Re: dock: atticus and mal
Mal smiled a little. "I've never found gods so easy to contact. I would have a question or two if I saw a real sign." He shuffled his hand on the splintered edge of the dock. "The world is mad without them. It hardly needs the help."
The story sounded like the kind of thing a madman would pitch on a late-night conspiracy radio show. The radio waves carrying messages from dead men, stronger in the ground because the ground was closer to the dead. "I could be convinced," he said. "I'd like to see inside that base." He still had questions of his own, and the space where technology interacted with the unexplained remained close to his thoughts, breathing on the back of his neck, full of old worried that made him stare at the ceiling in his bed at 3 AM.
The puzzle drew his eye only when Atticus pointed it out, and his brow furrowed. "Solving that puzzle is going to help you hear the radio waves," he said. It wasn't a joke, and he didn't make it one, for whatever reason, but there was a tinge of skepticism. Still, he was interested.
A flicker of a smile. "Indeed." Atticus Anning. Haunted church and haunted island - he thought his own thoughts about that, letting the silence sit for a moment.
"No," he said. No new owners. His voice drifted into coldness, slowing a little. "It belongs to the estate, now. It will be sold sometime soon. As the executors liquidate assets. Unless my sister is feeling nostalgic."
He didn't quite smile when Atticus made a solid guess about wealth. "The family. Reed Industries has a very fat and happy board. Most years." The name might ring a bell - the company's name could be found on industrial equipment from factory presses to delicate laboratory ware. And then there were the subsidiaries, numerous as they were specialized, churning out microchips and the miniature electronics that powered smartphones overseas. But they weren't a household name, not really, not unless you owned a plant or a hospital.
"What makes a good thinking song?" He extended a hand, expectant for the puzzle.