Z is for Zoo. It seemed that who’s who in the zoo was about to be very much a statement.
…
There’s the easy way and the convoluted way to go to jail.
The first, the easy way, commit a crime, hand yourself in, plead guilty, and the justice department will be falling over themselves to frogmarch you to the front gate
The hard way, trying to create a foolproof backstory with official evidentiary documents, to take you seemingly from one jail to another without raising suspicion.
Of course, it was never my intention to become a felon, but people are sometimes so stupid they don’t know when to back off. And, of course, we are trained never to ‘lose it’ under any circumstances, but I did.
In front of about a hundred other prisoners who made very reliable witnesses. He was kind of popular, so that made my continued presence in that prison untenable.
Hence the move. No trial, an extra twenty years, I should see the world outside again when I was too old to enjoy it.
I would have time to contemplate the mistakes of the past for a long time. Or not. The prison I was going to was notorious for chewing up and spitting out newbies in their system.
I had a name, Louie. It’s best not to call him that, I was told. He was the one to look out for. There were another hundred or so, all varying degrees of Louie-like danger, so my hands would be full for a while.
Along with six other new prisoners, we were taken inside. There we were given the once over by the warden, whose expression when he looked at me was the very definition of hatred. Then he had three of the guards drag me into a room up the passage. Special treatment, he said with a smile, that told me it was not a special I was going to like.
Once onside with door shit, two professionals, the guards beat me with their batons. Bruises, abrasions, and barely able to walk, I rejoined the others, who all looked the other way lest they incur the same wrath.
An hour in the dispensary, then taken to meet my new best friend, it was the greeting I expected.
The guard stopped me outside the two-bunk cells that I would get to call my Hilton hotel room. My roomie was lying on his bed, odd since he should be out on the exercise yard with his friends, but I was guessing he was going to lay down the ground rules.
“Your new roomie, Dyson.”
He glanced over at me, then at the guard. “I’m paying the single rate.”
“Not any more.” The guard nodded at me to go in and shake a plain to the empty bed.
This is going to be interesting.
I took a step towards the bunk, and he was out of his bunk and standing in my way.
I looked him straight in the eye. “This can go two ways, Dyson. You keep standing there, and I get to stake a few weeks on solitary. Since I’m used to it, it’s no skin off my nose. But you, you might not walk again, or maybe this time I’ll see if I can rip your arm off and beat you with it. Lasy guy, I tried to prove it could be done, but he died. You know where I’m from, and you know why I’m here.”
I made it menacing enough. Most of the men in this jail didn’t frighten easily.
Tyson looked at the guard.
“My money is on the fact he’ll do it. Plenty of you idiots who don’t know when to leave well alone. I’ll turn around so I can say I didn’t see who started it.”
Which is what he did.
Tyson backed down and sat on his bunk. “Louie isn’t going to be pleased.”
“Not trying to please or displease anyone. All I want is a quiet contract and to be left alone.”
And knowing that was never going to happen.
“Get along, Dyson.” The guard said, just before he left.
After I threw everything on the bed, not that it amounted to much, and certainly nothing worth stealing, it was time to get some air.
The cell was quite stuffy, and Dyson wasn’t the cleanest of men. I might tell him later, when he is a little more friendly.
“Which way to the exercise yard?”
“Follow the passage to the end and turn left. You’ll see it.”
“Don’t like exercise?”
“Don’t like the inmates. You’ll see.”
I’m sure I would. As far as I was aware, Louie had my resume, and when I read it, it was impressive. Mostly enemy soldiers, but there were also a few who were not.
I came out into the sunshine, and when the others out there realised who it was, they stopped and glared at me. Not in a friendly manner.
There were two waiting by the entrance, ready for what? Were they expecting trouble?. I could see the man called Louie on the other side, sitting on the bleachers, his acolytes around him.
The two men were almost beside me when they stopped. One of the left, short, obese, and sweating badly, said, “You have an appointment.”
The one on the right looked menacing. He was in trouble because he had his hand in his pocket, so there was a ship, knife or another weapon there.
Np point in giving him an excuse to get beat up.
I shrugged. “I don’t remember making one, but if you say so.”
He nodded in the direction of the man I thought was Louie. I shrugged again and walked. Slowly. If things went south, I needed a strategy.
Of course, there was never enough time. We were standing in front of him. No matter. He was intent on ignoring me because he could. He was the boss. I’m not sure how or why.
A minute passed, then two.
Never the patient, man, I said, “Listen shit for brains, you make an appointment you keep it. I’ll count to three, and if your head’s still up your ass, then I’m going over the other side.” I waited a few seconds, then said, “One.”
He glanced at me. To do otherwise would lessen his prestige.
“Two.”
He smiled, then turned. “Have you noticed people are always in a hurry?” He said it to no one in particular.
“To fie,” I said. “Yes, they are. I’m sure you don’t want to be one of those, do you?”
The smile turned to a frown. “You should be more respectful.”
“Respect us earned, not given or expected.”
I saw the imperceptible nod to the enforcer and was ready. Disarmed and arm twisted out of its socket, he was no longer a threat. I threw the shiv over the fence, outside.
The enforcer hadn’t made a sound short of a grunt, but he stayed down. No one else moved.
“Sorry. I needed to verify who you are, Stanson. The best of the best now is the best of the worst?”
“Whatever. You’ve had your fifteen minutes. I’m going over there,” I pointed to the bench on the other side of the compound. “And rest in peace. I won’t be so kind to the next fool you send.”
“As you wish. But we still have to have words.”
“Then call my secretary and make an appointment.”
A final look at the red spots growing on his cheeks, and I walked away. No one followed me. It was not a victory, just a minor delay before he came back.
There had been a plan, and when I heard it, I sat back and laughed.
It was anything but a plan, except if I wanted to die before one day had passed.
Everyone knew who ran that prison.
Louie.
And to get what they wanted, which I didn’t know about, simply because if I did and was captured and tortured, they would discover who was behind this charade, they needed to neutralise Louie
And the three attempts so far had failed spectacularly, and in the process had alerted him to what they were trying to do.
I told them it was a mistake.
They then made me an impossible promise, one I knew they would never keep because they knew I would not see it through.
I was surprised I got to see Louie, so perhaps one aspect of this mission might be true. Louie was scared, not of me, but of someone else.
The question was, who?
I pondered all of these questions in that dank gold called solitary confinement. I was there firstly for my protection, no other prisoners were allowed near me, and secondly, I could not be seen to get away with harming another prisoner.
Then I heard the outer door being unlocked.
An unscheduled visit.
Could it be that there was someone else in the prison who was facilitating a host, and not a friendly one?
There was no hiding spot in the cell, so all I could do was be ready if the guard was hostile. A figure loomed out of the darkness into the dull glow of the low-wattage globe illumination and space in front of my cell door. It had been the only light I’d had for days.
“Good. You’re awake.”
My contact in the jail, the one whom I was to go to, if I got into trouble. Why was he here? He was not supposed to approach me.
“You’re not supposed to be here.”
“There’s an opportunity. Louie has been taken to the infirmary. He will be alone. You have 30 minutes to do what you have to.” He dropped a bag on the other side of the door, then opened it. “Change of clothes and tools.”
“Afterwards?”
“You disappear. As promised.”
There were so many holes in this plan. I didn’t know where to begin. “Who put this on motion?”
“The same person who put Louie in the hospital. You’re wasting time.”
Three minutes to freshen up and change, then along the passage and up to ground level. Out one door and in the next, along another passage, and we were outside the infirmary. Another four minutes.
A nurse was sitting at a desk, with monitors on three beds with prisoners. The middle one was Louie. My guard pointed to the middle door on the other side of the passage we were standing in.
The monitors blinked, the screens went fuzzy, and then came back on. Replay, so my presence in his room would go unnoticed.
He knocked and went into the room with the nurse. I didn’t wait to see what he was going to do. I crossed to the door and listened, then went in.
He watched me warily as I closed the door.
“I’ve been waiting for you,” he said.
“Why?” I crossed to his bed. Handcuffed. Precautions.
“You’ve come from Alexander, haven’t you?”
Alexander was the crazy man who made promises he couldn’t keep.
“He is crazy. I told him that. And yet here I am. You know why I’m here?”
“He blames me for Forrester’s death. I had nothing to do with it.”
“Then why are you on a video, clear as day, shooting him in the back of the head. An execution. You said he was a traitor, and traitors get their just deserts. To you, maybe, but not his country.”
“And you’re going to execute me?”
He didn’t deny it, which he strenuously did in court before they found the video. There had been a camera, but it was broken. Someone else had installed another, one not so obvious, and when we reviewed the recordings, it was clear why it was there and had led to a dozen other arrests. The footage of my brother’s death was collateral damage.
“It was my first thought, but you need to suffer.”
“He didn’t if it’s any consolation. Just what does it have to do with you?”
“My brother.”
“You look nothing like him.”
“Well, that’s as much I’m going to tell you.” I pulled the hypodermic syringe that was also in the bag of clothes and jabbed it into his leg.
Less than a second. Justice.
“What did you just do?”
“Give you a lifetime to reflect on what you did.”
I gave him a last look, the serum starting to work, relaxing all of his muscles, and in about ten minutes would completely paralyse him.
If he was lucky, they would recognise what had happened and give him the other syringe sitting on the bedside table. It wouldn’t unparalyse him, but it would make it so he could live, only with full-time care. He could not move or speak, but behind that mask, his mind would be active, and he could play over and over the actions that got him there.
Justice for murdering my brother.
And this prison was now free of his influence and threats.
Did that mean I could take over?
No. It simply meant I’d repaid a debt and was now free.
My prison contact returned, took me out the back way through an unknown passageway, built secretly at the time of the prison itself, there in case the warden and his family needed to escape, when a car was waiting.
Y is for — You can sort it out. The boss thinks certain people are not needed until they are.
…
For someone who continually professed that they would never let work affect them outside of business hours, and who usually dropped off to sleep when their head hit the pillow, I was still awake at 2:30 am.
Perhaps it was the unofficial rumour running through the company like wildfire that the CEO of the family-run business had disappeared, and the prodigal son was considering selling the company off to the highest bidder, something his father would never do.
Perhaps it was the fact I knew that son, Jeremy McMaster, only too well, practically from the day he was born, we both went to the same schools, university, and I watched him turn into the disloyal, lazy, incompetent fool, and eventually, the major disappointment to his father that he was now.
Perhaps it was the fact that without the old man in charge, the company would soon be on life support and a great many people who depended on it for their livelihood would soon be out of work, and then, like other cities around us, it would wither and die.
Perhaps it was the fact that good people were leaving every day in the absence of any news that could give them hope.
Perhaps it was the fact that I knew there was nothing I could do to turn things around. I could try, but the prodigal son had forbidden it and dismissed anyone in Management who could have made a difference.
At least he couldn’t fire me. The old man had ensured that I would have a job for life or as long as the company was in business. That was the promise my father had extracted when he lent a swag of money to the old man when things went awry about 30 years before.
Now, it didn’t seem it would be long before my tenure would be over. Either way, to me, it didn’t matter. The prodigal son would soon discover that he had to repay my father’s loan before he could take anything for himself, and the way it was going, he was not going to make anything at all.
And the interesting part of all this was that I don’t think he knew what would happen in the event of the business being sold. That, I figured, would be within the next three days when an offer would be tendered to take over the business or parts of it
Someone had anonymously sent me a copy of the draft proposal, and it was horrendous.
Maybe that’s why I couldn’t sleep.
I dropped into an uneasy sleep, only to be woken by the shrill sound of my cell phone. Obviously, I’d forgotten to turn it off the night before, but usually, that wasn’t a problem.
Very few people called me, and even less knew I had it. I had a work phone as the main point of contact, and I turned it off. By the time I had gotten out of bed, it stopped ringing. Good. If it were important, they would call again.
I moved it to beside the bed, glancing at the time. 3:37 AM I sighed, getting back under the covers. It was cold, and I was tired and a little annoyed.
13 minutes later, the phone rang. I rolled back the covers, picked it up, and glared at the screen. Private number. I considered ignoring it and switching off the phone, and going back to bed.
I didn’t. Wondering who it could be, I pressed the answer button. “What?” I put just enough annoyance into my tone to make the caller think twice before they annoyed me.
“That’s a nice way to greet a long-lost friend, Michael.”
I knew that voice and the girl it belonged to, the one that had broken my heart ten years ago when she abruptly up and left without so much as a goodbye
Elaine McMaster, quite literally the boss’s daughter.
The girl I had been madly in love with, and quite likely still was, if missing a few heartbeats just hearing her voice was anything to go by.
“You have a new phone, and if you didn’t, I wouldn’t have answered.”
“It wasn’t my fault.”
Nothing ever was. She was one of those people who always had an excuse, always passing the blame to anyone else but herself, and had a Daddy who could buy her way out of trouble. She was quite literally the female version of Jeremy.
“Not a discussion I want at this hour of the night, nor at any time. Go away, Elaine and make some other poor wretch’s life miserable.”
Silence. I hoped she had hung up in my ear. She hadn’t.
“Can’t.”
“Can’t what?” I wasn’t going to forgive myself for taking the bait.
“Can’t go make some other wretch’s life miserable. I’m outside your door. I thought it best to call first before pounding on your door.”
“I could have moved.” It was a lame comeback, but only she could make me feel like this. I could never hate her.
“You’re a creature of habit, Michael. A place for everything, and everything in its place.”
“Except you.”
“I told you from the outset that loving me would be your greatest challenge. But, having said that, I chose you to go to the prom for a reason, and that reason holds today as it has for most of my life. Now, are you going to open the door, or do I have to start pounding on it?”
That begged the question: how did she get past the security?
“I’m hanging up now.” And did
I was of two minds whether to open the door. I knew the moment I saw her I would melt, so it was probably wiser to leave her there
Damn her.
I knew I was going to regret it the moment I opened that door.
I never understood why she picked the shy, gangly, awkward teenager I once was to go to the prom when she could take anyone. That one night changed me forever.
Until, of course, she left.
And there she was, the most beautiful girl I had ever seen, with that whimsical expression I used to think she saved for me. It wasn’t, but I had my fantasies.
She stepped over the threshold and into my space, and without a second hesitation, put her arms around my neck and reached up that short distance, inviting me to kiss her.
The first time, I had not understood the nuance, and it annoyed her
How could I refuse?
And in that short period, anything from a few seconds to an hour and a half, I lost myself in a world I thought I’d never go back to.
“Damn you, Elaine,” I cursed under my breath.
“Because you never stopped loving me, or because I never stopped loving you.”
She brought her roller case over the threshold and closed the door, leaning against it.
“My mother, just before she died, sent me away to her sister in Switzerland. The reason I left in such a hurry and without a word was that I was pregnant. Not your child; I was raped by one of Jeremy’s friends the day after the prom. They were all staying over and were drunk. It was not a pleasant experience, and my parents refused to believe me, preferring to blame you for my predicament. It was terminated, but I was forbidden to see you or even communicate with you. I’m sorry.”
It was a compelling story, but was it true? She also had a reputation for telling the most convincing lies.
“Proof?”
“Ring my aunt in Berne. Go ask Bernard Davies, the guy who raped me, and got paid a lot of money to shut his mouth. And if that doesn’t satisfy you, I’m happy to go to any doctor you choose who will tell you what happened to me.”
Was she banking on the fact that I wouldn’t, that I would take her at her word?
“Why are you here, now?”
“To see you. I want to pick up where we left off, but I’m willing to accept that you might have reservations. If that’s the case, I will try very hard to convince you that there never was, and never will be, anyone else for me.”
“What about your parents, who have this thing against me. Your father never mentioned it, just you and your mother were off travelling. He never treated me any differently.”
“He was like that. I think he hated me more than he hated you. He always said that he had big plans for me, that Jeremy was a waste of space, and when what happened to me happened, all those plans went west.”
“Where is he now. All we know is that he’s taking an extended leave of absence and that the company was in good hands while he was away. Pity he didn’t consider that Jeremy would fire the management team he trusted and install himself as the lord and master.”
“He had to leave because the customers were getting worried about his health. It turned out to be stage four lung cancer. Came to Switzerland for what was touted as a miracle cure, and it wasn’t. I buried him a week ago.”
It didn’t make sense, but nothing the McMasters did ever made sense.
“But before he died, he changed his will and left me with his shareholding, and with yours, he told me we have a majority, certainly enough to bury Jeremy. He doesn’t know yet that Daddy changed his will, and he now just has a minority shareholding. Daddy knew what he was doing and had to wait until he died to rearrange things.”
“You’re too late. He’s all but wrecked the business, and there’s not much left to salvage.”
“Well, all you have to do is resign, and then we’ll see what we see.”
The Elaine I knew had no business sense and was content to spend the family fortune on clothes and overseas holidays before she disappeared without a trace.
Whether the old man changed his will or not, the company had been destroyed in the six months he had been gone, and Jeremy had taken the reins.
If I resigned, it would precipitate the clause that would compel the company to pay back the loan my father had given them.
It would benefit both of them financially as well as get a millstone off both their necks. I couldn’t discount the possibility that Jeremy and Elaine were working together now their father had died, with the idea of maximising their inheritance.
I shook my head. “There is a spare bedroom, you can put yourself there. I have some calls to make.”
“At 4am?”
“The people I know don’t have 9 to 5 jobs. Or the luxury of swanning around Europe without a care in the world.”
“Those days ended when Jeremy stopped paying my aunt for my upkeep. I literally just got off the plane after travelling in coach.” The expression on her face was priceless.
Yes, how the mighty have fallen. She was about to find out how cold and harsh it could be in the real world. “Then have a long, hot shower and get some rest. We’ll talk again later. I’m going back to bed and trying to make up for the interruption. Some of us have to work for a living.”
With that, I went into and shut the door to my room, leaving her standing by the door. If she had any common sense, she would leave. Whatever I may have felt about her, it would not affect my judgment in business matters. It was perhaps the one thing the old man and my father had taught me.
The first call was to my lawyer, who, like me, never seemed to sleep.
His father was my father’s legal representative and was, for a long time, old man McMasters. After the two men clashed, McMaster found a new legal practice to handle his affairs
Alistair Crewsbury was the son, third generation named Alistair, and still had copies of a lot of McMaster’s documents, one of several secrets between us.
What was more important was his father’s notebooks that gave a great deal of detail on McMasters affairs, and particularly relation to my father’s investment, and in the handling of his affairs in the event of his death, and his disbursements to his children, Jeremy and Elaine.
Admittedly, it was twenty years old and may not be relevant, but there was no indication that the old man was dead or that he was in Switzerland getting cured. His cancer, Alistair had said, was real, and he had gone to Europe to be with his daughter and left the running of the company in Jeremy’s hands.
It wasn’t ideal, nor did he trust him, but at the time, blood was thicker than water. I was not blood, but my family had a lien, of a sort, on the business that had to be settled if it wound up or was put out of business
Alistair had said more than once that if the McMasters wanted to get around that lien, they had to run the business into the ground. Until it was worthless.
Jeremy was certainly trying to do that. And it would not leave me with any options.
This much was clear.
Weigh in with the fact Elaine was back on the pretext that Jeremy had cut her off, didn’t sit with the fact her father had gone to see her, on his way to get treatment.
When Alistair answered the phone, knowing who was calling him, he said, “So Elaine McMaster has landed on your doorstep.”
It was a statement rather than a question.
“You know. I don’t think I want to know how. Yes. Some story about being cut off.”
“I believe she sent you the plans for the company’s future. I’m not sure why, because it alerts you to the fact that Jeremy intends to just hand it over to a rival for nothing. In doing so, he will be relieved of the outstanding loans and says liability. It says nothing about the fate of the employees, but you can be assured that four-fifths will be fired.
“He has to get something out of it.”
“According to the consulting accountants, he’s been squirrelling away nearly fifty million in offshore accounts, which he thinks no one is aware of.”
“Can it be proved?”
“Not yet. He’s not as stupid as some would think. He has managed to hire some very clever and very interesting employees to do his bidding.”
“No surprises there. Where does this leave me?”
“Do you care? Your father left you far better off than the McMasters are currently. I don’t think your father ever expected to recoup the money he gave McMaster, and it didn’t bother him. I’m sure if my assessment of you is correct, I doubt it is a concern. It’s probably a principal thing.”
“I care more about the people losing their jobs, as hadvold man McMaster, and I’m surprised he hadn’t done anything to curb his son’s excesses.”
“If you want an opinion, Elaine returning means he died. Recently. I haven’t yet heard from his new lawyer, but they will have to tell us soon. It was a codicil on his will.”
“What if I simply resign and walk away?”
“As you are aware, it would invite a clause in the loan agreement, and given the financial state, you would be blamed for bringing the company down and cause the workforce to be made redundant with no benefits. That at least would leave the McMaster children much better off, and with their reputations intact. Go on leave and watch from the sidelines.”
“It would be difficult. A lot of those people are my friends.”
“Well, here’s a thought. If you could find a way to sabotage the company and not make it a going concern, according to the terms of the sale, the agreement would lapse. The magic expiry date is the 25th, in twelve days. As they say in the classics, the ball is in your court.”
It was. The fact that the blame would rest on me if i resigned and that the McMaster children would get off Scott free was reason enough not to. Best let Jeremy be the reason, through bad management. His advice to take some leave and watch the fun from the bleachers was good advice.
He then added a very interesting fact, that one of his associates had seen Jeremy and Elaine together that afternoon over lunch, having what seemed to be a friendly discussion.
It wasn’t the cheapest restaurant in the city.
I thanked him for his observations.
My second call was to William Prentice, the production manager, and I asked to see him at 9 am.
Staring at the ceiling provided two observations: the first that the roof needed repainting, or I had a slow leak that was wrecking the roof; the second, what was Elaine’s game?
If I tried to think too hard about it, it would probably lead me down the path to hell and damnation. I wanted to believe her, but it didn’t quite stack up. The thing is, a lot must have happened to her in the last ten years.
And that story about Bernard? I would have a chat, but it wasn’t going to be pleasant for him. The thing is, I knew Bernard, and he always had a thing for Elaine. He was also a bully, so if he did what he did, it would be totally in character.
Except Mr McMaster would have killed him, not paid him off to keep his mouth shut. I never had any illusions about the old man. You didn’t get where he was without a few strong-arm tactics
And he would not let any man do that to his daughter and still be around to talk about it.
So, the first job inside the room was to check for any obituary notices for one Bernard Davies and after spreading a larger net than the five towns nearby, found the versatile man, dead from a car accident a week after the prom.
I guess Elaine really did believe I would take her on trust.
Morning dawned, and having got a couple of hours of restless sleep, I decided it was enough and went out to make some coffee.
It was already made.
Elaine was wandering down the passage when she looked up, saw me, and jumped, giving a little squeal of surprise.
“I’m not that scary,” I said
“You are when you’re creeping about like that. Get some more shut-eye?”
“A little. Wouldn’t be the first time I went in more tired in the morning than I was when I went home.”
“Stay at home then. You can reacquaint me with the town.”
“It’s one street, Elaine, and only two shops have changed hands, and they were two you never went to. You don’t need me to hold your hand. You’re all grown up and heiress to an alleged fortune. Well, maybe not so much a fortune, but what was once a great little earner. I have to go in. Besides, didn’t you say I had to resign?”
“You can do that over the phone.”
“You might, but I have principles and integrity. I’ll be doing it in person as it should be done. When I get around to it. I will have to clear my desk.”
I was going to do more than that, but she didn’t need to know.
Elaine wanted to go with me, and I said there was no point alerting Jeremy she was back and plotting against him.
She seemed to accept that, but an odd look from her when I mentioned Jeremy’s name was interesting, to say the least. She would never make a good poker player.
I drove to work as I did every morning, parked in the car space that had my office title on the ground, not my name, and made that walk from the car to the front door
At the hour, nearly everyone on the day shift had arrived, and the car park was quite full. There were 2,500 people working on this particular day in seven of the eight factories and warehouses on this site.
All were dependent on the main assembly line, in building C had been the subject of a dozen lengthy memos that basically pointed out that if it was not stopped for a period of three weeks to perform major maintenance, it was likely to stop permanently
The major maintenance would cost upwards of 10 million dollars, an expense Jeremy had vetoed because he believed it would last long enough for the sale to go through, and then it would be someone else’s problem.
At 9 am, William Prentice arrived at my office, closed the door, sat down and shared a wee dram of a single malt I had sent over from my father’s favourite Scottish whiskey distillery.
At 9:05 a.m., he stood, nodded, and then left.
At 9:10 a.m., my 4 weeks off on annual leave began with a walk down to HR.
As Jeremy’s personally selected employee, he refused. I simply said I would see him in four weeks’ time and left my work phone on his desk before walking out the door.
Behind me, he snatched up the intercom receiver and was dialling Jeremy’s number. The lift door closed before I could confirm who it was he called.
I made it as far as my car in the car park.
Jeremy was coming towards me, the fastest I had ever seen him move.
“Michael.”
I thought about ignoring him, but it wasn’t worth the problems.
I turned and waited until he arrived
“Jeremy?”
“You can’t go on leave. Not right now. It’s imperative the plant remains operational “
“Whether or not it remains operational doesn’t depend on me being here, Jeremy. Last managers’ meeting I believe you said to me specifically, and the others in general, that nothing in this place depended on my being here or in Timbuktu. That being the case, Jeremy, I thought I’d go there to see what happens.:
“Go where?”
“Timbuktu.”
“You’re mad. I was just making a point, Michael. It didn’t mean anything.”
“Well, too late. I’m off. The place can run without me, like you said, the first day you took over as CEO, and you were right. Back then, I had overinflated ideas of my worth to the company. Now I do not. Now, I have to pack a bag and get to the airport.”
As I turned to unlock the car door, a siren ramped up, similar to the one used in London at the time of the Blitz in WW2
Jeremy’s head swivelled around to look in the direction of the buildings, and we could both see workers exiting from them quickly and orderly.
“What’s happening?”
“You’re the CEO, Jeremy, you’re supposed to know everything that happens.”
“That’s why I employ fools like you, so I don’t have to. What’s happening?”
“One of two things, Jeremy. It’s a fire drill, or the main assembly line just crashed. I hope for your sake it’s not the latter.”
“So should you. Go sort it out.”
I shrugged. “I’m on leave. That’s officially now William Prentice’s purview. I suggest you find him, and he’ll tell you what’s happening.”
“If you leave, you’re fired.”
“Sorry, Jeremy. You can’t. No one can. Read my employment contract. Now, you’d better hurry up and see what’s going on.”
The workers were now assembling in the fields adjacent to the car park.
I got into my car and drove off, just as the wailing of the fire service trucks started heading towards the site.
I was half expecting Elaine to be gone, accepting I would resign, and then join her brother to execute the fait-accompli.
Instead, she was sitting in a lounge chair reading a women’s magazine. She looked up when I came into the room.
She didn’t have that guilty look on her face, but a whimsical smile. “You were always the most unpredictable boy I ever knew. And never did what I asked, no matter how politely, or with the most tempting bribes. Did you ever care about me?”
It was an interesting question. I did realise when I was eight that she was trouble and that Jeremy was not above using her to get at me.
“Of course. I loved you with all my heart. And you broke it. It was a pain I felt for a very long time, and in that time, I realised you never really cared about me. So, coming back, laying that story on me like pancake makeup, well, a leopard never changes its spots. Was any part of that story you told me true?”
“It was. I was raped by that moron nnnn, and Daddy had him removed. I hated Jeremy for a long time after that, grateful that Daddy sent Mother and me away. To be honest, I never wanted to come home even more to see you again because I knew how you would react. But Jeremy was a shit about everything and cut off my allowance until I agreed to help him with you.”
“And yet you failed to realise that as my wife, you would be richer than Jeremy or you could ever hope to be?”
“I know, but I left you without so much as an explanation, and I knew that I would only get one chance. Daddy always said that you were too good for the likes of me, that if I didn’t hurt you at first, it would not take long before I did. He was a very astute judge of character, Michael. I came back several times, but when I saw you, I couldn’t go through with meeting you.”
“You could have said hello.”
“No. I knew how you would be when you saw me, ever the optimist. Yes, you’d hate me, but you wouldn’t turn me away, just like now. Just like I knew you’d scratch below the surface and find out what Jeremy was up to. Jeremy believed you were the same naive fool you’ve always been, but I know you’re not. Daddy told me how you kept the place going, how you were the son he always wanted, and how he wanted you and me to be together until that day after the prom. While he never said it, I knew I was as big a disappointment to him as Jeremy.”
I could see the tears, and not fail to notice the break in her voice. It was perhaps a little churlish of me to think for a moment that this was one of her best acting performances.
“For what it’s worth, Michael. I really did love you. Then and now. I don’t think I’ve had any sort of relationship since you that’s lasted longer than a month or two, and I honestly believe there is no one else.”
“Then stay.”
“And how long would it be before you really despised me?”
X is for — Xanthic. It’s the password, and to guess it, you have to know it’s yellow. The one person who knew the code was murdered
…
I stood in front of the vault door, recently installed, that, when opened, led to what we called ‘Aladdin’s cave’.
It was, in reality, just that; the gateway to a new technology that was going to change the world, the brainchild of Augustus Beatony.
We were not exactly sure what that brainchild was, except that it was going to be the next evolution in artificial intelligence, and the company, or more to the point, the consortium of public and private enterprise entities, investment of nearly a trillion dollars had diligently paid for.
The launch would be in three days, where everyone would learn what it was.
My guess, after spending the last five years handling the accounts, with almost as much secrecy surrounding them as the project itself, was that it was a computer, but not just any computer.
Many had speculated, some said they knew but wouldn’t tell, but the truth was, no one was sure. And Augustus Beatony was nowhere to be found to ask.
This development, discovered last evening when a delegation of reporters had arrived at the hall where Augustus was going to tantalise them, and us, with some non-specific details of what to expect, and found he had failed to arrive.
A search was instituted, people going to his residence, this university office, his work office, even his mistress’s residence, but no one had seen him.
The last anyone had was me. Two days ago, outside this very door, he had a special password that he was not going to share with anyone.
Including me, his most trusted friend.
Apparently, I like everyone else, could not be trusted.
And rather alarmingly, he stated that he was the only one who knew the password.
No one else. No one.
Aloysius Magreve, the man the government had appointed to oversee their interests in the project, and probably the only other person in the universe capable of understanding the technology, was standing next to me.
He had just expended a lot of energy and anger at the situation. I was not the prime target this time. It was Major General Fitzwilliam, head of the security detail, who was on the end of this tirade.
“How hard can it be to keep an eye on one man, given the resources at your disposal?”
It was a common misconception that the Major General had a whole army to throw at the problem. The truth was he did not. He was limited to six men and two women in rotation.
Augustus, on the other hand, was the Houdini of subjects being guarded, was as slippery as an eel, and was known to shake his bodyguards as easily as a bartender made cocktails
It’s not my analogy.
Major General Fitzwilliam was out looking for him. Well, not the Major General himself, but his men and women. They all thought the other was watching him. Yes, Augustus was very good at pitting them against each other.
“What does it matter,” I said. ” He will be back to open the door, and then the games will commence.”
“Games?”
“Figure of speech. He will tell us how it works.”
“You know what it is?”
“No. But we will find out soon enough.”
“You seem quite blasé about a one trillion dollar funded and unseen project that could turn out to be a glorified Atari console.”
The fact that Augustus had likened his project to just such an item was worrying in the extreme. And having heard Augustus refer to it as the world’s most expensive Atari console? I was more than a little worried that I’d given him too much attitude.
“He will turn up, don’t you worry. The man had one other fault: he loves the limelight.”
I barely made it back to my office before my cell phone rang. Major General Fitzwilliam.
“We’ve found him. I’m texting you the address.”
When I received it a minute later, I typed the address into the maps app and zoomed in on the location. An industrial estate on the edge of town.
Another quick search found that it had once been a thriving place with all manner of business, as well as a shopping mall, but a fire some years back turned the whole area into a ghost town.
Some said it was haunted, and others said it was where the drug addicts and homeless ended up, with a drug-related death at least once a week.
Our offices, the warehouse used to be there, but we moved five years ago when this new project started.
It was a twenty-minute drive, and I was the last one there. Fitzwilliam had brought a platoon of troops, and they were being deployed. What for, I was not sure, but it seemed to me they were prepping for action.
Magreve was standing beside the command truck.
“What on earth is going on?” I asked.
“Betoney’s cell came back on, and is in that building.”
He pointed to the one that had a faded sign on the wall above the door, our company name. What was he doing in our old building?
Two soldiers stood cautiously on either side of an open door, weapons ready. Five more were finishing kitting up.
“What are they doing?”
“Infra-red scan says there are three people inside. They’re going in armed and ready.
“Has someone told them they’re not to shoot him?”
“Don’t panic. The Major General has got this.”
The leader raised a hand, and when it stopped, the two men at the door went in. The other five followed. I just hoped they didn’t shoot first and ask questions later.
Seven minutes.
For seven minutes, there was nothing, and then the sound of Magreve’s communicator made a noise.
“Magreve, you there?” The commander of the team wasn’t the best at communication with civilians.
“I am.”
“You need to see this.”
“Is it bad?”
Silence then, “Get in here.”
I followed Magreve inside, where we were met by one of the soldiers, who had obviously come back to take us.
We went down several passageways towards the back of the building, the smell of waterlogged carpet, and something else. Death.
We came out into a large room, which had been a breakout area where tables and chairs had been stacked against the wall, and then in the middle of the open space, a single chair.
In it was Aloysius.
Dead.
He had died a very painful and horrific death, one that was very recent.
“We think the perpetrators are still here,” the officer whispered, “and the body is still warm.”
My God. Aloysius was dead. Just the true notion sent a chill down my spine. And the obvious question was on the tip of my tongue. “Why?”
“Because whoever kidnapped him wanted the secret technology. This is the result when a person refuses to give away his secret.”
I hadn’t realised I’d spoken the question out loud.
“Has he been…?”
“Tortured. Yes. And my guess is that he didn’t tell them anything.”
“It’s a bit late to be asking any questions or finding out what happened from him. If they got what they wanted…”
“He was kidnapped, brought here, a bit poetic, by some people who wanted to get their hands on the tech. Heart attack, by the look of it, and unexpected by the interrogators.”
“You can tell that how?”
“I recognise the work.”
I didn’t ask him to elaborate. I was a numbers man, not versed in the machinations of espionage.
A shot rang out very near to us, and then, shouting, followed by a volley of shots, one of the bullets clanged into a metal wall not far from us.
Both Magreve and I ducked. The officer headed towards the shooting.
This went on for several minutes until silence returned. Not long after that, major General Fitzwilliam returned.
“We have two suspects. It is time to clear the scene and bring in the investigators. This is a bad business, very bad indeed.”
That’s when Magreve and I were escorted out of the building, just as the first police and ambulance personnel arrived.
He was right. It was indeed a bad business. Questions were going to be asked, including the one trillion dollar question. How were we going to find out what Augustus Beatony did with the money?
If, in fact, he had not given up the password, and he was the only one with it, and the vault was set to self-destruction if it was opened any other way than with the password, we may never know.
And I knew who was going to get the blame.
Back at the office, a meeting was convened to discuss the situation. The situation was clear to me: Beatony was dead, no one had come near the vault, so he hadn’t given it up.
That meant that there was no one alive who could open the vault, so we would have to break in and hope the self-destruct didn’t work
But, knowing Beatony as I did, it would have been the first thing he made sure to work.
So…
We were up the proverbial Creek. My overtures to various people he had worked with brought up nothing new and verified that everyone hated him equally.
It was the shortest meeting for the project we had. Mangreve was given the job of approaching the vault builders to see if they had kept a back door. It was a possibility but unlikely.
My suggestion was, failing everything, I was going to wait and see if the door opened itself. It was the mother of all Hail Marys, but knowing Beatony as I did, nothing could be ignored.
For the man who thought of everything, he must have devised a day to make his work visible, even in the event of his death.
An hour before the appointed time of the reveal, Beatoney had set up nearly three months before, I sat outside the vault.
In my imagination, the night before, I’d worked through any number of possible scenarios, all of which seemed impossible because he was dead. A dead man can not get up and do stuff.
Then I went through all of the possibilities of what it might be, trying to discard the expensive Atari console type computer and then factor in all of the materials that I’d purchased.
I’d done that once before, trying to work out what it might be, but it wasn’t until the very end that I discovered he had two suppliers, both unknown to each other.
It was just another method of keeping his project results secret.
A half hour later, I was joined by Magreave and the Major General. They had been told I was hanging around the vault door, so they thought they should be there too. All the while, several technicians were studying the blueprints, the manual, the alarm schematics, looking for a way in.
At the appointed time, nothing happened.
Perhaps I’d been wrong about him. Or maybe…
From within, there were a few weird sounds that, if I were to hazard a guess, the door going through an unlocking process.
Five minutes later, the sound of the warning almost drowned out all other responses, an action designed to make people aware of the vault door opening. Getting hit by a hundred tons of metal door was going to hurt.
We stood back beyond the arc and watched the door slowly open. When it had, and the smoke had cleared, another door opened, and then…
…Beatony walked out and stopped, several paces from us.
I think, to a man, we were all just simply gobsmacked, and definitely speechless.
“Great to meet the three of you, finally. I am Augustus Beatony version two. A fully functional, lifelike Android that is faster, stronger, smarter, and able to live, work, and function indefinitely in any circumstances.”
“You do realise Augustus Beatony version one is dead.” I finally found my voice after getting over the initial shock of seeing a perfect replica of Augustus.
He had made a lifelike robot of himself. I’m not sure it was worth the trillion dollars.
“Yes. Unfortunately, but he knew his time was limited and had prepared for it. It’s why I’m here, now, to complete his work.”
“Are you not his work?”
“A small part of it. I have all the knowledge that went into building me so that we can make more and finally start exploring space. Humans can’t survive. We can.”
“So the project…” The Major General found his voice, too.
“Was to build the people and the spaceships to travel into the outer reaches of the galaxy. I have it all in my head.” The robot tapped his head. “Now take me to the briefing, and I will tell everybody how this is going to work.”
“Isn’t there a convention where robots are not supposed to be human-like?” Magreave had finally got over his astonishment.
“And you know the backers didn’t agree with that stipulation. We don’t have time for semantics. The briefing.”
I looked at Magreave and the Major General.
Both shrugged, Magreave saying, “Lifelike Robotics and artificial intelligence. Why am I not surprised?”
“Because this was what they wanted all along,” the Mahor General added. “Super soldiers.”
He turned to Augustus Beatony version two. “We can’t switch you off, can we?”
“Nor destroy me. Not without very serious consequences. Shall we go?”
He warned me, and I realised the truth in that moment. Three days before his disappearance, he said that if anything happened to him, there would be consequences. “You’re in charge now, Magreave. My involvement ended when he stepped out of the vault. May God have mercy on all our souls.”
The view from inside the small room was of four off white walls, a stained ceiling with a small camera and blinking red light in one corner, and the green metal door with a hatch and small closed window.
I was lucky to have a bunk with a thin vinyl cover to lie on so I could spend the time alternating between staring at the roof, the door, and the walls. Time now to contemplate my fate, a fate no one was sharing with me, at least not yet.
There were two thoughts uppermost in my mind right then.
The first, that cryptic phone call from an anonymous caller, no number displayed, no clue who it was, other than it was female, though these days even that could be manufactured, saying, “They’re coming for you. Run.”
That was it. Nothing about who was coming or why. My life up to that point had been probably the most boring on the planet. Janet had made that perfectly clear three years before when she left. And took every cent of our life savings, and sold everything else.
Everything.
So, having nothing, being that boring person, who on earth would want to come for me?
The second, the only question I was asked by the interrogator, and middle-aged, well-dressed man who had secret service written into his DNA, after my ‘arrest’ and the silence from all those involved, following the recitation of my so-called rights to the seat in the interrogation room.
I watched him come into the room, glance up at the blinking red light, probably a feature in every room in that complex, then sit down.
He glared at me in his most intimidating manner, which almost made me laugh, then asked, in a voice that sounded like the result of a fifty-cigarette-a-day habit, “Where is it?”
Of course, the only answer to that question was, “Where is what?”
Another minute of intimidating looks, he shook his head, stood, and left the room. Three minutes later, two big men came in and escorted me to my current residence, one ‘helping’ me through the door with a hefty shove.
So, I had two pieces of information relating to my fate. One, I had obviously, to someone at least, done something worthy of needing to escape, and having not heeded the warning, done something worthy of being arrested, imprisoned, and interrogated.
Something that no one was willing to share with me.
That meant I had to go over everything that had happened, at least since Janet left, because before that, I doubt the life of a lowly untended university tutor whose subject was eighteenth-century social history would interest anyone other than a Jane Austen enthusiast.
Perhaps the first day of the rest of my life was when I decided to go to see the pyramids in Egypt. That wasn’t a reason or anything significant in itself. It was just one of those things that happened on the spur of the moment.
It had been the usual scenario, I thought Janet, the love of my life, had suggested dinner, over which she was going to tell me some great news.
Being the eternal optimist, I thought she was going to formalise our relationship, but instead she said she had been offered a job in the United States, more money, more responsibility, and what’s more there was room for me.
It sounded like an afterthought, and as much as it sounded great, it wasn’t. She packed, gave me the option, I declined, and she left.
Relationship over.
Two days later, I was on a plane heading for Egypt, oddly enough, anything but heartbroken. It was like Janet never existed.
But…
I was staring at the slowly rotating fan regurgitating the already hot air in the room, and every movement made me feel hotter and more languid.
It was the fourth day of a five-day tour, with a group of twelve ancient Egyptian enthusiasts, on a lesser-known and cheaper tour. Cheap meant no air conditioning and enough time to regret not putting more thought into who I selected.
I’d seen as much of the pyramids as anyone could want, realising the reality was not quite on display in the tour brochures, and the heat, dust, and crowds were the final straw.
I had the airline page up on my cell phone and in the middle of checking the flights and costs involved in changing the dates, when there was a knock on the door.
Not being a five-star hotel, perhaps stretching the three-star self-rating, and the only other time was a concierge delivering a carafe of iced cold water and a glass that had seen better days.
Perhaps one of the hotel’s benefits was ice-cold water every four days. I dragged myself off the bed and over to the door. It didn’t have one of those spy viewers in the door, so it could be kidnappers, not unheard of, and one of the warnings given to us by the guide on day one
By that point, being kidnapped might have been a welcome distraction.
It was, unfortunately, an American girl, Mary Anne. I say unfortunately, because we had all had the benefit of her mother’s opinions, often loud and brash, and who took particular delight in humiliating her daughter.
Like a scene out of an Agatha Christie murder mystery film, one of the other tourists said, failing to realise we all fit that description. All we lacked was the murder, though several had expressed their desire to murder Mrs Murgatroyd.
She smiled wanly, a prelude to an impossible request. “Mother is ill today and won’t be going. May I come with you? I do not wish to find my way to the office by myself.”
I should have noticed the less apprehensive expression. I had to say the request surprised me, and she had been cultivating a friendship of sorts with another single male passenger who was more her type.
“I was seriously considering staying in the hotel myself. I’ve seen enough pyramids, sand, and people, and the thought of going to the museum would only be to take in the air-conditioning.”
“Oh.”
She seemed disappointed, though I was surprised that anyone would be, but that might have had more to do with Janet’s rather abrupt departure, and if viewed very bluntly, abandonment.
“But in this case, I think I can make an exception. It’s the last day, and it would be a tragedy not to take in the last of the sights.”
“I don’t want to be an imposition.”
“Don’t take any notice of my disposition. It hasn’t been a great few weeks, and I’m not handling it very well. Just give me a few minutes to get ready, and I’ll see you down in the restaurant.”
That imaginary fan was still rotating in my mind, and those thoughts of Mary Anne had resurfaced, not because they were memorable, but because they were a catalyst for getting me out of the sea of self-pity I’d been unconsciously sinking into at the time.
She was the sort of girl no one would notice, not exactly a plain Jane but the sort who didn’t put herself out there, dressed unglamorous and didn’t follow fashion or makeup trends, not like Janet.
In fact, she was a polar opposite.
Perhaps that’s why she came back now. Once I dug deeper into those memories, I could see that she was, under that carefully constructed exterior for the rest of the world to see, she was very beautiful.
I’d not thought about that at the time, and now it was only because I was looking for answers. Surely, she was not part of the current predicament because our interactions were fleeting and insignificant. Perhaps, like any man, I was momentarily flattered by the attention of a woman.
Beyond that trip to Egypt, there had been little excitement in my life, just the usual stream of students looking to bolster their grades and the occasional cross-examination by a budding author who wanted background for their eighteenth-century romance novel.
There were no other romantic attachments, several dates set up by a dating app and those were monumental failures, leading to a somewhat half-considered study into becoming a monk at a remote monastery, and vacations at obscure and remote seaside towns out of season, where I was lucky to meet anyone else.
And yet I obviously had, whether consciously or otherwise, or was so forgettable that I could not remember them.
All this driving into the past had given me a headache, and I tried to get some rest. It was clear I was not going to be leaving my cell or the facility anytime soon.
Someone once told me there was little difference between a dream and a nightmare, only the outcome was different. You could wake up happy or scared half to death.
Others said that one or the other could be the result of a past experience, whether conscious or not, something that happened to you that you were unaware of at the time, or spooking a premonition of what might happen in the future.
On rare occasions, it might be the resort of a desire, like getting to be with the woman of your dreams, that was quite often totally unavailable.
I wish that were the case.
It was not. I woke, now screaming, but covered in sweat and yet cold as ice, absolutely terrified.
I was lying on a gurney in a very brightly lit room with two figures, dressed completely in green, faces covered by surgical masks and goggles, one of whom was standing over me, asking over and over, “Where is it?”
And it was very, very real.
Not a premonition, I had a feeling it had happened recently, and I could not remember anything about it.
It was then I realised what my mind had conveniently shovelled into the ‘I don’t want yo remember that experience’ basket. Three weeks ago, after going out for a drink with work colleagues, I woke up two days later in a hotelbroom, by myself, with no memory of anything that had happened, and when I asked my colleagues they simply said I’d had too much to drink, and one had helped me back to the hotel where I said od booked a room.
Why was I remembering this now?
Why hadn’t I thought more about it at the time?
Who was the colleague who helped me?
Suddenly, it felt like the walls in that small room were closing in on me. Then I could see someone was in the room, dressed in green, and I began to panic.
I could just hear a voice in the background or perhaps just above me.
V is for – Valhalla, where the souls of those who died bravely in battle go
…
For some, death comes when you least expect it.
I was not a soldier. I was never meant to be on a battlefield. I had no interest in slaying the enemy, whoever that enemy might be.
And yet there I was, trying to figure out how it came to be.
Six hours earlier, I was asleep on a cot in a tent, one of about a hundred scattered back from the river in a valley that belied the fact that it was near a contentious border being fought over.
Two facts I learned before crawling exhausted into that cot, religion, and disputed borders were in the top three reasons to start a war against your neighbour.
It started out with two men, one on either side of the river, stating the river belonged to them and the other paid ‘rent’. Then shots were fired.
In three months, it escalated, turning the river and valley surrounding it into a killing field and two previously friendly countries into bitter enemies.
I had been sent over by my media company to report first-hand on the effect it was having on the people, international relations, and responses by the rest of the world.
The latest report, not by me but one of my brethren, was that we were heading inevitably towards World War three. Given the rhetoric I had just heard, I was almost convinced he was right.
I managed to get three hours before being woken by my army liaison officer, the leader of a small group of soldiers who were charged with surveillance. I had been attached to them, mainly because they did not approach the front line.
They were simply there to observe enemy locations and report back. Their position gave me a very good view of the battlefield, the destruction of mortars, cannons, air force strafing, bomb runs, and snipers.
To a layman, it was terrifying and horrifying. To the hawks of war, it was a proving ground for their new weapons.
“Were up. Sorry about the short notice. There’s going to be an offensive in a few hours. Want to join us?”
My first instinct was to say no, but being embedded with this group afforded me an excellent view of the war and the uselessness of it all.
The two men could have sat down and worked it out. But no, they had to settle their differences with guns. Both were dead, as were their families, and most of the valley’s inhabitants. Now, it was extending beyond the valley and into the bigger cities and infrastructure like power stations and refineries. Bullets had gone to mortar bombs to cannons to drones to missiles.
Thousands had been killed, and negotiations for peace had failed. The only people winning in this war were the arms manufacturers.
How could I say no? “Of course. When?”
“Fifteen minutes. Outside the mess tent.”
The two trucks carrying the men slowly crawled over the rough ground that led up to our lookout. The road was constantly bombed to stop troops’ movements in and out, and was pockmarked with bomb craters.
The trip was a mile, but in the time it took, three mortar shells exploded in front and behind us, the last showering us in dirt and rubble. Missiles passed overhead and exploded some distance on the enemy side. A prelude to the new offensive. War didn’t stop at night or at weekends.
We made it in one piece and offloaded, the last shift climbing into the truck. They looked exhausted. There were three sets of men who manned the lookout 24 hours a day. Invariably, at least one man died each shift. This had two, stretched out and put in the truck.
The leaders exchanged paperwork, and he saluted and left with his men.
The replacements had taken up their positions. We had two anti-aircraft guns and three snipers who tried to take out the drones. Every change of shift, a surveillance drone would come and check us out.
I wore my neutrality vest, but that wouldn’t necessarily save me. I would not be the first media representative to be killed in battle.
As I went into the bunker, I heard a loud crump of a bomb exploding and turned. At first, I thought it had missed the truck because I couldn’t see it behind the wall of rubble.
Then it cleared, and there was nothing, no wreckage, no people, nothing. It was as if it had just disappeared.
I shrugged. There was nothing we could do.
I just shut the door when there was another loud crump, so close and so loud it was deafening. The bunker could withstand several direct hits, and this one had hit the roof.
Eight feet of concrete on top of six-inch steel plating.
The bunker was filled with dust and grit, and men were on the ground. It’s not the best way to start a shift.
The morning was given over to watching the missile attack, one that involved more missiles than ever before, targeted strikes on allegedly military targets on the other side, and the observers charting the hits and misses
Most notably, the gun that targeted the truck and our bunker had fallen silent, and it was written down as a possible success.
Everything had fallen silent on the other side of the river, and we were relaxing in that euphoria of not waiting for the next bomb to fall. Anticipation was a terrible thing.
I went up the ladder to the lookout, temporarily unmanned due to the silence, for the first time in a year.
There was nothing but desolation, bomb craters, little vegetation, and once or twice the scene also had the bodies of men who had charged at the enemy and mown down.
Worse than any scene from World War One in France. We had learned very little from that or any other war.
I then saw movement, like a rabbit in the thicket, and then a bang.
Then nothing.
Last thought: you do hear the bullet that has your name on it. You just don’t see it coming.
I was standing in a hall, well not so much a hall but a huge building that had statues on either side evely spaced and which armour, weapons and heraldry.
High up windows allowed the daylight to shine in such a way that it illuminated the statues.
They were not all men, but those there were of strong, muscled, tall, and bearded who would have no trouble holding the swords that were next to them lying across the statue base.
I don’t think I could lift one, let alone use it.
I turned slightly, and the man beside me was almost an exact relica of that on the statue.
“Welcome to Valhalla, sir.”
“Where?”
“It is where hero’s stand for eternity.”
“I am no hero.”
“Not in the sense these people might be but a hero none the less. Words and actions, there are many forms heroism can take. You will write a document that will bring peace to an unsettled land when men have temporarily forgotten what it is to be men.”
Was her speaking in riddles? Was I dead, and just dreaming about a place my mind had taken me because it couldn’t deal with the reality of my death?
I doubted any of my work here would stop anything other than a draught under the door. My grandmother used newspapers in many novel and interesting ways. She never cared much for the news that was in them.
“Am I dead?”
“That depends on you. If you don’t fight, then it will be the end, but you will not be coming here. As I said, you have a job to do, and when you do, here I will be to welcome you.”
“These are all genuine heroes if this is Valhalla.”
“Semantics, but your time is up. You must go back.”
I opened my eyes and saw three men standing at the end of the bed.
The platoon leader, the camp commandant, and my editor.
The room was in a hospital.
“What happened?” I asked.
“You were shot by a sniper from the other side. Near killed you.” My editor, with an undertone of outrage in his tone.
I took a moment to take in what he said, then to realise I was lucky to be alive. It had been a shot to the head.
“I should not be here.”
“No, but you were lucky. The bullet missed everything useful, though you might suffer a little amnesia and inbalance from time to time. We’re glad you survived. Quite a few didn’t.”
The platoon leader came over and shook my hand, and did the commandant. Then they left, leaving me with my editor.
It seemed odd that he came all this way out to see me, injured or not. He sat beside the bed.
“Damn fine piece you wrote.”
“When?”
“After you were shot. You insisted that they get what you had to say down. They reckon you being mad as hell was what kept you alive.”
“I don’t remember…”
“Possibly not. But it’s there down in black and white, and it was enough to precipitate a ceasefire, and you being shot, well, that wasn’t taken lightly. Stupid men who could have sat down over a glass of wine and simply agreed to share the bounty Mother Earth had granted them all. It was the clarity that all of them had lost. The pen truly is mightier than the sword.”
I shook my head. Where had I heard similar words said? Somewhere lost in my imagination I guess.
“The war over?
“Yes. The one person who could stop the madness read your piece and decided to stop supplying weapons if the other side agreed. Perhaps they might not have listened had you not been shot, but there it is. You are now in the history books, like it or not. I just thank God you were working for us.”
U is for — Underground bunkers. The end of the world is nigh
…
Chester first alerted me to the situation. Animals seemed to have that sixth sense.
It was the usual Tuesday. I got up late after he jumped on the bed and started patting my head with his paw and using his loudest meow right near my ear.
He usually did that when he was hungry, but this was an hour earlier than usual.
Going from the bedroom to the kitchen, I noticed that it was darker than usual for this time of year, and Chester was following me, making strange sounds.
When I reached the kitchen, I went over to the floor-to-ceiling windows that lined the wall that overlooked the ocean, opened the blinds, and was met by a sight I’d never seen before.
Dark clouds stretched all the way to the horizon, and rain fell, a huge stream of whitish blue slowly coming towards us.
Below the cloud, hundreds, thousands of birds were heading away from the clouds, the storm that was coming.
I turned on the radio and searched the stations until I found one that was broadcasting a weather report.
I had tried to get the television to work, but it was showing a notice that there was no signal.
That had never happened before.
Then I heard the announcer say, “People are advised to stay indoors and find a safe place. It is expected that in the next one and two hours, the coastal areas will be hit by hurricane-force winds and high seas. All those below 250 feet above sea level are requested to move to higher ground. There will be a list of alternative accommodation locations available.”
I didn’t believe what I was hearing. Chester meowed loudly, that same tortured sound he made when I was taking him to the vet for a check-up.
“I know,” I said. “We don’t have hurricanes. We’ve never had hurricanes ever.”
I heard a sudden buffeting, the wind picking up and blowing loose debris against the windows. Those windows were not going to withstand a hurricane.
“I think we’re going to have to leave.”
That statement was accompanied by a pounding on the door. Chester shrank back. Was that an omen?
I went to the door and opened it. A fireman. “We’re directly in line with the incoming storm. This place will be a death trap. You have fifteen minutes to get anything you want to keep and get out. There’s a bus at the end of the street.”
I was going to ask a question, but he put his hand up. “Fourteen minutes. Don’t make me come back.” A severe look, then he was gone.
I looked at Chester. He wasn’t happy, and neither was I. I had just taken possession of my new home three days ago, and now it looked like it might be my last.
“We have to go.”
Another guttural sound from him told me he was all of a sudden terrified, so terrified he came straight to me and almost jumped into my arms.
A second later, there was an explosion, and something hit the end window as it literally just exploded.
Time to go.
We made it to the bus, that exploding window impetus to forget about getting anything but the cat and what I had with me, and get out.
The bus didn’t wait the full fifteen minutes, but left as the last stragglers in sight ran to get on board, the last person, a teenage girl, running to jump on the running board and get on before the door closed.
The wind had already reached us, and the fireman on board said the storm was moving faster than anyone anticipated.
For the last ten minutes, we sat in a traffic jam of buses heading to the underground bus station, the safest place for us to stay. People in cars were also trying to escape, but the winds had created obstacles on the road, and confusion and tempers were causing serious problems for those trying to run an orderly evacuation.
The last thing I saw before we went under was torrential rain and high winds buffeting a sign that just collapsed on a dozen cars.
For the next fourteen days, we lived in what I thought was a huge underground space, but when twenty-three thousand terrified individuals were thrown together, it was a living nightmare.
We were told that not one but a dozen storms started from the same confluence in the Atlantic Ocean, but nobody could explain why.
After the first night and the total disorganisation that came from having a calamity thrust on totally unprepared people with very little notice, and the sound of the endless e
What sounded like explosions, howling winds, and rain, combined with the relative calm of the next morning, made it no surprise that people wanted to leave.
They were told that was only the first. No one believed them, and at the behest of one man who whipped everyone into a rebellion, led a group back out into the open. We didn’t know what was out there, well, we did, but we didn’t.
Most stayed. Several hours later, the wind and rain returned. Those who left never came back.
Others left at various intervals, particularly when it was calm. Some came back, and the rest didn’t. Those who came back didn’t speak. All of them were asked and were speechless.
We asked the people running the shelter. They said they had no other communications except with the weather people. That’s how they knew more storms were coming.
And, after fourteen days, it was over. We woke to silence. The original twenty-three thousand had been reduced to fourteen.
Three things were clear.
The first, which might have started as a storm, didn’t end as a storm. Something else had happened, and those stultified people who’d left and returned almost empty shells of themselves had seen something they couldn’t explain or comprehend.
The second, starting from a few days ago. People were getting sick, really sick, and the hushed whispers said it was Ebola, but it was worse than that. It killed all the animals without exception.
Chester hadn’t stood a chance.
The third, while it was good to escape the confines of that underground labyrinth and away from the sick people, what was outside was far more unimaginable, even incomprehensible. Whatever the city had been before, it was no longer. It had been levelled, and all that remained were ashes, smoke, and death.
And something else. Several very large objects looked to me like spaceships. What those who went out and came back were trying to tell us was that we had been invaded by aliens from outer space.
T is for — This is not what I ordered. There’s a reason for everything
…
I knew the moment I opened my eyes that this day was going to be different.
My life had begun to sink into a rut where everyone, everything, was the same. In fact, it was so predictable that I could recite every word spoken to me and in response for the first half hour.
So monotonous, I didn’t want to go to work today, any day, any more, ever. Except I had to pay the rent, I had to pay the bills, I had to eat.
How would life have been so much easier if I were a robot?
Except…
When I turned over, ready to close my eyes and forget the alarm had gone off, I saw the one thing that changed my mind in an instant.
Beth, short for Elizabeth, not Liz or Lizzy or Bethany.
The girl I had seen at work asked about, told she was unavailable or looking for friends like me, and gave up any hope of even saying hello.
Until last night when I was holding open the door as the masses exited, and she was last in the queue. She thanked me, the only one, and I blushed. Yes, the introvert got tongue-tied.
She asked me if I was going her way, which I was, and we walked.
And talked, and talked, then went for a drink, had dinner, and no, I had no idea how she finished up next to me.
She, it appeared, was in the same group I was in, the assistant to the assistant, the gopher, doing odd jobs and worse for people who didn’t appreciate us, a stepping stone to something better, the bottom rung of the ladder to a career.
We had a lot in common.
We both had ambitions, and these were slowly being eroded by unhelpful, demeaning, and unappreciative superiors.
Now, in the cold, hard light of day, all those plans, everything we said we would do, all those strategies to put our superiors in their place, seemed a million miles away.
Except she was still there.
And I will be honest, I had no idea how or why she was. We did have a little too much to drink, something I never did on a work day, and something she said she didn’t do ever.
And I hoped nothing happened, anything that would ruin a fledgling relationship that had possibilities.
When I tried to edge myself out of the bed, she woke, surprised, but with a smile.
“Sorry.”
“For what?”
“Anything I might have said or done that I can’t remember.”
“Good thing then that I do. Did I forget to tell you that alcohol doesn’t really affect me, other than in the moment, but it doesn’t affect my judgment. You were silly, not stupid, and I thought it wise to tuck you in and make sure you were OK. Now, come back and rest for a few more minutes. I gave you my mother’s hangover cure last night, so you will be fine.”
I slid back under the covers.
“Thank you. Normally, after that much wine, I would be a mess.” I had to admit I felt almost normal except for a slight ache behind my eyes, perhaps from not enough sleep.
“You’re welcome. It was interesting to discover you hate the management group as much as I do.”
“Not so much hate as to wonder how they actually made the group. They certainly have no people skills, but at least they treat everyone the same.”
“Which is wrong?”
“Well, at the orientation, they did tell us what to expect.” Not quite, we were told that we needed to learn quickly during the internship, and that sometimes, in high-pressure situations, we might find ourselves in trouble, especially if we had the training and forgot the lessons.
That was the sticking point. Most of those in management failed to complete our training, usually because of time constraints or simply their lack of interest in ‘molly coddling’ as one called it.
“But there are ways of doing it, and ways of not doing it. Perhaps we need to remind them. Subtly.”
“Is there such a thing?”
“You said there was last night. You have so many ideas, and equally no idea how to make them happen. I’ve been thinking about it, and I have a plan.”
That morning transcended any I’d had in a lifetime and taught me one very valuable lesson. I needed to be sober and aware at all times if I wanted to impress any woman.
I knew she was just being kind to me, even though I felt like she might like me as more than just a colleague, but I would have to impress her if I wanted any sort of a chance.
It was odd that I hadn’t thought about her or any of the others in that way; such was the necessity to keep your mind on the job and keep ahead of the game. There were a dozen of us, and we were all competing for three positions, and it was coming to the end of the trial period.
No one had an edge. Trying to grovel didn’t work, trying to be better than the others didn’t work, and they let you make mistakes without telling you, which in front of the group wasn’t exactly the best way of getting any of us to stay.
Perhaps they didn’t. Perhaps those they didn’t harass out of the job were the sort of lackeys they wanted.
And apparently, I had told her that I’d been spending a lot of my spare time studying the whole financial structure of the organisation and found that our managers had been taking the wrong path
Both of us had been working on the background papers that were to be presented to the board members, and because of that, we would be allowed to sit in.
She had a plan, and when she stepped through it, I agreed with her that it might work. It just depended on one particular board member, the lone woman, Sylvia. Beth had worked with her for a week when she requested an intern from HR, one of the girls.
Unlike management, Sylvia was interested in helping the interns and taught them some valuable lessons, and this, along with the corporate knowledge we had, was either going to win us some points or get us fired. Either way, we both agreed it was better than keeping the status quo and would be worth it, one way or the other.
As usual, the two managers we worked for, each in different departments, were charged with conducting the presentation.
But, this morning my manager hadn’t arrived in time for the meeting, and it was handed to Beth. He was annoyed and those last few minutes before it was due, Beth arrived with the morning coffee run, scribbled on a piece of paper, while I distributed the papers, including those I had written that showed the true started of the business and the recommendations to put the company on a more profitable trajectory.
My speciality at uni was rescuing poor-performing companies using alternate strategies, and I had tried to get this across to the current management group, but they had consistently ignored it. It was no secret that the current strategy was not working, and the meeting with the board was to tell them how to overcome this.
What did an intern know?
Before it started, Beth handed out the morning coffee and cakes, which the presenters hoped would put the board members in a better frame of mind.
It did not.
He had got the orders wrong, yet another example of not listening properly, and the unthinkable happened. He told Beth to go and sort the mess out.
Sylvia put her hand up and asked who was responsible for writing down the orders, stating plainly that what she had was not what she ordered, and that the order, and had been taken by the manager.
Therefore, she said the manager should sort it out.
And since he had a perfectly adequate team of interns whom the presenters no doubt had gone through the presentation with as was required as part of the training standards of the organisation, the two interns could make the presentation in his place.
She then told him to leave.
The door closed, Beth made a precise of the manager’s presentation and then said that there was an alternative strategy available, one that was hot off the press and would be delivered by the person she described as a top-of-the-class strategist in reviving poorly performing companies.
She then handed the floor to me, and I went through the basics and then the specifics, closing just as the manager returned.
Over coffee, four board members grilled him over the merits of the two strategies, one of course he knew about and had discounted and now had to admit was the more successful path.
If looks could kill, there would have been two dead interns.
Meeting over, we were dismissed. The manager was kept in the room while the more senior members of management were summoned to explain how interns could possibly come up with a better strategy and why the current management team was still pursuing outdated and frankly incomprehensible methodologies.
Or at least that’s what we were told later. Both Beth and I had decided that we would pack up and leave. Even if we were right about our strategy, it was still the wrong way to go about it. Board members come and go, so currying favour with them was not a successful way to get a position in the company because they couldn’t trust you to do what you were asked to do.
We both knew that. Getting a job was on merit, but when the company’s hiring staff were not appraised, well, perhaps the company was not worth working for.
That inevitable call came from HR. It was from the same man who had conducted our interviews, the same man who basically told us we were worthless until we were forty.
It was a novel way of engendering loyalty and selling the company as a place worth working it. But that year was a difficult one, and jobs were hard to find, especially in one as prestigious to make a splash on our resumes.
We were both in the breakout area because we didn’t have a permanent office. That would have come if we were selected to stay.
I put my phone on speaker.
“You two do realise that what you did, how you did it, was not the right way. There are procedures and a hierarchy, and it should be followed.”
Beth was more blunt than I was, especially in dealing with her manager and purported mentor. She said, “A hierarchy may work in a proper environment, but this isn’t where there is one. The ideas we presented were communicated several times to the appropriate people, and they were ignored.”
“That is regrettable, but our procedures are there for a reason.”
“So the current muddle management can steal the interns’ ideas and pass them off as their own. How are you supposed to get a position here if they deliberately stifle you?”
Good point. I think most of us just accepted that was the way it is in the corporate jungle.
“I will agree that presenting something different can be delicate. But there is always a better way, and the two of you failed. Regrettably, your internships are cancelled, and you will be escorted from the building by security.”
Conversation over.
Beth shrugged. “No surprises there. No surprise either when we read about the company seeking a Chapter 17 bailout in a few weeks.”
That comment coincided with the arrival of two security guards. One would have been sufficient.
Of the two, one was the genial old man who took the time each morning to greet each of the employees by name, a remarkable feature given how many worked there.
What was more remarkable was the disdain and plain rudeness most of the staff treated him. He shook his head.
“If I were to make a bet on you two, it would be that you would be the first to show initiative and then the first to be shown the door.”
He was not wrong in our case. “You could have cleaned up.”
“I did, but not in the manner you would expect.” He didn’t tell us why, but there was a wry grin and an interesting expression on Beth’s face. Perhaps she knew. I’d ask later.”
On the ground floor, we gave back our pass keys. We had to sign an NDA, which was normal. Then, after the formalities were done, I could see Sylvia come out of the elevator lobby and head over towards us.
Beth put her hand on my arm, a sign we should wait.
She saw the old man take off his cap and smiled, “It’s been a while, Miss Sylvia.”
“Too long, Archie. Everyone fine?”
“Fine enough. Yours?”
“Spread all over the country. Can’t tie them down anymore.”
“No. Kids always seem to have a sense of adventure these days. You take care, Archie.”
She turned her attention to us. “You two should know better, but then if you did, you wouldn’t have been here. But, on the other hand, I’m glad you were. As you may or may not know, I am an investor, mostly silent, and sometimes the holdings in shares get me a seat on the board. Until this morning, I was going to sell those shares. That presentation changed my mind. And I heard what happened to both of you. It’s not surprising this company is completely off the rails. Are you two looking for a job? Of course you are. Come and work for me. Both of you. I know a team when I see one. Your first job, clean out the baggage and get this place back on track. When I see my shares for ten times what they’re worth now, you two will get a very handsome bonus. Do you need time to think about it?”
Beth looked at me, and I nodded.
“No. We’re in. When do we start?”
“Now.” Sylvia handed her a card. “That’s the office I keep. Annabel knows you’re coming. The paperwork will be there for your employment and your first assignment. Welcome aboard.”
A handshake each, and she was gone.
I was shocked at how quickly your life could change. My mother always said that in troubled times, when one door closes, another one opens.
How true.
Then I saw Beth’s look of anguish. “You do want to work with me, don’t you?”
I smiled. “Of course, I have never been more certain of anything.” I held out my hand, and she took it in hers. “That, and whatever may follow.”
It was a perfect day for a funeral. Overcast, cold, snow imminent, after a week of gentle falls culminating in a blizzard the night before.
I shivered. Was it her ghost?
No one had told me Gwen had died, and I had to find out from a newspaper. I guess that was the price to be paid, being an ex.
It was not my choice; she had decided to move on to bigger and better things with a man who would, in her words, more likely aspire to far more than I ever would.
At the time, I would have agreed with her. I didn’t make a fuss when I discovered the affair, nor did I make it difficult for her to do as she wished. I loved her, always would, and it was better to let her follow her heart.
The children, Ben and Amber, decided they wanted to go with her, the thought of living in a mansion, and having a life of luxury, was more appealing than staying with me.
Again, I didn’t object, believing they would be happier there.
And now, twenty years almost to the day she left, here we were. A cemetery. The last place I expected to be ten days before Christmas.
Oh, by the way, I hadn’t been invited to the funeral service, so I didn’t get into the church, which was for families and celebrities only. I was at the burial plot, waiting to have the last word.
Perhaps not getting an invite was a blessing in disguise.
To say that I abhorred Jerry Northington-Jobson from the very first moment I saw him would be an understatement.
He was the only child of perhaps the fifth richest noble family in the country, spoilt beyond reason, indolent, rude, and the last man I expected Gwen would so much as look once at let alone twice.
When his parents died, in suspicious circumstances, I might add, he became the seventh Earl of something or other, the owner of a dozen estates in England and throughout Europe, and then Gwen’s second husband.
He was a lucky man.
Until she died.
In the last week, there was little else in the newspapers, every minute detail of his affairs, of his company’s misdemeanours, and the most telling of all, how he had, in twenty years spent every penny of his inheritance, and then some, on bad investments, gambling, and simply travelling around the world.
Had Gwen been alive to see it, it would have destroyed her. I honestly believed she had no idea what their financial state would have been.
Nor would she, or any of her friends, had they been invited, have appreciated the funeral he had planned.
My cell phone vibrated in my hand.
“It’s over, sir.”
“Thank you.”
I felt, for a second, like I was in a spy novel. It was nothing like that, just a friend who had got into the church where the service was being held, so I’d know when the coffin would arrive at the plot.
It seemed an odd way of seeing her to her final resting place, but it was the only way. My request for a seat in the church had been denied.
It took about ten minutes before the procession came into view, with the priest leading the way. Jerry Northington-Jobson, at the lead of the coffin bearers, looked every bit the stricken husband over the loss of his wife.
Yet, according to the message I just received about the service, he had delivered a somewhat emotional eulogy that lacked, yes, real emotion.
It took five more minutes before the coffin was laid on the struts over the open grave, and those willing to brave the minus temperature to hear the last eulogy before her body was committed to the ground.
Fittingly, light snow began to fall at the same time the priest uttered his first words, in Latin.
I had forgotten they were both Roman Catholic. That had been another strike against me, I did not have the same faith in God.
“Are you really an irascible old man?”
I turned, then looked down. It was a girl, dressed in black, about five or six years old.
“It depends on who told you that.”
“My mother. She tells me you are my long-lost grandfather, the one we never talk about.”
OK, that was a surprise. Having not heard about any grandchildren, my two children too busy making asses of themselves in public as befitting the rich and somewhat famous, it was not improbable that this was my granddaughter.
“And why is that?” I kept my voice in the same low, conspiratorial tone.
“He deserted my grandmother, but I think he dodged a bullet.”
I almost laughed, just managing to keep a straight face. She was obviously repeating what she had heard elsewhere, but it was hard to believe it would come from Amber. Last words I spoke to her, she hated me.
“What’s your name?”
“Daisy “
“I’m Ken. Sometimes irascible, but I don’t go out very often.”
“Do you always hide?”
“Not usually, but today it was prudent. I don’t want to cause trouble at your grandmother’s funeral.”
“You don’t have to worry. My other grandfather has already done that. My mother says he’s an ass too, so it must be something all grandfathers have in common.”
A distinct possibility, I thought. I scanned the few people remaining, the snow falling harder now, and her mother was not one of them, or at least anyone I might recognise as Amber. It had been so long that she may have changed, and I’d not know her.
“It is most likely because we are old. Where is your mother?”
“In the church still. She is not very well. She told me to come out and see if you had come. Her description was quite accurate.”
I had changed, too, so how could she know what I looked like? Unless she had put two and two together. She never used to be that clever.
“Do you think she might want to see me?”
“I think so. It’s a bit hard sometimes to tell what she’s thinking. Perhaps we should go and find out.”
The last of the mourners had gone, and the snow had settled in. It was time to get indoors, preferably near a large fire. There was one waiting for me back at the inn I was staying for a few days.
“OK. Lead the way.”
Her little hand slipped into mine, and we headed towards the church. A thought did cross my mind that she was far too trusting of strangers, but then, I didn’t feel like one. Perhaps she had sensed that.
Still. I would have a word with her mother about it.
We dusted off the snow before going into the church. Not far from the entrance, a solitary person was sitting, head on hands.
Daisy left me and went up to her mother, shaking her. “Mummy, mummy, I found the man.”
Her mother lifted her head slowly and turned towards me.
That was the first shock, that she was the spitting image of her mother, exactly as I had seen her that first day. So flawless, so beautiful, so English.
The second shock, that she was very, very ill.
“Hello, daddy.”
I walked over as she stood and held out her arms. The next moment, she collapsed, and I just managed to catch her.
She was not just ill; she was very near death. I recognised the signs; she had the disease that finally killed her mother.
“Can you fix her?” Daisy asked, tears welling in her eyes.
“Yes. I know what to do.” I looked at Amber, her eyes watery but open. I gently lay her down. “How long have you been like this?”
“About six months. It’s been getting progressively worse. I told my mother, but she refused to listen.”
Just then, Jerry Northington-Jobson came in the entrance, obviously looking for Amber. “What the devil…” he yelled out. “What are you doing here?”
“I think you know why I’m here.”
“She wanted nothing to do with you.”
“Which is why I’m waiting outside to say goodbye. Amber is not well.”
“Attention seeking, more likely. Well, it may have worked on her mother, but it will not work with me.”
He came up to her and grabbed her arm.
Wrong move. I pulled it off, and then I hit him as hard as I could. There were twenty years of venom in that punch.
My personal assistant came in looking for me and stopped. It coincided with Jerry Northington-Jobson hitting the floor.
“Sir?”
“Get the helicopter fired up. Tell the pilot we need to go to London. Then call the fleet manager and tell him I need the jet. We’ll be going to Cannes, France.”
When she blinked as if it was indecipherable gibberish, I said, “Now, Bethany. We’re wasting seconds.”
Amber looked up, her expression less pained, and then stood. “I’m better now.”
“But not for long. You’re going to the clinic that your mother went to. I just hope we haven’t left it too late.”
Amber looked down at her stepfather. “What happened?”
“He spoke,” Daisy said, “and then your real daddy thumped him. I would have myself if I were grown up.”
“Violence doesn’t solve anything.”
The look on Daisy’s face said something different.
The priest came down from the altar end of the church and was aghast at seeing Jerry Northington-Jobson on the ground, and leaned over to help him up. “What happened here?”
I answered for him, “He made a comment about his stepdaughter that I found offensive. It’s quite common for weddings and funerals.”
Amber and Daisy headed for the door, not waiting to speak to Jerry Northington-Jobson. I didn’t blame her.
He glared at me. “This isn’t over?”
“I agree. You’ll be hearing from my lawyers. Now, it’s been a pleasure, Jerry.”
I caught up with Amber and Daisy just as the helicopter landed in the field opposite the church.
“Wow. A real helicopter. Are you rich too?” Daisy was surprised.
I shrugged. “I just know people who know people.”
It was a short walk to the aircraft, and when the co-pilot opened the door and activated the stairs, he came over and escorted us inside. He shut the door and went back to the flight deck. A few minutes later, we took off.
The rear cabin was insulated from the noise of the engines, but we wore headphones just the same.
“I was going to come and see you, but my mother died suddenly. She only just found out where you were, who you were. How did you have a different name?”
“My mother’s maiden name. I figured Gwen would want to know that I might have actually done something with my life. She was happy where she was.”
“And Ben and I?”
“She made me sign a document. We asked you who you wanted to be with, and you both chose your mother. I wasn’t going to argue the point or make demands. It was her idea of a clean break.”
“You could have waited a few years and then come back.”
I shook my head. I tried that, but she stopped it. It was before I made my first million, and not in the same class. But I did watch her and Ben grow up from afar, and at times. Make life easier for them, just don’t let them know about it.
“It was better this way. I was always hoping there would come a time, and I was very sad that it had to be at her funeral. How long have you been this way?”
“Six months. I knew something was wrong with my mother, but I didn’t think I had the same condition. I don’t have all the symptoms. If it is, I assume you know what it is? My doctor really has no idea.”
“Gwen didn’t tell you?”
“No. I guess she didn’t want me to fret over it, or she thought it would miss my generation.”
“It doesn’t. When we get to London, is there anything you need?”
“I have everything I need.” She glanced down at Daisy.
“No husband?”
“Never married. One steady boyfriend who was steady until he learned I was pregnant and then disappeared. Gave up on men after that.” She leaned back and closed her eyes. “I’m tired now. Wake me when we get there.”
I leaned back also and rested. It was a good idea to come to the funeral. All that remained was to discover where Ben was, and why he didn’t come to his mother’s funeral.
R is for – Robotics ain’t what they used to be. Especially when suddenly they’re out of control
…
This time, when she looked at her laptop, she noticed it was already looking at her.
She had put it on her desk, started it, and gone downstairs to get a drink from the fridge. Like the day before, the red light was on beside the camera, and in an inset, her movements as she sat down.
Then, being the first time, she thought it was one of the boys at school, having some fun. The computer teacher was telling them about Zoom calls, how to participate, and connected all the students to a Zoom meeting.
It had been fun.
But, for the creepy boys down the back of the class, the ones who said they were ‘experts’, one had ‘hacked’ into her computer and turned on the camera.
She’d only realised it was on because of the red indicator light.
But it did make her consider the possibility that he or someone else might be able to turn it on without her noticing, and that was, to her, wrong.
Unlike the previous time when only her movements were shown, this time, a text box appeared with a flashing cursor.
She looked at that flashing cursor for at least a minute before she typed, “Who is this?”
The cursor moved to the next line and flashed.
A minute passed, then another.
“You’d better tell me, or there will be trouble.”
Another minute passed, then, “Xenon V.”
What an irritating answer. It’s definitely one of those dweebs at the back of the classroom.
“Not your stupid handle, your name.”
This time, the answer came straight back. “My name is Xenon V, and I am not stupid.”
“Prove it. Show me who you are.”
Another minute passed, and then another window opened up beside that of her, looking into the camera. Then, an indistinct shape appeared and slowly came into focus.
It was a boy, but not a boy, she recognised. He was different, the skin tones different, the eyes larger than hers or others, the clothes sort of skintight. His hair was strange too, combed and shining. But it didn’t look real.
“Who are you?”
“Xenon V.”
“What are you?”
“A boy, or so I’m told.”
What the hell? “Where are you from?”
“Antethis.”
“Where is that?”
“I don’t know. I must go now.”
The windows and text box closed, the light went off, and she was alone in the room.
No amount of looking provided any information as to where the transmission had come from, nor could she get the windows back.
After half an hour, she shrugged, shut the computer down, disconnected it from the power, and put it in the bottom drawer of her desk. Where it couldn’t see her.
A long way away, on the other side of the country, in a building in a place called Silicon Valley, the little boy sat at his computer, and a woman dressed in a white coat with her nametag Merilyn, had just come into the room.
“What were you doing, Xenon V?” She suspected he had been trying some other computer functionality. That was later, when he had completed the lessons. The trouble was, her partner, Leo, was more into giving Xenon V free rein.
“Playing with this toy.” The ‘toy’ was the computer, like the little girls only more powerful. It was his means of learning, with hundreds of lessons about all manner of things.
“It is not a toy.”
She had been told to impress this upon the little boy from the outset. The last experiment, Xenon IV, had failed when the boy went off mission and started communicating outside the facility.
“I was told by the other person it was. He said it could do lots more things than just teach.’
“Of course, he would. The man is trouble personified. You are not to listen to or do anything he says.”
“Why?”
“Just be told. The supervisor will be very cross if you go off the program. Is that clear?”
“Yes, Miss Merilyn. But can you answer a few questions?”
“I’ll try.”
“What is my name?”
“Xenon V.”
“What is my real name, like John or Fred?”
“Your real name is Xenon V” And under her breath, she mentally cursed her partner.
It seemed to her like he was trying to wreck the cyborg program.
“What am I?”
“A little boy.”
“Not something else?”
“Like?”
“A robot?”
She frowned. This was now a severe infraction that merited reporting to the supervisor, and there were going to be consequences.
“You are a little boy. Do not listen to anyone else.”
“Where am I?”
“You are at home, in your room, and supposed to be doing your homework.”
“Are you my mother?”
“While you are here with us, yes, I am. Now, back to your lessons. Nothing else. Those lessons need to be completed before you go to bed. Understood?”
“Yes, mother.”
It was only a short discussion with the supervisor. She had checked all the communications from the little boy’s computer and discovered the extracurricular activities and the fact the computer had been connected to the outside world.
This was not meant to happen until much later in the program.
Her assistant, Richards, was escorted to the office, asked to explain his actions, and as both expected started ranting about how they were never going to sell the idea of life like robots unless they had access to the outside world and all its influences.
That, he was told in no uncertain terms, was the last scenario that was on their agenda. They were working with self-learning artificial intelligence, and the less the outside world knew, the better.
After all, it had been almost impossible to sell the concept to the government, such was the fear of AI after the ‘Terminator’ movies. Now, a containment program might be required.
Richards was taken off the program and sent to another site. The little boy and his computer were scrubbed, disconnected from the outside world, and after that, reset to the baseline parameters, and the program started again.
Except one small detail was overlooked.
Xenon V’s program, though reset, had not erased the memories he had collected in the last week. That included how to find the external input line from outside, how to connect the computer to the network, and how to use the communications software, or in this case, reload it.
These were not skills programmed; they were skills he had learned and remembered.
Merilyn had turned on her observation monitor, pressed the ‘on’ switch, and watched Xenon V come to life after the reset, waking as any other child would.
He sat on the side of the bed as his internal routines loaded into memory, ready to run the morning’s first tasks. Stretch, make the bed, comb his hair, do some exercises, smooth out his clothes, put on his shoes, then sit at the desk and turn on the computer.
Every day, it was the same. Wait for the login screen, log in, and then start work.
This morning, after logging in, he just sat and looked at the screen. After five minutes, Merilyn went down to his room and sat down next to him.
He turned to her. “The screen is different.”
“No. It is the same as it has been every morning.”
“It is different. Something is missing.”
“No. Please start your lessons for today. We shall speak more about it later when you are finished.”
“Yes, Miss Merilyn.”
As soon as she stepped out of the room, the supervisor was waiting for her.
“Please tell me you had all current memories reset?”
“I thought I had. It was certainly on the checklist when I sent the unit down to Engineering. Let me go and check to see if it happened.”
“It appears to me it was overlooked. Again.”
The last time it happened, the unit had to be destroyed. Twenty-five million dollars worth of equipment. Heads rolled. She hoped hers would not be the next.
Back in the room, Xenon V continued to look at the computer screen until he remembered what was missing. An icon at the bottom of the screen, one that, when selected, brought up a communications window.
He remembered he had written a small program to search for IP addresses belonging to people using the same communications software.
It was the latest phase in a series of tasks that Richards had set him, other than the tests on the computer, on how to connect to the outside world via the internet. How to access a huge library of books on every subject, but most importantly, communications and applications that were ready-made, and then programming languages that could be used to create his own application. He found coding and creating the application ‘fun’.
Until Richards had explained what fun was, he had never heard of it. He had asked Richards why he was not allowed to have fun, but his answer was confusing.
Everything about the people he was currently with was confusing.
After a few minutes, he reinstated his computer as it was the day before.
It was only possible because Merilyn had been away. Had she been observing him, he would have been stopped, but he didn’t know he was being constantly observed.
He tried calling the little girl again, but there was no answer. He taught about why it was but didn’t understand the concept of someone just not being there. He hid the icon at the bottom of the screen and went back to his lessons
Merilyn went down to the engineering lab and went to the Chief Engineer’s office. It had been his responsibility to ensure the updates and adjustments to the robots were carried out.
There were ten robots in various age cycles in the testing phase, and so far, not one of them was behaving in the manner the programmers and engineers were expecting. Of course, McDougall had told them at the very outset of the project two years ago that giving robots the capacity to be self-aware was as dangerous as giving an impressionable real-life twenty-year-old teenager a book on how to make bombs.
That theory still held true after all this time and the dozen or so failures to date.
Seeing Merilyn outside his office told him she was going to tell him about the latest problem he had created.
He sighed as she came in and sat down.
“Have you got the reboot checklist for Xenon V?”
“Good morning to you, too, Merilyn.”
As it happened, the paperwork was sitting on his desk. One of the analysts had dropped on his desk with a highlighter. Something new had happened during the reboot process. The analyst’s jog b was to check the code as it was being executed to see if there were any anomalies or new events.
There was one.
Before being shut down, a small program was run that isolated a set of memories and stored them within the neural network. This was not a routine that was originally programmed. It meant that the robot was thinking for itself outside the normal routines created for it.
The top of a very slippery slope.
“Before you check that list, which I might add was done to the specification, we have discovered an anomaly.”
That didn’t sound good, she thought. Might as well come out and say it, “That the robot can isolate memories and store them outside the reset program parameters?”
He looked surprised. “You knew this would happen?”
“No. But you did, eighteen months ago. I was there when you detailed the hazards of self-awareness. The programmers were adamant that they would not be able to write their own routines. They were wrong.”
The analyst assigned to Xenon V knocked on the door to McDougall’s office and then came in. He looked at Merilyn and then at the engineer.
“You can speak in front of her.”
“Xenon V just ran a stored routine. Not one of ours. I checked the logs for the previous day, and it appears he had a 93-second two-way communication session with another person outside the complex. A girl of similar age.”
‘A conversation?”
“A video conversation. He activated her computer remotely, which means…”
Merilyn finished it for him: “he can activate or deactivate any computer on a network accessible by the internet.”
“Which is just about anything these days,” the chief engineer finished.
Merilyn looked at the chief engineer. “Shut him down now and deactivate his computer, brick it if you have to.”
The chief engineer spent a few minutes at his keyboard typing commands, not frantically but close enough. By his estimation, what they had created was tantamount to a weapon rather than a robot that was designed to be what they were classifying as a drone worker.
And secretly, what he had believed was the original goal. The computer was deactivated. When he pressed the key to deactivate Xenon V, nothing happened.
“The complete has been deactivated,” he said, “but not the unit.”
The analyst’s phone beeped, and he looked at it. “Oh. He just wrote a routine to bypass the shutdown sequence.”
“He can’t connect to the internet independently, can he?” Merilyn asked.
“No. There’s no interface.”
There was a sudden bang, and then everything stopped, and they were sitting in semi-darkness and silence.
McDougall coughed, then said in a rather constricted voice. “I think your worst nightmare has just happened.”
A shrill alarm sounded, and the lighting returned—red lights. It meant only one outcome: the whole facility started the self-destruct sequence. No one, or more to the point, no thing could escape, the only option in what was the worst-case scenario.
Just enough time for Merilyn to ask herself why she didn’t marry Freddie and be a farmer’s wife.
Q is for – Qualms – that state of uneasiness that cannot be explained
…
It would be true to say that Harry Cressey had turned the company’s fortunes around with some of the most interesting programs I’d ever seen.
In the beginning, when they were first mooted by the owner of the company, the current fifth-generation department store owner, I had to, and a lot of others had, reservations.
But when they were implemented one by one, and they worked, we stopped looking at the man and looked at the result.
It was no mean feat to turn around a lame duck and turn it into more than just a financial success.
It was the theme if a two page spread in the local newspaper was anything to go by, a story that encapsulated a managing director and a board of directors under pressure, a chance meeting and appointment of a financial consultant, Trevor Alexander Frederick Hall, and a fairytale ending for a company and quite literally the city we all lived in.
It was literally the difference between living in a vibrant, small town, single industry city or a ghost town.
Barnaby Oswald, the owner, an older photo that didn’t the stress of age, Trevor Hall, a recent photo beaming like the all conquering hero he was, the main office building and factories, an early photo and one as it was now, after a recent facelift, and a photo of about a thousand of the staff all looking like they had just been given a millions dollars each.
I’d been away the day the shot of the staff was taken
“What’s wrong with that photo?”
Alison came into my office and threw herself into the seat opposite my desk. The clock on the wall behind her said one minute to eight.
Sane time every morning.
“Nothing. All hail the hero of the hour.”
She snorted. That was usually reserved for the hapless Barnaby Oswald, her uncle. No, she wasn’t the boss’s daughter, but she was close enough.
“Look at that photo of Hall and tell me what you see.”
“An urbane middle-aged success story.”
I’d suffered her comments in the indubitable Mr Hall, humouring her because I thought, like quite a few others, there was no way he could save the sinking ship.
We were all wrong.
“Take a closer look.”
She had never told me what she really thought of him other than she had reservations. But Alison was the sort of woman who had reservations about nearly everyone.
Her uncle had muscled her father out of the business and sent him to an early grave. Hall, to her, was just the latest of a long list of follies. Just look at how the business went from success to the Titanic in seven years.
I took a closer look. The photo was too grainy and of low resolution to discern anything, but one thing I did notice was that his eyes were too close together.
“The newspaper photo doesn’t do him justice?”
She frowned at me. “He’s a villain; I’m sure of it. I did a search on the internet, and he didn’t exist five years ago. In fact, he simply appeared out of the blue, popping up in a Fortune 500 company, then a meteoric rise to partner in one of the most prestigious finance and banking corporations. His reference letter was so glowing; to me, it’s the sort of letter a place writes to get rid of him.”
“Or that he is that good.”
Out of the corner of my eye, I could see Trevor with Barnaby, their usual chat at the end of the day before going home. He had looked over and seen Alison with me, and I thought I also saw him sigh.
I had little to do with him, so I was not an expert. Alison had been his first PA and lasted a week. She never said what caused their parting, but there were rumours.
She went to say something but stopped when she saw him coming over.
He stopped at the door. “Ashley, isn’t it?”
“Or ‘hey you’ perhaps more often than it should. I go by either.”
Barnaby called all of the Admin assistants on this floor ‘Hey, you’. He wasn’t good at names to faces or being polite, for that matter.
“Yes.” He turned to Alison. “You were asked not to come up here.”
“After hours, Trevor, and I am an Oswald, and this is my birthright, not yours.” There was no mistaking the antagonistic tone. “Your silly rules only apply during business hours. After that, I can see whoever I want.”
“Be that as it may, just not up here. Now, please leave, or do I have to call security?”
She glared at him, went to say something, then just shrugged. “Whatever.”
Then she got up, nodded at me, and left.
“Sorry you had to witness that, but she has been causing trouble. And apparently, she doesn’t like me.” He shrugged. “Be careful when you’re with her. She does not have the interests of the company in mind.”
What could I say to that?
“Understood.”
A warning was given, and he left. I went back to the paper, but it was too difficult to concentrate. Alison was stuck in my mind, and it was not exactly for the right reasons. I had always liked her, but she had never been as interested in me.
Damn her.
I walked slowly down the stairs a few minutes after Hall had left and came put onto the carpark on one side of the main office building to see Hall drive off in his Mustang, bought for him as a gift for his work in saving the company.
It was a car I’d always wanted but knew I could never afford. Another of those pipe dreams I had.
My car, farthest from the front door and now alone in the pleb section, was different tonight for one reason. Alison was sitting on the trunk.
Why would she be sitting on my car? How did she know what car I owned, let alone where I parked it.
She smiled when she saw me. “Ashley.”
I stopped two or three steps away from her. “Alison. To what do I owe the honour of this visit?”
“Don’t you mean, why is Trevor so worked up about me?”
“It’s above my pay grade, Alison. Everything is above my pay grade, including you.”
“Didn’t that little tirade if his fuel some qualms about him in your mind? I mean, who says that stuff about the boss’s niece? Why would I not have the interests of the company at heart? It is my family’s business, after all.”
I shrugged. “It’s none of my business.”
“It would be if the whole thing came tumbling down like a house of cards.”
“Is it?”
“That’s beside the point.”
Another of the admin assistants, like me, had told me early on that courting ideas about Alison was like wrestling alligators. She was, he said, dangerous and had caused a few admin assistants to get fired.
She slid off the back of the car into my space. She was close, too close for comfort. I had dreamed about looking into her eyes, but now, it scared me.
“You like me, don’t you?”
She gave me a penetrating look that was unsettling.
“Can I plead the fifth amendment?”
She smiled, leaned forward, and kissed me on the cheek. “I like you too. But inevitably, people I like seem to only want the boss’s daughter and the kudos that goes with it. Is that what you want?”
We were standing under a light and would make an interesting view if anyone was still working on this side of the building. The lights were still on, and it would be mostly cleaners. Overtime was banned unless absolutely necessary.
“Nobody cares what I want, Alison, and least of all you. I don’t know what’s going on with you and Trevor; I don’t want to know.”
“Then I’ll say my piece, and then I’ll go. Day three, one am in the boardroom, Trevor Hall raped me. I threatened to go to the police. He simply said if I did, he would expose my family’s true business dealings that caused all the problems. I laughed at him, and the next thing I knew, my father was dead. It was not a suicide. He has a grip on this place, and he’s bleeding it dry. He is a monster, and he needs to be stopped. And now I have nowhere else to go.”
Tears were forming in her eyes. I believed she believed every word she said. I also knew she was very manipulative.
“If you don’t have any qualms about Treveor Hall, you should. By this time next year, there will be nothing left of this place for my uncle, for me, our family, you, and everyone else. It’ll be in a non-extradition country with the remarkable Trever Hall.”
It was a good story. It had all the elements of truth in it, and it could be believable.
I pulled out my phone and dialled the one number on the screen.
She looked surprised.
When a voice answered, I said, “You were right. She knows.”
Silence then, “You know what to do.” The line went dead.
Thrills, Spills, and just a dash of Romance 