Excerpt Sixty-Seven

KUNGFUISH CONSEQUENCES

It was somebody’s back room in downtown Geneva, but nevertheless it was officially a Chinese police station: that was one perspective. 

The localised view was that it was not there at all, a figment influencing the imaginations of those who made trouble with such ease that they seemed to be doing it in tandem with their breathing, and those who’d blow anything whistley they found entrancing their mouthparts. The establishment, at worse, could only be unofficial, culturally unSwiss, Chinese hospitality minding its own business. ‘No questions’ was the top-shelf-thumbs-up option. No one wanted to mess with the Chinese police on a busman’s holiday, least of all the local Swiss police. The local Swiss policy regarding Chinese ‘interference’ had so many holes in it many referred to it as ‘holey inadequate’.

Meanwhile, back at the Necessary Foreign Interference Police Station in the Name of Minimising Effect of Rogue Artificial Intelligence (NFIPSNMERAI), the casual-in-appearance and ruthless-in-efficiency staff laboured away in the name of the People and their Joyful Narrative Programmers (JNP).

Viktor had always carried an irrational fear of the Chinese. Not the ordinary everyday Chinese, well, maybe them too, a little, but mainly the ones who had whirlwind-style Kungfuish abilities and weren’t afraid to dish out a menu of spinning karate chops at the drop of a vase. He realised this was probably TV and movies oriented anxiety at play; screen-based programming, but was it entirely? There was a truth behind the act that Viktor did not want to face because he valued his face and flying chops meeting aghast chops was too one-sided even if his jaw had been made out of bricks. 

Being represented in life’s historical tapestry as ‘victim number nine’ manifested an aversion in Viktor… As his mother used to say: ‘You are not a victim, you are a Viktor…’ He’d made his mother proud and been a full member of Life’s victory club…her little Viktor… Except now Lady Victoriousness seemed to be calling in debts; appearing at odd hours to exchange forgotten victories for screamingly unjust victimhood’s.

It was the waiting while presenting a limited and weak façade of stoicism that opened up lines of internal enquiry he usually had neatly blocked off. An intrusion of thought made the waiting bearable while the waiting made the thought intrusion seem valid. He was in an inverted spin and soon the crowd will realise he was not part of the aerial display but just trying to land with conventional aerodynamic stress.

He’d been battered before. He’d spent time in the Siberian Outlands and the mixture of anything Siberian winter and vodka and/or sub-vodka poison such as bath cleaner and the like, would invariably lead, if time had her wont, to a battering at minimum, sometimes warranted, sometimes even encouraged, but always damaging and leading to another reason never to be sober. You couldn’t always see the damage but it built up over the months and as soon as Viktor got out of there he took time sitting on a puffed-up couch run by an assertive psychiatrist who specialised in retrieving rotting minds from frozen wastes.

Viktor considered the cliché of there being a laundry downstairs and restaurants either side…but then he wandered a little; jumped from one cliché to another. 

Viktor considered the cliché: Do you know who I am? But he knew with certainty that, not only did they know; they probably knew more than he did. His expertise on the character of Viktor, who he’d honed over decades of graft, was diminishing. It was just an age thing, wasn’t it? He wasn’t nosediving, he was pacing himself. Technology would provide longevity, he just needed to meet it halfway; in the gap between invention and production. He’d read sci-fi that had most of the answers, but coming down from fiction to reality; it had only presented questions that baffled current technology.

He used to know who he was. He felt like someone, or some thing, had stolen his identity and abandoned it in a lay-by before setting it on fire but after joy-riding it like joy was a object of abuse.

The police station smelt primarily of antiseptic, but there was another, sweeter smell underlying, fighting with a slightly less coherent olfactory elusiveness. 

He was waiting around, playing his role, expectant of flying fists and feet, maybe they were waiting for a whirlwind Kung Fu exponent to be free from battering some other innocent bystander. 

But the truth, that no one was considering, was that they were waiting for the Superintendant, who’d been caught shoplifting at Lidl. It was the bread and water of the operation: he’d explained to the cashiers that he was testing their security. The higher up the chain the story went the more damage limitation measures kicked in. Diplomacy’s head gave an imperceptible nod and looks were exchanged that resulted in Lidl handing over cash to a man inside a letterbox.

Viktor had said next to nothing. He knew how much that must irritate them. He behaved in a dignified and resigned manner, even though resigning wasn’t particularly dignified. It was the way he did it; he had always been exceptional at conducting himself; adept at the orchestra-of-the-self. A life led in operatic melodiousness. He was a masterpiece: he wasn’t, but that’s what he was musing as the Muse took hold and and led him round GaGa village. And then he was wondering why he was musing those falsehoods… Then he linked said muses with the distant and uncertain sound of a fat voiced lady, singing for metaphorical explanatory purposes. The metaphorical explanation being: the End, checkout!  a visit from the Pope’s boss in the conference room above St Peter’s Cafe Gate and Bistro.

Was this the end?

It wasn’t the end, it was a blip caused by the narrative assembly apparatus in his crammed and contorted mind; every corner had an End-of-Ends around it, seemingly, ready to pounce and slip the Reaper’s hood over his head and ‘tickle’ him with a scythe… 

But Death-o-Vision was a sideshow. 

What would most likely happen was, he would update his household of bots, gain some kind of tech rejuvenation advantage…and what? He’d have a better idea when it happened. He was tired, he would never admit to such weakness, but there we were.

Technology had arrived that would give him the kung fu magic. He’d done the groundwork, enquiring at Davos. Whispering into the winds of change.

There was hope…what would he make of it? He wasn’t in a position to project; he had limited energy output. He’d forgotten the sheer heft of pounds per square of horsepower plotting and scheming exacted on a man’s mitochondria.

and… what? 

He’d reform, return to the scene of morally atrocious acts and making sure they were settled either by reparations or by finishing the job. The whole Good and Evil thing seemed up in the air. Anyone going back over their lives and wishing for something different is a fantasist. 

What happened makes you who you are, do you want to be someone else? And after a little more digging into the past and his affect on it and people who deserved better, he concluded: Yes! with unexpected alacrity…

Stirring after being stirred…

‘Sorry to keep you, Mr Flabby-Cough,’ said a man, entering suddenly from the left, neither sounding nor looking Chinese. 

‘That’s Fla-bee-coff.’

‘We have reason to believe that there is a death threat to you. It appears credible and we want to cut it off at the pass, so to speak. How amenable are you to working with us? Is there anyone who you know who might have a vendetta against you.’

Vendetta aside the man was disguised as a non-Chinese person. Then, in an is he? isn’t he? conundrum, Viktor tried to ignore, his Chineseness poking through, it became obvious he was all Chinese but with a Euro-slant…whether the looks were bespoke or coincidentally natural one would never know…or indeed, care.

An unconscious assembly of names and places built a massive industrial complex Viktor’s conscious mind had previously wiped off the map. 

Viktor’s name list spun like news hot off the press from the fifties… he tried to say a name. But it was impossible to say ten names at once. And as no name had precedence over any other it was like a wall of names building on the shoreline ready to douse the sand dunes. No single name could make its way through the mist and Viktor, for the first time since he was a child, began to cry. The human was an impressive physical object, but from time to time problems with leaking and such let it down.

Viktor wondered, where was the martial arts thump of grievous bodily harm when one needed it.