Citizen Pariah (Unreal Universe Book 3)

by Lee

  The next time I visited I was going to have to shoot a gun out of my ass or something equally bizarre in way of thanks.

  The night air was cold, making me regret my decision to wear a thin t-shirt (not at all to show off how healthy I am, or to attract the attention of the lovelies in blue) and cargo shorts, so I picked up the pace towards my car. It would not do to catch a chill before going to my awesome new job interview and get harassed by Ming the Merciless for failure to carry through on a promise.

  Fred Garvin, Outraged Citizen with Conspiratorial Tendencies was nowhere to be seen. Either he wasn’t as far gone towards Unlawful Conspiracy Theorist as I believed and still had some kind of home to go to or he’d been rousted towards the deli as promised. I will admit to but deny in court a kind of soft spot for the crazies. Our world is mental in a lot of ways, and sometimes people just can’t cope with the … continual avalanche of progress or the probably endless litany of raw deals that we’re subjected to thanks to our decision to walk on two legs and build computers. By making particular forms of craziness legal and by giving them money to keep healthy and on somewhat of an even keel, the government has recognized that OC’s and UCT’s are needed, so, really, they’re almost like foghorns pointing out treacherous waters. Maybe I’m stretching their usefulness a tad, but I can name at least a dozen different high-handed pure-evil schemes whipped up by megacorporations over the years that have reached the public consciousness through those two branches of government sanctioned insanity.

  The two old guys weren’t bickering at their usual spot; they’d moved to the far parking lot and had constructed a lean-to between two garbage bins using old police uniforms. They had a nice, crackly fire going and were arguing over the merits of Sylvester Stallone’s acting skills as I went by. For hobos, they were singularly up-to-date on cross-cycle flicks.

  “Hey!” One of them shouted after roundly lambasting Sly’s performance in Rocky 9. “Hey, Red Shoes!”

  That got my attention; it isn’t all that common for homeless people to attempt to get noticed. Most of the time all it got them was some humiliation mixed in with bitter resentment as those of us who haven’t had a rough life are suddenly confronted with a grim truth. Life does suck, and shit does happen. I stopped in my tracks and turned around. I raised an eyebrow.

  “Can it, kid, Spock you ain’t.” the second old guy wheezed. He jabbed his buddy in the shoulder. “Kid thinks he’s Spock, over there.”

  “No, not Spock, The Rock.” The first guy chuckled.

  Second Guy pointed a gnarly old finger in my direction. “You. Fight to the death between Spock and The Rock. Who would win?”

  “Um? If he’s going to go against a Vulcan, he’d better bring along a Death Star and a few thousand spare troopers. You can’t kill the guys in the yellow shirts, old timer. You can only inconvenience them for a few minutes before you get vaporized.”

  “Who was better? Picard or Kirk?” the first one shouted loudly.

  “Neither. They were both equal but for different reasons. Ryker was better than them both, but had too many weaknesses.” This pithy statement brought knowing nods from both the elderly gentlemen. “Captain Sisko, on the other hand, could have kicked both their asses.”

  “Apocryphal!” shouted Old Man One. “Horrendous, scandalous lies!”

  “Verifiably true all the same!” Old Man Two howled. “And Janeway?”

  “No comment.” I wasn’t sure, but I was beginning to think these old homeless guys weren’t really homeless. Or if they were, it was on purpose. “I hate to bash the fairer sex anywhere that doesn’t have a bed.”

  Old Man One nodded sagely while Old Man Two snickered. Both men turned serious. “For a few dollars, we’ll tell you something. It might even be true.”

  “If you give me the money for both of us, I promise we will eat instead of drink, and I can almost practically guarantee it’ll be true, and pertinent to you.”

  “If you give us both the same amount of money you would have given just one of us for both, then it will involve you, it will be true, and we will both eat and drink.”

  Since I was flush with extra cash and free from worrying overly much about Sergei until the next time I needed him to make me something illegal, I chose to go with the flow. I handed both gentlemen a fifty dollar bill, which they held up against the light cast by their fire. Testing, I guessed, to see they were real or not. Satisfied through some wizardly means of detecting funny money from the real thing, they tucked the bills away out of sight.

  Old Man One took a deep breath, screwed his face up into a rigid expression of heavy thought and held it for more than a minute. When nothing happened, or seemed to happen, he looked to his friend. “You tell him. I’m drawing a blank.”

  Old Man Two sneezed. “He was taking a piss behind the dumpster when the guys came by. He didn’t see anything, that’s why he’s saying he can’t ‘get anything’. He’s a charlatan but I’m the real deal. Don't get in your car. Those guys I mentioned probably put enough Semtex on it to blow you to Egypt.”

  “Why would someone put a bomb in my car?” I asked, bemusement fading quickly.

  “Technically,” Old Man One interjected, sore from being called a phony, “it’s not in your car, but on it. Even more properly, on the bottom.”

  “I would go so far to say not a bomb but many bombs.” Old Man Two asserted. “They were there for some time. At one point they had to send one of the men away for some food. I’m not sure how the bombs are supposed to go off because they threatened to kill me and had the most awful things to say about Eddie Murphy’s acting career, so I was disinclined to stick around.”

  “Quick!” I pointed a finger at each man. “A fight to the death between Axle Foley and Reggie Hammond!” And then, before the old fellas could unlock their brains from the overload, I hiked it over to my car to see if it was really loaded down with explosives or if I’d just wasted a hundred bucks and ten minutes.

  “Spink here.”

  “Spink, it’s James.”

  “I’m well aware of that, James, I have caller ID.”

  “Now is not the time, Spink.”

  There was a long moment of silence. Spink and I have been ‘partners’ ever since The Sneeze. According to Writ Off, his job was primarily to ensure that I didn’t kill the wrong person again and to enforce all of the new regulations covering my punishments that are allegedly written down in some book somewhere. In reality, he gets paid a lot of money irritating me. I could practically hear him debating whether or not to continue giving me a hard time.

  “What’s the problem, James?” Expedience won the day.

  “Well,” I said from underneath my car as two hundred pounds of Semtex cooled gently in the night, “has, um, there been any developments in the Zongo case that I’m not aware of?”

  Spink didn’t talk for five minutes. “Not according to Writ Off’s main database, and they’d be the first ones to know. From what I can see, Champions of Proper Law are assisting ShizHaus and Wacky Tongue in compiling data for a wrongful Writ issuance.”

  “”kay.” In the movies, when the protagonist is confronted with an explosive device of ridiculous size, all he or she needs to do is pull a wire. More than half the time it doesn’t even matter which wire they pull because, naturally, the writers have made it whichever color they happen to like. In the other half of those types of movie, the bombs are pretty damned diabolical and can’t simply be deactivated by cutting a single piece of wire. You need a small tackle box full of tools, twenty to thirty years explosive training, a mind like a steel trap and a big temporal bubble so you can spend a few thousand decades of subjective existence figuring out how to dismantle them.

  This was one of those. I couldn’t remove it from my beloved piece of crap car. I couldn’t defuse it, I couldn’t trick it into thinking it’d already detonated. That it hadn’t gone critical the moment I’d walked up indicated that whoever’d installed the blasted thing hadn’t gone in for DNA-prime
d explosives. As far as mercies went, it was rather small and kind of irritating.

  “Anything else?”

  “Well, am I still an employee of Writ Off?”

  “I wouldn’t have answered otherwise, James.”

  “And you really and truly did pay my Anonymity Inc bill like I asked?”

  “Again, James, yes, else you wouldn’t be an employee of Writ Off and I wouldn’t have bothered picking up the phone. What is the problem?”

  The problem, I silently told Spink, is that my car, the only reliable method of transportation I had left, was soon going to breaking its way through the atmosphere, propelled at a fraction of the speed of light by enough plastique to level half of New Downtown. “Hypothetically speaking, let’s say there is a Writman who has just finished delivering a Writ for a tobacco company we’ll call Bongo. Again, for the furtherance of this hypothesis, let’s assume for the moment that Bongo’s legal department failed to learn that the people the Writ was for were not actually doing anything illegal, and that by issuing the Writ, they broke the law, and that the Writman, who is currently not best loved by his employers, could possibly be facing a lot of legal troubles of his own because he failed to do a letter perfect deliverance. My question is this: Can a Writ be issued against me, I mean this hypothetical Writman, before he’s been fired?”

  “No. And if you, er, this non-real Writman were to have a Writ issued against him, his employers would be legally bound, before firing him, to inform him that he had very little time left on this earth.”

  I slid out from underneath the car. It was a complete write off. I was going to have to call Rigible and personally ask him a favor. “Okay, awesome. Last question. If all the above hypothetical stuff, you know, the firing, the Writs and whatnot, if that was going to happen, is there anything that a Writman could do beforehand, say, to protect himself?”

  “One minute.”

  While Spink trolled through Writ Off’s computers, I looked around for the nearest bus stop. Spying one about two blocks away, I trudged off in that direction, praying all the while that it was one that would take me to my job interview. If it wasn’t, I could probably take a cab, but that might show whoever was going to conduct the interview that I was seriously interested in the job, which I hope you realize I’m not.

  Spink came on almost exactly one minute later. “Theoretically speaking, no.”

  “Ahah!” I announced, pointing a finger in the air. “But that doesn’t mean there’s not something I can do.”

  “Legally, it’s very, very dodgy and the only reason the loophole exists is because no one in their right mind would even attempt it.” Spink took a deep, deep breath. “That out of the way, I think it’s really your only shot if the Zongo thing goes the way everyone is assuming.”

  “Hit me with it.”

  “Renegade Writman.” Spink explained. “Under the law, you’re a Writman until you are given an official exit interview. They aren’t done anymore because, frankly, some of you guys give us office types the screaming willies. But it’s still there, in the books, and no one’s changed the wording in over a hundred years. So even if CoPL gets their wish and Zongo is found guilty and they deflect all guilt onto you for your failure to adhere to their requested method of deliverance and Writ Off does fire you, legally you’re not fired until you have a meeting.”

  “So,” I said slowly, feeling the concept out in my head, “as long as I avoid you office types, I’m still a Writman and I get to accept jobs?” I made it to the bus stop. From the interactive map-comp, the 413 Western Inglesong Cross-Route Travel Bus would take me close enough to the Unbiased Herald’s main office that I could walk the remaining distance without stroking.

  “Well,” Spink hesitated, “no. Because, you see, you’ll be busy dealing with the OEW issued against you. I don’t think you’d really be able to deliver anyone, and I’m positive head office won’t give you any paper.”

  A feeling of frustration crept up in me like I haven’t felt in years. “That doesn’t sound so shit-hot, Spink. Where’s the copper lining?”

  “If you live long enough, you might be able to run the Writ out.” Spink grunted.

  “Oh.” That was tremendously excellent news. How hard could it be to do that, really? I mean, yeah, sure, weirdoes and idiots tried to do it all the damn time and completely failed at it, but I’m a Writman. Totally doable. “Could you, like, send me data on the where people are gonna look? It’s a safe bet I’ll be doing a lot of running around, and away.”

  “I’m confident that one way or another I will be reassigned the second you go Renegade or the second you get boxed in and force interviewed out of the company, James.” Spink’s tone suggested he thought I was stupid for asking.

  That news stung. Spink and I didn’t get along all the time, but who did? He and I had worked together for a little under five years, and in that time, we’d been through an awful lot. Botched deliverances, potential grabs for better paper, all of it, the good and the bad, had created a bond. As much as I hated the fact that he had my skullphone number and could force a call through whenever he wanted, I guessed … I guessed I liked the guy. He was an okay fella. “So why are you telling me this?”

  “Before The Sneeze, I was one of the ones who wanted to see you as Writmaster.” Spink made the confession easily, readily. “You’ve definitely got the talent and the flair for such a vaunted position, and I can’t see any reason why you haven’t made your way back to the top. I think either you’re subconsciously sabotaging yourself or you’re waiting for something to happen. If it’s the latter, becoming a Renegade Writman is just the sort of event that could bring you back out on top. And if that happens, I want you to think fondly of me. If it’s the former, you’ll possibly get killed in the next three days or so.”

  “Gee, thanks for the vote of confidence.” The 431 rocketed its way around a corner about seven blocks away. “Anything else you’d like to tell me before I get killed in the crossfire?”

  “I won’t belabor you with all the ‘pleasure to work with you’ junk, but I will tell you this: under the Champions of Proper Law mandate, any man, woman, child or animal that can successfully prove that they have delivered their Writman, usually by reciting the unique data code on the paper itself, they get money equal to fifteen percent of their Writ’s initial cost or a bounty fee based on the skill level of the person delivered. There are absolutely no indications that a Renegade Writman cannot do the same.”

  “Hot dog!” I shouted. About damned time I got some good news.

  “I’d assumed you’d find that exciting.” Spink sounded pleased. “One last thing: if there are any midnight changes to the Zongo case, I’ll call you, and that’ll be the last time we’re likely to speak unless or until you hit Writmaster.”

  “Yeah, I gathered.” The bus was coming closer. “Hey, Spink thanks for the memories.”

  “Don't worry, kid, you’ll be fine.” Spink sounded overly optimistic.

  “I’d better be. I’ve got my whole life riding on this.”

  I climbed on the bus.

  “The concept-in-use known as Citywide Tactical Control is, for the time being, city specific; there are no other known cities that experience the same level of difficulties, and as such, officers in this branch of policing are given a higher level of accord than most. This is not favoritism: they are being asked, on a daily basis, to treat ordinary citizens who’ve become swept up in the chaos, as criminals. This is a difficult but necessary job, and those who do it deserve our thanks.’ -city official, on concerns of misuse of power and stated rate of ‘burnout’ amongst CTC-trained police officers

  Chapter 3

  “The Unbiased Herald may be ‘the world’s most depressing newspaper’, but you have got to admit that they (the reporters) are definitely damned diligent. And mentally deranged. Possibly homicidal. And I don’t think I should mention that they all carry guns. And are homicidal. I said that already? Well, that’s because everyone over there i
s a gun-packing homicidal maniac. I wanted to get that across to you.” -Wilbur Orvilleson, owner/CEO of Life Today

  The Unbiased Herald is an ongoing pet project of the world’s wealthiest man, Herbert J. Smith, and against all credulity, it was an incredibly popular one. I knew from an entire month in English class that UH had been started in the early fifties by Herbert after he’d experienced what he claims to be a ‘prophetic vision of a future where crime is sensationalized by a rabid media’. For the next forty some-odd years, Herbert worked on the paper pretty much by himself, diligently recording noteworthy events as they happened and how they happened, dancing a dance of grammatical and descriptive ballet that has evenly divided the world on the subject of his sanity.

  Providentially, Herbert had been into oil in a very big way at around this same time, so sinking money into the dry arid desert of no-frills journalism was literally a drop in the bucket. When oil got tricky and the Tesla Energy Project got off the ground, Herb was in on it from the very start, where he doubled the money he’d already had. Herb bought a new building (the very one I was heading to, my mood darkening and my skin itching at the thought of having a ‘real job’), moved into the top two floors and was never seen from again in any way except for in the newspaper’s photo ops.

  It wasn’t until the late eighties when Herb’s journalistic prophecy came to pass. In an almost overnight shift, news anchors and reporters were chiming in with their own two cents or intentionally dramatizing an already dramatic event for the sake of viewer- and readership. It took a Presidential decree (narrowly avoiding the complete obliteration of the Freedom Of Speech Act in the process) to force anyone who had anything to do with any kind of news reporting to a) refrain from a news blurb along the lines of ‘Eating the vegetable can kill you in three seconds flat, stay tuned after the commercial to find out which one!’ and b) presenting the news like it was a soap opera. AM radio news channels got away with what they wanted to because the average percentage of listeners who dialed in was a little bit less than that of people who’d read UH for the first forty years of its existence.