by Aidan Truhen
And if she was thinking she’d know that when you wire your equipment like that, then someone like her or Charlie can maybe get up in your shit, but okay you harden it and you make sure they can’t and that’s fine, that’ll work. You make your gear tough enough that you can’t crack it and you know that means it can’t be cracked. You call someone who is like hacker Kryptonite like that’s even that person’s handle like Crypto-nite see what he did there?
But you know who you call to do that?
You call Mr. Dory.
So right now Karenina is tracking me and she is doing it but good. She has my number. She has me on satellite heat camera and live ambient surveillance. She is running the show from her command car and she is treating me like a mouse in a maze. She closes streets like a wizard waving a wand and she has her machine make the box I can move in smaller and smaller all the time and I can actually feel it happening. I can see my options going away and it is scary as fuck. Down into the subway or off along the street this way that way I can see cops and they have guns and Karenina is coming and I gotta admit she is gonna get me.
Would get me.
Oh Karenina. You screwed up.
Dory owns the city now. My box is getting smaller but as it does the walls are getting thinner and going away. There’s reports of a riot kicking off by the power station and half the task force is breaking away to deal with it. A bunch more just got snarled up in the maintenance work round Independence Plaza. Steam pipes is what I hear maybe gas. Karenina’s bleeding support and she can’t feel it. And when she chose where she was gonna run me down, she also didn’t know that there was construction by the local crosstown—just somehow wasn’t on the map. Data entry lag right? Talk about your systemic failures. I guess someone in the permit department didn’t get to work on time today. But that weight limit on the temporary bridge is for real and that means the tank can’t get over—but the command car can so Karenina is all thunder and fire. She checks the data on her screens and she can see that everyone’s coming with her. The tank checks in: alternative route found, ETA nominal. Except the tank crew are getting a hold order. Which they obey.
On she goes because she still has all the cops in the world right there with her. She can see them on her screen.
Back by the crosstown Fred and Tuukka have ditched their bike and they’re walking. Fred’s got his long case like a pool cue. They’re in no hurry. They’re chatting. They can see she’s got it. She’s running me down. They’re not concerned. This is how it is to be a Demon, pointing at things and making them die, commanding armies and standing in a pile of the dead. This is what it’s supposed to be. They’re back in charge now. And when they fill the gaps in their roster, people will forget there were ever four Demons, and the name of Jack Price will be a lesson in humility.
I know this because I can see it all happening on my phone. Which Karenina does not know I have.
Which is invisible to her, like so much else. Like me as I walk down the street singing my little song. Mm mm mm hmm hmm hmm hmm. Kind of an anthem now. Mr. Linden’s office phone. Got a kind of Imperial March feel. Kinda like it.
She’s living in Dory’s magic kingdom now and nothing is real. She’s got facial recognition running and it’s telling her I’m way over the other side of the box hiding under the counter in a Hungarian deli place. She’s leaving more and more cops behind but her transponder is telling her they’re all still right there, just seconds away. She’s the tip of a spear and she’s jamming herself down my whole neck all the way to my ass. She’s got an impact team from SWAT right up ahead to make the hard entry.
Except Karenina. Oh honey they don’t exist. Ain’t no spear darling there’s just you in that command car and everyone else turned left at Albuquerque. Even the helo’s gone. Got a system failure, engine trouble, the whole damn nine but somehow she hasn’t got that message. Somehow she’s still getting the feed. If she wasn’t so deadset focused on me she’d know that. She’d miss the sound of it in the air. She’d look up and see an empty black sky.
It’s just her now, right out ahead and all alone. Just her and one driver heading into the narrow streets.
Five.
Four.
Three.
Two.
DORY KILLS THE LIGHTS.
He kills power in this whole eastern half of the city.
He kills phone traffic and emergency service comms.
We’re in a dark so deep it’s like we fell back four hundred years. Out on the water the ships light up, emergency power. There’s a coastguard launch hailing, looking for answers. Nobody has any.
Two miles back, Fred and Tuukka know something’s up and they start to run: Struwwelpeter and his sea-troll friend, far too far away to make any difference now, even if they knew where the hell they were going.
HERE WE ARE IN THE TUNA CANNERY. Smells like cheap orange breathmints. Seriously. Who knew? Big dark empty place looks like a giant men’s room except with weird robot stuff hanging off the ceiling so like a men’s room where they do alien autopsies so I guess not like a men’s room at all. Like an autopsy room for aliens that smells like Tic Tacs.
You’d think the whole place would smell of rotting fish right and sure no doubt it used to but this place is clean like antiseptic clean like it’s almost frightening. It’s purpose-made. The whole floor and all the workspace is a single piece of vacuum-formed plastic. When they finish for the night they close all the doors and push a button and orange-scented industrial bleach comes down and gets every inch of every surface and then there’s a rinse and that’s it. Slurry runs off to be strained and reclaimed as chemicals and the whole workspace is like new.
I figure there’s gonna be some conversation. That was how it was when Ms. Quint and her friends caught up with me. There was conversation, I mean even maybe a little more than you’d actually want. It’s the same scene except that Dory isn’t here because he’s working and I am because obviously. Mr. Bates is playing butler, Mr. Friday is here to translate. Ms. Quint is standing in the middle of the room. There’s obviously going to be some discussion of what’s happened and some angry weather and then maybe some crying and hugging. I’m a little concerned actually what if Ms. Quint comes over all Scandinavian and they form some kind of a bond? I mean I am all for restorative justice but you know not in this precise context not right now.
In comes Karenina with her driver all torch and handgun cool because they know there’s a SWAT team in here ahead of them and it’s all clear and they know the entire damn cavalry is coming up behind. Because on their gear all of those things are still true. Even the helo is still up there, though they don’t have radio since they came inside.
Bates shakes hands with the driver. Hey you get the guy? Naw man we ain’t seen shit is what. Fucking ghost town.
Karenina makes her way into the room. Doesn’t see me. Light in her eyes and Quint’s in charge because all of Poltergeist is waiting on her and it shows.
Karenina looks at Quint. Quint looks at Karenina. Long silence.
And Karenina doesn’t have the slightest fucking idea who she is. Nothing passes between them. No spark of recognition. Nothing happens.
She looks around, sees me.
Price? You want to get down on your knees and fucking beg you fucking miserable—
Quint sighs and puts the gaffing hook straight into the side of her head. No conversation at all.
Karenina goes away.
Quint looks down at what’s left behind and shrugs. Looks at Friday: weather.
Friday: Yes well I imagine it will be something to look back on at least.
We walk out in a line. Bates shuts the door and presses a green button marked:
CLEAN
QUINT MAKES ME A PRESENT of her gaffing hook. At least I think it’s a present she may just be saying I should dispose of the murder weapon because Friday
is out of the room and you can’t really tell a lot from her face. Anyway she pushes the hook into my hands like here this is your thing now and I take it because my hands are monkey hands and that is what monkey hands do. She looks at me for a while. I look at her. The hook still has some small but presumably vital working parts of Karenina’s interior experience on the western slope where it’s scratched. Figure it was scratched by generations of sharks or whatever not by a bit of skull but honestly there’s no way to know for sure. Maybe the doc would know wherever she is.
Friday comes in and there’s weather of course because these people cannot do anything without talking about it and you get the feeling that there’s probably some Ingmar Bergman in there or some Tarkovsky. I don’t understand a fucking word so I’m just guessing.
Quint: rain coming bring the sheep in from the upper meadow.
Friday: yes I will do that but one of the rams has an erection.
Quint: he’s a ram he always has an erection do it anyway there’s fog on the west hills that means precipitation is probable before the bear farts.
Friday (to me): Quint says that you are a thin man and she is sad.
Right okay well I guess I am a little—
No. She means that your life is thin. There is nothing in it except you. It does not really touch the world and if you go out of your life almost no one will notice and this is a sadness to her. You are a thin man and she says it would be better for you to grow a little fat.
Yeah I had a plan in that regard like there was this girl but it turns out she doesn’t like me very much and in fact she’s probably dead now. Leastways I thought I was getting messages from her but—never mind that okay I’m thin I get it.
Quint says that there is an empty sack in you that you must fill up with love and children. She has traveled all the roads there are in the world and she knows sorrow and she knows joy and now she has killed a woman and it was not a great matter after all. The universe will not notice. Only we will notice. She says not to let the same thing apply to you.
She said all that?
No.
What?
No. She was asking me about the taxi to the airport. But I thought you could use to hear it and you are the kind of man who takes advice better in translation. It was in a self-help book that I read once.
What?
Mr. Price: it does not matter where these words come from. Perhaps they are from a great poet of my country. Perhaps they are things that were said once to me. Perhaps they are a motivational poster that my sister’s son has on his wall next to a portrait of Chris Hemsworth in his underclothing. It does not matter where they come from only if you think they are true.
Sure okay but—
Why are you holding a gaffing hook covered in your friend’s brain?
Is that like part of the profound thing?
No I am genuinely a little confused.
You and me both brother. You and me both.
AND THAT’S IT. THEY’RE GONE. Sensible car comes and takes them to the airport and that’s it. Goodbye Poltergeist. But also hello Poltergeist because the machines are running again retasked in some other place. Nordic digital resistance is strong and somehow they’ve pretty much always believed they were in a war.
Seven Demons came to town one time, took a contract. Must have been halfway to being a try-out for their newest recruit. Had no idea who they were fucking with.
Yeah well I didn’t either.
Three Demons left now and one of them walks like a crab. One of them is scary as hell and one of them is a sniper.
Three Demons and me.
I’m cleaning my friend’s brain off a gaffing hook. Quint was right to give it to me.
This is all my own work.
Almost all.
Almost.
SO YOU PUT ONE FOOT IN FRONT of the other is what you do. You put one foot in front of the other because if you stay still you die and how does that help anyone?
You put one foot in front of the other. But that’s not being alive that’s just not being dead. You want to win this you gotta feel it you gotta love what you’re living so you don’t just put one foot in front of the other you look in the mirror and you see your own face and you grin that grin. You put on your suit. You put on your Italian calfskin boots and then my friend then you put one foot in front of the other. This is your life and you’re earning it one step at a time.
You put one foot in front of the other and you do it with style.
SO HERE I AM, WITH STYLE, and here are the bright and the glad, the rich and the pretty. Hot people partying basically partying without great attention to good taste which is the best parties. Gold and mirrors and light that makes you think about sex. Ambient music just right. Dance floor over there kinda shuttered off so it’s dark enough. Place is called Inhibition which of course is what it sets out to destroy which is why the logo has a line through. Very ha ha. This is a bar where you can drink drinks that are rare and expensive but not very good. It’s where Sean Harper spends the bulk of his evening leisure time which is basically every evening. He has a regular table. He entertains here, courts here, seduces here. He solicits donations to his pet causes in one private dining room, gives speeches in another, then comes back in here and relaxes like he’s Sinatra back in the day. But he’s got that look. That thin look. Like he’s thinner than I am by a mile.
Do we remember Sean yes we do. Sean owns that place where I first met the doctor’s dog. Sean is the little pissant who for some ungodly reason hired the Seven Demons and I took it amiss and here we all are. But somehow or other Sean is a sideshow.
And that is the whole point. That’s what this is about.
Because here is Sean right and he is this wealthy kid who does charity stuff and throws money around and he has never had to reach for anything but it dropped in his lap or basically right onto his dick. And yet at the same time he cannot do anything that matters.
Sean Harper didn’t kill Didi Fraser for a reason at all. He noticed her because she cussed him out but that isn’t why he killed her. He killed her because it suddenly occurred to him that it would be cool. It was something he’d never done before and he thought he might like to. Are you following me? He killed her because it was the only thing he could possibly do that might actually have consequences and then it did have consequences and those consequences were me. Then when that scared him he had to double down. He got it in his head to hire the Seven Demons because he thought he’d try being a bigtime villain and then it would be about something other than just his own littleness. Ultimately he’s a fucking insignificant little prick and he knows it and that’s why he wanted to do a murder and that’s why when it went sideways he decided that was gonna be like his defining moment like When Sean Went Bad. Didi Fraser wasn’t part of some bigger plan. She was part of a plan to get bigger that just made Sean smaller and smaller and here we are.
There’s his driver outside. Man can’t wait to go off shift go home to his family. There’s the doorman. That guy just arrived all clean and spruce and lots of energy. Imagine what either one of them would make of Sean Harper’s life. Hell, imagine what Didi Fraser would have done with it. She’d have bought a megaphone the size of a stadium and cussed out the moon.
But Sean…
I came here to kill him but there’s hardly any point. He’s barely alive as it is. He’s a man of no consequence whatsoever and everything he’s done with his life amounts to exactly this: the international mercenary assassins he hired to kill me have forgotten he’s their employer and so has he.
Fucking Swedish arthouse levels of futility happening here.
But that’s what it is I guess.
Outside I got two guys with a big wooden tea crate and some packing stuff think this is an intervention. Which it is in a way.
I’ll make a permanent decision later.
<
br /> SO A SNITCH WALKS INTO A FUNERAL and the priest says, Hey Buddy you’re early but there’s really no point in you going home.
Yeah just think about it for a second you’ll get there.
Anyway this is me walking into a funeral except it’s actually a wake like a memorial and it’s a week after they put my man Billy in the ground but the whole place is still all deathy and full of sad people because the guy who died was family and he was great fun. And that right there is one of my couriers dropping off a parcel for Billy’s brother Rex because cocaine never sleeps.
This is Billy’s house: crazy pale house all generic and fake historic like you can build anything you want you’re gonna make a fake period house like why man why? But that’s my boy no taste in architecture I guess. Those are Billy’s kids over there crying a little and then laughing and feeling bad about it because what the fuck do you do with grief and mortality when you’re eight. And that is Billy’s wife, sweet and sexy but just as weird and bewildered as he was, long slender legs and waisted cowboy shirts and she pretends she doesn’t know about the strippers because boys will be boys or maybe you just shouldn’t talk about that shit on these occasions I got no idea what real people do.
This is weird. I can’t help it I just assume every man I see here has perfectly trimmed body hair, and it really doesn’t help me fit in with the mood.
