Happy-X

[Rev. St. Syn, KSC (Ret.)]

Happy X Block

1

I followed Mr. Brown to the public bathroom on my floor - 667, It wasn't that my office didn't have a bathroom, it was just that I didn't have to clean my bathroom if I didn't use it. Lazy? Hmm, practical I'd say. I'd won the office in a competition run on the back of Happy Flakes boxes a few weeks ago and had been given the entry code yesterday - Monday morning. I'd entered every Happy Flakes competition since the corporation had taken over Kellogg's back in '34; I was 5 then and had wanted my very own Authentic Pre Optical Processing Retro Gaming System Featuring 23000 of the worlds best games from 1982 - 2019. I hoped it contained Jet set Willy, I wasn't disappointed, Larry Greenbaum down the road had won the thing and showed it to me briefly before the death defying Scrid wrestling match that landed him in hospital for a year. I never spoke to Sucker Face after that. My parents couldn't afford to buy me an RGS of my own. But at least I won the office.

I'm 34.

Happy X Block was the 10th (you might have guessed) self contained business/residential block and the first with a fully fledged independent A.I. running the show. It had opened last week and since then every available apartment and business space was being snapped up by those eager to start anew. Happy X was filled to bursting point and they hadn't yet opened anything above 955, the final 45 levels - the expensive stuff was up there - the luxury con-apts - the law offices.

Sorry I haven't introduced you; Reader, meet Mr. Brown, an electronic strip on the ground that leads you to the nearest bathroom. There are loads of these guys all over the place. Mr. Yellow will help you find any business premises you're looking for, etc. Why they have Mr. Blue shows you to the many lonely singles cocktail bars on 668 is anybody's guess. I don't really have to express my opinion on the naming of Mr. Brown, do I? Fortunately the guide strips are polarised so that only the person following can see them, nobody knows I'm heading to the bathroom. Well that isn't strictly true, Happy X's A.I. does. Everyone in here is 'chipped' supposedly for out personal welfare and protection. All of our personal details are on that chip: Health, credit status, entry codes, criminal record (if you've got one) - all that stuff. I always thought it kind of sinister and since chipping was voluntary on the outside, in the world, I'd never had it done - shop assistants would sigh as I fumbled for my credit card. You had to be chipped to enter a Happy block and the thought of not accepting my prize of the 10 year lease on the office had made me abandon my Luddite ways. Besides I just couldn't afford to pay for my old office anymore and the landlord had already threatened my legs with a garbage truck. I'd taken down the sign from above the door and carried it with me on the train to Happy X. It didn't fit above the door of the new office.

You either had a home and went to work in somebody else's business space, or you had business premises and you lived there too, no-one had both, that would be a crazy waste of space! I have fantastically comfortable couch in my office that doubles as my bed, there's a kitchen and bathroom there too, like I said earlier I don't use my own bathroom, but the kitchen has seen many a great pizza and beer night.

I get to where Mr. Brown is leading me, the public bathroom. I enter, it's empty. Unusual, it's a busy place, 667 has a lot of restaurants and it's lunch time. The cubicles are all open; I enter the nearest one (I could never pee in a urinal - too great a risk of splash-backs). I stop and stare at the quarter slice of Edam cheese sitting on the cistern. Somewhere at the back of my mind I'm laughing hysterically at the bizarreness of this, outwardly I'm just staring at the cheese. I pee, sort my self out then carefully place a plastic bag over the cheese and slip it into a coat pocket. I'm a private detective; I carry plastic bags, ok. I leave the bathroom and buy a no-sugar black decaf coffee, a hi-fibre/lo-fat donut (the junk food world's epitome of pointlessness - I'm kind of charmed by that) and a news sheet at the vending machine mini-mall across the way. I settle down to watch the bathroom entrance alternately glancing at the news sheet, munching and slurping. No-one goes in there, not a soul. After 20 minutes I decide to ask to be shown a bathroom, I sub vocalise this as "Happy X - Show me to the bathroom". I drop my empty cup and donut wrapper (they're swept up by a janibot almost instantly) and fold the news sheet into my pocket. Mr. Brown appears in front of me on the floor leading me away from the bathroom opposite. Strange; I ignore the guide strip and walk over to the bathroom door, it's locked I find this out by banging my face against the glass, usually the door would slide gracefully open, but not this time. I turn around; nobody seems to have noticed my accident except a couple of giggling school girls. I wonder briefly in my dazed state if it's the fedora, the trench coat, or the bleeding nose that was the source of the amusement. My attire is kind of odd in this climate controlled environment, but I've always felt slightly cold in here, it's a couple of degrees warmer in my office. I glance down at the floor; Mr. Brown is insisting I follow back the way I came. I do so having nothing better to do, but clean up my face.

Mr. Brown stops outside my office door, I stop too, but more out of surprise, the nearest public bathroom (other than the one that's closed) is quite a way down the hall, yet the guide strip's insistent little brown arrow is pointing at my office door. I stick my finger in the chip reader and the door slides open. Once inside I polarise the glass, lock the door and dig the cheese out of my pocket.

Now, I like cheese, but I can't say I really ever had a big thing about Edam, odd rubbery stuff. I sit the cheese from the bathroom on the desk and switch on the antique green glass shaded desk lamp Hilary had bought me when I'd opened the first office in Boston. Hilary had a thing for fedoras, old lamps and Edam; she put it on pizza instead of mozzarella - yuck! One of the reasons she isn't here I suppose, the other being that aside from the fedora she eventually decided I was an asshole. Probably true, I'd made an awful big thing of the Edam pizza. The Edam on the desk was getting interesting. The thin edge of the wedge was translucent in the lamp light and there was something inside the cheese. I put on a pair of rubber gloves and failing to find a knife in the drawer I pull the cheese apart with my hands only to discover a human finger, complete with diamond ring buried inside. I drop the cheese reflexively and stumble back from the desk. Nausea washed over me and I made it to and finally christen my bathroom with partially digested coffee and donut. Damn. I doubt I'll ever have a good relationship with Edam at this rate...

[East Coast Hustle]

very interesting. keep it coming.

[LMNO]

Uh oh.  Two detective stories, going on simultaneously?


This should be interesting...


PS - Nice work, so far!

[Malaul]

CROSS OVER STORY CROSS OVER!!!

[LMNO]

Perhaps.... I'm going sort of meta-stream of conciousness here, so i don't really know where "LMNO-PI" is gonna take me.  Perhaps when I get a more clear sense of what "Happy-X" is about, we can give it a shot.

[fluffy]

::happily munches carrot and spinach salad::

i love detective stories

[Rev. St. Syn, KSC (Ret.)]

That's cool. I don't think I'm up to LMNO's (classy stuff) standards though. It took me weeks to squit that chapter out and I have no idea who's finger was in the edam.

[Malaul]

hehehe
squit
hehehe

[Rev. St. Syn, KSC (Ret.)]

I'm thinking this could develop into something for The City, lemme grind my mind. I work like Douglas Adams; I have to be forced to sit down and do it with threats hanging over my head.

[LMNO]

Do it, or I will taunt you a second time!














(apologies to monty python.)

[Bob the Mediocre]

Damn, I missed the first taunting. Was it good?

[LMNO's Shadow]

That fuckhole couldn't taunt himself out of a paper bag...

You didn't miss much.

[Rev. St. Syn, KSC (Ret.)]

Do it, or I will taunt you a second time!

I better get my writing hat on.

[Rev. St. Syn, KSC (Ret.)]

Happy-X

2

Then the lights went out. Cue predictably flashy and disjointed echoic interlude, as I'm dragged out the office, down to the landing bays and bundled into a skycar. What? No, I don,Äôt have any more detail than that. Jeez.

I wake up.

I appear to be standing in a bad part of town. Yep, even this city has its worse than usual parts. I hear the skycar lifting into the night, its turbines whining as it ascends into the murky, polluted gas that passes for air around here.
I turn to my right and look down, there's someone hunched over on the ground.
"Damnit, help me get this fucking thing off!"
I try to crouch down to see what he's talking about, but instead I stumble, my head is spinning. I reach out for a convenient parking meter, miss, stumble further and slide down the wall to sit facing my companion.
He's tugging at something that appears to be wrapped round his ankle. It's a Scrid tentacle, I think to myself. What was a Scrid doing down a drain in this quarter? I didn't feel any compulsion to help my companion out; in fact I felt more than a little joy that the Scrid appeared to have a good grip of him and was slowly dragging him towards the storm drain, but I wasn,Äôt sure why. Scrid hunting season; only they're the ones doing the hunting. What a way to go. He was screaming for help now. I tentatively stood up, using the wall to support myself. No-one knows what they do with their prey; I mean you'd think Scrid would have better taste than that. Actually, I,Äôm positive they do. I staggered over; my companion unleashing obscenities at me by the double barrel load, reaching down past his outstretched hands to his coat pocket. I retrieved a key from it and stepped back out the way of the tentacles. The shouting and swearing stepped up a gear before being silenced as he disappeared down the drain. I watched in the darkness as the Scrid set about its unfathomable task, whatever it may be. It... He watched me from the drain with those unblinking eyes. Slowly, I backed away kicking something with my heel in the process. I nearly went over, but turned and caught myself. I was looking at myself. I had a right arm round my shoulder and was holding my left hand with my left hand. I pulled myself upright and went from two into one again. That was weird. I took a breath, bent over and lifted the kicked object. It was a gun, an old police special. It wasn't a ceramic sheathed plasma-bolt unit, but it'd do for now. I shook off the tendrils of what ever form of mind scrambler I,Äôd been put out with and trudged off in the direction of a patch of city that had more in the way of lights and people than unknown assailants and hunting Scrid.

The street ran out at the gates of a train yard. Luckily, the gates were bust down. In my naivety, I thought it would be a simple matter to traverse the yard and I,Äôd be sure to find an opening in the fence on the other side. Ha! The yard was dark and packed with container carriages for the big intercontinental tunnel maglev trains. Some of the rails were powered, so I had to be careful where I stepped. I hadn,Äôt got 100 meters over, under and through some carriages when a voice emanated from the darkness to my right.
,ÄúHey, buddy,Äù said a voice ,ÄúCareful where ya step.,Äù
,ÄúYeah,Äù another voice affirmed from my left.
,ÄúShit,Äù I said, fumbling for the gun in my jacket.
I spun around looking for the source of the voices, and ended up standing beside myself again. ,ÄòWhat the hell?,Äô I thought. The owners of the voices stepped out of the darkness.
,ÄúShit, there,Äôs two of ,Äòem.,Äù Said the first.
,ÄúYeah,,Äù said the other. ,ÄúSplitter.,Äù
I/we took the opportunity and simultaneously pulled guns on my/our potential assailants.
,ÄúEasy buddy,,Äù said the first raising his hands.
,ÄúWe,Äôre not armed,,Äù chimed-in the other.
,ÄúYeah, sure,,Äù I said. My other self was silent.
,ÄúNo, really. It,Äôs against the rules. Ain,Äôt that right stumpy?,Äù
,ÄòStumpy,Äô stepped into the light. He was 6,Äô4,Äù at least, broad-chested and the total opposite of the image his nick name implied.
,ÄúRules?,Äù I asked bemused.
,ÄúYeah,,Äù said Stumpy. ,ÄúIt,Äôs against the rules of the Yard-Mother.,Äù
,ÄúYard-Mother?,Äù I asked.
,ÄúYeah,,Äù Said stumpy. It seemed to be his favourite word. ,ÄúYouse should take a visit to see her, innat right Earl?,Äù
Earl stepped into the light now; a 4,Äô11,Äù weasel of a man, who seemed to be the brains, if you could call it that, of the outfit.
,ÄúSure,,Äù said Earl ,ÄúThat,Äôs where everybody goes in the end. You might as well go there straight, splitter.,Äù
,ÄúSplitter?,Äù I hadn,Äôt notice my second self stand down and seep back into me, leaving me alone with my new playmates. Stumpy and Earl both laughed.
,ÄúHe doesn,Äôt know.,Äù Said Earl
,ÄúYeah,,Äù said Stumpy, predictably.
,ÄúFor fucks sake, just explain it to me, or get the fuck away from me.,Äù I ranted. Stumpy and Earl, looked like they were about to cry. I immediately regretted my outburst.
,ÄúWe can,Äôt; don,Äôt know enough,,Äù said Earl, scrunching up his features and holding the side of his head.
,ÄúWill you let me go to the other side of the yard, or not?,Äù I asked, waving the gun about erratically, trying to look like I knew what the hell I was doing with it. Earl, pursed his lips, still holding the side of his head and said. ,ÄúYou have the gun, you can kill these two and be gone.,Äù What was he saying? This was making my brain itch, I put the gun away. To tell the truth, I had the distinct feeling I could have done worse than bump into these two brain donors. ,ÄúShe really wants to see you. splitter. You can continue after that.,Äù His face changed into a huge grin. ,ÄúWe have food tonight!,Äù Hunger made itself know. ,ÄúEDAM PIZZA!,Äù he exclaimed loudly. The hunger was viciously murdered by the thought of Edam pizza. ,ÄúOk.,Äù I said, ,ÄúTake me to your leader.,Äù Stumpy and Earl turned and set off in the direction of the middle of the train yard, obviously not getting the joke. ,ÄúI assume, I just follow you guys then,,Äù I shouted after them. No answer. ,ÄúWell, I,Äôll just follow you guys then.,Äù I said stomping off after them.


tbc...


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Posted raw. Haven't tweaked it yet.

[LMNO]

Sweet.  I like the scrid inclusion, and the concept of "splitter".