are all featureless and bland to the human eye, with an omnipresent faint electric hum, but through the visors in Augmented Reality, Farridan's latest flagship work, the room comes alive with holographic presentations. Files and folders hover just out of reach in collating star systems, open pages hover in the distance at eye-watering sizes, a panorama of a white cliff with waves crashing against it hangs far underneath, a huge change from the smoky, smoggy city that reality enforces upon the residents.

Above that is Farridan's private residence, and he does not take visitors often.

The company wants a personal assistant to keep Farridan on track; he's been playing with private models of his latest project for months now, tweaking some facet of his design he doesn't care to share about. The board's decision that he's reluctantly agreed to is to install an assistant that will help him keep on track and focused on developing a production model. Unfortunately, Farridan has a controlling share in the company itself, and no one can make him do anything.

Therefore, the best response is to wheedle it out of him.

The contract simply states that the job is to, as best as possible, persuade Farridan to work on and drive towards production his latest product, and to remove obstacles from his life that would otherwise obstruct that process. The language is loose and faintly ominous, but the pay and benefits were amazing for such a low-barrier job, with the only restrictions being female and a face-to-face interview beforehand.

"Come on in!" Farridan calls from the back of the room, where he's slumped back in a revolving chair with his feet up on his desk; long-limbed, flexible, hands up over his head scrolling down a code display that looks like a wall of triangles with occasional characters thrown in. It's nothing familiar. "I understand that time is valuable at the lower altitudes."

His voice is whimsical, a little curl at the corner of his mouth as he flicks at the display again then types four lines of code in the time someone else would use to yawn. He hasn't looked down at his guest yet, the infamous green stare that cores right through whatever he looks at as yet undeployed. This is a man impatient with the physical world and its limitations.

 

[wanna_be]

Sophie's eyes opened wide at the sight that greeted them when the elevator doors opened. Looking down, she could see the city that she had been walking through only a few minutes ago, dressed in her best professional clothing and nervous about the interview she had this morning. She couldn't help but feel nervous as she stepped out onto the glass. It wasn't like she was going to fall dozens of stories to her death, but her brain was still insisting that nothing stood between her and certain, liquefying death.

Hesitantly she collected one of the visors besides the elevator doors, they were clearly labelled, and it was obvious that she was expected to take one. It was faintly uncomfortable for a few moments before she got used to the lightweight piece of technology. Her jaw dropped though once she looked up.

The room she had stepped into might have been empty, bland even, until one was wearing a visor. Then the room lit up, filled with things that likely were boring to the man she was here to meet, but were awe inspiring to a girl that had never used anything more technologically advanced than an iPhone.

She was suddenly aware of the time, and the fact that she was supposed to be in an interview in less than two minutes. It wouldn't exactly look good if she was late, and she really needed this job. On the other hand, her potential employer was already there, somehow lost behind the graphics and animations. Sophie carefully made her way between the computer programs, worried that touching something might start a chain reaction and destroy the whole wonderful reality.

The man she had come to meet was leaning back in his chair, pianists fingers flicking at some lines of code that she couldn't even pretend to understand.

He spoke, but she was unsure of how to respond to his comment, settling for a rather pathetic. "Ummm… I suppose…"

He continued to flick at the code. She tried to be as professional as possible, considering the situation, putting on her most professional voice. "I'm here for an interview Mr Calder…"

 

[Obuzeti]

"In the vernacular you'd be correct, but the specifics are different," Farridan says. He's smiling, but it doesn't move anything but his lips - he has the still-eyed stare of a reptile, poisonous green. In contrast to her professional outfit and demeanor, he's wearing some kind of dark silk slacks and shirt that gleams as he moves, light rippling off the fabric; it looks astonishingly expensive. He isn't even wearing shoes, either, just dark cashmere socks. He kicks his feet off his desk and sits up. "You're intended to be an albatross around my neck so I'll lay more golden eggs for people who sit in board rooms and look at charts and pretend to be worth the money they're making."

His head tilts. The birdlike resemblance gets stronger; Farridan hasn't blinked yet, and the sharp quirk of his neck is reminiscent of a magpie's curiosity. "That said, the plans of mice and men often go awry. Take a seat."

Farridan clears the code from over his right wrist with a flick of his hand; there's some dark band on his wrist that's casting the image, and he navigates through a trio of screens with deft finger flicks before he settles on a picture of Sophie herself, a copy of her resume across the illusory screen. "You're in a remarkably tight corner, Miss . . . ah . . ."

He glances up at the screen. " . . . Morrow."

For a startling moment, self-depreciating humor darts across Farridan's face, and he laughs, clear and bright, then settles himself back into his observation, though the smile lingers. It's unnerving to see that touch of genuine, unrestrained joy in combination with the total lack of human recognition when he stare into Sophie's eyes.

 

[wanna_be]

Sophie moved to sit as instructed, adjusting her pencil skirt and blouse as she did so. They were plain, simple, black skirt with a white blouse. Her handbag had been a gift from her girlfriends, 'to help her get a new job'. The shoes she'd had for a long time, though she'd spent an hour this morning trying to make them look new. The whole ensemble probably cost less than the socks Farridan Calder was wearing. He looked the type.

There was something subtly uncomfortable about Farridan. She couldn't quite pin it down. Maybe it was viewing him through the strange visor. Maybe it was the clear opulence of the building or his clothes. Maybe it's the way he talks about her like she's a fictional character from an equally old poem. Or more likely it's the way his smile doesn't extend to his cold reptilian eyes.

She was surprised to see an image of herself suddenly projected into the air before her, it took her a moment to realise that her interviewer had called up a copy of her resume. The image that stared back at them was recent, she looked almost identical in person, right down to the hair style. Her dark hair, pulled back behind her ears, falls to a little above the small of her back. At only five foot one she was a lot shorter than Farridan, helped a little, but not resolved by, her heels. She has a girlish figure, her breasts big enough to be obvious, but small enough to be a source of insecurity, and a waist that a man with large hands could almost encircle.

Sophie found that she didn't like Mr Calder very much. There was something discomforting about him, and it felt very much like he was patronising her. She bristled. "Since we're quoting poetry, you should have said 'gang aft agley'."

 

[Obuzeti]

"If I was inclined to speak Scots, then yes, but I'm interested in computing languages, not human deviations," Farridan replies. The tips of his smile widen outward, becoming more natural, Cheshire-like. His teeth gleam behind his lips, a perfect and chemically-induced laser white. "I'd rather read a line in Kotlin or Python then try to figure out what Burns had against the letter U."

His fingertips rattle once against the desktop in a wave, ten little dots of noise in the otherwise impenetrable silence.

"Evasion rather than confrontation, too," he muses. "If you're the passive sort, this is going to be an exercise in frustration, miss Morrow. I am a quintessential programmer - I do not go around problems, I dissect them into their component forms and lay them out in clean lines. I attack that which does not function until it does."

Farridan shrugs, still smiling, and leans back in his chair. He stares right through her head like there's a television screen on the other side of it he can't see. "Return to line. You're in an awkward position, miss Morrow. You have a record, and little experience, and your erstwhile bosses are going to throw you upon my mercy; and for all of the forty seconds I've exhausted so far you should understand very much what my stores of that are like."

"If the perks are all that you're after, you'll receive them - I don't really care about your qualifications so much as your lack of them - but I can't promise much else. You're intended to the board's buffer against me. It's easier for them to forget what I'm like, through a pawn."

The worst bit of it is that he's not even trying to sound condescending. He's smiling, and there's no whit of hostility in his voice at all, which makes it come off like he's talking to a new dog.

 

[wanna_be]

Her record was supposed to be sealed. She'd fallen in with the wrong crowd when she was a kid, become involved in things she'd ended up regretting. Unlike some people she'd managed to get out early enough that it didn't become a permanent mark on her record, or that was what was supposed to have happened. How on earth did Calder know?

"I just didn't see what it has to do with this interview." She paused deliberately, "Sir."

She didn't like the way he was talking about her. It was almost like she wasn't actually present in this interview. Instead he spoke about her like one might speak about a gift, or a pet. A belonging, not a person. That's what confuses her. It doesn't seem like he's trying to offend her. Something about his voice was calming almost, which made it hard to stay angry at him. If he'd sounded condescending, or haughty then she'd have simply walked right out then and there. He didn't, there was arrogance in his tone, or maybe not arrogance, just a complete belief in his position.

"I'm no pawn Mr Calder, just a PA, that give me responsibilities too."

It was also hard to justify walking out right now. It wasn't as if she had potential employers clamouring to take her on right now. She'd only had a handful of interviews offered, and none of them came with as attractive a salary as this job. Maybe she could just survive it until she had enough savings to walk away from it until a better job presented itself. Moresby Innovations was a big company, surely a job with them would open some doors.

So maybe she should stop pissing Calder off…

"I'm sure I can act as the buffer against the board for you as well Mr Calder."

 

[Obuzeti]

"Well, it's not like anything you've personally brought to this interview is interesting, so I'm digging around in your background instead for fun gossip," Farridan admits, as he scrolls down a court docket displayed from his wrist monitor. "Stop worrying. This is just asinine juvenile misbehavior. Half the board's paid over five hundred thousand dollars in insider trading fines, IRS audits, and other assorted legal tomfoolery. By comparison this barely even registers."

He flicks the screen aside and glances up at Sophie. There's a long two seconds of just raw, dead silence as he looks at her, unmoving.

"Let's try something," Farridan says, abruptly. A hint of laughter bubbles through him as he twists down and digs through his desk, coming out with a VR visor that he sets on the desk. "Surely you're aware by now that my latest project is holographic projection. Now, I'm limited by the projectors for now, but using a visor I have a much wider base to draw from. Try this on. Oh, and if you don't, you can go ahead and leave."

He sets the visor on the desk and comes to his feet, walking away from Sophie as he pumps both wrists and brings a halo of electronic light to life around him, then spinning it and dropping some deeply convoluted menu out of the display. He returns to coding, his fingers dancing in air, without even looking at the woman he's presumably interviewing.

 

[wanna_be]

The two seconds felt longer, probably because of the strange quality Farridan had of dropping to a complete and absolute stillness. His handsome face didn't flicker, his posture didn't change. It was unnerving, and it took almost everything Sophie had not to jump when he suddenly speaks.

It didn't take him long to produce another visor. Similar to the one she had taken at the front desk, this one was slightly thicker and heavier. She turned it over in her hands while he stood and walked away. It seemed pointless to her, she can already see so much of what he is doing, admittedly not that she understands what he is doing. She understands computers, and has no problem in using them, but coding is going several layers lower than she can comprehend.

The slender billionaire seemed to be ignoring her now, engrossed in whatever project he was currently working on. Ignored, Sophie shrugged, removed the visor she was already wearing and put the new one on.

"One nerdy headset on. You don't need to impress me Mr Calder, I already know how successful and clever you are, if you just need me to act as a go-between for you and the board, I can do that. If you need me to manage your calendar I can do that too. If you just need me around so you can feel more intelligent, that's fine too, I'm under no sort of illusions here."

 

[Obuzeti]

The difference is immediately clear. The new visor Sophie dons has a sealing edge; the screen is pitch-black, and no light sneaks in. While the other one let her see the wonders that Farridan works, this one just shuts it all out. With her sight shut down, another odd quirk of Farridan's floor becomes evident - the entire place is eerily quiet. There's the faint hum of air conditioners and system fans keeping modems cool, and the gurgle of water somewhere out of eyesight, dripping steadily, but there's no music, no sound of the wind whipping by the skyscraper outside, no echoes from the other floors. The level is soundproofed.

"You know little of my needs," Farridan says, his voice quite suddenly right behind Sophie, calm and conversational. He hadn't made a sound, but then those socks were cashmere on a tile floor - he probably moves quiet as a mouse over that smooth surface. "Place your hands on the desk. If you move them, or the visor, the interview's over."

Another several seconds of silence. The hum of fans moving cooled air is the only smattering of sound in the giant and empty space.

"Answer me two questions, and you can consider yourself hired," Farridan says, from somewhere directly over her head, close enough to feel the movement of his breath or the heat of his body, but there's nothing to indicate his presence but the voice. "First, are you willing to assist me in the development of my technology? I don't care about the board, but I do need - a beta tester, so to speak. Someone to work out the peculiar quirks upon."

"Secondly, what hours are you available? I live here with my work, Miss Morrow, and I set a demanding pace. Do you imagine yourself capable of matching it?"

The visor still displays nothing. Sophie sits, blanketed in darkness.

 

[wanna_be]

You didn't notice how quiet a place was until you couldn't see it anymore. Maybe that was why Sophie jumped when Farridan's voice suddenly sounded in her ear. She'd gasped in surprise, and it took her a moment to bring her breathing back under control. He could move very quietly indeed, it was probably helped by the socks, but even soft wool couldn't totally absorb all sound.

There was a quiet control in his command as he spoke to her, and she turned, feeling around blindly until she found to cold, smooth surface of the desk. She didn't touch the visor, or make any move towards it, instead setting her hands palm down, fingers spread on the glass surface.

There was silence again, and she wondered if he'd gone still once more, or if he was simply moving silently around. She's had to bend down a little to rest her hands on the desk, so hearing his voice over her head is not as great a shock as hearing him in her ear had been. She's prepare for it this time, even if not being able to track where he is makes her subtly uncomfortable.

She answered his first question with only a slight hesitation, more because of the position he had put her in than because she was uncertain. "I am."

The second time around she felt the need to add a little bit of attitude to her response. "Well you're paying my salary Mr Calder, I can match whatever pace you set."

She meant it as well. She'd been prepared for a job that might require her to give up a lot her social life, it was just her fault for starting so late in the game that she was doing it now. There was another silence, and in the darkness Sophie found herself resisting the temptation to reach up to the visor, staying still until she heard Farridan's response.

 

[Obuzeti]

"Well then," Farridan says from the dark, still just behind Sophie. "I'll have to organize some paperwork, but you should be able to start at noon tomorrow. Be ready for late nights - I don't follow the day shift. I suppose we'll see how well you assist me."

A thumb ghosts across the back of Sophie's neck, and then swipes up to draw the VR visor from her head and set it on the table before her; his touch is firm, uncallused and soft, but with a wiry strength. Farridan looms over her, tall and graceful, and that slightly smiling face is turned down at her with unblinking eyes. He steps backward once, and sweeps an arm towards the exit. "Go, and return. We'll begin on the morrow."

Then he pads back around the desk and towards the stairway to the second level where he lives, already typing something again, coding something else, light collecting on his fingertips as he forthwith dismisses Sophie from his attentions.

 

[wanna_be]

Still not being able to see was starting to get to Sophie, it felt like she was having control taken away. At least if she could see she could look at Mr Calder, she could see exactly what he was doing. If she could see she would be able to stare defiantly at those green, reptilian eyes. Unfortunately, she couldn't, she had to stay, hands flat upon the desk, while he spoke from the blackness.

Sophie had just about resolved to take the visor off, moving from her position, and damn the consequences, when the visor was removed from her face. Light flooded in and she almost gasped at the intensity of it. Blinking rapidly, it took her a moment to return her vision to normal as she looked up at the significantly taller Farridan. He looked imperious, his stature and subtle intimidation not ruined by his half-smile in the slightest. If anything it made things worse. She could admit though, there was a certain handsomeness about him. In a crocodile sort of way.

Then without warning it was as if she'd been forgotten. The brunette felt insulted as her, apparently, new employer padded away just as silently as he'd moved around her before. He was clearly no longer interested in her. She frowned, but relieved that nothing else had happened she turned and left.

_________________________________________________________________________________


Mr Calder hadn't made it clear the time she should arrive the next day, so Sophie had erred on the side of caution, arriving at 8AM rather than the more traditional 9. Besides, it wasn't as if appearing eager was a bad thing, maybe it would lessen the worrying intensity which Farridan seemed to display when he regarded her. After all, she was just a PA… Right?

Stepping off the elevator back onto that strangely silent floor once more, Sophie looked around. She wasn't sure what she expected. Maybe he would be waiting for her. Maybe not. Perhaps he was a late riser and she wouldn't see him until noon. Either way, she was sure something was going to happen to surprise her today.

 

[Obuzeti]

Farridan is lying on his back on a bench he's pulled into the middle of the room, with a deconstructed visor laying beside his roost on the floor. He's got a holographic display spread out around him in the air, as per what seems to be usual, and frustration is written across his brow as he fiddles with a long string of coding. He adjusts a bit of it, and glances up to a black band stretching around him as well.

"Come in, miss Morrow," he says, and then sighs, as the word TEST marches around the black equator and then distorts horribly at one point, becoming illegible. "If you have anything to declare, or new demands from the Board, please present them now so I have less headaches later."

He gestures irritably at the ring of code around him, sitting up so he can type properly. His fingers flicker at unbelievable speeds - he's definitely not using a standard keyboard setup, he can type colons and semi-colons with a single press. There's a symbol pad to his left he's apparently got configured on whatever he uses as a keyboard substitute. "Kink in the camera data integration. Some goddamn fool downstairs modified the base aspect ratio and didn't adjust the conversion rates, so now the whole display's thrown off scale. Basic fix, just time-consuming."

It doesn't look basic.

Here, bizarrely, Farridan looks the most human he has yet - brows wrinkled, leaning forward into his work, the beguiling, upsetting smile wiped clean into a straight, firm line of lips. There's a blazing intensity to him; the gears whirring inside his brain are almost audible, and he moves as quick as his thoughts. There's always something captivating about watching a master at their craft, and it's here at the virtual forge that it is most clear what Farridan lives for: virtual creation.

"If not, have a seat, I'll be with you shortly."

 

[wanna_be]

Clearly Calder hadn't been waiting for her. Instead his attention was entirely focused on the display about him, his fingers tapping at incredible speed as he adjusts whatever it is that he's looking at.

She takes a few steps forward, her heels clicking loudly on the glass floor, filling the space with the echoes of her entrance. She wasn't entirely surprised that Farridan paid her little heed. He was clearly the type that was more focused on his work than anything else. A good thing, in this case. At least she could just get on and earn her salary without him bothering her too much.

She stared in dumb incomprehension at the code he was working on. It was way beyond her limited understanding of what went into making computers, phones and software work. His hands and fingers flicker through the strings of code and strange animations as though he has memorised the exact route he needed to take. It was quite impressive to watch, even if she didn't really know what was going on.

He barely even glanced at her as he spoke, easily issuing instructions while continuing with his task. At his command however, she managed to tear her attention away from what he was working on, refocusing it on the room she was currently in. Eventually she found a chair, a clear acrylic item of furniture that almost vanished into the transparent floor. Without a sound she settled into it, crossing her legs as she waited patiently for him to be finished with his current task.

"There's no rush sir."

 

[Obuzeti]

Farridan doesn't even notice her response, or at least doesn't acknowledge it, for a good fifteen minutes. He codes, lost in the whirl of line and response, and the outside world is on pause while he crafts from bits some facet of a masterpiece. Then he rolls his shoulders and clicks the display off, having completed some part of it, and turns to Sophie with pursed lips. He's not smiling. He's just looking at her, head cocked, birdlike and empty.

"Well then," he says, and suddenly smiles, like he's remembered to turn the light switch back on. "Ready to assist me?"

He turns and pulls open a drawer, pulling out another headset, and carries it over to Sophie, dropping it in her lap without any fanfare. "Put that on, would you?" he says. "I need to find out if I fixed it, and I need feedback without having to look away from the code. Let me now if the view looks normal or if it's flickering or - something. Not normal. You get what I mean."

The display inside the visor is a tessellated tile, a simple geometric pattern that warps around the edges of eyesight uncomfortably. There's an invisible rim where everything starts to blur and turn at angles the eyes can't follow, which reasonably makes it whatever Farridan's trying to fix.

 

[wanna_be]

Sophie was about ready to take out her phone to pass the time when Farridan seemed to remember that she was there. In truth she hadn't paid him much attention, simply sitting and staring off into the middle distance, thinking about things she needed to do today, the date she had been on last week, pretty much thinking about anything except Calder himself.

It took her a moment to realise that he was staring at her with that curious way of his. Despite his intellect he had a way of looking at her as if he was curious about her very existence. Like a predator wondering whether she would be edible or not. She smiled once he spoke, nodding and responding as professionally as she could. "Of course."

She picked up the headset that looked, for all intents and purposes, like something out of a sci-fi film. It took her a moment to adjust the straps and the harness so that it fit her comfortably, then she focused properly on the vision in front of her, looking for something that didn't seem right. Not that she knew what that meant.

Fortunately it seemed that there was an obvious issue, as she looks around inside the virtual world, there's a point she can't seem to focus on. It blurs and shifts and makes her eyes ache. "There's like… um… a blurry edge to everything. It makes my eyes hurt."

 

[Obuzeti]

"Right, I'm guessing that the concave stretch vertices are off," Farridan replies, already tapping something in past the uncomfortable blur of the visor. "The thing that allows you to 'see' in three dimensions, more or less. It's not scaling the field of view correctly, so everything near the edges blurs, because your eyes are naturally attempting to interpret what they're seeing as if it's from an angle, when the visual data isn't. So- "

Silence. He trails off into nothing, absorbed in his work. The blur shrinks, and seems to - change - like checking a different prescription of glasses. It doesn't make it go away, but the uncomfortable pain dissipates as the eye stops trying to make sense of it. Now it's just a mishmash of dark colors like a paint splotch.

About ten seconds later, Farridan abruptly starts talking again, flickering to another subject as the previous one loses his interest. "You have a college loan to be paying off, right? What are the terms?"

 

[wanna_be]

Farridan's reply included several words that Sophie knew and understood, but did nothing to explain what it was that was wrong with the visor. She nodded uncertainly, until he began to explain exactly what it was. Surprisingly enough she understood that explanation.

He trailed off, and she simply sat there, not in darkness, although she might as well have been. She could hear him speaking before, and without speech it made it seem as though he had simply left her in the room. Maybe he had…

She was just about to reach up to remove the visor when suddenly his voice started again, appearing to simply spring from empty air thanks to the visor she was still wearing. She wondered what he was doing right now. Probably still flicking through the code while his attention effortlessly flitted away to a completely unrelated subject.

"My college loan..?"

Sophie was surprised, she hadn't expected a question like that. "I don't see why that's…"

She cut off her initial response, it couldn't hurt to answer the question, and it certainly couldn't hurt to keep Farridan happy for as long as possible while she collected the more than generous paycheque. Anyway, she wasn't ashamed, and a certain degree of defiance crept into her voice as she finally answered. "I didn't go to college."

 

[Obuzeti]

"How awkward!" Farridan says, fascinated, but there's still some uncomfortable divide between how it comes out and what it should sound like; there's none of the gossipy, high-school-reunion faux-horror, but instead genuine pleasure. The smile is very nearly audible. "Neither did I, but then I wrote my own operating system and compiler, then submitted a thesis statement of its command string to a competition. That blew up and I went straight from basement programmer to millionaire in about a week's time. But I mean you wouldn't know what that's like."

The casual cruelty with which he drives in these barbs is breathtaking.

Further silence.

Something touches Sophie's shoulder - two fingers, as he rubs the fabric once, sampling the texture. "Cotton," he muses. "But the handbag is leather. Your heels are well-used, too, so I'd guess the handbag's a gift; it's too nice compared to everything else. Friends of yours? Gift from Mom?"

His fingers are dexterous and amazingly strong, evident even from that brief touch. There was no hesitation or sly intimation - he'd wondered what the blouse was made of, for some reason, then walked over and touched it, no distance between curiosity and action.

 

[wanna_be]

Sophie finds herself desperately wishing she could see Farridan as she hears his response to her answer. There's something about the way he speaks that takes the ease from her body and makes her tense up. Unfortunately he continues to talk, and the tone in her voice informs her uncomfortably of the look on his face. She feels the heat come to her face and is glad that the visor conceals most of her cheeks.

She refuses to rise to his goading however, and lets the conversation sink once more into silence. A silence that is broken by a touch, not by footsteps. It is perhaps one of his most unnerving qualities, his strange ability to move without a sound. Her jaw tenses visibly at the question.

"The bag was a gift. Is my clothing a problem Mr Calder?"

There was defiance and challenge in her tone.

 

[Obuzeti]

Farridan laughs, a deeply unsettling sound. Her ire delights him. "No more than the rest of you. I like knowing. Obvious things don't interest me. Putting together clues is more rewarding. I mean, I know your financial status already, but putting together that a $200 handbag is beyond your means really puts a pricetag on it, doesn't it? It's good to know that I can afford you."

The casual, conversational tone is at total odds with the savage insults he offers. His fingers lift and then settle against her hair, testing the texture and feel of it. The clothes might be well-worn, but the hair is soft and full; the kind of volume only given through care that no amount of conditioner could duplicate. He twirls a lock about his finger, musing in his eerie silence for a moment, content to think while she waits on his pleasure.

"I know you live alone," he starts again, deceptively pleasant. "And that, per your prior jobseeking status, you don't have a lot of appointments to keep. Do you find a lot of time for these generous friends of yours, or are you a homebody?"

 

[wanna_be]

Afford her?

Sophie's whole body tenses up, her hands flexing upwards a fraction of an inch towards the visor. What kept her from removing it was the strange heat that rushed into the pit of her stomach. She didn't understand what it was or why it was there, but it didn't seem to be diminishing as he kept talking.

His fingers in her hair made her quirk her head a little, instinctively, unconsciously, before she could freeze herself. It was the kind of attention she'd expect from a boyfriend or girlfriend, even a parent. Certainly not an employer. This is certainly not what she was expecting when she agreed to the appointment, but it could have been a lot worse.

His voice went on. Ok, so he knew she lived alone, that's OK, her marital status was on the application, that wasn't weird. Maybe the financial status thing was, but he could have just guessed that from her clothes, like Sherlock Holmes.

"We go out. Why? Looking for some friends?"

The defiance grew stronger in her voice.

 

[Obuzeti]

The amusement thickens in Farridan's demeanor like pudding, almost nauseating in its intensity. "Let's play a game. Keep your hands flat on the desk, and don't move them. I wouldn't advise inspiring my creativity over how to convince you to cooperate."

There's a beat of silence as he waits for her to comply, and then the visor flickers and switches to a new image. It's a photocopy of the lease agreement over her apartment. Everything's in there: square footage, number of rooms, renting history and payment details, the landlord's notes about her as a tenant. It's discomfortingly detailed.

"Is this information accurate?" Farridan says, light, like he's discussing the weather. He's still standing right behind her, according to the sound of his voice, but the silk he wears is silent and his breath is even and quiet; without the ability to see him moving, only his voice gives any indication as to where he stands at the moment.

Meanwhile, something slides into her hair and then starts combing it out - a proper comb of some kind, at least. He's gentle enough to not pull at any tangles or split ends, curiously gentle in comparison to the barbs his words and games offer.

 

[wanna_be]

How to convince her to co-operate?

What was that supposed to mean. Sophie puts her hands on the desk, though the tilt of her jaw and balance of her stance makes it clear that she is doing so under protest. It doesn’t take long for Farridan to continue with whatever game he is up to as paperwork appears on the visor in front of her. She frowns, confused as to the purpose of this whole exercise.

"I don't see any…"

She cuts herself off then as she sees her own name. "What…"

It's her lease agreement, there's her signature, and the landlords, her rental history, even what she thinks must be personal notes made by the landlord. Everything is there, almost identical to the copy she keep in her own flat. Had her landlord given him this information? Surely not… This is a massive invasion of her privacy. Meanwhile, a comb slides into her hair and she turns instinctively, one hand raised and open palmed to strike at where she thinks his face is.

 

[Obuzeti]

The slap lands. There is a heartbeat of stillness and then Farridan grabs Sophie's other hand and pulls it back with the one she'd slapped him with. There's a brief sensation of cold, and then something clamps around both of her wrists, tight and soft.

He's handcuffed her to the back of the chair.

"A vast improvement," Farridan notes, still yet cheerful. "I appreciate you fighting me on this, it makes things much more interesting."

The way it's been done, Sophie's elbows just hook over the back of the chair, pressing her forearms along the reverse side of it down to the apparent bar the handcuffs have been looped around. The awkward angles involved leaves her back in a slight arch, and the chair's back is too wide to roll around to either side. She's pinned in place.

"Allow me to clarify your position for you," Farridan says, as he takes a moment to scoot her chair back from the desk she'd been sitting at. It rolls in eerie silence, but refuses to scoot at all once he sets it back down. His voice is expectant, like he's talking to a pet. "You have things that aren't mine, and I have the capability to change that. I'm fine with you choosing not to do things, even if that's boring. Trying to hurt me invites my spite into the conversation and that changes the paradigm we exist within."

"For example," Farridan says, as he circles back around in front of Sophie. "If I can pull that information from your landlord, how likely is it that I could get him to cancel your lease tonight? Consider your answer carefully."