The Dragon Writers Collection

by DragonWritersCollective

  In my mind I could see April's indignant reaction to such an overtly sexist remark. Truly, this man was from another time.

  "Wow, you are some kind of Neanderthal aren't you?" I said with a laugh.

  "Now," Smith swallowed his first bite of burger and washed it down with a huge gulp from the shake. "I assume you can't find the binoculars with TGPS because they're all the way down in Guatemala, right?"

  I looked at him like he had just told me the earth was flat.

  "What? NO! Blarg, man, do you even know how the TGPS works?"

  After a second, it hit me, he might not know.

  He leveled an icy gaze at me, slurped up another sip of shake and said, "Humor me."

  "Okay," I said, slowly. "The Thermal Global Positioning System - as every vidschool student knows - uses the Global Positioning System combined with constant, real-time thermal scans of the globe to locate things by scanning for certain temperatures and correlating the information with unique radio chips embedded in everything."

  "And in everyone," Smith said, and then scratched his right thumb. That's when I noticed he had an implant scar there.

  "Wait, how old are you?" I asked. It had been a long time since the government had ordered chip implants. Almost everyone had them inserted when they were born these days. Smith must've been one of the last generations to be born before the process became ordinary.

  "I'm old enough that when I was born nobody put anything inside my body," Smith said. "They just snipped a little tip off of it."

  I raised an eyebrow, and chalked it up to 20th century humor.

  "So, just use the TGPS to find your binoculars in the rainforest," Smith said.

  "The problem is, they were a family heirloom, passed down to me by my grandfather and so they don't have a microchip," I said. "They don't show up on the TGPS. I wanted to have one added, and really have them upgraded to have a holographic system and all this sweet tech to..." I trailed off as I saw Smith's eyes glaze over. "My mom wouldn't let me have them upgraded. She said my grandfather specifically told her to let me use them, but never change them. Weirdly, mom says that was one of the last things he said to her before he died. He's been gone for...like 50 years now."

  Smith scratched his chin thoughtfully.

  "Ok, kid, I'll take the case," he said. With that he whipped out an honest to God three ring binder and filled out a contract.

  "Here we are," he said.

  I read it out loud.

  "I, Adrien Faulk, agree to hire Mr. J. Smith, a private detective licensed in the state of New York, to find a missing item worth no more than $500. Mr. Smith's services will be retained for 14 days or until the item is located, whichever comes first at a rate of $200 per day...."

  I thought for a second.

  "Hang on, Mr. J. Smith? Really? Really?"

  "Look, Adrien, I try not to get noticed much. It's an old habit that has kept me alive in my chosen profession more often than not. So, I go by Smith," he said.

  "Ugh, I get that, but when I came into Grand Central you stuck out like a sore thumb, reading your old school newspaper, wearing that outfit...and now this diner? That's not exactly blending in, is it?"

  Smith laid the contract in front of me.

  "I didn't say I wanted to blend in, I just want people to ignore me. If you hadn't been looking specifically for me, would you have written me off as an out of touch old-timer?"

  I nodded reluctantly.

  "You're darn right you would have. Because if there's one surefire way to get people to ignore you, it's to make them think you're worthless."

  After a few seconds of letting his remark hang in the air between us, I signed the contract.

  "Okay, let's go find my binoculars," I said, jumping to my feet.

  "Hold your horses, kid," Smith said with a mouthful of burger. "Ruby hates it when you rush."

  CHAPTER TWO:

  Getting a Clue

  Smith paid Ruby - with real coins, no less - and we headed out of the diner.

  "My car is back toward the station," I said. "Should we head to your office or do you want to go right to the airport?"

  It was Smith's turn to look at me like I'd suggested something ludicrous.

  "Why would we go to the airport?" he asked.

  "Well, aren't we going to Guatemala?" I said, pulling out my phone again. "I've been researching ticket prices and we can get a good deal if we catch a flight before 5 p.m. - or we can wait until after 12 a.m. Either way it should only be about $2,000 per ticket, which is not bad considering we're leaving the same day."

  Smith charged off in the direction of the station's parking deck without so much as an acknowledgement of my discussion of ticket prices. I almost lost him in the crowd.

  "Hey!" I called after him, but he continued walking. A few jostled shoulders - and dirty looks - later, I had fought through the crowd enough to be walking side-by-side with him.

  "We're not going to Guatemala," Smith growled at me, with a mixture of annoyance and pity - kind of like a father does to a child who doesn't understand what's going on. I hated it.

  "The odds are very much against a scenario that involves us going to Guatemala to find those binoculars," Smith said, a wry smile spreading across his lips. "This will likely be the easiest money I make on a case ever. If I know you, rich boy, you've just misplaced the things in your ridiculously expensive luggage or tossed them absentmindedly at your little girlfriend's house."

  "My fiancé'," I corrected him. He didn't seem to notice. "But, no, I searched all my luggage, the house, the guest house and the pool house. And April and I searched all over her room and her parent's place."

  We reached a corner and Smith took a right, away from the station.

  "My car is back that way," I said.

  Smith kept walking. "I'm almost positive I can do a better job searching anything than you, son."

  We took another turn and I realized I had no idea where we were.

  "I don't think I've ever been in this part of the city before," I said, looking around in a daze. The buildings here were still mostly made of brick; a few didn't even have solar panels installed. Some of them might have been pre-water wars structures. The sun had started to go down and the buildings cast long shadows across the street. Smith stood at the edge of one of those shadows, his face half in and half out of the light - looking literally like the man of two worlds I was beginning to realize he was.

  "Wow," I said, glancing at his face. "That's appropriate."

  "Don't get all literary on me, kid," Smith said. "A few more steps and we're there."

  I wanted to ask where, but Smith turned and all but disappeared into the shadow. He produced a metal key from his coat pocket and unlocked a garage door that was so filled with graffiti I thought it was part of a brick wall. Smith jabbed a button with his implant thumb - I noted it was his right-hand thumb - and the garage door rose.

  Or, well, it kind of rose. It creaked up slowly at first and then whatever motor was winding it upward seemed to give out with a wheeze. Smith stooped and stepped under the half-raised door. I heard a loud clanging sound as he kicked something and the door grumbled the rest of the way up.

  With a snap-hiss sound, Smith turned on the light in his garage. Before me, I saw what must have been a ghost.

  It was a car.

  It was a car with an internal combustion engine, I could tell by the exhaust pipes and the smell - that smell of ancient gasoline.

  The thing had thick, rubber tires, a solid glass windshield and headlights with what had to be halogen bulbs in it. You could tell Smith loved the machine, maybe more than he did anything else. It was polished so well I could see my reflection in the red-painted hood, the shiny covers on the wheels and even the little horse that was on the front vent-plate.

  "Is that a -?"

  "Mustang," Smith finished. "Just like me, it is from the 20th century. It runs on gasoline."

  "And serious amounts of grease," I said, as I inadvertently
stepped in an oily puddle. "Just like you," I quipped.

  Smith chuckled.

  "Not bad, son, you might have half a brain in that pretty little head of yours after all," Smith said. "There's one big difference between me and this 1965 automobile, though."

  "What's that?" I asked.

  "The car is way more reliable," Smith said with a grin as he slid into the driver's seat.

  I opened the passenger door and sat down. The door was incredibly heavy. I reminded myself it was made of actual metal and not the polyglass of today's vehicles. Smith pulled out his key ring again - where on earth did he still get keys made? - and put one in the ignition.

  The car roared to monstrous life. The engine rumbled with fearsome power. It was like we had awakened a T-rex, summoning the reptile from time immemorial and Smith was somehow going to force it to do his bidding.

  I didn't think it was still legal to even own one of these fossils, much less drive one. Smith sensed my apprehension and looked over at me.

  "Don't worry, I can still drive it, my license is current and this baby can do laps around any of your modern smart cars," he said.

  "What about the emissions regulations?" I asked, staring at the column of smoke billowing out of the exhaust pipes.

  "I'm exempt," Smith said, and then laughed. "I've been grandfathered in."

  He turned out onto the road and the garage door automatically closed behind him. Traffic made way for this machine tooling down the boulevard. The ride was surprisingly smooth. But, man, was it loud! It was one of the loudest things I'd ever heard on the streets of New York City.

  Smith was a man in his element behind the wheel of this car. He leaned one elbow on the door beside him and steered with only one hand on the wheel - right in the middle of the bottom rung of the steering wheel. It was less his hand and more a linkage to another appendage, as if the car itself were just an extension of his body. Or, maybe it was the other way around. The interior was immaculately cleaned, except for the floorboard. There were innumerable stains on them, probably the result of eating some more of that disgusting food.

  "Ok, tell me how to get to your house," he said after a few minutes.

  I blinked.

  "Directions to your house, kid, that's the first place we're going to check," Smith restated.

  "Uhhh, well," I stammered.

  "Don't tell me, you have no idea how to verbally tell someone how to get to that palatial estate you share with your mommy and daddy, do ya?" Smith nearly spat the words at me.

  It wasn't my fault. Most modern cars came with built-in TGPS and navigation system. They essentially drove themselves. Who needs to keep up with something as mundane as directions? Suddenly, I remembered my smartphone had a navigation app and pulled it out of my pocket.

  "Here we go," I said, and scanned my thumb so it would unlock the phone's homescreen. Smith glanced down at my hands while I was doing this and sneered.

  "Is that a tattoo? I thought those things were so 2015 for a man about town such as yourself," he said.

  "Where have you been, old-timer, it's a personal QR code," I shot back.

  Smith rolled his eyes this time.

  "It's bad enough they make us have this damn chips in our hands, now you're telling me you believe that 'save the earth' with a tattoo nonsense?"

  "Look, Smith, I know you want some good old-fashioned hard currency or whatever, but I believe in protecting the environment so I got the ID tag tattoo last year."

  Smith looked out the window as we waited at a traffic signal. He was the only one on the road manually driving and the other drivers looked up from their vidscreens and phones to frown. I could tell they were thinking he would slow them down with his pitiful human reaction time when the signal changed, but Smith didn't seem to care or even notice.

  "I know you've seen those commercials," I said.

  He looked back at me.

  "Movie stars and pop musicians can't convince me that printing paper money or using an honest coin is going to ruin the environment," Smith said, his voice dripping with derision. "If you ask me it is just another excuse to control the populace. When I was a young man -"

  I shot him a look.

  "Ahem, when I was a YOUNGER man," Smith continued. "They told us all to get these chips implanted in our thumbs and it would make life easier, lower healthcare costs by making our medical records easier to access and always present and that it would even change the way we paid for things. Well guess what, it didn't."

  I looked down at my phone's screen and saw it had loaded the route to my house from our current location.

  "The fact is," Smith continued with his diatribe. "The implants were a bust. There were all these unforeseen problems with interference from smartphones and radios and so on."

  "The TGPS part works just fine," I said. "It's ancient technology, now we can do everything optically as the code tattoo stores the important information. You really ought to get one"

  "Not on your life," Smith said. "If I could take this hunk of metal out of my hand, I would."

  He reached over and scratched his thumb, as if the chip itself were somehow itching or irritating him.

  “I swear, sometimes I think this one has never worked right,” he said. “At times, it seems to blink randomly or just get hot in my hand for no reason.”

  He looked down at the phone's screen and seemed to memorize the route through osmosis. The light changed and we roared off, leaving the smart cars in a cloud of dust and smoke, their passengers recoiling in horror at the pile of pollutants we were leaving behind.

  "Roll the window down," Smith said, pointing to my door. "You'll love it. Live a little."

  To humor him, I did.

  And it was amazing. I have to admit I had never quite felt the sense of freedom that I did when that wind blew in through the car. Smith was in charge of where we were going. I watched him work the pedals and shift gears - the car even had him do that manually - and he seemed in control of more than just our navigation. He was making his own destiny with this machine. It was crude, it was old and yet, it was magnificent. It was an experience, certainly more than just riding in a car.

  We pulled up to the security gate at my parent's estate. I try to play down my dad's success most of the time. I only go out to eat three nights a week and I only own two smart cars. My mom worries that people will think I'm too much new money if I flaunt it all the time. She says people will try to take advantage of me and I'm too young to make wise decisions. Truth be told, dad does pretty well as an aerospace engineer for one of the new outer space exploration start-ups. Whenever April and I watch the news, and they show some new government program focusing on space exploration or space commerce we usually see my dad's company mentioned. He is frequently shown as the face of the company, touting the importance of exploring and harnessing the opportunities in the final frontier.

  "The future is bright indeed for Inferno Industries," or at least so says Marcus Faulk, my dear old dad and aerospace engineer of tomorrow.

  It can be a bit much, and mom even says April might be trying to marry me for my money. But her parents aren't exactly poor so I don't think so. But nobody can tell Jennifer Faulk when she's wrong. So, April has opted to prove her wrong by being a wonderful girlfriend for the past two years and now a wonderful fiancé' for me.

  Smith looked over at me expectantly as we reached the keypad for the security gate. I didn't bother to explain how I wouldn't have to lean over. The pad wasn't actually connected to anything, the security system would respond to my thumb implant or I could use the new tattoo scanner we had just installed. The keypad was a decoy to distract thieves or anyone else trying to break into estate.

  I waved my thumb at the sensor box expectantly.

  Nothing happened.

  "Must be interference," I said. "Probably this giant hunk of metal we're riding in, Smith."

  He grunted.

  I tried again.

  Still nothing. That's when I noticed th
e gate wasn't exactly lined up correct.

  "Hey, does that gate look open to you?" I asked.

  Smith killed the engine and got out of the car. In a flash, he went from old-timer to coiled viper, waiting to strike. His hand slid nonchalantly into his trench coat and he produced a handgun.

  "Yes, it is a .44 magnum," he said, before I could even ask the question. "And yes, it still fires real bullets made of real lead which I have to craft and load myself. Now, keep quiet and stay in the car."

  Oh, like that was going to happen.

  I gave him a few minutes and then slipped out of the car and squeezed through the gate behind him.

  Gaining clandestine entry into the Faulk estate was no easy task. In addition to the security gate, my father had lined the driveway with security sensors and some electrical devices that could stun the average intruder. Closer to the house were more stunners that could take down a small elephant if need be so I couldn't imagine anyone being able to get past them. What can I say, space industries are very cut throat these days and my dad is always warning us about industrial espionage.

  Telling Smith about the security precautions seemed like a prudent thing to do, but as I got close to him, he held up a hand signaling me to keep quiet.

  "Fine, I'll drag you back to the car when you get stunned," I said in a mildly annoyed whisper.

  Smith didn't react, and then I noticed why he didn't need to. Someone had deployed a scrambling device right in the center of our driveway. I started to get worried. Whoever had broken into the estate was determined, well equipped and well trained.

  We walked up to the front door and found it, too, had been hacked open.

  "Why is there all this ketchup around the door frame and on the steps?" I asked Smith.

  He didn't answer. He was already standing in the doorway.

  "Adrien, it isn't ketchup," he said, gravely. "I need you to go wait in the car until I find out what is going on."

  "No way, this is my house -" I pushed past him and nearly passed out at the scene laid before me.

  It was bloody.

  It covered the floor and the walls were streaked like a butcher had cut up live animals in here.