At hand, the kingdom of hell is closer

Traveler, this is Josh. I need to ask a favor. 

K, Josh, what's up? 

A friend warned me the Grim Reaper is afoot. Eh? Reaper, Angel of Death, you get the idea. This friend thinks he is coming for me, or someone close to me.

Josh .... Can I send someone to help you?

No, Traveler, I need you to visit my friend. Let me get it all out at one time. They call him Loco, he is a resident of the Everett Nerves Institute. He hears spirits, which is not that unusual for his domicile, but he sees them as well.

Well Josh, Traveler said gently, I'm guessing that a number of people at the institute also see spirits.

True enough, but he can display what he is seeing on a projector. He's the subject of quite a bit of study into the paranormal, so they take excellent care of him; I worry about his fate, but it is unlikely to be death by bedsores. I made a small donation to the institute a few years back with the stipulation they call me if he has a message for me. 

Hence the Grim Reaper?

Hence. And if you don't mind, put a move on, when he first saw the Grim Reaper he was far away, but he can see more details, he must be getting closer. 

I've already started the Lincoln. Cody Boy, COME! We're going on a road trip.

When they drove up to the Nerves Institute, Traveler held his phone up to the gatebot. Sure enough, Josh had downloaded credentials, gate opened, wonder how "small" that donation was, as the self-drive Lincoln entered the facility. There were several historical homes on property and Loco was in one of them, the Wilkinson Home. 

As they pulled up, Cody started to growl. Easy boy, said Traveler, but he could see the concern. There was a lot of activity in the evening air, probably bat, but their pattern in one case looked all the world like a floating jellyfish. And there was some animal on the South side, wierd, maybe a 4 legged bird, or a dog with a long snout. Traveler shook his head remembering the uproar of the the "dragweiler" a decade back, a rottweiler with certain reptilian characteristics the press called a "dragon", so dragweiler it is. 

Cody Boy, you OK. The dog emoted back that he was. Good boy, take your iBone and run the perimeter, get me some shots and readings, GO!

Then he went in the and the "house dad" introduced him to Loco. And he could see right away why Loco was special. He was looking at an "angel console" that Josh and the house dad assured him could only be driven in this room, there were no electronics.

Loco pointed out the Angel of Death in quadrant 1,1, very close now, he said. Traveler was suitably impressed, it was his first Angel Console. Hey Eve, what do you make of this, he summoned his AI?

The Lincoln A is measuring the same quarklike emmisions that were collected in Jerusalem with the blockiamond rupture. Principus! So he did have a dog in this fight, (sorry Cody, it's an expression).

It was hard to get Loco's attention away from the projection, but eventually . . . 

He was supposed to destroy it all. Take picture, give the disk to Yolanda, destroy everything else. It was all under the ban. Made a copy and sold it. Loco shook his head, spittle flying off his lips as he said,  NeoRats.

Traveler was trying to keep his game face up, buy how in Mary's Poptops could be have known about NeoRats? That is supposed to be managed by his Circle and now that he was High Table, it was his problem. How much of this did Josh know before he called him?

Loco, which one is he? Quadrant 2,3, he is on his way to Las Vegas, already landed. 

Vegas, Traveler mused. He wondered it it would be possible to take photo of the project; can the physical world measure the world of the spirits? Well, they had certainly learned to detect the numerology generated energy that was used in Principus and other high security products. Even able to store it as digital information in man made chips like blockiamonds. Sure enough, he could take the picture. Eve, can you track this guy? Wait, I know who that is, Harold, Yolanda's steamy scene photographer.