I find myself at this time…[open air]
Sorry. Totally forgot what I was going to say.
You’re probably asking how I knew it was a setup. It’s simple really. Nothing is ever that easy. I mean come on. An intergalactic kingpin without a shred of empathy sending little old me to get his daughter. Please. Even if he had a daughter and she was taken hostage for ransom, a shrewd businesscreature such as himself would just buy a new one. I’ve seen lesser dons do it.
All these assholes out here are no different than the assholes back home. They all make the same mistake. And that is, they think they are smarter than me. Hopefully, you see in hind sight how obvious the trap was. Plus, call me paranoid, but I assume that everyone around me is cognitively challenged – to put it nicely – and intends to kill me.
So far I have not been wrong.
I think I remembered what I was going to say earlier.
I find myself with not only my exorbitant amount of what was my money, the ransom money, and whatever was on that third chip. So I assumed anyway. Seeing that there was no intent for me to ever be able to spend said money, it’s safe to assume that there was nothing on those chips. Well, maybe. I should have checked then and there the contents of the chips, but I already knew what was up. Besides that, there’s the principle of never look a gift shark in the eye, or whatever. Thirdly, I didn’t have any more room in my bag o’ grenades to carry a chip reader.
When in doubt there are always grenades.
Moral of the story.
Don’t.
Fuck.
With.
Me.
Because I promise you that I am much better at fucking.
As dumb as Zalud’s men may be, I never underestimate an adversary. It was safe to assume that the chips were a trap. Say I took off with the goods, there’s likely a tracking signal. If not overtly, the currency, if it exists, was likely traceable. Hell, I’m traceable. My reputation precedes me like a wrecking ball, being a distinct species put aside.
And isn’t this a lot more fun than peace talks for a princess?
Next question.
What’s more useless than no information?
Too much information. Inundation. I love that word. Inundate.
This takes to me to phase two of the screwing. Advanced foreplay.
It was time to take a trip to what I affectionately call Sprawl Central to meet who I called the Count. Count D’Money when I’m feeling cheeky. Travel needed to be quick, immediate even. The cheap bastard Z set us in what was essential coach to carry out the deal. Makes sense I guess – not spending too much money on my death. Cheap funeral.
“Ports” as I call them are heavily regulated. Teleporters, gates, wormholes, blah blah blah. A billion miles between here and there means nothing in space, just in case you weren’t feeling insignificant enough. Naturally, being me, I have connections. Shady ones, that are surprisingly upstanding come to think of it. I should buy some of these guys Christmas gifts as a thank you. I think I put them at more risk than they pose to themselves. Gotta have some kind of honor among the cretins.
The biggest and bestest gift was about to go to Steve. He was about to earn it.
Picture a Steve. That’s Steve. Picture a city with a reference like Sprawl. That’s what it looked like. If you’re still struggling with that just read the trilogy about it. You won’t regret it.
Having a port in the heart of a money-changing underworld is a bad idea. Having one nearby that is unregistered and highly illegal, however, is essential. Picture it, a borderline derelict city sprawling out in every direction. It has everything every other city has: its own politics, crime, community, economy. Some of the wealthiest beings in the universe live in that shanty town, actually. Some of the nicest creatures, most cunning, and heartless I’ve ever met all live there. Some ghetto rich, others straight up loaded by even Zalud standards. In other words, any city you’ve ever been to.
I had a plan. As little as I thought of my adversary I assumed they assumed what my plan was. So I hoped to make more of an ass of them than me. That plan required Steve; I hope he’s doing alright.
I made my way through the dark gloomy night. I suppose it was night. It was dark. There was an ambient glow letting me see enough as I went. The buildings were impressively tall for such a rundown area. Buildings built on top of one another until the sun no longer shined. It made me wonder what it was like in its heyday. To have such a large, impressive city gone to ruin. Such is the tale of most cities from what I’ve seen over the years, I suppose.
The few residents present in this particular part of town scurried inside at the sight of a stranger. Fear is often confused with wisdom. I wandered on from the port through the streets, into alleys. Couldn’t tell you street names, or how to get there really, I just kind knew from muscle memory how to get there. No one seemed interested in starting trouble with me, not once, since I had been there. Maybe they knew better. Maybe it was that crazy aura I tend to put off. Maybe I was just too weird looking and they avoided me as you would a rat scurrying past your feet.
Down a particular dark alley off a particular dark street there was a particular dark rusted door among the rubbish and detritus of the city.
“New England Clam Chowder,” I told the door.
The knob turned readily when I turned it. Inside laid an even darker darkness. I stood there, alone, in silence for a moment.
“The white,” I murmured.
Another door clicked open. Beyond it, a warm glow of light lead the way.
“Cooper!” an excited voice barked from the other side. “That you?”
Suitcase full of money. Get it? Huh. Huh.
“Depends. Who’s asking?” I laughed.
“You know the way.”
The password was taken from my suggestion. It had to be simple, memorable, and require a level context that only existed between sender and receiver. Plus he thought the movie was hilarious.
I walked into the light. It was just another chamber. There was no Steve. It was just a partially lit antechamber with what looked like the remnant furniture of a society long forgotten. Three other doors walled me in. One does not simply walk into another paranoiac’s living room.
It would be imprudent of me to give all the details, but the answering of the three riddles was only the beginning of the maze. This door, that door. Take such and such corridor. The place hadn’t been cleaned in like forever. There was little to no light.
If someone had managed to make their unwanted way into this labyrinth they’d assume it was another derelict building in that derelict city. Only, if they erred in their path, which they technically already had, the path was ill fated for them. Many of the disintegrating runners and hall tables and chandeliers were not what they appeared to be. I can’t say they were there at all really; I didn’t want to get that intimate with the death traps that littered the place.
Onward and downward, it was quite a journey to the kingdom below the jungle. Then in typical fashion I came to a large burnished wood door, elaborately carved in characters I did not recognize. They may have just been knotted vines, I don’t know.
The door opened.
Steve looked like a Java the Hut that hat started a diet. His human Steveness came in the form of is shock of messy black hair and I guess a mustache. I try not to get close enough to others to find out. Never know what spits venom out here. And I have a fear of people with bad breath.
“I saw a bit of movement in the markets,” he said, motioning for me to follow. “Not entirely surprised to see you.”
“Am I that predictable?” I asked.
“The explosions didn’t help.”
We walked through the living, I guess. I don’t know – I sleep on a small cot on a dusty spaceship if I’m not in some space hotel. Great taste for a being of great wealth in the underground. It was not far off from what I would have probably picked. High ceiling parquet floors. Tall stone beams. Earth tone, eclectic décor.
When you live alone in a world to be untouched by the world(s) around it, it has to be substantive enough to never want to leave it.
I followed Steve in his flowing crimson robe. It swayed from side to side as he walked to another massive door on the other side of the room. The door opened at the flick of his wrist and sunlight poured in.
“You redecorated,” I said, shielding my eyes from the blinding sun beneath the planet’s surface.
Steve was beaming as bright as the ball of fire hanging in the air.
My eyes slowly adjusted, revealing blue and tan. The crashing of water. Squawking of some mutant seagull. There was even a warm breeze wafting a salty aroma through the room.
I had been in the room before. It was where Steve commonly worked. He saw fit, however, to turn it into a tropical beach. I made a joke involving Fhloston Paradise, but the joke was lost on him. An oration of the story would not give that movie its due respect and I neglected to bring a copy with me.
Sigh.
“I feel terrible for bothering your vacation,” I said looking around. “But I see it’s a working vacation.”
“Work,” Steve chuckled. “This is my existence.”
Floating nebulous webs floated in the sky. They resembled a scan of a neural network. Clusters jutted off in various directions. Spindles lead to other spindles. Beams of information firing between them in a constant synaptic flow. I knew what those beams were. They were numbers. They were money. What I was looking at was the economy. Not an economy. All inclusive economic activity.
“I guess it’s true what they say.” I was being hypnotized by the floating universe of money. “If you love your work, you’ll have two in the bush.”
Even Steve gave me a concerning look on that one.
He raised his eyebrows to shake off the flabbergastedness.
“What riddle have you for me today?” he got down to business.
He knew by now that my social calls were always intertwined with some sort of business. I don’t keep people around that are not of use to me. There was no offense taken by it. One of the reasons he continued having dealings with me, what was considered our business, was also our entertainment. We were academics of sorts. Men of the universe. Working out the puzzles that it contains. That was what our types discuss over tea.
Steve took of the robe and sprawled out on a beach chair with a satisfied sound.
I took out the chip that had an extraordinary amount of money on it. He was nestling a dark set of visors over his eyes as I placed it on the small table next to him.
He abruptly sat up.
“You get that the hell out of here!”
I was a bit taken aback by his response.
He whipped his sunglasses off so fast I thought there were going to break from the whiplash. Before I could ask what he knew, he let me have it.
“That kind of money does not just go off the market and stay there. And never would I thought that you would have something to do with it.”
I was a little stunned, for a few reasons. I wasn’t sure which point to address first.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” I decided on.
Steve sighed and stood up. He put his robe back on and walked over to the floating economy atlas. The room shifted into what I was accustomed to being his office, consistent with the living room.
“I figured they only sent you to look for who had it. Some time ago,” he said paying more attention to the nebulas than to me. “A rather large amount of money was displaced from Zalud Enterprises, to put it simply.”
“Well, yeah.”
“But concurrently. And I mean to the universal nanosecond, a substantial amount of money was displaced from the Emperor’s coffers. Not in itself suspicious. But it never reintegrated to the market.”
I looked at the chip in my hand.
“You mean this actually has the money on it? Pay for a job he had no intention of me surviving to spend.”
“I suspect there is a lot more than you bargained for on that chip.”
I pulled the other two chips out of my pocket.
Steve turned a shade paler, his face slack.
“Tell me you didn’t do it.”
A vague inquiry, particularly when it comes to knowing my behavior.
“Didn’t do what exactly?” I asked.
“Kill the Emperor.”
Skrrrrt.
“Not that I’m aware of,” I said cautiously.
He waived a nubby little hand at a wall. A news headline instantly began streaming across it.
I must admit. I was so stunned at what I was seeing, a serenity washed over me. Maybe I was proud of doing something so big, I didn’t know I did it.
The images flashed back and forth between the Galactic Palace and a tower, both billowing smoke. I recognized that latter.
I felt Steve staring at me. He was as much concerned for me, not to mention himself, and about what to do about it. Having shown up at his house, I dragged him into something deeper than I originally intended. Given, he was just the man I was going to come to anyway once I figured out where the pieces stood on the board.
He was fidgeting, damn near thinking out loud.
“Hm,” I managed. “I knew something was up, but I was not quite expecting a surprise party of this scale.”
The screen flashed. Another image filled it.
It was me, courtesy of Charles-cam. You remember, the robot.
The chyron read that the individual in the images was being sought for questioning regarding the explosions and the theft of a rather large quantity of credits from the empirical coffers. A somewhat vague surveillance image of my face popped up beside a clip of me diving on the curtains in the hotel room just before the feed went black.
“… the destruction of a Galactic Agent,” the anchor’s voice said in a steady stream of words.
“Steve,” I said, looking at said Steve. His face was so slack I thought it might fall off his head. Those reptilian Java eyes barely shown as he glowered. “I think I’m in a tight spot.”
We went deeper into his lair as I mulled over the news. My trap to his trap in fact had a trap in its own. A trap that works regardless of being sprung or not. Caught with the money, or planted on my corpse. Scapegoat for an assassination of the highest caliber. A little more exciting than a disgruntled gardener who got a promotion he didn’t want doing it I suppose.
An alien after my own heart, I shit you not, it was a genuine supervillain underground lair. Equipped with machines with turny knobs and blinky lights. I don’t keep many around me that I call friends. But the closest I do, I do because they have taste. Or a use – yes I am aware of my own flaws and narcissism. One begets the other.
“We,” he kept saying as we went. “We are in a tight spot.”
Disclaimer:
Though I knowingly and willing got him involved in my mess, I underestimated how deep the pile was. For that I am sorry and am not afraid to admit when I am wrong.
If I knew then what I know now, however, I was going to go to him anyway. You’ll see why.
“Okay,” I said, pinching the bridge of my nose. I hate having to think beyond the range of my cock. “I would need you in this event anyway.”
Steve threw up his stubby little four fingered hands.
I held up the chip.
“No,” he shouted adamantly.
“It’s a lot of money.”
“No,” he repeated in the same tone. “If you haven’t noticed I have plenty of money.”
“Another reason I came here. You’re the right kind of greedy.”
Steve mauled that one over a minute then nodded.
“They’ll be trailing you,” he said.
“Didn’t expect anything less.”
Steve began pacing about his supervillain floor.
“Obviously I don’t want them tracking you here,” I said.
He snapped his weird little fingers and pointed at me.
“The assassination!”
“Yeah, not gonna lie. I didn’t really expect that one.”
“But why?” Steve said as he began to grin.
“Maybe he likes politicians as little as I do.”
Steve waved off the statement.
“Galactic emperors are a dime a dozen. Assuming the current one was even real.”
“I used an unregistered port to get here.”
Steve’s rolls giggled.
“They don’t know you are here,” he proclaimed. “Good news for me.”
“Plus it expands his resources,” I muttered.
“He already owns those resources too though.”
I raised my eyebrows.
“All of them?”
Steve pointed to his supervillain giant screen that popped up the interactive universal economy map.
“Oh, right. They’re probably going to come try to shake you down though, just in case I did come here.”
He waved that one off too. I was getting weary of his gloating so I cut to the chase.
“Alright. So how do you recommend to best leave a bunch of trails that lead to nowhere while I exact my revenge on the Great and Powerful Zalud?”
Steve deflated a little.
“It’s a solid plan. That’s why I came to you.”
He had the same plan in mind as I did, the precise reason why I was there. I just wasn’t expecting all the Galactic King’s men and all the Galactic King’s alien horses to be coming for me too.
“You don’t want to use that money he gave you,” he cautioned.
I nodded.
Steve winced through an apology.
“I could use someone else’s money though. Liquidate what I have and make off with someone else’s. Er, rather…”
Contemplating the matter I took to pacing the room as well. The room was surprisingly conducive for plotting and planning diabolical plans.
“Who among his beneficiaries can we filch?”
“I don’t like to operate that way,” Steve said with a pained look. He sat in his oversized, gray supervillain chair.
“Well we can’t just unload all that money on quote unquote innocent people.”
The money atlas whirled in silence as he drummed his fingers on the armrests. A crook he may be, but I knew what he did did not create overt harm to anyone. That kind of thing would draw attention, hence causing problems for his industry. Plus, I knew he was really a big softy.
“Ha, take your pick,” he bellowed. “With kickbacks and commissions for the transactions, you’d still make out pretty well considering you have the ransom and the pay for the job.”
“Assuming that they are actually on those chips.”
“I don’t doubt they are, as things appear to be unfolding. It’s all traceable. That must have been his ‘ace in his ass,’ as you say. If he lost you, you’d be bound to spend the money and easily be picked up again.”
“That much money though?” Call me skeptical.
“It had to be worth the Empire’s times. Plus, money makes people stupid. It roped you in, didn’t it?”
“I resent that statement. I wasn’t far off from what I thought would happen.”
“So you knew that you would be framed for killing the Emperor?”
I squinted at Steve.