A few steps down the slope he came to a large patch of nettles. Unaware of the properties of that particular plant, he waded in, and then realised that they were quite capable of defending themselves. He cursed and was about to make his way back up the hill when he tripped over a large hidden object. He pitched head first into the plants. The pain was significant, but his expletives stopped dead when he realised what had tripped him. He hauled the body out on to the grass and surveyed his find with incredulity. “Now that’s what I call ‘service’. This planet really does have everything I need after all, though what a sex doll is doing up here has got me beat. Did it grow here? I must get some more seeds if it did.” He scratched his head. “I could wheel it back in that trolley I left on the grave and have a closer look.” He checked it more carefully, brushing off dirt and beetles. “I’m sure I can clean the thing; it’s only got a bit of green mould… What luck; it’s fortunate I’ve found something like this; I might have gone mad and started talking to myself. Bugger those plants; my face feels as though it’s on fire.”
Under the waterfall in the valley, and by the light of the torch, he stripped the doll and began to give it a good clean. He used a kitchen scrubbing brush to clear the mould away, and dish-mop to dislodge various multi-legged arthropods out of enticing apertures.
“This is very nice,” he muttered, exploring the various openings. “Cool to the touch, but apart from that, it feels and looks exactly like the real thing…” He cast his mind back to the last ‘real thing’ he had experienced in a back room of the ‘Space-farer’s Rest’ on the totally misnamed ‘Paradise City’ section of a deep-space refuelling station. “Actually, it feels a bloody sight better than the ‘real thing’. I’m going to call you ‘Sharon’, and you’re coming back with me to my house to let me teach you a few things.”
*.*.*
Three days later he was contentedly back under the waterfall, washing the sweat off his body. He did not notice the flash of light, which indicated the return of a silver cylinder at the top of the hill as it flattened the remains of a rose-bush. ‘Sharon’ was laid out on the bank, naked of course, drying in the sunshine. He splashed some water at her. “Not bad, old girl,” he laughed. “You could move around a bit more I guess, but you’re still a lot more animated than my ex-wife. I liked the bit with the chains and the sticking plaster. What do you think?” He paused and smiled. “Speak up. Don’t be shy. Devil got your tongue?”
“No it fuckin’ ain’t, although from what you’ve been doing, he might as well have, and every other part of me.” The ‘doll’ sat up and pierced him with an icy stare. The man gasped and fell backwards into the water. He surfaced coughing. “And don’t think I haven’t been aware what you’ve been doing to me, you pervert,” The doll continued. “Just because my motor systems had shut down doesn’t mean my sensors and processors were out along with them…”
The man’s mouth worked silently and his whole body went red with embarrassment.
“No, I didn’t like the bit with the chains and the sticking plaster, nor what you were doing with that… thing.”
“But, what the hell..?” he spluttered. “I thought you were a toy. You weren’t moving, cold to the touch, no breath, been in the bushes for a long time…”
“Yes, that’s blindingly obvious. I thought I was a goner also, doomed to suffer boredom and your perversions for eternity, but apparently the heat has generated enough energy to kick-start my systems. The internal self-repair is now working; I need a bit of a rest and I’ll be back on my feet. Talking about feet, what have you done with my boots? No I don’t want to know. Chuck me a towel, will you, while I work out how slowly and painfully I’m going to kill you.”
Blue Sky Thinking
T
om regained consciousness, aware that he was lying on a row of uncomfortable seats and being fanned gently by a rather nice looking girl with wispy blonde hair and wide blue eyes. He had not looked at anyone other than Suzanne for the last fifty years so it was a bit of a shock to see someone like that, leaning over him. He tried to remember what had happened, but the blonde cut in. “Oh, I am glad you are better, sir. We were all worried about you, what with the meeting you’ve got booked. Without you there, I’m told that the deal might not go through.”
“Deal, what deal? Where am I; who are you?”
“My name’s Amber, sir.” The girl looked rather taken back. “Don’t you know me?”
“I’m afraid not.”
“Er, I’d better get Mr Errorcode. Are you okay though?” Tom nodded and struggled to sit up. The girl helped him and arranged the cushions comfortably behind his back. “Should I go and get him now, sir?”
Tom nodded, confused, and she scampered out of the room. He took a breath and looked around. He appeared to be alone in the executive lounge of an airport. “What’s happened to me?” Then he realised. “I died. I should not be here at all. So where am I? Who am I?” He reached for the inside pocket of what was a very expensive suit, and withdrew a wallet. It was an expensive wallet. It contained expensive money, and lots of it. There was a name. ‘Thomas Smith’. “At least I still am who I was…” There were also a number of credit cards in his name, all of them of the ultra-platinum variety, and an identity card with a biometric signature, ‘T Smith, Syndicated Consultant Trusts’. The name was not familiar to him. He got up and weaved unsteadily to sit by a screen on one wall. He noticed the SCT logo in the corner of the monitor. The display advised him to insert his ID card. He did. It asked for a thumbprint on the drawer which had just opened. He stuck his thumb on the pad. He noticed the SCT logo on the pad. The screen asked for a password. “No idea,” he thought, and typed the word ‘Suzanne’ on the keyboard (he noticed the SCT logo on the keyboard). The screen welcomed him, very politely; he had never been called ‘sir’ by a terminal before. It did not take him many minutes to access the company details and to discover there was no information of any use at all. It did take him a few minutes more to register that he was actually the acting head of the company. He shut down the terminal and swivelled thoughtfully on his chair.
The door opened. A strange little man entered. He was dressed all in black, except for a belt with a large silver buckle. Tom would have found this interesting, except for the fact that the man was wearing a mask across his eyes and carried a rather large and evil looking knife. It was pointing at him. “Er, hi.” Tom backed slowly towards the corner of the room. “Can I help you? Looking for the kitchen are you?”
The face behind the mask twisted into a grin. “No, the butcher’s; and you’re on the slab.”
“Look, can we talk about this? I don’t want to be murdered by the Lone Ranger’s little brother. Would you like some money? I have loads of money. Then I could give you a job; this guy who goes around sorting out the bad guys.”
“Not interested.”
“People would say, ‘Who was that masked man?’ Just think of the kudos.”
“I’ve already got the game. I play it most nights, when I’m not out killing that is.” The man advanced on Tom, flicking his blade backwards and forwards. “I suppose I ought to say, ‘prepare to die’. They always do it in the films…”
“That’s films. Couldn’t we say, ‘prepare to have a cup of tea’?”
“Nah, more than my job’s worth. I’d get a 2 on my PDP if I failed in this mission.”
“PDP?”
“No idea; we all have to have them though; something about management being able to pretend they know what we do.”
“So, a 2; is that bad?”
“Oh yes, there would have to be an action plan, and I’d be relegated from ‘specialist’ back to basic criminal ‘contributor’ status; you know the sort of thing: bludgeoning tramps, stealing purses off little old ladies, drug-dealing in the back streets, programming in UNIX...”
“I wouldn’t wish that last one on anyone. Look, I can offer you ten times what you’re being paid if you back off and forget
all this.”
“Sorry boss, no more time; I’ve started so I’ll finish.” He lunged forward and stabbed at Tom’s heart.
Tom stepped backwards and kicked the persistent assailant soundly between his legs. “I did try reasoning with you,” he apologised as the force of the blow lifted the man from his feet. He landed and Tom’s fist punched him hard in the throat. The assassin collapsed, coughing and writhing in pain. “And that was for all the clichés!” Tom said, nursing his bruised hand.
“Is everything okay?” A man came in to the room. He was a small man with a pointy face and an obsequious smile that instantly made Tom wish he had a daughter so that he could forbid her to marry him. He assumed that this was his aide, Mr Errorcode. The girl, Amber, followed him in. Errorcode peered at the groaning body on the floor.
“He, er fell over,” said Tom. “You might want to call Security and have them remove him for questioning.”
The aide gasped as he saw the knife on the floor beside the erstwhile assassin. “Did he attack you, sir?”
“Sort of; I think it was something to do with his job objectives.”
“No problem.” Errorcode produced a gun from inside his jacket and shot the groaning man through the temple. “I can’t understand it, sir,” he said, ignoring Tom’s protest. “We’ve had no crime in this region for many years. What was he thinking of?”
Tom wondered what sort of laws they had here. “I have no idea, unless he was that desperate not to get a 2 on his PDP.”
“Ah, PDP,” said Errorcode knowingly. “I guess it has been known to negatively motivate people, sir, but I’m still puzzled.”
“We won’t find out now, will we?” Tom noticed that the aide had not yet holstered his weapon. “No worry, no harm done; you can put the gun away.”
Errorcode poked the corpse with his foot. “I’ll call Maria to clean up the mess.”
“Who?”
“The cleaner; we like to make sure all our cleaners are called Maria; it saves on the tax, insurance and redundancy pay.”
“Oh.”
“I’m sorry I wasn’t there with you when he arrived.” The aide finally holstered his gun. “Drink?”
Tom nodded. “Got any whiskey?”
“Try this one.” He poured Tom a healthy measure of ‘Scarpenmore’ from the bar. “I hope you are feeling better now, sir. I’ve delayed our meeting with that important client; so you could recover, you understand.”
Tom nodded. “Good Scotch,” he murmured as the liquid burnt its way down his throat. “Do you have a first name, Mr Errorcode?”
“I do, sir. I don’t recall mentioning it though. You have never asked.”
“Go on then, what is it?”
“Montague, sir.”
“Is it, now?” Tom rolled the name round in his mind. “Can I call you Monty?”
“No, sir. We like to keep things formal in SCT.”
“Good. Carry on.”
“And Amber…” Errorcode cast a glance towards the very sheepish girl, “you should have stayed with Mr Smith. You know the rules?”
“Yes sir.” Amber cast her eyes downwards and blanched. “Sorry sir. Would you like me to go and kill myself now?”
Errorcode looked at Tom for confirmation. “It’s the least you should do,” he prompted.
Tom shook his head. “Really, there is no need to go that far. She was only concerned for my welfare. We’ve been through a lot together. You’ve been with me for... it must be, how long?”
“Four hours, sir.”
“Ah, it does seem longer.”
“And you were unconscious most of it, sir.”
“We must have met somewhere else?” Tom felt his colour rising.
“No sir, I only work as a hostess at the airport. I was hoping to get a job as a stewardess but there’s a lot of competition.”
“Is there, now? Montague,” Tom scowled at his aide, “can we fit another stewardess on my private jet?”
“Which one sir?”
“Amber of course.”
“No, sir, I meant which jet?” Montague’s voice was level.
“The one we are using today?” Tom made a guess.
“I suppose we could, sir.”
“What about it, Amber? Can you get your things together before we leave, and forget about killing yourself? When do we leave, Monty?”
“When you are ready, sir.” The voice did not waver.
“Good. Quick as you can then, girl.”
* * *
The private aircraft was not huge, but the removal of most of the seats had made it very roomy. Tom was using another terminal and accessed details of his schedule, as Montague and a number of other aides busied about making calls concerning his various businesses. He was trying to stall for time until he could work out what to do. He suspected that when his body had died with Suzanne, it had made a consciousness flip to bring him into this universe. It had happened before, a couple of times. He died in one universe and woke up in another body, in another universe; it was getting somewhat tedious. Perhaps it happened to other people, but for some reason, only he stayed aware of his previous lives.
As far as he could remember so far, there were three parallel universes, and under normal conditions, his death in one should have been matched by the same in the others to maintain the balance. One of his other selves, however, had refused to die, and the lack of correspondence had opened up portals between the universes in an attempt to restore equilibrium. He had faced and defeated that other self, but the result was that his last body had been packed off out of the way to live a normal lifespan. He had assumed that last death would actually be the end, and when Suzanne died there was no motivation for him to carry on. To his annoyance, instead of it being the finish, he realised that he was now yet somewhere else, and that somewhere else needed identifying and dealing with.
As he checked the company’s files, he began to see how much of the company there was. In fact, it was spread across a vast part of the planet. He called Errorcode over. “So tell me again what we are going to do during this upcoming meeting.”
“Sorry, sir, I thought we had been through it several times.”
“Humour me, so I can feel comfortable with the plan.”
“Yes sir.” Errorcode’s face betrayed nothing. “We are meeting a Mr Nishi from the Consortium of Client-side Businesses with a view to developing trade concessions and more in Musoketeba.”
“Musoketeba?”
“Yes, his home country. They have the largest population per square kilometre in the world because they haven’t yet any planned birth control. They also now have a very poor stock of natural resources, having used them all up or bulldozed them all down to build houses and factories and roads and high speed railways. Our objective is to exchange marketing rights and a supply of labour in their zone, for raw materials and food from ours. If we can push the envelope to get a ten per-cent market penetration, we should be able to increase our profits by an extra 20%, and we can get the locals to do all the tasks.”
“Excellent.” Tom nodded. “And we can then use the proceeds for charitable works and famine relief.”
“Or something.” Errorcode raised an eyebrow.
There was a gasp from one of the assistants. Tom heard someone mutter, “Did you see his eyebrow? What on earth did the boss say?”
“Of course, you will leave the negotiations to me as usual.”
“Of course,” Tom agreed, wondering if his faux pas had been noticed by anyone other than the entire cabin crew.
“You will greet Mr Nishi in the traditional way and then allow me to conduct the rest of the talks. You don’t speak Musoketeban I assume?”
“No, alas.” (I would if I had my electronic translator, Tom thought, but I lost that several universes ago.) “That reminds me,” He said out loud, “I must plough some research into a translation device. Do we have any contact with extra-terrestrials?”
“What, little green men. Everyone knows there are no such things. Oh, I see,” Errorcode’s face broke into the most false smile Tom had seen since his last visit to an estate-agent, “a joke. Yes, very funny, sir. I thought we agreed that we don’t need to put any cash into research along those lines as there are only two languages in common use these days. Actually, now I come to think of it, there are about two hundred others, but that lot don’t really matter; Pangean and Musoketeban are the main business languages.”
“No, I suppose the others don’t matter,” agreed Tom, not agreeing at all. “Anyway, how am I supposed to greet this gentleman?”
“As I have said before, sir; quite simply, bow like this.” Tom practised the rather strange inclination of head and the left hand side of his body. “Very good, and then shake hands while staring him right in the eyes. Do not break the stare until he looks away.”
“Okay, and then what?”
“Leave the rest of it to me. I will conduct the necessary negotiations from there. You will sit still and nod only when Mr Nishi and I both nod. It is very important not to nod if it is only he who nods.”
“Right, nod when you both nod; look the other way if just Mr Nishi nods. I think I’ve got that.”
“Perfect. I suggest you get some sleep, as we still have a few hours’ flight to go. You must be tired after that assassination attempt.”
“Monty, a thought?”
“sir?”
“Who would get to run the organisation if I die?”
“The Plank runs the company, sir. Your loss would, of course, be a great blow to us, but we would elect another leader as quickly as possible to fill the gap.”
Into the Fourth Universe Page 4