I thought I would try my hand at something that was retweeted in my Twitter stream by wawriters. They give you the first sentence, then you keep on writing from that point for at least five minutes or longer. In my case, it turned into longer very quickly and I just kept on going.
The prompt for this week was: The bag was empty except for a smudged, slip of paper which said, “Sorry.”
And that is where I shall begin…
The bag was empty except for a smudged slip of paper which said, “Sorry.”
Saul crushed the greasy bag into a fist, the smell of its previous contents wafting up into his nostrils. His mind raced with a hundred different possibilities. She had been quite convincing, telling him she could get the chips he needed. But now there was nothing there.
Sorry! That’s all they could say! A total con and now I’m up the creek with nothing and no money.
A hundred grand. There was no more in that account. But he still had a few others hidden away, ones that even the government couldn’t find with their bankbot algorithms. He took a deep breath, looked around. His eyes searched around the cones of light illuminating the park for some movement.
Just a setback, that’s all. Always have a backup.
Saul pulled his digital assistant from his jacket and ran his finger across the screen in a practiced maneuver. Phone numbers and faces raced underneath his finger at lightning speed. He lifted his finger, tapped, and turned on the headset.
Simulated ringing filled his right ear as he glanced around the darkened park once more. Nobody there. There had to be someone-
“Hello?” a sour voice said on the other end of the headset. Saul raised a hand up to the headset.
“It was a set up. We got burned. They didn’t have anything,” Saul said.
A pause in the line, followed by a slow intake of air. Moises was not someone to screw with, and right about now he was considering what to do about the situation.
“You know how much I put behind this?” Moises kept his tone calm. It was a trademark with him. You never knew if he was pissed off and ready to stick a knife in your throat or just wanted to buy you a drink.
“I know, Moises,” Saul said into the headset. He tried to keep his voice as even as Moises but wasn’t doing too good a job. “Fifty grand. And fifty of my own to get these things. So we’re both in the shit now, ain’t we?”
Another pause with a long, haggard breath on the line. “Alright,” Moises said. “We got a backup. Go see Herman at The Shop. He opens in an hour. Think you can keep out of sight until then?”
Saul ran the numbers in his head. “I’ll keep a low profile.”
The line disconnected. Moises never was one for conversations, especially on lines that might be compromised. Saul looked at the screen and the counter on it ticking down in silence.
Damn, only five minutes left on this crypto.
Saul knew the drill. He popped out the DRX card in the assistant. The unit complained with a bright screen and screeching noise from its internal speaker. With disposable tech, he didn’t care if it could no longer read the information on the fingernail-sized card.
He switched off the unit without ceremony and wiped it down with a sanitizer before tossing both into the nearest trash bin in the park. Better safe than sorry in this case. He couldn’t be sure these days if the NSA snoops could crack the quantum encryption faster than the dealer who sold him the assistant guaranteed. These days, there were no guarantees for that kind of safety, no matter how much money was thrown at it.
One more hour until Herman opened. Saul walked toward one of the exits to the park. He took a moment to watch the pre-dawn rays of light cross over the horizon before leaving. Saul felt a rumbling in his stomach and knew how he’d kill that hour before meeting with the backup.
**
The diner sat off from the corner, surrounded by much larger buildings. At one point it might have been a focal point for foot traffic; now it was nothing more than a monument to a decade barely remembered.
Saul walked past a street band trying its best to belt out a Three Dog Night song with a set of old acoustic guitars. He wondered if they really knew the song, or were trying to copy the tune from an underground analog tape that had seen better days. Given how the notes sounded out of tune, he guessed the latter.
He put his hand on the faded faux chrome door and gave them another passing second of listening before walking into the diner.
**
The smell of a hundred past greasy meals assaulted Saul’s nose. He took in one last bit of fresh air as the door closed behind him.
Saul gave the place a quick once-over. Empty booths of torn red vinyl, a bar area of cracked Formica, a jukebox in the corner that looked like it might have worked a couple of years ago but now sat there taking up space. And not another customer in here.
Good. Just have to keep low for another forty-five minutes.
He helped himself to a seat at a booth in the far corner and picked up the menu next to a pile of loose napkins. The menu stuck to his fingers, which he pried away and rubbed clean. The napkins didn’t look like they would offer any kind of salvation from the menu.
“Can I help you?” a voice said over him. Saul hadn’t been paying any attention.
A bad lapse, there, buddy. Better stay on your toes.
Saul pulled the menu closer and picked the first thing that he saw on it.
“Philly steak and cheese, please,” Saul said from behind the menu.
The waiter, a large man whose gut peered out from underneath a t-shirt, wrote the order down on a piece of scrap paper and returned to the bar.
The waiter slapped the paper into the revolving order clip holder and spun it around. He sniffled, rubbed his nose, and looked through the small opening into the kitchen area before hitting the bell.
“Yo, Billy!” he shouted.
The clanking noise of pots and pans from the kitchen jolted Saul out of his temporary meditation.
“Yeah, what?” a cranky voice asked the waiter.
“Billy, steak and cheese. And make it quick this time.”
More shuffling of pots and pans with a coarse grumble. Saul recognized the voice and tonal inflection immediately.
RVX-70 Personality Module. Recalled ten years ago due to constant malfunctions. Owner must’ve bought it off the junk pile and tried to fix it.
Saul noticed the waiter out of the corner of his eye, staring back at him. He buried his head behind the menu even though he didn’t need to read it any further. Something in the back of Saul’s mind told him that something wasn’t right about all of this.
The waiter walked over to the booth. “I’m afraid you gotta pay first. Sorry, restaurant policy.”
Saul had missed it coming in, and cursed himself under his breath for not seeing it sooner. The retinal scanner for pay, a small orb attached to the side of the register on the end of the bar. He had to think fast.
“Look, I got some money right here,” Saul said as he reached for his wallet. The waiter waved his hand in the air.
“Sorry, sir. We’re not that kind of a restaurant. We only take iris.”
Saul sighed and stood up from the booth. He gauged the distance mentally between the register, the waiter, and himself. He could do it, if he timed it just right.
He took calm strides over to the cash register as the waiter walked around him and behind the bar. The register beeped with each press of the buttons on it, followed by the tally for his food on the readout.
“That’ll be nine-fifty,” the waiter said.
Saul braced himself. This would have to be quick. He lowered his head down to the pay scanner. A quick flashing beam caught the vision in his left eye in white light. Two seconds if he was lucky, less if he-
The register went crazy with a series of beeps. Saul raised up and drew the gun from his jacket. The waiter was still busy figuring out the beeping from the register when he looked up to see the barrel of the pistol between his eyes.
“Billy!” he shouted before Saul pulled the trigger. A flash of blue light struck the waiter in the head, leaving a round mark of burned skin between his eyes. He stumbled back against the wall before collapsing on the ground.
The door to the kitchen swung open as Saul tried to silence the register with the butt of the pistol. The register would not stop its incessant blaring, but that was the least of Saul’s problems at the moment.
The cookdroid had indeed been modified, much to Saul’s surprise. Two extra sets of appendages stuck out at odd angles from the metallic, humanoid shape. On one hand a meat cleaver had been welded to a swinging end joint.
“Security protocol in effect. Subdue criminal,” Billy’s voice said. The crass tone was replaced with a cold, calculating one. Saul backed away from the counter as the cookdroid slammed the cleaver into the register. The blaring ceased.
Saul aimed for Billy’s head with the pistol and fired. A thin waft of smoke formed up on his head and disappeared.
Stun mode won’t do anything to that junk heap. Gotta up the power.
Saul stepped back even further as Billy brought the cleaver around in a wide swinging arc. The cleaver connected with the wall of the diner and lodged itself firmly there. Saul flipped the pistol over and tuned the power setting up as high as it would go.
He took aim again as the cookdroid pulled at the cleaver in the wall. For a fleeting moment Billy looked over at him and Saul wondered if he knew what was about to happen. He pulled the trigger and another flash of light, this one red, struck Billy.
Billy’s chest exploded in a shower of sparks. He pulled the trigger again and half of Billy’s head disintegrated into thousands of parts. The cookdroid’s body slumped forward with the cleaver still stuck in the wall holding it up.
Saul exhaled and put the gun back in his jacket. If the alarm agent had time to send its signal, the police would be here in about two minutes. He looked up at the clock on his way out the door. Herman would be opening The Shop soon.
**
Herman grabbed the end of the towel with his gnarled hands and yanked it back. Saul leaned in and reached out with a hand to touch the nine small gray squares on the display. The old man leaped forward like a cat and covered them back up.
“Okay, you’ve seen ’em,” Herman said.
Saul threw a look at Herman. “I want another look.”
“Trust me, they’re vintage,” the old man said. His mouth cracked open in a smile.
“I don’t care if they’re vintage, I care if they’re real.” Saul knocked on the side of the table to emphasize his point. “There’s a lot of vintage crap that’s also fake crap.”
The smile on Herman’s face disappeared. “Okay, okay.”
He pulled the towel off the display one more time and tossed it. Saul leaned back in again and took out his glasses.
“Wow, glasses,” Herman said. “I haven’t seen those in close on twenty years. Why don’t you go get the surgery like everybody else?”
Saul didn’t bother to look back up from the display. “Call me old-fashioned.” This two-bit dealer didn’t need to know the real reasons.
He mentally recalled the serial numbers in his head. This was something too important to leave on a DRX card. As he looked over each of the small squares laid out on the red velvet, his memory triggered itself. Five of them were fakes, but three of them were real. More than enough.
Saul took off his glasses, folded them up, and put them back in their case in his jacket.
“I’ll take these three right here,” he said.
Herman looked disappointed.
“You don’t want the others?” he asked.
“No,” said Saul. “Just these three right here.”
“I could throw in the others at a discount.”
Saul rubbed at the stubble on his chin. “Those others are fakes. Those three aren’t.”
Herman’s disappointment changed into surprise.
“How’d you know-”
“Because I know.”
Herman opened his mouth again, then shut it fast. Saul smiled. He knew how to deal with curious tech dealers, especially the ones that dealt in less-than-legal items.
The old man took out a small plastic case and dropped the three small squares into it.
Snapping the case shut, Herman asked, “Will that be cash or charge?”
Saul smiled, taking out his DRX card and handing it to Herman.
“I see,” said Herman as he limped along to his register. Saul breathed a sigh of silent relief when he didn’t see a scanner attached to it.
Herman inserted the DRX card into a box next to the register. It let out a lone beep.
“All good,” he said as he offered the card back to Saul.
Saul took the card and the plastic box and put them both into his jacket.
As he opened the front door to The Store, Herman offered up a weak goodbye.
“Come again,” he said.
Not likely, if these things work.
