The following passages are excerpted from Selected Conversations with Chern, Elias, & Rhone, and possibly inaccurate depending on which universe you live in.
R: Missing?
C: Depends who you choose to believe. I choose, yes. The connections are too many, too taut, too ornate to be mocking, mere… coincidence.
R: Remind us what these are.
C: The suitcase left at the airport [containing silks], the hotel room checked into — never checked out of, as we all know —
R: Remind us of the state.
C: State of the room?
R: Yes.
C: Lots of shampoo bottles strewn across the bathroom. Not one, but two digital music playback devices. Loaded with sundry techno-pop. Neckies, 14 of them. Colorful ones. And, as the investigators found, the mirror was completely caked in fog, even days, even weeks after the last possible shower had been taken. Damn uncanny. And the food — the food! Cubed watermelons on the second bed, along with a mostly-uneaten tray of sushi… turned out to be a 104-piece platter from the hotel's Celebrilliant cafe. Missing inventory, as I recall — if I do infact recall correctly — tallied up to 3 fried shrimp rolls, 1 piece of yam tempura, 2 tuna nigiri, 4 cucumber rolls —
R: Thanks, I don't believe we need the minutiae here. We need to discuss the disappearance.
C: Ah yes, well, that's the thing — we have no proof whatsoever that Fletcher ever left the hotel room. For when the door opens, it logs that. If you open the sliding door to the balcony, it logs that. All recorded, and the system would've known the different between entrance and exit. So first of all, that's the most striking aspect. I hazard to cant a cliché, but "disappeared into thin air" comes to mind here.
R: We can't rule this out as longshot, which has been known to happen on rare occasions.
C: But longshot, intriguingly enough, statistically almost always results in no noticed absence. Except for when, you know, those malicious cases in which someone leaves here to go there and kill…
[A nervous silence fills the room. E, who's been quiet up to this portion of the interview, coughs loudly. And then,]
R: Right. We have no leads, nor good reason to believe that James Fletcher, noted author, motivational speaker, and a community manager of the Gametaverse, intended to commit parallel-self murder to further his goals.
C: The Afrerican proverb comes to mind, then: "I want water to be wet and the sun to be hot, as I hope the shade beneath rock will never be missed."
R: And as I could easily add from Clade's Opulent Vinyls, "And for all the wars of our brothers, the strife of our sons, there are no battles to be fought here, no glories to be won."
RELATED QUOTES FOR FURTHER STUDY
"There is no discernable pleasure without curiosity." -Ainsley Talesworth
"All too often, experts know what is good for themselves, but not others. Lacking knowledge of self, one knows little about their fellows." -Talbot Winshire III
"It's not hard to be nice. It's not difficult to control your anger. Being quick to temper is a sure sign of fundamental stupidity, and a lovely (my simulated equivalent) breeding ground for test subjects." -iGron (deactivated AI)