by J Battle
Thank goodness I have my mac and hat.
I should say that, when I get the chance, I'm going to shake the hands of the designers of this coat. It has a built-in cooling system, powered by the photovoltaic cells in the hat, that allows me to remain uncomfortably warm in these conditions, and not evaporate to nothing. My only gripe is that they didn’t seem to anticipate the temperature of the air I'd be breathing in; it’s hot and it’s drying out my mouth and all of my mucous membranes and I’m afraid to blink in case the dry grit in my eyes cuts grooves across my eyeballs.
Wait a minute; there’s some stuff in this pocket I hadn’t noticed. There’s a scarf, a pair of tinted goggles, and what looks like a pack of mints.
That’s much better. I can see clearly with the goggles on; the scarf is wrapped around the lower half of my face and seems to filter out some of the heat; and these mints are so cool and refreshing.
It’s not yet noon here, so only one sun is up. If I could be bothered, I’d look it up on my wrist-top and give you its name; but it’s just too hot to even think of doing something that complicated. I’m sure my narrative facilitator will provide full details, if he thinks that it is necessary.
In another hour, the other sun will appear, and even this fancy mac will struggle to keep me alive as the combined heat from the double suns of the Kepler-47 system (there you go, I knew he'd put it in - he can't help himself) threatens to agitate the molecules in my bloodstream to a such an extent that it turns to steam. I don’t like my molecules agitated; everyone knows that. Apparently, at this time of the year, the temperature is likely to reach a high point of close to 70 degrees C, or 178F, in the shade; not that there is any. And this is still early Hot Season! I don’t want to be here when it gets really hot.
With a bit of luck, I won’t have to hang around out here for too long. When the police arrive and rush inside the hotel, I’ll be able to go back to the squirtbooth near its grand entrance and get out of here.
No, wait; I can't. I haven't seen Strange leave; he might still be there, waiting to catch me out.
Or he might have gone already.
I can't work out which is more likely, and any moment now there is a very good chance that my brains will start to melt and leak out through my eyes. I can't see that helping the decision-making process.
If I can't guess what Strange is doing, I might have to stay out here all day. Sometimes I wish I had greater range of expletives at my fingertips; bother doesn’t seem to cover this situation.
I can see the hotel from where I’m standing, though it shimmers in the heat haze. I keep feeling that I’m going to be segued from this scene into an erotic flesh on flesh sequence; no such luck.
Whilst I’m being slowly roasted, I may as well tell you what I’m doing here on Greenhaven. Look at the place and tell me how they came up with a name like that.
It all started on a Monday morning in June. I remember the exact day because it was two years to the day since I'd kissed a woman, and she was called June.
**********
I was waiting for my first coffee of the day and, as usual, I was going to have to wait a bit longer than I felt I deserved. I’m not a hard boss, but I do have some fairly strict rules about timekeeping at work, and Julie ignores them all. If I actually paid her on anything like a regular basis, I’d probably pull her up about it.
For some reason that I'm not privy to, Sam isn't here yet, and he's been hanging around here, doing not very much, for as long as I've had an office. I'm fairly sure that he was hanging around somewhere else with the same level of commitment and activity long before that.
So, I was trying to decide if I should get up and make my own coffee, or take a quick nap on the old brown leather couch that I inherited from my uncle, when there was a gentle knock on the outer door of the office. I know; who knocks these days? And why are they knocking on my door? No-one ever visits me at the office; well, not for years anyway.
There was another knock on the door, and I decided that some response was required on my part; I’m quick like that.
When I opened the door, I found that my visitor was a tall woman, dressed in a smart green two-piece suit, with short, curly blonde hair and an air of sophisticated desolation. She was probably on the low side of middle age, and she had certainly had some work done.
I must have held the door open without moving for longer than was polite, because she stepped forward until she was very close to me and whispered, ’can I come in?’ Her accent could have been American, or Welsh; I’m not good with accents.
Her voice was low and a little hoarse; from crying or from smoking; I couldn’t tell.
‘Of course,’ I answered; a little too jolly perhaps.
I allowed her to walk first into my office, and I didn’t check out her rear; I promise.
When we were both seated, on either side of my scruffy scratched desk, she leant forward and undid the single button on her suit jacket. She was wearing a plain, light yellow blouse; it went well with the colour of her suit, but it struggled to contain her figure.
Now, I‘m going to make a confession here. I’m an adult male in my mid-thirties. I have a lot of life experience, and I’ve been around; ask anyone. Despite that, whenever I meet an attractive woman for the first time, I may as well be a fourteen-year old boy again. I can’t help it; it’s the breasts. Women have breasts, and you can forget your great wonders of the world; your Hanging Gardens of Babylon, or Temple of Diane, or your Phoenix. They all pale into insignificance compared to a woman’s breast; and she had two of them!
There, now I’ve got that out of my system, I can continue with my story.
‘What can I do for you?’ I asked, eventually.
‘You can look at my face, for a start,’ was the somewhat icy reply.
I looked up at her face, and tried a smile. It didn’t get much in the way of a response, so I let it slip away.
‘Sorry about that. What can I do for you?’
She sighed. ‘I’d like you to find my husband. Well, my ex-husband, I should say. He’s gone missing, and he owes me money.’
Taking great care not to let my attention drop below her chin, I opened my wrist-top.
‘Do you mind if I take some details down? I’ll record it if that’s OK.’
She nodded, then, with her cold blue eyes staring at me, she quite deliberately chewed her bottom lip.
‘What do you want to know?’
‘Just the usual.’
She told me all the usual. His name was Ben Masters, and she hadn’t seen or heard from him for two weeks, which wasn’t a problem in itself; they were divorced after all. But he hadn’t paid her this month’s alimony; and that was a problem. She zipped a photo to my wrist-top, along with all of his personal details.
‘Two metres tall, and one hundred and twenty kilos. He’s a big boy, isn’t he? What did you feed him on?’
‘He wasn’t that heavy before he went to prison. I looked after him; made sure he ate the right things.‘
‘What did he go away for?’
‘He robbed a bank, and someone got shot.’
‘So, he’s not your average citizen then?’
‘Nothing is average about my Ben.’
‘That’s very nice for you, I’m sure. When did you last see him, and can you give me details on his friends and associates?’
‘We had a meal, two weeks ago, at Mellies. You don’t want to get involved with his friends and associates. They’re not nice people.’
I shrugged and almost said, ‘I can look after myself’, but I didn’t, because experience tells me that I can’t.
‘OK, Mrs. Masters. You still use your married name? I think I’ve got all I need for now. I’ve zipped over my charge details, so, if you could just transfer the deposit to my account, then I’ll get right on to it.’
More than a little relieved when my account flagged up the receipt of the much-needed funds, I smiled at her and stood up.
‘How did you hear about me?’ I ask
ed, as I held my hand out for a business-like shake.
‘I looked you up. Chandler Investigations; why wouldn’t I pick you?’
She paused for a long moment before she finally accepted my hand and gave it the slightest of squeezes.
Then she was gone and all that was left was the scent of her cheap perfume.
Chapter 4 - Then the missing fat guy
When the fragrant ex Mrs. Masters had gone, I switched on my desktop and began to work my magic. My computer is the best that the small amount of money available to me could buy: the website I used to purchase it actually queried my request for a physical, non-virtual keyboard. In many ways I’m quite old fashioned, and don’t get me started on squirtbooths, or modern atonal music, or TV, or Hollywood comedies.
Before I’d got properly started on my new assignment, the outer office door swung open and Sam scurried in. He doesn’t walk like most people; he dashes from place to place, with tiny steps, as if he hasn’t got the time to take strides. Given that, in all the time I’ve known him, he’s never worked or studied, or travelled, or had any sort of responsibilities, you’d think he’d be able to take a more relaxed attitude to the minutiae of daily life, but it seems he feels compelled to rush to his next opportunity to do absolutely nothing.
He didn’t stop to say hello or how are things going as he trotted past my desk.
‘What’s up?’ I called as he disappeared into my bathroom.
‘I’m going to have a bit of a sit in here,’ he called back; at least that’s what I thought he said.
I know a true friend would have followed him into the bathroom to make sure he was OK, but you only do that sort of thing with Sam once, so I just stood at the thankfully closed door.
‘Are you OK?’ I asked.
‘What d’you mean?’
‘Have you eaten something that disagreed with you?’
‘I’m not taking a dump. I’m sat on your floor.’
‘Why?’
‘I’m hiding. There’s no electrical stuff in here, is there?’
‘Just the lights. Who are you hiding from?’
‘The AI’s. I think they’re watching me.’
‘They watch everyone. It’s sort of what they do.’
‘No, they’re watching me, personally; specially.’
‘What’s special about you?’
He grunted; it could have been a laugh, or he could have actually been on the toilet.
‘I know stuff.’
I shook my head and went back to my desk. Sam knows stuff the way religious zealots know that God wants to be their best friend.
Back to the absent Mr. Masters.
Within minutes, I’ve got all of his social media sites up and start building a time-line. Whilst I’m working on that, I set a couple of programmes running to data mine the accounts of his electronic ‘friends’. After an hour or so, I’ve got a fairly good picture of who Ben Masters is; or at least, of his web persona. It’s not always wise to mix the two.
He was forty-two, with only a basic education and a remarkably truncated work life. His closest ‘friends’ all had similar background, so it was easy to get a handle on his criminal gang. I didn’t have access to police files, but public records, and their own private, indiscreet social media posts gave a pretty clear picture.
With his time-line established, I used one of my trickier, less than legal programmes to download data from the surveillance cameras that bedeck our moistened city in ever increasing quantities. As I mentioned, this is not strictly speaking legal. I’m sure that one or other of the governing AI’s knows what I’m doing, but, as long as I am careful and there is no ‘against’ that can be attributed to my actions, I’m usually left alone.
Knowing where he lives and hangs out, and what he’s been up to, it was fairly easy with today’s sophisticated face recognition software to trace his last sightings. I must admit that I groaned a little when I saw him exiting one of the squirtbooths that ringed the publicly accessible concourse of Manchester’s Interplanetary Squirtport.
So that was that. He’d left the planet and she didn’t have a chance in hell of getting any money off him. End of job; here’s my report and final bill; thank you very much and goodnight.
That’s what I should have done. There was nothing to be gained from digging any deeper, and I pride myself on being straight with my clients and not bumping up their bills unnecessarily; no, I do; honestly.
Still, it was a quiet day, and there was still no sign of Julie, so I decided to make my own coffee and have a look to see if I could track where he’d come from. It wasn’t just boredom, however. My interest was piqued by the fact that, before he turned up at the Squirtport, he hadn’t been seen for three days.
If I‘d had more work, or if Julie had been there to distract me and make me coffee, or if Sam had come out of the bathroom, I wouldn’t have ended up with half-melted boots.
Chapter 5 – Then bang, bang; you're dead
The shot should have been easy. He’d been shooting with this rifle at his local shooting range for nearly a year, and he judged himself an adequate shot. The distance was manageable and the light conditions were good; and, after all, Masters was a big target.
Shooting people, however, is not the same as shooting at pieces of paper. The consequences are all together more severe. As he took aim, he noticed the sights wobble a little and adjusted his position to steady his weapon. He tried again, and still he didn’t feel secure. Masters was talking to the little guy who was there to collect him from the prison; completely oblivious to the fact that a rifle was pointed in his general direction. He laughed and bent forward, just as the first pressure was put on the trigger.
Jim sighed as he gently released the pressure. Then Masters stepped back, gesturing at the rear door of the old-fashioned vehicle. His massive chest was a perfect target, so Jim took the shot. The little guy eased out of the driver’s seat and stood up, just in time to receive the bullet in the back of his head. If he’d had time to think, Jim would have been amazed at how quickly Masters was able to spin the dead body to one side as it fell, and squeeze into the driving seat.
As he drove off with a screech, Jim lowered his gun into his carryall and rushed away from the scene on legs that threatened to fail him at any moment.
A few minutes later, he was walking down by the canal, on a section where he knew there were no surveillance cameras.
When he was certain that he wasn’t being observed by a chance passer-by, he dropped the bag into the canal. Trying not to think about the wrong man he’d killed, he concentrated instead on his regret at losing the gun. It was an M21 sniper rifle and was nearly a hundred years old; he’d spent many hours restoring it to its former glory. Being such an old weapon, it didn’t have the record and report facility required of all new and officially updated weapons; which was a useful feature if you want to kill someone and not end up enjoying the comforts of ‘Gotcha.’
To facilitate his safe getaway, Jim had disabled all of the cameras watching his chosen place of execution. Now all he had to do was visit the local shopping mall; the one that was vandalised on an almost nightly basis. There he could visit the toilets, remove his mask and body bulker, turn his coat inside out, remove the insert in his shoes that modified the way he walked, and leave; secure that there were no working cameras to record the remarkable change in his appearance.
Jim Evans was twenty-four years of age now, and he’d spent most of the past nine years preparing for the release of Ben Masters, the man who’d killed his father in the Retro Cash bank-raid.
His first attempt had been a failure, and he felt regret at killing the wrong man; although he was part of Masters' gang. The thing to do was to concentrate on his next attempt, and make sure that he got it right. And, if he failed again, he would continue. He wasn’t going to stop trying until Masters was no more than a massive, overweight corpse.
Interlude - Here be Aliens II
The Stolys lounged in silence; enjo
ying the ebb and flow of the moonlit reef.
Two small silvery fish were swimming in agitated circles in a rapidly drying out basin, cut off from the sea proper as the tide withdrew. It was only a matter of time before their lives would end in a final series of weak splutters and flutters.
One Stoly leant forward and flipped the closest fish into the air. They both watched as the little creature arched through the air and landed with a satisfying plop in the safety of the sea. The second Stoly flipped the remaining fish into her own mouth and crunched; thus balance was restored.
'Are your plans completed?' asked the male, his query frills rippling.
She studied his frills for a second, but could divine no secondary meaning to his question.
'When the time arrives, the solution will accompany it.' She flicked her frills to indicate resignation, confidence and just a hint of hope.
'And the target worlds?' She could have taken two consecutive questions as an insult, but he was technically her superior, so she allowed no reaction from her aggression limbs, and just a flash from her frills.
'Chosen and studied.' She projected an image of a blue and white world, orbited by a larger than average grey white satellite.
'The timing is of significance. When the final assessment of the effects of Argu’s last performance are complete, I'll be ready to go.'
The male agitated his frills in a wry chuckle.
'He is such fun. But does he realise what we have to do to restore balance when he tells one of his jokes?'
'Every time he makes the Universe a better place to be alive in with his jokes, we have to work so hard to make it a worse place, to achieve balance. I quite like that.'
Chapter 6 - Then paranoia and confusion
Tracking someone’s movements from one squirtbooth to the next is difficult for your average citizen, though it is not impossible. Wherever there is a record of any transaction, there is usually a way to access that record; if you have the right contacts, or programmes. Contacts have never been my strong point, but I do have the programmes and an amenable AI to use them on. The Only If They Pay (Transport - Fees and Records) AI records all squirtbooth traffic to ensure that all fees are correctly allocated and paid; even in this bravest of all new worlds, nothing is for free.