The Man Who Couldn't Be Bought (A Miles Franco Short Story)

by Chris Strange

  It was the sort of thing you couldn’t help but stare at, even after you’d seen it a million times. You told yourself you stared because it was beautiful, in an unearthly way, but really you were scared, because even after all this time you still didn’t know what it truly was.

  They called them Bores when they appeared, a couple of years before I was born. Some said the twenty-four Bores around the world were the result of some government scientists with a penchant for risk-taking and an unlimited purse of taxpayers’ money. More than a couple of cults were convinced it was part of some deity’s screwed-up plan for humanity. Me, I didn’t know who to believe, and I figured there wasn’t much point thinking about it too hard.

  It took all of five minutes for the government types in their black suits and their sunglasses to start poking at the Bores to see what they could make them do, or so the stories go. Turns out, the Bore only did one thing, but it did it damn well. A portal, I suppose you’d call it, a portal to another world. With the special kind of arrogance reserved especially for politicians, the government began exploring the world on the other side of the Bores.

  I closed my eyes to block out the sight of the Bore. Looking at it too long stung my eyes. The Bore was the reason I could do what I could do. Tunnelers are all tied to a Bore, and this one was mine. If I went too far outside the city limits, my ability to Tunnel decreased, until I couldn’t even form a Pin Hole. True, I could have left anyway, taken up some other job, but Tunneling was the one thing I knew, the one thing I was good at.

  Today, though, I was reconsidering that position.

  As the car reached the crest of the hill and the radio started playing a nice saxophone solo, I opened my eyes again. I could just make out the Immigration and Customs offices at the edge of the Bore. Immigration still liked to pretend they held the only path for migrating between Earth and Heaven, as if there weren’t several hundred Tunnelers like me scattered throughout the city.

  The clock on the car’s dashboard read 1:26 a.m. when we finally pulled up outside my apartment building. 2310 Marlowe Street was a building that I’m pretty sure must have been condemned about a decade back, but had never been demolished. It stood ten stories high and was constructed mostly of dry wood that would go up like a tinderbox if someone tossed a lit cigarette at it. It was packed in between a laundromat and an almost identical apartment building, with a narrow alleyway on either side that was a haven for the homeless and anyone else looking for a nice pile of cardboard to bed down on.

  I tried to open the car door, but the kiddie lock seemed to be on, so Officer Lanky had to let me out. He tried the friendly chatter thing one more time before finally giving up and returning to his car. I tried to summon some guilt for ignoring him, but I couldn’t manage it. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d got some shut-eye, what with the annoying Vei family and being arrested and all. I tend to get cranky when I stay up past my bedtime.

  I rammed my key into the door to the building and jiggled it for a few seconds, muttering incoherent swear words to myself, before the lock finally yielded and allowed me to shove the door open. The hinges protested with a low creak, and I slipped inside. It was dark and dusty, as usual. The light bulb had burned out about two years ago and no one had bothered to replace it. I’ll willingly admit the whole place was a shit-hole, but it had a quaint, shit-holey kind of charm about it. Also, the rent was dirt cheap.

  Unfortunately, my earning capacity is less than dirt, so the last thing I wanted to see was my landlady’s sixteen-year-old daughter leaning against the handrail on the first floor, wearing a thin nightgown that could only have come from a XXX store.

  “Hi Miles,” she whispered down to me, doing her best impression of a sultry temptress. “I heard you at the door.”

  I groaned inwardly, expended a considerable amount of energy to avoid groaning outwardly as well, and ascended the stairs. I live on the ninth floor, and apparently the building was built before some genius thought of elevators, so I had no choice but to go past her. Tania wasn’t a bad girl. She’d just learned too much about dealing with men from her mother.

  “Not this again,” I said. “I’ve had a long night. Besides, it’s past your bedtime.”

  She leaned against the handrail, awkwardly thrusting her narrow hips to the side, and batted her eyelashes at me. “It’s so cold and lonely there.”

  I cringed, praying that the neighbors couldn’t hear her. I was in enough trouble already.

  I tried to move past her, but her hand snaked out and grabbed my tie, pulling me close. She purred.

  “Knock it off, kid.” I grabbed her hand and pushed it away, trying to be gentle. “You got no interest in an old man like me.”

  Her seductress act dissolved in an instant, and the transformed into something much more comforting and familiar: a pouting teenager. “Mom says you’re three weeks behind on the rent.”

  I tried again to move past her. “Didn’t she get the check I slipped under the door?”

  “You did no such thing, Miles.” She put her hands on her hip, blocking the narrow walkway. “You haven’t had a paying job in ages.”

  I shrugged off the uncomfortable sensation of having a teenage girl monitoring my financial situation better than I was. I knew what was coming next. Tania was nothing if not predictable.

  “I want you to teach me,” she said, right on cue.

  “No.”

  “That’s what you always say. Why not?”

  “Because.”

  She folded her arms and tilted her head to the side. “That’s not an answer.”

  “Sure it is.”

  She paused and glanced back at the door to her apartment. “Maybe we should wake my mom, see what she says.”

  Aw, hell. The universe really wasn’t going to cut me a break. “Didn’t take you for a blackmailer.”

  She raised a hand to her chest and put on an affronted look. “Me? How can you say such things?”

  The kid had definitely been taking lessons from her mother. When the hell had she got so devious? She had me over a barrel, and the damn thing was full of splinters.

  Still, I knew what she was asking, and there was no way I was going down easy. “What makes you think you’re even able to be taught?”

  A grin broke across her face, and I got a sinking feeling somewhere in my intestines. “I already did it once.”

  “No you didn’t.” I said, hoping that denying it would make it go away.

  “I did.” Her voice rose, and I gave her apartment door another glance. She must’ve seen, because she leaned in close and whispered, “I opened a Tunnel.”

  “You’re lying.”

  She glanced away from me. “Well, it wasn’t a full-sized one, and it only lasted a second before it collapsed, but I did it. I really did.”

  She met my eyes and held my gaze. Damn it all. She wasn’t a good enough liar to pull this off. The only reason I’d been able to avoid teaching Tania this long was because I was playing the odds. People with the ability to Tunnel were rare and most couldn’t do so without guidance. If she was telling the truth, that made my life a whole lot more difficult.

  There were two types of Tunnels, although really they were just different manifestations of the same thing. A proper Tunnel was large, at least seven feet in diameter, big enough for someone to walk through.

  The other type of Tunnel we called a Pin Hole. The circles were much smaller, only an inch or two across. A Pin Hole was a channel to Heaven, and it allowed us to tap some aspects of the world. Specifically, its instability.

  Everything is fluid and malleable in Heaven, from the creatures that inhabit it to the land itself. If you go there unprepared, you’re likely to find the world shifting around you so fast you lose whatever trace of sanity you have left. A Pin Hole channels that instability into the real world, allowing a skilled Tunneler to transmute objects. What a thing can be transmuted into depends much more on the type of object it is, rather than what it’s made of. A fork
could be turned into a pair of chopsticks, even though one is metal and one is wood. That sort of thing.

  The trouble was if Tania was getting into this sort of thing without knowing what the hell she was doing, she was going to wind up turning her skull into an insect’s head, or her necklace into a noose.

  As if I didn’t already have enough to worry about.

  Then a thought occurred to me. “Hang on, kid. You need Kemia to make a Tunnel. Where the hell did you…?” The guilt on her face would have been comical if I wasn’t already so pissed. “You broke into my apartment?”

  “It’s not breaking in if you have a key,” she said, attempting defiance but coming off petulant.

  “You don’t have a key. Your mother has a key.” I sighed and ran a hand through my hair. “How much did you take?”

  “I could only find one bottle—”

  “I only had one bottle.”

  “Then I guess I took all of it.” She grinned at me sheepishly, and I forced down another sigh. Calm down, Miles.

  I couldn’t pretend I wasn’t a million times worse when I was her age. When she was old enough she might be able to get her Tunneler’s license. Her mother wouldn’t be able to afford her training, but maybe she could get in on scholarship, like I had. But I could see in her eyes that she wasn’t going to wait that long.

  Hypocrite, a little voice inside me whispered. Like you weren’t stubborn and stupid as a goddamn donkey.

  “All right,” I said. It felt like I had to drag the words from my mouth. “You win.”

  “You’ll teach me?” Her eyes were so bright they would’ve blinded a deer.

  I nodded. “I’ll teach you. But I’m in the middle of some crap right now. As soon as I get everything wrapped up, we’ll begin. Okay?”

  She leaped into my arms, wrapping herself tightly around me, and I became acutely aware of how thin her nightgown was. Seriously, this would not be a good look if her mother came out right now.

  “Thank you, thank you, thank you!” she squealed in my ear.

  I peeled her off me, feeling my face growing hot. “Back to bed, kid. I’ll be in touch.”

  Tania nodded, beaming, then practically skipped back to her and her mom’s apartment. I ran a hand through my curls as she closed the door behind her, then started trudging up the stairs again.

  I felt like shit for lying to the kid. She wouldn’t understand. Kids never did.

  But now it was time to go. The cops would be expecting me back soon, and it wouldn’t take them long to start looking for me when I didn’t show. There was no way I was getting mixed up in this Chroma business. I never pretended to be an honorable man. I was a survivor.

  I had to pack my bags. It was time to leave Earth.

  CHAPTER THREE

  My apartment was both my home and my site of business. I had an office once, back when I thought being a freelancer was like being a private eye, where long-legged dames strolled in late at night and offered you a chance at danger and glory.

  The office was the size of a linen closet, and it took two months of no work before they finally kicked me out. After that I just conducted all my business from the semi-comfort of my apartment, relying on a few discreet newspaper ads to bring in work. It was only in the last few months that my old Tunneler buddy, Desmond, convinced me to take one of his old cell phones and use that as well. I didn’t see much use for the thing myself. Next thing he’d be wanting me to buy a goddamn computer.

  My apartment was predictably crappy, full of used furniture I’d found on the side of the street and hauled up the stairs with the help of anyone who owed me a favor. An actual wall separated my bedroom from the rest of the apartment, which I was pretty proud of. The carpet was a horrid shade of green, faded where the sun came through the dirt-streaked windows, and full of cigarette burns. That wasn’t my fault; I’d given up smoking back when I was still a teenager, after half a dozen attempts at looking cool and rebellious.

  I tossed my keys down next to a filthy goldfish bowl. Munsey and Frank drifted up to the surface of the water, and I obliged them by shaking in a good helping of fish flakes. They were ugly sons of bitches, but they were hard. I liked that. They gobbled up the food while I made my way across the apartment.

  The one good thing about my apartment was the view, if looking out at Bluegate didn’t depress you too much. Most buildings in the immediate neighborhood were only three or four stories, so I sometimes pulled my tattered old armchair up to the window and stared out. The window faced north, and on a dark night I could see the glow from the Bore lighting up the buildings on the opposite side of the river.

  Now, looking out at Bluegate for what could be the last time in a long while, I felt strangely nostalgic about the city. Sure, the place was a wretched hive of scum and villainy, but it wasn’t without its redeeming features. Hell, I’d been raised on these streets, and I was pretty fond of myself.

  I shook my head and stepped away from the window. I wasn’t leaving anything behind, not really. Besides, I’d probably get a chance to come back when the cops got bored trying to find me and learned how to deal with their problems themselves.

  I pulled open the fridge door and found Tania had been telling the truth; she’d cleaned me out of Kemia. The silver fluid acted as a catalyst when making a Tunnel. I wouldn’t be going anywhere without it.

  I checked my watch. Nearly 2 a.m. If I could get to Spencer Davies’ place before the cops started snooping around, I could convince him to sell me some more Kemia. He wouldn’t need much convincing. Davies was a Vei chemist, catering to the freelancers like myself who didn’t have the access to Kemia the government-sanctioned Tunnelers did. He wouldn’t turn down the chance to earn a few hundred bucks to slip into some stripper’s thong.

  I grabbed a couple of extra shirts and underpants from a pile on the floor of my bedroom and shoved them into an old messenger bag I kept at the top of my wardrobe. No time for a shave, or a shower for that matter. Likely I stunk like a wet dog, but I wasn’t trying to impress anyone. Heaven was generally pretty warm, and I wouldn’t need anything heavier than the worn suit jacket I was already wearing.

  I was so busy hurrying around the place I kicked a black case on the floor and nearly went down on top of it. When I got my balance back I opened up the case and pulled out my trumpet.

  It wasn’t much to look at. It was dented in a few places, and the metal had long since stopped shining, but it was a good instrument. Occasionally I played with a couple of other guys at bars around the city. We got beer bottles thrown at us more often than not, but it gave me something other than work to worry about. Sometimes the barkeeper would even take pity on us and shout us a hearty meal of fries and ketchup.

  I hadn’t played it since my last gig went bad, when a Vei playing damsel in distress dragged me into a whole lot of nonsense that I should have stayed away from. Still, I kept the instrument well-maintained. Wasn’t any point letting a good trumpet go to waste. Besides, it had—what do you call it? Sentimental value. Not many people have a musical instrument that both created and destroyed a relationship. That bloody woman.

  The clock on the wall kept up its constant movement, but still I put the trumpet to my lips and played a few long, mournful notes. They didn’t come out as clean as I’d like, but it was me that was rusty, not the trumpet.

  Christ, I wanted to take it with me. But it was a weight I couldn’t afford. With a grunt, I returned it to its case and stashed it under my bed next to a pile of old Tunneling textbooks. It was just a trumpet. Just a trumpet.

  Even if it was the only thing I had left of that bloody woman.

  But that was the way it had to be. I turned to head for the door, then paused. I didn’t know when I’d be able to get back, and Heaven could be a dangerous place if you weren’t prepared. “Damn it,” I said, then went back to my wardrobe and took a long, narrow box from behind an old raincoat.

  I pulled the nightstick out and tested the weight of it in my hands. It was an
ugly damn thing. The thing was weapon, pure and simple, with no other purpose than to beat the shit out of someone. The knife I carried could be used to scratch a circle, but the nightstick had no such purpose.

  Some Tunnelers carried guns, but I’m not that stupid. Not usually, anyway. For one thing, if you’re ever in a situation where you need to shoot someone, it’s likely that there’s more of them than there are of you. And if you’re me, they’re generally more determined to use their guns than you are. Your best bet is to play the part of a peaceful bystander and hope they don’t shoot out kneecaps.

  For another thing, you have to be dumber than a chimp to take a gat to Heaven. Complicated things like a gun are likely to change at just the wrong moment, safety mechanisms suddenly disappearing and firing pins setting off the gun unexpectedly. Heaven’s just too unpredictable to go waving such a dangerous thing around. The nightstick is much simpler, of course. Swing, smash in some skulls, run for your fucking life. Easy.

  With a bad taste in my mouth, I tucked the nightstick into the pocket I’d stitched into the inside of my suit jacket. It was just a precaution. Chances were I’d bring it back with little to no blood on the vile thing.

  I started to make for the door and stopped again. Goddamn it. One more thing I had to do before I go.

  I picked up my phone and dialed. It rang ten times before there was a click and a groan. “Guh?”

  “Desmond,” I said, “I need a favor.”

  There was another groan, and some rustling sounds. Then he came back on the line. “I knew it was gonna be you, guy. You’re the only one who asks for favors at two in the morning.”

  “I’m going away for a few days. I need you to feed my fish.”

  “You woke me at two in the goddamn morning—”

  “Oh, quit your whining,” I said. “There’s something else. There’s a girl that lives in my building.”

  “Congratulations. But you should know by now she ain’t going to be much interest to me.”

  “Don’t be such a smartass. It’s not like that. She’s just a teenager. She opened a Pin Hole.”