Excerpt Nineteen:

Much Too Much Much Too Late for Frank and Mabel

‘I knew her when she was a kid, she was quiet and under her smile she was disturbed, which everyone found charming. That’s just how we thought back then. We shouldn’t take it out on ourselves. But she changed, she went vegan, I believe, Judith, I can’t believe, actually. She knocked on my door, gave me a leaflet from a vegan charity.called…something… I took it from her…out of…charity, but things were different back then… it made me feel sick to my stomach. I mean, I told her, I can’t eat vegan food, the human stomach isn’t meant to digest vegetables. Fruit is okay but it gives me the shits, so it’s rationed. And nuts, they are the Devil’s work. Have you had your initial meeting with the cashew nut? It ain’t no nut, I told her…it’s a parasite living on the bottom of an apple… Ass apple pip, more like. I gave her the spiel; I didn’t know any different. We were all conditioned…to serve the masters, the Lords of the land. It’s different now of course. I can’t wait for common sense and automated laws to take over. Do you have any skinny on the download time? I mean if you are government people you’d have the inside word, wouldn’t you?’

Mabel and Frank shook their heads solemnly in sync.

‘Ass Apple Pip. Isn’t that a three words square in Miami?’

‘I think you’ll finds it’s SoCal.’

Frank Stone and Mabel Russell didn’t need to roll their eyes at each other, they could ‘get’ each other and leave their eyes unrolled. This man was a type; an über tribble. They’d called because Mark Tribble, the occupant of the domicile across the road from the Callas home, had made several complaints a few years back. The complaint had been filed under ‘no action’ and put to the bottom of the list. Mr. Tribble had lodged a series of what he called ‘serious’ complaints accusing a local woman of trying to force her religious views on him and trying to entice him in to a mad diet cult using flirty fishing techniques; techniques Tribble had identified and confirmed by looking at porn on the internet.

‘People can survive as well on a vegan diet as any other diet,’ Frank proffered, adopting a positive and fair-minded attitude Mabel found irritating.

‘Who told you that?’ Tribble countered, starting to turn, causing a counter rise in turnability in the two cops/ex-cops.

‘UK and US dietetic associations…they seem to be the authority on dietary issues.’

‘With respect, you can’t believe anyone nowadays, especially specialists.’

‘We have to put trust in something or we drift into chaos.’

‘We’ve been drifting in and out of chaos since the last time we had a good world war…bring back the birch…that’s what—‘

‘I hope you will trust us, Mr. Tribble.’

‘You know they are trying to wipe us out don’t you?’

‘I beg your pardon, Mr. Tribble?’ Frank and Mabel did know this fact, but in a more informed way. Tribble was way off track. But his private conclusion reached the summit via the backdoor and matched theirs, which stopped their jointly imagined eyes rolling at each other. They felt the familiar nausea that had become familiar as it drove through them in waves every time they remembered the current impending fate of humanity, which, as far as they could make out, was going to come from alien artificial intelligence of an unidentifiable nature. A well kept official secret that was leaking out with increasing gaseousness.

In the car outside:

‘That stupid little fillet-of-fuck, flapping around in his own stupid-juice.’

‘His mother must have been a piece of work, he’s been indoctrinated with snot covered shit.’

Mabel and Frank liked to display some juvenile vitriol once away from most of the people they dealt with, it was a tradition that had built over their long professional relationship. They both had issues with being polite for any sustained period, a disposition they recognised in each other within seconds of first meeting. Insulting Tribble let steam off; restoring the equilibrium.

‘Where does that leave us?’ Mabel said, calmly, post vent.

‘It corroborates the change thing that was going on from witness X and witness Q the MI5 and CIA agents. It was the trip, Callas made to the Balearics: Ibiza, or Mallorca, there are conflicting details.’

‘Spain is the key. We need to get out to whichever island it turns out to be and put our lips and ears on the ground.’

‘They do these great translation devices—’ Frank began and checked himself.

‘We need to—’

‘…Keep tech out of the equation, I know, I know. I lapsed. It’s hard.’

‘I know.’

They knew…

It had been happening slowly but surely for the last three or four or five years or more: people slipping out of mental awareness. Frank and Mabel had a pool of sanity they slopped around in together; a jacuzzi of anchored familiarity, but the whittling evaporation was so forceful they could taste it. They were turning into everyone else, as humanity queued up for the…whatever it was alien AI was using to end human lives these days. Time was becoming less abundant and more treasured.

They both cried for a while before regaining control with snotty laughter. HQ was incommunicado; there was a power switchover that seemed to be on pause. Their outgoing boss told them, ‘business as usual’, but he sounded gravely ill. And the breezy incoming automated authority had fired them…they were doing what instinct drove them to do. But their car, all of a sudden, wouldn’t start, it was dead; it wasn’t driving them anywhere. They were not surprised, all electric motors were controlled from a central point.

Frank rifled around in a box behind the passenger seat and brought out a printed map.

There had been an email, while they were still using computers, from an ex-employee of a ‘special’ military laboratory conducting what was described as the ‘refurbishment’ of ex-special forces; hybrid-superhuman modification, abomination…whatever. Hector Kendle had gone off the radar, after the interview, when the project was mothballed. But a Spa Hotel that Kendle had mentioned—his body language expressed a wish that he had not given away the hotel’s location—was a couple of hours away on foot, avoiding roads, and seemed like the most convenient place to start.

They left the car; hard-copy map-led, and walked spa-wards.