Technomancer (Unspeakable Things: Book One)

diamond in the setting. “You can’t break this. You can’t break any of the objects.”
    I blinked at her, then looked down toward my pathetic plastic sunglasses. “Can you mark them up?” I asked.
    “No. Not according to Robert.”
    “Hmm,” I said. I got up and went into her bathroom.
    “What are you doing?” she called after me.
    I came back in a moment with a pair of gold-plated nail clippers.
    “Those are mine,” she snapped.
    “I’m not selling them online,” I said. “I’m going to conduct an experiment.”
    “Oh,” she said, catching on.
    I sat at the table, took the sunglasses, and tried to snip the tip off one of the arms. I clipped at the final hockey-stick-shaped hook that went over the ear. I couldn’t do it, however. It was as if I were trying to cut into a sheet of steel. After a bit of grunting and squeezing, I gave up.
    “Not a mark,” I said.
    “Let me try,” she said. After I handed over the sunglasses and the clippers, I felt a twinge of worry as she went at them. She couldn’t mark them either. Not even a crease.
    “I didn’t think plastic could be unbreakable,” she said, staring at them in defeat.
    “Talk to me about the process. Why do these things exist?”
    Jenna shook her head. “I don’t know much—just what Robert told me. At some point—back in the sixties, I think, these objects were made. Some say they are still being made today, but less often. This one looks newer than most. Once they become objects, they can’t be damaged.”
    “What if you put them into acid or a volcano?”
    “According to Robert,” she said, shaking her head, “nothing happens.”
    I retrieved my sunglasses and tucked them away. She slid her hand back off the table, hiding her ring again. So much for building trust.
    “OK,” I said, “how does yours work?”
    “I don’t know that. I only know what the ring does.”
    “Can you give me a hint, then?”
    “Well, it just makes you lucky. Whatever you want tends to happen.”
    My eyebrows shot up. Right away, I was wondering why Robert had vanished. Was that what she wanted to happen? I didn’t voice the thought, but she caught the look in my eye.
    “No!” she said. “It wasn’t like that! It only works with things that are very close—it has a short range. And you have to be thinking about what you want—and most importantly, it only changes small, physical things. Like dice or cards.”
    I nodded. “Sounds useful in Vegas.”
    “Right. But not if you overdo it. There’s one other critical thing. The bad side. The ring makes others around you have
bad
luck.”
    “Ah, I see. That’s why I was losing so badly, hand after hand.”
    “Sorry,” she said.
    “No problem. I started betting on you and made all the money back.”
    “You also alerted security. Now, tell me the story of these sunglasses.”
    I did so, as best I understood them.
    “What’s the downside?” she asked when I was finished.
    I shrugged. “As far as I know, there isn’t one.”
    She stared at me and shook her head slowly. “There’s always a downside. Robert told me that in no uncertain terms.”
    Frowning, I took out the sunglasses and rotated them slowly with my fingers. I wondered what evil these were doing without my knowledge. I supposed it couldn’t be too bad, like giving me cancer or something. Tony had seemed to live life fully enough—at least up until its abrupt ending.
    I decided to try not to overuse them, all the same.

I’d gotten as much out of Jenna as I could, and it didn’t make sense for me to stay, not with her stretching out semi-provocatively on the king-sized bed while she drank coffee. Besides, I had things to do, and she was devoted to that hotel room, still convinced Robert might come back or call her—if he wasn’t dead.
    “Thanks for helping out, and for being a gentleman about it,” she said as I left, and that made me feel good. She’d promised to stay put and I’d promised I would report back if I found out anything.
    I called a cab, shelled out a twenty from my thick roll of bills, and got a ride to an all-night convenience store. It took me three stops, but I finally found one with disposable phones. I felt eyes on me as I entered the store, but put it down to nerves.
    The convenience store was typical of its breed, but, typical of Las Vegas, had lottery tickets in unusual abundanceand variety. There was a slot machine in the store, an old one that let you play draw poker for a quarter. I