Entertainers like Aveline, Bastian and their crew lived a nomadic life. They lived out of a suitcase while they moved from one venue to another. Sometimes, the places they stayed at could be comfortable, but less than sumptuous. However, in Capital City, the accommodations were much better. This time, Aveline and her crew stayed at a luxurious hotel nearby the rehearsal sound stage.

Bastian’s hotel suite was located on the top floor. It was large and comfortable and split into three areas – a bedroom in the back, a living room in the front and a very large balcony outside with a panoramic view of Capital City. In the living room, Bastian set up all his computers and networking equipment and there was a lot of it. He sat at a computer with four, large monitors arranged in a giant array in front of him. As many computers sat on the ground at his feet and networking cable twisted and coiled everywhere under the otherwise elegant desk the hotel provided. Lights twinkled from all that equipment shoved under the desk and illuminated the floor with a faint, green glow. Looking outside over the balcony, the night sky shimmered in colors of dark blue, violet and black while in the background, the bright, night lights of Capital City reached upward to outshine the stars that shone from the heavens.

Bastian sat at his desk, hands on the keyboard while staring at the glowing four monitors. He sat very still except for his eyes which scanned screenfuls of text scrolling by. Other than the hum of cooling fans and the occasional keystroke from the keyboard, nothing else made a sound. It was an eerie quiet that only lifeless machines could make.

As Bastian studied the screens of scrolling text, Aveline, the celebrity pop-singer walked in wearing only a hotel bathrobe! Her signature pink and aquamarine hair was not tied up as was typical and fell down to the backs of her knees. Her face washed clean of any makeup made her appear even younger than the nineteen-year-old teenager she was supposed to be. Aveline sidled up to Bastian who took little notice of her until she pushed herself past his arms and sat in his lap. She cozied up to him with notable affection.

“Bastian!” Aveline shouted into Bastian’s ear. “Are you going to sit here all night again?” Aveline complained.

A strange scene, no doubt, seeing Bastian, the simply dressed computer geek and Aveline, the talented, spirited vocalist, as a couple. Perhaps it would be more believable if Aveline were dating another celebrity, maybe a masculine, good looking athlete. But that did not happen with her. How this odd pairing came to be was unknown, at least for now. Regardless of their circumstances, Bastian acknowledged Aveline yelling in his ear to get his attention and answered her question.

“There’s some research I’m doing and I’ve got to hack around for the answers. I probably won’t be in bed until very late.”

“Hack around” was a dirty term Aveline knew. It meant that Bastian was using his formidable computer hacking skills to plumb the dark net and secret chat rooms undetected to access information that was not easily available due to the government’s control of information and the media. The UEN, after all, fed its citizens only the information it wanted them to know about.

Aveline knew it better not to ask, but she could never resist. “What are you trying to find out more about?”

“That Viviane girl.”

Hearing Viviane’s name again made Aveline bristle and fume. She hoped that once the day was over, Viviane would just be a distant, unpleasant memory, but now, Bastian had brought her to the forefront again.

Aveline’s tone was curt. “What about her?”

“Here’s what I’ve been able to find. She’s a gorgeous girl no doubt, but she has an unknown past. She was discovered by photographer Acel Yu and as recently as a month ago, Viviane was working as a graduate student researcher at the National Laboratory on the campus of Renard University. She was researching quantum properties relating to teleportation technology. She’s actually very intelligent in this field and working on improving the accuracy of teleportation trying to achieve 100% accuracy. The strange thing about her is that her past before she was twelve years old is a mystery. There are no records of her childhood or anything about her before the age of twelve. That’s why I’m using my hacking skills to try to find out more information about her.”

Not only was Aveline mad, she was worried now too. “You know I don’t like you hacking around into computers and wandering around the dark net rubbing elbows with cyber-criminals,” scolded Aveline. “If the government were ever to find out, you’d be arrested and put away for a long time. I don’t think it’s worth the risk. And why are you so interested in this Viviane girl? What’s she to you?”

“I just want to know who we’re working with and when I couldn’t find out anything about her past, I decided to hack around to see if there was any underground information about her. So far, I haven’t found anything. I think it’s important to know who we let into our company, even if it means I have to use some ‘underhanded’ techniques.”

“You want to know something about that Viviane girl, huh? Well, I can tell you something. I bet she slept with that photographer and that’s why she was discovered and is now getting popular. She can’t be that good of a model if she was working as a scientist at the University all this time. You probably won’t find that information in the dark net either.”

“Now you don’t know that.”

“Come on! It’s so obvious! That girl is nothing but a bangin’ body and a pretty face!”

“Don’t go starting rumors.”

“Don’t be so interested in other women where it doesn’t concern you!”

Aveline turned up her nose at Bastian and jumped out of his lap. Bastian’s interest in this new girl Viviane bothered Aveline and she did not know how to handle it other than by making false accusations and behaving badly.

Bastian tried to defuse the situation by not fighting. “Anyway, there’s more. I’m hearing chatter on the dark net that the Order of One Justice is on the move here in Capital City and that their target is the matter teleportation technology that Viviane and her colleagues are working on. She may be in danger, even if she no longer works there anymore. I’m going to keep an eye out for her going forward.”

Aveline had heard enough. All she had heard was Vivaine this and Viviane that and Viviane other. “Hmph! You can sleep out here on the sofa if you get any sleep at all tonight! Good night!”

Having had the last word, Aveline stormed off to bed. She slammed the door behind her just to drive the point home to Bastian how unhappy she was with him.