Saturday, November 27, 2021 - Atacama, Chile

“Bring the find here,” Kothin yelled down the tunnel.

“¿Que ?” came a voice across the field .

Kothin cursed a bit and then pulled out his phone. After a bit of typing, “¡Tráelo aquí!”

The workers worked their way over, sloshing right through the intervening brine pool.

“Dámelo” he said perfunctorily. The workers handed over the lithium slurry. Kothin could feel the mineral composition and after a lot of cursing, references to the translation app, and hand gestures indicated the processing that still needed to take place.

His phone rang and he waved the workers off.

“My lord…. no. I have no idea what the girl is doing. I am in Chile taking care of our mining operations. What? No. It is awful - I wish we could just go back to pickaxes.”

He listened for a while longer answering with yeses and noes.

Later that night, he was sipping a glass of local wine[^1] absentmindedly reviewing production figures. A knock at the door and he gestured, the lock moving of its own accord to open.

“So what did he want?” The voice was sardonic, verging on mocking, the woman who entered was tall and wrapped in an illusion so strong that even Kothin could feel it.

“To know who you are? As do I.” He said simply and folded his hands on his lamp as he waited patiently

The unknown person laughed, her voice ringing in his head. “How many times have you asked me that? Well, at least you don’t try and spy on me anymore, I felt bad for those poor children, but I wanted to make a statement. Well, either you don’t try or you have become much, much better at it.”

Her flippancy about the gruesome corpses of his agents bothered him, even now, centuries later.

“Fine.” He smiled and unfolded his hands to pour her a glass of wine. “Amazing what they can grow in this heat. Isn’t it?”

She took her time, inhaling the odors of wine, a sip and another. And then she drank down the whole glass in one gulp. “You are a funny man. Touché. Do you have anything I can actually taste?”

He gestured at the bottle of Murtado sitting in ice on a table behind him. She noted he did not get up to pour for him as he had for the wine. She walked over, cracked open the bottle and took a swig. Then went to the hotel bed where she sat down, swinging up her legs and dirtying the blankets.

“He wanted to know about the girl. What else does he ask about?”

“She is fine. She knows very little. She met an elf - I think they are fucking - but he knows less.”

“Pity. I would like to know more.”

“Me too. Me too.”