A Certain Number of Hypothetical Scenarios

by Joseph Wright

  "DO AS I SAY OR I'LL SMASH YOU INTO TINY BITS," it said.

  "I'm God," said God. "Who the fuck are you?"

  The golem proceeded to thump God on the ankle over and over.

  "Ow. Hey," said God, and pointed a finger at his aggressor. Electricity arced in the sky.

  Strauss smiled. When the golem had been rebuilt, he'd implemented a few modifications of his own. Under the kevlar plates and clay, the golem was pure semtex.

  The lightning bolt struck down. "I smite thee," said God. That's when the golem exploded, and that's how Dirk Strauss committed deicide.

  Strauss returned the device to his pocket. "Didn't even have to press the button," he said to himself. A dry smile flickered on and off. Days like these, he loved his job.

  DIRK STRAUSS: BANE OF WINDOWS

  Dirk Strauss crashed through the window, more out of habit than necessity. Stained glass filled the air and scattered through the church. He landed in a hero pose, a glock in his free hand and his magic claymore on his back.

  The cultists scattered. Their summoning circle was billowing smoke. The floorboards were warping, splintering, blackening. It couldn't be stopped now. Soon Ammutseba, devourer of stars would drag itself from the pit.

  Strauss smiled. He was looking forward to this.

  There was some time to kill, so he shot some cultists. When there were no more left, he turned around. Ammutseba was watching him. Black tendrils reached towards him, and its gaping maw flexed and ululated. It communicated in words that weren't words.

  Strauss took a small phrase book from his breast pocket and leafed through it. He squinted as he found what he was looking for, replaced the book, and drew his sword. "That's not what your mum said last night."

  The beast roared, and the sky began to fall. Then Strauss stabbed it in the face, so the sky chickened out and stayed where it was, embarrassed.

  That was another one down. He crossed out Ammutseba in his notebook. Since he'd blown up the Judeo-Christian God, he'd been pretty in-demand. The pope had called for Strauss' death at first, but after he proved incredibly hard to kill, he decided he'd settle for having everyone else's gods killed instead. The Parahuman Regulation Bureau was all for it. They were all too happy to get rid of a few gods, and nobody turns down pope money.

  Strauss was being well compensated for his hard work, but off the record, he would have done it for free. Besides, he'd been given carte blanche to jump through as many windows as he wanted.

  OUROBOROS

  Dirk Strauss found himself cut adrift from linear time. He came across himself from fifteen years ago.

  "Get a haircut," said Dirk. "Wait, I remember this. Is this that time I looked into that weird mirror?"

  His younger self fixed him with a glare. "There may have been a kind of mirror. And I might have looked into it, but I have a very reasonable..."

  "I don't care." Dirk looked around. There wasn't any particularly obvious way to exit the shifting blurry void.

  "So you're supposed to be me from the future?"

  Dirk regarded himself with a combination of bewilderment and detached horror. He remembered the long red leather coat and shaggy teased hair. Over the top, perhaps, but pretty standard for a twenty year-old witch hunter. The knee high swashbuckler boots, on the other hand, ranked highly on his list of regrets.

  "Yeah, strange as it may seem," he said. "Listen, jog my memory here, how are you supposed to kill an ouroboros again?"

  "You're from the future, shoot it with lasers. Why do you look like you just came from a funeral?"

  "Because I've got a proper job. Seriously, isn't there a classic way to kill them? Garlic, headshots kind of thing?"

  Young Dirk shrugged and sneered. "So you're like, behind a desk? What happened to keeping it real?"

  Dirk found a mirror he recognised and shot it. "Okay, time for you to fuck off," he said as his younger self was sucked out of limbo. "Have fun with that nest of skinreapers next year."

  "Wait what?" said young Dirk as he disappeared and collapsed the time window.

  Dirk straightened his tie and choked the ouroboros on its own tail.

  XENOGRAPHER

  The Parahuman Regulation Bureau had intercepted some kind of interstellar message. A strange pulse of modulated gravity had been observed and analysed, and the guys in the lab were pretty sure it was an alien language. The problem was, they weren't fluent in alien. That's why Dirk was paying the xenographer a visit.

  Now usually the PRB wouldn't concern themselves with messages from the stars, but after the alien invasion and that one time God came down to Ingelmouth and kicked the shit out of the city centre, the government had been scrambling for a counter initiative, and they'd decided the PRB were the outfit best equipped for the job. More the fool them, but it meant more funding.

  Anyway, the xenographer, Dr Fraser Van Allen PhD, MA, BA, wasn't answering his emails or the phone. The next step was to crash into his house through the window. That's where Dirk came in, and that's why he was frustrated to see, as he parked the car, that the house was on fire.

  Now, Dirk wasn't invulnerable. He was just very very very very competent. Thus far in his career the distinction had proved slight, but he had to admit that he could conceive of a certain number of hypothetical scenarios in which he would benefit greatly from being, for instance, fireproof. Venturing into the building fireproof and venturing into the building not fireproof would result in wildly different consequences. Such as being on fire.

  This gave him reason to pause.

  When he crashed through the window, he did it very carefully. Braced for the backdraught, he was surprised when none came. There wasn't even any heat. What there was, was a hive of aliens. The fire was a hologram, intended as a deterrent.

  One of the aliens made clicking noises at him, and the dead xenographer's translation software, running on the computer in front of the dead xenographer, echoed it in English.

  “CHARTERED ACCOUNTANT WHO LEAVES A TRAIL OF DEATH,” said the computer, presumably doing its best to translate the meaning of the name the aliens had given him. “YOU DESTROYED OUR MOTHERSHIP. AND SEVERAL OTHER MOTHERSHIPS.”

  The aliens hissed in unison.

  “HISSSS,” said the computer.

  Dirk took a second to let the situation settle, noting that none of them were willing to make the first move. “Now listen up, fuckers,” he said. “Consider this fair warning. Protocol dictates that no agent should place his or her finger on the trigger of his weapon unless he or she intends to fire said weapon. You will notice that my finger is on the trigger. If even one ovipositor points in my direction, I'm going to squeeze that trigger over and over until the gun goes clicky clicky click.”

  Walking over to the computer, he plugged in a memory stick and the translation program began to filter through the data on it. “HEY GUYS,” it said. “DON'T WORRY ABOUT FORGETTING WHAT THE MISSION WAS. HAPPENS TO EVERYBODY. WE WERE GOING TO EXTRACT YOU BUT WE FIRED ALL OUR PODS INTO THE SUN. WHOOPS. ANYWAY HANG TIGHT. LATERS.”

  That's when the xenographer woke up. “Oh hey whoa,” he said disoriented. “Wait, are you from the PRB? I didn't give you fellows permission to come here. Did one of the aliens let you in? They've not quite got their heads around the concept of doors, is the only thing.”

  “If you're not dead,” said Dirk, “why weren't you answering our messages?”

  “Just trying to help these little guys out. Didn't want them getting shot or anything.” The xenographer shrugged. “Also,” he said, “I didn't really want to. I'm very lazy.”

  Dirk thought it was best to leave them be. He recognised the aliens as part of a Cacwm strike team. The thing about Cacwm was that due to the unfortunately hierarchical structure of their hive mind they became increasingly incoherent the farther they got from their queen. Right now they were separated by several hundred lightyears, and as a result... they were pretty dumb.

  “Delta sierra six to base,” he said into the transceiver as he drove
away. “Got a negative on that communication. It was just nonsense. Over.”

  “Copy that delta sierra six,” said the young lady at the desk.

  “Liz,” said Dirk after a while.

  “Still here,” said the radio.

  “You don't think I look like a chartered accountant do you?”

  TROPHY

  Charlie mashed the buttons on his controller in an attempt to avoid being strangled. It didn't work.

  Bleary eyed, he looked at the clock. 3 am. He'd been on the sofa playing games for thirty two hours now. Jess, Matt and Anthony were away finding themselves on some kind of road trip and hence weren't here to motivate him with their scorn, so the only things stopping him from getting the platinum trophy were his heavy eyelids and his propensity for being strangled.

  There was a loud roar from outside, followed by an explosion and some car alarms. Charlie groaned as the house shook, and the HDMI cable disconnected from his TV.

  Hauling himself off the sofa he busied himself in the forest of wires, swearing as he attempted to untangle them. He'd just plugged everything back in when a man crashed through the ceiling.

  “Goddamnit,” said the man, handing Charlie a crossbow while he dusted off his suit. Rain was pouring through the hole in the roof. The man took the crossbow back and patted him on the back. “Sorry about the roof,” he said, and leapt out of the window onto the towering monster that was passing by.

  Charlie didn't really know what to do about the smashed window, so he drew the curtains closed. As for the roof hole, Anthony was the only one who knew the landlord's number, so he poked an umbrella through and opened it so that it hung there and blocked the rain. It was a stunning display of lateral thinking that he was quite proud of.

  He sat back down and picked up the controller. Ten minutes later a trophy popped for collecting five thousand pointless objects, and a sudden glow flashed behind the curtains as a dead monster crashed through the town hall.

  “Yessss,” said Charlie, fistpumping as water started to drip through the light fitting.

  DIRK STRAUSS DOES HIS TIMESHEET

  Liz was staring out of the window at the massive plume of smoke a few blocks over. The small number of co-workers not doing the same thing were typing and phoning and rushing around in somewhat of a panic.

  Unnoticed, the elevator doors opened and Dirk walked into the bureau headquarters. His shirt was soaked in dark blue blood. He strode up to reception, slamming his crossbow down on Liz's desk.

  “That was... very impressive,” she said.

  “Thanks,” said Dirk, loosening his tie.

  “How many have you-”

  “Five.”

  “In one night?”

  “Yep.” Dirk entered his office, unbuttoning his shirt.

  Liz glanced up at the window again. The skyline had been drastically remodelled in the past few hours. She vaguely wondered who was expected to foot the bill. No wonder Agent Strauss seemed stressed. Still, Ingelmouth would look a whole lot worse right now without him to thank.

  Dirk exited his office again, wearing a fresh shirt. Liz beckoned him over and straightened his tie.

  “You've still not filed your timesheet for last week,” she said.

  “You need me to do my timesheet?”

  “No, you need to do your timesheet.”

  Dirk took a leaf of paper from the copier, wrote on it, and placed it on the desk. In the centre of the blank page, he'd written the words 'ALL THE TIME'.

  “Do you know if we've still got that flying Corvette?” he asked.

  “It was a Porsche.”

  “Oh.” He paused. “Screw it then.”

  As he left, Liz's attention was drawn once more to the window. The smoke was clearing around the hulking kaiju corpse that lay slumped over the rubble of the town hall. She half suspected Dirk had aimed for it on purpose.

  PIXIES

  The stars twinkled down on a forgotten forest. Spirit lanterns lit the trees softly, subtly, mystical hues soaking into the leaves. An ancient monolith stood in a clearing, concealing arcane knowledge behind indecipherable glyphs. The night air was still and silent but for the chirp of crickets and the hoot of an owl.

  Any numinous quality this magical, timeworn place had was thrown into sharp relief by the stupidity of the pixies. They were clowning around and getting all the woodland creatures high on pixie dust.

  They spiralled through the clearing like an idiot whirlwind, and then they were gone, a trail of sparkles dissipating in their wake. All was quiet again. The breeze rustled through the branches, and an owl fell on its face.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Joe is basically Charlie Brown only instead of a dog he has social anxiety issues. He spends most of his time thinking about etymology and looking like a startled owl.

  You can find more of his work at joe-wright.deviantart.com