by J Battle
In Favour of Fools
These Foolish Things: Book I
By
J. Battle
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All the usual stuff; links, dedications etc. are at the end of the book; just in case you were looking for them.
Revised Edition (September 2015)
Chapter 1 - Now I'm in trouble
So, just to get things straight in my mind; I’m in a hotel room on this Godforsaken world; there is a dead man on the bed and any minute now the police are going to knock on the door and invite me to spend the rest of my life in one of their comfy cells. If it’s not the police, it will be Strange; and that would be even worse.
The only exit is through the door and out into the reception area, or through the triple-glazed window that is keeping out the furnace-like heat that bakes this planet for years at a time. If I go through that window, there’s a thousand kilometre trek across the most inhospitable landscape of any of the multiple worlds that have been opened up for our delectation and delight by Fool’s Squirt technology.
Oh, and I did I mention the stiff on the bed?
In my defense, he was dead when I got here, your honour. But who’s going to believe that? Certainly not some police officer who’s had to break down my door to insist that I help with his enquiries; especially as it looks like I’ve been set up by Strange and Mrs. Masters, and they’re supposed to be on my side.
I walk over to the door and check the lock and bolts. The lock won’t delay anyone for more than a second, and my gran could break through these flimsy bolts. I look around the room for something to help build up my defenses. There’s a small chest of drawers which I drag across to the door and a writing desk which I put on top of that. The wardrobe looks too fragile to be moved, and I don’t want to go near the bed, for obvious reasons. So that’s about it; my barricade; secure against all but the most determined of toddlers.
I don’t have a gun, which is only for the best. I don’t get on with weapons of any sort; there’s too much chance of someone getting hurt, and that someone is likely to be me. Still, I search my bag for something to defend myself with, and all I can find is a toothbrush. It is self-powered, with a turbo setting, and it has all the usual attachments, though it only carries a threat if you’re plaque.
Then I find the emergency survival pack that Julie insisted I buy.
‘You don’t go to a place like that without taking basic precautions,’ she’d said, in her usual condescending tone. To be completely honest, when I say ‘usual’, I mean when she talks to me. I’ve never heard her use that tone with anyone else. Given that she is my younger sister, my secretary and my cleaner, I feel I am entirely justified in being miffed at the way she talks to her older brother/boss.
The pack is small; about fifteen centimetres square, and maybe ten thick; covered in a thick blue film. I’m trying to work out how to open it when the phone rings. I glance over at the ancient device, with its receiver and tiny keyboard.
Answer or ignore?
If I answer, I might hear something I don’t want to hear. If I ignore it, he’ll just come up, and I need more time to work out my clever escape plan. At least, I hope it will be clever.
‘You’re taking your time.’ Never one for pleasantries. His voice is gruff but clear, with a tiny pause before the last word.
‘Give me another twenty minutes; then I’ll be finished here.’ I try to sound efficient and business-like; I’m not entirely sure I've pulled it off; I may have come across as panicky and fragile.
‘How’s it going?’ A strange question; coming from him. He’s never shown any interest in my situation before.
‘I’ll let you know when I see you.’
‘OK.’ He hung up.
So I’ve got twenty minutes; maybe twenty-five. Long enough to weigh up all the pros and cons and decide what a sensible person would do in these circumstances. Then I’ll just smash my way through the window and be off.
Or maybe I haven’t got twenty minutes; maybe he’s just checking that his patsy is in place and he’s already calling the police. This is why I never go out in the field, because this sort of thing never happens to me when I'm sitting at my desk, with a nice coffee steaming away in front of me.
Whilst I’m picking at this plastic-covered survival pack, I might just have time for some explanations. My name is Phil, and my license says in very clear print that I am a Private Investigator. I should clarify that by saying that I’m not the sort of P.I. you see in films or on TV. I don’t have a chiseled jaw and I don’t own a gun. I don’t chase criminals, or travel to exotic worlds. I don’t interview suspects and I don’t beat up bad guys. I don’t have an on-off relationship with a devastatingly attractive female police officer, and I don’t have witty one liners tripping off my tongue.
Most of these things, I don’t do because I don’t want to; that doesn’t include the lady police officer, of course. That’s just the way I am. What I do, and what I feel comfortable in saying that I am very good at doing, is finding things, or people, or pets.
Now, you might ask yourself, if he doesn’t travel or chase bad guys, what is he doing here on a distant planet, with a dead body and a gang of overenthusiastic law enforcement personnel about to knock his door down?
These are very good questions, and if I survive the next few hours, you may well find them answered.
Now that I’ve got the pack open, I can see it contains a large folded piece of light coloured flexible fabric, and a smaller piece of dark coloured stiffer material.
Before I go any further you are going to want to know how you are actually getting this story; I’m not writing it down and posting it to you, after all.
No, I’m not writing this story, and when you see it in book form in whatever format you prefer, none of the words will have been chosen by me. I have a ghost-writer, and he claims to be a very good wordsmith. Mind you, he also tells me he is thirty but, if you saw him, you'd agree that he looks like a child; I can’t believe he doesn’t have trouble getting served in bars, even with that poor attempt at a beard. He does all the writing; all the technical plot development, dramatic pivots and character delineations. All I do is live the story.
A number of years ago I broke a big case and became very briefly something of a celebrity. A publishing firm approached me, offering cash and smiles, and asking me to write the story for them. I didn’t respond favourably to the writing idea, and the smiles made me nervous, but I was quite pleased about the cash. So they got a ghost-writer and he did all the tedious work for me, and I still got to keep most of the money.
I won’t tell you the story of that big case; ‘Winds of Treacle’ is still available at a very reasonable price from Brick and Bat, and all good online retailers.
The book was quite successful, so my publishers decided that a series would be a good idea. They wanted it hot off the press, with no delays. As soon as a case was closed, they wanted the book available, whilst it was clear in everyone’s mind. So they gave me implants that record everything I see and hear when I’m on a case. I am allowed to switch it off during toilet breaks, and, it actually states in my contract, during personal amorous moments. I can dream, I suppose.
The raw material from the implants is uploaded live to my ghost-writer’s computer, and converted to the stylish, ’witty’ text my publisher demands in a process I’ve never bothered to ask about.
Since that first case, we’ve not had a lot of success and I think th
ey are going to ask for their implants back.
I should also mention the way the story will be presented. Some parts will be in first person, present tense; some will be first person, past tense. Other parts will be in the third person; my ghost-writer (you’ll already have guessed that I can’t remember his name – he’ll probably fill that bit in) does a little research and writes those bits himself.
I don’t know why he presents the story this way; he says it gives a more layered, dramatic narrative. I wouldn’t know.
Now, I’ve sorted out this emergency pack. It looks to me like a light grey, almost white coat and a black hat. I stand in front of the mirror and put them on. The coat is a thin dense fabric that hangs below my knees. It has a belt and is double-breasted, with unnecessarily large lapels. Each shoulder has what you might call epaulets. The hat is black and wide-brimmed; casting a shadow over my face. I study my image in the mirror for a moment; there is something familiar about this get-up, but I can’t remember what it is. Did I see it in an old film somewhere?
I pat the pockets; they’re a bit lumpy. Then I reach inside them and remove a hammer from one, and a metal peg from the other. The hammer feels heavy; fit for purpose I think. I walk to the window and put the peg in the corner and tap it firmly with the hammer. The window collapses and the hot air rushes in.
As I climb out of the window on to the ledge, hoping that there will be a nice soft landing, with all that sand, I remember something the ghost-writer once said to me. Apparently, with normal first person narratives, you know that the storyteller survives whatever perilous situation he might find himself in. Otherwise, how would he tell the story?
The way we do it, he said, there is no such guarantee.
Very reassuring.
(NB: Note from the ‘ghost-writer’. Before we go any further, can I just say that my name is William Wright, which Phil knows full well, as we’ve been working together for years. I’ve left his comments in to give you some idea of what I have to work with. During the rest of this work, I will probably correct his terminology, along with everything else he gets wrong. Also, I am not a ‘ghost-writer’, I am a Narrative Facilitator, or N.F., which he also knows.)
Chapter 2 - Then the robbery
Where this story starts very much depends on who you ask. With Ben, it would be the misplaced bullet; for Millie, when she first heard the Joke. Of course, with Phil, it all begins when he first meets the ex-wife. It’s so typical of him to think it all starts with him.
In reality, it started much earlier; nine years earlier.
It was on a cool autumn day; the first day of business for the flagship store of Retro Cash in Manchester, UK. No-one had used cash for years, of course. It was just so twentieth century. But, with the implementation of the new thirty-five percent sales tax, in conjunction with the forty-five percent basic tax rate, suddenly cash was in great demand.
Half an hour after the bank opened for business, a gang of five masked men rushed in, waving their weapons and demanding that their bags be filled with cash. The operation was progressing smoothly, with five bags positively bulging, when a certain Mr. Evans had a sudden fit of bravery and tried to intervene. Why he did this, we will never know, as he was shot dead for his trouble by the leader of the gang; a large, heavy individual who went by the name of Ben Masters, or Big Ben to his associates.
The gang rushed from the bank with their booty and dived into the nearest squirtbooth, which they had already pre-programmed with the coordinates for their hidden den.
They were more than a little surprised to find themselves deposited nicely into a large, five person cell on the orbital prison platform, named ‘Gotcha!’ in a fit of playfulness by the Law and Order AI.
What they really should have known before embarking on this particular escapade, was that part of the remit of Retro Cash required all notes to be fitted with recording devices that reported their status to the Money, Tax and Credit AI. Even more importantly, they should have been aware that all weapons manufactured since 2032 recorded and uploaded data on their use to the Unnecessary Use of Weapons AI. Collaboration between the three AI’s allowed them to redirect the squirtbooth’s end point coordinates to that of the platform, and, of course, disable the weapons.
Minutes after their capture, they were all convicted of Crimes Against Others and received the mandatory sentence of fifteen years of live term imprisonment, where they would have the opportunity to experience every delightful moment of their incarceration, with an option to amend the sentence to nine years of suspended consciousness imprisonment (a cost cutting alternative which allowed the unconscious prisoners to be stacked twenty-five high).
Since 2053, there had been only three crimes on the statute books; the other two being Crimes Against Oneself and Crimes Against the State. Crimes Against Oneself usually result in a period of in-depth counseling and your own TV show. For Crimes Against the State, an exhaustive and comprehensive programme of organ donation is generally implemented, with the option to accept forced exile to a planet of the Law and Order AI’s choosing, at any stage before reduction in organ count made that option unviable.
Mr. Evans, the have-a-go corpse, left behind him, in addition to a pool of rapidly congealing blood, a wife and a fifteen year old son; and that’s why the story starts here.
(They want me to talk about squirtbooths; I don’t know why. If you look out of your window, you’ll probably be able to see one, but apparently I have to explain them. I’m not going to talk about the technology involved because, if he can get over his irrational fear of them, Phil may well give you a potted version. It will be short, simple and probably inaccurate, because this is Phil we are talking about, and you shouldn’t expect too much.
A squirtbooth is a little like an old-fashioned telephone box, but shinier, and with more flashing lights, but less chance of the smell of urine. You just key in your destination, and it sends you there. As simple as that. This has been public information lecture from your Narrative Facilitator. N.F.)
Interlude - Here be Aliens I
The Angels on a Pinhead Devotion was, in the opinion of most of those subjected to its arbitrary tyrannies, an unusual religion. They didn't believe in a bloke with a beard, or in a self-indulgent afterlife. They weren't concerned about the creation of the universe and all of the delights that it contained, and they didn't feel that they were a chosen people, and that everyone else had got it so wrong. There were no catechisms, or places of worship; no symbols or tattoos, and no great book to guide your every action from birth to the time when your body loses its integrity and you shuffle off this mortal coil.
What they believed in was balance; the yin yang of the cosmos. If that balance could be made perfect, then the Universe would go on forever, and entropy would be defeated.
Not the most ridiculous of the beliefs they could have adopted, when you consider the Offal Eaters of Sart, who believe that their God is a sausage, or perhaps the We Speak No Evil, Hear No Evil and See No Evil Believers of Sirius 5, who remove all these opportunities to perpetrate Evil in a moving ceremony when the child in question approaches maturity. In other circumstances, the APD would have been considered as mostly harmless. But in these particular circumstances, harm was definitely on the cards.
The Stolys (the race that instigated the APD movement) sought to achieve universal balance by working ever so hard to ensure that every good thing that happened was equally balanced by a bad thing.
For instance, if they passed a smiling child, they'd drown a cat. (To be completely accurate, Stoly young don't have the capacity for smiling, and Stoly cat analogues are amphibious – still, I think you see where I’m coming from). In theory, the process should also have been applied the other way. It practice, however, the Stolys are not especially good at doing nice things, so they leave that side of things to others, or to chance.
On its own, this drive for balance would have been a nuisance, but it hardly represented a threat to the happiness of the Universe at
large. The Stolys however, ran the Galactic Confederation, and they had a mega credit budget to ensure that no good deed went unpunished.
The late and almost totally ignored Sig-Nal, Professor of Stoly Harmony at the Sirius Pan-Universiad, had his own views on the reason they were such wet blankets on a cosmic scale.
'They don't have proper sex,' he announced, to the eager audience. Then he sat down, confident that his case was made.
A quick look at their breeding process backs up his suggestion.
When a female is ready to breed, she whistles a sort of atonal tune, and spins on her middle leg, casting off her eggs to be carried on the wind. The male then leaps about, trying to spear an egg on the end of his pointy little penis. The successful male is then able to transfer his DNA to the egg and thereby it is fertilized. The egg remains attached to the said penis, extracting nutrition from the dwindling male, until all there is left of the male parent is a little X-shaped bone which is absorbed into the embryonic body and becomes the basis of its coccyx.
Not much in the way of intimacy, dignity or fun in the whole process.
It's hardly any wonder they are such spoilsports.
Chapter 3 - Now I'm hot and then...I wasn't
To say it’s hot out here doesn’t really cover it for me.
A hot day in Hell would feel cool compared to this. My grandmother used to cook her Sunday chicken roast at a lower temperature than this. If I had an egg, I could break it on one of these stones and listen to it sizzle. Ten seconds on each side and my sixteen ounce steak would be done.
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.