by J Battle
We were sitting in our local, having our Tuesday night drinks. It's the same place we have our Thursday and Monday night drinks, though not our Saturday night drinks. On Saturdays, we go a little more up-market and head for the city centre where they have women.
'You should sack her,' he said at last.
'I'm not sacking her.'
'No. Listen; it would help me. Sack her and hire me. I need a job. We're mates; we'd have fun.'
I looked at him for a moment, as if I was actually considering the prospect; but I wasn't. If I had to list all of the people who would be less use as a secretary/cleaner than my sister, it wouldn't be a long list, and Sam would certainly be at its head.
'You've never had a job,' I offered, instead of just saying no.
'I need one now. They want to send me off-world.'
'Who does?'
'The It's-About-Time-You-Earned-Your-Keep AI. If I don't get a job, it'll stop my vouchers and squirt me somewhere horrible.'
'I can't give you a job. I haven't got a vacancy. I'm not sacking Julie.'
'You don't need to pay me; all I need is a job and a health plan; that's all.'
'I haven't got a health plan, and I can't afford to give you one, or a job.'
'If you sack her, it might force her to go out and get a better job.'
'Have you been talking to my Mother?'
'I wish,' he replied, going all wistful on me. 'She doesn't call me anymore; not after…'
I knocked back my pint and stood up. I didn't want to hear any details; not now, not ever.
When I returned, fully laden with beers and savories, he had the same expression on his face.
'Can I hide at your place?' he asked, as he took his beer.
‘You’ve been hiding at the office.’
‘No, at your flat. Your office is too public. People keep knocking on the door.’
‘Tell me about it. They’re not really after you, you know.’
He looked at me as if I were the most stupid bloke in the room; I might have to take that from Strange, but I wasn’t prepared to take it from him.
‘You seem much better tonight; not as agitated as you’ve been lately,’ I suggested, ‘and no tin hat, face paint or icepacks.’
He lifted his jumper to reveal his icepacks, wrapped in tinfoil and painted green.
I took a long pull on my pint. I couldn’t find any words that wouldn’t make the situation worse.
'When they get their hands on me, they're going to squirt me off-planet. I'm a city boy; what would I do in the wilds of some distant planet?'
I drank my beer sympathetically until he got up and scurried off without a word.
Either he’d felt a sudden need to go to the toilet, or he’d seen someone looking at him a little too intently for comfort. Either way, he’d end up in the gents.
I guess a Freudian psychoanalyst would have something to say about the amount of time he spends in bathrooms.
As these thoughts wandered aimlessly through my mind I allowed my eyes to drift to a nearby table; I nodded at Old Bill, then looked quickly away. He's not really old, but he is older than Just Bill, and much older than Young Bill. He’s not as tall as Tall Bill, but he is a head taller than Short Bill, and he’s much thinner than Big Bill, though, of course, he’s not as skinny as Thin Bill.
It’s not at all unusual to find him sitting alone. Without being too obvious about it, I watched as he took out his wallet and looked inside. After a couple of seconds, he sort of shivered and put it back inside his jacket pocket. Then he finished off the rest of his pint and moved on to the next of the three he had lined up.
I looked at the door to the gents, but there was no sign of Sam, so I turned back to Old Bill and he caught my eye.
I'd have been OK if I'd let my eyes flick past his, as if I hadn't noticed him, but I was too slow. There was an awkward moment where I stared into his sad brown eyes, then I weakened.
'How's it going Bill?'
'Oh, you know.'
I nodded, glad that that was all over.
'What about you?'
There was no need for that, I thought, and I shrugged eloquently; I can say a lot with my shrugs.
But I don't think Old Bill speaks shrug.
'Still doing that thingy job?' He wasn't going to give in any time soon.
'Yes, I'm still a P.I.' I gave him my Tom Sellick quizzical look but it was wasted on him.
He took out his wallet again, opened it and stared at it for long enough for me to think I might just slip to the bar. Then he shivered and replaced it. I watched as he knocked back his pint.
You know me; I had to ask.
'Why do you keep looking at your wallet?' It seemed like a concerned, caring question; not at all nosey.
He moved on to his next pint.
'It's just my way of deciding when I should go home.'
'Oh, I see.' I didn't see. 'How does that work, then?'
He took out his wallet again and opened it for me, showing me a photo of a nondescript lady of indeterminate age.
'You're wife?'
He nods and drinks.
'So how do you know when it's time to go home?'
'When I'm not scared anymore.'
Chapter 13 – Then where do I go?
The morning after my visit to Mrs. Johnson and my drink with Sam and Old Bill, I cycled to the office hoping to have a word with Julie, whenever she would deign to turn up.
The cause of her tardiness was a bit of a mystery to me. It’s not like she has a hectic social life to keep her up all hours. Which has always been something of a puzzle to me; she is much prettier than I am, and she can be chatty and sometimes quite witty. Why aren't the young men of Manchester banging on her door in droves? She can be quite sharp, though.
In a way, I was in quite a good mood. I had two cases and, for once, I was going to get a good payday out of them, even if they were the same case. Mrs. Masters didn’t need to know I was also working for Mrs. Johnson, and vice versa.
Julie arrived late morning, and she was already opening up today’s Sudoku puzzle when I came into her office.
‘Coffee?’ I said, as I fired up the coffee machine.
She nodded without really looking up.
‘Bring it in to my office, will you, when it’s ready?’ I said, before manfully striding into my office.
Of course, she didn’t. As is my almost daily practice, I told myself that she was just waiting for the coffee to be ready. I gave her ten minutes, then I popped my head around the door; she still hadn’t moved, unless you count her rustling in a family-sized bag of ready-salted.
‘I need a chat,’ I said. Then I tried, ‘I need your advice.’
She looked up then and smiled; I tend to get a little nervous when she smiles; it’s usually a signal that I’m not going to like what’s coming next.
‘I’ll be right there.’ All sweetness.
‘Bring the coffee with you,’ I tried again, and ducked back into my room so as not to be subject to her reaction.
She didn’t bring the coffee, but she brought her ears, which was all I really needed as I explained the juxtaposition between the two cases. When I’d finished, I sat back in my chair, with my boots on the desk, and asked her what she thought.
She nodded sagely and sat forward on my couch.
‘There’s no doubt about it, bro; you’re going to have to travel to these places. There’s little or no web interfacing off-world and they don’t allow AI interference, so you can’t do it remotely. You’re going to have to get your feet dirty this time.’
She was only confirming what I’d already worked out for myself, even though I’d hoped that she might come up with an alternative solution that left me sitting in my comfy chair.
‘Julie!’ I whined; I know it’s not attractive, but sometimes life does that to you. ‘You know I hate even the idea of squirting.’
‘I know, Phil,’ she replied, with more of an exasperated tone than I like from a junior
member of my family/staff.
‘They trick your particles.’
‘I know, Phil.’
‘I always try to be honest with my particles.’
‘I know, Phil, but just this once you can tell them a little white lie.’
‘That’s easy for you to say.’
She smiled, and them she sighed, and then she shook her head.
‘And, it won’t be just once will it? Because I’ll have to go to both planets, won’t I? Unless…maybe I can do it with just one trip, if I pick the right planet.’
‘Go on then, smarty-pants. Pick the right planet. What’s it going to be? OK or JD?’
I didn’t have the faintest idea which one would be the best to choose. The guy I knew was Masters had gone to JD, under the guise of Johnson. The guy I knew was Johnson had gone to OK, under the guise of Masters. Which planet should I chose? Which planet would mean I don’t have to go to the other one?
If I go to OK, then Mrs. Masters will think I’m looking for Masters, but I might actually find Johnson, which will please Mrs. Johnson, but displease Mrs. Masters. If I go to JD, and find Masters; that’ll please Mrs. Masters, but I can see a chance of violence there, and I don’t like violence, and I’ll still have to go to OK to find Johnson for Mrs. Johnson. See; it’s not so easy is it?
Sam slipped silently out of the bathroom and placed one soft hand on my shoulder.
'If you're going after him, take this. It might not be enough, but it's something.'
'Thanks, Sam,' I said as I accepted the now warm icepack. 'I'll put in back in the freezer for now.'
'Put this in with it, will you?' He passed me his jacket.
I have a fridge-freezer in my office to keep my cream cold, in case you're wondering. And the blue tubes in the freezer section are just ice lollies; honestly. Any resemblance to a popular rec-drug is purely a coincidence.
I went and got the coffees, hoping that the caffeine would give a boost to the old brain cells but, three coffees later, I was no closer. Julie had fallen asleep on the couch and Sam was back in my bathroom, and I was still struggling with my decision.
The whole decision-making process was such a challenge to me due to my deep-seated antipathy towards the abominable invention. I don’t like squirtbooths; the very idea of them appals me. The last thing I want is for the molecules that make up my precious body to be tricked into thinking they are massless particles that can be projected at super-liminal speed to anywhere that I might choose. The name of these strange fictions should be enough to put a sane man off; Fool’s Particles.
I know how they work; sort of. I know the history; I’m a thorough sort of person after all, and I like to be certain that my fear and dislike are entirely justified. But, like all things quantum, they simply don’t make any kind of sense in the macro, Newtonian world we actually inhabit.
The guy who discovered them was a scientist of some note called Peter Fool; he’s probably got all sorts of titles and letters after his name, but that’s what I’m going to call him. He was working in the field of power generation, on managing the energy created when bits of matter and anti-matter collide, and converting it to a useful purpose. Quite by accident, he discovered that the process is not only destructive; when the particles of matter and anti-matter destroy each other, a third particle is created; this is the particle that bears his name. The Fool’s Particle has no mass, and is therefore not governed by the speed of light restrictions that apply to all other matter, as so elegantly described by Einstein (I saw the documentary).
Peter Fool’s real genius was in finding a way to change the nature of your bulk standard matter so that it can be temporarily convinced that it is made up of Fool’s Particles, has no mass and can be projected at many times the speed of light to any location in this part of the universe where the coordinates can be described accurately in the Fool’s Formula.
No; it doesn’t make any sense to me either. In spite of that, it really is the only way to see the Cosmos.
(Not a bad attempt at explaining Fools Squirt Technology from Phil; although I can’t believe he thinks he can explain it without mentioning Quarks and the quite remarkable twist on Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle. Or Professor Fool’s magnum opus,‘ The Folly of Reality,’ in which he states that normal matter ‘actually alters its fundamental nature for up to 27 nanoseconds.’ Apparently this is enough time to squirt you to any place in the Milky Way. Just keeping things real. Your trusty Narrative facilitator. N.F.)
Anyway, I was getting very close to making the choice by tossing a coin or maybe that old faithful; eeny-meeny.
Then the outer door swung open and in strode Strange, resplendent in his long, dark, tight suit. He could have knocked.
‘I’ve booked us squirts to OK for tomorrow morning; 10 a.m. I thought it was time we got moving.’
I nodded; it was nice to have the decision made.
‘What do I wear?’ I asked. He looked at me as if I were the dumbest boy in class; I hate it when people do that.
‘Look it up.’ He glanced at Julie, snoring away on the couch, and one side of his top lip lifted. ‘Who’s that?’
‘My sister.’
‘How much does she know?’ There was a strange sadness in his voice.
‘Not much.’ It wasn’t an honest answer, but it wasn’t entirely untrue. For a bright girl, her ability to retain facts was goldfish-like.
He nodded and left the room. The air rushed to fill the vacuum as if it too were glad he’d gone.
Chapter 14 – A little tense at the Squirtport
I wasn’t in the best of moods. Strange hadn’t let me ride my bike to the Squirtport, so my body had already been exposed to an irrational quantum process and there was another one on the way.
It’s quite surprising how long this instantaneous interstellar travel can take. We’d already been queuing for a couple of hours and the end of the line had showed no sign of coming any closer. I’d tried all of my best conversational gambits and the well was close to dry. At first, Strange had emitted a couple of grunts every now and then; followed by maybe a nod or two. Then he started with that stare. You try and make light witty conversation under the glare of those hard blue eyes.
We spent the last hour in the line in virtual silence, which wasn’t that bad, really.
Interstellar squirtbooths are much grander affairs than their rather more mundane terrestrial cousins. There’s somewhere to sit, and a place for your luggage. There are advert screens displaying the best features of all of the 21 planets available to the discerning traveller. If they were really discerning, they’d stay at home, in my humble opinion. But no-one seemed too interested in my opinion.
Strange lowered himself to the seat and crossed his legs. Within seconds, his eyes were closed and he appeared to be asleep. How he could be so relaxed when his body was about to be deceived and squirted across the galaxy, I don’t know. I myself was still feeling more than a little tense, and I’d doubled up on relaxers before I’d left the office.
The booth started to hum and I assumed this was normal, as it built up to whatever power levels were required to propel two bodies and their luggage across the breadth of space. I tried to distract myself by reading up on our destination.
OK was a planet with a large temperate zone that now provided 90 percent of the beef required by Earth’s multiple chains of fast food ‘restaurants.’ As I read on, I vowed never to visit such places again. It seems that the cattle walk into the Squirtport, all healthy and relaxed, and are then squirted directly to the chains’ factories. Their squirtbooths are modified and actually deliver the cattle ready minced.
The principle mode of transport on OK seemed to be equine and there were no substantial settlements. There was no AI supervision and minimal internet. Law enforcement was rudimentary at best, and it was recommended that all visitors carried side-arms.
Not my sort of place at all.
The hum seemed to level off, and the booth started to vibrate. That
didn’t feel right to me, so I nudged the big guy.
Somehow, without me really understanding anything about the process, I ended up with my face against the wall, one arm pushed far too high up my back, and something alarming and hard pressed into the middle of my back.
‘You don’t want to ever do that again, believe me,’ he whispered directly into my ear.
I was a believer.
Chapter 15 – Then a little substance abuse
Jim Evans ended up missing nearly a full week of work after the explosion. Mid-twenty-first century recreational drugs are supposed to be non-addictive and harmless; but not the way he took them. When he saw the news on his wrist-top, he reached straight for Maggie’s Bliss, a powerful stimulant designed to convince its user that, no matter how bad things seemed for everyone else, you were really quite lucky to be alive.
He backed it up later with a double dose of Tony’s Smile, and that really was too much. As ever, it had seemed a good idea at the time, until the good feelings wore off, and he was left with the usual feelings of regret and embarrassment. To counteract the effects, he went with a single shot of Bush Babe, which left him without the ability to string consecutive thoughts together for the rest of the week.
As the following weekend arrived, he realised that he had to get a grip on himself. If he didn’t do something soon, he was going to lose his job and any chance of getting back at Masters. So he put on his running shoes and went for a long run. He’d always been a runner. His dad used to take him out to New Mills and they’d run through the Derbyshire hills.
After all these years, he cherished those memories above all else. When his dad had been killed, he ran from the house without a word and was gone for the whole day, though, in truth, he was lost for much longer.
When he saw Masters jailed, he had tried to make himself see it as closure; so that he would be able to move on with his life. But the look on Masters’ face as the sentence was passed down; the slight snarl and the barely visible nod, told him the truth. Masters wasn’t concerned about his sentence; it wasn’t going to be proper punishment. He’d sail through his time and emerge even more arrogant that he had been.
