Transmutation

The girl winced as the old man tightened a screw. “Ow!”

“Well, if you would stop cringing so much, maybe I could do my job the right way.”

“I’m holding as still as I can! We’ve been at this for hours.” The girl sighed, trying to stand up as straight as she could. Her legs hurt and her back was fairly screaming in agony. But this was the price one paid. The old man had told her that this would be a long, tiring process.

“How do you think I feel? You stand here, I do all the work,” the old man said in his thick European accent. “This is delicate work.”

“I don’t even understand how you can get that to work,” she said, trying to peer through the mirror at what he was doing. Even with the extreme angles the mirror provided, she had only the dimmest idea of what the old man was doing. She had seen the sketches, vaguely remembered how it all went together.

“It is very complicated, little girl,” the old man said. “Do you know how a clock works?”

“Well, no,” the girl answered, furrowing her brow.

“And that doesn’t bother you?”

She was a girl concerned with things that were beautiful and interesting. Clocks were old and musty and utterly beyond her. “Of course not. So long as they work, I don’t care one whit.”

“Then hush up and let me do my work. I know what I’m doing, and I promised you that when I was done you would have what you wished for, didn’t I?” He tightened a screw, and the sound of intricate metal pieces sliding into place clicked loudly in the quiet workshop. The girl felt a pinch, and took in a sharp breath.

“That’s natural,” the old man said. “Well, as natural as this can be, anyway.”

She just nodded absently, trying to think about something else. They had been here for what seemed like days, her standing in front of the mirrors and under the lights, the old man working behind her. She would have felt unsafe in a dress that exposed so much of her back but the man seemed too ancient to muster any sort of passion. He was as dusty as the old machines he kept.

“Hold this,” he said, handing her a piece of wire. “Be careful you hold onto the leather. The wire will cut you if you let it.”

She nodded and took a hold of the grip he had fashioned. The old man took the other end of the wire and began to work it through the pulleys she knew were back there but could barely see. He was very insistent that she keep out of his work while he did it. But she remembered the armature he had shown her, how the wires would keep the structure together, allow it the freedom of movement she wanted.

“Very good,” the old man said as he took the grip from her hand. He wound the wire around the anchors that they had worked to graft over the past few months, small metal eyelets that had been inserted deep under her skin, screwed directly into the bones until the muscle and skin had grown back over. It had been the worst part, aside from this.

“Everything looks accurate,” the old man said. “Exactly as I had planned.”

“You’re … you’re done?” After all this time, all the pain and the strain on the underdeveloped muscles that had barely been needed in her shoulders and back before, suddenly it was done. It didn’t seem so bad. She had worn dresses more difficult.

“Yes. Would you like to give them a try?” The old man stepped back, looking carefully at his handiwork. If anything was going to give way, he was going to be there to fix it before the whole armature fell apart. 

The girl nodded and flexed her shoulders. It was just a graceful roll, as though she were shrugging off a coat, but the anchors held and the wires pulled taut and the pulleys began their task. From behind her on either side unfolded the slender metal structures, all slender spines and a spider web of wires and gears. It looked incredibly fragile, but she knew better. Even a young girl like her could tell when things were built to last.

She continued to shift her shoulders, wincing as her muscles pulled in unusual ways. The anchors, at least, held firm. She barely felt them, they were so integrated into her now. But they pulled where they needed to, and slowly the wings unfolded. They spread out to either side of her, the top of the frame rising up above each shoulder as everything slid into place for the first time. 

“Very good,” the old man said softly, barely a whisper. “Everything looks wonderful.”

“Yes, it does,” the girl said more to herself than the man. The mirrors made more sense now, giving her a perfect view of everything opening up now that she was bent forward more and he was out of the way. The clockwork wings were a marvel, more beautiful than anything she had ever seen.

“How do you feel?” The old man seemed a thousand miles away to her. His voice could have been of an ant, crying up to her as she walked by.

She flexed her shoulders again. The wings spanned wide, and then closed with a whisper. She felt the wind, saw the dust kicked up around her, and grinned.

“I feel light. I feel … free.”

Scott Pilgrim Vs. The Neglected Medium

My earliest memory is of me and my mother. I am five. I know this because my mother has told me that I’m going to get a younger brother, but she’s not yet obviously pregnant. We are in the basement of the house I lived in from the time I was 18 months old until I was 16.

We are sitting on the large wood-framed couch together and playing Super Mario Bros. I’m less prone to dying than she is, but whenever we get to Bowser’s castle I hand the controller to her because I’m afraid of the stark black and white architecture, the manic music, the fireballs that fly in from off-screen without warning.

I’m young, couldn’t tell you how old. Maybe 7? Memories from so far back are hard to pull up, nebulous. I know I’m not yet 8 because for my 8th birthday I received an SNES and never looked back. But today I’m not concerned with the NES, I’m concerned with waking up early on a Saturday morning. I descend from my bedroom to the basement, my parents both still asleep. It’s freezing in the basement. I don’t care.

I kneel down in front of the TV in my pajamas and start up Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. I’m really bad at the game. I can’t beat the fourth level and rarely even see it. Little do I know I’ll never get further in that game. I’m too young to realize it’s not that the game is hard, it’s that the game is terrible.  I lack the capacity to make those judgments still.

Games have formed a pretty important part of my life, as much a part of my childhood as my parents. The problem is, games have always kind of lived in a section of my life walled off from everything else. As a kid, friends would come over and play Mario Kart or whatever. But they never seemed to think of things the same way I did. How many of them burst into tears when their parents gave them A Link to the Past for their 8th birthday but hid the SNES as a surprise gift in the closet? How many of them could hum the music to dozens of games on command? How many of them doodled in their notebooks not in stick figures but in pixels?

But the world didn’t seem to work that way. So my gaming obsessions were never connected to everything else. I enjoy music. I enjoy movies. I enjoy books. And while they’re all connected to each other and feed off each other and form this cultural mélange that allows a person to enjoy all the type of media together. It’s a foundation of culture. It’s a history. But gaming was never a part of that club. And so that part of my life was different. Separate. Alien. The people I would talk to about movies or books were not the same people I could talk to about games. And I thought that was just the way it was.

But Scott Pilgrim has come out, and I feel like something has changed. You see, Scott Pilgrim isn’t based on a video game, and it’s not even really about video games, but it is at its core drawing as heavily on the cultural references of video games as much as it does music or movies or the comic books its based on.

Movies have been getting away with this for years. Blade Runner isn’t overtly referencing Metropolis, but it uses the concepts and images of the previous work to help enrich its world and story. Similarly, Scott Pilgrim references games but doesn’t overtly name them or use them, but it uses the concepts and images to craft this world where games are just as relevant as all the movies one has seen and all the books one has read and all the music one has listened to.

Scott Pilgrim is the justification of the neglected medium. It is, at heart, a love story. But it uses concepts such as boss battles, leveling up, extra lives—things that games have been using for years—not as simple references for laughs, but as concepts that help enrich the world and as storytelling beats, as relevant as the concepts of every other medium. It welcomes the games medium, with its own culture and references, to join the mess of other forms of entertainment that have all been feeding into each other for decades. And in doing so, it not only provides a good film, but it provides a conduit for all the ideas that have been so long separated to spill out, not as nudge-wink references, but as devices used to tell stories, without shame or apology.

Scott Pilgrim is interesting for many reasons, but it’s magical because at its heart, the movie speaks to the child in me who remembers living a life that was ruled by how many lives I had, what level I was on, the final boss leering at me in the distance, my desire to explore these digital worlds and have these experiences of numbers and pixels and mechanics laid out before me as important and immediate to me as any other world I could experience.

That child would look at something like Scott Pilgrim and say “Of course that’s what the world is like” but the adult in me can only sit back and marvel that what I felt could never happen has already come to pass, that the two countries I thought forever separated in my life could be brought together in ways I had never considered, that someone could decide that all of these things that had been so long ignored were important.

And if that’s true, and the mediums are compatible, if games and every other form of culture and entertainment are on equal footing, who knows what incredible and interesting ways they can interact now and in the future?

An Explanation RE: My Actions

Five times in my life I've shot a man, and not once did I think it was the wrong thing to do. And I'm not the kind of person who doesn't believe in regrets. I regret that I never had a chance to say goodbye to my Ma before she died, and I regret that I didn't kiss Heather Woods in the 10th grade that time we went to the homecoming dance.

So sure, I regret things.

But the people who I shot ... those seven bastards deserved what they got. Every one of them was a bad person. And I can't feel sorry for doing what needed to be done.

The first was a mistake, a bad twist of fate. Some punk trying to steal enough to score picked the wrong guy. One dark alley, one threat, and I warned him too. But when he pulled the knife and advanced on me I did what any red-blooded American properly armed would do. I put two in that fucker's chest and left him there drowning in his own blood.

Okay, so maybe that's not the proper way. My Grandfather took me out to his farm back when I was a kid, to see the fresh air and learn about God's land in thorn and claw, as he said. One day one of the farm dogs got caught underneath the wheel of a tractor. It was all broken, limp as a wet dishrag, and my Grandpa had told me then that you never let an animal suffer when you could put it out of its misery.

So leaving that sorry fucker there in the alley to suffocate on his own tainted blood was bad form on my part. I made up for it. I went to Grandpa's grave and told him that I had done it wrong and learned my lesson and if--and God forbid that it come to pass--I had another chance to do the right thing, I'd make sure that I never left a broken living being behind me.

The 2nd and 3rd were another bit of bad luck. I seem to be one of the unluckiest men alive. But that's okay. Common sense and preparation can make up for a whole mess of bad luck, I've found. And I do my best to wield both. So when the two bums came in through my kitchen window looking to do Heaven knows what, I tagged them both. The police might have been suspicious at how neatly I had done it, one of them hit once in the chest and once in the throat and the other one neatly betwen the eyes.

I couldn't really tell them that the 2nd one, upon seeing his comrade fall, had gotten down on his knees and begged me to let him go, that he had made a mistake. But he was so helpless. I couldn't just let him run back out into the world. It was a hard winter that year, and he looked half-frozen as it was. I wouldn't do that to my worst enemy. So I did the decent thing and put him down proper. 

Thank god he had booze in his system and his friend had a cheap old gun on him. I was acquitted without delay. Nobody condemns a man for minding his own house. Not even in these awful times. 

The fourth time was a good work. Driving through the seedy side of town, as I did from time to time, I spotted a pimp beating up on his hooker. Or maybe it was just a husband who had gone too far laying hands on his wife. I'm not sure which it was, to be honest. You can't tell one from the other with those kinds of people. But the woman was screaming for help and nobody walking the streets in that part of town lifted a finger, scurrying into hiding and onto stoops where they could deny they saw a damned thing.

I was not as cowardly.  I didn't even have to stop the car. And all those people who were looking the other way obviously saw nothing. Nobody looks too hard for people who kill those types of monsters. The woman was simply grateful. No harm done. My good deed for the day achieved. 

Why am I telling you all this? Well, because the last time I shot a man was probably the last time I'll ever get away with it. I don't regret it, per se, but I understand that there are some things people don't look kindly upon. Like how my friend Chris from work didn’t look kindly upon my confession that I had shot four men while we were sharing a few 12 packs of beer.

You should have heard the things he accused me of when I detailed what I laid down before you here. He called me all sorts of names. Monster. Psychopath. They were unfair things. I’m just a man who protects what’s mine. It’s a carefully honed skill, the ability to defend. I am especially good at it. So when he threatened me, intimated that he would call the cops, I defended the thing most important to me without thinking.

So poor Chris is dead now. But he was always a bit of a pompous ass. So … there we go. I regret nothing, but I can’t exactly hide this one. I can’t think of an excuse that the police are going to like. So I’m simply going to tell them the truth, in as calm and composed a manner as I can. Which is why I write this. Five men, a drop in the bucket. Tyrants and patriots kill exponentially more every day.

I only did what was necessary.

The Mob Lawyer (part 6)

Hiroki was squaring away the data he had collected when Camen returned to the office with Mrs. Wallace in tow. Hiroki wasn’t sure where Camen had stashed her after the events of the other night, but she looked diminished outside of her palatial home, scared and insubstantial.

Camen let Hiroki do all the talking on this one. Hiroki appreciated it, well in his element working with numbers and data. This was one of the main reasons Camen had brought him on board, and he had the decency to know when to let him take the reigns. 

“Mrs. Wallace,” Hiroki said. “I assume Benjamin told you that we recovered some information from your husband’s office yesterday.” 

“Yes,” she said quietly. “You’re doing better than the police. They’re still having trouble getting a warrant.”

“Well, we beat them to the punch,” Camen said. “And we’re not exactly following proper procedure.”

"Anyway,” Hiroki said, “the data we found was pretty unimportant on the whole. However, of note is that your husband kept his personal budget and finances on that computer. And there were plenty of interesting things in there.”

Mrs. Wallace sat forward in her chair, her eyes wide. “Interesting how?”

“Well, to start with, you were aware that he was giving money to Victoria Falchi?”

“I … no.” She shook her head, her brow furrowing. “I mean, I figured he might. A man like Sam doesn’t keep a woman like that through personality alone. But he never told me the specifics.”

“Well, there’s money here that is earmarked for Miss Falchi. What’s more interesting, though, is that there’s another amount of the exact same amount that is going to someone else.”

“Someone else?”

Camen spoke up. “Are you aware of any other people that your husband might have been paying under the table? Blackmailer? Drug dealer? … another woman, maybe?”

“Another woman?" Mrs. Wallace looked bewildered. “Why would he keep another woman?”

“Two might not be enough,” Hiroki helpfully chimed in. Camen shot him a look, and he withered in his chair.

“We don’t know for sure what’s going on, but the only clue we’ve got is that he was paying someone a pretty decent amount for something.”  Camen moved closer to her, kneeling down by her chair. “Look, if you know something about what that might be, I need to know now. We’re getting to the point where the police are going to sweep in and all the clues are going to disappear.”

Mrs. Wallace’s eyes went wide, but she shook her head slowly. “I’m sorry, I don’t know anything. He never mentioned paying that much to anybody else. I’m afraid I can’t be much help.”

Camen sighed but nodded. “All right. We’ll keep looking, but without some hint as to where your husband’s disappeared to or who this mysterious person is, we’re kind of stuck. We’ll keep you updated, but in the meantime I hope you’ll agree to stay out of sight.”

“Of course,” she said. “The last thing I want is to end up like poor Miss Falchi.”

Camen escorted her out, taking her home while he left Hiroki in the office. Hiroki was fine with that, with some more time to think and work he could potentially dig through the information they had gathered. There had to be a clue somewhere, there just had to be. Without some direction to who they were looking for, this whole case could end up a wash. A missing man, a dead body, and the police already starting to poke around. A recipe for disaster.

Hiroki was lost in his work when the door opened. He didn’t even look up, just kept digging. “She’s no help, Ben,” Hiroki said. “I think we might be at a dead end.”

“I certainly hope that isn’t the case,” an unknown voice said.

Hiroki looked up, eyes wide. In the doorway were three people. They were all dressed in nice suits but none of them particularly looked business-like. There were two in the back, a mountain of a man and a short, thin man, who looked dangerously thuggish. In front of them was the man who was obviously in charge.

“Can I … help you?” Hiroki eyed them nervously. Sometimes Camen had some shady characters show up, but these guys looked more serious than the usual person who came through that door.

“You’re Ben Camen’s tech boy, aren’t you?” The man in front stepped forward. “You can certainly help me, then. You see, I’m looking for information about where Samuel Wallace has got to, and I hear you might have some idea.”

“I’m afraid I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Hiroki said. “But Mr. Camen will be here before too long, and he can sort this out.” Hiroki moved to stand up, suddenly wanting nothing more than to step outside and call Ben and get him there as soon as possible.

The two men who were standing at the door stepped forward. The big one shifted just a little, expertly flashing the holster under his suit jacket. “I’m sure you can help me,” the man said as he sat down in the chair across from the desk. “So sit tight, kid.”

Hiroki sat back down, staring at the two men. They were on either side of the chair, immobile but obviously standing in the way of Hiroki and the door. There was no easy way out of this one. He only hoped Benjamin came back quickly.

“That’s right,” the man said when Hiroki settled in, defeated, into his seat. “Now, you’re going to tell me everything you two have found out so far.”

“Or what?”

The man laughed. “Or what? Come on kid, this isn’t the movies. You’re going to tell us. We can just do it slow or you can just volunteer the information and save us all a whole lot of work. Now, why don’t you show us all that information on that computer of yours.”

Hiroki stared at the screen, the information they had stolen from Wallace’s computer right there on the screen. There wasn’t time to get rid of it before they’d stop him. There wasn’t room to run. Hiroki hesitated a moment, unsure.

The two men behind the chair advancing on Hiroki sitting at the desk.

The Mob Lawyer (part 5)

Hiroki held open the heavy wooden door to the law offices of Barston & Chase for Camen, following behind him and trying to look as official and adult as he could. The two of them were woefully out of place in these stolid, somber surroundings. But Camen was an old hand at handling these situations, introducing himself with all the gruff competence of a beat cop.

The receptionist gave way to a suit, who approached them and shook Camen’s hand. He seemed rather embarrassed to have them there, looking around them to the door. “Good morning, gentlemen. If you’ll excuse me, I’d like to handle this privately,” the suit said as he motioned them down the hallway to the offices.

“I’d like to see Samuel Wallace’s office, if you don’t mind,” Camen said, not taking the invitation to go immediately.

“Um … yes, but first I’d like to talk to you in mine,” the suit said, glancing towards the door as if he expected someone to walk in at any moment. “Just follow me.” 

He led them into a big, imposing office, all big leather chairs and monolithic mahogany desks. “You’ll have to excuse my insistence on doing this in private,” the suit began. “Our clients are very protective of their privacy, and it wouldn’t do to have them see an investigator here. Bad for business.”

“Just what sort of business is that?” Camen asked.

“We deal with the legal and financial affairs of many of the most prominent citizens and corporations in Colston City. This law firm has been here since the 1800s, Barston and Chase were lawyers turned prospectors who rushed out here. Thankfully, when the rush turned out to be largely hot air, they had skills to fall back on and plenty of people who regularly got in trouble.”

“You sound pretty proud of that,” Camen pointed out, looking around the room now, obviously uninterested. Hiroki wondered how long they’d have to talk to this guy before they’d be allowed to search the room proper.

“It’s an impressive heritage, one we strive to live up to. People depend on us to be there. Unfortunately, when one of our own goes missing, it looks bad. We’ve been shouldering his load, claiming that Sam is laid low with an illness, but we want to know where he is as bad as you do.”

“So you have no idea?”

“I’m afraid not,” the man said. “We’ve made some inquiries on our own, informal and discreet of course, but so far there’s been nothing. But things have changed, and we have to act.”

“So now that there’s a dead body and Sam’s got police attention, you’re going to cooperate, is that what you’re saying?”

“More or less,” the suit admitted with a shrug. “Go ahead, Wallace’s offices are down the hall. I just beg you to be discreet.”

Camen nodded and the two of them exited the office and made their way down to the large door with Samuel Wallace’s name on it. When they entered, they were in an antechamber the size of the office they had just come from, this one brighter due to the wall of windows along one side.

“Hello, gentlemen,” the assistant, a woman in severe business attire said from behind the desk as she stood up. She seemed overly composed, a well-practiced neutral expression on her face. “I was told to expect you.”

“Benjamin Camen, ma’am,” he said, shaking her hand. “This is my assistant, Hiroki Sugoi. Don’t mind him, he’s mostly just here to observe. He’s in training.”

“My name is Brittany Hughes. What can I do for you today?” She seemed to ignore Hiroki entirely, writing him off as irrelevant. Hiroki didn’t go out of his way to change her mind.

“We’re investigating the disappearance of your boss, Samuel Wallace. We were hoping for the opportunity to search his office.”

She sighed and shook her head. “I’ve been told to give you as much access as I’m comfortable with, but I’m afraid I’m not very comfortable with you poking around in his office unsupervised. There are hundreds of files in his office, all of them privileged, and the last thing I want is finding out after you’re gone that while you were here you decided to indulge in some profitable espionage.”

Camen didn’t seem very surprised by this. He stood his ground and shrugged his shoulders. “I need to look for some idea of where Mr. Wallace went. A woman is dead. Either I come in and poke around or the police come in and do it. Your choice.”

Miss Hughes stared at Camen for a long moment and then nodded. “Very well. Come with me. I’ll let you look around, but I want you to do it under my strict supervision.”

The three of them walked passed her desk to the closed door, opening to another, larger room. This was as plush and richly furnished as the first office they were shown, but much bigger. Hiroki scanned the room. There were several large file cabinets in the corner, and along the wall opposite the window was a wall of case files and ledgers and books. Hiroki’s eyes were drawn to the computer, a dark screen sitting off to one side of the desk.

“Your assistant can sit at the desk,” Miss Hughes said by way of explanation. “Mr. Wallace’s computer is protected, and so far the systems guys haven’t been able to reset the password or anything like that, so I’m afraid it won’t be much help.” Hiroki noticed that she didn’t actually sound all that sad about that, but Camen nodded for him to sit in the large leather chair and Hiroki was glad to oblige.

As Camen began to head towards the wall of files and books, Hiroki discreetly pulled two pieces of equipment out of his bag. One was a small, low profile hard drive. The second was a small USB key. He kept them both under the table, where the watchful eye of Miss Hughes couldn’t see. Thankfully, Miss Hughes looked pretty occupied as Camen began to pull the ledgers and notebooks from the wall and flip through them.

“Mr. Camen, you can’t just start going through things like that. What if there’s sensitive information? I said I would help you, but you need to let me know what you want to see and then I’ll determine whether or not that’s an appropriate course of action.”

“I want to see all the things he wrote down. Not the case files, not yet anyway, but the books he kept. His home office was suspiciously devoid of information. If there’s any clue to where he’s gone or why, it has to be here.”

“Well, let’s start one at a time,” she said, taking down the first ledger, glancing at the first page where there was a quickly jotted inventory of what was inside. While she was looking, Hiroki plugged the hard drive and USB key into the computer as discreetly as possible.

Camen flipped through the notebook for a moment, and then handed it back to her. “No good. Give me another one.” As she looked through it, he turned to Hiroki. “I hope you brought something to keep yourself busy.”

Hiroki shrugged his shoulders. “I brought my computer. Thought that maybe I could do some school work. If that’s all right.”

“Miss Hughes, is that all right?” Camen said, pulling out the files on the wall halfway to look at what was written on them. Miss Hughes looked up and situated herself in between Camen and the files as she handed him another notebook.

“I guess that’s all right,” she said absently. “We don’t have wifi here, hopefully you’ll keep yourself busy without the internet.”

“It’s fine, I can use my phone to tether,” Hiroki said, pulling out his laptop and setting it up on the desk. As she was looking away to keep Camen from pulling down more files, he reached over and pressed the power button on both the laptop and the desktop at the same time. The sound of the powering computers was loud, but could easily be accounted for by Hiroki’s laptop looking a little too big to be all that quiet.

Hiroki pulled up the utility on the USB key, connecting to Wallace’s desktop. The program he had installed interrupted the boot sequence, loading a program of his own instead of the original OS. He worked quickly and efficiently, trying to be as unassuming as possible. Thankfully, that’s what he was good at. He quickly set up the program to clone the hard drive off of the desktop onto the one he brought with him.

Once that was set up and running, he tabbed over to the word processor and began to work on one of the papers he had to write for his finals. He didn’t really have to pay much attention to Camen anymore. He would make a lot of noise, maybe find something out despite Miss Hughes’ obvious smokescreen, but the real work was done. He felt proud of himself. Without him, Camen’s job would be a lot harder. It just proved to him how much the detective needed him in his life. 

He titled his paper with his name and with the class he was taking, and began to write. There was a murder to solve and a missing man to find, a mystery all around them, but for now all he could do was wait for the platters of data at his feet to spin and for Camen’s act to hold up.

Hiroki could think of worse jobs.

Block #fridayflash

Ryan was shown into the Coordinator’s office, a small space that bore more in common with a closet than it did a room. The two chairs faced each other over a fold-down desk, the Coordinator already seated in his, tapping away at the computer in his hand.

Ryan slid in next to the Coordinator, waiting for the older man to speak. The Coordinator was a man who operated at his own leisure. Not that Ryan was all that excited to hear what he had to say once he was done. Nothing felt good about this meeting.

“We have a problem,” the Coordinator said as he tapped the screen on his computer one last time, setting the small device down on the table.

“I’m not surprised you’d think that,” Ryan said.

The Coordinator looked at him expectantly. It was hard to meet the Coordinator’s gaze. His one good eye was bright and piercing, intimidating enough, but the replacement for his other eye was the flat black lens of the video implant. It’d be easier if it was just an old fashioned glass eye, not this technological monstrosity.

“You don’t have an excuse to offer me for your poor performance?” The Coordinator spread his hands helplessly. “I’m running out of options here. You were brought on board for a very specific purpose. An obligation you’ve failed to fulfill for nearly five years, now. You understand how that’s unacceptable, given the circumstances.”

“You can’t rush this type of work,” Ryan said. “I’m doing the best I can. It’s not as if I haven’t tried. But sometimes these things just work and sometimes they just don’t. It’s not as if I haven’t provided years of good material previously.”

“That’s half the problem,” the Coordinator said. “There are certain expectations you set by how prolific you were, both before and after Gathering Day. The people here relied upon you to provide for them on a set schedule. And you exceeded their wildest dreams. We were all very impressed. But now … nothing.”

“I don’t have an answer for you,” Ryan said. “I’m doing the best I can.”

The Coordinator shifted uncomfortably, his eye lowering as a sign that he didn’t want to say what he was about to say. “There’s been a proposal from the archivist that she be given permission to produce a series of stories set in a pre-Gathering Day world. I spoke to the morale officer, and he seemed to think it would be a good idea to pursue that.”

“A … but .. the archivist?” Ryan sat up straighter in his chair. “She’s not capable of providing for all of us. She’s a librarian.”

“She’s already submitted a writing sample, some ideas for stories, the outlines of five novels.” The Coordinator pressed a few buttons on his computer and then slid it over to Ryan. He picked it up and quickly scanned the writing. It was amateurish, but it had promise. He perused the outlines. They were solid stories. Shit.

“She already has a role, though. One person, one job. Remember? That’s how the community is being run.”

“Ideally, yes,” the Coordinator said. “Unfortunately, we didn’t forsee that the archivist would have diminishing responsibilities as other communities went silent and our affairs settled into a routine. She notes the personal highlights of the community, helps people organize their private logs, but in reality there isn’t much left for her to do. We think expanding her role to envelop yours is an efficient use of resources.”

Ryan’s face went white. He felt bile rising in his throat. He couldn’t be suggesting… “So what happens to me?”

“The community doesn’t need two storytellers,” the Coordinator said. “Especially not when one of them hasn’t told a story in years.”

“So … what … you can’t just let me go! Let her go! I was one of the first choices for this community. I can learn her job.”

“She’s a mother of four. As hesitant as I am to bring it up, your partner did pass on some years ago. No children to worry about. And much like will happen with you, her job was assumed by the community over time without too much trouble.”

“So you’re just going to get rid of anyone who’s redundant? How is that any way to run a community? You’re supposed to be protecting us, not kicking us out when we don’t meet your standards!”

“I’m not in the position to be swayed by pleas to my emotions,” the Coordinator answered. “And unfortunately for you, there is no ‘we.’ Everyone else is fulfilling their assigned roles. You are the sole exception. And it’s come to the point where keeping you here is one more child I can’t authorize people to have. You do realize we’re about to become a third-generation community? I’m sorry, but my decision stands. You are hereby stripped of the title of this community’s Writer, and asked to leave.”

* * *

Ryan walked down the narrow corridor leading to the entrance to the community. This was a rarely-used part of the structure, sealed and forgotten for years. There were storage containers lined against one wall, so narrow that the small farewell party that accompanied him had to go single file past them.

“Please, I beg you to reconsider,” Ryan said to the Coordinator. “You know what it’s like out there. You know I’m not equipped for this.”

“You have been given plenty of tools with which to survive,” the Coordinator said. “I’m not heartless. But I have to make decisions for the good of the whole, not the individual.”

“We will not forget you,” the new Writer, Deborah, said. She seemed genuinely distressed by this turn of events, bless her. “I will write of you, and your sacrifices. The community will revere you by the time I’m done. I know it’s a small comfort, but it’s all I can do.”

The security director, a thick ex-military man, was the first to the door. “When you get out there, you need to find shelter before nightfall. We don’t know what’s out there, but the last thing you want is to be stuck in the dark, unprepared.”

“What time is it out there?” Ryan shouldered the heavy pack he wore. It was full of tools, each carefully explained to him, though he was sure that he had forgotten all of it already. It didn’t matter. They had provided him two other tools, the old but well-maintained pistol from the armory that was heavy and alien in its holster, and the single pill in the locket around his neck if he decided that he couldn’t take this new reality.

The door of the community opened for the first time in over a decade. This was the first door, leading to a small decontamination chamber that had been built in case there had actually been traffic from the outside. In all the years of the community’s existence, that had never happened.

Ryan stepped through the first door, which closed behind him. He could see the three of them, crowding at the window, watching him. The second door unsealed itself, dust blowing in from the outside, quickly sucked up by the vents in the room. The community was not to be contaminated.

Ryan stepped up to the door to the Outside. The community had been sunk into the side of a mountain, the path hewn into the rock. The tunnel was dark and cool, various debris from animals or travelers or god knows what littering the floor. Ryan stepped out into the cave, and the door shut behind him.

Slowly, carefully, Ryan made his way out to the mouth of the tunnel where it emerged into the open air. It was full daylight, but the sun only lit the sky a dull, tumultuous grey. He knew that there was no clear sky anymore, but he had hoped to see some of the great blue dome stretching up forever. After ten years with low ceilings and cramped spaces, though, even this low cloud that had been the doom of so many people looked impossibly high. It gave him a sense of vertigo to look up.

Instead he looked out. The land was blighted, an endless expanse of rocks and dust and hard-packed dirt that was slowly being eroded into desert. There were buildings, many of them still standing, but he saw nothing moving. That fit with the reports the community had. Whatever was left out here in the Outside, it was scarce.

As he adjusted his pack and began to climb down the slope of the mountain to the flat ground below, a thought crossed his mind. A thought so powerful that he felt his spirit break under the weight of it. He wanted to cry, but instead he grinned fiercely, laughing softly to himself. Of course, it was so obvious!

This, he thought to himself, would make for a great story!

The Mob Lawyer (part 4)

Hiroki shifted uncomfortably in the heavy silence that had fallen over the study. Patricia Wallace was sitting in the massive leather chair behind the desk, her knees pulled up under her chin. She looked ill at easy, though he supposed that if he had lost a spouse and was potentially connected to a murder that he’d be upset, too. In the large chair she looked like a girl, awoken by a bad dream and taking comfort in a parent’s things. 

“So … what do we do now?” She asked the room.

Hiroki had no answer. He was still in the chair he had been shown to when they arrived, feeling completely unable to contribute to this situation. Camen was standing off to one side, smoking a cigarette, smoke rising in a cloud above him as he seemed to be browsing the leather bound books on the shelf. 

“The most likely thing,” Camen said, “is that the police will come and question you. It might be prudent to cut them off at the pass, go to them and tell them your husband is missing. They’ll question you about the murder, I’m sure, but I don’t doubt that you’ll quickly rise above suspicion.”

“You’re so sure of that?”  She looked over at Camen. “What if I, in a fit of passion, went over there and murdered her? Why wouldn’t they believe that?” 

“I can’t tell you the specifics of the case, otherwise they might believe that. I’m just going to say that I find it unlikely you’re that capable. It is more likely, though, that they’ll suspect your husband. Especially after you tell them that he’s missing.”

The horrified look on her face prompted Hiroki to speak up before she got really riled and made things difficult. “If they suspect your husband, they’re going to look for him. They have more resources than we do. It’s not a bad thing.”

“I told you I didn’t want this made public,” she said. 

“Right now, it won’t be,” Camen said. “The last thing they want to do is publicly name your husband if he’s not the killer. No sense going out and begging for a lawsuit. They’ll keep it quiet enough. And if he’s not guilty as I assume, then he has nothing to worry about.”

“I don’t like it.”

“I’m afraid you don’t have much choice,” Camen said. “Your husband’s mistress turns up dead, there’s enough information to point them towards mob involvement. It wouldn’t take much searching to figure out that she was spending her free time with a lawyer with mob involvement. If you don’t go to them, they’re going to come to you. And they’ll be a lot less nicer about it at that point.”

There was a protracted moment of silence after that, as their client digested this new data. Hiroki shifted in his chair. It was late, he was going to be in trouble as it was, and now here they were telling someone to go see their biggest competitor. This wasn’t exactly the glamorous detective life he envisioned.

Camen finished his cigarette, putting it out in the small ashtray that Mrs. Wallace had given him. He turned around and began to speak. “If you like, we can take you down there ourselves, I can talk to the detective in charge. It’ll make things nice and smooth, they can question you and you can be back home in a few hours.”

“Right now?  It’s the middle of the night.”

“If we take her down there now, we’re going to be sitting around for hours,” Hiroki said. “Better to wait until morning.”

Camen shrugged. “If you insist. That’s not quite as pre-emptive as I would like, but I suppose it’ll-“

He was interrupted by the chime of the doorbell. There was a moment’s hesitation, the sound so foreign that nobody moved. Patricia was the first one to speak. “I … how did someone get past the gate?”

“It closed behind us when we came in,” Hiroki said. 

“Maybe it’s the police?” Patricia was already standing up, walking towards the door of the study. As she reached for the knob, Camen reached out and put a hand on her arm.

“You wait here. In case it isn’t the police. Stay here with Hiroki, I’ll go check it out.”  He reached into his coat and pulled out a small gun from the underarm holster that Hiroki knew he had. He turned towards Hiroki, nodding. “Watch her. If you hear anything go bad, get her out of here and get to the police.”

“You think it’s that serious?” Hiroki asked, heart pounding. He stood up, a sudden rush of energy making him jumpy, heading towards the door.

“I’m not planning on taking any chances,” he said, before he retreated down the darkened hallway towards the foyer, the bell still ringing. 

Hiroki closed the door after Camen had left, turning towards Patricia.  She was pale and nearly trembling. Hiroki motioned to the chair. “Come on, sit down. It’s fine. He’s paranoid because that’s part of the job. But he’s good at what he does. We’ll be just fine here.”

“But what if we’re not?” she asked. “What if it’s some sort of burglar?”

“Then they wouldn’t be ringing the bell, would they?” Hiroki said.  '”Like I said, just sit down and relax.”  Once she was sitting down, seemingly a little more under control, Hiroki made his way over to the door. There wasn’t any sound now, just the sound of the two of them breathing in this room.

“Mrs. Wallace, I’m going to turn off the lights. Don’t be alarmed.” Hiroki reached up and flipped the switch, plunging them into darkness. Then he cracked open the door and peered out into the darkness of the hall. The hallway was empty, and Hiroki couldn’t see any motion out in the small part of the foyer he could see from here. The house felt suddenly like a tomb, large and still and indifferent. 

Suddenly there was the sound of two heavy impacts, one accompanied with a low grunt. Hiroki was ready to bolt if need be, but in the gloom of the hallway he saw Camen coming down the hall. Of course, he was coming down the hall at a full run, his gun out.  “Hiroki, come on!”

Hiroki turned towards Patricia. “We need to go, now!” To her credit, she was up in a flash, the two of them both making their way out of the study and into the hall. Camen caught up with them, handing Hiroki the keys to the car. “What’s going on?” Hiroki asked.

“There’s someone here. I tackled them, but they’re still here. I don’t know if they’re armed or not.” The three of them raced out into the foyer, Camen at the lead, gun out and scanning the darkness for sign of the assailant. Hiroki led Patricia to the open door, Camen right behind. Out in the yard, they were nearly completely exposed if someone wanted to take a shot at them, but Hiroki knew the drill on safely getting to the car and ran at a half crouch to the vehicle.

He put Patricia in the back, telling her to get down and stay down. Then he made his way over to the driver’s side of the car, Camen right behind him, gun out and sweeping the yard. Out here it seemed much brighter than inside, but the shadows made it hard to tell what was trees moving in the wind and what was the intruder. 

Hiroki started the engine even as Camen was climbing into the passenger seat, peeling out of the parking lot and towards the gate. The headlights revealed that the gate was open, the sliding mechanism smoking faintly. Hiroki kept his eyes on the road, though, getting them out of the there.

“What happened?” Patricia asked.

Camen settled into his seat. “I opened the door but there wasn’t anybody out there. I felt like someone was watching me, though, and got out of the doorway so I wasn’t such an obvious target. Just in case this was the same person who killed Ms. Falchi.”

“I heard a struggle,” Hiroki said. 

“While I was hiding, someone rushed in through the door. I grabbed them, but they were ready for me and there was a fight. I ended up landing a punch that knocked them to the ground, though. Then I went to get you. I’m not sure where they went, but it seems we’ve lost them.”

“What do we do now?” Patricia asked. 

“Well, you can’t go back,” Camen said. “But apparently whoever killed Falchi is after you.”

“You’re sure they’re related.”

“No…” Camen shook his head, pausing. “We need to learn more about this case. And quickly. But until we get a grasp on what’s happening, we need to get you to safety.”

“What did you have in mind?” 

Camen shook his head. “I don’t know. I need time to think. Hiroki, I need to get you home. I’ll take over, and I’ll pick you up tomorrow afternoon.” 

Hiroki’s jaw tensed. The last thing he wanted was to be dropped off and sent back to the safety of his apartment and his mother right when things were getting interesting. This was an adventure! This was exactly the kind of thing he had signed up for when he insisted on being Camen’s assistant. But it was always ‘get Hiroki out of the way’ first and ‘have awesome experiences’ second.

***

Hiroki trudged into the apartment to find his mother sleeping in the recliner in the living room. He set down his bag and gently shook her awake. “Hey mom, I’m home.”

“Oh, Hiroki,” she said, yawning and stretching. “What time is it?”

“A little bit after three,” Hiroki said. “Sorry it took so long. Ben’s server was invaded, had to fight off the intruder and secure the data.”

His mother nodded, glazing over at the first mention of the technology he was ostensibly hired to do. She climbed to her feet and began to head towards bed. “I worry about you staying out so late. You can’t be running around at all hours at your age, it’s unnatural.”

“Mom, everyone my age is running around at all hours,” Hiroki said.  “The difference is that I’m getting paid for it and building up a resume. Don’t worry, I take care of myself. And Ben looks out for me.”

She scoffed. “That man doesn’t look like he can take care of himself, much less anyone else. I don’t trust him. He’s shifty.”

Hiroki rolled his eyes. “Whatever you say.” When his mother went to bed Hiroki sank into the living room couch. He sighed, turning on the TV for some noise and light but not really paying attention to it. At this rate, he wasn’t sure he would ever fall asleep, anxious about what Camen was doing right now, fleeing a would-be intruder—maybe a murderer!---and leaving him here to wait for information.

Thinking about the case, and the adventures that he could be going on if only he wasn’t stuck here, Hiroki fell asleep on the couch, accompanied by the muted light of the TV.