Plotting Murder

Verna Gardner
It's late when she calls. Verna's daytime hours aren't nearly enough to complete what she has to do. Even on the weekends, something always conspires to make sure she has but a few hours to eat and maybe to sleep in a given day. It's so much that she's almost forgotten about the dark stranger who gave her his number a week ago. Almost.

Saturdays are a day of rest, and this is why, at 8:00, she finally has nothing to do.

The rules say that the girl shouldn't call the guy first. But it's been a week, and besides, would she have time to talk if he called her later? And he gave her his number first. It's all so confusing, isn't it? So she opts for courage and calls him. If he does want to help with her little problem, he should know about that problem, yes? And if he no longer wants to help, then, it's best she know that too.

Somewhere else in Denver, Cipriano's phone rings. Upon picking it up, he'll hear Verna's voice -- quiet on the other end. "Hi. It's Verna. We met at 1Up?"

Cipriano Santos-Augustine
"Technically," Cipriano says, voice all rich gold velvet, "We met at the shooting range.  It does please me that you have yet to be devoured by your demons.  How does the evening find you?"  Verna might approve of that voice, which if one could bottle it might glow warm amber like the sunlight Cipriano hasn't seen for a century.  Such a thing would belong in a palace, and there have been occasions when Cipriano has been in a palace, dancing and laughing and feeding in the kind of luxurious surroundings that one would expect to find a Ventrue in.

Currently, he's on a rooftop, surveying the city.  He spent the night in a mechanical closet, with dust and the memory of mice.  Verna would be less impressed by this than by some of his previous residences, but Cipriano is unconcerned about the character of the place in which he sleeps so long as certain requirements concerning the sun are met.  This is still better than the month he spent living in sewers; he may have come to be at peace enough with the rats and the labyrinthine twists, but the world seemed to fall closer and closer in until he would suffocate without the open sky.  Nevermind that he no longer needed to breathe.  He could still feel it.

Verna Gardner
"You keep talking about my problem like I'm going to be eaten up at any moment," Verna says, slightly amused. But there is some truth to that, isn't there? It's enough to keep her from laughing, at least. "It's more likely he'll find out where I'm hiding and... Well, after what happened a couple of weeks ago, I'm not his favorite person."

She sighs, such a human thing to do -- an expression of not having the breath to express what needs to be.

"He's a bad man, Mister Santos-Augustine. I'd probably end up worse than dead, if that makes any sense."

Cipriano Santos-Augustine
Cipriano is perfectly silent while Verna speaks, but once she stops he laughs.  And, naturally, the first thing he says is, "Did you just call me Mister Santos-Augustine?  I do believe we can do away with such formalities."

He, too, makes a sound in his throat.  It is not about breath and what it costs to take or to hold steady.  Neither of those things are a part of who he is.  Sometimes, sometimes he remembers what it was like to breathe.  To struggle for breath, to master breath.  A hundred years since he has needed to he still breathes in before he fires.

It is not the memory of breath that binds him to Verna.  It is not the memory of a fast-beating heart.  It is the knowledge that they are, both of them, hunted.  For all of his easy laughter and playful demands and the ease with which he can be moved to teach a girl to shoot or try pinball for the first time, Cipriano knows how being hunted can be wearying.

There have been so many nights he wished for a safe place to rest.  The knowledge that he was, if only for the moment, safe.

In order to have that, he would need to spill his secrets.  Reveal truths and weaknesses that he would rather leave in shadow.  Verna though, granting that to Verna is, at least so far as he knows, so much less complicated.

"There are many worse fates than death," he says, and there is still some of that laughter threaded through his voice.  Delicate patterns of velvet on something smoother and silkier, intricate lush paisley swirls on something cool and billowing.  "For instance, I once attended a frat party.  It consisted primarily of intoxicated people falling haphazardly over furniture and into bed with one another, an outcome I hold some fondness for when it is not accompanied by the scent of awful beer.  This is a mistake I will not make again.

"We shall hope, for both our sakes, that your demons smell less appalling.  Have you called to tell me about them?"

Verna Gardner
The man with the velvet voice says that he holds some fondness for people falling into bed with one another, and Verna's mouth ticks up a smile. If she knew that he'd spent the day sleeping in a mechanical closet, she might not. But that's among the many, many things that remain a mystery about Mister Santos-Augustine. To her, he's a man who deserves a bit of such formality.

"Yes. I thought that if you were serious about wanting to help me, you should know the whole story," she says, and there's a bit of sadness in it. Maybe she thinks if he knows the whole story, he won't be so enthused.

"Thankfully, I don't think my demons have ever seen the inside of a college, so you won't find them at a frat party. I do recall the scent of particularly bad cologne though."

Cipriano Santos-Augustine
"Do they, as so many with inferior cologne, attempt to make up in quantity what is lacking in quality?"  Is that the most relevant thing, Cipriano?  Really?  You can hear the smile in voice, practically see it hovering in the air like a Cheshire cat grin.

"And the whole story would, of course, be welcome.  If I am to suffer through the scent of awful cologne, I would prefer to know why."  There is a slight pause.  "It does, after all, sound terribly dangerous.  They could spritz me with it.  Do you know what a trial it is to get scents out of leather? "

Verna Gardner
She laughs. They're talking about people out to make her life hell, but she laughs. He disarms any conversation with that lovely voice, like you could fall into it and just relax.

"Okay. So, I suppose I'll start with the beginning," she says, trying to shove a bit of seriousness into her tone. We're not going to talk about humorous things right?

"A friend of mine, Marie, wanted to go out, so I met her at a bar. Pretty normal, really, except that when I got there I could tell that she was just covered in bruises. She said she wanted to get away from her boyfriend, Jon Marc, and it wasn't hard to understand why. So I told her I would watch her children while she was moving out. She wouldn't have to worry about them, you know?

"Still, fairly normal. I just thought he was an abuser. She would leave and everything would be fine."

Everything did not end up fine, did it? No, things couldn't be that simple.

Cipriano Santos-Augustine
"Just," says Cipriano, and now there is an edge to that tone, sharp like the bite of frost, still mostly hidden under layers of gauzy silk.  "An abuser."

There is a pause then, before he asks, this time, a more relevant question.  "Where are Marie and her children now?"  A shorter pause.  "Or, perhaps, should you not wish to share that knowledge...are they safe?"

Verna Gardner
"I don't know," she says, and her voice cracks a bit. "He thinks I know, which means he doesn't know either. That's really the only silver lining to all this. It seems that at least her children got out."

Verna sighs again. She did not get out, not by any stretch of the imagination.

"The day she was going to drop off her kids, I found a man watching my apartment. He'd done something to the front door, made it so it wouldn't open. So I crawled out of a window to get away from him. I fell, and he picked up my phone and tried to play like he wasn't spying on me, but he saw my messages to Marie, and he wasn't a very good liar. I told her to stay away from me. I was being watched. So she did.

"And that's why I don't know where her children are, and why Jon Marc thinks that I do."

Cipriano Santos-Augustine
Here, he does take a breath at the swell of the memory of light streaming through stained glass.  Glinting off of gold and rubies.  Echoing across the vastness of a cathedral.  "Small miracles, no?"

There is another pause, and to see him, seeming to stay upright only by virtue of being half tangled in a ladder, one would think he was having an entirely different conversation.  That these slight pauses were not points of tactical decision.  "So.  Jon Marc?"

Verna Gardner
"Jon. Marc," she says, and for all that Cipriano has never heard her utter a curse, that man's name sounds like it. "And his grotesque accomplice. He has a friend. Probably a lot more than one."

Which, of course, is why she's been so wary, so watchful. It's why she's distrusted you every time, until won over by that silken tongue.

"It wasn't long after that that my workplace was broken into. They bashed down the door with heavy machinery and proceeded to destroy the laboratory. Everything was smashed to pieces, and..." she pauses, takes a breath. "There was blood. And my boss and his partner are still missing."

That's an old wound with her. She loved her boss more than she wanted to. He was kind and generous and so very brilliant. She doesn't know that the reason why it hurts so much was because he spiked her drinks with vitae. Cipriano will only note that her carefully collected, professional nature just breaks down at that point. She thinks that what happened to them might have had something to do with Jon Marc's terror campaign. And it's just too terrible to put into words. It might have been all her fault.

She takes some time to compose herself, and when she comes back, the only thing that spikes her words is anger.

"A few months later, Jon Marc cornered me in a coffee shop. He taunted me with what happened, and wanted to know where Marie's children were. I told him off. He got angry and left. Too public to do anything to me then."

Cipriano Santos-Augustine
Blood.  There it is, inevitable and shimmering.  Sometimes it seems the only real thing: the blood that he craves, the blood that granted him time and strength, the blood that men seem so willing to spill.  Rubies on gold.  Copper on concrete.

And Verna's anger, crimson spilling over marble.  Shadows falling over the sea.  That kind of truth he knows also.

"Are you sure that those two things are connected?  Was Marie connected to your work, perhaps?  Abuse and stalking rarely turn into heavy machinery and the abduction or death of people so tenuously related, in my experience.  Do you have, beyond the closeness of the two things as they occurred, some reason to suspect Jon Marc?

"It very well could be Jon Marc, but if it is, I suspect the situation may be a bit more complicated than an abusive relationship.  This kind of escalation is...unusual."  That first bite of anger has faded now, into something restless like the stirring of leaves that follows the first kiss of autumn frost.

Verna Gardner
"It is more complicated than that. I wouldn't have suspected him in that, except that he seemed to know what happened there. He was gleeful about it, like he wanted to impress on me that he did that once and he could do it again," she says, and the memory tastes like ashes, like something caustic.

"And, later on, another woman came and found me. She told me what he wanted the children for. He pits them against dogs in fights. People watch and bet on the outcome. I think he took someone close to her, maybe a child, I don't know. But a man like that, he doesn't care. Breaking into my workplace and killing people would probably count as a Tuesday to that man.

"It has become much more than than my helping my friend leave her abusive boyfriend, yes. The escalation is bizarre. But everything about Jon Marc is so utterly disgusting, I wouldn't put anything past him."

She takes another deep breath. Now that the truth is becoming clearer, perhaps Cipriano might want to back out. Still, there is something about being able to tell someone the story. It's a cleansing thing, letting the bile out.

Cipriano Santos-Augustine
Cipriano, even teaching Verna to shoot, has always been a creature of grace.  He is prone to languid pauses and rich laughter, and it was perhaps easy enough to let it slip from her mind the precision of his shots into his target.  To let go of the thoughts about what kind of things would drive someone to such a degree of skill.  To be so bold and so ready to offer his aid in a moment like this.

As one might forget, for just long enough, that an affectionate lion remains a lion.  That lions, even less than house cats and certainly less than dogs, are not creatures to whom the word tame can ever truly be applied.

Here through, sudden and sharp, is the sense of exposed teeth.  For the first time, more of a low growl than a purr.  "What?"  Apparently, sending children into dogfights will damage even Cipriano's calm.

Verna Gardner
"Yes. My demons, Mister.... Cipriano. They are demonic," Verna says. "When you saw me at the shooting range, it was because my apartment had been broken into. They broke every piece of glass I had. It was like it was back at the lab, only they didn't find anyone inside to kidnap or murder. I wanted to be able to do something to protect myself -- something. The police, though, they thought I did that. To my own apartment. That was their official response."

Verna has such a love/hate relationship with the police lately. They are helpful and unhelpful in schizophrenic fashion. They're imbeciles who occasionally stumble upon the right thing to do.

"What really has me afraid is that I ran into him again recently. I think I made him very angry with me this time."

Cipriano Santos-Augustine
"The police act within certain limitations, even when they can be bothered to apply the fullest scope of their power to justice rather than extortion."

Verna cannot see one of his eyebrows arch upward, paired with a slight lifting of the corners of his mouth.  He thinks he might enjoy this part of the story.  "Oh?"

Verna Gardner
"I went to see Maddy, the woman who told me everything about Jon Marc? We went to a Mexican restaurant. It was a set up. She knew he was there, and wanted to catch him doing something horrible to me on video," Verna says, but the anger she might feel towards Maddy is tempered a bit. She recounts that whole thing like it were just a footnote in the grand scheme of things. Maddy's already paid her dues.

"Which, he did try to do something horrible. I yelled at him. I told him I didn't know where Marie's children were. And I told him I knew what he wanted to do with them. His little friend was there, trying to keep him from reacting, but he grabbed me. I told someone to call the police, and he said 'Silence!' like he was some kind of cliche villain, accused me of being insane, and started dragging me out into the alley behind the restaurant. Maddy followed and took video of the whole thing, of course.

"I don't know why... I think I was just shocked or scared. I did everything he said, except... I tried to Mace him. It didn't... I couldn't get it to work. So I just ran."

She couldn't get it to work because he told her to drop it. And just like that... everything left her hands. The why of that escapes her. It has her tumbling over words in a diatribe that has been mostly fluid up to that point. She just wants to tell someone, to get it out.

"When I got around to the front of the restaurant, the police were there. I told them what happened, and there were witnesses at the restaurant to insist that I wasn't lying. And Maddy was unconscious out in the alley."

Cipriano Santos-Augustine
As it turns out, he does not like this part of the story better.  Verna cannot explain to him clearly, cannot fully grasp what has happened to her.  He does not know that it id because she met something like him, but there are only a handful of things that provoke such a response.

For a moment, he is quiet.  He weighs what he has heard, the likelihood that if not vampires there may be some supernatural creature or force at work.  He replays the conversation in his mind, searching for clues she did not know she was giving to something he was not at the time alert for.

"I don't suppose you somehow ended up with a copy of that video?  You say his friend is grotesque.  How so?  Perhaps it will help us identify him."  Perhaps he is Nosferatu.  "What about patterns?  What times and places have you encountered them or have you known them to be?  Can you think of a pattern there that may help us search for them?  Are there any details that strike you as common between these events that seems significant?"

Verna Gardner
"Does this mean you still want to help me?" she asks, hopeful at last. "I thought perhaps if you knew what I was up against, you'd tell me to have good luck with that."

She laughs a little, a bit of dark humor. It would make sense. Nobody would just stick their neck out like this for some acquaintance. But Cipriano seems to be willing. What he wants in return could be... anything. But chances are it's better than what Jon Marc has planned.

"His friend looks like... like Mister Clean. A bald guy with white eyebrows. He's a little... grizzled, like he works dirty jobs, and -- hmm, I suppose he does. Jon Marc, on the other hand, he's superficially good looking. I mean, he's disgusting, but you wouldn't know it to look at him. Curly black hair, always looks like he just remembered he left the stove on. Prone to angry outbursts."

But then, aren't you rather prone to angry outbursts yourself, Verna? At least when he's involved...

"I haven't noticed a pattern in times, really. But places, yes. He finds me in public, at low-end restaurants and cafes. They find out where I live and where I work. But they've done all this in the mornings as well as in the middle of the night on New Year's. Usually, if I stick to places like libraries and art galleries, I feel pretty safe, because I am just that doubtful that his kind would step foot in them. They are both about as intelligent as bricks."

Cipriano Santos-Augustine
At that last, Cipriano laughs again, and there is nothing bitter in it.  This is a rich and ringing sound.  And he can, when he chooses, cloak his intentions and his thoughts, that is true.  But this joy is real and wild and clear, all rushing alpine streams and echoing church bells.  "Perhaps," he says, and there is something serious in that velvet voice with the last echoes of that laughter.  "But a plan like this, an enterprise like this, requires cunning.  If not theirs, than someone else.

"And whoever holds the puppets...it would be better we saw them than those who dance on their strings.  Still, we should be able to find our answers.  Even should Jon Marc prove difficult to track, there is a dog fighting ring.  Those are not so easily hidden from those that are looking.  If they are willing to abduct children, they are also likely willing to abduct dogs.  And then, of course," here that amber velvet darkens to something more like tarnished gold.  The last reddish rays of the sun as she claws at the horizon.  "There will be the bodies."

Verna Gardner
"I haven't sought out to find them. Not yet anyway. If I did, what would I do? Walk up to his hovel and have a nice chat over tea? I think not. It's just... the police are worthless, and as you said, this is an enterprise. So far, it has just been me running. I'm so tired of running."

And there is a worn-out character to her, Cipriano. She fights demons and goes to grad school and teaches. When her students come to her with their excuses about homework, she hasn't the will to care, because here she is being terrorized by violent thugs and still manages to get her homework done.

It leaves one with a bit of weariness and frays at the edges.

There's a long pause. Breathing on the other end, like she doesn't know what to say next, and then: "Thank you. Even for just listening. For not telling me that I'm crazy."

Cipriano Santos-Augustine
"Running...."  And here, for a second, he lets his voice fall into silk, no velvet and no colored light and no bells.  He does not betray his own weariness, would not dare such a thing even if she could know how it is he could know what it was like to run for decades.  He knows what understanding is worth though, and that is enough to drop much of the show.  "Does become exhausting.  You start, at a point to wonder if you have left behind so many parts of yourself you are still yourself.

"I do not think that is how this ends for you, though.  We will find them, and pick our ground, and then we will fight.  However that ends, you will not doubt who you are."

Verna Gardner
"I'm not much of a fighter. I couldn't even Mace the man. You saw me at the shooting range? It was the first time I've ever fired a gun. I've never needed to."

There's a tapping on the phone, fingernails, like she's trying to think.

"About the best I could do is if they were stupid enough to try to attack me in the lab at school, where I could lock them in a closet with argon for air," she says, laughs a little, because it is a bit humorous to speak of murdering people with some guy you've just met. That and the idea of locking Jon Marc in a closet with argon for air does sound so very nice, doesn't it?

"You sound like you know what I'm going through."

Cipriano Santos-Augustine
"Would you not have expected such a thing, after you saw me shoot?"  He asks her quietly.  "You perfect such skills, as a rule, either because you have need of them to defend yourself or because you have a love of violence.

"I may be no stranger to violence, but I bear it no love.  And I think you have suspected, if not known that, since we met.  And that, even if I might not come to be the friend in this that you would want, I might well come to be the ally that you would need."

Verna Gardner
He speaks of being allies. So did Maddy, and look how that turned out? She was used like meat in the center of a trap, to be beaten or killed for Maddy's vengeance. Alliances can be so fraught, can't they?

"Why? Why would you do this for me? For some girl you've barely met?"

Cipriano Santos-Augustine
And Verna may fare no better with Cipriano, that is true.  But Verna, for all she may not stay there long is no part of the world where he fears betrayal so keenly.  Where he must always be on his guard.  A world that drives him to a weariness to match hers, for all it is so much harder to read in him.

"It isn't for you.  It was, when all I thought I needed to do was punch someone in the face and tell him to fuck off.  But now it is something else.  I certainly desire no harm come to you, but with what we're talking about, I would be either a liar or a fool to promise that.  And you would be a fool to believe me.

"You could still run.  I would think no less of you.  But I don't think running is your desire.  I'm not the kind of person one calls if they aren't willing to face at least some dark corners of the world."  And, in all of that, there is no answer to her question.  Of course there isn't.  He gave her a truth, but not exactly the one she asked him for.

Verna Gardner
"I have important work to do, promises to keep. I don't want to run." Verna says, although his words ring true. She could just run. Abandon her dreams here, and seek somewhere else. The threads that kept her tied to such promises are frayed with the passage of time. She still wants to be loyal to her old boss, but yet...

Maybe she will look to transfer to another school after this semester is over, perhaps that would be the wise course of action. But something in her does want to see Jon Marc pay for all his numerous misdeeds. Part of her wants to see him afraid for a change. Part of her wants to watch him die.

Cipriano isn't wrong. She knows why she called him. Perhaps that is why he'll do it.

"But what do you want in return for all this? I mean, if not a friend..." then what am I to you? The way she says the word 'friend' suggests something more, like she can't imagine why a man would do such a thing if not for the one thing that all men have on their minds.

Cipriano Santos-Augustine
There is a long pause.  But he is in a new city, Verna.  Lonely.  Weary.

Eternity is a very long time.  Even the sliver of it he has lived is a very long time.

"Are you so sure you want to ask me for the truth?"  His voice is still silken.  His voice has always been that, after all.  Cipriano always commanded attention.  Was always graceful.  Blood gave him strength, blood made him more compelling, blood gave him power; it did not change his nature.  There are those who say that it does, that it must.  Look though, at humanity.  Greed.  Corruption.  Violence.  How many of the living hold fast against temptation?  The Embrace just gives some of them a greater span of time in which to fall to their own demons.  Common, perhaps, but not inevitable.

Verna Gardner
"Whatever it is, I'm almost certain it's better than being abducted and forced to fight dogs in a pit until I die. I have so many great and wonderful options," she says, huffs into the phone another dark laugh.

There's a sound on the other end, fabric sliding against fabric. She's moving, or reclining. Comforting herself in blankets perhaps.

"Maybe I don't want to know. Maybe I want to pretend? But I'm too smart for that."

Cipriano Santos-Augustine
There is a sound that catches low in his throat, without being able to see his face it is hard to place an emotion to it.  Judging by the somewhat lighter tone that follows, it was most likely a laugh.  "Indeed, brilliance can illuminate and brilliance can sear."

There follows a pause.  Had he still the reflex to breathe there would have been a sigh, but there is no breath to release with some of his tension.  And Cipriano, even about to give away this much of himself is far too self-possessed to give any other sign.  "I have seen enough of the world that sometimes it wears upon me.  I find that you are a fine diversion.  There have been worse beginnings to friendships than that."  There is weariness, a little, threaded like shadow through his tone.  But there is still something bright, not warm like the sunlight and amber of his laughter, perhaps; rather, cool and glimmering, like starlight on an oasis.  There is not nearly enough weariness in him to overcome that.

Verna Gardner
"A diversion from your own demons? I suppose I could live with that," Verna says. "As long as you help me forget about mine."

Or, you know, kill them. That too. There have been worse beginnings to friendships than murder plots. Not many, perhaps, but still. Some, surely.

"You can call me and talk about gravity or light or whatever you want any time if that's the kind of diversion you seek."

Cipriano Santos-Augustine
"The unknown fascinates me.  No matter how much I learn, it seems there is always more."  Back creeps the velvet and sunlight into his voice.  "When I was very young I used to go to the-"  Church.  "Library.  There was a-"  Monk.  "Man there who had been studying for a very, very long time.  He taught me about history and geography.  Ethics."  God.

"I became a soldier."  Just not in the war you'd think, Verna, for all that is true enough.  "And I've had relatively little time for such studies since."

Verna Gardner
"That's the beautiful thing about the universe. There's always something more to discover," Verna says, shifts again in her human need to keep moving. "We try, but never quite manage to pin down a theory of everything. It's always right around the corner, until we're delightfully surprised at how complicated things actually turn out to be.

"Do you regret becoming a soldier? Would you rather have spent your time studying, do you think?"

Cipriano Santos-Augustine
"I think a world in which there was nothing left to surprise us would be extremely boring," Cipriano says, all the light and velvet back in his voice.  She cannot see him now, lying back over the rooftop.  Will not know that this, for Cipriano, is resting.  Or as close as he gets.  Not tonight, anyway.

"I do not regret my choice to become a soldier any more than I regret my choice to stop being a soldier.  Both were the best decision I could make at the time.  I would not choose to be a soldier now, but that is a different matter entirely than regret."

Verna Gardner
"I regret my choice to stop being a scientist. I went back to it, obviously. I don't want to have to stop again," she says, and maybe Cipriano can guess from this why she has not yet run away.

"My old boss, he... He offered me a way back. I got a job in his lab, and then he paved the way for me to get into grad school. And now he's gone. I just can't find it in myself to throw away the last gift he gave me and run."

Especially since it could all very well have been her fault. If she just hadn't decided to help a friend with something seemingly simple. She's so sad, like this particular wound is taking a long time to heal. So much that she tries to ignore the danger to herself and keep going.

Cipriano Santos-Augustine
"The world is not gentle.  It will take the lives of those we love most.  If you cannot take comfort in his presence any longer, than take comfort in his legacy.  Rebuild the lab.  Continue your work.  Do not stop being a scientist.

"It is not the same as having the living with you.  But I have always found such things comforting.  It was always too much for me to think that people just stopped.  Seeing their legacies always made it seem like there was some meaning in the things that we do."

Verna Gardner
"Exactly. You understand. I'm continuing his research. It's not much, but it's the closest thing to a legacy I can give him. I need to."

She sighs in sadness. So many of those from her. Each one a feeling that can't be voiced.

"We were working on a nanoscale etching process for diamonds. I can write my name on a diamond's surface so small that you'd need an electron microscope to read it. I've come pretty far, in my quest to deliver a legacy."

Cipriano Santos-Augustine
"Forgive my complete lack of comprehension, but why is that important?  I understand that it must be.  I simply do not know why."

Verna Gardner
"Diamond has a very strong structure. Say you use our technique to knock out a single atom. You can then fill that hole with something else, and it becomes trapped in a very hard, rigid prison.

"Any time you would want to isolate something exceptionally small, you could do so with our technique. Encase it in diamond, and it won't feel the effects of the surrounding environment. The technique could very well be extremely important for other researchers in quantum computing, who need to isolate their entangled qbits."

Verna, he probably hasn't the slightest clue what you just said.

"Um... Explaining quantum computing and entangled qbits could take a while."