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Naomi Randall - Journal

25th September 1999 - Part 2

Something's been bothering me. I've been sat here, watching Theo set up the VR rigs, and there's just been these little thoughts at the back of my mind, niggling little things, but possibly important.

It was all down to William and his friends using Jake's little food 'problem' against him. How did they know? I went to ask Jake, see if there was anyone else that knew, or if maybe there'd been a time he might have slipped up in front of them. But no, no slip ups, and the only person outside of our cabal that knew about it was the Hermetic master himself.

The thing that was worrying both of us was that, if it hadn't come from the Hermetic master (which seemed unlikely, why would someone in authority be abusing their power and giving away potentially lethal information?) then it must have come from one of the cabal. So we went to see him, asked him if he'd told them. No, he hadn't. He'd told Jessica. Jessica had told them. It wasn't a surprise, I'd figured she'd been playing both sides. But the question remained of how could we remain in a chantry where we really couldn't trust anyone.

I left Jake in with the master, doing my best not to storm out fuming. By the time he caught up with me downstairs we'd both come to the same decision, that we were going to leave the chantry. Kind of rash, I know, but if you can't trust them with secrets like that, then what would they do if they ever found out about the whole Child of Moloch thing? Sure, I've told Kurgan and Suzie, them I can trust. But they're going away, along with every other senior member of the chantry that I trust, and leaving Jessica in charge. There were only two things stopping me walking out there and then, Tony stuck in the Digital Web, and the other Akashics, the ones that I'm now apparently in charge of and was responsible for. If I left them, then there'd be no one to train them, though that might actually be better for them than being trained by me...

So I dragged Jake up to talk to Jessica. She had seemed nice when I'd met her during the week. Was that all an act and I'd just been too blind to see through it? I'm normally pretty good at spotting stuff like that, but I have had my mind elsewhere recently... She explained why she'd done what she did. Playing us off against each other was apparently the only way to ensure that the Hermetic master would give her the job rather than William, given that Jake didn't want it (something I wish he'd told the rest of us...) I asked her why she didn't just come to us, by the looks of her now she needs our backing in order to be able to run this place, she said that she had to be seen to be being 'devious' by the master. It's like she'd kind of got the right idea, but not taken it quite far enough. She could have gone to the master, got the information, then come to us. We would would have been quite happy to go along with the scam, get her to feed some info to William, though not the horrible potentially lethal stuff... organise things so that neither William nor Jake appear to be chantry head material, though having William looking far worse, of course, and have her be the grand mastermind behind it all. Play the arrogant bastard that is the Hermetic master at his own game. So if anything she was naive and a little foolish, which is ironic given that she won the position due to her 'deviousness'.

Jake was doing all he could to stop himself leaping over the desk and strangling her. I was kind of harsh on her as well, she was still looking a little peaky from what I'd done when I left half an hour later, but I had a point to make and I'm fairly sure she got it. She talked Jake out of leaving the chantry, I have to agree with her that it is probably safer to have both him and William under the control of the chantry so that the chantry has juristiction over anything that might happen. And Jake has made a formal complaint against William's attempted manslaughter, or whatever the term would be for giving Jake enough alcohol to kill someone.

Jake left shortly after that, leaving me to talk to her. I told her that I was thinking of leaving too. She pleaded with me to stay, not quite as much as she had with Jake, but then I guess I didn't need as much persuading. We had a chat, she seems sort of terrified by the mess she's managed to get dumped in her lap. Running something like the chantry is a lot of work... She reminded me a lot of me when I first started up the centre. Having talked to her for a while I really don't think she was lying. She's a genuinely good person who just made some bad choices. I still don't trust her, not properly, there's still doubts in my mind, I find myself watching her too closely. But I'm hoping we'll be able to work together. Hell, no, I'm hoping we can be friends. Part of me still wants to just walk out of here, but I can't turn my back on her... or my 'students'...

I can't decide if that's me being too nice or really selfish when I say that though...

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