Goose
Shushing Esther, Audrey smiled kindly at the old man. He pointed to his laptop with evident excitement and again chanted, “Dah-dah-dit, dah-dah-dah, dah-dah-dah, di-di-dit, dit. Isn’t that lovely?”
“Uh, sure,” Audrey nodded. “Very nice.”
“Do you know what it means?”
Audrey could feel everyone around her hanging on the man’s words. He’d gotten their attention, but he kept his own gray-blue eyes locked on Audrey’s frozen face.
“Uh, no…?”
“Goose!” The old man shouted, laughing at his own discovery. “It’s Morse code for goose!”
“Well, okay then,” Esther interjected, trying to pull Audrey away from the man.
“It’s a pattern in the system,” the man rushed on, before reaching up to absently smooth his hair. “Repeating in the electrical fluctuations. In the flickering lights.”
“Flickering lights?”
Audrey hung back, thinking of the lamp that had been flashing in their hotel room, but Esther was still itching to break away. Especially when she saw Captain Steampunk get in line at the café counter.
“It’s been happening all week,” the old man continued. “All over. Narrowing in… to this hotel.”
“And it says goose?” Audrey asked incredulously.
The rest of the crowd had gradually lost interest and were now getting back to their own conversations.
“Yep,” the old man nodded. “It must their code this year. For the meeting.”
“Oh, come on,” Esther mumbled beside Audrey, but in no relation to the old man’s revelations.
She was watching the baristas intently, hoping her order would be called soon and imagining how she might casually greet Captain Steampunk while passing him in line.
“Ben!”
A middle-aged woman had crossed the lobby and was flashing the old man a look of disapproval. Or, Audrey wondered shrewdly, was it a look of warning?
“Don’t mind my friend,” the woman told Audrey with a laugh that tried and failed to sound carefree. “He’s always playing jokes, pulling people’s legs with his tall tales. Aren’t you, Ben?”
“What?” Ben glanced from Audrey to the woman, then turned back to the data scrolling across his screen. “Oh, yeah, me and my jokes.”
Audrey smiled at the woman as if it were normal for a man to joke about a hotel talking to him in Morse code. She wondered if the woman might be his caretaker or a relative. Either way, her hand-knit vest told Audrey she could also be a potential customer.
“I’m Audrey,” she introduced herself pleasantly. “I have a table at Geekify Greenville today. Selling knit and crochet novelty items, fantasy hats, and so on. Are you coming to the con?”
“Yes, we are!” the woman responded gleefully. “Or, well, I am.” Her face clouded. “Ben will likely leave soon. He has to get back to the… uh… to his home.”
“That’s nice,” Audrey smiled again, considering ways to steer the conversation back to her craft items.
She turned to introduce Esther before realizing her friend had stepped closer to the counter. A quick glance showed that everyone else had inched away, too, leaving Audrey on her own.
“Oh, tell her the truth, Ash,” Ben said impatiently without moving his eyes from his computer screen. “She might be useful.”
“The truth?” Audrey asked tentatively, prickling at the idea that she might be useful.
“Well…”
The woman looked around carefully, seeing as Audrey had that everyone else had stopped listening to them.
“Maybe that would be okay,” she relented. “If you’d like to know the truth?”
Audrey hesitated. She could say she didn’t have time and needed to finish setting up her table—which was true—but she was also strangely intrigued.
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With 3 genres, 22 possible endings, and even a time loop, Audrey & Esther Geekify Greenville will lead you through wacky journeys again and again!