by Robert Wilde
“Err…the best what? What happened?”
“They asked me to join an even more exclusive club, even more, an inner circle. It costs more, but that’s no worry to me, I earned seven figures last year.”
“Hot Toys?”
“What, anyway, this inner circle, it only runs the agency, they want me to pay to run the agency! The stupidity, the arrogance, as if I pay to do more work!”
“That does sound really odd,” Nazir agreed truthfully, really odd. “I suppose you could have ended up in charge of the whole thing?”
“Exactly! This isn’t a charity, this is an agency, I demand to be paid for my work.”
“Your jumping frog fee.”
“What?”
“Never mind. Well, I think you should walk your anger off and then call your chauffeur.”
“Indeed good man, indeed.”
“Are you alright?” Dee asked the interviewer.
“I’ve never, never… he said some very hurtful things Miss Nettleship, and I am… really… reeling from this.”
“Then let’s get you back behind the scenes and sit you down with a drink.”
Dee led the lady to the now open door, winking at Pohl, and soon they were walking down a back corridor and going into a room which had been turned into an ad hoc office for the evening.
“I see you have your own bottle of champagne…”
“For guests! I would never drink while working.”
“Let’s ignore that for today, here’s a fresh glass, now have a sip of that and calm down. What happened?”
“We assessed him, believed he was who we were looking for, and offered him our upgrade.” The champagne was sipped hesitantly at first.
“I see. Does this cost more money?”
“Yes, it does? Do you think he was angry about the money?”
“No, no,” and Dee noticed the champagne was now going down very well, so it was clearly time to join in with a glass.
“Tell me about this upgrade?”
“Well, to be honest Miss Nettleship we didn’t think you were the right sort of person…”
“You and my ex-boyfriends…”
“But are you interested?”
“Yes, as you know, I have money to invest. If you have an opportunity that’s more than just finding a partner?”
“We do, we do. It’s a full life experience, a total commitment, but you are really welcomed into an elite group and your eyes are really opened about how this world works.”
“I see, and I am very interested in having my eyes opened. Is it a lot of money?”
“We ask for twenty five per cent of your assessed wealth.”
Dee stifled a mouth drop. “That’s more than the church.”
“They do work in a similar area, yes. But really, when everything is considered, it’s not a huge commitment.”
Dee looked at the interviewer, sat hunched on her chair, now chugging booze. A woman in her late forties possessed either of style or the money to buy someone to dress her in it, with jewellery which obviously wasn’t costume, so clearly a woman with money. But there was a streak through her of weakness, and this evening had unveiled it. Money, presumably twenty five per cent less money than she had, and weakness. This was… very interesting indeed.
“Why don’t you tell me more about this upgrade?”
“I really think you’re a little young to appreciate it fully.”
“I lost my parents when I was young, I’ve grown up quickly. Why don’t, and I mean no offence, but why don’t you let me judge if I’m too young?” She sounded like half the girls in her school. She bet they weren’t investigating suicide pandas.
“Well, if you’re sure.”
“I am. And there’s still plenty of champagne to calm your nerves. What do you say?”
Nazir watched the angry man’s car disappear, and he then trotted back inside, picked up a plate, and filled it with buffet goodness. Then he felt a presence beside him and turned.
“Hello professor.”
“What are you doing? Are you really hungry?”
“I’m just going to the car for some research, that chap has given me an idea. This is fuel.”
“I see. Fuel.”
“Where’s Dee?”
“Still behind the scenes with the interviewer.”
“Ah, right, well, are you okay to keep scoping out the people in here?”
“Three men have tried to give me their numbers. I am, quite frankly, desperate to come to the car with you.”
“Yeah, alright, let’s go, but grab a plate too.”
Soon they were in the front seats of the car Nazir had rented for the night, with the plates on the top of the dashboard and Nazir’s laptop open and ready.
“So, this society is offering an exclusive club which costs and a lot of money and you’re expected to work for. I think we can assume you’re not flying out to hug pandas for the summer.”
“Can we assume that? Really? With this group?”
“Alright, no, hugging might be on the cards. But it’s given me an idea for something we can look into.”
Nazir’s hands flew over the keyboard. “Don’t they hurt?” Pohl asked.
“Magic fingers. If I ever get arthritis it’ll have to be after I can just plug my brain into the PC.”
“Would you like to do that? Really?”
“Oh hell and yes. I regret being born about a hundred years too early for all the really good stuff to happen.”
“Will there even be a humanity in a hundred years?”
“Well, my town of birth will be a flat pile of rubble, but I’m sure my current home will be standing. And when I said will, I meant is.”
“So what are we looking up?”
“I am hacking into the computers whose signals are coming from inside. I assume Dee is distracting the staff enough so they won’t notice, so she’ll either have to jiggle her tits or get them drunk, and I think she’ll use the latter.”
“That would be Dee’s tactic, drink them under the table.”
“Right, so, this means I’m into their system, and what I’m looking for is a list of their staff.”
“The people in charge?”
“Yep, them. And…ah, bingo, here is a list. Wow, it’s a long list.”
“Lots of people run a small dating agency?”
“No, there’s a huge turnover. People never stay in charge for long. But here’s my hunch, we’re going to compare this list with the one we acquired from the police.”
“By acquired you mean stole.”
“Possession is an elastic concept, and I specifically mean underpant elastic. Right, let’s put them side by side and we’ll see… well fuck me with a herring. Everyone in charge of this society is killing themselves. Dating is either the most depressing business in creation or something is going on.”
“Both?” Pohl offered.
About twenty minutes later, Nazir and Pohl looked up to see what was tapping at their window. It was Dee, who was stood outside with a new bottle of champagne in one hand and three flutes in the other.
“Are you going to let me in then?”
“Depends how much you are?”
“Shut up, this dress is lovely, I do not look like, and I quote, ‘the sort of hooker who hangs around gentleman’s clubs’. Now open the fucking door.”
Dee slid into the back, handed the glasses round, filled them, and was gratefully handed the last sausage roll in the car.
“I assume you have found lots?” she asked.
“Oh yes, we’ve cracked it.”
“Me too. And none of us had to jiggle anything.”
“How did you know…”
“I know what you’re thinking. So, what have we got?”
“It’s a suicide cult,” the professor began, “the society recruits wealthy people to replace those running the society, who then kill themselves, and those now running recruit more people, also to kill themselves. You bring people in at the bottom, tra
in them up, brainwash them into thinking this is a good idea, then you die and they copy you.”
“The most fucked up pyramid scheme ever,” Nazir added.
“Yep, that’s what they told me too. For twenty five per cent of my current wealth I too can be initiated into their secrets. Clearly so the interviewer can go and hang herself. With a very expensive rope.”
“And for some reason the fuckwits panda themed the whole thing, proving, as if it needed, that there are some very sick people in the world. At least pick lemmings.”
“You were never in PR were you Nazir.”
“No I wasn’t.”
“Right, so,” Dee was waving her fingers and the glass, “we have a panda suicide cult. Is that actually illegal?”
“Must be?”
“If only we had a friendly policeman to ask,” Nazir said, looking innocently away.
“As if you’d ring your ex's up for advice, oh, wait, you don’t keep them long enough to get a number.”
“At least my exes didn’t learn on wax tablets.”
“I’ll ring the good detective if it’ll calm you two down.”
“Sorry Professor.”
“It’s alright, I’ll do it. I did let him inside me.” A phone was pulled out and it rang Detective Jeff Maquire.
“Dee!” he said with more excitement than she was ready for.
“I have a theoretical question for you Jeff, is it illegal to brainwash people into killing themselves?”
There was a pause.
“This isn’t actually theoretical is it?”
“Well, no, you could round the boys and girls of the station up and get yourself to our location.”
“What exactly is happening?”
Dee explained, leading to Jeff sighing. “So you’re not in danger.”
“Not unless they can talk three of us into jumping in front of a train.”
“Why are they doing this?”
“Good question…”
Nazir snapped his fingers. “Pyramid scheme, right, I said pyramid scheme? Well this is it, isn’t it, it’s a fucking pyramid scheme. All these payments, they’re going somewhere, to someone who isn’t killing themselves. If we find them, well, we’ve found the fucking answer.”
“I don’t want you to go back inside,” Jeff cautioned.
“We don’t need to go back inside to work that out, I’ll dig in the files.”
“Have you hacked something again?”
“Oh dear, the reception is breaking up, zzz, zzz, we can’t hear the policeman.”
“That doesn’t work, does it,” Jeff sighed.
“Well, apparently not, but you have to try these things.”
“You are not to…”
“Oh look, turning the phone off works a treat.”
Dee’s car pulled to a halt at the start of a suburban driveway, looked out, and said “is this the right place?” She had one eye on the sat nav also, but it was the professor who confirmed things.
“Yes, this garden is completely filled with bamboo plants.”
“Oh, is that what they look like?”
“I believe so.”
“This is going to get weird isn’t it?”
“I believe so.”
The three got out, walked up to the front door, and jumped with fright before realising there wasn’t a bear looking out at them from the living room, but a live sized furry model.
“If we find out someone is fucking that thing I am retiring again right after I’ve burnt this place down.”
“Not sure that’s in the journalism ethics manual.”
“Just buzz the door hacker.”
A short while later said door opened, and they were greeted by an elderly man whose dressing gown was covered in pictures of pandas.
“I think you’ll want to have this discussion inside,” Dee said, and stepped forward.
“What discussion?”
“The thing with pyramid schemes is you always run out of blocks.”
“I, oh, ah.”
“Yes, Ah. Now shift.”
He let them inside, and all felt like they’d just entered a gift shop. Every conceivable surface was filled with pandas. Panda paintings, models, ceramics, even pandas in planes hanging from the ceiling.
“On the plus side, if they convict you they’ll probably have to send you to a hospital instead of prison,” Dee noted.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he tried to protest.
He was now in a Panda filled living room. The huge model seemed to have been set up as a shrine, with fresh bamboo laid in front of it.
“We know you’re behind a panda themed dating agency which not only recruits single, wealthy people, but then indoctrinates them into recruiting others and killing themselves. We also know you take the money, which you seem to have spent on a Panda phobics worst nightmare.”
“I didn’t spend the money on my collection!” His indignation was clear.
“So you are behind it?”
“Well, yes but…”
“And you do take the money?”
“Yes, but I donate it all to save wild Pandas.”
“Sorry, what did you say?”
“Young lady, I donate every single penny to conserving wild Pandas. It is imperative we protect this species and…why have you held your fingers up.”
“It means be quiet. I would like you to listen to a presentation my friend here has been working on all his life. Nazir, ‘Why Pandas are a Shitty Animal’, go.”
“So,” Nazir said as he relaxed back into one of Dee’s sofas and held the sort of cold beer that would give his parents apoplexy, “I think we have proven we can crack a case.”
“Alright,” Dee conceded, “alright, we did solve a case.”
“You see, what did I say. One man in prison, a load of people who should know better in counselling, a giant panda model sitting in my flat ready to troll the WWF next Halloween. What could be better?”
“Just because we cracked a case doesn’t mean we have Joe back.”
“Ah.”
The doorbell rang, so Dee pulled herself up, went over, and opened it. She found a box sitting on the doorstep and a hunched figure hidden by a hood and a long coat exiting her garden path.
“Hey, wait,” she said exactly as her phone rang. It had the Array’s ring tone, so she pulled her phone out.
“Don’t follow that person,” it barked at her.
“Hello to you too.”
“Sorry, the signal was tricky, but don’t follow them, I’ve had them deliver the package to your house.”
Dee looked down at the box. “You’ve sent me a present?”
“Yes. I think you should take it in and have a look.”
The box was slightly oblong, wooden, with a clasp on the door and a handle on the top. “Has this wood been treated with something?”
“It’s waterproof, yes.”
“Right,” and she picked it up with the handle and carried it to the lounge table. “I just flick open the clasp?”
“Indeed.”
She did so gently, and with Nazir and the professor gathered round, opened the door. At first she thought there was a severed head inside, but her mind soon realised it was the sort of model head you find on shop dummies, only made out of metal. Obviously a light metal.
“You’ve bought me a Seven tribute model?”
“Oh no Dee, I’ve bought you something much more than that.”
“Hello,” said the box, and Dee dropped the phone. Once everyone had stopped jumping back, the box explained “it’s me!”
“You sound…”
“…like Joe…”
“Yes, it’s me!”
“Still shit at introductions I see.”
“And hello to you too Dee.”
The Array took over. “I have combined the technology you found which allows a soul to be collected and moved with a second generation communication box, which I’ve managed to produce, and this is the res
ult.”
“You’ve put Joe in a box?”
“Isn’t it awesome!” insisted Joe in what sounded almost identical to his old voice. There was a pause, then he added “isn’t it?”
“It’s fucking amazing Joe, I’m just trying to work out if I can hug a box or not.”
“Hug the box!”
Miles away, the Array ran a routine through its mind that was very much like smiling. Stage one had gone well.
Two: Clear
Dr. Bhavsar was looking forward to his shift ending. Okay, he always looked forward to his shift ending, because you didn’t ever consider what was happening around you and think ‘I really need another two hours in Accident and Emergency’, but this time he was really, really looking forward to his shift ending because with thirty minutes left no one had died, no one had been too seriously injured, and he might be able to leave feeling happy. Feeling like a normal human being who hasn’t had to compartmentalise the horrors he’d seen and worked to repair. Just thirty glorious minutes.
A lot could happen in that time, of course it could. A god could cause an accident out on the streets, in an infinite wisdom that seemed strange to mere mortals who just wondered why their fleshy weak bodies were being torn asunder, and that accident could range from a car breaking the leg and hip of a pedestrian to a fully-fledged plane crash, although Bhavsar had never been involved in the aftermath of one of those, and he really hoped he never would. Okay, maybe when they were all drunk they thought it would be interesting, but not tonight, and there were now just twenty nine minutes.
He looked up, through a window in a door, and into the entrance hall, where the sick, wounded and increasingly ‘packaged off by their GP to save money’ arrived, and he sighed as the entrance opened and two people came in. One was fine, if just pale, a tall brunette with a clean jacket and a look of total panic. She clearly wasn’t the one who’d need help, that was her friend, a woman of average height, strong build and blonde hair which was badly tied behind her head. This woman was staring straight ahead, as if dazed, and her face was bruised.
Right, time to earn some money, Bhavsar thought to himself, and hope this pair aren’t in too much trouble. Walking straight forward, through the doors, he came over to them. “Hello, I’m Dr. Bhavsar, what’s the problem?”