Miss Brandymoon's Device: a novel of sex, nanotech, and a sentient lava lamp (Divided Man Book 1)

by Skelley, Rune

  Bishop kept the gun and grabbed Fin. They ducked into the stairwell and Bishop closed that door as the outer door banged open for the second time in fifteen minutes.

  *** *** ***

  During the commotion that followed, Fin stood with Bishop in the near complete darkness and listened. Fin had difficulty breathing quietly, but the heavy door effectively muffled his wet noises. He longed for a cigarette, but didn’t think Bishop would approve if he lit up under these circumstances. His head throbbed.

  When Fin caught himself mentally complaining about his own petty physical discomforts, he felt like a traitor. He had forgotten about Rook. No one else would try to rescue her, because no one else knew she was gone. If he died now, he would have let her down in the most complete way possible. If there was an afterlife and they met in it, she wouldn’t speak to him. He couldn’t risk that. He had to act.

  He reached for the gun, but Bishop shifted the weapon to the far side of his imposing frame and whispered into Fin’s ear.

  “You’ll get us both killed. You’ll help her more if you just listen.”

  Fin didn’t want to just listen, but didn’t want to be responsible for Bishop’s death either. His karma would really suck then. So he gritted his teeth in the blackness and listened to the conversation of the interlopers, muted and distorted by the metal door.

  “Tango-November-Hotel.”

  “No fuckin’ shit.”

  “Cut the chatter. Of course ‘They Not Here.’ We didn’t come for them.”

  “This can’t be their HQ. Too small.”

  “I said cut it!”

  A moment of queasy quiet.

  “You morons all forget how to do your jobs?” drawled a fourth voice.

  Fin heard a brief flurry of footsteps, and clattering furniture.

  “Blood.”

  “Looks fresh.”

  Moments later the doorknob rattled beside Fin. He and Bishop placed their feet against the wall and braced their backs against the door, which flexed ominously.

  “Doesn’t matter what’s in there,” announced the insufferable leader. “It won’t be if they come back.”

  A brief quiet, then sloshing and splashing, the odd ping.

  “Get the lights on your way out.”

  “No problem.”

  Fwoomp.

  Bishop and Fin were calm for a few seconds before panic set in. Fin grabbed blindly for the doorknob. Bishop stopped him.

  “The whole room’s on fire, Fin! You heard how much juice they splashed around. We can’t go out that way. They may even have posted a guard or a lookout.”

  Fin pressed his forehead against the door and felt it growing hot.

  “Sorry, dude,” he mumbled, “I didn’t mean to get you killed.”

  “We’re not dead yet.” Bishop sounded unconvinced.

  The door was becoming unbearably hot. If only this damn door had been locked the first time.

  His head jerked up.

  “The window.”

  Fin scrambled up the bottom steps and ran his hands along the rough concrete wall above his head, heedless of his injuries.

  Seconds later his fingers found the spot where the window should have been.

  “Shit! They would have to be efficient.”

  Bishop stood beside Fin and followed his arms to the window frame which was expertly boarded over. He pulled the Zippo out of Fin’s coat pocket and scraped the light to life.

  Together they examined the heavy plywood and the masonry screws holding it in place. Fin tried to jiggle it.

  “You didn’t leave the house today without your utility belt, did you?” he asked.

  Bishop searched his pockets, but came up empty.

  Fin looked through his own pockets, but didn’t even have an obscene postcard to rely on this time.

  In desperation he scooped the shotgun off its bed of dog-ends and aimed the barrel up at the window. Bishop looked skeptical, but, failing to think of anything better to try, turned his back and clapped his hands over his ears.

  *** *** ***

  The blast was deafening. Bishop turned to find Fin looking dazed. The smell of gunpowder started creeping into Bishop’s accelerant-clogged nose. His eyes watered from the smoke seeping under the door in acrid tendrils.

  The blast blew a hole in the board near the lower-right corner and broke the glass on the other side. Bishop yanked the loose bits free and tried to pry the board off, without luck.

  It was getting hard to breathe.

  Fin motioned Bishop back and blasted the board again, this time in the center. The blaze in the office behind them roared loud enough for Bishop to hear, even with his overloaded eardrums.

  Both Bishop and Fin started frantically pulling on the remains of the board. Somewhere above and behind them an alarm started to scream.

  Using the gun as a bludgeon and a pry, they cleared the rest of the obstruction and shattered glass.

  “Okay. GO!” Fin shouted.

  “I’ll follow you!”

  “NO! I’ll need to push you. GO!”

  Bishop hefted himself into the opening and promptly got stuck.

  Fin supported Bishop’s legs as he wiggled into a better position and slipped his shoulders through one at a time. Fin shoved hard and Bishop landed gracelessly on boxes and broken glass. A loud hissing coming from the ceiling drew his attention. Fin’s shots had done collateral damage.

  Bishop turned to help Fin. As he grasped Fin’s hand, the door at the top of the stairs opened and the lights flicked on. A nervous voice cut through the hiss and pop.

  “It’s probably something at Dogstar. It’s their alarm.”

  Fin’s head appeared in the opening as the employee started down the stairs. Three steps later, he turned and ran back up shouting, “SHIT! Get OUT! I Smell GAS!” The door slammed and Bishop heard pounding footsteps overhead as Fin fell through the window into his arms.

  Bishop gestured at the hole in the ceiling and ran for the steps.

  Upstairs, music blared but there was no one to be seen.

  Bishop couldn’t run full-out because of all the displays he had to knock out of the way. Fin stuffed a handful of art supplies in his pocket as he ran.

  “This is no time for looting,” Bishop hollered.

  Fin looked wounded. “I’m not looting, I’m saving them!”

  They burst through the door onto the sidewalk and kept running.

  Peripherally, Bishop was aware of a crowd forming. People from the Sycamore building milled around.

  Fin and Bishop made it across the street before the explosion threw them to the ground. As they picked themselves up, they heard the first sirens.

  Fin insisted on climbing to the top of the nearby parking garage to survey the damage. Dogstar blazed. Sycamore was half-collapsed and aflame. Olaf’s was gone.

  “So, should I have waited ‘til now to do my looting?” Fin asked ruefully.

  Chapter Seven

  HOSPITAL

  My unit found the office already empty, but there was some evidence left behind: blood on the carpet, damaged entryway. My assessment is that another interested party beat us to them, and now represents a threat. On another point, I want to state on record that the quantity of accelerants used was within guidelines.

  from Samaritan Security Agency internal briefing #KT1515

  Rook’s brain was fuzzy. A metallic, sickly-sweet taste filled her mouth and her feet hurt. Wherever she’d been, it couldn’t have been much fun. She felt queasy and was walking slowly down a street she only vaguely recognized. Blinking didn’t help her dry, itchy eyes.

  Shaking her head to clear it brought an extended bout of nausea and a throbbing in her sinuses, so Rook stopped and leaned on the nearest object for support. The rickety handrail shifted and she landed on her ass on the bottom step. Rook rested, head on knees, eyes closed. When the nausea subsided, she looked up and discovered she was sitting on the front steps of Fin’s house, blocks and blocks from the apartment she shared
with Marcus.

  She made her way up to the top floor. Damn, there were a lot of stairs.

  By the time she made it down the long hall to Fin’s door, her head cleared somewhat and she could stand unsupported without wobbling. Knocking brought no answer.

  “Fin?” she called, her voice hollow and quavery. She cleared her throat and tried again. “Fin? It’s me. Rook.”

  No response.

  Even as she tried the doorknob she remembered he kept his room locked. If she was going to live here, too, she’d need to get her own key. She could recall her backpack falling on the street when she was grabbed, and started to check her pockets for something to pick the lock with. But she couldn’t find her pockets.

  Her leather jacket was inside out. She started to take it off and noticed her blue dress was also inside out, all the seams on display. Confusion turning to fear, she looked down her dress. Bra too.

  Head spinning and legs rubbery, Rook darted back down the hall to the bathroom and locked herself in. With violently shaking hands she pulled off the jacket and dress and threw them across the room, where they lay in a heap beside the overflowing trash can. She could not steady her hands to unhook the inside-out bra and ended up pulling it off over her head with a shout of triumph and a few strands of hair. As she flung it across the room, it caught the light and sparkled. Rook studied it from where she stood. The cups were lined with foil.

  Now desperate to know what else happened to her, Rook untied her boots and discovered they were on the wrong feet. That’s why her feet hurt. She kicked the boots off and yanked her inside-out black stockings down, snagging them. As they joined the growing pile near the trash she got her first good news and started calming down. Her panties were right-side out and frontwards. As she’d left them. Everything felt right down there and she relaxed a little, concentrating on breathing so she wouldn’t faint.

  Rook shut the toilet lid and collapsed onto it, sobbing.

  *** *** ***

  Fin stood with Bishop atop the parking garage and watched the unfolding chaos below until fire engines invaded their vantage. By the time they reached the elevator, Bishop was already talking about the emergency room. They argued as they rode to the ground floor in the urine-scented glass box. Fin doubted he had health insurance having just blown up his employer. He wanted to go home and see what was on the disc. Bishop insisted stitches and X-rays were more pressing. Fin remembered Rook’s computer and they reached a compromise. They would retrieve the laptop from Cinemopolis, Bishop would drive Fin to the hospital, and Fin would hope Rook’s Mac could read the disc.

  At the hospital they encountered a huge crowd. Due to the fire and explosion, they had a long wait ahead of them.

  The waiting room was sprinkled with photographers, reporters and a smarmy individual Bishop recognized from one of the local news shows. Fin saw a few people from Sycamore’s front office. Bishop and Fin sat in a corner and put on their best surly looks so the media would leave them alone.

  Fin studied Rook’s laptop setup while turning the unlabeled disc over and over in his hands.

  “What are you waiting for?” Bishop asked.

  “What if there’s nothing on it.” Again not knowing anything felt better than being sure of something bad.

  Bishop took the CD and popped it into the drive slot. Fin held his breath. The Mac hummed and an icon appeared on the screen.

  Fin let out a long sigh and double-clicked. A file called ‘recruitment’ caught his eye and he opened it. Bishop read over his shoulder.

  TEF Manifesto

  All religious systems include a creation story. These systems invariably also include a prophecy of the world’s end, when some ultimate battle will sort all the inhabitants according to their deserved rewards. This is an explicit encoding of causal relationships onto the moral realm. All of these stories are thusly grounded in the "common sense" paradigm of beginning, middle, and end.

  The generally accepted scientific theory explaining the universe also assumes this linear structure. Creation at the Big Bang and inevitable entropic attenuation. The universe is just the stuff in the middle. Even with the advent of ideas like special relativity and route-dependent time, this theory keeps the universe "overall" safely wrapped in the conventional "beginning, middle, end" causal chain. Unlike religious systems, the scientific one posits no means to influence the final outcome.

  The common sense world view, the one based on the dim and fleeting information supplied by our physical senses, is of a stable world. The continents don’t move, common sense would tell us. The world is flat, as anyone can plainly see. All assumptions are doomed to one day seem so quaint, and to be replaced with ever more powerful new ideas like the ones we now cling to - plate tectonics and oblate spheroids.

  Stability is an illusion. The universe is a collection of dynamic phenomena. It is filled with paradox - patterns of chaos. The central question for any religion must be, "Would God create an unstable universe?"

  No.

  The universe has a purpose, which gradually technology allows us to see. Creation lies not in the past but in the future. The universe is unstable because it isn’t finished. It is a means, not an end. Most importantly, there is no God - yet.

  The patterns of chaos have a purpose. You have a purpose. These are not the final days - this is only the beginning! Technology leads God ever closer.

  “What the hell’s that supposed to mean?” Fin asked.

  “Makes sense to me,” said Bishop. He frowned. “Sort of, anyway.”

  “But what’s it got to do with Rook? Why'd they take her?”

  “Maybe another file will tell you more.”

  There were four more files with recognizable icons: ‘black,’ ‘silver,’ ‘gold,’ and ‘profiles.’ Fin opened ‘black.’ It was a plain text document. He studied the short list of columns.

  ^∑^

  black/black

  35%

  1000

  25

  ^∏^

  black/silver

  25%

  1000

  27.3

  ^Ω^

  black/none

  10%

  500

  29

  ^∆^

  black/gold

  05%

  1000

  29.2

  ^Μ^

  black/other

  25%

  500

  23.6

  The next two files held nothing more useful. He looked to Bishop who again read over his shoulder. Bishop shrugged. Fin opened the last file, ‘profiles.’

  Webster

  22.4

  B

  Rook

  ±S66nkj~37F

  Webster

  29.2

  B

  Jennifer

  Brie~23R

  Webster

  35

  A

  Kent

  R355-da~48S

  NewAlsborg

  29.5

  B

  Chris

  J382~rl~00O

  Webster

  27.2

  A

  John

  C573-ji~29V

  StoneDock

  21.2

  A

  Jerry

  B511~mo~17S

  GamblersMill

  31

  B

  Danny

  R255~ax~19F

  Webster

  29.2

  C

  Carrie

  Mohawk~46S

  Webster

  32

  B

  Lara

  K655-ui~88H

  Cheddarly

  25

  B

  Rose

  Lungfish~32p

  Fin pointed out Rook’s name.

  “What does it mean?” Bishop asked.

  “I don’t know,” Fin admitted. “But it has to be her. There aren’t many Rooks around.”

  Fin studied the rest of the list, but had no clue what it meant. Rook’s was
the only name that stood out. He scrolled through several pages.

  “They can’t all have been kidnapped. We’d have heard something, right?”

  *** *** ***

  Rook exhausted her tears. Looking around, she discovered no tissues or toilet paper. Fin kept a roll in his room, she now recalled. She splashed her face at the sink and dried it with the rough olive-colored curtains.

  On the back of the bathroom door hung a spotty full-length mirror. Rook stood in front of it to examine herself. She saw a puncture mark and bruise on her neck where they jammed a needle into her in the van.

  She had no idea who ‘they’ were, just that there’d been two of them in the back with her, both in dorky, pea-snot sweaters. They had a big sheet of aluminum foil which they started to wrap around her before she lost consciousness. With a shudder she remembered the foil in her bra and began to examine herself again. Another bruise on her left upper arm. No memory of that injection. How long had she been gone? It was late morning when she and Fin left The Shamrock and it was now starting to get dark. She wasn’t hungry enough to have been gone overnight.

  Rook studied herself in the mirror. No other marks. No bruises, bite marks, rope burns, writing, new tattoos. No implant sites. The more she thought about the situation, the more puzzled Rook became. During the course of her work for CTP she’d had occasion to talk to alien abductees and many of them said they’d had their clothes turned inside-out, buttoned wrong, whatever. The jerks who’d abducted her certainly weren’t aliens. They weren’t even Men in Black.

  Her makeup was a bit smudged, but mostly intact. Like she usually looked the morning after sleeping in it. After breakfast, she remembered, she’d applied a fresh coat of lipstick, and there it was, more or less. Fin’s scent lingered on her, so she hadn’t been washed to remove evidence. With much relief Rook decided she hadn’t been raped. She was now more puzzled than ever. Why was she kidnapped, if not for rape or ransom?