Tara swayed in her seat then. Her eyes filled with bloodshot.
She picked up her mug of beer weakly and clinked it against Dory’s, “I would never…” she said, closing her eyes as if nauseous.
Dorothy watched protectively, drunk herself. The last time they had gone out together, Tara had nearly gotten arrested for threatening to urinate on a woman’s Pomeranian Fido.
Dorothy put her arm around her friend, “What’s going on with you tonight?”
Tara leaned back, the unseen force touching her, “I don’t know. I think it’s starting.”
Dorothy picked up her own beer, slowly taking a sip.
“What’s starting?” she asked nonchalantly.
Tara sat upright. Her eyes popped open, now green and clear and she grabbed Dorothy’s face.
Dorothy felt her skin chill as Tara answered, “The dolphins…”
Friday, October 15, 2082 10:01 pm – Fourteen Hours Before Event.
The microdrone returned to the cell every five minutes. The hovering device sounded like a minuscule electric lawnmower when it moved. It was the size of a baseball and used a bio-monitoring x-ray to scan Adrienne Moon first. Spencer ignored the fine wand of red light as it next flashed up and down his body. He could feel drone’s antigrav field raise the hair on his arms as it drew close. It had come and gone so many times he no longer paid attention. His face was buried between his knees. He couldn’t forget the girl’s face…
Oh Dog, oh Dog, oh Dog…
Two hours earlier, Amy Miller had been ribbing with Adrienne. They were talkin’ that new betty show on the holovision.
Hillbilly Housewives of Houston? Dude, this is so dark.
Spencer’s combud told him 2 hours 14 minutes had passed. Adrienne Moon was curled on a metal bench in the corner of the jail cell with her face towards the cinder block wall. Spencer sat on the floor. The bars on the cell’s entrance cast ominous, gray shadows. Adrienne Moon whimpered endlessly. Her white dress was splattered with dots of blood.
The scene played over in his mind.
They had been sitting side by side on the carpeted floor of Virgil’s apartment, about twenty minutes after Virgil locked himself in his bedroom. The three of them were gathered around a Monopoly holoset. The betts sat with their backs to the wall, giggling over a vaporjoint.
Every few minutes one of them would call out, teasing Virgil, “We’re not going anywhere!”
Spencer chimed in too, “Yo dude, I know you got your own bottle in there, but this beer’s gonna be gone!”
Everyone was giddy, filled up on the booze Virgil had scored. Adrienne’s friend, Amy, looked pretty fine. Amy Miller was her name. Adrienne and Virgil were always bringing betties around to audition for the role of Spencer’s girlfriend.
Spencer began talking to himself again, “I don’t know, officer. I just met her…”
It was true. All Spencer Hotshine knew was that Amy Miller was a teacher at the Lawrence Head Start downtown, in the old church at Ninth and Vermont. It was the same church where his mother took mass. Spencer had walked by it a thousand times. Adrienne was still volunteering there to work off her community service hours from Bmod. That’s how the girls met. Spencer’s eyes fell briefly on sobbing Adrienne Moon, then back to the floor.
“I’ll never drink again,” he mumbled to the blue, cement walls. “Never, ever.” His face wrenched with misery, “I want to be on the right side of history. Vision is the way, I get it.”
Suddenly Adrienne Moon turned and screamed at him angrily, “Will you pleaaaaasse shut up, Spence? Seriously, Jeezus!”
“You’re crying too, Addy!” he shot back.
“Yes!” she said. “Crying, not talking!”
Her eyes were so bloodshot they looked pure red. Tiny black streams of mascara mixed with tears burbled over her skin.
“My bad, Dog…” Spencer said sheepishly.
“Go to hell, narc!” She gave him the finger without looking up again.
So heavy…
The story in his brain started over.
Amy Miller had the hovcar in Monopoly. The holographic game pieces floated above the board. Spencer had been the dog. Adrienne Moon was fittingly the lunar transport. Virgil had been the hat. Until he freaked.
So dark...
Amy Miller had just taken a sip of beer when her head exploded. He remembered watching the mason jar, slow motion fall from her hand and spill black porter across the carpet. The beer soaking into the carpet looked just like blood. Spencer’s face still stung from the sharp bits of flying skull.
I’m lucky I didn’t catch a piece in the eye. Oh Dog. They can’t be dead…
She was dead, though. Dead as Apple products. And Virgil?
Spencer’s dog had been stuck in Monopoly jail when she spoke her final words, “Hey, someone’s lucky! Look who scanned the get out of jai…”
Boom!
He remembered Amy Miller as she was in the moments before she died. Her skin was light brown, her cleavage seductive. Her hair was curly, dyed blonde, short in back like a guy’s, pixie-cut bangs falling down over her smooth, round cheeks. She had freckles and big warm, hazel eyes. And sexy, pouty lips built for torture. She was tan from the recent Indian Summer, and the girl had one of those bodies that just… stays leaned up against a wall after a bullet rips half your head off.
I’ll never…
The cell door mechanism made a metallic clink and opened. Spencer looked up. It was the stocky deputy again with the tribal tattoos all over his forearms. The name tag beneath his brass deputy’s badge read, Talboy. His hair was buzzed military short. He swaggered confidently in a tight khaki uniform, black boots shining vividly with polish.
“Time number two!” the deputy bellowed. “On your feet, Hotshine!”
Spencer stood awkwardly. His back ached. He was taller than the short deputy by a head, which made him uneasy. Before leaving, he glanced at Adrienne Moon. She did not look up. She just curled tighter into the fetal position on the metal bench. Adrienne had already been taken from the cell once too. Spencer vaguely wondered how many different hidden cameras and nanodrones were monitoring them.
“Come on, boozejob!” roared the deputy. “Don’t just stand there. MOOOVE!!”
“Sorry,” Spencer managed, trembling.
I didn’t do anything!
Had Spencer Hotshine’s emotions been less scattered, his sense of observation more keen, he would have realized this was the same sheriff’s deputy who had helped him file insurance documentation when his Mustang had been stolen from his place of employment two-plus years before.
“Save your sorry’s for interrogation,” said Deputy Talboy, humming as they walked down the sterile jail hallway.
“Sorry,” repeated Spencer.
Deputy Talboy mocked him, “Sorry, sorry, sorry, everyone’s sorry.”
“I…” began Spencer.
“What?! You scared? Should be!”
Deputy Talboy shouldered past and stopped in front of a plain metal door painted red. There were several plain metal doors painted red lining the hallway. Spencer was unsure if it was the same room as last time.
“No sir, I mean, yessir, not scared of you, I just…” Spencer stammered.
“Coyote got your tongue?” said the cruel, short man.
His hand caressed the black biometric doorknob as he goaded his prisoner.
“No sir, I just… can I ping my mother?”
Deputy Talboy snapped, “No you can’t stream your momma! Your combud’s firewalled. Way things are going, you’ll be lucky to see her alive again.”
The air vanished from Spencer Hotshine’s lungs. He then watched with confusion as Deputy Talboy suddenly grimaced like a kid caught stealing cookies.
Talboy touched his own combud, listened for a second and replied, “Yessir. Sorry sir. Just some fun. Coming in now.”
A male com voice spoke placidly from overhead, “Access granted.”
The doorknob changed from black t
o green and the door opened with a pneumatic hiss. Spencer shambled in. Deputy Talboy followed and the door closed behind them. The knob turned black once more.
Oh Dog…
The last time, Spencer had been alone in the room, sure that invisible death gas was going to start flowing from the vents at any moment.
Instead, he had simply been questioned by the emotionless building computer.
“Are you Spencer Michael Hotshine?”
“Uh… yes, I am.”
“Is your address 815 South Prairie Street?”
“Yeah.”
“Are you employed at Greystone Behavioral Modification Hospital?”
“Yes.”
“Have you ever consumed alcohol?”
“I… yes. But I didn’t used to!”
“Are you an alcohol addict?”
“No. No!”
“How many still operations can you locate on a map of Douglas County?”
“None. I don’t know any!”
“How many speakeasies can you locate on a map of Douglas County?”
“I haven’t been to a speakeasy!”
“Did you visit The Grand Canyon with your family when you were fourteen?”
“What?”
“Did you, or did you not, visit The Grand Canyon with your mother and father on spring break during your freshman year of high school?”
“I guess so.”
“Have you ever heard the name, Tara Dean?”
“Yes.”
“Have you ever heard the name, Marlene Fossbender?”
“She’s one of my bosses at work.”
The computer was silent for a few moments, then asked, “Are you a sympathizer with the alcohol decriminalization movement?”
“No. No! Absolutely not!”
“Have you ever owned a medium sized Fido?”
“Yes, well no, not me myself. But my mom has two Gemini class Persian Felixes. And my dad bought a Sony chocolate lab when I was a kid. Buster. He’s still onstream.”
This time, Spencer was not alone.
The interrogation room had two plain metal chairs on either side of a stainless steel table which was bolted to the floor. In the chair facing him sat a gray-haired gorilla of a man dressed in weathered hemp blue jeans and a tight-fitting, green polo. The man had a thick, salt and pepper mustache that looked as though it would have been in fashion in Tombstone, Arizona, in the late 1800’s. His forearms were the size of Spencer Hotshine’s calves. His jaw was a grizzled cinder block. Before the man on the table was a law enforcement badge laying face down. He held a standard 25 cm holotab in one hand and was using it to fan himself. The man’s cold blue eyes did not so much as flicker when Spencer and the deputy entered.
He had just begun a comstream, his voice gruff and direct as he spoke, “I don’t give a flying donkey’s pecker if I’m upsetting your Felix…! You didn’t think it might be helpful to share your Dogdamn hypotheses?”
The deputy pushed Spencer into the empty chair and took up a sentry position in front of the door, his manner now quiet and professional. Even seated, the big man on the other side of the table loomed over the room. His ashen-blue gaze briefly flashed over Spencer as he listened to the person on the other end of his combud.
Then he snarled, “Sapet couldn’t find an aircraft carrier with a metal detector in a swimming pool. If you had a problem with your coms being hacked you shoulda walked your snaggly-ass carcass down to HQ to check with Everquist. I mean, you got a signed physical holograph from the girl! How long ago? Did you receive a second blow to the head after you bit your tongue off? Fucking dark sky, Slopes!”
Spencer was glad he wasn’t this Slopes person. The hulking man massaged the bridge of his nose as he listened angrily.
Spencer recoiled as the man’s fist slammed the table between them, “I’m the ONLY person who needs to know! Police answer to the Dogdamn sheriff. I answer to Fort Riley! The Coyote crash site is outside city limits! So technically, the only law enforcement agency with less jurisdiction out there than LPD is cocksucking CNED! It’s Community Narcotics Enforcement Division, not Farm-NED…!” He shook his head, “No Slopes! Don’t tell me about checks and balances. Fuck me, you communist! We haven’t had checks and balances in the Union since Bill Clinton was president.”
Spencer felt a lump rise in his throat as he realized who the man across the table was. Sheriff Dale Proudstar. A Lawrence legend. Since leaving the special forces, he had been sheriff in Douglas County almost longer than Spencer had been alive. He still had the physique of a body builder and was hated, loved, reviled and worshiped, but always won reelection every four years based on one fact. When Dale Proudstar became sheriff, violent crime in Douglas County dropped by 47% within a year. Like most old school types, he was reputed for being liberal on drug policy as it related to alcohol. He was equally well known for his harsh punishment of other organized criminals. He had even gone on public record since the last election saying alcohol should be decriminalized. The media had a heyday! CNED, MAAD and the entire recreational marijuana lobby despised the man. Spencer’s mother had said Sheriff Proudstar would not win reelection that fall because of it.
Spencer swallowed the lump in his throat and did his best to stare at his shoes.
The sheriff’s tone grew as cold as a dying fusion core, “Slopes, right now your opinion is worth a squirt of pigeon spunk. I want facts, data. Every letter, holograph, cloud address, insight, secret hypothetical CNED agent route or bubble gum wrapper with a penciled diagram of Cora the Cartoon Conqueror on it. If it remotely pertains to this still theory, I want it on Everquist’s mainframe in thirty seconds or I’m gonna strip you naked, march you down to the Asian sector and sell your skeleton to a bone recycler. Now. Fuck. Off. Proudstar out.”
The sheriff leaned back in his chair and exhaled, letting his holotablet fall flat on the table with a thwack as he crossed his arms across his chest and assessed the young man sitting in front of him as if seeing him for the first time. His eyes darted up and down, quick and observant. The faded, black letters of a tattoo covering the outside of his left forearm spelled a single word: RANGER. Neither he nor the deputy spoke.
Spencer looked about nervously.
Maybe I should say something?
Before he knew what was happening, he blurted, “Please don’t send me to the slaughterhouse!”
The sheriff unfolded his arms and let his chair fall forward, placing one hand then the other on the table. Not knowing what else to do, Spencer turned his head to see if the deputy’s face bore any explanation for the ongoing silence.
“Don’t look at him, Hotshine,” snarled the sheriff.
Spencer snapped his head around, “I I I I I I I didn’t! You know my name?”
Sheriff Proudstar rolled his eyes, reached into his cargo pants and produced a e-joint. He took a long drag and casually exhaled a large cloud of the earthy-smelling steam. Spencer watched the man’s eyes study his reaction. His mother’s words rang through his head.
If you don’t know what to say, then shut up.
The sheriff gestured, “Want some?”
Spencer remained frozen, though his toes wiggled ferociously in his sneakers.
“Hah!” Proudstar smacked the table with a heavy palm, “Just kidding, son. Hell! This is the Sheriff’s Department, you can’t vape marijuana in here! ’Less you’re me of course. And you’re technically off duty. And it’s Friday fucking night and you’ve been rousted from bed by an emergency klaxon ’cause some poet / writer / whatever the fuck shot himself with an unregistered weapon, and in the process blew an innocent girl’s Dogdamn head off.” Sheriff Proudstar tugged the ends of his mustache, “And… let’s see; you, Mr. Hotshine, are under 25 years of age, in possession of two different types of alcohol and a ball of black market stym-hash the size of Tennessee. And you’ve even slid some hospital intel to CNED for a digi here and there.” Sheriff Proudstar leaned to one side, “Deputy Talboy, wouldn’t you think that if someone
was that fuckin’ clever to think they could play both sides at once, maybe the slaughterhouse is just the place for ’em?”
The deputy’s response was immediate, “Absolutely a good place for such an individual, sir.”
The sheriff turned back to Spencer Hotshine, cocking his head, “Hell, being a union janitor… bet you’d get a slaughterhouse discount!”
Spencer said spasmodically, “No, sir! I mean, yes – is, no. I’m not saying no to you. I’m just…”
Proudstar leaned his elbows on the table, dangling the electronic joint out of the corner of his mouth, “Boy, you’re about as sharp as a sack full of wet baby owls, ain’t you?”
Spencer Hotshine said, “I’m not stupid, I’m…”
The sheriff laughed, his smile suddenly broad as a barn, “Dogdamn. Just shut up, kid.” He reached for his badge and turned it over as he took another pull off the e-joint, holding up the six pointed, electroplated star, “See how this badge says Sheriff of Douglas County, Kansas?”
Spencer nodded.
“That’s right,” continued the sheriff. “It doesn’t say Dickhead of Douglas County, Kansas, does it?”
Deputy Talboy snickered.
“No sir,” said Spencer Hotshine.
“Well now that that’s cleared up, I’ve been known for doing a lot of underhanded shit in my day, but sending kids to the slaughterhouse ain’t one of them.” He picked up his holotablet and glanced at it momentarily, “So… I know your name cause it’s 2082. I know the day you were circumcised and I know your blood type, and how you did on your SAT’s, which ain’t good. No wonder you’re a fuckin’ janitor.” The sheriff leveled his gaze at Spencer like he was sighting in a rifle, “And yes, I know your momma, who for the record, is the only thing standing between you and those morons at CNED.”
Spencer looked up wanly, “You know my momma?”
“She’s been a secretary at LFD longer than I been sheriff, boy. Your mother does her job, goes to church and otherwise keeps her head down. Smart citizen, her.”
Spencer responded eagerly, “You’re not going to tell her then?”
Proudstar narrowed his gaze, “Your best friend just murdered a girl in the process of failing at his own suicide. What are you? 13? No, you’re 22. Course your mom’s gonna know. Real question is, how much trouble you wanna be in?”
Absorption: Phase 03 (The Eighteenth Shadow) Page 7