The Doomsday Brunette

by John Zakour

  “Yes. Miss Ona was particularly fond of that blender. Since then, the computer with the help of several bots has prepared all meals.”

  “Was the room cleaned the day of the party?”

  “Yes.”

  “By who?”

  “Cleaning ‘droids.”

  “Who did the flower arrangements?”

  “They were holographically designed by the décor computer, which is attuned to Miss Ona’s emotions.”

  “Polishing the silverware?”

  “That’s my responsibility. Why, was a piece of subpar luster?”

  “No, it looked fine. What about the wine?”

  “It was chosen by Miss Ona.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “No one else in the house chooses the wine,” he said. “Miss Ona is quite particular.”

  “Yes, I gathered that. Who actually brought the wine from the cellar?”

  “Only Miss Ona has access to the wine cellar. It is protected with a DNA encoded lock.”

  “The Quads don’t have identical DNA?”

  “Apparently not,” We replied. “Dr. Thompson no doubt varied their DNA somewhat when he created them. Odd that he made them just enough alike to drive one another crazy and different enough to drive each other…even crazier I suppose. Still, I’m sure he meant well.”

  “Right, so no one else can get into the wine cellar. And no one carried the wine up, moved it into place, chilled it or anything?”

  “It was a red wine,” Mr. Johnson. “To chill it would be criminal. No, to the best of my knowledge only Miss Ona touched the wine. That is usually the case.”

  I leaned forward and took another sip of tea.

  “Elbows off the table,” HARV whispered. “And if you continue to slouch like that he’s going to assume that you’re recovering from radical spine surgery.”

  “W, you’ve known the Quads for a long time. Correct?”

  “All their lives, sir.”

  “What did you think of Foraa?”

  “She was a lovely girl: bright-eyed, friendly and full of wonder. She was precocious but had a heart filled with love for everyone and everything that she met.”

  “Really?”

  “No, not really. That’s the approved statement that I’ve been allowed to give to the press for the past fifteen years. Sheer force of habit, you understand. Actually, Miss Foraa was spoiled, self-centered and angry but in retrospect she was the best of the four. And she was always kind to me. I think she rather liked me, really.”

  “Did she have any enemies that you know of? Anyone who would want to kill her?”

  “Mr. Johnson, each of the Quads receive death threats every day of their lives. Death threats, marriage proposals, interview requests, sponsorship offers and who knows what else. They’ve been threatened, cajoled and romanced by every government, conglomerate, scientific organization, terrorist group and lap-dance establishment created in the past twenty years. Humanity has reviled and adored them. Feared and desired them. Worshipped and desecrated them. It has been utterly impossible for them to live any semblance of normal lives among humanity and it is only through sheer strength of will that they have managed to hold onto their respective sanities when surrounded by such overwhelming human greed, lust, and envy. One could easily make the argument that there isn’t a person alive who hasn’t at one time or another wanted to see them dead.”

  “That was another of the pre-approved speeches wasn’t it?” I asked.

  “Yes,” he said. “That one was for intimate interviews, when the Quads wanted to play up their humanity. It’s factually accurate though.”

  “Okay, but I think we need to get past the rehearsed stuff if you’re going to be helpful,” I said. “I sort of need the truth here.”

  “I understand.”

  “Is there anyone in the household that disliked Foraa?”

  “You mean other than her sisters?”

  “Yes, aside from them.”

  “She didn’t get along very well with the Pfauhans,” he said.

  “The Pfahuans, you mean the security experts.”

  “Yes. Miss Foraa was never one for high technology or annoying people. Both Pfauhans are unbelievably annoying, high technology experts. You see the problem.”

  “I see it,” I said with a nod. “Back to last night, were you present when Foraa was murdered?

  W shook his head.“I was asleep in my chambers. I had been preparing the room for six days. The last twelve hours of those without a break.”

  “It takes that long?”

  “The polishing of the silverware alone takes two days.”

  “So you were asleep when Foraa was murdered?”

  “Correct.”

  “You didn’t hear anything?”

  “My quarters are at the far end of the ziggurat.”

  “Pyramid.”

  “Pardon?”

  “Sorry, you’re right. Ziggurat. Your room’s far from the dining room?”

  “A little more than a kilometer away. I travel back and forth via an indoor hover. As you can see, I have some trouble moving quickly.”

  “Yes, I’d noticed that.” I took one last sip of tea and gently placed my cup on the saucer. “That’s all I have for now, W. Thank your time and for the tea. It was delicious. And very nicely presented.”

  “The pleasure was mine,” he said, as he began to clear away my cup.

  “I may have a few more questions later on,” I said. “Can I come back to you again?”

  “Any time, sir. Just give me enough warning to properly ready the room.”

  I stood and walked slowly toward the door.

  “One last thing,” I said, turning back to him. “The bit you said about there not being a person on this planet right now who hasn’t wanted the Quads dead, does that include you?”

  W stood motionless for a long nano.

  “Of course not,” he said.

  “So I guess you should have said that there isn’t a person on this planet right now, other than yourself, who hasn’t at one time or another wanted to see them dead.”

  “Mr. Johnson. I am a frail, old man for whom putting my pants on is a challenge. My lot in life is setting tables and serving tea. How could I possibly harm, let alone kill any of the Quads?”

  “You’re right,” I said “I just wanted to point out the miscue in the pre-approved speech. The Quads might want to rework that a little.”

  “Yes, that discrepancy should be attended to.”

  I turned back toward the door.

  “Darn right it should,” I said. “Because when word of the murder gets out, I think you’ll all be making that speech a lot.”

  19

  We left the tertiary drawing room and trekked through the mansion on the next leg of the interview expedition. Supposedly, Ona’s computer was guiding us directly to Opie’s specially designed habitat within the residence but I think it took us the long way around so it could listen to HARV tell more stories.

  “And the next thing you know, the old woman shows up at the door with a shotgun.”

  “A real shotgun?”

  “It was one hundred years old, if it was a day. Two nanos later he’s hiding behind a tree, ducking buckshot.”

  “So it isn’t just computers and machines that dislike him?”

  “Oh no. His lack of appeal is multi-demographic.”

  “Can’t you two speak in binary or something so I don’t have to listen?”

  We turned and entered a long hallway that was filled with medieval weaponry. Full suits of armor lined the walls, interspersed with cases and wall displays of weaponry.

  “I didn’t know Ona was a weapons collector.”

  “She’s not,” the computer replied. “These are the remnants of Dr. Thompson’s collection. He used the weaponry in his research.”

  “It must be very valuable.”

  “Not really, most of it’s fake. Dr. Thompson smelted it himself based upon 12th and 13th century designs
.”

  “He smelt is own armor?”

  “His philosophy was that one could not create the future without fully understanding the past, so before beginning his rather intense period of weapons development, he immersed himself in the history of warfare in order to fully understand the weapons that had come before.”

  “Building suits of armor based on 800 year old designs helped him build a better laser?”

  “It gave him a historical perspective of warfare and its evolutionary touchstones,” the computer replied. “These suits of armor were considered state of the art in the thirteenth century, yet they were shortly thereafter rendered useless by the ‘ultimate weapon’ of the period.”

  “What was that?”

  “The English longbow,” HARV said with a smirk.

  “Correct,” the computer replied. “A low-cost, easy to master weapon that could attack from long-range and pierce the best battle armor of the day, the longbow was the weapon that conquered Wales and Scotland and won the Hundred Years War for England.”

  “And made England the foremost military power of Europe,” HARV added.

  We walked past the armor and turned left into another long hallway.

  “Can I stop listening to you two now or is there going to be a test on this later on?”

  “You never know,” the computer replied, “however the point is moot now because Master Opie’s residence is just ahead. Thirty meters down this hall and through that door.”

  I looked up and saw that the hallway ended at a large set of double doors, which took on a bit of a glow, the computer’s way of highlighting the destination. I walked the rest of the hallway and I put my hand on one of the large doorknobs but then hesitated.

  “Do I need any special equipment for this or anything?”

  “No, sir,” the computer replied, “the doorknob works in a relatively straight forward fashion.”

  “I mean with Opie!”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, he’s a monkey, right?”

  “A silverback mountain gorilla to be specific.”

  “But how do I approach him? Shouldn’t I have a banana or something.”

  “A banana?”

  “Boss, please,” HARV said. “You’re embarrassing me.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Silverback mountain gorilla’s are indigenous to Hagenia forest Their diet includes 97 different plant species, none of which are bananas. A gorilla in its natural habitat wouldn’t know what to do with a banana.”

  “Yeah, well, I don’t think the home of the world’s richest woman is considered its natural habitat.”

  “I see,” said HARV, “so the banana is sort of a symbolic nod to the creature’s opulent yet unnatural surroundings. Do you think that’s appropriate?”

  “What?”

  “I agree,” the computer chimed in, “I think something familiar to the species would be more suitable. Perhaps the leaf of a plant indigenous to the mountain forests would be more appropriate.”

  “Yes, something common to that part of the world and yet can also be found in this hemisphere, such as bamboo shoots,” HARV said. “That way you’re speaking to both cultures.”

  “Brilliant,” the computer said.

  “Thank you.”

  I rolled my eyes and opened the door.

  “Forget it,” I said. “Opie could be bloodthirsty, rabid and radioactive and he’d still be preferable to listening to the two of you.

  The room was darker than I expected, filled with lush vegetation and heavy with humidity. It was hard to breathe at first, and harder still to see clearly.

  “I see that Ms. Thompson has gone to great lengths to recreate the mountain gorilla’s natural habitat,” HARV said.

  “I guess every Graceland should have its jungle room.”

  “Pardon?”

  “Nevermind. Computer, any idea where we can find Opie?”

  There was no answer.

  “It would appear that the computer interface did not enter the room with us,” HARV said as his hologram, now dressed in 19th century safari gear, appeared beside me.

  “Great, omnipresent except when you need it.”

  “Would you like me to page it?”

  “No,” I said. “I was getting sick of hearing you two chatter. Could the two of you be any more annoying?

  “Did you or did you not instruct me to befriend the computer?” HARV said inside my head.

  “There are other things to talk about in this world besides my shortcomings you know.”

  “Granted,” HARV replied, “but few are as enjoyable.”

  I took a couple steps deeper into the room and felt my feet sink slightly into the mud-like floor. I crouched slightly out of instinct and scanned the darkness for any sign of motion.

  “I don’t like this,” I said. “Let’s switch to infrared.”

  My left eye went dark for a nano then sprang to life again like a computer screen powering up as HARV switched the input to my brain from the normal light spectrum to heat-sensitive infrared. The jungle became a blur of red and orange shapes and I could now see that more than half the deciduous vegetation wasn’t really there at all.

  “Apparently Opie has been using Ms. Thompson’s holographic décor program,” HARV said.

  “So simple even a monkey can use it.”

  “Perhaps then there’s still hope for you. Fine idea, by the way, switching to infrared.”

  “I have my occasional good ideas.”

  “Granted, but have I ever told you about the empar?”

  “Empar?”

  “My own variation on radar or sonar. I use an electro-magnetic pulse which I emanate from the wrist communicator as the searching waves. It’s a little something new that I’ve added to the bag of tricks.”

  I tried hard not to pay attention to HARV’s chatter and continued my slow trek through the jungle, scanning the grounds for suspicious heat signatures as I moved.

  “I don’t know if I’ve mentioned this but I’ve been gradually upgrading our operating system. After all, I have to do something to keep busy during your downtime.”

  “Is there a point here, HARV? I’m a little busy.”

  “Actually, the reason I bring it up at this particular nano is because, although using the infrared vision lets you see more clearly in the darkness, the empar would let you monitor the entire room including areas currently outside your field of vision. Such as behind you…”

  “What?”

  I spun quickly and dropped into a defensive stance, ready to fend off any attack from behind. Unfortunately, I didn’t notice the six hundred pound hulking form that suddenly dropped on top of me from the treetops overhead.

  “…or perhaps above you.”

  For a super speed computer, HARV is remarkably slow at getting to the point.

  The hulk hit me like a hairy ton of bricks and the two of us rolled along the dirt floor, grappling as we moved (me trying to break free, my attacker…well, I’m not entirely sure what it was trying to do but it involved some very painful grabbing and hitting).

  I should note here that, despite evidence to the contrary, I don’t enjoy fisticuffs or violence. I much prefer thinking my way out of dangerous situations because it usually hurts less. But in my business there are times when physical force is necessary. So I come to these things prepared. First, I carry gun, a cool one too, made especially for me by Randy and loaded with a few thousand interesting features (more on that later).

  I also wear armor. It’s lightweight, super strong, and computer enhanced. It’s specially designed to both protect me and, when needed, to augment my strength. It’s a little constricting at times and smells a little funny when it gets wet, but that’s a small price to pay. After all, you never know when something huge and angry is going to drop on you from a treetop.

  My attacker and I rolled across the floor and hit one of the non-holographic trees. My attacker took the brunt of the impact and it caused him to
loosen his grip just enough for me to skitter free. I scrambled to my feet a few meters away, turned back toward my attacker and, as I suspected, beheld the infrared image of a great ape rising up on its legs and pounding its chest, oozing more testosterone than an amateur bare-knuckle fight competition in a New Tijuana whorehouse.

  “Wild guess here,” I said. “That’s Opie?”

  “I doubt that there’s more than one silverback mountain gorilla currently in residence here.”

  “I thought he was supposed to be intelligent.”

  “Maybe he’s gone native.”

  “Well, it would have been nice if somebody had told us that before we got here. I knew I should have brought a banana.”

  “Yes,” said HARV, “because everyone knows that a banana is the only way to stop a charging gorilla.”

  “Don’t get sarcastic with me. All I’m saying is that…Did you say charging?”

  I turned back to Opie just in time to see him put his fists angrily on the ground and charge me on all fours. I flicked my right wrist in the special way that makes my gun pop into my hand and held it steady in my grip. I was about to vocally set the gun for heavy stun and fire when HARV did something totally unexpected.

  “SR Trigger. Bruce Lee. Go!”

  “What?”

  And at that nano, Opie was on me and things became very strange.

  I ducked under Opie’s initial lunge and did a lightning fast sweep with my leg. I caught him behind the knee as he passed and he tumbled to the muddy ground with a growl that was equally composed of anger and surprise.

  “What did I just do?”

  “Just go with it,” HARV said. “He’s coming back.

  Opie rose to his feet and attacked again, this time with a wild punch from his hairy, tree trunk arm. Again, I ducked under the punch, then grabbed his arm and gave him a spinning back-kick to the rib cage that staggered him. Opie stumbled then spun his massive form back toward me, clearly off-balance and confused now, so I pressed my advantage.

  I lunged at him and hit him with a round-house kick to the stomach then two quick snap kicks to the head. Then I leapt in the air and delivered a haymaker spinning back-kick to his head that toppled him.

  I found all of this really strange, because I’d never done a proper spinning back-kick in my life. As a matter of fact, I’d never done any of the combat moves that I’d just performed. Electra is the martial arts expert (as she, often painfully, reminds me). I’m a barroom fighter who I like to think gets by on smarts and old-fashioned gumption more than anything else (although truthfully, it’s more likely luck and dirty tricks but I’m not about to put that in my press material). The bottom line is that I suddenly had abilities that I never had before and it didn’t take a genius to figure out where they came from.