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Post by The Astronomer on May 8, 2015 14:16:19 GMT
"We kept in touch. He still had connections with the Trustwell Corporation and the U.S. Department of Defense, and I had friends in Interpol to check for patterns. Did you know that in Russia, it is still legal to study interdimensional travel as long as one does not actually breach the barriers themselves? One can still, for an exorbitant fee, purchase functional wormhole generators. Yorick and I had reason to believe one of these devices may have been smuggled here, to the highest known concentration of Sternkinder in the world. Does this not seem ominous to you, Mister Cromwell?"
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Post by Ewan Cromwell on May 8, 2015 14:39:28 GMT
"Suspect feels more appropriate to me" Ewan said.
"However the appropriate wording be damned, this is something worth investigating, something that needs investigating" he continued, his tone indicating his curiosity was stoked.
"Do you have any leads for me to start with, or am I starting from scratch here?" he asked.
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Post by The Astronomer on May 8, 2015 14:49:33 GMT
"I'm not sure..." Willingham wrote down an address on a napkin. "Yorick was staying here before his heartattack. It's an apartment in Old Ambrosia. Because his death was declared to be from natural causes, the police never thought examine it. I can't... I am old, Mister Cromwell. I cannot just run everwhere chasing clues..."
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Post by Ewan Cromwell on May 8, 2015 14:55:35 GMT
"And you should not have to" Ewan said, taking the Napkin.
"Do you have an address or number I can use to contact you?"
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Post by The Astronomer on May 8, 2015 15:04:50 GMT
Hans told him his cell number. "I will be leaving the city after this. I am officially still in D.C., talking to friends. I will be returning to visit the University of Ambrosia at the end of the week. I think you will contact me very easily at that point, ja?"
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Post by Ewan Cromwell on May 8, 2015 15:21:06 GMT
"That I will" Ewan said.
"I must thank you, oddly enough." he continued.
"This case is one I am glad to be able to help with, for a multitude of reasons." He then finished, before getting up.
"And it was nice to see you too, I'm glad you were able to make it here, even briefly" he then added slightly more loudly, before leaving the cafe, not taking the Coffee with him.
Once he had left the Cafe he took the time to read the Napkin, before setting off to the address listed.
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Post by Ewan Cromwell on Jun 17, 2015 3:23:01 GMT
/////////////////
Glad to be back home, Ewan looked around the labyrinth mess that was his Penthouse, though to him it seemed organized well enough. He paused momentarily, before going to make a coffee, with which he returned to the living room as he grabbed one of the laptop's he had lying around the house, specifically one that he had nothing of value stored on. He took a second to disconnect it from his house wireless, before getting out the hard drive from Vaughn's computer, and connecting it to the laptop.
'Lets see what you wanted to keep away from Wick' he thought as he set to accessing the hard drive.
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Post by The Astronomer on Jun 18, 2015 9:25:38 GMT
After entering the password 'wormhole', Ewan spends the next few hours browsing the drive for anything of use. It is not an old OS, and Ewan quickly establishes the device is only two years old at most. It is very likely Vaughan kept the majority of his scientific work in universities and private labs. Occasionally, Ewan opens something that he knows is far beyond his ability to understand, but primarily, the documents consist of reports, letter drafts, and collections of private messages from coworkers, reporters, admirers, and past employers.
Eventually, he manages to sort out the...
*fan mail (Useless at best, disturbing at worst)
*interviews (Vaughan was in support of aiding Starborn, but otherwise refused to discuss the war or his past work beyond technical descriptions. Crossreferencing with YouTube reveals a man who appears dignified and rational on the service, in contrast to the appearance of his study.)
*Trustwell mail (Ewan finds the proof that the company had been bribing Vaughan an exorbitant amount of money to keep silent over Trustwell's possible responsibility for the Reign. Almost every letter is signed by a 'Lionel Hargrave'.)
*And personal correspondence.
Vaughan holds several lengthy discussions with two men in particular, Hans Willingham and the notoriously eccentric Dr. Kazuo Ogami.
He also appeared to be an avid fan of video games, especially Worms and Angry Birds. A quick check of prior history reveals his sole competitor and ally to be a 'Darth_Fafnir.' Vaughan's own signature is 'GoldBug99'
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Post by Ewan Cromwell on Jun 18, 2015 9:33:26 GMT
Once he had sorted the mail, Ewan Deleted the folder of fan mail, confident it would not be of use, with that done, he decided to use his power of Morphic resonance on this Lionel Hargrave, before he decided to take a closer look at the trustwell folder, and the personal correspondance.
He finally took a sip from his coffee, which by that point had started to cool, before starting his closer investigation.
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Post by The Astronomer on Jun 18, 2015 9:40:34 GMT
Images come to him of a starkly handsome man, expensive suit, easy smile, friendly eyes.
Hargrave is a fool if he thinks we'll kowtow/Saw Hargrave today, thinks we should refine our approach towards the public this quarter/The Mayor will see you now, Mister Hargave/Sir, the Colonel has asked us to escort you directly to him/Do you enjoy the thrill of having power over another human being?/Fifty years ago, this restaurant was opened by a starving Irish immigrant. Today, the waiters speak French. Progress.
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Post by Ewan Cromwell on Jun 18, 2015 9:46:47 GMT
Ewan, intrigued by what he had found, decided to see what he could find on Hargrave through the internet.
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Post by The Astronomer on Jun 18, 2015 10:03:42 GMT
The Trustwell's Corporation's Lionel Hargrave is listed as a 'Senior Solutions Consultant' by various sources, and there are several pictures of him in group shots with local Ambrosia celebrities, such as Mayor Barker, the APD, Colonel Rodgers at Fort Kirby, and even Yorick Vaughan. In the last photo, Ewan can clearly see Hargrave handing over the same award he found shattered in Vaughan's waste-bin.
A more indepth investigation reveals he is a career lawyer, a graduate of Yale, and has been with the company at least twenty years. He is nearly fifty, and he looks Ewan's age, clearly benefiting from high-end anti-aging techniques most people cannot afford. There are a few articles describing his wife's car crash during the Reign, but nothing in-depth. The press had bigger stories to investigate at the time. He looks much older in a picture taken just after.
According to publicly released statements, Hargrave makes only slightly less than Chronos Consolidated COO Erwin Price. Facebook also states his favorite author is Agatha Christie, and he thinks George Harrison's All Things Must End was the best album of the 20th century.
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Post by Ewan Cromwell on Jun 18, 2015 10:30:34 GMT
"Interesting" Ewan said to himself, as he then set to work, transferring the information he had decided to keep onto several USB sticks, ensuring he had one copy of the data on him, one in his office, in a small safe he kept, and one hidden under the sink.
With that sorted he was uncertain what to do next, he had been putting off thinking about his mother since he arrived home, for multiple reasons, but he now had run out of immediate tasks to occupy himself with.
The way he saw it, he really had two possibilities, Something with Trustwell, or Wick, a small part of him still hoped whatever had Vaughn scared was Trustwell, but he knew it probably had something to do with Wick, which meant it had something to do with his Mother.
Ewan, uncertain what his next step was, decided there was one thing he could do with what he had, and so set to work on the emails from the Trustwell folder, doing what he could to hide Doctor Vaughn while keeping the content and value of the Email's the same.
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Post by The Astronomer on Jun 23, 2015 3:07:51 GMT
Ewan finds some success masking certain content, without ruining the gist of the writer's intent. Certain letters are easier to edit than others though, as some are very clearly Yorick Vaughn himself. All the while, Ewan learns more corporate corruption than he ever wanted to know. There are warnings here of 'weakening the inherent stability of expected physics' and 'exposing our planet to unforeseen consequences'.
Other interesting Trustell reports include descriptions of hospitable realities, assays of mineral content and animal life, and agricultural propositions. Ogami's name appears attached to several reports, but large portions are already redacted by the time they reached Vaughn's eyes, it seems.
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Post by Ewan Cromwell on Jun 23, 2015 3:12:03 GMT
Once he was finished, Ewan assessed what he had, and how much the information that kept Vaughn's identity revealed.
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