Anger Management in Louisiana

Anger Management in Louisiana

Dramatis Personae:

--Aldous Axelman: mysterious legal secretary to Juliet Monsigny.
--Amanda le Beau: detective third class of the New Orleans Police Department. Orleans Parish, contiguous with the city of New Orleans: although New Orleans has no Sheriff, though the Parish, like any county in 26th Century America by current federal law must have an assigned US Marshal to make sure that the local law enforcement has someone to watch over it and prevent it from becoming corrupt. She's that specific law enforcement person assigned to oversee the N.O.P.D. to ensure that American citizens' civil rights are protected.
--Cygnus Blanc: chief editor of the New Orleans Times-Advocate Syndicate News-feed, the news-feed of record for the angel, Starbright, defended state of Louisiana. If it is caught between Starbright and the super-gators, then it is news to Cygnus Blanc and he will put a reporter on it.
--Yogi Samyansin Bhurutuj: the yogi who instructs Charla Softon on how to manage her anger. He sure is not very good at his job, if Charla Softon is an example of his “success”.
--Granville de Blodgett: the New Orleans persecutor... er district attorney for New Orleans parish.
--Norbert “Yankee Dollar” Carolla, the man who is the current head of the Matranga Syndicate..
--Charles Chubb: a public advocate and defender, he is the legal counsel for Harry Hildebrand Kranberry. It is a case he does not want, once he learns who his real clients are.
--Joe Frick and Barbara Frack: Service sheepdogs assigned to monitor Charlotte Softon, Starbright, the champion and city hero of New Orleans. They do not do much to help Starbright, but they occasionally prove useful in making her life interesting and fun.
--Max Hereford Gonzalez: an associate editor who works for the Times Advocate as an article copy editor and proofreader. Incidental character he is, or is he?
--Loretta Lavanau: Reporter employed by the New Orleans Times-Advocate Syndicate. She does not like: in this order; Starbright, the New Orleans Police Department, Cygnus Blanc, her job, and people in general. They are all liars of various degrees to her. She is a trained truth-reader, a "fact", not usually known.
--Harry Hildebrand Kranberry: Just your average illegal drug dealer, who specializes in a plasma-based mind altering nerfcotic called “The Blue Light Special”. The nerfcotic is a drug developed by the machine people to treat machine people schizophrenia. In human beings, the nerfcotic leads to delusions of adequacy.
--Magistrate Juliet Monsigny: the judge presiding over Harry Hildebrand Kranberry's trial.
--Pabstex: a machine people waiter who works at The Crescent House, a religious safe house, where the dispossessed and the homeless in New Orleans can seek refuge from the oppressive realities of twenty-sixth centuiry Post Reconciliation War America.
--Polly, the Pitcher Plant: You do know that this peculiar pitcher plant is an illegal Charlatta Softon made creature; an intelligent carnivorous perambulatory plantimal experiment who masquerades in the Picayune Building as a mere potted plant? Though she is cute and seems to have a vocabulary that is limited to desiring mice and the occasional human meat sandwich, Polly actually tends to mysteriously move around a lot, pot and all, inside the Picayune Building. She tends to listen in on many people's supposedly private and very secret conversations. And of course she remembers those conversations for Starbright.
--Charlotte Softon: AKA; the Celestial class weapon of mass destruction codenamed Starbright. She is the designated hero of New Orleans. Don't let her soft apricot-orange glow fool you. She is no angel of the "Biblical good type" as the assortal religious fanatics who follow her exploits, believe.
--Incidental Characters to be named in story.

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Part I: Anger Management in Louisiana

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“Say yadda yadda Ohm.” intoned Charlotte Softon. She glowed a pink-violet orange as she floated a half meter above her bamboo mat in a classic yoga kneeling position, her legs tucked and crossed under her in that ridiculous irritating uncomfortable seatee position. Her scarlet and cobalt weather cloak, hood flung aback, that garment dotted as it was with yellow-gold fleur de lis insets, hung limply down as a surrounding flag from her perfect human and quite lovely body in the well proportioned and finely muscled feminine physique sense.

One glance at her, and you knew she could move Mars out of its orbit just by pushing it very hard. She was surrounded by a dozen other ordinary people, each wrapped in his or her own poly-rainbow winding sheet; each one who was seated in the same kind of lotus ridiculous position on his or her bamboo mat, butt down, serenely calm in his or her unjustified arrogant serene chakric center, and each who hummed a similar kind of chant. It was some nonsense vowels and consonants strung together to form a placid and soothing effect on the psyche; or so Charlotta's calculating machine people-like hind mind mathematically told her, while her all too Human being quite judgmental fore-brain was irritated by the noise to the point of changing her pinkish orange aura color up-spectrum towards purple . Not good. 'Stay pink apricot and stay calm!' Charla thought to herself.

“It is is not pronounced "Say yadda yadda Ohm", Ms. Starbright. It is pronounced “Si yadu aham, Ahm” when you chant the prayer.” Her yogi admonished. Once again Yogi Samyansin Bhurutuj scolded her specifically among his pupils and thus publicly humiliated Starbright.

'He probably had a death wish of his own, he did not know about.' Starbright mused. Charlotta wondered if the yogi actually knew how close he came to a death of a thousand algorithms^1 as he singled her out, yet again, as the class never-do-well. ' You are not helping me keep my temper, you idiot!' she thought angrily at her court-assigned anger management counselor.



Of course, she was about to repeat this retort aloud to the clueless yogi, who had yet to demonstrate that he knew how to truth-read an angel's penumbra glory color aura, when an event chain interrupted the local moral argument circumstances. Charlotta's senses, much better than those of the average super-bear, showed her through sound and light, that two stories above her, someone had thrown a chair through a window and that chair was headed into a flat parabolic parallel to the Picayune Building skyscraper, inside which she was, a chair’s trajectory headed down toward pedestrian traffic eighteen stories below adjacent to it, with a final terminal merge velocity of about fifty-three meters per second/second with the ground, give or take a half meter/second.

Given the mass of the chair at thirty kilograms and the good chance that it would hit a stupid inattentive citizen pedestrian at impact and kill him or her once it reached the ground level; Charlotta Softon flew at the glass window that fronted the yoga studio on the sixteenth floor of the Picayune Building and burned her way through it, leaving a round human core-sized mousehole behind her as she chased the chair down toward the ground. She caught the chair just short of sonic boom velocity, herself, and grunted with the unexpected effort. “Grunt.” she said with her final braking maneuver.

The person, she saved from chair impact, was saved again from sprawling on the pavement in faint away shock, as he finally looked up. Charlotte quickly shoved the chair, she held, under his one hundred fifteen kilogram brown-haired, saffron-skinned, gray-irised, slant-eyed pudgy actor-wigged topped carcass. The fat sweaty slob immediately invoked a tantric Punjab ritual to calm himself that was entirely alien to Starbright's far more recent machine people education-reinforced, but definitely Protesting Catholic religious childhood upbringing.

'Oh great.' Charlotte thought. 'He's another import from no-wheres-ville.' Her machine people taught hind-mind informed her; promptly, enthusiastically, and mathematically^2

^2 You can beatify the bigot, and give her an aura, when she makes her death wish in an infinities  renormalization event that turns her from a human being into a celestial class weapon of mass destruction, but she still remains at heart a bigot despite the renormalization at the infinities. It will take a normal harsh human life lesson to fix that problem in Charlotta Softon.

She said to the man, as she smiled at him, and lied about it; “Are you alright, sir?”

“Yes, thank the goddess.” said the fat man as he mopped his profusely sweating brows. That cornball wig was not helping him either with the sweat or the smell, as Charlotte’s hyper-acute senses were assailed.

Now the sad thing about Celestial Class weapons of mass destruction, Charlotte discovered when she woke up reborn from her Reformulation Death Wish after her sponsor and parole officer, the Arella goofed and somehow accidentally renormalized her, was that the new Mathematics symbol byte data stream-spouting hind mind that came with the beatification, never would shut up with the "For The Love" yakkity yak equations which now spoke to her in machine people algebraic formula, translated such thus so that she understood in her foremind as; "The man before you is a drug dealer and is a criminal. He is unworthy before the Light."

'Some very smart people,' smarter than Charlotte was, she thought as she thought it out; 'Call this inevitable result, the  “Judgment of God”, a form of righteous anger that angels greatly feared, as to give into that path to rage, that was the first push down the slippery-sloped madness that served Darkness.' She had experienced it once when she had arrived too late to save the day at a train wreck at Loyola Avenue Station; because some fool machine people proctor teaching her a lesson in moral quantum dynamics; held her up with a mandated oral examination on the subject, as the Philadelphia Phlyer wrecked. Fortunately nobody had died in the event. Still... She had almost given way to the "Judgment of God" voice in her mind and was about to melt Donex, that idiotic machine people instructor, down to titanium, carbon, diene and manganese slag, when she was frustrated in her urge to justice by a rational talk-down to calm her through and away from that murderous decision, by the other machine people proctor present, Ronald-the-Worm.

Ronald-the-Worm had simply logically told her; “You can't prevent the next AMTRAX from jumping the fields; if you turn Donex into modern sculpture. That is murder, no matter that you think he is only a robot. The National Guard will hunt you down, genie bottle you and then flush you down the Saggy Alpha hypermass toilet!^3”



Ronald the worm’s argument made moral, quantum mechanical, and some religious sense to her, then, and it pulled her back from the same urge to kill her yogi now.

The ‘saved-from-a-falling-chair-he-now-sat-in’ refugee from persecution (As he saw it.), oozing-water-down-his-face felon chanted to himself; “Aham Shanti! Aham Shanti!”

'He drips fat oily hot sweat by now. He shivers from fear, not cold...' Charla truth-read the man. She could not help herself. 'In the middle of a cold chilly November afternoon, no less?' It was 17 degrees Celsius (290 degrees absolute Kelvin; her hind mind supplied.), 'so he must be guilty of something.' she surmised.

Somehow the tantric chant to Lakshmi, the Hindu goddess of wealth and prosperity, was not in Charlotte's machine people brand of catholic pilot-house for thanksgiving, but clearly it fit inside the fat man's range limit of preferred moral choices. That was another inadmissible-in-court piece of evidence that the fat man was a no-good-nik en-route toward and up to some interrupted evil-doery in progress when she saved him.

'Praying to some spaghetti monster in the sky that you had not been caught in the deed by some Agent of the Law; was not the same thing as thanking Himmel-Thorsky that you had not been clubbed by a falling chair debris object.' Starbright, surmised and therefore, truth read the presence of a unhygienic rodent here; but there apparently were other dangerous components to this event chain which nagged her and annoyed her subconscious self, that needed her urgent immediate attention. So she extemporized and filed this character away for future reference, as she posed for the obligatory half minute of cheers, camera phone photos and handclapping that the local New Orleans populace, now gathered to gawk at her, liked to use to reward their heroic champion.

That public relations interlude over, she told the seated sweaty smelly fat man with whom she posed; “Please be careful, sir. I can't be every-where. Each of us, must do our part.” She shook his moist hand, stepped up into the air and flew toward the broken window, from whence the chair had commenced its journey to its present sidewalk location. Camera phones followed her up, up and up as she flew away. Not all cameras followed her, though...

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Amanda le Beau listened to her phone as a man's tinny voice instructed her about where she was to go and what she was to do when she got there. The separate intelligence brief was data radioed into her cyborg ear implant as a matter of course. Her body core temperature actually felt as if it dropped two degrees as her instructor's voice told her Starbright was now involved in the situation. Even the toughest of the tough, and as the veteran undercover cop, Amanda was that hardened and much more besides, would be off-put by a reasoned and well-grounded fear when an angel was involved in an incident. A change of clothes in a convenient tidey-hidey place alleyway, where she also stored her fly-cycle, and Amanda was no longer a bum, investigating the murder of a homeless person at Jackson Avenue and Magnolia Street. Nope. SXhe was a "citizen" enroute to a crime scene.

Now she flies two and a half blocks northeast over to Ritzville as a 'tourist' to intercept a suspect as he meanders away from the Picayune Building after he encounters Starbright. Anything unusual that an angel did, trumped in importance an ordinary homicide investigation. That was true fact and mission for any human cop anywhere in this universe. 'Only the toughest of the tough, get these stinkers.' Amanda reminded herself, as she banked into another right turn over Pontchartrain Avenue from Kennilworth Avenue. 'This is drug trafficker country.' Amanda thought. 'Murders happen here, too.'

Police, who were careless, routinely died in this territory.

“Starbright, I hope that you pay attention to the people who clean up after you, because I just may need your help!” muttered Amanda le Beau into the wind that buffeted her face.

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Sixty meters does not seem like much....


Someone had thrown a chair out a window without so much as a thought as to what that splat could mean at the end. Charlotte Softon hovered outside the empty window frame and looked into the office from where the chair came. Her loudly flapping red and blue weather cloak, all dotted with the golden-hued trumpet lilies, eventually caught someone's ear attention and eye notice.

Loretta Lavanau, ace Picayune Times Advocate news-feed reporter and general major pain in the patookus, pointed directly out of the now windowpane-less office window frame at the hovering motionless Starbright, and said to Cygnus Blanc: chief editor of the New Orleans Times-Advocate Syndicate newsfeed; “Hey, Stupid. Even she notices when you lose it.” Lavanau folded her arms in triumph. “Now, you are going to get what's coming to you, Cyggy. She owns this travesty that you call a news-feed.” Lavanau waved for Charlotta to come on in and join the festivities.

Charlotta did so. She passed into the office through the windowless window and landed so softly that not even the coffee stained plush green nylon floor carpet noticed her landing her two hundred fifty kilogram weight upon it. “I would tell you to sit down, Cygnus, for what comes next; but as you threw your chair out the window, that would be academic hyperbole as well as a pointless instruction.” Charlotta said calmly.

The first words Cygnus Blanc uttered; were, “I can explain.”

Starbright glanced once at Loretta Lavanau, and said as an afterthought; “She missed another story deadline; so you threw another editor's tantrum without thinking of the consequences?”

“That happened.” Loretta and Cygnus said in unison, meaning different things by saying it.

“Well, let me explain about the consequences.” explained Charlottea “I caught the chair in time, and lasered the glass shards into harmless silica gas before impacts; so there is no felony negligent homicide, reckless civilian life endangerments, and/or deliberate criminal negligence involved for either of you two idiots... yet... But.”

'Here it comes.' thought Loretta hopefully, and Cygnus fearfully.

“... we will have civil suits, aimed at the newsfeed, aimed at you two, and as your boss, directly at me.” said Charlotta. “Let me be clear. This newsfeed is just becoming solvent now. That means breakeven income/outgo cash flow with no capital reserves, yet, for mistakes like you two make routinely on a daily basis. None exists at all. Five hundred people with families, beside you two incompetent employees, depend on the newsfeed for a living wage. 'I' depend on the newsfeed for my 'living wage', too.” She raised her voice and her aura purpled. The walls vibrated in sympathy with her basso-profundo voice.

“Are we fired?” asked Loretta and Cygnus together, this time meaning the exact same thing.

Charlotte understood what they hoped, and she dashed their expectations coldly. “No. I hold you to your contracts. You can consider yourselves verbally injunctioned until the company lawyer processes and serves you with the appropriate papers. You remain here to face the symphony of woe you wrote together. I will not let either of you escape foul-clear of this concerto.”

Loretta Lavanau protested, “I didn't throw the chair!”

Starbright told her; “You missed the deadline, and caused his temper tantrum.” pointing at Cygnus Blanc. “He threw that chair at you as a result of it, and missed you, thus sending it out the window when you ducked. Cause leads to effect. The lawyer will explain it all legally when he serves you both with the added no-fault releases I expect you to sign.”

“I bet that means those papers will say that we, two, are solely responsible for anything and everything, and you never will admit we even exist in the same universe as you do.” Cygnus observed sourly.

“Moral quantum dynamics classes and a University of Louisiana night school law degree earned from it.” Starbright said to them sweetly, as she calmed down to her normal pink orange from a dangerous deep chartreuse purple aura glow. “And to think... I once wanted to melt down my cue-em-dee proctor into slag.”

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It was the usual stupid surprised look on the malefactor's face when Amanda le Beau shoved her pistol under his nose. “What is your name?” she demanded, as she dragged him out of the dark shadowed alley into the bright cold clear sunshine of truth, justice and the American Way on West Kenilworth Street walkway. The subject was a heavy dead drag load of at least one hundred kilograms, not counting the body armor he wore, which was why Amanda had her gun muzzle cohabitating the same space on his pumpkin face as the evil doer's scraggly mustache.

“Horst Weasel” the suspect replied.

As Amanda le Beau worked her phone with her left hand and aimed her gun between the suspect's nostrils with her right, the phone chattered merrily away; “The subject's name is listed in INTERPOL records as Harry Hildebrand Kranberry. He was born in Jamaica in twenty five twenty five. His age is forty three. Here are his criminal vitae fundamenta;” 


Amanda le Beau could guess two alternative reasons for why she had a skater. She asked the phone; “Is his eye-cue on record, and is he a Jamaican Maroon gang member?”

The phone, in its chipper cheerful voice answered three ways; “His eye cue was measured at his last arrest two years ago. Variable 65-70 Stanford Binet Modern. He is a Maroon Gang street soldier. Blue Light Special is detected on his person and measured as to quantity, detective. Mass equals fifteen grams. Enough for a felony.” The phone added as an after school special.

**Machines can be unintentionally hilarious.** thought Amanda.

“I want a LAWYER!” shouted Harry Hildebrand Kranberry.

**So can crooks be.** she thought as she further recorded everything Harry Hildebrand Kranberry said on her personal body recorder. Heart rate, perspiration, galvanic skin response, even cerebellum electrical activity mapping would be included in the unintentional confession. **The goy was too dumb to wear an aluminum hat in the Republic?** Amanda le Beau instructed her police phone to Mirandize the subject. She said; “Read him his rights.”

The phone recited;

“No! I want a lawyer!” shouted aloud again Harry Hildebrand Kranberry.

“Stop recording me!” he added for good measure, thus rendering any evidence that Amanda le Beau gathered on him by eavesdrop while he was in her custody legally moot, too.

**Drat that Blue Belle and Yellow Avenger show.** thought Amanda le Beau. **I bet that even the Light-forsaken Shaddenites know their Miranda Rights by now.**

“Are you a fan of the Blue Belle and Yellow Avenger show?” she asked Harry Hildebrand Kranberry, on a quirky notion.

“I want a lawyer.” replied the arrested man.

Since he behaved like he knew he would be charged, Amanda le Beau went through the formality of it. “Mister Harry Hildebrand Kranberry, I formally charge you with giving false information to a police officer making an inquiry pursuant to the investigation of a crime. I charge you with the attempt to sell a prescription controlled substance without a due medical cause or license to do the same; in such an amount that the intent was to make a tax-free profit in the unregulated sale.”

“I charge you with the attempt to feloniously poison and kill by such a drug, the person and existence of the citizen and human being to whom you attempted to sell it, that citizen and person identified as Amanda le Beau, namely me.”

She one-handed-cuffed the arrested man's hands behind his back, kick-tripped him to the ground and frisked him quickly for weapons. He was surprisingly weak and flabby for such a huge man. **No firearms, shockers, clubs or blades on him.** she thought. **Rats!** An attempted murder charge on a 'Blue Light Special' might be a bit of an overreach in the filings; it occurred to her. **Well, I declared it, and I can't talk it back.** she thought. **Maybe the persecutor can make it stick as a rider charge on the drug felony?**

The police phone helpfully said to her as if it read her thoughts; “Officer Amanda le Beau, a search of the New Orleans police medical data-base does not indicate a normal fatal allergic reaction in the typical homo-sapien of your mass and type to fifteen grams of Lumine specialis medicamentum,”^4


She told the phone. “Shut up, phone.”

“I want a lawyer.” mumbled Harry Hildebrand Kranberry; facedown on the cold stainless steel street pavement, Amanda le Beau's size six high heel shoe was still firmly pressed into the small of his fat back.

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This rigmarole of a drug bust passed fairly unnoticed to the New Orleans resident angel, since she had to return to her court-mandated yoga class and was not paying attention as she should have been to future trouble for her. It might not have mattered in any case, since there was precious little she would be allowed to do about it in the present tense. Magistrate Juliet Monsigny, the judge who had issued the court order for Charlotta Softon to be police-monitored and incidentally enrolled in Yogi Samyansin Bhurutuj's school of mental discipline, was not one to allow any hero exceptions to his corrupt bench orders. And though the thought usually crossed Starbright's mind to ignore such impedimenta to her normal moral passage through life: there were Frick and Frack, her assigned Service Watch Dogs; the Arella, her parole officer, the next state over in Texas; and the Louisiana National Guard to enforce the onerous rule of law upon her. ^5


It was not the speeding ticket that got Charlotte into the trouble she was in, and thus therefore into the yoga class. It was her temper in court, when she protested the injustice of the fine. She had been fighting the usual mad scientist created city destroying sea serpent, and the fight, which started out in the bayous at the mouth of Lake Borgne, quickly went supersonic and drifted westward towards a sleepy night time New Orleans. Of course there would be sonic booms and property damage from the tussle.

The Louisiana state legislature had covered for that eventuality with a sovereign immunity statute modeled on the Virginia Commonwealth one; which was the example for immunizing angels from civil and criminal liability by making them deputized law enforcement agents of the people in their specific state--> that is defacto police officers via civitas posse comitatus 1877 as amended in 2560. What the inept Louisiana state legislature did not do, was provide complete sovereign immunity for angels against local ordinance misdemeanors in the statute; like some of the mundane traffic violations in New Orleans city air space. The ex-post-facto correction to the omission came after Starbright's fight with the sea serpent broke half the windows in the city.

Starbright returned to the yoga doge via the mousehole she left in the window before. Yogi Samyansin Bhurutuj.was standing there; where he had been previously seated, impatiently tapping his bare toes on his bamboo mat. The rest of the wood paneled salon, including the liquor bar where the yogi sold drinks after each 'class', was empty. Bhurutuj demanded of his pupil, Charlotta Softon, “Where were you? Where did you go? Why did you leave the meditation? You know that the session abruptly ended when you left? You're supposed to stay for the full ninety minutes.”

“Put a sock in your mouth, yogi.” Charlotta snapped. “I have to spend ninety minutes with you daily to learn the anger management meditation techniques, you teach, according to that magistrate you bribed to stick me with you. That does not mean I have to spend those ninety minutes in your so-called classes with your drinking buddy so-called students. So just for today, you do not get to use me as an excuse to sell them their after class liquor to buzz them up, so that they will not feel the anxiety that your utterly worthless exercises and my unnerving presence causes them. How much did you bribe old Juliet Monsigny to corral me into your class again? Should I inform my ever-present watchdog “friends”, Frick and Frack, about it?”

The yogi immediately pad-footed over to the bar to make himself a tall Mojo.^6 He needed some of that liquid courage to face the suddenly angry celestial he had in front of him. Deep carrot and purple hued Charlotta Softon with the sun-lit eyes, he remembered from his Frick and Frack safety briefing, was usually two seconds away from the eye lasers and the burn the foolish somebody down to ash attitude. There was the recent two hundred meter long metalized sea serpent monster which she had turned into a cindered bone brick sea wall monument that braced in northern Lake Pontchartrain and kept the city from flooding north to south. **Funny, how the most violent utterly insane acts that Starbright undertook always seemed to result in a final New Orleans beneficence of a sort.** Bhurutuj wondered how his fiery imminent death could be turned into such an act of goodness and Light and civic improvement.

^6
He slugged down his Mojo and stood bravely, his back to the bar, to wait for the heat beams to come. And he waited some more for his expected death and he assumed, his deserved extirpation for just cause from what would be an unjustified Starbright's entirely prejudiced point of view..

Starbright laughed at him. “Relax, Sam. I want you to mine salt on Avery Island as a convicted living disreputable felon, not to die as an unjustly-killed-in-a fit-of-rage religious martyr to some Vedic ideology that this state of Louisiana seems to have embraced as its current moral cause celebre’ for a Loony tune reason.”

Bhurutuj slumped down in relief from his braced ‘shoot-me-now’ position and leaned back against the bar. He said. “No monitoring, no telepathy from you into my mind, no-sent-to-second party transmissions to your special over-watchers and my fifth amendment rights are still in force? I am safe from you?”

Charlotta Softon nodded. “Truce between us, yogi, for now. You will make your mistake. All of you evildoers do so, sooner or later. I will have you brought to justice, then.” She smiled a broad shark-wide smile.

“Between the Provenzanos upstate, the Matrangas inside the city, and you, Punjabs, along the coast, this state is over-ripe and long overdue for an angelic harrowing.” she added. "But it all has be due processed as defined by the law."

“We don't leech that much.” complained Bhurutuj. “Not as much as the Schiaparellis, Sietoms, Giordomos or the Smalldones. We actually provide useful services…”

“Numbers, prostitution, a little rigged sports event here or there, ‘insurance policies’ , street-side loan operations, and so forth; is just a little leeching?” Starbright laughed. “This is not the current state of ground truth, yogi. Add the contract murders, a little treason with the Shaddenites, as well as a few government corruption rackets. Times.... for... you... have... changed.”

The yogi nodded. “Times have changed. The Reconciliation War makes the intolerant American people even more intolerant against those ‘citizens’ who do not fit into their current “American” ideal.”

“Practicing your persecution defense?” scoffed Charlotta Softon.

“If I am persecuted, should I not use that true excuse as my mitigation?” demanded Yogi Samyansin Bhurutuj . “Especially if you are one of my chief persecutors?”

“You have forty-seven minutes, seventeen seconds more time today to teach me how to manage my anger issues.” pointed out Starbright.

“Okay, criminal, time to work. Teach me, your tricks, as the court mandates, yogi...” She was fully ultraviolet violent in hue with those sunlit bright white eyes staring out of that fierce halo; making it difficult to be in the same room with her, without the yogi squeezing his eyes, both brows and lids, into narrow slits to block out most of the glare of her glory.

The same court order that bound Charlotta Softon, hamstrung Yogi Samyansin Bhurutuj, too. If he violated the terms of the court order, he knew that Starbright would arrest him for that excuse alone and end their daily dance of duncery once and for all.

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Magistrate Juliet Monsigny looked up from his desk holo-screen to see Prosecutor Granville de Blodgett walk into his chambers. The magistrate turned off the holo-screen quickly for there was some data that was properly restricted, intended for magistrates only. Mister de Blodgett smiled wryly and opened with a cheerful: “You become sloppier by the day, Jules. First, you try to side-line the most powerful ally Louisiana has in our state's attempt to redeem itself; to match the other states in their efforts to root out the pre-Reconciliation corruption that lingers on, in our glorious reformed Republic.” Granville actually said that with a straight face because he believed in that Jazz. “That will not prevent the good work. Not even if you were to allot to her twenty-four hours of community service per day for the next five years. She will break loose, somehow of her court-mandated obligations, and then she will break you.”

Monsigny shook his head; “You foresee me chopping blocks out of the Avery Island salt dome? Not going to happen, de Granville. I am like the English minister; Thomas Cramer. I will change spots with the times and survive all when they come for you, de Blodgett.”

Granville de Blodgett leaned on the corner of Monsigny's desk and said menacingly. “I have a new case coming up on the calendar within your parvenu, magistrate. A simple case of drug trafficking. The man, I will indict in that case, Harry Hildebrand Kranberry, claims he is a refugee seeking asylum from Jamaica . He sold mηχανή άτομα μπλε φως ειδική to a New Orleans parish police officer, Amanda le Beau, who was assigned to undercover action, as an alleged buyer for use; to gather the evidence against the accused. I'm prepared to assert the maximum effort. I will see him convicted. I warn you of this future truth out of courtesy; so that you may set your own affairs in order.” Granville de Blodgett called up the calendar on Monsigny's Holo-screen to show the magistrate the case file. Monsigny stared stonily at the presented file. Granville de Blodgett continued; “If you notice and see it on your calendar, that is the next case listed on your docket. And the case, on my docket, after he is convicted... I assure you, magistrate... will be yours.”

Blodgett laughed an evil cackle at some private joke, that only he understood.

Perhaps; if Monsigny had looked at the case file pending on the calendar; instead of just reading the zip-header, he would have seen the person of interest, the what legal cause, that caused the wonky New Orleans Police Department to latch onto that Harry Hildebrand Kranberry fellow in the first place. It was there present in the causa suspicionis to attract such an interest in the man in the first place. After all Magistrate Juliet Monsigny signed the order to compel the New Orleans Police Department to keep tabs on that certain another person peculiarly involved with Harry Hildebrand Kranberry for cause of suspicion in this case. So Monsigny had, in effect, woven the rope and tied together the hangman's knot, so he could not blame Granville de Blodgett from seizing the opportunity to put that noose, that he so conveniently created for Blodgett to use, around Monsigny's neck.

“Bwahahahahaha.” Granville de Blodgett could not stop laughing.

It was Starbright who was the other person of interest.

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Joe Frick and Barbara Frack stepped out of the vertex elevator together. Frick wore a two piece black and gray pin-striped suit and a teepee-shaped aluminum fedora designed to block radio-probes into his brain. Incongruously he wore some Roman style boot sandals over his bare feet.

Frack wore a severe black tunic of the ancient Mao style, over knee trousers. White leggings went down from her knees to end in flat-soled black shiny patent leather calf boots. She was the one who had the horned coronet head gear, with the faceted yellow sapphire center jewel at the median crest. Two more yellow jewels, each tip-ended a horn of the coronet. All three jewels sparkled and winkled in through the yellow spectrum bands from munsel to goldenrod. The steel gray coronet, itself, generated a halo over the head of Miz. Frack. If someone thought this halo effect would accentuate the saintly visage of Miz. Frack, then that observer would be sadly mistaken. No-one, sane, could look upon Miz. Frack and mistake her for anything but a rogue.

The two Service Sheepdogs walked across the Picayune Building's eighteenth floor atrium. Joe did a complete turnaround in a circle until he, Joe, saw what he wanted to find. He pointed to the correct door; “It's over there, Barbara.” He shook his head. “She's changed things around on us, again, from the last time.”

The halo over Barbara Flack's head expanded suddenly to encapsulate both Service Sheepdogs. It would be the all-encompassing Faraday defense that would be sorely needed, for latest Service intelligence now indicated that Starbright was not a limited enhanced human, such as Burthan Reynolds, the Avatar's “current mental health companion", who had received the gift of longevity as a result of a run-in with a certain famous blue-glowing celestial class weapon of mass destruction woman of tall stature, another full angel in Virginia, who infected him with that same blue Cherenkov-like glow she wore. That condition was not the case for Starbright, as the Service first assumed with Charlotte Softon had received from the Texans’ angel, the Arella: but Starbright had been fully and utterly Arella reformulated, reconciled and renormalized at the infinities into a definite model-type of the celestial class weapon of mass destruction inside a wormhole transit of some kind. That included the necessary death-wish of the human beings involved with all the dangerous reborn angelic oopsies that came with the renormalization and reconciliation at the infinities event. That certainly meant Starbright had radio-telepathy in her repertoire of beatitude, as well as all the other usual flying-brick attributes that came with such standard angels.

Frack said to her partner; “The New Orleans Picayune-Times-Advocate newsfeed is hers by legal transaction of recent registered purchase from the mad scientist Leroy de Crock. I think that she has the right to arrange her office building to suit her rather peculiar needs, because of it.”

This puzzled Joe Frick, who asked Barbara Frack: “I thought that Charlotta Softon was some kind of biologist before she was suddenly beatified? What is she doing, running a news-feed?”

Frack was annoyed with Frick's puzzlement, **Doesn't he occasionally try to read the intelligence briefings we receive, as one of the benefits of our wolf in sheep's livery dirty work?** she thought; but realized as he was still so new to the job, maybe she had better explain it to him, now, in kindergarten terms, so that he, as junior partner would have no ignorance excuse as a separate defense to be used at the courts-martial that she was sure the two of them were about to earn; “Softon was convicted of creating the Texatis Lignum Suspendisse Turpis Rosas Crocus, otherwise known the Texas Yellow Rosed Beef Tree; as one of the supposed two 'endangered species' being protected on the Arella's Fayetteville ranch. We found out that there never was such a species before and thus it was an illegally created bio-weapon. We actually originally dragged her into federal court and they convicted her for it. We put Softon into a genie bottle for twenty years for that one. And as hard as it is for me to believe, you know how she skated out of that prison sentence on us?”

Joe Frick was prepared with a good guess that surprised Barbara, that was quite accurate, based as it was on maybe a pure shot into the unknown, or maybe he was up to date on the intelligence digest? “The Arella genie bottle-broke her out of imprisonment and then renormalized our little Miz. Starbright, for "reasons", so we cannot re-jug her in the due process required as the follow up?”

“Got it all in one. Joe.” Frack said, as she wound up in front of the glass door that had glowing holographic letters: which read:


Frick observed sourly. “She is not bashful. And she is a Believer?”

Frack said; “Angels never are bashful and being who they are, is it a surprise that they believe? Wonder where she is?”

“There's a window pane missing, did you notice?” Joe pointed that fact out through the glass office wall to Barbara.

“I noticed. Let's go in, Joe, and make the usual nuisances of ourselves until she returns.” Barbara replied.

The two Service Sheepdogs went into the office and made themselves to home as if they owned the place... which by Federal Law that covered their Sheepdog duties as overseers to angels, they actually did.

================================================================================

... Amanda le Beau clacked her anopticon shut. The Service Sheepdogs were inside the Picayune Building; so that meant the military was after her prize witness, too. She thought to herself; **This is the part of the work that is really rotten. When I apply the hammer to the anvil and the person caught in between the two is hurt.**

Tap… / Tap.../ Tap.../ … On the shoulder it was. .. (**Of course it would be her. Surprise, awe and shock; you know.**) Amanda shrieked aloud and jumped upward in fright. Arms harder than Pittsburgh Steel wrapped le Beau solidly, easily. Hands that could crush ordinary matter into hypermasses, gripped the woman’s arms gently to prevent her from tumbling over the Baker Maid Building ledge parapet a good fifteen stories below to her death.

“You should not spy on certain people, lady.” the angel said.

Amanda asked her; “Please put me safely down on the ground, Miz. Softon. I do not deal well with heights.”

Charlotte Softon looked straight down, bemused. “I'm not that comfortable with hanging around in mid-air without any terra firma under my feet, either, Marshal.” She drifted back toward the rooftop perch where she had found Amanda le Beau.

Amanda le Beau looked into Charlotte Softon's kind face. “How long have you known about that one?”

“About my own personal Wyatt Earp nosing about into my business?” Starbright answered. “Ever since I saw you follow in trail, the man I rescued from a falling chair, two weeks ago, last Thursday. Do you want to talk about it over a coffee at Crescent House?”

As they landed on the rooftop of the Baker Maid Building, Amanda said at Starbright's odd choice of a Sisters Of Mercy religious order's coffee house, “I did not know you were a believer, Starbright.” Amanda le Beau dusted herself off to remove non-existent dander and dust that might have contaminated her from her physical contact with the angel. It might be paranoia to other people, but Amanda wanted no Starbright-owned vector tracker drones on her that masqueraded as dust mites.

Charlotta Softon gave Amanda le Beau the strangest look: “In an age of walking or rather rolling wheeled computers with redeemable souls, the thrice-damned sentient goats who falsely claimed they were deities, and our interstellar navy's necessary and miraculous victory at The Battle of the North American Nebula, you have to ask me, if I am now a Believer in the Light?”

The New Orleans cop said: “I have seen nothing in the examples that you listed that makes me want to believe in a floating spaghetti monster in the sky.”

Charlotta was not about to debate it with the atheist Marshal. She just made an x-form with her arms and legs as a field effects projector to open a wormhole, and waved Amanda le Beau to enter it. At this point it was apparent to both of them, that Charlotta was not interested in any further friendly or polite manners about anything between them or even a discussion about religion as small talk, when what Charlotta wanted, was compliance. She commanded, as an angel would, and expected obedience. Amanda shrugged her shoulders and accepted the non-invitation of friendship to join the angel inside the wormhole. One nauseous insides-outside trip later; Amanda le Beau and the angel found themselves inside the Crescent House. The place was some kind of community center and neighborhood pub in the middle of the New Orleans warehouse district.

The angel said to the cop, mind-to-mind, in a rare telepathic radio burst transmission; {{Well? Where do you want to be served? Be careful of the clientele in here. The Sisters of Mercy tend to serve the bottom ten percent of the intellectually capable and morally good human gene pool. They are not nice people, you see gathered here.}}

The fake N.O.P.D. cop, who was actually the federal marshall, pointed at an empty pedestal table, one among a couple of hundred which seemed to be people-filled with the kinds of people the angel told the cop to expect; “That empty table is apparently yours by default, by custom, or by design?” Amanda le Beau surmised to Starbright.

The angel simply floated over to the table without an answer to the question. Amanda le Beau followed her. Once Amanda stood next to the table, a blue and red metal beetle carapaced machine-people waiter, four-tired; so not with the usual six wheels, whirred softly toward them with his electric motors humming. He flew a strange pennant from his prominent radio aerial, and rolled up to take their order. He said: “Hello, patrons. My name is Pabstex. I will take your order.” he happily announced.

Amanda did not wait for Charlotta Softon to start; “I'll have a Baton Rouge Eggnog^7.”


Charlotta Softon followed Amands's order with her own request; “I'll have a vodka torpedo.”^8


The robot-man tire-rolled away to the bar to get the drinks human-mixed as required by the local humans-only bartender laws. Amanda watched the pennant flap from the machine people waiter's aerial. She asked Charlotta about the pennant: “Whose flag? I thought the machine-people had no standards as we, Humans, know such tribal totems.” The joke was not lost on Charlotta.

“He is an employee of the local parish. It is their no-shoot-at-me flag.” Starbright explained. "I suppose, a marker to show his strict neutrality in case the bad manners and the guns that follow come out in this place.”

“I've been a cop living in this city for a year, and I did not know about that one.” le Beau said.

The robot-waiter, Pabstex, rolled up with a service tray his head. A goblet and a mug sat upon the tray. Amanda waited for Charlotta Softon to reach for her drink before le Beau reached for her own. The angel grinned and took the whole tray, thus defeating Amanda's effort to have Starbright sort out the eggnog from the vodka tail-knocker. Miz. Softon apparently had a vicious sense of angelic humor. Starbright had deliberately ordered the vodka torpedo; since it would be mixed to resemble the eggnog Amanda ordered; for some reason. If it was a game, Amanda decided to play along with Starbright. Amanda chose the further mug from her and was proved right in her choice.

“Correct.” said the angel, as if Amanda had answered an important question. She, in turn, took the goblet, and downed the foggy brew in one gulp. “So... You can tell the difference in things; using your senses in a werll-trained fashion. I assume that is why a 'mere N.O.P.D. cop' was selected by the Marshals' Service to be the US Marshal for this parish.”

“Lucky guess.” lied Amanda le Beau.

“Good enough guess.” retorted the angel. “Now tell me in detail; why have your superiors latched onto an accident and thereby put you, me and the city of New Orleans in such grave danger? Why pick on Harry Hildebrand Kranberry and poor little innocent me in such a simple life-saving rescue incident to escalate matters? Why, Marshal?”

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Charles Chubb, was a public defender. That meant he did not really get to pick and choose his cases or clients. This was not usually a problem, since most of his cases he solved administratively; by plea-bargaining his not-innocent clients, guilty to the least onerous charges that he could negotiate with such milder punishments for them to serve as sentences. Death sentences and long terms at hard labor in the salt -mines for his clients, Chubb could easily avoid inside the liberal, generous and quite bibulous corrupt Louisiana legal system. Easygoing law in “The Big Easy”^5 was a very longish six centuries old tradition of de facto criminal de jure coddling in the state; for today's Louisiana state politician or common (criminal) 'businessman' could be tomorrow's convicted Louisiana prison inmate. The fall of the Powers-that-be in the Reconciliation War made the odds of winding up in front of a magistrate more likely than not in these days. So Chubb, the negotiator, flourished in this new/old corrupt legal environment.

When Magistrate Monsigny assigned Chubb to defend Harry Hildebrand Kranberry, it seemed like just another routine plea-bargain case; that is until Chubb found out that his client was locked up on a no-bail, flight-risk, threat-to-the-public-peace bench-order. A hasty conference with Granville de Blodgett, the public prosecutor, who took the case on a rigged-lottery assignment rotation if there ever was one, (As Chubb suspected, was in this exact case.), and Chubb discovered that his client had been saved from a random falling chair thrown out of the Picayune Building. Who threw the chair out, was not as important as who caught that specific chair. **Starbright saved my client?** was Chubb's consternated thought when de Blodgett told him. **Starbright then let him go when she had to know he was about to commit a felony drug sale?** he asked himself. When Granville de Blodgett refused to answer the question, Chubb put to him on a legal technicality excuse, about witness tampering, that was the last datum point. That discovery drove Chubb to immediately request a face-to-face private jailhouse conference with his soon-to-be-convicted and probably-executed client. Louisiana politicos knew that old Jean Lafete expression; “Dead men tell no tales", or at least not tales that can get you a free lifetime physical-fitness-through-hard-labor vacation at the Federal Hoosegow in Pollock, Louisiana..." **What exactly did Kranberry know, that was a guaranteed one-way ticket to the super-gators for Kranberry, and a free visit to the Federal salt mines for him?** Chubb wondered.

====================================================================

CLANK...

The New Orleans Parish Prison (N.O.P.P.; or NOPP), was a ramshackle barbed-wire-enclosed muddy field surrounded pile of blocks that consisted of four thousand single person occupancy, two meter by four meter by three meter cubes interlocked together and connected by gun galleries like a weird architect's King Kong jungle-gym nightmare. Louisiana was a poor state; so the typical prison air conditioning consisted of cross-flow natural heat convection atmospheric ventilation through the steel cage bars set in the doors and windows of each cube. Hygiene needs, for prisoners, was met by a legal requirement that consisted of a bar of soap a week and a bucket of swampy sea water drawn from Lake Borgne issued to each prisoner once per day. From that same bucket of water and bar of soap, the prisoner was expected to do his or her laundry, wash himself or herself down and clean his or her eating utensils,. Speaking of eating, the usual meal issued to a NOPP prisoner came in a four liter bucket and was not too dissimilar from what Louisiana farmers fed their hogs as pig slop.^8
Charles Chubb looked down into the glop pot. “They feed you this garbage?” he asked his client, Harry Hildebrand Kranberry nodded. The cell was bare concrete except for a concrete shelf, a concrete toilet and the obligatory concrete wash stand. “They use buckets and they have indoor plumbing inside the cells?” asked Charles Chubb.

“Part of the rehabilitation process...” Harry Hildebrand Kranberry, the Jamaican refugge drug pusher, said, “... the plumbing is to remind us what we could still have had, if we behaved.” Kranberry walked to the other end of the cell. He sat down on the concrete bench. He said almost in a monotone; “I suppose you want me to tell you my side of it?”

Chubb put out a hand to silence the felon and looked around. He looked up at the cell ceiling and said in a loud stentorian voice; “As Harry Hildebrand Kranberry's counsel; I demand his rights to consult with his advocate, his legal confidentiality rights. I demand those rights enforced to be free of truth readers' observances and machines recording twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week.”

A prison guard, known as a “bull” in the vernacular, came along the gun walk, and stopped by the rusty steel barred cell door (**They use ordinary iron alloys?** question thought Charles Chubb.). The bull said; “They heard you in central monitoring. The warden says, 'okay', on the confidentiality thing, but he warns you that your client makes any careless overheard comments within earshot of third parties, those comments become witness testimony.” The bull did not wait for a reply. He resumed his rolling drunken walk along the gun-gallery.

“That bull is probably an augmented life form.” said Harry Hildebrand Kranberry. “They do that thing, you know, they mechanically augment the bulls; so if the prisoners try to riot or make a break-out attempt, the bulls can put them down just with their on-board add-ons. Now can I get on with my story?”

“Just a second.” Charles Chubb said. The advocate pulled out a device that looked like a weird kind of phone. He swept it around in a circle, set it on the floor of the concrete cell, and said to Kranberry: "Come over here and sit next to me.” The lawyer pointed at the phone. Kranberry, perplexed, did as requested, sitting Indian fashion on the hard concrete floor next to Chubb. Chubb then told the device; “Turn on. Set your radius at two meters.” Though neither man would or could understand it, as neither man was smart enough to know what it was, or how it worked; a phase-shifted time-bubble popped into existence, through which said bubble, not even the Service could eavesdrop. That is not to say, that such a phased-event horizon would escape notice. It stuck out like a sphere of white noise to certain types of detectors, available to nearby Service Sheepdogs, who had devices to register that type event, such detectors that they carried on their persons, or to a certain angel, who was a living-connected-to-the-Higgs-Field-Human entity, or to a Federal Marshal who, herself, who had a device similar to the trans-phase-eruptor as a defense, which would also detect another such trans-phase-field-effect in space-time.

Lots of people and things close by could detect the effects of such a standing wave time-shifted event horizon. They just could not see or hear through it. As far as Kranberry and Chubb were concerned, though, they were inside a phenomenon that resembled a mirror ball of perfect reflectivity and non-porousness....

"… Make it quick.” said Chubb. “I don't know how long our air will last in here.”

Kranberry asked, “You mean the air can't get through the barrier, either?”

“Well, it wouldn't be much good at all, if they could hear us in here as well as see us.” said Chubb. He never could get used to the multiple reflections that he saw inside once the absolute darkness inside the spherical time bubble vanished in the light; not present until if and when he turned the flashlight on. He felt the trapped-animal panic-attack come upon him, gulped once and croaked further; “Hurry up and tell me your story."

Kranberry, unlike Chubb, was something of a man about it, so the weirdness did not bother him so much: “Okay, guy.” he said. “I was walking along the Howard Avenue pedestrian way when I hear a noise above me, and I look up, and I see this thing whooshing down at me. I flinched, and it took me a half second to register that it was Starbright carrying some sort of chair.” He wriggled around to get more comfortable and bumped his head against the surface of the phase wall. “Ouch! That's hard and hot!”

“It will get hotter, the longer we are in here. So, hurry up, with the story.” chattered Chubb.

Kranberry chuckled at the chicken-shipped lawyer. “Well, anyway, I faint away, because it is Starbright and within the business I do, it's one truth-read or thought-probe of me from her and I get the works, you know?”

“Yeah, yeah, angel and the bad man. Get to the point!” Chubb said.

“The point is, she slid that chair under me before I cracked my skull falling down, and treated me like I was some schlub-citizen, then told me to be careful, and took straight off, straight up to follow the chair back to where it came out of the skyscraper. I gathered my wits, got up and beat feet myself...” Kranberry said with another soft chuckle.

“Until you met the cop, who was trailing you, inside the Bridge City complex and then you tried to sell her some Blue Light Special. How did you get across the canal if you were afoot?” asked Chubb. He sort of expected the answer he got.

“I stole a boat.” said Kranberry.

“I'm surprised they didn't charge you with that crime.” Said Chubb. “They've listed you on the charge sheet for everything else they could think, from littering to voluntary manslaughter. Nothing that carries the death penalty, yet, but if they bring the Feds in, they could claim you were trying to kill the cop with a drug overdose...”

“From a “Blue Light Special? You'd die sooner from a Moscow Mule.” scoffed Kranberry.

“Right now, I can use one.” admitted Charles Chubb, as the pieces of the state's case and how it came to pass, all clicked together in his mind. **It's a put up job.** he thought. **The angel arranged the falling chair rescue to give the N.O.P.D. the legal excuse to trail Kranberry afterward into an undercover officer initiated drug-bust.** "That's got to be it." Chubb said aloud,  "They're out to clean up the town and this case is their first test wedge.” Chubb could see the way the thing would legally unfold like the burst of a cherry bomb in a slow motion explosion. **Monsigny would be scooped up, when he was caught trying to finagle the trial. He, Chubb, could be vacuumed, too, just as a guilty legal bystander working for the defense.**

Chubb decided quickly that he would be legitimate in everything he did. “We'll keep the Feds out of it, Kranberry. You plead not guilty, stand jury trial and claim entrapment. It won't do much good. It's ten years hard labor at the State Penitentiary at Angola for you, but it beats Avery Island and the Federal salt mines or Being Shot for the Good of the Republic or dumped into the Saggy Alpha toilet.”



“For a lousy drug bust?” shouted Harry Hildebrand Kranberry. 

Charles Chubb's ears rang. He'd forgotten that sound waves re-echoed just like light off the perfectively reflective inside mirrored surface of a time bubble. He told his client; “Being alive to appeal a just but flawed conviction, is better than taking your chances with a criminal plea bargain that upon review could land you in the farm as super-gator bait or in front of that baboon firing squad.”

“That's true.” admitted Kranberry.

“So here's what we do.” suggested Charles Chubb. **And it had better work, or I will be placed next to this damned fool; waiting for the firing squad send-off.** he thought to himself... 

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Frick and Frack waited in the rather cold office on the eighteenth floor of the Picayune Building for Starbright to return. Joe occupied his time by taking out a tape measure from his pocket to measure chairs, the fake oak desk, the empty shattered window pane frame and any other odds and ends, such as lamps, the weird Yellow Rose Beef Tree sculpture on the fake oak desk and the warbling pitcher plant that occasionally said; “Polly wants a mouse.” The obtrusive pitcher plant was approximately forty centimeters tall, Joe estimated. It was just big enough to chomp off a hand if it wanted one. Frick did not try to measure it directly.

As he accumulated data, Frick whispered the results into his phone. “The pitcher plant talks, is about a meter and a third from potting soil to maw and I estimate it to mass about thirty five kilos. No obvious perambulatory capability evidenced; yet.”

“So much for the part of her parole that forbids Starbright from dabbling in bioengineering projects.” noted Barbara Frack morosely. She rather liked Charlotta Softon and did not want to lose her own cushy job monitoring of Starbright. Being reassigned to stand guard on the Ghost Ranger again would be rather humiliating after this plush plum easy assignment. Barbara Frack assumed Joe Frick felt the same way.

Frick measured a hat rack, on which several items were perched that included a couple of aluminum bowler hats and also was hung thereon a silver hull metal gray tri-horned coronet with three highly polished yellowish orange star sapphires exactly similar to the point of being an almost exact duplication except for the size of head it was supposed to crown, to the one Barbara Frick wore on her own skull. “It's funny that she leaves it out, as if she expects people like us, not to touch her stuff.” he said to Frack as he measured the coronet. “I wonder why that she's so trusting of people like us, either, after her last run in with the Arella.”

His partner, seated and reading her own phone holographic display, answered colloquially; “Ever since that idiot, Walking Horse Good Fellow, stole the Kherab's engagement ring from her apartment, I presume that the dumbest, most ignorant and evil evil-doer in our benighted Republic, by now, knows what a terrible idea it is to steal monkey-trinkets from the local angel's treasure hoard.”

Joe grimaced in sympathy; “You're mixing your metaphors and similes again, Barbara.”

Frack shrugged from her straight backed fake oak chair; “You know exactly what I mean.”

At that warning prompt about stupid things done stupidly because of evil-intended ignorance, Joe quickly replaced the coronet on the hat-rack peg. He adjusted it to resemble the approximate position it had held before he lifted it off to measure it. “Do you think, she'll notice I handled it?” he asked Barbara Frack.

“Of course, I'll notice.” said Charlotta Softon, as she floated into her office from the outside of the building, through the empty window frame. She was not happy to see her two guests. Her aura was a bit of a mixed tangerine striped violet glory, the two Service Sheepdogs saw. Barbara Frack observed dryly; “Might want to replace that broken window, so no-one or no thing falls out who cannot fly, you know? Something else important could fall out of it, too.” It, the suggestion of a fallen angel, was not meant as a joke.

“Where's your editor, the man who broke the window?" asked Frick.

“Cygnus Blanc?” Starbrightshrugged. “Probably delivers snail mail to accounting on the thirteenth floor., if my eyes deceive me, not.” She looked down at the floor, as if she could see through the floor the sight of Cygnus, as he pushed the mail cart, which of course was exactly what she saw, as she said what she saw to the sheepdogs.

Both Service Sheepdogs were silent for a moment. Barbara Frack pointed at the pitcher plant and asked; “What about that crime?”

Starbright shrugged as she drifted over to her desk. “I am allowed a small pet during my parole as my 'service animal'. It is in the written terms of compliance.”

“From existing non-modified life forms, like a pet dog.” suggested Frick. “Of course, that allowance would be permitted for your sanity check. Still, that plantimal, I see, might raise a few eyebrows back at Home Plate.”

“Polly wants a hamburger.” said the pitcher plant. It lunged at Mr. Frick and snapped at him. Frick sort of backpedaled away from the pitcher plant.

“She existed naturally born and was not modified, at the time I bought her.” said Charlotta Softon, lying through her smile. She dared the Sheepdogs to call her out on her prevaricated statement of fact. “I haven't changed anything about her since the purchase.” she protested in all feigned innocence. That statement was entirely true. One hundred percent true. All the modifications she did to Polly, occurred before she bought her as a calf, all done inside the mother tree’s pistule, as still being from the Arella’s herd and before she, Charlotta, signed the bill of sale as having bought ‘one born as it is and unmodified at birth or thereafter Yellow Rosed Beef Tree Plantimal named Polly’.

The two Sheepdogs glanced at that thin technical legal truth they truth-read off of Starbright. Frack was senior, so she decided in the interest of peace and public tranquility; “You can keep the plantimal, Miz. Softon. Would you like to explain to us about your demoted editor, the chair and what the reporter; Miz. Loretta Lavanau, does right now?”

“You are not my parole supervisor.” Starbright pointed out acerbically. “The Arella may legally ask, but you may not. Not without a court order or a warrant.”

“The Arella is off planet... ” mumbled Frick.

“... checking on her Prankster aliens.” finished Barbara Frack.

“Consider us, her stand-ins.”

Starbright floated in her accustomed uncomfortable lotus position behind her desk, now. The missing matching chair that should have been present, the one that she used to rescue Harry Hildebrand Kranberry and set him up for the N.O.P.D. , was in the New Orleans Police Department Property Room, secured as evidence to be used in Kranberry's upcoming trial. She said, “Cygnus Blanc is a mail runner; until I can be sure he has learned to not toss objects at reporters and other people through windows during business hours. Miz. Lavanau pursues leads on a news story. And the chair, that furniture item, is in the possession of the New Orleans police, who confiscated it, from me, as evidence in the Kranberry case. Is that it? Are we done?”

The two Sheepdogs looked at each other again. Obviously it was not done. This time, Joe Frick asked the trick question; “The editor's chair toss was not part of some elaborate plan, you have to change current conditions inside New Orleans, is it? I mean, with all the legal trouble it causes for you, I would expect you to fire Mr. Blanc, or at least give him the hot-foot. You can have Righteous angelic temper tantrums, you know?” The two Sheepdogs waited for this answer. It would have to be a good one, for they were truth-reading Starbright to the fare-thee-well.

Charlotte Softon was not a good liar, by the Arella’s "honest" standards; but she could get by these two babes in the bayou country. “I'm taking meditation instruction for my anger issues, Mr. Frick.” Starbright maintained her innocence of any wrongdoing posture. “I'm constantly, intrusively and persistently N.O.P.D. monitored. There exists a union-management agreement, too, so I cannot simply fire Mr. Blanc or give him that lasered hot foot that you suggested. Also, I did not know that Cygnus would throw the chair, or that perchance Kranberry would be under it, when it went out the window to chase it down before it hit a pedestrians. How could I? I was at my mandated anger management class.”

“So you did not plan it?” demanded Frick.

“Again. How could I?” retorted and repeated Starbright. “I told you. I was at my yoga class! It was an impromptu that instant stupid decision Cygnus made when he threw the chair at Miz. Lavanau. In fact, it happens that my departure of the yoga class, to save Mr. Kranberry's life, is the specific reason my parole is under Louisiana state review. Do you think I want to be genie-bottled again for breaking my parole?” She folded her arms and glared at the two Service Sheepdogs as if she, Starbright, was the innocent aggrieved party; which of course, at least this time, she apparently on the surface to these two Rubens, was.

It sure seemed to be a straightforward true Starbright statement, as the two Sheepdogs’, with their independent observer point of views, recorded it on their video means to hand. The recordings would be subjected to review by far better truth readers than Frick or Frack could ever hope to be, so even if Starbright for the moment thought she could fool them, she would have to fool the second- checks too, for the far better second-checks would obviously catch any lies she told. And there would have to be second-checks as the additional safeguard included in the Overwatch. Starbright would know it. An angel on parole could not evade those checks and dare not lie and be caught by the second-checks; or it was the super hyper-mass at the galactic center for her. The Saggy Alpha toilet, where Humanity dumped its collective garbage, was where fallen angels were permanently imprisoned. No escape, from its event horizon, was possible.

With that known to all present, Frack bluntly told Starbright; “You understand, we have to ask you, Miz. Softon? Small mistakes and the butterfly effects engendered; lead to huge negative consequences for everyone involved; if we get such beings, like you, wrong in the checks?”

“You mean like the Arella renormalizing me?” Starbright countered. “You got that one wrong.”

Frack shook her head. “That is a small goof by our standards. I mean a butterfly that's more like the decision the Seraph made after she chastised the elder gods. She should have asked somebody in the government before she flushed the squeegees down into the singularity.” This was in reference to The Battle of the North American Nebula.

Charlotta Softon pointed out, sourly; “That was not the Seraph's mistake or fault. The squeegees attacked us to totally exterminate Humanity. The Navy had already determined to flush the saqueegees all down the Saggy Alpha toilet when that happened. There was nothing the Seraph could do to change that outcome for the elder gods, once battle was joined. ”

“Exactly.” Barbara Frack said. “We don't want to flush you, Ms. Softon. You comprehend what we mean?”

This statement confused Charlotta Softon; her hind-mind had mathematically analyzed it as semantic gibberish. She had to guess what they meant. “Even, if it proves to your satisfaction that it is a happy accident, then you tell me that I am not to exploit the Kranberry Incident, at all, to clean up New Orleans?” asked Starbright.

Joe Frick spoke for the pair of Service Sheepdogs, this time, as he pocketed his tape measure; “We did not say that thing, exactly. Just make sure that the means you use to clean the city up are not too obviously ruthless. That whatever happens; make it look like others, preferably evil-doers that no-one will miss, planned and did it all to themselves. You just helped law enforcement catch them in their acts?” He winked at her as he suggested the "right way" to do it.

With that enigmatic statement, Frick looked at Frack. Both Sheepdogs nodded at each other, got up from their chairs. They departed the Picayune-Advocate chief editor's office by flying out the empty office window frame on their own one-person platform-disk  levitators. Starbright's eyes followed them to the northwest horizon as they flew off toward Baton Rouge. She had to enhance her sight and look through a couple of buildings in the gamma spectral range as the Sheepdogs kept rather low below the skyline to mask their movements, using building occultations and shadows, to hide their movements from lesser eyes than hers.

Charlotta Softon, as the Sheepdogs left her with their “We-permit-you-to-exploit-this-golden-opportunity-to-do-what-we-want-you-to-do, but-do-not-get-publicly-caught, or we'll-see-you-hypermass-imprisoned-inside-Sagittarius-Alpha-warning”, was now deep into one of her purplish-pink ultraviolet ultra-violent rages with sunlit eyes so bright you could see the glare shine out the empty window frame of that office if you were in her opposite line-of-sight and you were not blocked by opacity in any form to your horizon line within the environs of New Orleans city. Plenty of people would know that Starbright (Why do you think Charlotte Softon earned that name?), was a tad upset about something...

She was about to be used, by the people who told her nothing of their intentions; except to threaten her with punishments for their guilt, if they failed at what they schemed and attempted through her… again.

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Loretta Lavanau followed the lawyer, Charles Chubb, as he went about his daily routine. At some moment she would corner him for an in-your-face interview. Normally, as any good lazy reporter would, Loretta would phone-interview Mr. Chubb; to obtain his client's version of events. She did that thing to record Mr. de Blodgett's version of the state case to send defendant, Harry Hildebrand Kranberry, to the super-gator farm, but Mr. Chubb declined to answer his phone. She did not blame the lawyer, Charles Chubb. Recorded phone interviews could be easily hacked, manipulated, and exploited to spread false information among the public. A face to face live news-feed, unfiltered, would have the raw advantage of presenting an unedited version of the truth, that probably would be hacked; but which as it would be broadcasted live, could not be edited for content and manipulated for a skewed point of view. **If I was in Chubb's position; my own life hanging on the guilt or innocence of my client, I would insist on a face-to-face interview to control the content, too.** she thought.

That was not what the lawyer, Chubb, would actually think, as he went about his business, blissfully unaware that he was being stalked in series; by the truth-searcher reporter, Lavanau; by the self-preservation-minded magistrate, Monsigny; and by the duplicitous police officer, Amanda le Beau. Starbright was in the pursuit chain, too, but since she was an angel and could simply look out the office's missing window to follow the lawyer, with his stalkers in trail, she followed the comedy with her enhanced eyesight. She did not have to closely physically shadow the schlub, Chubb, directly.

Lawyer Chubb, walked serenely along the grass-grown-over overtly abandoned Earhart Expressway roadway. He whistled to himself, and was therefore ready-primed to leap out of his skin, when Loretta Lavanau jumped out of the Lillian Street alleyway to ambush-interview him. “What the hello!” he mouse-squeaked as he fainted in fright...

Loretta Lavanau caught him before he fell face-down onto the pavement. **Lot of that weak men collapsing to the pavement, and being caught by strong women; so they don’t crack their skulls open on the hard ground, going on in New Orleans, these days…**, she thought to herself. “Whoa, there, fella. You don't want to split your head open on the cobblestones. With your luck, Starbright would show up, and you would awaken in the prison cell next over to what's left to the left of Kranberry.”

“Why do you, reporters, always lead off with that Captain Oblivious sympathy comment when you are nearly always ready to gut-rip your latest victim with a gaffe hook interview on a live news-feed?” demanded Chubb. “Can't you tell the truth, that you hate my stinking guts, because I'm trying to get my state-mandated and persecuted-one-way-lane-steered-towards-the-guilty-verdict-to-be-fed-to-the-super-gators client off with the time he served?”

“Is that what you believe Prosecutor de Blodgett intends? To frame your client for pushing drugs?” asked Lavanau.

Chubb dusted himself off and shook Lavanau's helpful hands from his person “You said it, yourself, Miz. Lavanau. I believe with the obvious enmity and possible presence of Starbright in this case, that my client is assumed convicted before the case ever arrives in front of a magistrate, or a jury. It is almost as if the whole thing was planned. In fact I suggest that it could have been planned for some nefarious hidden reason.”

“What reason could that be?” asked the reporter.

“How should I know the reason?” snapped Charles Chubb. “Why don't you ask Starbright, your boss, about what she plans? You have the most direct path of information line to her, not me.”

**And there it was said.** Loretta Lavanau thought. **The one thing I would not want to be out there spoken aloud, if I was on the prosecution side of the line.** To a cagey reporter, and Loretta was that kind of news-feed researcher, it made perfect sense; that the only excuse that the persecution could have to construct a sloppy case like this one against a random felon, such as Harry Hildebrand Kranberry, was the legitimate one that the New Orleans Police Department was legally required to monitor all citizens who interacted with Starbright, so as to insure and preserve that citizen's physical and mental well-being as a result.

Kranberry, when he popped up in the N.O.P.D. data bases as a suspected felon, could and would be tailed, conversely, as a potential threat to Starbright's physical and mental well-being. So Starbright's intervention to save Kranberry would be the first chain link in de Blodgett's evidence chain against Kranberry. Lavanau expected that would be the point and limits of any evidence deposition that de Blodgett, or more likely one of his flunkies would take down as he elicited the necessary canned testimony in an affidavit from Miz. Softon. Chubb was neatly slicing through that paper testimony evidence link, so he put it out there baldly and boldly, that Starbright was the actual person behind the Kranberry persecution. He would force the persecution to produce the angel, in person, present on the witness stand for cross examination at the trial; since a deposition could not be questioned as to the facts claimed or the opinions it contained; only the living being in the witness chair could be so questioned. It was risky to escalate the case into such prominence that way. The persecution team could call Chubb's bluff and subpoena Charlotta Softon, themselves. It was a major risk-reward gambit useful against the defense. Make it all public. Involve her, Starbright, in spoken testimony, themselves preemptively. If she stood up to a truth-reader and her testimony was therefore true, that she merely rescued Kranberry by mere chance, then Chubb's declared accusation in this interview; would not only be defamatory and libelous, but it would be a rash felonious aspersion on the character of a 'patriotic self-aware weapon of mass destruction's character', thereby affecting her morale and functional ability to serve as a moralistic and very real national military deterrent against very real enemies who were only held at bay by people like her. A move to give an angel a bad case of the sulks was not too wise. That was considered TREASON in some exalted FEDERAL quarters.

So Lavanau asked Chubb; “Are you sure you want to claim that Starbright...”

It was at this moment that officer Amanda le Beau, put her right hand on reporter Lavanau's left shoulder, since the interview had gone into what she considered somewhat dangerous political territory, and said; “I'm sorry, to break up this interesting, emotional and highly speculative discussion about Miz. Starbright’s current affairs; but there are traffic laws against putting an impediment in the path of a public flyway in this city.”

Chubb and Lavanau looked at le Beau, and then looked a couple of hundred meters straight up at all the fast unimpeded air cars that flew over their heads. Lavanau said; “You jest, officer?”

Amanda le Beau produced a thumper and refused to smile. “Citizen, counselor at law, do you see me smile?”

Loretta Lavanau said; “I'm a reporter...”

“... charged with one count of obstructing a public flyway. Do you want to try for obstructing a peace officer in the performance of her duty and resisting arrest?” finished Amanda le Beau for the reporter and the record.

Chubb passed the surprised Lavanau his card. “Call me after you are booked. Answer no questions and constantly demand to contact your attorney, Miz. Lavanau. That will be me; since this is a false arrest situation and I am the witness to it. I may be wrong about you. It looks like that we might be on the same side after all.”

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Magistrate Monsigny threw his phone clear across the office. His secretary, Mr. Aldous Axelman, who transcribed a legalese case brief into plain language as prescribed under current federal law to be publicly published in the news-feed of record, instinctively ducked as if he was used to dodging Monsigny's thrown objects. The phone bounced off the wall; leaving a dent in the moldering Sheetrock™ that formed the skein under the faded wallpaper.

Aldous Axelman said rather cheekily, “You discovered some bad news on the phone, sir?”

Monsigny scowled at his legal secretary; “You saw the news-feed. You could have told me.” He walked over to where his phone landed and picked the pieces up.

“I need another phone. Order one for me.”

Adelman laughed harshly; “I doubt it would make any difference. You will just break it, like the last four I ordered. You should buy a Seraphim Industries model.”

“Throwaway phones cannot be used as evidence.” Monsigny pointed out. “The phones are too easily modified and tamper-vulnerable.”

Axelman laughed again, “It would not do to have a permanent non-erasable phone record of all your evil-doings and plots that could be produced before a grand jury, sir?”

“How many times have we had this conversation, Aldous?” Juliet Monsigny asked.

“Not enough times to jade my curiosity, sir.” Aldous Axelman said. “I wonder what particular news item upset you, this time. With all the interesting data transmitted through the local web, it could be anything. But I guess, from your expression, that it could be the short news blurb item about the Times-Advocate reporter?”

Monsigny just nodded a curt single once. “Ask discreetly about it. I want to know why Loretta Lavanau was ridiculously arrested on a misdemeanor traffic stop. Why did it make the news-feed? What is the real story behind the fake story?”

Axelman smiled; “I will do that thing.” He chuckled softly to himself, as if he knew the answer already.

Monsigny, not being truth-reader trained, missed the tell-tale clues Aldous showed, still said; “It must have something to do with the Kranberry case. Someone wanted me to see that story.” Leave it to Monsigny to make almost anything trivial that happened, over-dramatized and have it revolve around him." Aldous probably revealed that he knew this self-centered narcissism trait about Juliet, also in his body language, but Monsigny missed that clue, too.

Aldous would have to be careful, as he made his inquiries. The New Orleans Police Department was out as an information source. His paid contacts and hired stoolies, therein, had not warned him that Loretta Lavanau would be so pinched, so Axelman instantly and instinctually drew the correct conclusion. **The Feds are inside the N.O.P.D.. They have found a spy to work for them from inside the ranks or they've planted an operative of their own within it.** That was a good supposition; maybe eighty percent accurate, Axelman estimated. Aldous wondered, if he could make contact with the Fed and offer a quid pro quo. That xcontact could prove useful to him, personally, as an escape route, when the Feds came looking for Juliet Monsigny.

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The glaziers were almost finished. The armored transparent aluminum was a considerable improvement over the easily shattered silica glass that normally fronted the Picayune Building. Steel workers were busy transmuting the ancient carbon steel frame box that formed the skyscraper's skeletal structure, beam by beam, by the laborious process of swap out, with exact Pittsburgh Steel duplicate replacements. The concrete poured floor slabs were similarly being lifted out and replaced by thinner, lighter, and much stronger Pittsburgh Steel hull metal plates which dropped into the new sill frames. The whole Picayune Building, all twenty four floors, was being reconstructed in place. The Times-Advocate still operated out of the top two and the bottom eight floors, and the other tenants, (Yogi Samyansin Bhurutuj in his plush rent-free court-mandated installed doge on the sixteenth floor, in particular.), continued business as usual for them. This up-to-date material modernization changed the blocky glass-paneled stone column look into a more jeweled spear-shaped faceted tower-like face to the world. **It must cost a fortune for all the work.** thought Amanda le Beau, as she walked up to the main entrance. The new large main foyer entry doors pivoted open noiselessly on hidden turn hinges. Amanda noticed that the transparent doors were six inches thick, and that the refraction index was of a steep positive slope, indicating a type of armored glass. The building could have been sheathed in Human hull-metal, a particularly tough and flexible alloy of Pittsburgh Steel, out of which famously the Kherab's Lair, a reconstruction in vague facsimile of the Athenian Acropolis on the top of Mount Hallett just to the northwest of Denver, Colorado; was alleged to be built.

Amanda le Beau supposed that the transparent armored glass being mounted on the Picayune Building was a sort of very practical capital limited needs financial compromise. **Pittsburgh Steel is not cheap.** Amanda mused. She crossed the foyer and looked for the elevator core that one usually found in such archaic twenty-second century American skyscraper architecture. Instead of such elevators; she new-found an endless belt vertical escalator==> a vertex. A person stepped aboard a stage and the belt carried the person straight up through a human-sized mousehole up and down through the floors,

Amanda observed. **Most unusual. So Starbright is not too helpful for the physically challenged as one would expect such a liberal to be.** thought the marshal.

The noiseless trip to the eighteenth floor, took about two minutes. 'Fast', apparently was not in the vertical escalator list of desired mechanical qualities. Amanda thought it might be a part of the Big Easy laid-back way of doing things. **The whiplash accelerator trip of an elevator ride might not be in the average New Orleander's pilot house.** she mused.

{{Hello Miz. le Beau. Do you want to explain why you are in my place of business, without an appointment? Oh, I see, you want to find out what I plan for Mr. Kranberry and what it portends for Orleans Parish? I guess you will just have to take a customer service number and get into the line behind the Service, my parole officer, Juliet Monsigny, Mr. Blodgett, Mr. Chubb and some of the other interested parties who want to find a reason to put me back into the genie bottle or flush me down the Saggy Alpha toilet.}} the thought chain exploded into the marshal's mind. This was followed by another cold query, {{What is your new reason for wanting to do me harm? And why do you constantly lie to everyone about being a mere human N.O.P.D. officer in public; when you clearly wear the U.S. Marshal’s Service tomfoolery enhancements inside of you? What do the Marshals now want with me? What do you want from me?}} Starbright was clearly up to something, for this was an attempt to rattle Amanda le Beau's cage. Amanda was rueful; **Consider me, rattled**, she thought. 
  
**I'm strictly the U.S. Marshall for the New Orleans parish doing her duty. I also actually started in the N.O.P.D... so I don’t lie to you when I claim I am a constable in that department.** thought Amanda le Beau at Starbright. She looked around carefully for the only person who could transmit such thoughts at her, here and now. **It is funny that Starbright's transmitted thoughts sound much different in my mind than Charlotta Softon's spoken words.** thought le Beau. **Where are you? And please no tapping on the shoulder to startle me, again. That kind of rollicking slapstick is only once funny, Starbright.**

{{Travel up to the eighteenth floor.}}

Charlotta Softon presented herself in the middle of the eighteenth floor atrium. For Miz. le Beau, the apparition, the presentation of Starbright that she saw, was a bit startling. She expected a standard run-of-the-mill angel presentation (The imperial perfect human Omnipotent.), wearing the usual proletarian weather cloak over black and gray close-linked ring-mailed armor, a majestic glow about the angel, (Kind of an Apricot, somewhat paler and softer than the Arella's fiery reddish-orange glow according to the Department of Justice briefs she had since received about Charlotta Softon.).

Instead, the ‘ordinary” woman Amanda saw, wore a three piece green pant suit, low-quarter heeled shoes and apparently the only jewelry aboard the woman; was a rather plain steel gray tri-horned coronet that sat on the crown of her head. Starbright's apricot-orange-like dark brunette hair was severely pulled back, braided and knotted into a muffin-shaped bun. Except for the subdued apricot-orange pinkish-glow aura about her, there was nothing else to suggest that this mere medium-sized human woman could demolish the planet, Jupiter, in less than a day with her bare hands.

Amanda had to fearfully remind herself; again with that thought; **This parolee can actually demolish the planet, Jupiter, in a day with her bare hands.** Miz. le Beau walked across the atrium, stuck out her hand and said aloud, confidently to mask her own fear,  for the benefit of the ignorant gullible public present; “Hi! My name is Amanda le Beau. I'm a police officer with the New Orleans police department. I'm here to conduct some background interviews with Miz. Loretta Lavanau's close associates with whom she works. Perhaps you could help me with that task, Miz. Softon, since Miz. Lavanau works for you, as a reporter for your newsfeed? I tried to contact the chief editor to arrange such interview appointments, but he seems to be unavailable; or not in his office?”

{{Well played, Marshal, to mask our meeting, why make a scene and draw unwanted attention?}} was the “alien” thought in Amanda le Beau’s mind.

“That would be because Mr. Blanc has been reassigned to other duties.” Ms. Softon said. “For the now, I perform his function as chief editor. Perhaps I can supply you with the information you need without interruption of my people at their work?” She pointed to the chief editor's office and invited Amanda to follow her into it... for shielded privacy no doubt; {{No thought-probers or truth-readers, Miz. le Beau, or I will make things very ugly for you… in the strictly legal sense of course.}} was Ms. Softon's intruder thought in Amanda le Beau's mind.

The threat was not strictly confined to legal. **This is a cornered woman, with her back to converging walls. Dangerous does not begin to describe the situation you walk into here, Amanda…**

Starbright smiled and pointed again the way to her office. Amanda accepted the invitation and noted the curious passing worker-bee employee looks that came her way. **I wonder why they find me odd, when they have a celestial class weapon of mass destruction walking around among them?** she thought. Amanda walked through the twin glass doors that led into the glass-walled chief editor's office. She noticed that like the new outside glass curtain panes that formed the Picayune Building's weather front and skin, the office doors, and presumed office walls, were about six inches thick of transparent armored aluminum. **Faraday Defense, that would be the main reason why Starbright chose the aluminum armored glass.** she thought.

The office doors swung noiselessly shut behind the seemingly average N.O.P.D.blue-suited-uniformed officer. The walls and doors immediately went opaque gray. Charlotta Softon, who had been grounded and walking until this moment, casually stepped up into the air and floated over and arrived serenely behind it, to a glass topped desk, which did not fit the description of the fake oak desk at all, which Amanda le Beau's research led her to expect; a position from astern of which desk; Cygnus Blanc was to have allegedly supposedly so tyrannically sat and intimidated reporters.

Starbright assumed a relaxed hover, not quite a stand, nor a formal seated lotus yoga position, but one which she found apparently quite comfortable for her; as she swung her slightly bent legs back and forth in a casual two cycle Foucault tick-tock metronome motion; as if she was some kind of pendulum clock and Amanda le Beau was wasting her time.

Softon said without much preamble or pleasantry; “I want my reporter out of the hoosegow and free within the hour, Marshal.” {{You can drop the fiction about the interview, Marshal. If you attempt to scan these premises, I surely promise you, I will exercise my citizen’s right to privacy under the search and seizure clause and you will feel the rather painful results.}}

A sharp stab of pain in the area of le Beau’s left pre-frontal brain lobe was a merest whispery hint of the direct feedback force that Starbright could apply to any cyborg enhanced Federal Marshal snoopery she detected. Amanda was somewhat taken aback. She said aloud for the benefit of Starbright’s recorders “Are you in a position to make that kind of demand of me; Miz. Softon? To the N.O.P.D.; I'm just a simple cop.” She looked around for a chair for her to sit down as the nausea wave threatened to overwhelm her sense of balance. This 'impromptu interview' of her main target of interest might be a much longer and more strenuous event than even she anticipated.

Softon ignored le Beau for a moment. She stared straight ahead at something that only an angel could see, apparently, and then said strangely off topic; “Mr. Blanc will need a few minutes to join us. I had the snail mail room moved to the basement, and he moved downstairs with it. I called him and told him to take the stairs and stay out of sight until he gets here. Quite simple instructions, so he should be able to handle it, for he is such a simple man. As for you, my dear? There's nothing simple about you at all, Miz. le Beau. You carry the usual U.S. Marshal’s augments within your body, both for attack and defense. Specifically I presume that you know I detect electrocyte blast cells in the gigajoule range inside your arms and legs; that you have a Hunter's Organ that overlaps your diaphragm and I perceive a Sach's Organ that runs dorsally along your physiognomy. You are quite the electrified eel human weapon system, Marshal le Beau. You are a bit outclassed in the present company, if you will pardon my self-preening.” Miz. Softon softly chuckled. “But you will do for what I need.” {{Or else I misjudged you?}}

“Huh?” asked Amanda. “You don't think that you can use me for your agenda?”

“Whose agenda is at work here? I perceive that I am the one abused by your intent. If you were not assigned to be an asset for me to use for effect; Miz. le Beau; to achieve some goal not of my choice;” said Starbright coldly. She spoke aloud for the first time in a tone that matched her radio telepathic voice; "...then you would be of no use to them, either. Your superiors would not allow me to operate as I have in New Orleans, as I would do, if they did not expect me to achieve their own goals for them in the mutual end result. Which is, of course, I presume, to get rid of the leftovers; that persist around New Orleans; despite the Reconciliation War and the post-war lessons learned indoctrination they should have absorbed. Lessons they should have absorbed from that war and from people like me.”

By now, Amanda le Beau noticed that Charlotta's soft orange-apricot glowing cat-like eyes were a bit whiter in the iris and difficult to stare into because of the sun-glare. Amanda still said; “Perhaps, but you are a paroled felon. I don't see how we can cooperate in any matter that will become public knowledge, or how you can think that you can order me to go and fetch Miz. Lavanau, as if I were one of your paid minion flunkies... which I am not, by the way.”

{{Yes; I am a reformed paroled felon. But I am also a duly deputized state-assigned champion of the Republic. So that makes me more righteous than you in this situation, does it not, Miz le Beau?}} is what passed through Amanda le Beau’s mind; while Charlotta Softon laughed her irritating laugh again. Starbright said aloud. “Paid flunkie, Miz. le Beau? I'm insolvent at the moment. I'm not sure I can pay for the work being done on this building today. At least not yet, can I. That will depend on some financial transactions that will occur in a couple of hours. Besides, I do not need to bribe, coerce, or even persuade you. You will release Miz. Lavanau when you figure out how she fits into our mutual plans.”

{{I hope you prove a bit more intelligent than our surface conversation indicates, Marshal, otherwise I may find that you are more of an hindrance than an aid to the accident you caused to be set into motion by Your arrest of Mr. Kranberry.}}

The two track conversation did not help Amanda keep her wits together. Vague ill-defined plans to clean up New Orleans and arrange Lavanau’s release from the hoosegow seemed to be mutually contradictory subject matters to her. The marshal was confused.

{{It will be clear to you as soon as I finish a few more tasks that I undertake.}} was the next wild alien thought in Amanda le Beau’s stream of consciousness… **What?** Amanda was completely befuddled.

“What is our mutual plan? I didn't know we had a mutual plan.” said Amanda le Beau.

“Of course we have a plan.” said Starbright. “Why do you think I bothered to see you in person, instead of turning you over to human resources or to the Service?” There was that irritating melodic Starbright laugh for the third time again. Amanda recalled that angels were supposed to have operatic voices; all of them, except for the Seraph, who sang like a cement mixer that was filled with metal gravel and bee bee shot, or so the rumors went…

Charlotta said further; “I just need you to tell me, what the plan you have, actually is, so I can work my end of it through!”

Amanda, the mere cop, was non-plussed. **I'm supposed to know the non-existent plan, that we use to employ you to clean up New Orleans, that does not even exist? Or am I supposed to come up with one?**

{{Well; if you do not have one, and I do not have one and your bosses do not have one, then why are so many evil-doer people busy trying to do me in because they think there is a plan and that I am part of it? You must have some plan laying around somewhere. Starbright hovered over Amanda with an expectant smile on her face, as if she waited to be briefed like a Quantico Academy recruit.

And with a shock; Amanda le Beau realized that was exactly the gonzo position that Starbright was actually in. That weird angel was a complete neophyte to this kind of hero work, not some grizzled veteran who dealt with evil-doers with calm fatal-to-the-evildoer aplomb like the Seraph, Avatar, Kherab, or the Arella routinely did. **Starbright was actually clueless and asking to be included in the plan? What Plan?!?**

That discovered fact frightened Amanda le Beau very much. She was uncertain that she was the woman for the job, now accidentally laid before her. She was no Service Sheepdog! This angel expected her to play the Service Shepherd for her and tell the angel what to do? That was not how these things were supposed to work. The mysterious unfathomable super-intelligent angel was supposed to launch her own top secret utterly-righteous-intended outcome for the good guys; but actually produce that somewhat nefarious end result scheme and then Amanda, or someone like her, would investigate the scheme, lay it all out for those who would either approve or disapprove it, and then they would send a qualified trained expert to handle the angel and solve the problem the celestial class weapon of mass destruction and her plan represented to mere normal people. That was how it is supposed to work!

{{Welcome to my reality as it actually is, Marshal Amanda le Beau. You think that I like to wing anything like this situation blindly? Everything between us, up to now, has been coincidence, bad luck, and your clumsy ineptitude at work; in other words… your fault. If you do not have the plan, you better invent one! ‘cause like you think, right now, I am clueless and I am annoyed. Those are not two conditional states of being that you would want me in at all, Marshall.}} stated Starbright.

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Cygnus Blanc was happy he had his old title and position back. At least that part of his life was back to semi-normal. He was not too thrilled by all the ultra-modern architecture that was going on around him as the builders took out all the fake wood paneling and warm friendly earthy colors that was the hallmark of twenty-second New Orleans architecture as exemplified in the Picayune Building. They replaced it with sterile steel and glass in the floors, walls and ceilings, but also the furnishings, including desks and chairs. The real morale-breaker for Cygnus, besides being kicked out of his huge corner chief editor's office to wind up inside a four sided glass interior cubicle mere editor's office; with a rather small in size but thick glass door that took a gorilla's strength to pivot on its rotator hinge pins; was that he also lost his ceramic potted fern in the process. His favorite bush was replaced by a thrice times cursed talking pitcher plant who constantly snapped at him and who constantly tried to appropriate pieces of his body for lunch. He asked an assistant copy editor what was the deal with all the steel and glass replacement in the Picayune Building. He especially asked about why the potted pitcher plant set up as the only green decoration in his office? Max Hereford Gonzalez told him; “The boss-lady wants to make the building conform to the very best Texas building code practices. I think she gave you Polly, the Pitcher Plant, to remind you not to throw chairs and people out of windows, Cygnus."

That satisfied Cygnus Blanc's suspicions. The Picayune Building was being made Cygnus Blanc goof-proof. Polly, the pitcher plant, was a spy set upon Him for "reasons". Cygnus expected that Starbright had been told to do these things to him by the Newsfeed's legal department, or else. Cygnus tended to have an inflated sense of self-worth. He'd ruffled loose a lot of Powers-that-be feathers in his forty-four years of journalism and those particular chickens he plucked; had decided to roost an angel upon him and his news-feed. He had been through this kind of nonsense before, when someone stupid had bought the Times Advocate as a hobby. Such owners tried to 'run the newsfeed' as if the dabblers had any concept of how to go out and get stories, or could judge which stories were fit to transmit into the web and which stories should be buried dead...

Gonzalez stuck his head inside the door to tell Cygnus; “Hey, Chief? Guess who's back from the parish lockup. Somebody just sprung your favorite reporter, Loretta Lavanau.” He pointed at a somebody who just hopped off the vertex.

**Since when was that pain-in-the-arse locked up? Had someone in this benighted patch of paved over swampland come to their senses and arrested Loretta Lavanau pre-emptively before she could commit another act of what could be laughably called journalism?** Somehow Cygnus Blanc could string together long ungrammatical convoluted thoughts and make them seem pithy to himself. It was when he tried to speak these thoughts aloud that he embarrassed himself and started to chuck chairs. It was just about now, that Cygnus noticed that his glass topped desk had no legs. It simply floated in place and he found he could not budge it. There was not a single blessed chair to grab and throw either. **Well, I still have the pitcher plant to throw at her.** Cygnus thought succinctly with satisfaction.

Loretta Lavanau bumped Max Hereford Gonzalez out of her way without so much as an excuse me. She plopped her fanny on the corner of the non-supported legless glass desk top and told Cygnus, face to face, about twenty eight centimeters apart, from her nose to his nose; “Hello, Chief! Guess who arrested me and why; and who sprung me and why? This story you can't suppress for your benefactors downtown; because the Feds are into it.”

“The Feds!” stammered Gonzalez and Blanc together as they both stared at Loretta Lavanau in shock. The reporter flicked some nonexistent dirt off her left blouse sleeve.

Blanc asked; “How do you know; it is the Feds?”

Lavanau explained; “An N.O.P.D. cop hauled me in on a traffic obstruction charge on the Earhart Expressway. When was the last time, two people talking on the ground below a flyway, holding a little private conversation, were hassled by a constable, and only one of those people was run in?”

Blanc had to think about that one. **There was the Tatum murder a decade ago, but that was an actual murder and the cop really had no choice with Manndrigal Thompson standing over his lover's body with a bloody ax.** ^9 Cygnus Blanc said; “There may be truth in what you say, Lavanau. It's been at least ten years since anyone was jailed for vagrancy in any fashion in this city. Who sprang you?”

“You mean who paid my cash bond?” asked Lavanau.

Cygnus Blanc remembered why he was constantly irritated with this reporter. “Yes. Who bonded you out of the parish lockup?”

“ 'A and A Surety' ” stated Loretta. “I tried to find them in the New Orleans business data base, but they are not listed as a local business. So I wonder...”

Cygnus Blanc face-palmed at Lavanau's stupidity. He talked through his spread hand; “Of course they are not listed locally, you total nitwit. It's the Avatar and Arella Surety, a subsidiary of the Randall Insurance Group!” **Not only were the Feds involved, but by the look of it, there was the specific kind of Feds, who were involved in this situation that made you wish you had a one-way ticket to some non-extraditable political territory that they could not easily haul your carcass out of; like the Lunar Free State where the crazy communistic Tuesday Free Canadians hung out. Those kind of toughest of the tough Feds would still get you (illegally), but at least you could make them sweat a little in the doing of you in... ** he thought.

“You mean the Arella and the Avatar are involved in this case, too?” Lavanau's voice took on the edge of panic.

Cygnus looked at the silent attentive plantimal in the corner and vowed to buy a bag of herbicide the first chance he got to use on it: “No. I don't mean that at all. Someone just contacted the local A and A insurance office to put up a no-collateral surety bond based on a good faith signature, that the company would accept.”

“Who in New Orleans has that kind of credit with the awesome Arella?” asked Lavanau.

Gonzalez pointed in the general direction of the Chief Editor's Office.

“Now who do you suppose, Loretta?” Cygnus Blanc told her.

“I guess that means my story doesn't get published and transmitted?” asked Loretta Lavanau.

“Not unless she okays it.” agreed Cygnus Blanc. “But that can't prevent you from giving me the juicy details.” he encouraged her. "Since you've told me this much, I might as well as hear all about what you suspect about Mr. Harry Hildebrand Kranberry and how he is supposed to be the means to clean up the Big Easy.” Cygnus was a natural born gossip.


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Three offices to the corner; the northwest end of the Picayune Building, an apricot orange-glowing woman stood behind her version of the floating glass topped desk. She ruminated about the hilarious irony; **Some supposedly smart and capable people, namely Loretta Lavanau and Cygnus Blanc, still have to be led around by the nose with such painfully obvious public clues; such as which bail bond service providers might be used to bail Lavanau out of the hoosegow to point such geniuses in the right direction as far as a news story went.**

Amanda le Beau, perched on a bean bag chair, and grasping a peculiar two handled very heavy thermos mug filled with Cajun coffee asked; “How much does this mug weigh?”

“About twenty two pounds or ten kilograms. Use the straw, Marshal. It's easier than trying to hold the thing and sip from the lip.” said the angel. “It might interest you to know that mug is a 'renormalization gift' from the Seraph, herself.” Starbright sipped a different concoction from her own frost-covered duplicate insulated mug. Amanda le Beau could only guess at what kind of ersatz potion might produce ICE on the outside of that kind of very insulated container.

Amanda asked politely; “Are you listening in on their conversation?”

“Of course not.” protested the lying Charlotta Softon. “That would be illegal!”

“Lip-reading?” suggested the cop.

“Also illegal.” said Starbright.

“Then how?” asked the Marshal. "How are you going to know what they said to each other?"

Charlotta said; “I'll ask the plantimal. Nothing illegal about it; if some third party tells me what she hears.”

Amanda le Beau stated the flaw in the plan. “Cygnus Blanc will get rid of your spy bush.”

“Polly is poison, bullet, acid and flame proof. If Cygnus brings in something that could hurt Polly, I expect you would arrest him under the Firearms Control Act.” said Starbright sweetly.

“But he has the civil right and obligation to bear arms.” pointed out Amanda.

“Not if he drags in a meson cannon-armed tank.” said Starbright brightly. “He may claim he's getting rid of a noxiousa plant, but it will be obvious to any jury, that such a large weapon to do in Polly, my service plantimal, could only be intended for a major target. That would mean, he commits sedition, by threatening ME and my well-being. I am that specific strategic weapon at risk that must be protected, Marshal. And with that much said; how about briefing me about the next part of your plan?” She grinned hugely as if she enjoyed the discomfiture she knew that the Marshal had to suffer, with Amanda being the out-front person in this new-invented and shared scheme to clean up New Orleans. It would not be Starbright who would be flushed down the Saggy Alpha toilet; if this operation blew back at them. All Amanda, all the time, it appeared to be to Amanda le Beau, just as if Starbright had picked her out, especially, as the named fall-person to be used in the post-operational debacle finger-pointing blame phase.

The marshal shrugged her shoulders; “We have to wait for the trial and wing it from there.” The angel laughed at her.

“The only one who can fly around here, is me; and I do not have or use wings to do it.” mocked Starbright. “What are you going to do?”

End of Part I.

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