This is a joke, right? I mean, come on. I’ve got units right here that

are a lot more sophisticated than a Thaumac 10, for Christ’s sake! I

don’t care how much you pay me, if you want me to rob one of the

tightest data banks in the world, I’m not about to try it with a

fuckin‘ popgun!”

“As I said, this is no ordinary Thaumac 10, ” said Modred. “It’s

rather special. And we’re going to make it even more special. You’re

going to show me what you can do given unlimited resources.”

“Unlimited?”

“Unlimited.”

Pirate shrugged. “Okay. It’s your money.”

“Good. We’ll be in touch.”

Even in a city chock-full of eccentrics, Wyrdrune thought, Dr.

Sebastian Makepeace was not the sort of person one would call

inconspicuous. He was very large, for one thing, over six feet six

inches tall, and he weighed about three hundred pounds. He also

made some rather peculiar fashion choices. He habitually wore a

beret, either black or dark brown or dark green or deep purple,

from beneath which his long white hair cascaded down to his

shoulders, framing his clean-shaven, wide, cherubic face. He always

wore a long, black leather trench coat that at least three cows must

have given up the ghost for, and he wore it regardless of the

weather, though Wyrdrune had never seen it buttoned up. Beneath

that, he wore seersucker in the summer and tweeds the other three

seasons, well-tailored three-piece suits that always somehow made

him look like a dirigible dressed up for a grouse hunt. He never

wore an ordinary necktie or a choker, but always some sort of

colorful silk scarf, either tied in a huge bow in the style of a

Flemish painter or draped carelessly around his neck, like a WW I

aviator. He resembled a character out of Dickens… if Dickens had

taken acid.

His official job was professor of pre-Collapse history at New York

University, but unofficially, he was some sort of government spy.

Exactly what he did or which branch of the government he worked

for had never been made entirely clear. Wyrdrune would have

written that claim off to fantasy if it hadn’t been for the fact that