Case Closed

Harry was standing at the large panoramic window in Valentine Stevenson's reception room. He was looking out at the blackness of space and down on the blue planet below. For a moment he watched the changing shape of the clouds before turning back to the room. The black marble floor was shining like a mirror and somewhere a water feature was happily bubbling to itself. The large purple piece of furniture in the center of the room was rather a landscape than a couch and from one of the walls a huge painting of Valentine in a shiny purple suit was grinning down on them. There were also many other pieces of art � pictures as well as sculptures � which were obviously chosen by value and not aesthetics. From the center of the high ceiling a large gaudy glass chandelier was illuminating it all. Camera drones were buzzing through the air all over the place.

Valentine himself had already been escorted out of this place a while ago. He had been screaming something about his lawyers and that everyone would regret this and anyway, where would everyone be without him. Now, a number of police officers were searching the place. A titanium-coated FluxButler was standing motionless in a corner, where someone had put it to get it out of the way.

Harry walked over to the large double doors leading to a dining room seating 12 people around a shining glass table of an impractical shape. On one of the long walls there was a large triptychon, painted mainly in shades of purple and silver, showing scenes which Harry could only interpret as depicting robot paradise. The doors of the sideboards had already been opened and half emptied to the floor.

When he was just about to inspect the fully automatic kitchen and try out the auto-chef function � purely out of a professional interest � Harry was called by Elanor, who was busy inspecting Valentine Stevenson's study.

A holographic interface was projected over the huge antique desk. Harry looked at it for a moment, thinking about how they would never get anything like that at the police station and how he would never be able to afford one at home. One of the IT guys had already been here and therefore the screen was showing the grumpy face of Kevin Perez, the man they had come to know as Mr Spencer. They had found the whole communications history of him and Valentine Stevenson as well as a formal contract about the abduction of Angela Morgenstern and the discovery of Eldorado. They had also checked the police records and found quite a long list of criminal offences both by him as well as his 'friends'.

Then Harry turned to Elanor, who was closely inspecting the opposite wall, which was entirely covered in shiny, bronze-coloured metal scales and had a large oval mirror in the middle, which reflected the stars outside of the window.

'What are you looking for?' Harry asked.

Elanor turned around to him.

'Did you notice,' she said,'that there is a holographic projector hidden in that hideous lamp up there? Come in and close the door.'

Harry did so and turned to look at the ceiling. No, he definitely had not noticed the piece of technology which Elanor was pointing at.

'Also, I think that the length of the corridor and the size of the next room don't add up with the size of this. There is certainly something hidden here, but I just can't find out how to get through,' Elanor explained. She re-called the camera drone and put it away, muttering something about it being a pity that the battery suddenly failed.

Harry frowned as he looked around. He didn't think it would be advisable to suggest blowing a hole into the wall of the corridor. While Elanor tried to find a button on the antique marble statue of a lady in a toga, Harry stared at the bronze wall. He looked into the mirror.

'Did you ever see a mirror with a time delay?' he asked Elanor, who stopped at what she was doing immediately.

A test revealed, that said mirror was in fact not solid, but allowed a hand to be stuck through. After taking a deep breath, Harry stepped up into the mirror and through it. Almost immediately an alarm went off. This caused one of the policemen to stick his head through the door, asking if everything was alright. There was a short scream and three shots were being fired behind the mirror. Elanor smiled at the man at the door and shooed him away, saying they had everything under control. He frowned slightly but closed the door again.

'Is everything alright?!' Elanor asked through the mirror.

'Fine... just fine,' Harry's voice answered, panting.

The room was larger than Elanor had expected. It was completely painted in what she first thought was black but turned out to be a really, really dark purple. On similarly dark, purple-coloured metal shelves which ran the length of the wall opposite the entrance, various objects were stored. There were a few of the cylinders filled with blue liquid which they had also found in the hidden room under the Morgensterns' glass house. Some larger objects were lying on the floor. In the middle of the room there were three automated defense drones, not moving but still giving off sparks from their bodies.

'Now I know what these remind me of,' Harry stated. 'They look just like Flux batteries. Just a different colour. And they kind of look more elegant. Did you see the carvings on the top and bottom?'

Elanor nodded while looking at a collection of what she had to assume were weapons. There were also various other objects. She couldn't even guess what they were for. On a shelf right at the bottom there were a few small transparent globes, which were half-filled with some kind of substance. Two of them looked intact and had a small leaf growing inside of them. Most spheres however were cracked or even had holes which were obviously deliberately drilled. All that remained inside of them were dry brown lumps.

Elanor was not surprised to also find several blue crystals of the same kind which had been stolen from the Morgenstern family house. Closer inspection showed, that while at first they all seemed identical, they in fact subtly differed in their facets and even in their colour. Harry conjured up pictures of the Morgensterns' stolen crystal on his pad and spent some time comparing it to the ones on the shelf. Sure enough, he found one that looked exactly identical.

Harry turned his attention to a slender steel table standing at the window. On it there was a strange and seemingly improvised apparatus which connected two Flux batteries and a screen with a black disk of approximately the size of a dinner plate but curved to be thicker in the middle. It was engraved the same strange symbols they had found before. In its center there was a hole.

For a while, Harry stood in front of the table, pondering. Then he went to the shelf and picked one of the crystals randomly. He put it into the hole in the device on the table and waited. Nothing happened. Harry looked around and found something like a switch. Once activated the screen showed what looked like schematics for some kind of machinery, but he couldn't say exactly what it was. The screen changed a few times to show different pictures. He exchanged the crystal with a different one from the shelf and it was more of the same.

'Do you think there's anything FluxTec actually invented all by themselves?' Elanor asked.

Harry just shrugged.

'Right now I doubt it,' he answered. 'It's really disappointing.'

He picked up another crystal. Unlike the others it did not show anything on the screen upon activation, but instead projected a holographic image of stars into the room. He spent some time marvelling at it and tried how the image reacted to his touch, until Elanor handed him a small object.

'You've got to press the button in the middle,' she said.

As Harry did that, he suddenly found himself in the middle of a desert next to a high cliff. He wanted to shout out in surprise, when he was suddenly standing in a forest, trees towering high around him like skyscrapers. Then, suddenly, a plain with grass weaving in the wind. As he was still looking around, the picture changed again to a beach and rolling waves. The same happened a few more times.

Harry gasped as he was suddenly back in the room with Elanor.

'Don't worry,' she said, 'I don't think it was real.'

Harry nodded and looked around at everything they found.

'And now?' he asked. 'What will happen now, with all of these? Put it all in a box in an evidence room and let it collect dust? Or will they ask about it once this whole case goes to court? Will Valentine get any of it back? Or what if people find out about it? Will someone ask questions?'

'Oh, I don't know.' Elanor answered while putting the Morgenstern's crystal into an evidence bag and labelling it. 'All I know is we found the Morgenstern's paperweight in Mr Stevenson's study and there was also evidence of his connection to several criminals involved in the kidnapping of Angela Morgenstern. Tanja even got the testimony of one of them, right? And then... I don't know. Maybe we will come back here tomorrow, searching for more evidence. Something we overlooked today and just have to check again. We don't have to take anyone with us, right?'

'Are you sure that's a good idea? Won't Valentine demand it back?' Harry asked, frowning.

'What will he say? Someone raided my secret room and took all the artefacts? You know, I think we've got a great age of discoveries in front of us,' Elanor said.

Harry nodded, thoughtfully looking out of the window into the darkness and the twinkling lights.

Tavaron

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