looked up. Caught a faint tang of ammonia, and then it was gone. “Someone’s been printing,” I said.
I began opening desk drawers. One was locked, but it was too narrow to hold what I was looking for. I went through each drawer of the filing cabinet, looking for stacks of rice paper, or at least printing supplies. I found nothing but ordinary paper, file folders, tangled computer cables.
Hootan yelled from the front room, “What’s taking so long?”
“Shut up,” I yelled back.
I walked out of the office. Caught another whiff of amines. I started for the warehouse, then stopped, turned toward the other small door. It was unlocked. I pushed it open and flipped on the light, expecting a scattering of cockroaches. It was a bathroom, newly renovated and sparkling clean: white tile, new toilet, a shower stall guarded by a white rubber curtain. I pulled back the curtain.
“Here we go,” Dr. G said, excited.
A new-looking chemjet printer sat on a wire crate positioned in the center of the shower stall. The printer’s exhaust fan and runoff port had been covered by an elegant filter and valve system. Plastic tubes snaked down into the shower drain. In the corner of the stall was an open FedEx box agleam with foil c-packs. Many of them were labeled with the hexagonal sperm symbol of phenethylamine, the yeast of artisanal drug manufacturing.
The chemjet wasn’t a model I recognized. Most of these machines were made in China or Malaysia and stamped with generic-sounding names like “Print Pro,” but this one had no markings that I could see. And those valves were a cut above the usual hobbyist price point.
The printer wasn’t turned on, so I thought it safe to pop the lid. It was like opening the hood of a Chrysler K-car and discovering a Ferrari engine. No, an art project. I recognized many of the components—copper tubes, mini-ovens (each costing thousands of dollars apiece), ceramic refrigeration coils, glass reaction chambers—but others were a mystery to me. Tubes and wires crossed and recrossed in a web that reminded me of neurons, or those graphs showing every possible relation in a social network.
This was like no chemjet I’d ever seen. A normal printer was designed to cook multiple recipes within a certain range, like a home bread maker. No reaction chamber connected directly to another, because you might have to plug in other steps—for drying, mixing, or distilling—to make whatever drug you programmed.
But this engine was so convoluted, so complicated, I knew I didn’t have the skills to take it apart and put it back together to see how it worked. The best I could hope for was a kind of brain scan: watch it in action and try to figure out what was happening.
“Why does this look familiar?” Dr. G asked.
“No idea,” I said. “But this thing makes Numinous, I’m sure of it. We have to take it with us.”
“We can’t just walk out with it,” Dr. G said. “Fayza would never let us keep it.”
The angel had a point. I snapped the lid back in place and closed the rubber curtain. I walked out of the bathroom, then back in.
Dr. G said, “We need—”
“A decoy,” I said.
I jogged back to the office and grabbed the box of communion wafers.
In the front room, Pastor Rudy and Luke sat on the seats—the pastor relaxed, Luke anxious—while Hootan paced in front of them, still holding his hand in his front pocket.
“Why are you doing that?” I asked him.
“What?” Hootan asked.
“The hand thing. Either show them the gun or not. What’s the deal with hiding it, but letting everyone know you’re hiding it?”
Hootan resentfully removed his hand from his pouch, sans gun. He looked at the box in my hand. “Did you find it?”
“I have to test it, but I’m ninety percent sure the pastor here is delivering it through these.”
“Crackers?”
Oh, right. Muslim. “Communion wafers,” I said. “The powder form of the drug mixes easily with unleavened bread.”
Luke
I began opening desk drawers. One was locked, but it was too narrow to hold what I was looking for. I went through each drawer of the filing cabinet, looking for stacks of rice paper, or at least printing supplies. I found nothing but ordinary paper, file folders, tangled computer cables.
Hootan yelled from the front room, “What’s taking so long?”
“Shut up,” I yelled back.
I walked out of the office. Caught another whiff of amines. I started for the warehouse, then stopped, turned toward the other small door. It was unlocked. I pushed it open and flipped on the light, expecting a scattering of cockroaches. It was a bathroom, newly renovated and sparkling clean: white tile, new toilet, a shower stall guarded by a white rubber curtain. I pulled back the curtain.
“Here we go,” Dr. G said, excited.
A new-looking chemjet printer sat on a wire crate positioned in the center of the shower stall. The printer’s exhaust fan and runoff port had been covered by an elegant filter and valve system. Plastic tubes snaked down into the shower drain. In the corner of the stall was an open FedEx box agleam with foil c-packs. Many of them were labeled with the hexagonal sperm symbol of phenethylamine, the yeast of artisanal drug manufacturing.
The chemjet wasn’t a model I recognized. Most of these machines were made in China or Malaysia and stamped with generic-sounding names like “Print Pro,” but this one had no markings that I could see. And those valves were a cut above the usual hobbyist price point.
The printer wasn’t turned on, so I thought it safe to pop the lid. It was like opening the hood of a Chrysler K-car and discovering a Ferrari engine. No, an art project. I recognized many of the components—copper tubes, mini-ovens (each costing thousands of dollars apiece), ceramic refrigeration coils, glass reaction chambers—but others were a mystery to me. Tubes and wires crossed and recrossed in a web that reminded me of neurons, or those graphs showing every possible relation in a social network.
This was like no chemjet I’d ever seen. A normal printer was designed to cook multiple recipes within a certain range, like a home bread maker. No reaction chamber connected directly to another, because you might have to plug in other steps—for drying, mixing, or distilling—to make whatever drug you programmed.
But this engine was so convoluted, so complicated, I knew I didn’t have the skills to take it apart and put it back together to see how it worked. The best I could hope for was a kind of brain scan: watch it in action and try to figure out what was happening.
“Why does this look familiar?” Dr. G asked.
“No idea,” I said. “But this thing makes Numinous, I’m sure of it. We have to take it with us.”
“We can’t just walk out with it,” Dr. G said. “Fayza would never let us keep it.”
The angel had a point. I snapped the lid back in place and closed the rubber curtain. I walked out of the bathroom, then back in.
Dr. G said, “We need—”
“A decoy,” I said.
I jogged back to the office and grabbed the box of communion wafers.
In the front room, Pastor Rudy and Luke sat on the seats—the pastor relaxed, Luke anxious—while Hootan paced in front of them, still holding his hand in his front pocket.
“Why are you doing that?” I asked him.
“What?” Hootan asked.
“The hand thing. Either show them the gun or not. What’s the deal with hiding it, but letting everyone know you’re hiding it?”
Hootan resentfully removed his hand from his pouch, sans gun. He looked at the box in my hand. “Did you find it?”
“I have to test it, but I’m ninety percent sure the pastor here is delivering it through these.”
“Crackers?”
Oh, right. Muslim. “Communion wafers,” I said. “The powder form of the drug mixes easily with unleavened bread.”
Luke
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