“No.”
“Were they male or female?”
“What part of wetsuit is not computing for you?”
Frustration has me briefly squeezing my eyes shut before saying, “Think of their build.Body structure and composition from a purely average, scientific point, like you would if you were observing any other animal in the ocean.”
At that, her head curiously tilts to one side.
“Like a male orca’s dorsal fin differs from a female.Does shit happen?Sure.But theaveragedistinction is what we are using for this analogy.It’s what I want you to use totransferover the information to me.”
Seeing her brows pull tightly together pushes me to continue.
“You have been around swimmers and divers and mer people your whole fucking life.”
“Esto último no es cierto,” Garcia needlessly interjects.
“Of course, the latter isn’t true!Mer people aren’t real!I’m using it to make a point!Let me make my point!”
Our table attorney – reluctantly – concedes.
“Now, have you ever noticed variations between them?”
“Of course,” Salay quickly answers.“Natural buoyancy, tank usage, leading with your upper body versus lower.Men tend to rely more on the former.Same for rock climbers though.”She pauses midchew to add, “And parkour dudes.”
The information has me instantly using it to investigate, “The individual chasing you earlier they…?”
“Definite dick,” thoughtlessly escapes her, surprising us both.“Ohshit…Definite.Dick!”
“Stop screaming the word dick,” scolds Garcia as he glances up again.
“Stop being a pretentious one.”
“See!”I victoriously exclaim.“Your brainisan air gap system!We’ve just gottaphysicallytap into it.”
“Dirty talk,” she mockingly coos around more food gliding into her mouth.“Kinky.”
“Now, I have a starting point to feed into my algorithm…” my efforts hastily begin dancing across the keyboard.“Height estimate?”
A hum of contemplation noticeably precedes her replying, “I don’t know.Taller than me…but shorter than Ernie.”
“Wide range,” trickles out between my typing, “but the more information the better…”
“And he was packing an underwater speargun.”
“Vary in weight and awkwardness howevermostnorms don’t just carry that shit around like a trophy that needs mounting, meaning if I find those rough dimensions,” the pads of my fingers click open a web browser to begin my search, “and estimated weight,” I continue theorizing out loud, digits moving to do the actions my words are indicating, “the likeliness that they were carrying itinsomething…” More frantic movement continues post the plugging in of my results.“Combine that info with the dock we unplugged from…and thetimewe set sail…” my concentration becomes hyper focused, “and the time it took to reach our lo-cal…” the remainder of the world fades, “and the trajectory of the current…and the estimation of the time of attack…” only me, the screen, and flow of my fingers matter, “potential starting coordinates for the assailant in relative comp coming from likely a parallel starting position and…”
I’m not entirely sure if it’s been mere minutes or hours that have passed by when I’m finally pulling up a true possible prospect, but it doesn’t matter.
What matters is that I havesomethingrather than nothing.
That we have more than we did.
“Hello, Varun Wooten, resident of Chicago for the past four years, borrowing his brother’s Disney streaming accountas well as his wifefor the last two.”Additional clacking is accompanied by more chatting.“Let’s see what else we can find out about you…starting with your call and text log.”
“You can do that?!”Salay squeaks tempting me to pause and shift my stare to her.
“I can do a lot with an internet connection, baby.”
