Five slices of fresh jalapeño plopped into Noelle's cup of instant ramen. They wouldn't compensate for the freeze-dried peas and corn kernels, which were similar in consistency to the styrofoam cup itself, but Noelle could only do so much. Food was food, and time was pressing.

Errant drips and splatters of broth went unnoticed as Noelle slurped the soggy noodles and scrolled through seven years of notes spread across ten spreadsheet tabs. A database of phone numbers, addresses, possible motives, and rampant speculations, all extensively cross-referenced with links and comments, sprawled across her screen.

Sometimes, Noelle wondered if it was the digital equivalent of a conspiracy theorist's corkboard of pushpins and string, but there was no time to worry about that now.

Most of her late-night phone calls had gone to voicemail, so her scramble to enlist the resources of the police would have to wait until morning. In the meantime, she mulled over what she knew and didn't know.

Uncle Johann's shooting was disconcertingly similar to one of those locked room mystery novels she and Maria loved to obsess over. But while novelists often played scrupulously fair, she couldn't expect that much latitude from her current situation. What if the vital clues that would make it all sensible just never turned up?

Fairness Rule 1:

This story will never ask readers to solve an interaction prompt without providing a way to find the clues.

As the story tags state, this is a science fiction mystery. Things that would be impossible in the real world will happen. However, I will only prompt you to answer a question when I can reasonably expect at least some people to figure it out. Some puzzles may be challenging, but at least in hindsight, the path from the clues to the solution should make sense.

Don't be defeatist, she reminded herself. Better to assume that there really was a way to make light of things. Just keep digging.

But even if she uncovered some explanation of the lab's work, how could she even be sure of its veracity? If the killer turned out to be someone connected with the research, they might flat-out lie about it.

Fairness Rule 2:

No character will deliberately lie about how technology works -- not even a guilty party.

Any direct explanation of the "rules" of this world can be safely assumed to be true.

No, I shouldn't be so pessimistic. Saturn Technologies was a government contractor. Even if they hid what they were working on, they couldn't get away with lying about it, at least not for very long.

Of course, none of this would help if that information came too late. Noelle had once flung a mystery novel out of the apartment window in a rage because it only disclosed a crucial clue after the detective had named the killer.

Fairness Rule 3:

Information from later chapters will never be strictly necessary to solve interaction prompts in earlier chapters.

However, elements of the mystery itself may not be solvable until later in the story. For example, at this point, you are still missing some critical information.

Once again, Noelle chided herself for her pessimism. She might get key information later... but there was no reason to just wait around for it. Better to assume she could make some progress now on whatever and hope for the best. Maria was counting on her.

And she had absolute trust in Maria's account, no matter how outlandish it sounded.

Fairness Rule 4:

Narrators do not lie in their narration.

Furthermore, no guilty party will conceal guilt during narration via time skip, hidden details, and so on. Finally, I will never deliberately mislead the reader about the order of narration (such as telling a chapter in a way that appears to occur in the present, but is actually a flashback.)

With that in mind, Noelle pulled up the floor plans for the Saturn Technologies labs. During the investigation of her mother's disappearance, she'd studied the layout closely. For every room on the floor, the only exits were one door and one window.

Thin, precarious ledges connected the windows on one side of the building, so a sufficiently agile person could exit Uncle Johann's office, hug the wall, and enter Vincent's window, but it would have to be unlocked in advance. No such exit from the machining room was possible.

Fairness Rule 5:

No secret passages.

After this much investigation, it is implausible that a secret passage would have escaped detection.

Fairness Rule 6:

No ropes, ladders, or other climbing aids were used.

To set up a mystery this elaborate, then declare that the solution was a magical invention called the ladder would be boring.

But that made it all seem impossible, unless someone had tampered with the keycard records, or there was an error in the official police accounts!

Fairness Rule 7:

The investigators did not and will not deliberately alter the evidence. This includes police and federal investigators.

Furthermore, electronic records, such as keycards and videos, were not forged or tampered with. All forensic analyses have been carried out honestly.

Eliminating the impossible left her with one answer that stretched the limits of plausibility: an elaborate hoax suicide. Uncle Johann had shown signs of being mentally unwell, and was certainly paranoid.

But he would never have framed Maria!

Fairness Rule 8:

Uncle Johann's shooting is not a suicide made to look like a murder; it's not a hoax at all.

It would be crass to promise you a science fiction mystery and then leave the science fiction irrelevant to the solution. Taking advantage of the victim's effectively unlimited ability to set up his own locked room death is unsporting conduct.

So Noelle's thoughts returned once again to impossible devices. Even if Uncle Johann had been working on, say, a machine that lets people walk through walls... there probably weren't that many, right? He couldn't be mass-producing them.

Fairness Rule 9:

Only one type of impossible invention plays a role in the disappearance and the shooting, though this invention requires more than one component to operate.

By this definition, a garage door + a futuristic power source + an infinite-range garage door opener would count as one invention with three components.

This invention requires a power source. As Agent Singh noted, three power sources were provided to the lab, and one is missing. This strictly limits how many units the lab could have built!

Fairness Rule 10:

As implied by the blueprint in Uncle Johann's room, one power source only supports up to three uses of the invention.

But having laid out her thoughts, Noelle found herself at a roadblock

Perhaps she could use some inspiration.

In the comments for this chapter, feel free to post:

* Research requests for Noelle to dig into.

* Questions about the rules of the game, and the underlying fairness of the mystery.

* Spoiler-tagged speculation.