Excerpt Ten:
Two to One
They left Mallory in a passing place half a mile North of the entrance to the spa hotel grounds. Judith didn’t like leaving Mallory; Mallory had never had been exposed to such vulnerability while under her stewardship, but fuck it, she reasoned, she had new obligations and allegiances, and it was just a car. But then not just a car because she had been Judith’s only true friend, apart from some oil-eating issues, for the previous decade: had it been that long? Where had time gone? Fuck it, she thought, it’s gone, it’s only time; time is no friend of mine…
To Judith, Kirk was a paradox; both a safety and a danger, dangerous safety, paradoxically, dangerously safe… Kirk danced her slow, and then dervishly whirled her fast. One shade of black and white; alternating, stark contrasts that fitted perfectly into the ethos of the dawning era… life was becoming more like a video game. Did she just say that?
Anyhow…
The Sheriff’s deputy sticks to her Sheriff no matter how slippery the surface becomes: she’d read that somewhere. She wanted to read it again someday, but now she had an agenda to climb.
The entrance to the hotel drive was barred by an ex-MOD barrier deserted by the outgoing establishment. Kirk caught a whiff of an odour redolent of a freshly sprung trap; his systems went into overdrive… Kirk’s bird-brain shut down and entered the communications corridor; he walked along it and entered the operations room where the odour was clarified: final approach to the target was compromised by enemy emplacements. DRD satellite system engaged: there’s booby-traps, three ex-special forces personnel guarding a suspected techno-VIP, our man, and set up to take Kirk down and then steal G & G labs’ property.
Judith’s eye-lids stuck together and her hearing ceased in peculiar slow motion; a thud went through her bones and soul that felt unrelated to the momentary loss of sensory appreciation. A smell of burning filled the air… her senses returned, ambled back whistling, unperturbed. A shockwave followed by a lack of shock; not even out of breath. ’What just happened?’ she asked Kirk, but he seemed to have other things on his mind.
Kirk’s emotional self-appraisal was jammed momentarily, then nudged on with new data: the vaporised personnel were lying in ambush and had orders to kill Kirk. The outgoing powers were getting rid of the last refurbished souls in a scorched-earth retreat to an underground position. But why, thought Kirk, if they were on the same side? Wires had been crossed somewhere and high voltage passed through them.
A few paces passed, and they were side by side, cresting the driveway’s gentle summit. They both paused at the sight of the hotel, its single occupant, a nonentity who would, all the same, dictate their future.
Judith went back to a memory she had strained and filtered and moulded and folded and stroked before so many times: she’d gone to Ibiza to meet up with Atoll and his mother at a super-luxury rented villa mansion. A breathtaking view from its poolside terrace, looking down on the Mediterranean and the town below was memorable, maybe if it hadn’t been she would not have been aware of the visit. She would have insisted on wandering down to the town, if only to gauge vegan social evolutionary progress, and walking along the beach, and drinking-in the paradise from multiple points of view… but she did nothing according to what memory should recall; just sat by the pool. That wasn’t her, so who was it? The one certainty she did have about the memories was that she had not been drugged in any way—this thought was pervasive and conclusive—and it didn’t seem odd that it was the one concrete fact left from the two-week trip.
Kirk was debriefed by the Neurosphere with assurances that the next of kin had been informed. Three ex-HM special forces troopers were vaporised in the action, it was quick and painless. They would not have stopped until Kirk was no more. They had no intel surrounding his connection to the DRD satellite, obviously. The tidy, instantaneous massacre had a heightening effect on Kirk that outweighed the regret at despatching men who could once, and should be now, have been his brothers in arms—One warrior to another; this was purely a business transaction.
Judith was being sucked into the black hole of having to inter-communicate with fake Atoll; she had worries that her heart was closed to him and open to anything her sheriff might suggest, (she’d try anything once, as long as it didn’t involve cruelty to animals). She was still awaiting his animal cruelty credentials. So far he hadn’t killed anyone, which was good. He had a quality of killerness to him; an action movie, cartoon violence capability. If he were a killer, it could still work… if he killed solely in the name of animal advocacy… It could work very well. A parade of candidates for ruthless despatch clambered for her administrative attention… until…
Atoll knocked and she let him in, they were back in Ibiza, with his mother, who would never drug anyone, knowingly. She was a strange woman, but not a doper. The whole week was strange, stranger than strange, but not the kind of strange you’d experience if slipped a two week long, memory pulverising Mickey Finn.
Subsequent to Ibiza, dreams and nightmares had popped in to say hello, but she couldn’t identify them as being present during the two week drug-fest… what? Drug-fest? Where did that come from: the use of drugs is not a potential explanation for the memory incapacitation; decapitation… that was beyond question… so far beyond question… Jesus, she thought, had she been drugged?
They descended the shallow slope to the reception entrance. They paused again, looked at each other, experiencing some kind of melded portal of synchronised sharing of the weight of pain and or discomfort that could be waiting for them in reception. And entered the entrance as one…
Excerpt Ten (B):
There was a short, deep thump of thunder, but looking out, the weather was fine, the air smelled of putrid, burnt flesh; a barbecue breakfast nearby. Two figures appeared at the crest of the drive and closing in. He took up his readied station behind the hotel reception desk, unsure of who they were coming to meet: it was going to be him, but who was him?
Descending the drive, landing gear down, Kirk’s bird-brain configuration received incoming data.
Judith was apprehensive. Her search for Atoll would soon be over.
Reaching the level of the pick-up and drop-off point, pausing…until they could pause no longer…
Kirk’s olfactory probing system was picking up something intrusive from Judith, as they squeezed inconveniently through the door together in a misjudged, plane-crash, of an ingression; examining her chemical output: she suddenly ranked as a priority threat; a chemical marker of indefatigable threat. Had the mission already been compromised? And whose puppetry control equipment was she dangling from?
Meanwhile, para-interconnectedly…
In the room, which was, handily, down the corridor from Kirk’s briefing room, Kirk sat on a stool at a grubby metal table; was he even supposed to be there? The door barrels open…an elaborately coiffured gentleman struts cockfully into the room; cascading from on high, through a valley… to its bottom…where a waterfall of trilling flourish meets a fountain of flourishing trill: ‘My name,’ he stated with absolutivity, is…’ …pausing, performatively and in one word; spurted forth: ‘ProfesssorrayFFFlaggrrrantayAmmorray de llla Casstannetta delllaMuunndo…’
Seemingly, forever passed, before Kirk realised that the man, of Spanish and Italian culturality, was looking Kirk up and down…and sideways…and… in and around…and through his eyes… an ocularly saturating invasion.
Kirk could not build a bridge, to span the raging river delta of nonsense, to reach the fresh pastures of sense that beckoned from the opposite bank…
Meanwhile… The bland man behind the desk seemed to home in on them while remaining static; he was an iceberg and they were a ship sailing in the vicinity. And thanks to the Titanic we know how dangerous that can be. Kirk’s alarms pasted themselves all over the man, whose quotidian facade: dopey, bored, boring… a person who should never have been a manager. Kirk wondered what this man’s story was; how he got filtered into a career path he is clearly fitted to like a pair of synthetic gloves being used as socks. Kirk noted that his systems were playing paper aeroplanes with flights of fancy.
Atoll, let’s call him, was looking at a blank monitor and pretending to write something on a pad without a writing implement. His focus was on the two people entering the hotel foyer and nothing else, and it showed, despite his efforts to feign otherwise. He’d been warned, by Atoll, that G & G labs might send a hideously over-modified agent to take him to certain brain-fuck-land or if he’s lucky, kill him on the spot. The woman was probably Judith… She did not look like he expected from Atoll’s less than flattering description.
The Prof. is waiting inanimately, save the world turning in his eyes… Kirk’s flummoxed.
The partners closed in on the lone wolf in sheep’s synthetic clothing; in a different era, he’d be played by a robot.
Judith scanned the fake Atoll: her quest to find him had ended in a new quest: to leave him. It was Atoll. Definitively him… a few memories, neither particularly pleasant nor unpleasant, crept in to aid with the assessment, then he said…
‘Good morning lady and gentleperson. Are you paying cash toady?’
Atoll vanished… The idea that this was Atoll became a bizarre concept. He wasn’t even trying to be Atoll…he’d never met Atoll… So what was he doing masquerading around in Atoll’s body?
‘Do you have a room for one night for a party of two?’ Kirk opened.
‘Yes, we are together. Why cash? We have cards. Do you have soundproofed rooms?’ Judith added, trying a brand of elfin-cheek she’d not tried before, but just sounding familiarly preposterous. Had she tip-toed too far out of her depth?
‘Cards don’t work anymore.’
‘I have cash,’ Kirk offered.
‘Oh, thank god.’ said the manager, to his computer, tapping the keyboard at random. ‘We have just one room left, it is the safe room…you’ll have to share it…with me…as the nights here exude the mystique of mortal danger. This place was last used as a secret service rally point for retreating agents…it’s going to appear on enemy radars…of differing…you know…the score…’
‘The new normal.’
‘Precisely. Precisement, as Basil Fawlty would say. You’ll be safe…in that room,’ he said, looking at Judith for too long, with no sense of recognition, ‘for cash, and it is, coincidentally, soundproofed… so…’
‘What do you think, darling?’ Kirk says to Judith, turning…gazing into her eyes, acting every microgram the peckish lover.
‘Oh, darling, it sounds perfect,’ she cooed back in attentive pretence, shamefully, fractionally meaning it, spurred on by the haemorrhaging of who she was, fascinating at who she could be.
Judith’s appraisal was that Atoll’s body had been snatched and reanimated by a feckless alien idiot, a real one. Judith forgave herself for assuming he had been a feckless idiot in his previous incarnation, clearly, by comparison, he had been feckful and idiocy free. The paradox she experienced prompted her to rename the manager…
‘Atticus!’ she said, a name her unconscious had been working on, sprouted and spread and felt around for somewhere to attach its roots.
Atoll/Marcus/Other, responded well to the instantly burgeoning nomenclature. ‘Yes, hello, welcome.’ he ejected, feeling for a name badge that wasn’t there… noting to himself that he would write the name Atticus and wear it with pride… it felt that good to him straight out of the box: ‘Atticus…Atticus…Yes, groovy… yeah, baby…’ his mood rose as he got rid of other people’s lost baggage. A new name, a new adventure; someone in his imaginary past might have said. It is what he needed. Judith was a saviour and he wanted to attach himself to her for safety plus.
I just renamed him, she thought, and he is running with it… Atoll and I never had such a close and responsive connection, maybe this guy is an upgrade… If I’d suggested a new name to Atoll he would have burped or something.
Atticus had been intending to work the reception area until enough cash paying customers had booked in to finance his ticket out of there, despite his fondness for the safety he felt at being here. He felt no one would come, save the shadows dashing across the lawn and disappearing into special forces rolls. He had been stuck, but now the wheels were sliding down the steep, icy incline.
Was this couple death, or a full tank of second chance? A spark in the flat battery?
To the Kirk in the planning room, a quickly re-arranged briefing room, things were looking good apart from the Judith question; she’d be easy to lose, he thought, but something didn’t feel right. His system were still processing. First stage was complete and he was due a G & G update of mission objectives. He reflected on The Prof., made the leap, and looked him in the eyes… and got lost.
But then the mission update came and it was grim: dispose of the woman, once target confirmed as neither, Atoll Goodmanson or, Marcus Godstrand. Then escort target to San Diego…further instructions to follow…
Judith felt good, considering she had just learned her boyfriend, ex, was still missing, and she was under the control of a refurbished agent who could be working for anyone, and whom she felt could fall in love with her and then kill her with equanimity, within half-an-hour; and the switch over from manual to automatic global governance was foundering, with catastrophic consequences, she felt great…because, as strange as it sounded within the shrouded raccoon of her thought, she seemed to have gained two men….
Atticus felt like he had been saved and there was more saving to be had.
Kirk, wondered what ‘dispose’ meant in this context…he knew, he just wondered about it to see if a little wondering might warp its round meaning into a square truth; he tried and tried, but…no…the mission came first.
Professore Flagrante Amore de la Castaneta della Mundo, rolled his eyes…
Excerpt Ten (c):
It had been a great day and the successful launch into a new brave wild wonderland was going well; part of her didn’t want it to stop. She also fancied waking up and finding it had been a simulation and everything was back to how it was. The grass was greener through the binoculars of reminiscence, anyway it wasn’t grass, it was astro-turf, that would end its days, turfed-out washed up, partying, on some idyllic coral reef.
Atticus had been bewildered by what Kirk explained to him about the safe-room they were sleeping securely in over night; just for this night, before moving on to a secret and stateside destination; it was like she’d entered a travel competition; winning a secret prize. Atticus had read and re-read the manual, but nowhere did it mention half the technological noggin-busting genius Kirk seemed to just instinctively know.
Putting the brakes on the sleep she felt she didn’t need, but was coming to get her anyway, Judith could have stretched out and almost touched Kirk, but she couldn’t look at him because his eyes were wide open and staring, not at her, inwardly, oddly… She’d tried to find out whether he was asleep; trying his different names: Kirk, James, Kirk T. James, even James T. Kirk, then Shatner, Bill, Sheriff, Boss, and finally, ‘Oi, you!’. She wondered if he’d died and whether his death had been caused by the curse she’d cast on him when he ignored her one too many times, not that she was keeping score; she was keeping score, but incidentally. She wasn’t a control freak…
Atticus was snoring in abrasive waves of insomnia inducing nasal clatter; mimicking, maybe even mocking the nocturnal biological behaviour of the once present Atoll… She thought she missed Atoll in the snatched moments of quiet in between each wave of nausea.
The unpleasant task of burying the dead bodies had been bitter, but a sweet note pervaded after the ceremony: saying goodbye and apologising for humanity contained within a catharticism. It was the first time she’d had two attentive, geniunely on board, fellow humans during such an act of freelance spiritualism.
‘Please God,’ she’d said, and she didn’t believe in a beardy, old, white fucker, but some furious conglomerate of all life on Earth and in the Universe, waving his/her fist, calling Humans out for being cunts (in the new American sense of the word) for their greed, arrogance and stupidity in their exploitation of animals, especially in this age, where it has no place apart from satiating greed, arrogance, and egoistical insanity gone mad. The most benevolent God would be the one going: ‘There, there, you’re mentally ill and can’t help yourselves.’—she wished he’d/she’d grow some, and nail all those fuckers who harm animals to a cross; see how they like it.
She gauged Kirk and Atticus, standing by shovels they’d got from a janitor’s closet in an annexe…they were either, convincing actors, or, what she did had credence outside the over-grown corral of her ‘first do no harm’ small holding. They’d both forgone the opportunity to say some words, but she’d covered it all, and they were probably unwilling to show emotion to each other, or her. Behaviour, she recollected from a book called What a Fish Knows, that fish are capable of. And she got a slight sensation of the beings, once housed in the buried fish parts, swimming in the air, on their way to heaven; a place, if justice is a thing, very few humans will ever reach.
She felt cuddlesome all of a sudden and thought she could cuddle Atticus, but didn’t want to in any other way than a ‘port-in-a-storm’ way. Cuddling the skipper, Kirk was out, until she fell asleep and took pot luck in dreamland, so she let herself go there.
Meanwhile…
Kirk was in two minds, he was wide-awake and fast asleep. He was bedding down in a state-of-the-art safe room with two suspicious muggles; she had overrun his defences and become a captive with Stockholm syndrome, which he reciprocated. Mutual Stockholm Tethering, maybe, part of him was already writing a paper on it. He tried to imagine what Judith Rome Callas was feeling. The male unit was more than just a human, he had signs of cerebral real estate activity. Kirk’s systems were dizzily curious about.
Kirk replayed the ceremony for meat she conducted…as touching as it was, it could be seen from another angle as a sign of mental fraying. But it was also basted in truth and empathy; a beautiful example of next-generation, sophisticated civilisation, emerging… It was a pity humanity would be autonomously usurped and never get a chance to dance and skip down that avenue on a moonlit night…and as that half of his brain slipped away into a rejuvenation phase… Dave ran up…because he could… existentially panicked, verbally assaulting Kirk: what the fuck they were doing…and…what was happening to them…and…when would a sense of believability latticed with relaxed understanding return; was the gist…
Meanwhile…
Another Kirk was dozing in the empty briefing room; the calm before the storm. The next briefing would be in a few hours, he’d got there early. His curiosity wanted to try to prise open a can of answers and swallow the contents in one gulping ingestion…
There sounded a knock on the door. Kirk tried, but the door could not be opened. It was the Professor. He could not hang around, he said, he wasn’t the grim reaper, he told Kirk in a whisper. If Kirk was not willing to play the game; playtime was over. Kirk still didn’t know what the fuck Professor Flagrant Amour Castanets, was trying to tell him. It was like he balanced on the tip of Kirk’s tongue, or, he was a cistern that promised a flush but couldn’t deliver.
‘Just look at her, and position her within your scape…’
‘Kirkscape?’
‘Yes, Kirk, Kirkscape, if you like.’
While…
Contemporaneously…
Kirk looked at Judith. She had already invaded his space and she couldn’t have any more of him because he was government property. And who was this Professor? And why did he want Kirk to let Judith into his inner sanctum, when all Kirk’s defences said no, no, no, no, no; ad infinitum. Was Judith some kind of virus? A decision was incoming… She’d gone far enough and he was quarantining her unconditionally; any other course would be too risky. A figure flies at him out of the dark, it’s Dave, launching a karate kick, frustrated and furious… What’s his problem?
Professore Flagrante Amore de la Castaneta della Mundo, couldn’t cross over from a specific world within a world within world. He was love, he wasn’t love; which was it? Whichever one it was, was dependent on two people and the myriad of intelligent stupidities there within. Two doors led out of his waiting room: one: death, the other: unimaginable, limitless, love and connection, in a consciousness sphere that craves connection, if only with itself dressed as an alien.
