The Third Adventure: Action, That's How! (A Caper in Time Part 2)
by Evan Forman and Michael Robertson - One Chapter a Week Starting 27.11.16
DNE EHT
.retfa reve ylippah devil ew dnA
.retirwepyt gniddos siht esu ot nrael dluow eh dediced dna
selkcunk sih dekcarc nireA ,etelpmoc luos sih fo ksat ehT .mih
nihtiw gniwolg ytilanif nedlog a tlef eH
.deirt yletarepsed ,yllaer eh fi ,yllautneve ,mih ot neppah ton
dluow siht kniht ot hguone yllis saw eH .neppah reven dluow siht
thguoht eh ,oga sraey tnatsid ynam ,hcihw ni nedrag eht hguorht
yppup ylurnu na gnisahc nerdlihc eht dna adeirK dehctaw dna nwod
dekool eH .gnos hguorht devas sdlrow dna snomed dna sthgink fo
seirots emitdeb derepsihw ,senacirruh pots dna sdniw ediug ot
etalumucca dluow ,reverof erehpsomta eht ni etarebrever dluow
snoitarbiv ynit esohw rethgual ;seiromem elttil noillib ,noillib
a derehtag sllaw esohw ,morf devom reven yeht esuoh a ,eunevA
yalidaC 01 fo wodniw kcab eht morf nwod dekool dna ksed sih ta
tas eh tnemom suoirolg eno siht rof ,yadot tsuj ,yadot tub ,reverof
htaed epacse ton dluow etteiL nireA
.eloh kcalb eht fo tuo saw eh ,nireA thguoht ,won dnA .tsethgils
eht ni gnillud egde larberec sti tuohtiw ewa dna evol htiw
sedaced eht revo detalfni dah taht krow tplucs dna tniap dna
ward dna oiduts reh ot yawa laets ot elba llits saw adeirK efil
ylimaf a fo soahc ylevol eht lla hguorht dna ,yppup a emoh
thguorb adeirK dna nireA ,retal sraey ruoF .tcefrep saw tnemom
sihT .gninthgiL ycuL htiw tesnus citcalag eht otni ffo edir
dluoc eh os htaed s'nairaD fo elcatsbo eht deraelc gnidne esohw
,regnaD nairaD fo noitpada mlif etihs eht ,sgniht lla fo ,gnihctaw
afos a no peelsa-flah meht fo ruof eht htiw dedne dna ,yadhtrib
hteitrof a gnivah yllautca saw eh taht tnemezama tnelis a ni
tneps saw ,deb sih gnidavni dlo-raey-ruof reision a dna
dlo-raey-xis ysion a htiw detrats yadhtrib hteitrof siH
.ti dekil dna ,devorpmi dna ,etorw eh elihw sraey rof ffo
dehsilbup gnitteg fo aedi eht tup eh tnaem hcihw ,retirwepyt a
esu ot nrael ot dah eh tnaem hcihw ,lwarcs mulysa ekil dekool
gnitirwdnah siH .sruoh ruof rof pots t'ndid dna egap a ssorca
decar nep A .tnew ti ereht dna ,emoh ta enola noonretfa erar a ,noonretfa
eno derob tas eh neht dnA .mih dnuora dlrow eht deruoved daetsni
tub sraey owt rof gnihton etorw eH .yduts a dna nedrag a dna
stnaruatser dna shtap dna sdleif dna skrap dna stekramrepus dna
steerts ni dneps ot syad fo sdnasuoht fo snet dah nireA dna ,emoc
ot llits saw taht tuB .retal sraey neethgie allebarA ot ti
degnahc ehs erofeb riatrA saw eman siH .rehtona dnA .rehtona dnA
.rehtona dnA .eligarf dna dehcterw leef t'ndid taht gniht eno
was ,emit siht ,emit siht dna dlrow eht ta dekool taht seye
s'rehtaf reh dah ehs dna ;oga setunim neetruof dna ,sruoh
neetfif syad evif dna derdnuh owt ,sraey neves gninrom taht sa
hcus eloh kcalb a neve epacse dluoc thgil esohw ,esrevinu eht fo
dne eht ta elims eht ,elims s'rehtom reh dah ehS .etteiL
anoìrtaK saw eman reh dna ,retal sraey evif emac yad tahT .t'nsaw
ti ,meht fo htob eht rof ylikcuL .efil s'adierK fo yad tseb eht
yldegella saw tahw tsefni ot selims tseb rieht ni pu desserd
sevitaler cinomed erehw ,sgniddew detah yllacisab llits nireA .ytic
eht edistuo hcruhc lufituaeb dna tneicna eht fo elsia eht nwod
reh deklaw taht rehtorb regnuoy reh saw ti ,retal sraey owT
.slewob eht fo recnac a htiw desongaid neeb dah rehtaf reh ,yad
txen eht ,nehw demusbus emaceb ehs tub ,lleps dab a neeb evah
thgim siht thguoht ehS .emit eht fo sretrauq-eerht tuoba das
ylteiuq ,yltnatsid os saw eh yhw deksa ydobon taht saw ti ,egatnavda
eno dah dnim a fo kcerw lauteprep sih fI "?uoy era woH .eniF" ,deilper
eh nehw seye wolloh sih otni gnikool t'nsaw ehS .mih dnuora
flesreh depparw dna elbat eht no gnidaer saw ehs koob revetahw
tup ehS .emoh emoc dah etteiL nireA esuaceb gnilims saw daehsiaC
adeirK dna gnidne saw dlrow ehT .siht ekil emit a tA .gninnirg
saw ehS .dennirg ehS "?ti saw woH !oS" .pots ot emarfrood eht ot
gnilc ot dah dna afos eht ffo pu tohs adeirK .eunevA yalidaC 01
fo spets eht debmilc yliraew ,ecnabrutsid siht gniciton ton ,nireA
.erac ot derit oot saw nireA tub trapa esrevinu eht gniraet saw
xodarap emit A .eromyna esnes ekam ot desufer dah esrevinu ehT
.wonk t'ndid nireA ?ni mih llik ot reknub dnaH deR a neeb reve
evah ereht dluoc woh dna ,mih llik ot evila neeb evah ts14 eht
ssoB dluoc woh ;rotsecna s'ts14 eht ssoB nhoJ emoceb ot evila
neeb noitnem ot ton ,dnaH deR eht fo rednuof eht emoceb tey
t'ndah ht43 eht ssoB nhoJ dna ,ht43 eht ssoB nhoJ dellik tsuj
dah ts14 eht ssoB nhoJ fi taht mih ot derrucco tI .sgnidliub
ralucitrap dna sngis pohs derebmemer-flah ;noitacol fo esnes
tseugav eht ylno ot gnignilc ,sruoh rof derednaw eH .ksud fo
dlog tsrif eht yb til yks elprup-yarg a ,teerts delbboc eht otni
pu dna elohnam a hguorht tuO .ti fo tuo bmilc ot gniog saw eh
dna eloh kcalb a saw efil s'etteiL nireA .taem tub reknub taht
ni gnihtoN .eromyna ereht nwod gnihton saw erehT .hcamots
gninrub sih morf elib kcalb maercs dluow eh deppots eh fi ekil
tlef eh dna yvaeh dna bmun saw daeh sih ,sselnoitcerid
yletelpmoc ,srewes eht hguorht gninnur saw nireA .lluks a fo
flah gniniamer eht morf gnidaerps doolb fo elddup a htiw ,sknuhc
der etanimretedni fo ssem llams a won saw ht43 eht ssoB nhoJ
dellac nam a ecno saw tahW .tnedicca yb ffo enog dah nug a ,oga
setunim ytriht tuobA
L L L L L L o snaeco snaeco snaeco snaeco snaeco snaeco snaeco
snaeco snaeco eniw der krad ot eerht rof evif sdnoces evlewt
setunim evlewt sruoh evlewt
bbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbmemememememememememmemer ereh ckab
enog a m'I er'uoy dna ereht er'uoy uoy uoY ONONONON NOW! !WON
-won og ot evah ew no emoc on -apmoc eht ot drawrof kool I"
.delzzis ezuf ehT ".reverof uoy tnuah gnikcuf ot gniog ma I ,em
sllik siht fI" ,dias lrig eht senot fo suoires tsom -eht dniheb
depmuj dna -ssoB nhoJ -ti desrever eh nehw niaga pu gnillif dna
gniytpme ssalgruoh -htuoy dnuofwen sih fo ruogiv eht htiw senud
dnas gnillor eht otno tuo gnirutnev yltnallag -SIHT TNAW TSUJ I
EREH TI POTS TI POTS SDOG ESAELP UOY TON UOY -gniyrc -a fo traeh
-detsurcne-lewej a elots -morf aneroduL fo nwot eht devas eh
sdnoces ruof dna setunim neetfif ,sruoh thgie ,sraey derdnuh owT
-a fo traeh eht elots eh eh ,sruoh xis ,sraey evlewt ,dnoces
neves ,raey enO -eht htiw suirebiT ekuD fo truoc eht ni deztlaw
dah eh oga sdnoces neves dna ,setunim neetfif ,sruoh owt ,syad
ruof ,skeew xis ytriht ,sraey neetrihT .nogard a nials dah ht43
eht ssoB nhoJ ,oga sdnoces xis-ytnewt dna ,setunim neetruof ,sruoh
evif ,syad eerht ,skeew neves ,sraey owT
.emit nwo rieht otni kcab meht deluah dna ,seugnot sti fo owt ni
nolubolokraX dna nhoJ depparw tI .skcirb eht hguorht gnitsrub ,llaw
eht ni pu denepo emit ni latrop a sa dehgual dna dehgual yeht
dnA
”.gnilaeppa os dednuos reven sah esrevinu eht fo htaed-taeh eht
,yadot neeb ev’ew secalp eht retfa dnA“
”!emoh og yllanif nac ew won ,enorht sih edam ecno doG erehw
ecifiro krad eht knaht dnA“
”!yawa gnidaf si xodarap ehT !ssoB ,ti enod ev’uoY“
”?gnineppah gnihtyna sI“ .elom eht sdrawot º09 ti detator dna ,tellub
eht dnuora depparw eh hcihw ,elcillof a tuo dehcaer ylsuoituac
eH .sworbeye rewol sih fo eno desiar dna ,elbat ybraen eht no
erusolcne sti no gnipeels ,elom eht dettops eH .seidob rieht fo
*edistuo* eht no niks rieht erow ylsselemahs yeht yaw eht ,snoitareneg
eht nwod dedacsac dah serutaef laicaf citsiretcarahc emas
eht yaw eht ,uaelbat nezorf siht ni neve noitcivnoc dna htgnerts
detaidar yeht yaw eht :meht fo thgis eht ta gnillevram ,srotsecna
sih neewteb nwod tlenk ht999 eht ssoB nhoJ
”.esrevinu elbbub fo dnik emos ni ydaerla t’nerew ew fi hguone
dab eb dluow hcihw ,xodarap a sesuac taht ,ht43 eht ssoB nhoJ
stoohs ts14 eht ssoB nhoJ fI“
”?naem uoy od tahW“
.ecnetnes taht gnihsinif retfa ,detalucaje nolubolokraX ”,melborp
ruoy s’ereht lleW“
”!tellub taht fo htap eht ni thgiR“ .detniop eH ”!ht43 eht ssoB
nhoJ s’erehT !kool dna ,seY“
”?hO“
”!elom taht tohs ts14 eht ssoB nhoJ erehw trap eht si sihT“ .enecs
eht tcepsni ot tekcos sti fo tuo rehtils nagro lausiv etarbetrev
sih tel ot pu neercs eht gnippilf ,ssoB nhoJ diaS ”!era ew nehw
wonk I ,hO“
”.tsol eb yam ew raef I .tonk fo dnik emos ni era senitsetni-emit
ehT“ .mih fo tnorf ni dna ,mih dniheb moor eht deretne ohw ,nolubolokraX
noinapmoc hctirdle sih dias ”,siht lla htiw gnorw yrev
s’gnihtemoS“
”.tohsrevo YLETINIFED ev’ew won ,eeS“ .mih fo tnorf ni thgir saw
tahw eciton ot tas ecno eye thgir sih erehw erauqs DEL eht
hguorht ni gnimoc smaerts-ofni neetfif eht no dessucof oot ,moor
eht otni derednaw ht999 eht ssoB nhoJ
.tohsnuGGunshot.
57 HOURS, 46 MINUTES, AND 15 SECONDS
Two years, five months, one day,
three hours, and two minutes ago, Aleister the mole dug his
longest tunnel yet. Three days, five hours and seven minutes ago
he discovered a burst pipe under- five years, six months, four
days, eight hours and three minutes ago he was born, the third
in a litter of- worms- wriggled into a- Täikur Soka- cuddled-
warmth of his coat- brown brown oceans oceans oceans oceans
oceans- oh hey, a worm.
About thirty minutes ago, a gun had gone off by accident. John
Boss the 34th now sat at the end of the table fidgeting with a
pen, opposite John Boss the 41st. Chel Hagar sat next to him,
wearily chugging down antibiotics with a mug of tea. Aerin,
Dhubagèl, and Lockswell were dotted around the table's edge, all
silent. John Boss the 41st sighed.
"You fucking shot my mole,” Taïkur stated.
"The bullet bounc-"
"THAT DOESN'T-"
"EVERYONE! EVERYONE!" Lockswell had stood up, arms raised,
turning to Taïkur and Boss. "Now, listen, we've…you've all said
and done things you regret. But I think, in this pressing time,
it is more important that we focus on what we are all here to
do. A military robot-"
"-a police robot," Chel corrected.
"-a robot of indeterminate occupational persuasion has been
destroyed, and it's being blamed on us. Now, since nobody in
this room knew about this until half an hour ago-"
John Boss the 34th spoke up. "-Actually-"
"RIGHT, NEW RULE: YOU ALL RAISE YOUR FUCKING HAND TO SPEAK NOW!"
John Boss raised his hand. "Yes, Dr. Jingles?"
"Please, call me Jacques. As I was saying, I'm the one who
destroyed the…robot. They'd put a shock collar on me, which I
was able to remove and throw into the machine's insides. The
robot fell, but then went berserk and started killing people in
the stands. I managed to take the beast down, piloting it into a
wall of spiked crushers which pulverised it into a fiery paste.
After my victory, I was captured and taken to a hospital to have
a part of my brain removed, but luckily my friend and colleague
Che-"
"-code name Stephi!" Aerin blurted, earning a dirty look from
Lockswell.
"-took out precious time from her position as a double agent…”
John drew out the syllable, looking at Aerin. Aerin nodded very
slightly. “…in the Dryadora City Police Department to rescue me,
heroically taking a bullet in the process.”
John Boss leaned forward in her chair. "Did you blow your
cover?"
Chel shook her head. "I wore a visor and gloves to cover my
bionic hand, the only identifying feature."
John Boss put his pen down. "So, does that not prove her to be a
valuable ally to our cause? That she risked death and killed one
of her own comrades to get me here?"
John Boss was silent for a moment, thumb to her lips in
consideration. She turned back to Chel. "How long have you been
a mol-" she glanced at Täikur, "…an insider for us in the police
force?"
"Oh, almost a decade."
"So why the hell haven't you ever contacted us until now!?"
"And risk detection?" She replied without hesitation. "Bringing
down the whole operation so I could pop over for a pizza and a
few beers? Fuck off, I don't need a cozy little cryptful of
resistance friends to do my job. I only came here tonight
because tomorrow's the best opportunity you're ever going to get
to do something big."
"Like what?"
Dhubagèl stood up and started wandering around the table.
"Actually, she's got a point. Tomorrow is King's Day, national
pride at an annual high. Tomorrow is when the Prime Minister
will be making a speech about the disaster. Likely near the
site."
John got out of her chair. "Do you have-"
"-likely in Naelon Square, give the cameras a good view of the
smoking ruins of the place. Remind them of what's at stake."
"Do you have the bastard on speed dial or something?"
Dhubagèl chuckled. "I mean, yes, but he's much too busy in some
emergency meeting right now to answer my calls. That's why I
hired a guy specifically to phone the guy sitting next to the
Prime Minister in those kinds of meetings: Eylon Dunnare,
government's senior press manager, lovely guy, does absolutely
everything you tell him on the condition you don't make his
medical records front page news."
John had her back turned to the rest of the group, silent in
thought. "So, you're suggesting we hijack the broadcast. What's
their official story, we planted a bomb or something?"
"It's an 'ongoing investigation',” said Dhubagèl. “They're still
writing the official story."
She nodded. "They want this robot thing to debut to the people
in a good light. So everyone turns on their TV to watch Mr.
Priomar make sense of the world for them, and then suddenly the
picture changes and their friends and families are being blown
apart by a police drone." She spun around excitedly. "I fucking
love it!"
Everyone was silent.
"The broadcast.” Her grin faded. “Not the people blowing up.
It's a good idea."
Everyone was silent.
"Right, you, Chel." She snapped her fingers and pointed. "You're
our woman on the inside, where are those tapes?"
Chel thought for a moment. "DTV Headquarters. The broadcasting
station. Everything goes to the archives."
"Maybe." Dhubagèl interjected. "The scrubbers get faster every
year, they might have edited the whole film by now."
John Boss the 41st leaned forward, hands on the table. "Which is
why I'd suggest we do this as quick as possible, but there's a
problem: the second we're holding that reel, we're fucked. Chel
and the three of us - Me, Mo and Jacques - can get into the
building alright if we get some police uniforms, but we'll
almost certainly have to fight our way into the control room, no
way to schedule it and get a headstart on the getaway." Her eyes
fell down towards the table for a moment. "Which means we're
doing it live. Fuck it. We'll need people on location. Dhubagèl,
you can slip in backstage and mingle with the press secretaries
and public relations doodads, keep us up-to-the-minute on the
Prime Minister's movements. There'll be satellite vans there
we're going to need to take control of. Aerin, you're the only
one of us freely able to walk around in public without getting
noticed, so it's yours. Maurice probably has something for the
job lying around."
Aerin checked and rechecked the weight in his jacket’s inside
pocket. He took a breath and stepped through the large glass
doors of Dhubagèl’s building, out onto the cobbled street
beneath a gray-purple sky lit by the first gold of dawn. He
wandered for hours, clinging to only the vaguest sense of
location; half-remembered shop signs and particular buildings.
"So what is that actually going to involve?" He asked.
"There'll be a crowd there to clap on every emotional cue, you
can blend in easily,” John replied, her arms folded as she
leaned against the wall. “Then you'll have to get into one of
the vans, either get it emptied or…talk your way in."
"Talk my way in?"
He pressed a grubby button on a black and yellow box on a street lamp, as he'd seen others do yesterday. As he waited for the cars to stop so he could cross the road without being flattened, a huge truck stopped at the red light. It was less a vehicle than it was a cage on wheels, two layers with thin slits at the sides out of which human hands could reach, and human eyes could blankly stare down at Aerin. As he met the gaze of the silent men and women being taken to who knows where, he felt a faint pang of…guilt? Sympathy? Lucidity? Lucidity, he thought, was a good enough word. Nobody waiting beside Aerin paid attention to the truck. The light turned green, and Aerin walked along with the rest of the elves, blending into the crowd.
John Boss smiled. "I assumed that was your main appeal,
do you have any other employable skills to speak of?"
"I'll just talk my way in, thanks."
He anxiously climbed the steps of 10 Cadilay Avenue, pulling up his sleeve and glancing at the little gold clock face worn around his wrist.
"Oh, can you give me your phone number Aerin?" Dhubagèl
remembered just as Aerin had been leaving the mess of his
apartment.
"What?"
"So I can phone you later with a time and a place, as soon as I
know anything."
"When will you know anything?"
"Probably before the Prime Minister. Just don't be late. Even I
can barely fathom what's at stake here."
Aerin laughed nervously, his forehead in his hand. "Um…oh, shit,
sorry, I can't remember my…phone number."
"That's fine. You probably don't need me to tell you that asking
was just a formality." Dhubagèl reached to shut the door. "I'll
call you."
The watch had been lying on his bedside table, next to the drawers of his clothes, so he assumed it was his; and he thought it was pretty, so he took it. He shut the door to what he was astonished to call his home.
"Is it dangerous?"
"Most things are, these days," said John Boss as she watched
Dhubagèl walk ahead into the sewer tunnels.
"No, but really, in how much immediate danger do you think I'm
putting myself in?"
"On a scale of one to ten?"
"Am I going to die? That is what I'm asking you."
Krieda shot up off the sofa and clung to the doorframe to stop. "So! How was it?"
Boss' weak smile faded. "Everyone's going to die, Aerin. It's just a matter of when, and for what."
She put whatever book she was reading on the table, and
wrapped herself around him. She wasn't looking into his sullen
eyes when he replied, "Fine. You?" It was an advantage,
sometimes, that anyone who knew him knew not to ask what was
wrong with him. "Aw, you smell like him. Did you have fun,
then?" She grinned, straightening his coat by its lapels.
"You seem awfully happy about whatever it is you think I did
last night."
"Of course I am. It's good for you to…get out there. Meet new
people." She spun around and started walking away.
"Nothing happened last night," Aerin declared bluntly.
"Honestly?"
"Yes."
She sighed with half-joking devastation.
"Why?"
"Oh, no it doesn't. It's just…" She tried to bite her smile
shut. "Would you be INCONSOLABLY offended if I told you I'd won
a bet?"
Aerin's eyes narrowed. "…On what?"
"Oh, come on Aerin, it's 2214! Everyone's at least a little bit
bi! If you've been using me as your image of the average, don't.
I've always just been bloody irredeemable, but for most people
there's just that one person, that one and only little spark."
They walked through to the living room as Aerin tossed his coat
to hang on the banister. "And a spark," she continued "is all it
takes to start a forest fire." She dropped backwards onto the
sofa, smiling.
"Krieda, there is no forest fire here."
"Are you very sure?"
"Yes." He sunk into the cushion next to her. "So, what happened
after I left last night?”
"Oh, god." She yawned and plopped her messy head down on his
shoulder. "Well, let's see…Oh, remember Jaina, from the book
shop?"
"Umm…"
"Short hair, freckles, huge-mongous sapphire eyes?"
"Oh, yeah."
"She has a boyfriend now. Her. A boyfriend. I am shocked and
disgusted and I want the world to turn back to the way it was
before."
Aerin smiled. "Forest fire?"
“Supernova." She gasped, her eyes lit up and she faced him. "And
now that I think about it, did you see the extended eye contact
she was giving you when she handed over your change the other
day? Well of course you didn't because you can't even look the
postie in the eye, but trust me…"
Aerin's cheeks blossomed red and his earlobes burned a little,
embarrassed that anyone else in the world knew a thing about
him.
She continued "…What I'm proposing is: we kill Kerkosandros- oh,
shit! Yeah: his name's fucking Kerkosandros, he works in a
microbrewery and he has…THE…most horrendous like, baby's first
moustache I've ever seen on another person! He's terrible,
Aerin! And he-" she was interrupted by her own spurts of
laughter "-so Jaina's introducing me to this guy and she says
'oh, hey Krieda, this is Kerkosandros' and I'm just about to
smile and shake his hand, like I would to any other elf, but
then he just takes me by, not so much my actual hand as like my
fingers, and he takes it up to his droopy octopus moustache and
kisses my hand!?"
"Oh, god." Aerin's eyes cringed shut and his palms slapped
together with his forehead.
"I know! And I watch them as the night goes on and he does this.
To. Every. Single. Other. Woman. He can. That's how plagues
spread, Aerin. Who knows what's living in that moustache?"
They were both quiet for a moment, slumped in front of the
television. Grainy footage of a very stern painter dressed in
black huffing along a riverside, brooding against a bus stop and
trudging through a graveyard. "The cemetery is the last real
place in the world," a low, rumbling voiceover declared. “It is
the one and only patch of world that has not been colonised by
advertising, by agriculture, by the machines. Even the forests
have had scenic routes cut through them like arterial bypasses.
Increasingly, since the industrial revolution two centuries ago,
the whole universe has become like this: dragged into an
all-consuming economic machine in which each living thing is a
cog or a wheel that can serve no other function but its own.
Some have called this 'the man-machine matrix', in the faint
hope of a distinction.”
Cut to footage of a man learning to walk with metal limbs. Fade
to a helicopter shot of towering social housing. "You are born
in a specific location; this is the most immediate decider of
what school you will go to." Cut to children sitting silently in
a classroom, staring at the invisible teacher behind us. "This
is where a child picks a career based on which classes they
enjoyed, they decide which classes they enjoy based on which
teachers they like, which teachers they like are mercy to a
chemical brew of attractive or repulsive neurological
associations formed before the child had learned to speak."
Cut to time-lapse shot of rush-hour traffic whizzing by in both
directions. "This is the final project of the cult of urban
planners, and this is your life. You go to the big city and
become a blood cell rushing through the tarmac veins of the
world. Metal boxes ferry you from your pre-appointed position
with your spouse and your children to your pre-appointed
position with your boss and your colleagues. 'Destination'
becomes 'Destiny', red lights and green lights ensure the steady
flow of traffic, indeed, the steady flow of time itself." The
deafening symphony of horns, hollers and skidding tires
smash-cuts to silence, return to the shot of the artist
wandering behind rows of mossy headstones. "And then there is
the graveyard, this ancient truth sculpted in decaying stone,
where advertisers and politicians fear to tread. The rest of the
world is mercy to fashion, to policy. This is the darkness at
the end of the tunnel."
A church bell strikes six times, fade to a shot of the St.
Kainsach kirk's clock tower, which in turn fades to a painting
of almost exactly the same composition.
"My god," said Aerin. "He’s actually worse than me."
"Any more pretentious he'll become a threat. We'll be forced to
destroy him." Krieda lay with her head in his lap, looking up at
a small cut on her finger next to where she'd been kissed last
night. "I've decided men are just terrible," she said. "They're
not worth the effort anymore. I'm taking the next flight to
Lesbian Island. It's booked. 3AM. I'm off."
"Well, surely they wouldn't all be terrible, you're sitting
right here with one."
"Sweetie pie, you are not a man, you are a flower."
"I don't know if that's a compliment or-"
She kissed him quiet. "Yes."
And, for a few long moments, here it was: silence. Warm silence.
Not the cold and clawing desperate awful madness silence of the
void, but the silence of bodies; two heated biological engines
humming away quietly, without failure or complication. For a few
moments. Something darker was bubbling up through Aerin, deep
below the steady cylinders of his imagination. An initial
attempt to drown out the noise: "Did you know there's an actual
Lesbian Island?"
"What? Where!?"
"Yeah, that's where the word comes from: 'Lesbos'. It's a
mythical island in the Miragea, far to the east of Lautusshire's
coastline."
"Where's Lautusshire?" She asked.
Something cold and terrible sank in his chest. "It's…well…before
Praeon, before King Praeon colonised the human tribal lands,
there was one large settlement called Lautus, right at the
easternmost point of the continent. This is, you know, ancient
times we're talking about but anyway: the Miragea was this
semi-mythical collection of small tropical islands which were
said to shimmer - hence, 'mirage'- in and out of reality
depending on the time of day or the seasons, the reflection of
the sun on the sea. Lesbos was said to be where the gods created
and perfected the first women, but basically forgot to carry
them over to the world of men. So they developed and evolved
entirely separate from male influence until a lost pirate ship
ends up on their shore. The pirates think this is just the best
place ever, and the Lesbians do entertain them that evening with
great feasts. But when the sun comes up, the Lesbians march to
the pirate ship with the captain's head in a fishing net and
they throw overboard the two men they left behind guarding the
ship's most valuable cargo: a group of kidnapped women being
taken to Lautusshire as slaves."
"How would they keep going though? Like, with no men wouldn't
they die out in a generation?"
"Well in the myth they end up taking the women from the ship
into their society, but they elect one, a singer, as their bard.
In some kind of religious ceremony they grant her safe passage
back to Lautus so she can spread the songs of their conquests as
their official bard. As for normal procreation…I think some of
them had penises?"
"Really?"
"Yeah, pretty much half the population. It's not terribly
unusual. I think I read once that female hyenas actually have
bigger dicks than the males."
"Wait, how do the hyenas give birth then?"
"You know when a snake eats something bigger than it and you can
see the outline of-"
"NOOOOO!!!" Krieda covered her eyes as if they could ever be
shielded from the harrowing mental image that was forever burned
beneath them. "You're evil!"
Conversation and the warmth in his chest faded slowly. Bubbling,
bubbling, and out come the words.
"I saw a truck full of humans earlier."
"What, like one of those meat trucks with all the pigs you
sometimes see?"
"Yeah. It feels so…incriminating?"
"Eh."
"What?"
"I mean, my vegetarianism's entirely a diet thing, so, I don't
feel too much either way. It's like…people argue against eating
meat because it's killing animals, but the only reason those
animals are alive in the first place is for their meat; cows
have so many mutations and genetic deficiencies that they
literally cannot survive outside of the farms. Same with humans.
Either let them live while using what they have to give, or go
and commit cow genocide. There's no winning that argument. Our
needs are literally the only reason humans are still alive."
Aerin thought about it for a moment. "Should it be, though?"
Krieda's face retracted from the dimply rose it had acquired,
into a softened form of shock; quiet behind her kind eyes. "It's
questions like that end up getting people killed…did you speak
to anyone? You haven't said anything like that out of this
house, have you?"
"No, no. Just…philosophising. Huffy Painter on the TV's rubbing
off on me."
The painter walked beneath graffiti on the underside of a rail
bridge, a black column striding over the long grass and bald
patches of an abandoned industrial wasteland, and vanished into
the mist that cloaked a Granite District housing estate.
Somewhere out in the pale fog, on the edge of an empty street,
Chel Hagar's forehead was pressed against the dirty glass of a
phone booth. "I-"
The voice on the other end was muffled by miles of flimsy
wiring. “…”
"Of course I'm coming home, of course. I just-"
"…"
"Do you know how many people have died, Dhac!? Do you know what
kind of absolute shitshow we are living in just now?"
"…"
"Oh for fuck's- THEN WAIT! Keep waiting! Because for the first
time in your floaty little glimmer of a life there ARE THINGS
MORE IMPORTANT IN THE WORLD THAN YOUR FEELINGS. WE ARE DEALING
WITH SOMETHING OUR ENTIRE DEPARTMENT IS NOWHERE NEAR CAPABLE OF
HANDLING. THERE ARE SOLDIERS ON THE STREETS YOU SNIVELLING
FUCKING-" Her words choked up and she sighed furiously.
Silence on the phone.
Silence in the confessional booth. "Are you still there?"
Silence except for the monotone buzz of a phone off the hook.
"Hello? Baby, I…" Chel's breathing was rickety, her tears about
to burst forward. "I hope you'll come to your senses one day and
realise I'm no good for you. I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I-. I did
come home, you know. For a few minutes, just before I had to go
away again for the crowd control. You'd fallen asleep because
you're always asleep when I come home these days and…" She
sighed, breathed in, counted to four, and breathed out. "I like
your new hair. It's very you, when we were younger…truly fucking
adorable." She laughed. "I don't even know if you can hear me. I
don't know. If you can hear me…" She thought for a few seconds.
"Eight. Eight o'clock. I will move mountains and I will be home
at eight o'clock and I will kiss you until your entire face is
swollen. I love you. Too much.”
She stood there for a while, and put the phone down and cried.
She lit a cigarette. The light above her flickered on and off
through the roof of smoke.
Chel made her way up the steps of the police station. Neas Alvus
flicked his cigarette butt away on the breeze. "You took your
time, where were you?"
"Making a phone call. Nowhere quiet inside."
"Yeah, Atair's fucking lost it. He's screaming at people in the
corridor like the world's collapsing."
They walked inside, the wind howling through the cubic towers
was shut out by the rotting wooden door. The place seemed barren
but for the receptionist and the same mother with the same
screaming baby. They hurried down the corridors, stuffy
linoleum-and-flimsy-wood tubes, and Alvus held the door open as
the last of the black uniforms slipped into the back of the
conference room.
Chel and Alvus found white plastic chairs on opposite sides of
the crowd. Some of the more high-ranking officers spread out
from a cabal around Atair, and folded their arms next to every
available exit. This was the secret signal for everyone who
valued their lives to sit down and shut up.
Atair stood at the stainless steel lectern, leaning over a
pristine white brick of papers. He did not stop to clear his
throat. "Every word I'm about to say to you isn't to leave this
room. As far as the general public, your friends, your family is
concerned, this meeting did not happen. At 9pm last night, an
Amphitheatre human known to its owners as 'John Boss' destroyed
the first model of our Siran X-01 riot control units,
commandeering it and killing enough people that we're still
counting bodies. The fugitive was secured and taken to a special
unit at St. Kainsach's hospital to be neutralised. At 11:30 that
night, this happened."
One of the doormen hit the lights. Now there was only the faint
gray glow from the line of windows and the grimy yellow light of
the tall, chunky projector at the back of the room. On the
screen behind Atair, a corridor, and a timestamp frozen at
11:38PM. When Atair nodded at the man standing at the projector,
he flipped a switch; and as the tape ran forward, so did the
world. Through the grainy image of a corridor, four black
columns - officers - carted the blurred body of John Boss in
from the bottom of the screen. A darker side corridor lit up as
someone opened the door at the end, and the fugitive's body was
carried through. The door shut, and the four split up.
"Right could you just…" Atair stopped mid-sentence as the
projectionist fast-forwarded through a couple of minutes.
Another figure in black shot up the hall, and the whizzing tape
was hauled back into normal speed. The shadow slipped into the
side hall, and vanished for a few seconds. The image was silent
as some sudden panic came over the officers running into the
frame. One buzzed into his radio, and backup soon arrived as
they assembled into a firing squad. Another few tense moments,
an officer at the back of the formation seemed to be speaking
behind his visor. The scene exploded as everyone fired at
something that refused to go down; a…surgery table? The squad
were bowled over by John Boss, flattened by the steel table he
and the rogue officer were running across the bottom of. The
rogue shot at some more reinforcements behind a door, the
hulking, gorilla-like human slammed the door shut and together
they sprinted offstage.
Something acidic rose in Chel's chest as the lights buzzed on
again in a seemingly random order.
Atair sighed. "So. Somebody in a police uniform has snuck into a
hospital and broken possibly the most dangerous fugitive this
city has seen in a decade out of our custody, and murdered one
of our youngest recruits along the way. Under less troubling
circumstances I would be wondering how someone managed to either
fabricate or steal a police uniform. These are not less
troubling circumstances. After doing a thorough check of our
inventory and CCTV tapes, we know for sure that no uniform was
stolen from here either last night, or at any point in which we
didn't eventually get the stolen property back. What this means
is: I have to seriously consider the possibility that the person
on that screen behind me, is also one of the people sitting in
this room, right now, next to any one of you."
…
…
Which is to say, nothing. Nothing but the seismic tremors of
Chel Hagar's heart in the fluid of her ears.
As someone with a scanner started asking for people's right
hands, off in the front corner of the room, one officer raised
her hand. Atair looked up from his papers. "Yes?"
"With all due respect, sir, if…" she looked at the room behind
her "…if the entire station is locked up in here, who's out on
the streets looking for this fugitive?"
"The army, Officer Liosta. I got the phone call at about…3
o'clock this morning? Military forces have been called in and
have secured a perimeter around the city. Round-the-clock armed
patrols will be scouring each district in pursuit of 'John Boss'
and its co-conspirators, as well as the maintenance of law and
order until the DCPD have found and dealt with our very own rat.
Executive orders."
Those two words sent whispers slithering amongst the officers'
heads which swivelled from side to side in their seats. "Who's
'executive'? The Prime Minister?"
"That means the bloody king himself thinks this is serious
enough to deserve…all of this." One officer muttered under his
breath. "Fuck the Prime Minister. I don't think he even has that
kind of authority."
Chel tried to remain frozen solid as more scanners combed
through the anxious crowd. They started from the front of the
three rectangles of warm and terrified people. One by one, the
past 48 hours of their lives were scanned and judged - if not
'perfectly sanitary' at least 'not gunning to destroy everything
our society values' - and out they went, escorted out of one
little door by a corridor of eyes. The herd grew thin and the
room closed down as the procession reached the thirteenth seat
from the left in the fourth row from the back. The woman didn't
look up from her clipboard.
"Name?"
"Chel Hagar."
"Rank?"
"Officer."
She ticked a box. "Where were you between the hours of 10PM and
midnight last night?"
"Home. I left the station sometime just after 9PM."
She scribbled into a box, then tucked the clipboard and its
dangling pen under her arm. "Hand."
The sweat clung to Chel's glove as she pulled it off. She held
her hand out rigid as the cold metal bit into the skin of her
palm. A few seconds of buzzing, and the woman let go of her
wrist, which she retracted back down into her lap. Her gaze
darted down to her hand, whose veins were bulging out of her in
a combination of heat and terror. Her eyes were holding back
tears of horror, and her throat harboured a pool of burning
vomit.
"Okay," said the woman. "Door's on the left, someone will tell
you where you should be."
Twenty minutes later, Chel emerged from the bathroom which was
empty as her hollow stomach. The colour had been purged from her
cheeks, but everyone was too busy to notice the dead person
ducking into her office cubicle. She sat down in her squealing
chair - "Piggy" - and tried to lose herself in the green lines
on the black computer screen. Mentally tracing the borders of
each pixel and the void, building little file structures as if
everything won't be thrown in the most instantly accessible tip.
Paperwork. Administration. Bliss. Paperwork was easy, it didn't
look at you and ask questions. You could take your time with
paperwork, play with your pen, imagine adventures for the little
cartoon animal on your desk.
Beep. An email. Email, too, was fantastic. It was a practise so
utterly unlike natural speech as to be a carefully considered
art form in itself. Reading and rereading an email before you
sent it, combing for mistakes, anything you might have missed
out, counting syllables and rephrasing the ends of sentences as
a form of administrative zen gardening.
1 NEW
FROM: Dhacadali (d.hagar@nexnet.com)
SUBJECT: WHY THE FUCK IS THERE BLOOD IN THE SINK????
TEXT: [empty]
By the blue light of the television in the corner of the
Red Hand crypt, Chel took off the glove on her right hand and
unwound the sodden bandage around it. She held up the gaping
wound for John Boss the 41st, Lockswell and Täikur to see.
The lens of John's right eye widened along with her left. "You
cut that out yourself? That’s fucking hardcore!"
Lockswell leaned closer with beaming, childlike curiosity. "So
where is it now?"
"Fixed to our cat's collar,” replied Chel. “There has to be a
movement every once in a while. If the chip doesn't pick up any
movement at all for two hours, it flags you up on a screen in a
control room somewhere."
Täikur spoke up from behind his perpetually folded arms. "Which
is very inventive of you, but the army are going to have the
whole city locked down within hours. They're already going to be
looking for a police officer, and if they ask to scan you, what
are you going to do? Bring a doctor's note?"
Boss shot forward on her sovereign spot on the sofa. "Covering
up a wound isn't rocket science, I've got everything for the job
in my room. It'll have to be here though. I am The Artist, I
don't trust anyone else to do it."
Chel looked even more confused in her morphine haze. "But…I
still won't have a tag?"
Maurice lit up. "I have a whole bucket of empty ones just
waiting to have histories written onto them!"
"…and how the hell did you get your hands on all of those?"
"Well, you see, Chel, in this world, when a homeless person
dies-"