by Lee Bond
Another rotten smile crossed Cherry Cristal’s face as she tapped her temple with two dirty fingers a second time. “Far Away Man told us that, too, Boring Man.”
A miserable flash of insight slammed Granger right in his queasy guts. There was only one way that Baron Samiel could’ve added that kind of information into the batch of Zigg downed by these freaks.
Only one way.
“You have your orders.” Granger snapped hurriedly, turning and walking away from the quintet of Zigg-heads. “Follow them. Be careful. Nickels survived the first attack and will be waiting for another. You can’t barge in like Sketch.”
Cherry put a hand up to her mouth so the hurrying Boring Man could hear her voice. “Don’t you worry about us, Boring Man. We’re going to do this right. Hurry on home, hurry hurry on home so you can make that call for us, Boring Man. Don’t know what would happen to any of us if you don’t.”
Boring Man disappeared out of range in a shuffle of boring brown clothes.
Cherry turned to her crew, specifically Wombag. “Wombag. You look like like a normal person.”
“Y…yes.” Wombag picked at some sores on arms, not liking where this was going. His head still echoed and rang with a voice like thunder, louder than thunder, actually, so loud he worried his brains were going to be like this the whole time, even after a hit. “W…well, no, not really. I … I … just like my pants and a… t-shirt. They’re comfortable. I never liked lots of clothes.”
“Don’t care about your life story.” Cherry put a hand around Wombag’s neck. “You’re gonna find some normal clothes, Wombag, and you’re gonna be our eyes in there, okay? For at least a few days…”
***
Granger fretted and fumed as he sped towards the hotel he’d spent sparingly little time in since coming to San Francisco; whenever he was out in the field –and this astonishingly held true at his advanced age- he felt more comfortable sitting in cars or in diners or wherever, keeping an eye on the target, accumulating information, doing crosswords, that sort of thing.
Using a hotel room for anything other than a little bit of downtime had always felt as though he were cheating on the job, and the last thing Granger wanted to be accused of was cheating.
As he sped through a stop sign without bothering to look, Granger snorted at the disparity in his life. He’d burst into flames of embarrassment and shame if someone accused him of using Federal tax dollars to watch a dirty movie in the hotel room, yet here he was, actively –well, not so actively- attempting to bring down a man poised to breathe revival into America’s crusted, corrupt, partially collapsed lungs.
Samiel’s smug words concerning the essence of his life rang through Granger’s ears.
“At least,” the Fed said through gritted teeth as he took a corner at speeds not necessarily conducive to continued life, “now I know I didn’t choose this life. It was made to order.”
That tidbit, that tiny little throwaway piece of news, no doubt of absolutely no concern to Samiel at all … a thunderbolt for Granger, one he hadn’t really had all that time to digest. But there it was, a great big stinking turd of a truth. Samiel had engineered himself a special agent employed by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, for the sole purpose of doing shit like this, in the middle of the night, against the best interests of the Bureau he worked for.
It made Granger wonder, it really did. How did you go about engineering an insatiable lust for the truth? For answers? How did you arrange it so a kid with an overly large vocabulary and a penchant for fantasy would develop the ability to almost literally smell conspiracy? And how could you then guarantee that that kid, that young agent, would do whatever it took to uncover that conspiracy when everything and everyone around him worked overtime to prevent him from doing just that?
It boggled the mind, it really did. Prior to being introduced to Baron Samiel through the lascivious and wicked-looking Lissande Amour, Delbert Granger had never once felt a single, disjointed moment in his life. Every minute of every hour of every day until the pretty woman with the solid contact lenses had arrived in his life was accounted for. There were no slips, no gaps, no horrendous moments where it felt like the entire Universe was going to collapse inside his skull.
Nothing. Just smooth sailing. Well, temporally speaking, anyways. There was the usual gamut of ordinary life problems, but that was it.
Granger sailed into the cheap Motel 6 parking lot and aimed himself for the stall directly in front of his room. That was something they didn’t teach you in Fed School; when you were staying in any kind of dive motel, you should always do your level best to get a parking spot as close as possible to your room. It made things easier, especially if you were called on to be somewhere quickly.
The phone in his inside jacket pocket grew heavy.
“Fuck you, you bastard.” Granger yanked the keys from the transmission and bolted from the car, not bothering to lock up. If someone wanted to steal his car –how ironic would it be if a Zigg-head rolled into the lot and picked up the cheap rental?- then they were welcome to it.
There was no way in hell he was taking this call in the parking lot.
A few more seconds wasted fumbling with the lock on the room’s door, and then he was in. Granger found the time to take a deep breath before closing his hand around the wicked phone.
It rang as soon as his fingers curled all the way.
Special Agent Delbert Granger of the FBI pulled the phone out, closed his eyes, and answered.
“Delbert.” Samiel’s voice –as always, as forever- was awash with unbridled anger. “You have some explaining to do.”
Mindlessly shambling towards the bed, ninety percent of his mind stolen by the conversation, Delbert plopped down on it. “Yes. Yes I do.”
“Tell me why you haven’t yet been able to provide me with photos of this man calling himself Garth Nickels.”
Granger reflected on the curious manner by which Baron Samiel mentioned Garth Nickels. He never referred to him directly by his name, rather, as ‘the man calling himself’ and other variations. It was almost as if the time-traveler was already familiar with someone going by that name and refused to believe that there could be anyone else in the entire history of the world with the same name.
“I’ve told you before, Baron Samiel, it’s difficult.” Granger automatically regretted his choice of words, but there was no going back now. “Special Agent Angela Devlin has his piddy on lockdown. Nothing short of a Presidential command will undo that preventative measure. Regardless of how badly he treated those companies during the first day here, he has since proven to be precisely what he claimed and has become the target of some very displeased groups with characteristically evil concepts of comeuppance. If I were to even attempt access to his PIDpak now, it’d be the end. I thought you were going to see what you could do?”
There was a long, lengthy pause before Samiel’s dreaded voice whispered through the phone. “That must’ve been from a later me, and I forgot to tell myself or it proved to be a waste of my time. Very well, Granger. Get me some pictures, then.”
“He … he doesn’t leave the site, Baron.” Granger didn’t like giving the Baron this many negative responses. Over the course of his indentured servitude, he had yet to invoke serious displeasure this issue with Nickels was destined to do so, sooner rather than later, and Granger had no desire to see just how a man who controlled time could actually punish his foot soldiers. “And his security team has made me.”
"I am finding myself wondering about your worth, Delbert Granger." Samiel's voice was chilling coming down through The Line. "This new incarnation of you, unbound from the history I wrote for you, it bothers me."
Granger didn't know what to say to that, so he said nothing. Samiel sounded distracted -and who wouldn't be, given his nature- but the glacial displeasure inherent in his voice suggested that now was not the time to do any kind of explaining whatsoever, lest he finally learn firsthand just what punishments might occur.
"Describe the Ziggs to me. In detail. I will need to find them in the timeline to ensure that their particular doses of Ziggurat-Aleph carry the necessary details. Be clear and concise, Delbert."
Hands shaking, convinced he'd narrowly avoided punishment, Granger started in describing the weird chick with the hair, Slinkydog, Frigget, Senator and Wombag. When he was done, he began working on the security team's descriptions when Samiel interrupted.
"That is all I need, Delbert."
And then The Line went dead.
Granger stared at the clunky, silent phone, wordless dread squirming through his guts like a venemous snake. "Fuck my life. The bastard. The bastard."
How much time did he have before Samiel erased whatever tragedy happened to the five Zigg-heads? It couldn't be long. It never was. Granger leaped for the nightstand, sad that he was so very desperate to get some alcohol in him before the tsunami struck.
He didn't make it. Mid-leap, searing, juddering pain threatened to tear his very molecules apart…
DAY 18: WHO IS GARTH NICKELS??
"A little over two weeks ago, the world had never heard of Garth Nickels, but today, just eighteen days into his joining the ranks of intelligent men and women intent on bringing America back from the brink of destruction, his name rings almost as loud as Elton Crux and other notable entrepreneurs.
But not all is good and kind in Camp Nickels; inside sources report that on his very first day here in San Francisco, Mister Garth Nickels descended upon businesses and companies in the tech sector like a virtual grim reaper, slashing and crashing -in some cases- transforming the life works of businessmen and women into burning rubble. In just under ten hours, Mister Nickels, who originally hails from the smallish city of Bern in Switzerland, gutted more than a dozen companies who -according to those same inside sources- would have been prime competitors for Nickels' parent company, Changetech.
Targeted by the Federal Bureau of Investigation that same day for violation of the Unfair Advantage laws enacted several years ago, Special Agent Angela Devlin -who refused to comment or speculate on Mister Nickels' true intentions- swooped in to put an abrupt end to the man's predatory activities on the trading floor. Based on the fact that Mister Nickels continues to operate, it's safe to assume that Special Agent Devlin found the man innocent of Unfair Advantage, and since then, all his online activities have been relegated to the more standard trading we see every day.
But at what cost? Our sources suggest that more than a thousand men and women, hardworking engineers, scientists etc. woke up one morning to find themselves unemployed. Many of them have been awarded a percentage of money from the sale of each company to've fallen beneath Mister Nickels' heel, giving them enough in the bank to recover from this shocking display of cruel precision. Those same sources have identified and highlighted more of Mister Nickels' online activities, and we have learned some shocking news; he may have stopped destroying American companies thanks to Special Agent Devlin's efforts, but he’s continued to do so on a global scale. He frequently targets high-tech companies in Russia, China, Japan, India, gutting them and selling their assets for pennies on the dollar.
Yet, with all of this under his belt, it really does seem as though Mister Nickels is intent on being a major player in bringing America out of this slump. Preliminary investigation into the few things he's developed and patented shows that he's got his head in the right place; working from pre-existing designs, he's completely revolutionized the energy absorption of the highest-quality solar panels currently available, has designed a tremendously efficient battery that syncs quite nicely with the panels, and ... well, there's too much to go on about here. Rumor has it he's going to be moving into cryogenics, room-temperature super conductors, genetic research, you name it, the man's going to be there.
But where has this man received the kind of education required for these kinds of technical advances on so many fronts? Investigation into the man's life before becoming an American citizen shows that his parents -deceased in the early 90's, the victim of a plane crash- were scientists themselves; Marta Nickels was a preeminent biologist and Pyotr Nickels, a physicist, leaving some room -but not much- to speculate that he received quite a bit of unrecorded schooling from his parents before they passed. Schooling in Switzerland is ranked highest in the world next to Japan and India, but after looking through Mister Nickel's curriculum, there's no evidence of him spending the necessary time to become a specialist in so many diverse areas, leaving this reporter to wonder if he doesn't have a stable of R&D scientists hidden somewhere, churning these innovations out by the barrelful, with him reaping the benefits.
Anything is possible, given what he’s doing on the home front, here in beautiful San Francisco. Around the time Mister Nickels was preparing to leave icy Bern for the sun-drenched West Coast, he purchased an old school and the surrounding property from the government for less than ten thousand dollars. As part of the American Initiative to lure investors like Mister Nickels to become part of the solution, the school … Merseyside Elementary … has undergone a transformation the likes of which we rarely see these days. Where most investors buy land or buildings and let them sit fallow for long periods of time while they recoup their financial losses or merely wait to see what the market will bear for a quick turnaround, our newest resident Mister Nickels has gone in the opposite direction.
He’s funneling hundreds of thousands of dollars into his project, and as you can see from aerial footage shot earlier in the week –before we were politely informed by someone in the Mayor’s office that any further attempts to document the work going on would see heavy fines and sanctions- Mister Nickels has transformed the old school and grounds into something quite spectacular. We don’t know precisely what he plans, but there’s a massive parkade going in, it looks as though the old track and field area is being repurposed for some kind of outside meeting place and Merseyside itself … well. The volume of bins shuttling to and from Changetech’s primary headquarters suggests that the entire building is being gutted in favor of something fresh and new. A quick peek at the blueprints before the Mayoral request to ‘stop spying on the man’ revealed that Mister Nickels is in fact housing his new company’s HQ somewhere on the premises, with the main building being transformed into an ‘arcade’.
How’s he getting all this done, and so quickly? Simple, ladies and gentlemen. He’s hired virtually every company willing to sign what I am certain is a fairly draconian non-disclosure act, not to mention shuttling entire teams in from California and elsewhere. He has a workforce of very nearly a thousand souls, working day in and day out to transform the area to match a vision that is surely as impressive as his goals to revive America singlehandedly, as his website claims.
Impressive, yes? While Mister Nickels should be held accountable for the roughshod way he barrelled into our lives, he certainly does seem to be toeing the line now, making up for the destructive manner with which he treated those alleged ‘opposition companies’. Our own financial analysts have the man’s worth somewhere in the low millions, possibly as high as ten or fifteen million dollars. With a steady stream of income coming in from the trading floor and a truly impressive skill in making bets on virtually every type of sport known to mankind, Mister Nickels is poised to become not only one of the wealthiest men in financially depressed America, but one of the front leaders in bringing a breath of fresh air to a stagnant tech sector.
But what is perhaps most impressive is Mister Nickels’ first legitimate offering up to date, a genuine, bona fide and not to mention unexpected foray into the world of video games. To talk more about this is Corey Felks, our resident super geek.
Thank you ladies and gentlemen, for sparing the time to listen to me. I’m your host, Teresa Kanawa. Here’s The Felkman, with his take on Changetech’s debut offering, the as-yet-unnamed
first person shooter demo made available yesterday afternoon.”
***
“Where to begin, bros and broettes, gamer guyz and gamer gurlz? Do I start with the video gone viral or the announcement from corporate raider and all around tech-murderer Mister Nickels? Ahh, screw it, we’re gonna go right for the jugular and talk about the viral murder video that popped up on the usual hotspots late Wednesday night, right? Because when we all first saw it, and I know we all saw it, we were sitting in our chairs, staring into our badass monitors or tablets or … and if you did it this way, you suck, get a new machine asap … on your phones, we were like whaaaaaaaaat? Straight up murder is what we thought we were looking at, or some kind of new level of completely messed upedness you sometimes wander across when new film geekz are out there trying to make their new crapfest found footage flick seem legit, right?
Because let’s be honest here. The footage is grim as hell. I’ve been around the ‘net for thirty some-odd years. I was there, on the webz, when there was dial-up. When there was no such thing as responsibility. I was there when the first of the file-sharing apps popped up and, like everyone else, I was the first to start downloading damned near everything I could lay my hands on. As a result, I’ve seen some stuff I can’t unsee.
And that’s what I thought this was, when I first laid eyes on it, okay? I’m not messing around, I’m not trying to hype the man’s limited gameplay release or anything like that. I legitimately thought I was looking at a snuff film that someone decided to revenge porn some other dude on, okay? Because it is rough, and I grew up watching some of the sickest horror movies you can imagine. The footage looks so real, it’s insane.
Until the man starts fighting the three whackadoo weirdoes on that rooftop, which, if you kids out there are smart enough to notice, looks like the same parkade that Teresa showed us in the quick flyover of Changetech before we got the smackdown. That’s where things begin to fall apart, at least for me anyways. Veteran gamer, right? Super in tune with the insane skills of the digital world, too, because let’s not forget, I’m not just about video games, but about anything to do with anything that has anything to do with special effects, graphics, anything.
