Uroboros Saga Book 1

by Arthur Walker

  “Tough luck. It’s a long shot, but if you could tell me what your wallet looked like, and a description of the guy, or gal, who brained you, that’d help me with my report,” the Police Officer replied, routing a report form to a badly scratched touch screen next to where I was sitting.

  I filled out the form, giving whatever description came to mind. I hated to prevaricate in case it might help me connect with my identity, but I also couldn’t risk unwanted attention with the police. I didn’t understand why I would have such an instinct at all. The police officer would probably try to help me if I asked.

  “Alright, Mr. Smith. We’ll be in contact. We don’t come downtown much, so I wouldn’t count on us finding what was stolen from you. Weird mobile number, not from around here, huh?”

  I assured the officer I’d lived in the Port Montaigne area for a while, keeping my old mobile after I moved. He nodded, only half listening to me as he brought his transport down lower, the lights of the street flooding back into where I was sitting. I looked down at the officer’s name as he helped me out of the back of his transport. Collins.

  Officer Collins took me by the arm and helped me into the clinic. It was old, still using fluorescent lighting, the archaic aluminum commercial storefront marred and corroded from the ravages of time and what I assumed was nearly constant rainfall. After flashing his badge at the surveillance camera there was an audible click and we were allowed to enter. Officer Collins sat me down in the waiting room in an aged plastic chair.

  Curious, I turned and looked at the date stamp on the glass. 2144, the glass was tempered right here in Port Montaigne. I couldn’t remember what year it was, but it had to be at least thirty years after the glass had been installed by the dilapidated state of the clinic.

  After a few moments an elderly man entered the room wearing a white coat, a battered stethoscope hanging around his neck. I smiled weakly at the antiquated piece of equipment, wondering if I’d seen one outside of a book or old TV show. The brief flash of memory at recognizing the item did little to comfort me as I struggled to fill out the basic medical form put in front of me.

  “Took a bad tumble. Lost his wallet,” Officer Collins related to the doctor, an elderly man whose name tag betrayed him as one Dr. Helmet.

  “A tumble? It looks as though a pipe wandered into your cranium,” Dr. Helmet said, wincing at the sight of me.

  There were a few ancient magazines languishing in the plastic folders screwed into the walls beside the door. The wallpaper was peeling down slowly from the ceiling, the wages of time evident everywhere in the tan and orange colored clinic. The carpet was of the brown industrial variety, fraying around the threshold at the door.

  I didn’t have any money to pay for medical attention, and I felt obliged to tell the good doctor I had little I could compensate him with.

  “I treat the transient population here. None of you guys have money, but then you aren’t a transient are you, Mr. Silverstein?” Dr. Helmet remarked as he inspected my wound.

  I looked at him somewhat startled.

  “Your shoes. They’re hand made in Italy by the Silverstein Company. They even match and fit, not standard issue for transients,” Dr. Helmet replied, running a quick CT scan with his handheld.

  I nodded looking down at my shoes. Like the rest of what I was wearing I couldn’t remember if they were mine, or where I got them. The good doctor frowned looking up from his handheld, running a light across my eyes.

  “You’ve got pretty severe head trauma. I wouldn’t be surprised if your vision and motor skills weren’t affected for a few weeks, served up with a side of short-term memory loss.”

  I could only nod numbly, reaching for a magazine. I held it up and waited while Dr. Helmet gave me a local anesthetic. He explained to me that the stitches would dissolve on their own and that I wouldn’t have to return unless I exhibited signs of motor control or memory loss. I put on my best smile and asked him where the nearest tourism office was. He looked into my face searching for any sign that I wasn’t okay.

  “Promise me you’ll come back if you display any of the symptoms I described.”

  I promised, and asked to use his restroom. He nodded and showed me the way to a wheelchair accessible room with a toilet and a sink. The room smelled of disinfectant and the light flickered in time with an odd buzzing sound that preceded a fan beginning to turn in the ceiling.

  I closed the door and turned to face the mirror above the sink. I looked like your average white guy, dressed in dirty business casual, short professional haircut, less than a day’s worth of stubble on my face. Looking down at my hands, I saw neatly trimmed nails, and no signs of hard labor. I wasn’t powerfully built, but probably a runner.

  I cleaned myself up as well as I could and straightened my clothing. I washed my hands vigorously, something my muscles seemed to remember. You’d think someone with amnesia would at least remember being an obsessive compulsive, but I wasn’t so fortunate. I straightened my hair and stepped back out into the clinic.

  I made small talk with Doctor Helmet trying to come off as normal as possible. I assured him I’d send a contribution to the clinic as soon as I got home and thanked him for his help. He handed me my shirt, my hand trembling slightly. It was awkward buttoning up my shirt, taking me a moment to figure out if I was left or right handed. The doctor frowned and shook his head.

  “Are you sure you feel well enough? I could send for an ambulance and have you taken to Midtown Medical,” Dr. Helmet said, raising an eyebrow.

  “I’ll be okay,” I replied. I signed the release papers with a flourish as “Mr. Mark Smith,” then tucked a copy into my pants pocket.

  I left the clinic and, using the directions the good doctor gave me, made my way toward the tourism office. Port Montaigne was a large city, huge buildings with hundreds of floors stretching up to the clouds which seemed to continually rain. The ground, even as heavily trafficked as it was, showed signs of moss. I could faintly smell the ocean and breathed it in deeply hoping the scent would jog my memory.

  There were transients everywhere in this part of downtown, their creased faces illuminated by the digital bill and reader boards. I kicked at the trash as I continued to walk in my reportedly expensive shoes. The clouds rumbled angrily as it began to rain again. The whole scene seemed familiar, like an old movie maybe. As usual, nothing was coming to me. A blank slate I was.

  I marveled at how brilliant the city seemed above the midtown threshold that separated uptown and downtown. The division was striking, and I wondered what someone dressed like me was doing down here. It wasn’t that I felt aloof or that I was probably better than anyone living downtown, it was merely the skin I’d woken up in.

  The stares I got were proof that someone who appeared as I didn’t get down this way much. Uptown and the adjoining concrete and steel supports only blotted out the sky more and more as I went what I was certain to be west. Pretty soon it was just pipes, air conditioning ducts, concrete some fifty feet up, and little else.

  The tourism office was a telling place. No merchandise and unmanned, just a somewhat lit space with a few fliers. I grabbed up one and opened it to gaze inside. It bore a 2178 copyright but appeared old. Even aged by time, the printed interior of the flier showed a bright place with a catching graphic of ivory towers presiding over a city of promise and prosperity. The city described in the flier might have been Port Montaigne a long time ago.

  I put the flier in my pocket along with a small pencil found lingering in a cup next to the visitors log. I turned to leave as a young woman bounced into the narrow booth next to me. She looked up and smiled weakly brushing the rain from her medium length pink and purple hair.

  “Oh sorry, I was just trying to get out of the rain.”

  I nodded retreating into the booth so she wouldn’t have to step back out into the rain to let me
out. She smiled and shook her head somewhat bemused and took out a hand rolled cigarette. I watched her light it up, and I breathed deeply of the fragrance of the smoke.

  “Most of you guys would just wave their stock picks in my face and shove me back into the rain. You’ve got all the classic signs, tan lines where there were rings on your fingers, obscenely expensive shoes, and that manicure? What’s an up-towner like you doing downtown anyway?”

  “Us guys?”

  “High-rise corporate types.”

  I nodded smiling for a moment remembering how I looked, and the way I was dressed. I looked down at my hand, she was right, it looked like I might have been wearing at least one ring. She continued to look up at me somewhat confused.

  She was young, but it was clear she’d already seen the darkest places of the world. Her brightly colored outfit had been cobbled together, probably hand sewn, her tattoos were cheap but well thought out. She was meticulous about her appearance and I could see she carried her own soap when she put her lighter back in her colorful handbag.

  “I’m not a prostitute.”

  “I didn’t think you were. You’d have sensed by now I don’t have any money, or interest, and moved on.”

  “Then why are you still talking to me?”

  “The soap. I obsessively wash my hands too, always nice to meet someone with a similar hang up.”

  “I wash dishes at the Strip and Waffle, but that’s all I do there.”

  “I believe you. Too short to be a dancer.”

  She slugged me playfully.

  “I’m Taylor.”

  “Silverstein.”

  “Like the shoes?”

  “Yeah, like the shoes.”

  We shook hands. I wondered why a girl her age wasn’t in college. Why her parents weren’t doing everything they could to give her a better life than living in downtown Port Montaigne. I wondered why I even wondered about such things.

  “I have to work my shift, it’ll be breakfast time soon. Split a waffle with me?”

  I nodded and followed her back out into the crowded streets, the rain having slowed somewhat. She wove her way through the crowd, nimbly avoiding the grasping hands of transients and the wandering eyes of pimps and what were probably worse. Why she wanted me, a total stranger to walk with her, suddenly made sense. I walked along beside her like I was her father, occasionally pointing to an obscure landmark and made small talk. I held her hand as we crossed the street doing my best to keep up the act.

  There were other folks walking the darkened and sky deprived streets of downtown as well. There were preachers, dock workers, and a healthy number of rickshaws being peddled from one place to another. It was all lit with old neon lighting, dilapidated Christmas lights, and barrel fires shrouded by folks trying to warm their hands.

  It was noisy, too. I could hear a dozen different languages being spoken at any given time and there was every sort of person under the sun, not that one could actually see the sun. The only thing any of them seemed to have in common was whatever business it was that kept them from midtown or uptown. To the east, one could see the divisions between districts more clearly, with midtown rising up to meet the port and then to what little I could see of the bowels of uptown.

  When we arrived at the Strip and Waffle, we ducked through the side door. The back room was crowded with cans of peaches and bags of pancake powder. It was a wonderful if somewhat unfamiliar smell. I walked past the dressing rooms averting my eyes as I followed her. She turned and looked back at me smiling.

  “I was sure you were a total perv.”

  “Disappointed?”

  “Nope, you can keep pretending to be my daddy all you want,” she said, her face almost glowing in the dark of the back room when she smiled.

  “It’s nice to be wanted.”

  Taylor led me back into the cleanest place I could remember. At the center of the kitchen stood a dark skinned man, Mediterranean by his accent. He smiled at Taylor and extended his hand in greeting.

  “I’m Joe.”

  “Silverstein. I’m pretending to be Taylor’s dad tonight.”

  “She usually takes a cab, but I think she’s been saving her tips for something.”

  Taylor only rolled her eyes and looked over at me, her face apologetic.

  “I promised you a waffle.”

  “It’s okay, maybe some other time.”

  I turned and followed Joe out. As we passed by his office I could see mountains of printed documents littering the desk. My hackles went up at the sight and I paused, my gaze lingering on the pile of unpaid notices, invoices, and vouchers.

  “Yeah, it’s a terrible mess. I run a good club, best waffles in town, but I’m no bookkeeper.”

  “Mind if I take a look?”

  “You want me to let a total stranger look at my financials because he walked my dishwasher to work?”

  “Yes.”

  “Hey, knock yourself out.”

  Joe wandered back to the kitchen throwing his hands into the air in disbelief. I sat down at his desk, and began rapidly sorting the paper work. My mind, while entirely incapable of remembering anything about myself, quickly dissected the financial documents spread across Joe’s desk.

  What became clear was that Joe was making money, but paying too much in taxes by not keeping good records and making the right claims. A few of the dancers brought me a plate of waffles and a cup of coffee while I worked. Each gave me a strange look and a smile, lingering in the event I wanted to make small talk. I didn’t.

  For some reason I could not resist the urge to create order in Joe’s office. From the dates on the most recent invoices it was sometime in December, 2199. The accounting wizardry I seemed to possess came easily once I began looking at the numbers, receivables, and invoices. It was good to feel a measure of control, and that I at least had a skill. A few hours of work would net Joe a tidy return from overpaid taxes, and show that at least one of his suppliers was overcharging.

  Hours later, rubbing his eyes sleepily, Joe walked by his office as I was putting the finishing touches on his books. He stepped in, mouth agape for a moment. He failed to hide his expression that was one part relief and two parts appreciation.

  “Mr. Silverstein, you really didn’t have to do this.”

  “It’s just Silverstein. The government and one of your suppliers owe you some money. I’d file as soon as you can, there’s a limitation on how long you can wait before the money is irrecoverable.”

  “That supplier. He’s overpaid on purpose.”

  “Tip?”

  “Protection. You’re definitely not from around here.”

  “No.”

  I stood up, reaching behind me for a coat that wasn’t there. I squinted trying to remember the source of the gesture. That kind of muscle memory or reflex seemed to indicate that I always had a jacket or a coat. Where the hell was my coat?

  “You okay, Silverstein?”

  “No.”

  “Look, I owe you, and I don’t get the feeling you’re here to shake me down. What can I do for you?”

  “The coffee and waffles were really good.”

  “Yeah, the girls did that. Can I buy you cab home?”

  “I have nowhere to go.”

  “Guy like you? You in some kind of trouble?”

  “I can’t go home until I figure some things out.”

  Joe nodded. He seemed to genuinely understand my plight somehow, without knowing the details. Putting his hands in his pockets he pulled out a wad of cash and placed it on the desk in front of me.

  “That’s three hundred. It’ll at least give you something to travel with.”

  “I think I’ll be staying close. Hard to find a good waffle.”

  “Anytime you want waffle
s, just sit down at my desk and work your magic. All you can eat.”

  I nodded shaking Joe’s hand. Taylor came by and gazed in at us with a strange smile crossing her face. She looked about the office in wonderment, her eyes wide with mock surprise.

  “It’s the apocalypse! Joe’s desk is clean!”

  “Hey, I pay you to wash dishes not comment on my decor. You outta get home now Taylor, it’s late.”

  “Okay, Joe. You gonna walk me home, Silverstein?”

  I nodded, waving goodbye to Joe. I followed Taylor through the back room and out the side door into the alley. It was almost noon, but you couldn’t tell by looking around outside. The tangle of concrete and utility housings that held uptown aloft completely blotted out the sky here. Not a single shaft of sunlight touched the ground.

  Taylor grabbed my hand as we again traveled through the streets as though we were father and daughter. It was a comfortable facade, even if completely unfamiliar. If there was a silver lining about not being able to remember anything, it is that everything seems new. The rain on my face, the touch of a young girl’s hand, and every smell and sensation was novel and unfamiliar.

  We warmed ourselves by a barrel fire, and after turning down several offers to trade for my shoes, we headed to what Taylor called The Commons. The building sat as though it were squatting beneath the huge metropolitan murk above us, drooping at the corners like a clown with no one to perform for. The outside had once been yellow with a red commercial facade out front.

  There was no doorman, but she did have to enter a code. Obviously, this wasn’t somewhere people just hid from the rain. There was a landlord, paying tenants, and warmth. The furnace seemed to work nicely. Taylor stopped in the lobby, turning her gaze back toward me.