The Finder Of Lost Things: Official Site

Chapter 6Book 1 is the beginning of The Finder Of Lost Things. And if you didn't know that, you're not smart enough to read this book.

Jake Patterson is your average loser, and drunkie and junkie who is (un)employed as a private eye. Until a fat man with a southern accent shows up out of thin air (literally) and asks him to kill a woman named Jessica. From there, things only get more complicated, and Jake and his buddy Zap wind up in something way bigger than themselves.

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Chapter 1: The Man With The Southern Accent

Most everybody thought faster than light travel was ludicrous. Nobody had ever debunked Einstein. Everyone who had gotten close had gone insane and overdosed on drugs. Which, in most cases, they were already on anyway, as brain – enhancing drugs were a serious problem at her place of work.

   It would seem that Einstein was right.

   Jessica Burhark, being a scientist working on that very problem, was one of the few remaining believers – and one of the few remaining sober. So Jessica was not surprised when she was reassigned to a different project. Just disappointed. So she packed her things, and moved out of her office in the American Center for Theoretical Transportation. By the end of the week things were back to normal, and she had been reassigned to a different floor.

But before any of this ever mattered anything to anyone else, there was Jake.

*  *  *  *  *

I wasn’t quite sure that what I saw before me was, in fact real. So I swallowed a gulp of the whiskey to help me figure it out. Huh. Didn’t help. I took another swig of the whiskey to see why. Didn’t help either. A third swig, I decided, was needed. I would then be able to observe why the first two had not completed their assignments, and then finally figure out my problem.

“Maybe you should stop with the whiskey for a little bit,” said the man in front of me. “I’ve got a business proposition for you.”

As far as I could tell, the man had not even walked in the door. Judging by what I saw, a large, ovular pod had appeared in the room, and had stepped out of it. The pod had then disappeared into a pinpoint of nothingness, which, I suppose, is what a black hole would look like. But I was drunk, so don’t take my word for it.

“Let’s hear it.”

I’m a Private Investigator by trade, though usually the jobs I’m sent on have little to do with what I’d imagined it would be like. When I was a kid, I wanted to be James Bond. Yeah, right. I was kind of a loser as a kid anyway.

I’m kind of loser now, too, now that I think about it.

But I digress. He was a short, stumpy kind of man, a little overweight, and wearing a gray suit and a magenta spotted tie. Eew. He also had a southern accent, I noticed.

“Kid, do you know what a nuclear war would be like?”

“Yeah, kinda like ‘boom, everyone’s dead’?”

“It’s a little more complicated, but yeah, that’s essentially it. What if I told you that you could stop one from happening?”

“Buddy, I’m dead hammered drunk. I just saw you step out of a pod or whatever that just…materialized in my office. Don’t talk to me about stopping a nuclear war.”

The man continued, as if he had not heard what I had just said. “Listen very carefully. I’m going to tell you a name. It is a very important name. I want you to find the person that this name belongs to, and kill that person. Alright?”

“What’s in it for me?”

“Twenty million.”

I choked on the fourth swig of whiskey that I had been in the middle of taking. The rest of the bottle drained itself onto my jacket. Damn.

I took another drink, then realized that there was no more whiskey.

“I take it, then, that you’re in?”

“Fuck yeah! But I want a million up front. Proof.”

“Five hundred thousand is all I am prepared to offer you up front.”

“Deal,” I said. I wasn’t about to sit down and think about, because somewhere deep down inside me said that eventually I would go sober and realize that I was talking to a man who had appeared out of nowhere and offered me a fortune out of the blue, and that somewhere in there, there would be a catch. I didn’t want a catch. I wanted money. So I didn’t think about it one bit.

“The name is-”

I puked all over his suit.

I guess I had too much to drink.

Chapter 2: Zap and Coke 

I neared the oaken door, the deck creaking ever-so-slightly. As I got close, rock and roll music began faintly echoing from behind it. I tested the knob. Unlocked. Good. Lock-picking is such a hassle.

I stepped through, drawing my silenced 9mm Glock semi-automatic pistol as I entered. I started sneaking through the house, tracking the music to the living room. Someone was playing Guitar Hero.

It was late afternoon, around five or six, and whoever was here had just gotten home. I could still taste the odor from their bare feet lingering in the entryway. I slowly drew up to the man. The music from Guitar Hero was loud; enough so that it covered my approach.

As fast as I could, I stood upright, clicked off the gun’s safety, grabbed the man’s neck, and-

“Fuck off, Jake. I’m playing Through the Fire and Flames. Have you no respect for a master artist?”

“Shut up, Zap. You’re only good because you never do anything else. This game is your life.”

“Not true. I play the other two sometimes too.”

That was Zap, an old friend of mine. We were pretty much the same in that we put ourselves in front of everyone else, yet at the same time didn’t really care what happened. You know the type. That’s us.

There’s a long story as to why he’s called Zap.  His birth name was Zephyr (who names their kid Zephyr?), but after reading The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, he decided to change his name to Zaphod. It was the only book he ever read of his own free will. Then, at fifteen, he was struck by a bolt of lightning. He had recently gotten his tongue pierced, and just happened to be climbing a tree with his tongue out during a thunderstorm.

Not even Zap can explain his choices sometimes.

Anyway, it’s easy to see how people started calling him Zap, and the name stuck.

“You got the stuff, Zap mi amigo?”

“Si senor. In the duffel bag on the couch. Two only. I’ll know if you take more.”

I’m an on-and-off cokehead. Don’t ask me why, or how I got into it, because it’s not something I’m proud of. It’s not like I started of my own free will, because I always tried to stay clean. I don’t remember my first time, but according to my friends, the first time I took it I was hammered drunk. And now I’m an addict.

Helps to have some around when the going gets rough, though.

Oh, and Zap just happens to be a drug dealer. Part time, of course.

So I took two baggies, stuffed them in my pocket, undid the strap on Zap’s guitar, and walked away.

I walked out of the living room, through the threshold, and out the door. I could still hear him swearing. I’d call him later. I needed him to do me a favor.

 Chapter 3: Masquerade

Jessica Burhark was not an easy woman to find. She had taken steps to prevent her identity from ever being uncovered, as she was slightly paranoid, a syndrome induced by reading one too many science fiction novels. That was her reasoning, anyway. But the measures she’d taken had worked.

For a while she had decided that she was in no danger. No danger at all. Why would anyone even think about killing a harmless scientist?

Then she was assigned to the Theoretical Travels department. This upped her paranoia level a little, as she knew that most of what she was doing could (and probably would) be used for the military.

Then she was assigned to light-speed travel.

For a week she stayed indoors with all the blinds drawn, all the lights off, and a baseball bat next to her wherever she went.

She saw a professional after that, and her symptoms were mostly cured, but that seed of fear stayed buried deep within her, and bloomed on certain special occasions.

Such as this one.

There was a cop at her door. He wasn’t dressed like a cop, didn’t have a uniform, but he had a badge. Fat lot of good that did her, because she had no clue what detective badges actually looked like. For all she knew it could be plastic painted gold.

“Are you Jessica Burhark?”

“Why are you asking for her? Has she done something wrong?” This guy was probably a murderer for some terrorist organization, here to get their hands on whatever she was working on. But if she let it slip that she suspected him, he would kill her. So she kept up the charade.

“No, no, nothing wrong. I just need to ask her a few questions. We believe she may have seen something.”

“What do you think she saw?”

“Can you just tell me where she is, please?”

“I am Jessica Burhark.”

“Oh.” The cop/terrorist paused. “Now was that so hard?” The cop/terrorist/whatever invited himself in, walked into her living room, asked her to sit down. She walked, sat, guessing how far she was from the shotgun on the wall. She kept it loaded, always, and changed the bullets once a month. Paranoia takes the better of its victims.

“Where do you work, Mrs. Burhark?”

“Ms. Burhark. I’m not married.”

“Ah. I see. Where do you work? Do you work in an office building, or from home?”

“I work from an office building.”

“For the Department of Theoretical Transportation?”

“That would be right, yes.”

“What floor do you work on?”

Shit. That settled it. If he didn’t leave after this next question, she was going to take him down. She began to shift her weight, adrenaline racing.

“Floor nine.”

“Ok. Thank you, that’s all I need to know. You may receive a call from me in a couple of weeks; if not, then you can disregard this meeting. Goodbye.”

Well. Jessica was surprised. When was he going to kill her? Maybe he was just a cop. She walked him to the door, showed him out, and then firmly locked all three latches behind him.

*   *   *   *   *

I had been watching from a window of an apartment building next door through a pair of binoculars. The cop, of course, was Zap. I had everything I needed, confirmation-wise – where she worked, where she lived – and it added up to a military program. So I figured I had the girl. I figured I had the world in my pocket.

Hoo boy, was I wrong.

*   *   *   *   *

Zap wanted to know what I was up to, and furthermore, what the FUCK was I doing making him go around pretending to be a cop? Did I know he got that badge for Halloween when he was sixteen? He could get in serious trouble for this! Etcetera, etcetera.

So I told him, not about the “nuclear war” or the man with the southern accent (or Bob, as I’d taken to calling him, because he reminded me of the character from Heroes), but I told him about Jessica Burhark, and I told him about the twenty mil. He flipped until I told him he’d get his share. He calmed down after that, and agreed to do whatever I needed him to do. It usually went like that, actually.

I went home after that, and that was when the shit hit the fan.

  I had only been home for about twenty minutes, and I had just come out of the shower when a big black spidery thing appeared out of nowhere and stole both of my bags of crack.

It was pretty weird-lookin’, with several arms and three legs, and who-knows-how-many eyes. It was like the mutant giant bugs you would see in those X-men rip-off comics. It appeared out of nowhere, walked over to my desk, picked up my cocaine, and disappeared back to wherever it was from.

Needless to say, I was pretty pissed, but that feeling vanished when it reappeared with two bags of… something else clutched in its paw/claw/hand/mouth/thing. They seemed to be filled with some sort of brown powder. It dropped them onto my desk, and then spoke.

To you, the words would sound like nonsense. But for some reason, they sent a chill down my spine, and made my hairs stand on end. They gave me goosebumps. They gave my goosebumps goosebumps. The words were these:

“From the Society, to the newest Finder of Lost Things. There is no choice for you. Your fate we have already decided.”

It then disappeared again. For about half an hour, I just stood there, frozen. When my mental ice finally cracked and melted, I walked over to the baggies that the thing had left. And as I picked them up, words ran through my head. They were alien to me; I had never heard them before. But they were there, undoubtedly.

Neverland was child’s play,
Utopia has naught to say;
Heaven, molded just as clay;
The future, for now, clear as day.

It creeped the crap out of me. But deep inside me there had awakened a sense of need. I had to know what this all meant. So I got myself so drunk that I forgot about the consequences, and snorted the brown powder.

Then the world exploded.

*   *   *   *   *

Actually, the world exploding happened a lot later. At first it just felt like I was high. I had the usual jitters, and then that energy associated with it. Then the euphoria. For a while, I felt normal – well, normal for being high on crack cocaine.

Then the memories. I remembered things I should never have remembered. I remembered being a baby. Being born. I remembered things from Zap’s perspective, like when he met me for the first time. I was such an asshole.

What? Me, an asshole? I would have to talk to Zap about that.

I remembered from the perspectives of my various pissed-off teachers over the years. I wanted to kill myself. I was scared out of my skin. I remembered my mom’s pain when she gave birth to me, and I knew for the first time why my dad had taken his own life. I didn’t want to know all this.

I started getting flashbacks of the history of the universe, the dinosaurs, here comes the big bang – I figured out that Nixon had nothing to do with Watergate – Hitler was twelve and a half when he decided he wanted to rule Germany – the collective ages of those who died at Pearl Harbor was 1027 – the egg came before the chicken – time travel is possible – The universe is exactly 400, 326, 527, 240 years and twelve days old - I knew everything in there was to know in half a second.

And then, without warning, it was over.

Nothing was clear after that. I had to get my priorities straight. So I focused on the one goal I had: killing Jessica Burhark. I had millions of dollars to make. Who was going to stop me? Zap? The girl? The cops? I picked up my pistol and walked out the door.

*   *   *   *   *

I pulled up in my car. The house was dark. Good. She was probably asleep. I drove two blocks away, killed the engine, and ran back to her house on Mulholland Drive. Picked the lock. Snuck in. Went upstairs. Opened the door. Entered the bedroom. She was asleep… but I wanted her to know who killed her. She had to know.

It would be far more fun that way, the look of fear on her face… I could practically see it already.

I never did figure out what had come over me in that moment, that sense of cruelty.

I woke her up, shook her gently. Whispered to her. Hey, hey, it’s time to get up.

“What? Who are you?” she asked, yawning.

“I’m the person who kills you.”

It took her a minute to process that.

“Ha ha, funny. Who are you? What are you doing in my house?” She was starting to wake up now.

“I told you already. I’m here to kill you.” So saying, I drew my silenced Glock 9mm, pressing the barrel against her skin.

That was when the world exploded.

I was not a part of it, but I could see it. A bomb had gone off. A nuclear bomb. I looked down; the floor was crumbling beneath my feet. I lost my balance, fell down, but I was still just an observer, not actually there. I could see the neighbor’s skin being blackened to a crisp. I was dimly aware of a scrambling, of the girl reaching for something I could not see, but I could not do anything about it, just watch the death and destruction happening all around me, death that I had caused and that-

All of a sudden, the bomb hit me. I felt an intense, burning pain – oh god, my chest is being incinerated, I could feel it, oh shit, oh SHIT, GOD! – and then the bombs were gone, and all I was aware of was the girl crouched between over me with a taser in her hand. She ran out of the room. I could hear her trying to dial 9-1-1 on her phone, but I had cut the power earlier.

I was half an hour before I could bring myself to stand back up.

I really, really hate tasers.

I resolved never to take any drug while drunk ever again.

I missed the cops by about five minutes. I saw them zooming past on my walk down Main Street, which thankfully was all lit up, even at this hour, late at night. I checked my watch. The bars would have just stopped serving drinks: 11:05. A bummer, because I needed one. I walked in to one of the bars anyway. The Rolling Stones’ “Brown Sugar” was playing on the jukebox.

I’d had enough of brown powders for the night. I hightailed it out of there. I saw another bar across the street, and not seeing a crosswalk anywhere in the vicinity, I started through the empty street. All of a sudden, time slowed to a crawl. I saw myself from outside my body, looking on as I continued through the street… and was hit by a car, doing at least eighty down an empty street, late at night.

Then, as soon as it happened, it was over. I was still a good ten feet away from where I saw myself being hit, and I stopped walking. I had a theory.

Sure enough, a few short seconds later, a silver car whizzed through the brisk night air.

So I could tell the future? But if that was the case, then why couldn’t I tell that “Brown Sugar” would be playing on the jukebox? How come I didn’t know beforehand that Jess would be asleep, or that she’d have the taser at her bedside? Perhaps it only showed life-threatening events?

This required some experimentation. I hightailed it home, taking a taxi. The cops might have already checked my car. I wasn’t about to take a chance. I already had my first test in mind.

Once home, I pulled out my pistol, pointed it at my head.

Nothing happened.

I wasn’t actually about to kill my self. That was why it didn’t work, I was sure of it. So the next test would have to do. But I would wait until morning. I went to bed, and closed my eyes.

Thank goodness for dreams.

*   *   *   *   *

In my dream, the black spider appeared again.

“What the hell is your name? Because I sure as hell can’t think of you as ‘The Black Spidery thing’ for the rest of my life.”

“For now, you can call me the Messenger. I am from The Society. You must accept your duties as The Finder of Lost Things.”

“Yeah, ok. What the hell is the Finder? I know that that would be me, but… what the hell are my duties as Finder?”

“You do not already know? Those who raised you have already told you. Have you suffered brain trauma? Are you healthy?”

“I don’t know who you are, except that you’re the “Society’s” “Messenger.” But my Father killed himself before I was born, and my mother got rid of me as soon as she could. I have no clue.”

The Messenger sighed, like an old secretary at an elementary school, who only works there because she’s old and has nothing else to do, and is annoyed but doesn’t want to be rude.

“In essence, you are what your name suggests. You find things. In ancient times, the finder would search out holy objects. The Holy Grail was found and hidden by one of your predecessors. Then for a time, there was no need for a Finder of Lost Things. Since about the twenty-second century, however, the Finders have been reinstated by The Society, and their duties have had more to do with finding and bringing to justice the more privileged criminals – those who can hide themselves from the rest of the world.”

“Twenty-second century? I’m afraid you must be lost in time.”

“No. We believe that your quarry resides in this time period. The twenty-first century.”

I was starting to get a strange feeling in my stomach. “This quarry of mine. What is his name?”

“Ezekiel Perrenian.”

“Is he sorta fat? Southern accent?”

“Yes. How did you know?”

I woke up in a cold sweat. I tried to get back to sleep but The Messenger did not reappear. A real bummer, too, because I had lots more questions to ask that sonofabitch. He’d be back, of that I was sure.

So. I was to find Ezekiel Perrenian, A.K.A. Bob, A.K.A. The Man with the Southern Accent. I only had one lead, and that was the girl. Actually, here’s the summation of what I knew about my situation.

• Ezekiel Perrenian wanted to start a nuclear war.
• Jessica Burhark could stop the nuclear war.
• I could save Jessica Burhark.
• Ezekiel had probably lied when he said that I would be paid twenty million.
• This brown drug had some pretty crazy effects, including granting the ability to see into the future under certain circumstances.
• I, having taken it, had become the next Finder of Lost Things.
• The Finder of Lost Things is a person who finds things.
• The Messenger had all of my answers.
• The Messenger came and went of his own free will, or so it seemed.
• Zap would never believe any of this.
• I was really and truly fucked.

But I had a job to do. If not for the world, or for the Society, whatever that really was, or for the girl, then for me. Because I needed answers. I needed closure. I needed to lose my responsibilities as fast as I possibly could.

While we’re dealing with lists, I’ll give you my agenda. At this point it was thus:
One: Tell Zap the whole truth. Make him believe.
Two: Find the girl. Protect her.
Three: Wait for Ezekiel’s eventual arrival.
Four: Beat the crap out of him.
Five: Wait for the Messenger’s eventual arrival.
Six: Beat the crap out of him, too, until I get the answers I want.

Simple. I liked keeping things simple. I had no idea how not-simple things would get.

I headed over to Zap’s, still not sure how I would make him believe. I had the stuff, but for all I knew he would think it was brown sugar. I couldn’t let him have any. It would probably kill him.

So I was in a rut, but I was already on my way there. The stuff from last night had officially left my system, so I had no link to the Astral Plane anymore. All that was left was me.

Zap was playing Guitar Hero when I got there.

“Don’t you have a job, Zap?”

“Got fired yesterday. Wasn’t around during my shift because I was PLAYING COPS AND FUCKING ROBBERS WITH YOU AND THAT SORRY-ASS GIRL!
“Jeez, sorry. I’d hate to tell you what I have to tell you with you hearing it starting on that note. I’ll just… leave.”

“No, no, what is it? I have a right to hear it, considering.”

I paused. How could I tell him?

“Did you really think that I was an asshole when we first met?’

“I still think you’re an asshole now, actually. You’re just my kind of asshole.” That made sense, in a way.

“Look. I know I promised you your cut from this job, but…”

“But what?” he said, in a rather demeaning tone. “What, you can’t give me a cut now? Is that it, you little bitch?”

“No, no! I think the guy scammed me. I think he had the money, but he wasn’t planning on giving it to me.”

“What makes you say that?”

“I’ll tell you, but you won’t believe me.”

“Oh, I’ll believe you.”

He didn’t believe me.

“You expect me to believe that bullshit story? Hell, the stuff in the bag could just as easily be brown sugar!”

See?

Zap continued. “Man, you coulda just told me that you couldn’t pay me. That would’ve been way easier on your part.  You really want to prove it to me, let me take some.”

It was right at that exact moment that the Messenger appeared. Man, for an inhuman freak, he had a really good sense of timing.

Zap broke out into stutters. “Guh, guhhuh, uh, ha, ah… Holy shit!”

“I believe, Finder, that our conversation was not yet finished at the time you left last night. You have not come to terms yet with your duties. However, this is a turning point in the fate of the future. You are required to come with me at this time.

I would save beating this guy’s lights out for later.

“Can I bring my friend?”

*   *   *   *   *

Apparently Ezekiel Perrenian had pulled out all the stops trying to kill Jessica Burhark, because I was not the only one out to get her. As Zap and I had been speaking, another hired killer and snuck into her house and was midway through planting a bomb when I kicked him in the back of the neck. Out like a light. He’d be back up (but with a massive migraine) in about a half hour.

By which point we’d have called the cops as well as the Bomb Squad.

But this guy was the least of our problems. Ezekiel Perrenian would not be arriving by himself at this girl’s house, not when there were seven other P.I.’s in this city alone, (two of which I knew on a first name basis) and god-knows-how-many muggers and thuggers that could easily be bought off.

Agenda points three through six were down the tube. Agenda point two was now the highest priority. But she wasn’t home, and the Messenger had already disappeared.

How were we going to get to her?

“Zap, do you have any guns?”

“Get Jessica Burhark down here in six minutes or we blow this place to hell!”

That was what I said. We were there, at her office building, four of us; me, Zap, and a couple of friends he rounded up for the ride. We each held in our grubby little hands an AK-47, the only thing keeping us from being shot to pieces by the twentysomething cops outside. This was a hostage situation. We had originally given them ten minutes. Four had passed.

“Five minutes!” I heard Zap shout. “Five minutes till boom time, folks.” Okay, make that five minutes.

Then a ding, and there she was. The elevator doors opened to reveal a woman paranoid, scared, and abused, and on seeing me her face drained of its remaining color.

I really, really regretted trying to kill her. I saw the secretary hit the silent alarm again, as she had every few seconds for the past five minutes. Silent alarms don’t save your life, I thought to myself. The cops are already out there. This was pointless. But I said nothing. I pointed my AK at Jessica.

“Jessica! Over here, now!” I’m not really sure why I used her name. You would think that in a hostage situation I could just bark at her, nameless, but no. Not for me. There were no bombs. We would be out of here as soon as I had her in my hands.

She walked over to me, close. Through gritted teeth, she managed too shakily say six words. “what… do… you… want… from… me?”

“I wish I knew.”

That was when Zap started firing at me.  

I weaved and dove, ducking behind a countertop. I raised my pistol and blind-fired over the top.

All according to plan. Up until the part where the cops started shooting. Zap pulled the same maneuver that I had just seconds before, ending up behind the exact same countertop of the receptionist’s desk, whose occupier had long since ran to the bathroom and huddled herself in a corner. I still had a firm grip on Jessica.

“Where is that bastard!” yelled Zap, over the gunfire and Jessica’s screams.

“He should be here any second now!”

And then there he was. Speak of the devil.

“You are in extreme danger!”

“No shit, Sherlock!”

“We must leave immediately!”

“That’s the idea!”

So he grabbed a hold of both of us and the next thing I knew we were all at my apartment. Not including Zap’s friends, of course. They were probably dead by now anyway.  

Jessica went in to shock, I think.

“Where are we?”

“My apartment,”  I sighed. “Look. You’re our hostage right now, and you’re not about to get away, so don’t try. But we’re not going to hurt you unless you try to escape, so go ahead and make yourself comfortable.”

She sat down on the couch. She was still a little dizzy. She let out some of her tension along with a huge breath.

“So… what is it, exactly, that’s going on here? Please don’t tell me you’re religious fucking fanatics or something like that, and I don’t want to know about starting any nuclear wars. All I want to know is why I’m so damned special all of a sudden.”

I wish I knew myself. I didn’t know a damn thing about this girl except where she lived and worked, and now here I was saving her life! The inanity of the situation hit me in that moment.

“All I know is that somehow, you stop a nuclear war. I think I’m here to make sure that you stop it, before it happens. If you want to know anymore, ask him.” I pointed at the Messenger, who had stayed poignantly silent since we arrived here. “Maybe he’ll finally be able to finish what he was telling me the other night.”

“Okay, I only have one question. Am I going nuts? Cause if I’m not, then we just teleported to your apartment in who-knows-where with this black spidery mutant thing out of an X-men rip-off comic.”

No. You’re not nuts any more than anyone else, Jessica. It’s the world that’s gone mad.

“Unfortunately,” said the Messenger, “what I’m about to explain to you is a lot more complicated than you being insane.

Uh-oh. This sounded like it might take a while. I rummaged through my cupboards, finding my last bottle of whiskey. I unscrewed the cap, brought the bottle to my lips… and put it back. The whiskey would only make my problems worse.

Zap and I settled in and waited for some answers.

Ezekiel Perrenian did not have time for this crap. He was a very important man, and he was in the middle of doing something very illegal. When doing something that had illegality of such a magnitude, one had to manage time well. But he had to tie up a few loose ends before he set the plan into action. One was light speed travel. The other was the Society.

He shifted in his seat, thinking.

*   *   *   *   *

For as long as the Society has existed, it has had three main functions. The first function is to stockpile massive amounts of money and supplies in its personal vaults, in case of an economic or global crisis. The second is to act as ambassadors to alien races if they ever made contact, as they inevitably did. The third was to act as Earth’s police force, protecting Earth in any point in time. Alternate universes, however, were the gray area, not clearly defined in the rules. They were assessed on a case-to-case basis.  

The man ran down a long hall, littered with evenly spaced doors. The hall seemed to get longer as he ran down, but finally, huffing and puffing, he reached the lone door at the end of the hall. It did not have a label on it, and was out of sync with the rest of the conformist hallway. But everyone knew whose office it was, just the same. It was possibly the most important doors in all of the Society headquarters. The Master’s office.

He barged in rudely, ignoring all protocol. This was too important for protocol. There were few reasons for anyone (anyone) to barge into her office like this. This man had information about one of those reasons.

“Ma’am, it’s about the Perrenian case.”

The man, Skylar Tylerson (his mother had a fiendish sense of humor) had barged in on the Master at a very inconvenient time, but nonetheless she said into her headset, “I’ll have to call you back,” and set it down onto the receiver, for this case demanded her immediate attention. It was the most important case in recent memory.

“What is it, Sky?” She had a hint of anger in her voice, as well as a twinge of annoyance.

“The Messenger for the Perrenian case? He’s revealed himself to two people other than his Finder.”

“Well, that’s not good.” It wasn’t good. At all. No one from the past could know about the Society until it made itself public in 2045, and even then, not many people knew much about it, and only an elite few actually knew where it was located. “What is our plan do handle this matter?”

“I don’t know, Ma’am. He hasn’t reported back in several hours. He’s not following protocol.”
The Master mentally sighed. Here was Skylar, flogging The Messenger, a being of much higher status than he, for doing something once that he did all the time. She would need to have a talk with his handler when this was all over, she mentally noted.

“Is that all? Because if it is, then you really had nothing truly pertinent to tell me, and barged into my office, which I specifically tell people not to do, for no real reason.”

“No no no, Ma’am! There’s more. Something much worse.”

She had a bad feeling about this.

“It’s the Warrior. The Warrior from that case. He’s been indoctrinated. Ahead of schedule.”

The color drained from the Master’s face.

*   *   *   *   *

Sheriff Parker Johnson received a phone call at 5:13 P.M. August 8th on his personal line. This better be good, he thought. Not many had his personal work phone.

“Hello, is this Sheriff Parker?”

“Yes, this would be he.”

“It is true that there was a hostage situation at the Center for Theoretical Transportation today, is that correct?”

“Is this a media call? Because if it is, I’m hanging up right now.”

“No sir. I have reason to believe that the men taking hostages are at the apartment building on Berkeley Street. The one with the broken sign.”

“How do you know?” this sounded like a prank call.

“The man’s name is Jake Patterson. Good day, sir.”  The man on the other line hung up.

Parker Johnson had no other leads in the case. The men had simply disappeared. What was the worst that could happen? A half hour of a SWAT team’s time down the drain? He ordered his men to gear up and get ready.

Leaning back in his well-padded office chair, Ezekiel Perrenian pushed his fingertips together and smiled. Too easy.

“Ezekiel Perrenian is a multitrillionaire from the year 2072. He has shares in several companies, ranging from computer technologies to weapons manufacturing. He is not a kind man. In 2065 he becomes a military dictator of the most powerful nation in the world, The United States of America. He wishes to begin a nuclear war. However, Jessica, you can stop him. Tell these two where you work. What department you used to work in.”

The first part I already knew. The second I didn’t.

“The department of light speed travel at the U.S. Department of Theoretical Transportation.”

“Ezekiel killed every person who got close to solving the problems with light speed travel. Every person. Except you. He is deeply sexist, and he didn’t believe that you could make it possible. Jessica… had you had the time, you would have eventually become the mother of light speed travel. You would have made it possible to stop that war. And in fact, you still will, as long as you stay alive. That’s what these two are here for.”

“Not for long we’re not.” Zap was peering through the blinds on my window to the street below. It sounded like something was going on out there.  “Get over here, Jack. You’re not gonna like this…”

Five stories below, there were several black SUVs with men in SWAT getups piling out of them like down off a duck.

“Messenger, can you get us out of here?”

“Unfortunately, no. Exposure to energy of such high frequency can cause rapid nucleotide breakdown and disintegration in the deoxyribonucleic structures of your unevolved bodies.”

“In English, please.”

“It’d kill you from the inside.”

“Oh.”

I only had one out left. One last card to play, and if it worked, I would win double, but if I lost, I would lose double too. It was a gamble, and I didn’t know the rules of the game.

But Brown Sugar was the only table that was still open, and I was still in the hole. “Hey Messenger… if Zap takes this stuff, will it kill him?” I waved the baggie at the Messenger.

“There is a chance that he will survive, I estimate his odds at about fifty percent. Certain people are genetically predisposed to cellular acceptance of the Compound, but please do not give him any. It could have serious repercuss-“

“The Compound?”

“That is what it’s called, yes.”

I took out one of the two baggies, and made two small lines on the table. I took out a dollar bill, rolled it up.

“You ready, Zap? You OK with this?”

“If I die, do you think I’d give a shit?” In other words, yes.

The cocaine feeling came and passed, and then I felt nothing. The sensation of knowing did not come this time.

I handed the bill to Zap, and he partook.

The atmosphere in the room shifted. Everything was blurry, time seemed to slow. This wasn’t the future. This was now. My vision went black. I could see Zap and the Messenger, but nothing else. A smirk wormed its way into a smile, and Zap’s face lit up. He was happy, but it wasn’t just the euphoria. It was something more. His lips split, and were pursed, as if in a shout, but I could hear nothing.

And then my vision was back to its normal state, and I could hear a raucous whoop fill the room’s stale air.

Jessica’s confusion was almost palpable as the Messenger disappeared again.

It was a few seconds before we heard the soft pitter-patter of the SWATs running down our hall, and a few more before they burst in the door to my now-empty living room. We had holed up in the bedroom with our rifles. Jessica had my pistol in case of emergency, and had stashed herself away under the bed. We had taken up positions beside the door.

Zap was excited. I was scared shitless.

The first one came through the door, and Zap beat him over the head with the butt of his rifle. I dragged him in and closed the door. I removed his suit, and put it on over my street clothes. It was warm and damp inside, and a little sticky. Whoever wore this thing needed some antiperspirant. I picked up his silenced rifle and signed to Zap to stay there. Palm out. Stay. Point down. Here. Point at under the bed. Protect her. Zap nodded. Got it. Good.

I opened the door, knowing that if I opened it fast enough I could escape the creak that it made, and stepped through, closing it quickly behind me.

I knew where every SWAT was located in my house. I didn’t guess, I just knew. It was the Compound. This was the meaning behind the name I had been given. I knew where stuff was.

At least I would never lose my car keys again. I went into the living room, well hidden behind my disguise. There was one man in the room, but I already knew that anyway.

“Hey, man. Looks like they’re not here after all, huh?”

I nodded, he turned around, and I shot him in the head.

But in the seconds it had taken me to take him out, two more had converged on my bedroom door. Where Jessica and Zap were.

One stayed back, the other one opened the door, and a burst of loud, unmuffled gunfire erupted from the threshold. I no longer could see the two SWATs in my mind’s eye, as I had before. So I couldn’t track dead people.

I heard the front door burst open, and the other four members of the SWAT team burst in, shouting “move, move, move!”

I went into  living room, and I saw Zap run up and bash the first one’s mask into his head using the barrel of the AK-47. He opened up, and shot three of the four in the head. But the last one fired on Zap before he could reach him with the rifle, and he flailed his arms and went down hard onto the carpet. I shot the last one with the rifle, and ran over to Zap.

“Hey, hey, hey! Are you okay, man?” I grabbed him by the shoulders, shook him hard. “Are you all right?”

He punched me in the gut. I fell backwards, landed on my butt, and once I stabilized myself I took off the mask.

“What the fuck was that for?”

“Sorry. Thought you were a SWAT guy.”

I laughed, and I went to get Jessica.

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