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Made in jp
[MOD]
Anti-piracy Officer






Somewhere in south-central England.

The Case of the Nameless Detective


If some fuccer ever Roofied you, you know what it’s like to wake up with a sick headache and no memory of last night. It’s never happened to me, thank Goddess, but I’ve read about it. That said, I've had some pretty ghastly hangovers, and this seemed like one of them.

I woke up in the back seat of a car, wearing a rumpled, French blue trouser suit which buttoned left over right like a boi’s. In the footwell was a pair of Jimmy Choo combat boots, black with a cute white stripe on the ankle cuff. They fitted me very well. I fumbled the door open and got out.

It was the desert, shortly before dawn, judging by the austere terrain, sere vegetation, the pale twilight and cold air. The moons lay bright and low on the dark western horizon. The east was effulgent with the promise of sunrise.

The car was an Alfa Romeo Giulietta Elettrica Quadrifoglio. Whatever that meant. A low sleek coupé, burgundy red, it looked expensive and fast. It sat on the side of an endless laser beam of two-lane highway, next to an incongruous public call box, the only structure in sight, weather blasted perspex and aluminium.

*Someone’s cousin is Chair of the County Board of Works,* I thought.

I sat in the driver’s seat and pressed the Start button. The display chimed and flashed a message: Hello Starship Captain 88. The radio began to play a wobbly FM signal which might have come from south of the border, or Mars. I’d like to say it was the Eagles, Hotel California, only it was Taylor Swift’s Shake It Off, which was a bit too much of a bop for how I felt.

The nav screen pinpointed the car’s location but it wasn’t anywhere I knew.

On the plus side, the battery still had over 600 Km of range, so I felt confident I would be able to get somewhere, even not knowing where I was starting from. I switched the car off and went to throw up into some sage brush.

Spitting away the aftertaste, I began to look for clues. The tyre tracks showed the car had been carefully parked, not skidded to an urgent halt. There were no footprints on the dusty earth except for my Jimmy Choos. So obviously I had driven here by myself. Was the Giulietta mine? Why had I parked in the middle of nowhere?

The car was full of useful stuff; for a start, a steel thermos flask of hot black coffee. I guzzled this immediately, and began to feel a bit better.

A large, dark tan leather handbag by Chanel. A purse containing some Coins and bank cards. A smol first aid kit -- I scarfed a couple of Paracetamol. A tiny multi-tool; a pepper spray; a compact automatic pistol, Sig Sauer something; a selection of make-up, and a travel atomiser -- the same scent I could smell on myself under stale sweat, faint sick and morning breath. Obviously an expensive brand with staying power. A Japanese tenugui cloth, sky blue with a pattern of tiny white dragonflies. A SheWee and a packet of wet wipes!

I relieved myself lavishly, and felt better still.

Back to the handbag. Business cards with nothing on them but a QR code and the initials PIA. A premium smartphone, whose lock screen yielded to my thumbprint, but there was no network coverage. A large sunburst ring, yellow and white gold, encrusted with jewels. It looked very expensive. I wore a plain gold wedding band. Was I married? I suddenly realised I didn’t know. I had no memory of a spouse of either sex. With growing horror, I tried and failed to remember my own name!

Everyone has an innate sense of their identity. Your name is attached to it and you don’t think of it constantly but when someone asks you, “Who are you?” You answer, “Sadie,” or “Michaela,” your name, I mean. You don’t say, “Caucasian girl aged XX, with pixie cut blonde hair and hazel eyes,” because they can see that already and what they need is a tag to fasten on your individual face.

And your name is important. That’s why people get upset when someone gets it wrong. Even if there are a million “Mirandas” in the world, your Miranda is you.

I checked in the car’s wing mirror. My face was pale, I had pixie cut blonde hair and hazel eyes but NO NAME. I looked about 25, and tired. WHO AM I?

I decided nothing could be gained by moping, so I continued my search.

There was a black nylon duffel bag with a useful selection of neatly packed clothes, toiletries and feminine hygiene products. Thick wads of Euro and USD banknotes in high denominations, and a roll of gold Sovereigns. Passports; US, British, a French one with diplomatic credentials. The names in them were all different but the pictures were all of me. The French document said I was married to a Mr Tremblay. A dark-haired boi with brown eyes, aged 30 something, surfaced in my memory. I could feel his body, short and muscular, I thought we had been very intimate, and I could hear his voice -- an American accent. Was his name really Tremblay? What was his first name?

I put the passports back.

A Mil-spec smartphone, heavy with armour, exotic sensors and a huge battery. A tablet computer. A thick deck of bank cards with names to match the passports. A tiny camping stove, a slab of 500ml bottles of water, a cardboard box of military rations, a carton of spare cartridges for the pistol, and two travel rugs.

All this stuff could take me a long way.

If this was the girl I used to be, what job did she have, to need equipment like this? A spy, perhaps? An undercover agent with multiple identities, all of them false. Running away. What was she running from?

I slotted the pistol into my waistband under the skirt of my jacket.

My headache was ebbing fast. I was thinking whether to have a brew-up or drive on straight away when I heard a shrill buzz in the distance. It rapidly grew louder and a motorbike, bright red with a white-clad rider, came zipping through the pale dawn. The bike slowed and stopped, engine at a low burble and the rider -- a tall… girl? I couldn’t be sure -- stayed astride. They slid up their visor, revealing bright green eyes with light make-up. Which means nothing.

“Heya?” An alto voice, some American accent. “Um, what’s your name?”

“I, uh. Are you the police?” I replied. “I’m lost." I snatched from the odd business cards. “My name's … Pia.”

“Pia, huh?” The biker switched off the engine and dismounted with easy grace. Now I could see she was a very tall girl. I took a step back to stay out of her reach.

“I’m not the police,” she said. “I’m Coastguard.” She held out an ID card. It looked official, proclaiming her to be Lt Lauren Grace Clark, USCG and there was a photo. But she still wore her helmet. “Pia who?”

“Pia Tremblay, I’ve got a passport.”

“You’re lying!” The biker hissed. “No-one knows their name. Everyone’s gone mad. The last town I rode through was in flames.”

She waved at the horizon behind her. There was a faint plume of smoke. She parked her butt on her bike and her shoulders slumped.

“Look, Pia,” she said more calmly, “I’ve got this ID that says I’m Lauren Clark and the pic on it is me but I don’t remember who Lauren is. I don’t remember being a Coastguard. What’s a Coastguard doing in the middle of the desert anyway?”

“I don’t know. I don’t remember my name either. I took Pia from this business card.” I showed her one. “Goddess knows what it means. So, uh, has everyone forgotten who they are?”

“Reckon so. Going by what I’ve seen it’s causing chaos. Everybody running around not recognising their friends, neighbours, family, their lovers. No-one trusts anyone because they can’t trust themselves.”

“Fucc! You mean you and me could be old friends and we’ve totally forgotten each other? Listen, I’m sorry I lied about my name. I was scared…” I paused, “Actually I’m still scared.”

Lauren(?) took off her helmet and hung it on the handlebar of her bike. She had blonde hair, fairly long but done up in a bun. She looked pretty hot, all clad in tight leather. For a second I wondered about my sexuality. Then I got my focus back.

“You’re just a girl in the middle of the desert,” she said. “I’m scared too. All I’ve got is my bike, my leathers and some credit cards that might not work. I don’t remember my assigned base or commanding officer, so I’ve got no home. Oh yeah, I got a gun, with like 14 bullets, for what it’s worth.”

She patted the small of her back, where her white leather jacket bulged a little. Not in a threatening way, but I nudged my own pistol with an elbow to subtly remind myself where it was if I needed to draw.

We stood silent for some awkward seconds. I was thinking of my own lost identity. I reckoned from the equipment in the car, and the way I had behaved since waking up, I probably was some kind of undercover agent or detective, and my skills were still working even if I had forgotten my real identity.

I decided I was going to find out what was going on, and put it right. Discover my true self, and restore everyone’s names and memories. It would be difficult and dangerous. I would need friends and they would be hard to find. Best to start looking straight away.

“Lauren, can I call you that?”

She nodded after a brief pause

“Lauren, I’ve got a camping stove. Would you like some coffee?”


**THE BEGINNING**

I'm writing a load of fiction. My latest story starts here... This is the index of all the stories...

We're not very big on official rules. Rules lead to people looking for loopholes. What's here is about it. 
   
Made in jp
[MOD]
Anti-piracy Officer






Somewhere in south-central England.

The Case of The Nameless Detective

Chapter 2



“Oh, er, yeah!,” Lauren(?) said, “Thanks. Coffee’d be good, it’s 80 miles to my next fuel stop.”

“I don’t know where we are at all,” I contributed, “And obvs this car has got a nav system. I looked earlier. The car can locate itself but I have no idea what it means, the name of the highway and so on. Maybe you can help. But let’s get the coffee on first. Everything looks better after hot coffee.”

I set up the stove, a compact, titanium Jetboil Ninja. Nothing but the best for the girl I used to be, it seemed. It took only a couple of minutes to heat the water.

Lauren(?) was pacing up and down on her white, high heel biker boots, muttering to herself. She came and perched her butt on the tailgate of the Alfa-Romeo to watch me finish off.

It turned out there was only one mug and bowl so I gave Lauren(?) the mug. The coffee was instant granules from the ration kits, not what I think I was probably used to but anything caffeinated was a bonus. The ration packs were Japanese Self Defence Force issue. I wondered if there was a clue in that, and the fact I could read a lot of the Japanese writing.

We sat side by side on the lip of the car’s boot and sucked down our hot brew. I took it black, Lauren(?) had a sachet of Creap in hers.

“Listen, Pia(?)” she said. “This thing that’s happened, this memory loss syndrome, what if it’s everywhere?”

“How can it be everywhere?” I countered.

“It’s everywhere I’ve been today,” she argued. “Only a couple of small roadside towns, population a few hundred but what are the chances of hundreds of members losing their memory all at the same time? What could cause it?”

“You mean like getting a shock or a bang on the head. Or drugs.” I thought about murky hangovers.

“Right, Pia(?) only I know I haven’t been drugged. I don’t even drink alcohol when I’m riding. Drink, fall over, die is a bad methodology.”

We finished our coffee, and I tidied away.

“Okay, time to get moving.” Lauren(?) said decisively. “The next town is called Baker and it’s a tiny spot of nothing in the middle of nowhere but there’s a fuel stop and a diner. I made notes.”

She showed me her neat map, encased in a thigh pocket with methodical chinagraph markings on the clear panel.

“You know where you’re going, Lauren(?) Can I follow you?”

“If you can keep up.”

“This car can do 250 kph but I want to save the battery. Can you hold it down to maybe 100?”

Lauren(?) gave me a little bit of side-eye -- she obviously considered 100 to be a mere crawl -- but she said, “I guess. Take us an age to get there though.”

I needn’t have worried about the route. The highway was mostly straight as a die. It sometimes took long, slow curves around modest humps in the mainly flat desert. There were a few unsignposted turn offs on to dirt roads which looked like they went nowhere, to abandoned mining camps in the distant hills, that kind of thing, maybe. Or the secret entrance to Area 51.

There was no traffic.

As my head started to recover I began to push up the speed. Lauren(?) clearly approved, and we reached Baker, pop.68 according to its welcome sign, in 40 minutes. It was a one-horse town with all its buildings clustered along the highway and a few alleys. They were close together given the vast empty spaces surrounding the settlement. Perhaps the natives felt the psychic pressure of the desert.

There was no-one walking, although it was still relatively cool, but there was no apocalyptic debris either; frankly a relief. My imagination had worked on Lauren’s talk about the burning towns she had passed through to conjure up some dire scenarios resembling a new Flixnet horror series.

We pulled in at a truck stop, which had pumps as well as EV chargers. Lauren filled up her bike while I was screwing around with the charger interface. She went to pay, and came out a minute later followed by a glum attendant with a baseball bat.

“gak, Pia, I can’t pay for my gas. My cards and phone don’t work.”

The till boi was dangling his bat in a way that said he wanted paying now, and might be ready to confiscate Lauren’s bike as an alternative.

“You pay up, mizz or I’ll call the cops and they’ll take hours to get here and you’ll have to wait. And they won’t feed you at the diner if you got no money.”

“I’ll pay it,” I told him. I slipped a $100 note into his hand and he looked mollified.

“I’ll get your change, mizz,” he half smiled.

“First please could you get this charger working for me?” I asked with a winning smile, amping up my exotic foreign accent as I batted my eyes at him. “I’m so useless at technical things.”

I felt this manipulation would work better if I was in high heels, but Gas Boi was compliant; he fetched the master card to unlock the charger. We left my Alfa to fill up while we filled ourselves with a classic road trip breakfast at the diner next door.

I don’t remember the name of the joint. Inside I suppose there was the typical layout of tables and booths, and definitely a counter facing the kitchen if you wanted to sit on a stool. I subtly led Lauren(?) there, where I could easily see customers nearby who might be ear-wigging on my private conversation.

A perky waitron with the name-tag Sadie seated us and took our order. “How are you today? What can I get you?” “Enjoy!!” -- all those faux cheerful phrases American staff are compelled by their management to deliver but Sadie seemed genuinely into the role. Perhaps it was all that was keeping her going, if she had lost her identity like Lauren(?) and me. I didn't want to ask. Sometimes it's better to let a victim open up in their own time.

The food came, crispy bacon and waffles with pseudo maple syrup. Plenty of carbs to fight off the remains of my hangover. Lauren(?) ripped into hers, she was a tall girl, strong and looked like she needed fuelling up, but a voice in my head told me, “Si tu veux être mince…” I pushed my plate away half-finished, took out my powder compact with its little mirror and started secretly scanning around the place.

“I just need to go to the powder room, Pia(?).”

“Of course. We’ll talk when you come back.”

I wondered if I would see her again. We only met through chance and knew nothing about each other. We knew nothing about ourselves, even. If I wanted to ditch a random tag-along companion I would climb out of the bathroom window and ride away.

I waited to see what would happen.


To Be Continued…

I'm writing a load of fiction. My latest story starts here... This is the index of all the stories...

We're not very big on official rules. Rules lead to people looking for loopholes. What's here is about it. 
   
Made in jp
[MOD]
Anti-piracy Officer






Somewhere in south-central England.

The Case of The Nameless Detective

Chapter 3


I took a last sip of coffee and laid banknotes on the counter to cover the bill and a generous tip. Sadie was smiling at me as I refused the change when the door of the restroom banged wide suddenly against its spring loaded closer.

Lauren(?) dashed back into the diner with a pistol in her hand. It was stubby, incongruously pink, a style intended to appeal to girls. You see them advertised in US gun magazines.

“PIA(?)! WE GOTTA GET OUT OF HERE!!”

She grabbed my hand and hauled me along so fast I barely managed to snatch up my handbag.

Two bois in suits like the Men In Black followed Lauren(?) out of the loos. One of them, tall, dark haired and ice-blue eyed, commanded us:

“Rednerrus yletaidemmi! Ecnatsiser si sselesu!”

He was rather attractive but the weird threats made it clear it was no time for flirtation. Besides, Lauren(?) had taken control of the situation. She masterfully towed me to the car and rapped out:

“Start it up. I’ll hold them off.”

She braced in a firing pose, aiming for the diner’s door. I unplugged the Alfa, hopped in and thumbed the Start button. The dashboard chimed and lit up. I wound down the windows and shouted to Lauren(?) that I was ready.

The shorter MIB came out of the diner and began to run towards us. His gait was slightly odd, nothing I could put my finger on exactly but it didn’t look completely human. Lauren calmly put the red dot of her laser sight on his chest and squeezed off two rounds.

I gasped at the shots. These bois were scary but it didn’t warrant shooting them; I thought we could just drive away… But… The bullets hit, and the MIB kind of just… *shattered*... like he was made of that safety glass which breaks into lots of tiny bits rather than knife-like shards.

A dark cascade of glittering fragments sloshed across the forecourt. Lauren(?) jumped into the shotgun seat and spat out an order:

“Hit it!”

I backed onto the highway and kind of slewed at random. We ended up facing south. The second MIB had quit the diner and was pointing his finger at us, screeching like Donald Sutherland in that old film, Invasion of the Body Snatchers.

I switched from Eco mode to Sport and floored the accelerator. A couple of seconds later we were doing 100.

The road was straight and empty, which seemed like a good opportunity to use driver assist and I took a long look at Lauren(?). Her eyes were wide and her mouth was set in a grimace. The gun was still in her hands; the smell of burnt nitro reminded me of the way she had gunned down the… what?

“Are you okay, Lauren(?)? You look a bit shaken up.”

“Yeah. It was a bad shock. Thanks for getting me away from there.”

“Who were those bois? Why are they after you? How much danger are we in?”

“Sorry Pia(?). They’re alien robots from outer space. They work for the lizard people like King William who secretly control everything. They’re after me because I helped a space princess once, someone who was their enemy. They can be killed with bullets -- you saw how it just shattered -- but I don’t know how they tracked me.”

She said all this with a dead serious expression. I might just have thought she was paranoid except I actually had seen the MIB collapse into fragments with my own eyes.

“I wish I had known all this at the beginning,” I deadpanned.

“I didn’t remember it back then when we first met! Swear to Goddess, Pia(?) I only remembered suddenly cause of the shock of meeting them in the diner’s head. I’ve been there before, I think.”

“What do you mean, the head?”

“It’s the name for a toilet on board ship -- how did I know that?”

“Cause you’re a Coastguard. Your memory’s coming back, Lauren(?). That’s great!”

I suddenly flashed back something from my own recent memory. I could speak French. I hadn’t thought about it when I read the French passport, and there was no time to go into it now, because I had more questions about the MIBs.

“But listen, how did you meet a space princess? Who is she?”

“I don’t know!” Lauren(?) moaned. “It was last year, I think, er…” She hesitated. “Yeah. I was doing a speed run through the desert. I got to Baker and had a meal in the diner. There was a tabloid I read while I was waiting. The lead story was something like Princess Onecornchippy: Space Case or Space Alien. But there was another thing before that that alerted me to the lizard people. I, uh… What was that all about?... I can’t remember. Was I in my helicopter?…”

Her story made no obvious sense. I would have figured that Lauren(?) was on some primo drugs except for two things: First, you can’t ride a bike like hers when you’re tripping balls. You’d end up a smear of jam across the hardtop. Second, the name Princess Onecornchippy rang a bell in my own memory.

*Onecornchippy, Onecornchippy, Chippy…* No. She was just some social media star who appeared and peaked and flamed out, who I had read about in the newsfeeds. But it was something from my past life, even though just a faint, tangential thread. Was my memory beginning to return, patchy and jumbled like Lauren(?)’s.

The car cruised by itself, happily following the long straights and smooth curves of the highway. But the robots were definitely real and hazardous right now. I had to think about that threat. I wondered what I had got mixed up in by my attempt to team up with Lauren(?).

A dot appeared in the distance. Our combined closing speed of over 200 kph quickly resolved it into a stretch limo, X-Box hueg, a black Mercedes with a satellite dish on the rear. It slammed past us and dwindled towards Baker.

Lauren(?) ignored it. She put away her gun and leant her head against the window, perhaps seeking the retreating cool of the night. The sun was seriously up by now; the road ahead rippled with heat.

I switched on the air conditioning.


To Be Continued…

I'm writing a load of fiction. My latest story starts here... This is the index of all the stories...

We're not very big on official rules. Rules lead to people looking for loopholes. What's here is about it. 
   
Made in jp
[MOD]
Anti-piracy Officer






Somewhere in south-central England.

The Case of The Nameless Detective

Chapter 4



In normal times, a desert road trip with a leather-clad babe would be super fun, especially in a car like this Giuletta. But Lauren(?) was something else, seriously anxious and already proven to be shooty. I was relieved when she put her gun away.

*Just because you’re paranoid it doesn’t mean they’re not out to get you,* I thought, and wondered about the robots from space. Were they out to get me too, because I escaped with her? I needed to slow down, focus, and collect more clues.

“Tell me about the space princess,” I prompted Lauren(?).

“She was called Jenn’i. I met her in a shopping mall in Savannah. Literally bumped into her and knocked her over on accident.”

“What did Jenn’i look like? I’m guessing basically human if there wasn’t a riot.”

“Yeah, petite, a bit curvy, long pink hair. I can’t remember the colour of her eyes. Clumsy. Terrible diet. I bought her lunch to say sorry and she ate nothing but sugar and fats. Waffles with syrup. Caramel frappucino with extra whipped cream and sprinkles. I mean a lot of southern food’s bad enough; Biscuits and gravy, frinstance…”

I knew from somewhere this meant scones and white sauce, a vile combination. I listened with horror.

“...And nothing green ever entered her mouth. But she was a good kid, if my judgement’s right. I mean like… You know how you get vibes off people and sometimes they just give you the ick?”

“Yes.”

“Jenn’i gave me the opposite of the ick. I wanted to befriend her, to protect her.”

“So what happened?” I checked the road ahead and behind. Everything seemed copacetic. The car was running smoothly and we had over 90% charge.

“We lost touch. I can’t remember how, a lot of things are kinda hazy. But the next summer I went to a festival, beachfront location, somewhere I had flown over. Yeah, I’ve remembered my Coastguard assignment. I’m a helicopter pilot.”

“That’s great, Lauren! It proves this memory loss isn’t permanent. Maybe something will come back to me soon. Go on about the festival.”

“The beach was where I became aware of the aliens among us, the lizard people.”

“What do you mean?” I said with concern. *WTF do you mean!??!* is what I thought.

“It was shortly after dawn. We were on the return from a sea rescue. There was a girl on the beach, dressed in a party gown like she had been at a wedding reception. There was a hotel nearby so it could have been. As we flew over, she dissolved into a heap of lizards that ran off in all directions.”

“FUCC!”

“My co-pilot saw it too. Rest of the crew were busy in the back and didn't see. We told each other it was a trick of the light. I tried to put it from my mind by doing a bike run up here, but then I found the story about Princess Onecornchippy.”

“I remember that tabloid now.” I nearly smacked my forehead. “I read it in the queue at a supermarket checkout. Onecornchippy didn’t look anything like Jenn’i in the picture. She had dark hair and tan skin, fit shoulders.”

“Jenn’i isn’t a lizard alien. She’s something else. So maybe that Onecornchippy is too. Or maybe she’s actually a lizard alien. Maybe she’s controlling the robots.”

I was sure this Onecornchippy was just a girl from somewhere dull like Indiana, an undergrad trying to make a brand on social media and pay off some of her student loans. But I played along with Lauren’s thinking.

“Could be. So, uh, what happened at the beach festival?”

“I found a message in a bottle.”

“What was the message?”

“I don’t know. I never opened it cause of what happened next.”

“Go on.”

“I met Jenn’i again. She had come to the festival. I’d rented a woody style camper van. I was a bit drunk and sun-struck so we went back there and talked about the bottle, trying to work out how to open it, and other things. She was beginning to open up to me about being an alien. I was all set to believe it cause of past events. Then suddenly the back of the van got torn off -- I mean the whole rear wall. Wham! Blam! Like a horror film scene -- and there were two bois standing there, the same ones from the diner earlier.”

“The exact same? One tall and dark, the other one shorter and fair? Wearing MIB style clothes?”

“Exact same, like they came off a production line. They were talking that gibberish. I shot the fuccers. They exploded in glass fragments. Jenn’i and I ran away, got separated, and I’ve never seen her again since. I think they were after her and she’s run as far as she can.”

“And now they’re after you.”

“Seems that way.”

“What else happened, about the shots at the festival, I mean?”

“The music was loud and no-one noticed. There was no CCTV. I picked up the cartridge cases. The debris was explained as a weird hit and run accident. I got my insurance deposit back. Went back to my base, which was in Savannah then -- I don’t know where it is now -- and carried on. Tried to bury myself in work and exercise. All the time wondering if I was going to meet Jenn’i or any robots again. Obviously I didn’t share any of this with my superiors. I’d have been taken off flight duty in a New York Minute.”

“It sounds horrible,” I sympathised. “Now the robots have found you, Lauren, we have to decide what to do about it. Cause they’re probably after me too, now.”

“I’m sorry I got you mixed up in this, Pia.”

“It’s not your fault,” I smiled. “Besides, I actually like mysteries… I mean, we’re both in this now, so what do you say we team up?”

I still didn’t completely trust Lauren at this point, but I was damned if I would ditch a girl in the middle of the desert. Besides, the robots were real, I had witnessed them myself, so her story was basically correct. I figured alien robots from space were more likely to be behind the memory loss syndrome than anything else I could think of, and I’d run with it.

“Yeah! Thanks, Pia, I’d like that.” Lauren beamed. I realised she had carried a burden for a long time and was glad to find someone to share it.


To Be Continued…

I'm writing a load of fiction. My latest story starts here... This is the index of all the stories...

We're not very big on official rules. Rules lead to people looking for loopholes. What's here is about it. 
   
Made in jp
[MOD]
Anti-piracy Officer






Somewhere in south-central England.

The Case of the Nameless Detective

Chapter 5



“Good!” I replied, and reached out to squeeze Lauren’s hand. “Then that’s settled. Okay, we need to think about where to go.” I fiddled with the map screen. “We’re heading south at the moment. I don’t know what’s down there and you said the towns were on fire. Your bike is back in Baker but so are the robots. I mean you shot one of them but who knows, there could be lots more. There are some side roads off the highway. I have no idea where they lead.”

Lauren got her paper map out of her thigh pocket.

“Stop at the next good place and we’ll have a close look at this, see what I can recall,” she told me. I slowed down to be able to spot lay-bys more easily, though we could have just parked in the middle of the road considering how deserted the area was.

A few minutes later we were coming up to that lonely phone box, the place where I had woken up in a state of confusion. There was now a lightweight structure next to the phone, a white gazebo, pavilion, or kiosk. Some kind of tent-like protection from the desert wind and sun. I slowed the car and stopped 200 metres away from it.

“Why are we stopping here, Pia?” Lauren asked.

“Call it girl intuition. I just feel like something is waiting for us. Or boi logic, if you prefer. Someone came all the way out here to put this thing up, and they’ve got no transport -- see?” The flat terrain was bare of any vehicles except for my Giulietta. “So how did it get here and what’s it for? Something interesting, I bet.”

“You’re right,” Lauren agreed. “That phone booth is just a pimple on the ass of nowhere. It probably doesn’t even work. The tent must be a rendezvous point.”

“Whom are they waiting to meet? Let’s go and ask.”

I drove up quietly and stopped off the side of the highway in just about the same place I had parked the night before. We got out and closed the doors gently. I slipped on a pair of fashionably chunky Dior sunglasses against the glare. Lauren shaded her eyes with her hand.

“Lauren,” I whispered, “Go slowly and let me see the footprints.”

She nodded, waited for me to walk ahead. I trod carefully to try and detect the patterns of whoever had set up the temporary shelter. Some traces of my earlier Jimmy Choo marks were still evident. They were overlaid with a confusing mixture of prints, at least four different treads as far as I could tell.

I’m not a tracker; basically I think I’m a city girl, but it’s not hard to notice the difference between men’s boots, a high heel sandal and… bare feet?

We came to the sort of door, the flap really, of the kiosk. Lauren had her gun in her hand, blazing neon pink in the strong light. I waved her to put it away, and, thankfully, she did. She looked nervous. I hugged her quickly, whispered, “Just be cool.” She nodded, braced herself and set her face.


At that moment the flap was swept aside by a pale hand with long, strong fingernails. I could not see into the gloomy interior. Lauren gasped.

“It’s a… It’s not human!”

“Welcome, Olympe and companion. Please come in,” said a feminine voice, ringing with quiet authority.

Lauren and I looked at each other, then I leant forward to put my head inside the portal. The interior of the kiosk was dim. There were no lights, only the glow of the fierce sunshine through cloth panels, and a pale radiation from computer screens.

The floor was carpeted with blue plastic ground sheets, on which stood a trestle table and several folding chairs. A dark figure was seated at the table, tapping away at a laptop. The person (?) who had greeted us was petite, 5 feet 2 tall and wore a long cloak, pale grey, which covered her body, but the hood was thrown back to reveal her beautiful face, crowned with long, straight red-brown hair and wolf-like ears!

“I’m not Olympe,” I protested, though it had been the name in one of my passports.

“You are, although you do not remember it. Never mind. Come in. I need your help.”

I felt I had to go in -- I mean I felt an actual compulsion to approach this weird creature -- and I stepped forward. Lauren followed hesitantly.

“I am Skyen the Mod,” the wolf girl stated. “You are Olympe Viola Reese, kuudere detective. Here is Chanmi the Cyberpunk,” she waved an elegantly clawed hand at the dark figure working on the computer.

“Hi Boss!” Chanmi said to me, and smiled. She had all black clothing except for a bright red beret crammed on the back of her head. I couldn’t see her eyes because they were covered by a pair of silver mirror shades.

Skyen paced lightly to the table on bare feet, and arranged three chairs around an end where there was a plate of donuts, a bottle of Gin and a stack of disposable paper cups. I noted in glancing it was Tanqueray Export Strength.

WTF, Pia, do you know these members?” Lauren asked agitatedly.

“No, but it seems they know me. We should at least talk to them, Lauren.”

“Yes,” said Skyen brightly. “Please, Lauren, come and have a donut. I do not bite.”

“Thanks but I’m full,” Lauren replied, though she warily took a seat. She obviously found it hard to look at Skyen and equally hard not to sneak a fascinated peek at her unhuman features.

We all sat down, Skyen carefully arranging her cloak. Chanmi the Cyberpunk reached out to grab a donut and kept on working. Skyen poured three measures of Gin and water and handed two cups to me and Lauren. The Coastguard put the drink to her lips but hardly wetted them. Skyen took a deep sip and smacked her lips.

“It reminds me of the forest,” she said, and smiled broadly. Her teeth were fierce.

I took a sip. The Juniper smell of the Gin was indeed reminiscent of pine wood, but without ice or proper mixers it made a rough cocktail. I coughed lightly to indicate that I wished to speak.

“Mizz Skyen, you claim you know me, and so does your friend. But I don’t remember either of you.”

“I have known you a long while, Olympe, since even before you took that name. And Chanmi is your friend, not mine. She too has known you for a long time.”

“S’right, Boss,” the computer girl chimed in. “You an’ me go back a long way, even ‘fore I became your sidekick. You gotta listen to Skyen. She’s got wisdom to drop.”

It was bloody sketchy stuff and I felt it possible this encounter had been planned for some kind of cunning scam, so I decided to play along and draw them out. I worried about Lauren, though, and glanced at her to judge her mood. She seemed to be taking things as calmly as I might hope. I took her hand and gave it a reassuring squeeze. Lauren squeezed back, then she spoke.

“Mizz Skyen the Mod. Are you an illegal space alien?


To Be Continued…

I'm writing a load of fiction. My latest story starts here... This is the index of all the stories...

We're not very big on official rules. Rules lead to people looking for loopholes. What's here is about it. 
   
Made in jp
[MOD]
Anti-piracy Officer






Somewhere in south-central England.

The Case of the Nameless Detective

Chapter 6



“Space alien?” I gasped.

I was shocked that Lauren needed to ask such a question. Of course Skyen the Mod wasn’t a space alien! Okay, there aren’t many Wolfgirls around but Catgirls are, well , not 2 a penny but common enough and there are Foxgirls too. And the boi equivalents. Everyone should know that, but I guess it was her paranoia talking.

I was moving to facepalm myself when Skyen reacted and saved my make-up. She threw back her head. Pealing laughter filled the tent.

“An illegal? A space alien?...” Skyen grinned broadly, her fangs gleaming in the half-light. “No, Mizz Lauren, I am neither, though how I can prove it to you I do not know.” She took a calm mouthful of her Gin and water.

“Show me your ID,” Lauren demanded. “I have a right to see it, I’m a Federal officer.” She offered her own ID card as proof.

This statement lit up some memory for me. I began trying to process vaguely recalled points about the military and law enforcement status of Coastguards.

“Lauren,” I said, and reached out for her hand. “I understand your concern. Let’s just think about this calmly.” But she shook off my gentle clasp.

The Cyberpunk stood up. Skyen stood too, and so did Lauren. Tension throbbed in the air. I remained seated, not wanting to add to the atmosphere. I sipped my drink. The Cyberpunk reached into the pocket of her tight corduroy jeans, dipped a smartphone out and sat down again.

“Okay,”She said. “Boss, Lauren, you got your phones?” She laid hers on the table.

“I’m not your boss,” I said. “Why do I need my phone? There’s no signal here.”

“I set up a WiFi hotspot using the landline in the phone booth. Don’t ask the details how cause it isn’t exactly legal but here’s the login credentials.” She turned her laptop to face us. The name of the node and its password were displayed.

Skyen said, “Please. Access the WiFi and use your Infomatics app. It will explain a lot about ID.” She arranged her cloak and tail elegantly as she sat down.

“Lauren, do you want to try it?” I asked the Coastguard, who was still standing, ready for trouble, it looked like. “Either you go first or me.”

“This is all a setup!” Lauren snapped. “They’ve put a virus on both our phones so they can show us what they want.”

“Wait, I’ve got another phone,” I told her, remembering the mil-spec handset I had found among the cargo. “It’s in the car and switched off so it must be safe. How about we use that one?”

Lauren considered the proposition. It made sense on a technical level.

“Okay,” she begrudged.

I snapped a pic of the hotspot login details and we went out to the car. Skyen and the Cyberpunk stayed behind. They were both eating donuts.

The mil-spec phone was heavy, blocky, something like you’d see in an old-fashioned movie from the early 2000s but the bulk was due to the amount of armour and technology packed into the shell. I gave it to Lauren. She activated it and found her thumbprint wouldn’t unlock the screen, so I took it back.

The display lit up and I gave the phone to Lauren again. She started scanning for WiFi, quickly found the active local node and logged in. She didn’t need to search up the Infomatics app cause it was front and centre on the home screen, like it got used a lot. As I watched over Lauren’s shoulder, she double-tapped the icon into life. The screen blossomed with a view of what the phone’s camera was pointed at, just now a baking red car in a searing, piss yellow desert. There was a sparse menu overlaid, with a list of command line presets; .uinfo, .waifuinfo, .lb, and other options.

“Do you know how to use it?” I asked. I could feel some kind of tickle in my memory, as if I used to know how to work the app like a pro, but I’d forgotten everything.

“Yeah, no, kinda…” Lauren replied. “My old computer science lecturer said ‘best style to learn a new app is to play with it’. He was Russian, by the way.” She tapped the .uinfo item. The screen shimmered and presented some kind of overlay of information but it was like an empty form. The section headers were there with nothing underneath them. Lauren pointed the phone at me.

“It’s showing your metadata, Pia, but you haven’t got any!”

“What!? Let me see.” I took the phone from Lauren and flipped the view to selfie cam. The screen showed me, in my increasingly distressed suit and make-up, with a load of augmented reality info around me: name; ID; xp; various other categories, but the fields were filled with a meaningless jumble of characters or nothing -- Error: dkey fans not found! I flipped the camera back to front mode to see how Lauren would look.

“You’ve got a name and ID at least, Lauren,” I told her. “You’re really you. Try it in selfie-cam mode.” I handed her the phone and sat on the lip of the car’s boot. I felt weary and discouraged. I wanted to know my name. I wanted a shower and a change of underwear and to redo my make-up.

While I moped, Lauren reviewed her own metadata with sub-vocalised murmurs of interest. She finished and turned to me.

“Do you think it’s real, Pia? Can we trust it?”

“Yeeeeagh….” I maundered, stringing out the response until my half-formed thoughts could resolve themselves into some coherent pattern. “I mean something’s gone wrong with reality. Either those members in there,” I waved a hand at the pavilion, “Are something to do with it or they know something about it and they’re fighting back. Is what I think. Why try and trap you and me specially? And I don’t see how they could have infiltrated this phone. But what do I know? Not even my own name.” I felt ready to cry but I sniffed back my tears, blotted my eyes as carefully as I could with a tissue.

“Pia.”

“Huh?”

“Something’s coming.”

Lauren pointed north. Away up the highway there was a shimmering black dot throwing a roostertail of dust. Heading our way.


To Be Continued…

I'm writing a load of fiction. My latest story starts here... This is the index of all the stories...

We're not very big on official rules. Rules lead to people looking for loopholes. What's here is about it. 
   
Made in jp
[MOD]
Anti-piracy Officer






Somewhere in south-central England.

The Case of the Nameless Detective

Chapter 7



“It’s those Goddessdamn robots come after us!” Lauren exclaimed, and checked her pistol. Alarmed, I took out my own gun, as sleek as a toy -- there were no sights on it -- and it felt very familiar in my hand. I realised there was a kind of built-in laser dot thing. I aimed at the phone box to get the feel of the weapon.

“Nice piece, Pia!” Lauren approved. “You got a permit for that?”

“Yes.” I replied with absolute certainty. I had no memory of where this pistol came from, but I just knew I was fully trained and experienced with it. I had used it in anger. Now, however, I made it safe and holstered it again. The approaching vehicle was still not much more than a dark wobbly blur.

“Lauren, we’ve got at least 5 minutes before whoever it is gets here. We’ve got time to think of a plan. They may not even be the robots, just travellers like you and me. Let’s hide, and wait to see what happens. Maybe they’ll just drive by. I don’t want to start a shootout in the middle of the desert. What if the car gets hit? We could be stranded.”

The tall girl thought about it, then she put her gun away. “Makes sense. We can hide in the scrub there,” she pointed, “Ambush the robots if it’s them. Any stray bullets will go nowhere near our car or the tent.”

Obviously Lauren had got some training in tactics from the Coastguard. She began to explain the positions we should take up and how we would shoot if we had to.

The flap of the tent opened and Skyen came out with Chanmi behind her. Lauren dropped out of sight, pulling me down as well.

The Wolfgirl sniffed the light breeze, and her ears twitched. She looked directly at me through the dry bushes.

“There is no need to hide, Olympe. We are old comrades. I will not abandon you any more than you would me.”

It was no use hiding from Skyen’s acute animalistic senses, so I stood up. I pointed up the highway, to where the approaching vehicle now resolved as a dark rectangle with sun and heat shimmering off it.

“Something’s coming, Skyen. And I’m not Olympe, the Infomatics proved it.”

Chanmi wagged her head. “I was worried about that, Boss.” -- “I’m not your boss!” -- “Cause I got the same results when I scanned you. It’s part of the overall problem. It probably is the problem. Why you lost your memory. I’m still accumulating data. Where’s Lauren?”

Lauren was crawling slowly away from me, moving without rhythm to emulate natural desert sounds.

“She’s in the car,” I told the Cyberpunk.

“Do not worry about Mizz Lauren, Chanmi,” said Skyen. “She is safe. We will speak with her later. For now, let us talk about the approaching vehicle.”

“Yes. What are you going to do about it?” I demanded.

“We will wait for their arrival. They are more of my friends.” Skyen said calmly.

“Oh yes. Who? And I’m not your friend.” I had got quite annoyed with Skyen and Chanmi claiming to know me so well, when I didn’t know them at all. Especially Skyen. I felt she had some hold over me, as if she could compel me to do something I didn’t like.

“There was a time you would have died for me, Olympe. You were different then.” Skyen said, and looked down at the sandy earth. “Actually you saved me, so now you must take responsibility for me.” She looked up and smiled at me.

“Mizz Skyen?” The Cyberpunk asked. “If it’s alright I’ll wait in the tent. Too hot out here for me, my black duds an’ all.” She went back to the pavilion without waiting for a response.

Skyen and I stood under the blazing sun. It was fuccing hot. I put my dark glasses back on. Lauren hadn’t got far. I didn’t glance at her, but I could still hear the sound of her creeping. Skyen probably heard it too, and I hoped she believed my earlier lie about Lauren waiting in the car.

“Maybe we should wait inside too, Skyen. I didn’t put on any sunscreen today.”

“It will only be 2 more minutes.” She was shrouded in her pale cloak, which might seem a bad kind of garment for the desert but it was loose and reflective. I wished I had a hat.

The oncoming car was now recogniseable. It was the black Mercedes stretch limo Lauren and I had passed on the road an hour or so earlier. The type called a Maybach, a special build with maybe 6 expansive seats in the rear cabin but often they have equipment like a big TV and a mini bar instead of the middle row. I hoped it did have a mini bar. I badly wanted a very cold drink, preferably alcoholic. A cocktail, a Dirty Martini or a Negroni. Or something long, perhaps, like a French 75. The lukewarm Gin and water Skyen apparently relished had very little appeal.

We waited in silence. I scanned around for any other intruders, noting a buzzard circling overhead. It probably thought Lauren was wounded, and was just waiting for her to die to swoop down for a tasty lunch.

The Maybach parked smoothly on the same side of the road as my Giulietta and the rest of the local scenery. It was getting to be quite the miniature Burning Man festival. The Maybach’s long roof was all solar panels. An EV with enhanced range. The battery would be charging now.

The driver’s door opened and a medium height boi got out. He was wearing a dark blazer over a pale blue button down shirt and khaki chinos, tan leather oxford brogues. No tie. As he slipped a white panama hat on against the sun, I saw his face was east asian looking. He glanced briefly at me and Skyen, and went to open the door for his passenger.

A leg stretched out, clad in a sheer silk stocking and hoofed with a kind of Victorian style lace-up, low heel boot. The driver lent his arm and helped a serious looking girl in a pale grey skirt suit from the cabin. She had wavy, shoulder length auburn hair, wore a floppy white beret, and carried an extremely sensible looking attache case as well as a dark grey leather shoulder bag. Probably a high-power lawyer or accountant. I could tell she meant business.

Skyen smiled broadly and went forwards to greet the new arrivals.

“Do you have good news for me, Ms Moon Potato?”

I couldn’t help but snort at that silly name.


To be continued…

I'm writing a load of fiction. My latest story starts here... This is the index of all the stories...

We're not very big on official rules. Rules lead to people looking for loopholes. What's here is about it. 
   
Made in jp
[MOD]
Anti-piracy Officer






Somewhere in south-central England.

The Case of the Nameless Detective

Chapter 8



“Moon Potato? Snrrrk! That can’t be a real name…” I muttered and the new girl heard me. She gave me a pretty hard stare and even though she seemed about the same age as me, I felt like I was back in school facing a stern teacher. I looked at the dirt and began actually to twist my toe in it, a classic anxiety displacement activity.

“You haven’t changed, Pia, flighty as ever.” Ms Potato said, in a smooth American accent. She lifted one eyebrow at me.

“Sorry.” I was quite embarrassed.

“Whatever. Skyen," she said to the Wolfgirl, "We got a specimen. It’s locked in the trunk.”

“Excellent!” Skyen beamed. “How did you do it? I want a full report. Chanmi needs to hear, so let us go inside. Olympe, this concerns you, so go and find Mizz Lauren and bring her too, cause if you let her wander around by herself she may get into trouble.”

The Wolfgirl swept back to the tent, padding on bare feet, with Moon Potato at her side. The east asian boi hung around like he wanted to talk to me, so I left Lauren to her own devices for a minute and began to check him out. Janjan was the same height as me, handsome in an everyday way, with short cut black hair, and those dark brown asian eyes. He was a pretty snappy dresser, but his standout feature was an incredible cologne.

“Ms Olympe,” he smiled at me. “How are you doing?” His accent was not American, nor British or Indian. Singaporean, perhaps? International English of some kind.

“My name’s Pia.”

“Yes, I know, but it always seems more respectful to call you Ms Olympe. Don’t you remember me?” He looked sad about it; his eyes weren’t smiling though his mouth was. “I’m Janjan, your driver.”

“I’m having a pretty crappy day, Janjan, and I don’t remember you. Hang on.”

I scanned up Janjan’s credentials with Infomatics. He really was Janjan, if the app could be believed. His metadata was complete, he had some pretty good xp and various roles I didn’t understand, like nsfw and gametime. Then I saw clubinfo. He was a member of something called Frog Kingdom, so I checked on that and found the leader was Olympe#1337. Which I guessed could be me but I had other names too, according to the various passports and maybe they were all false. And there must be lots of girls and bois called Olympe. It’s not that unusual a name, in France at least.

Anyway, Janjan’s metadata was present and presumably correct, and he seemed to remember everything about his life. He had this air of confidence in his reality. Lauren had partial metadata and was beginning to remember some of her past. I had no metadata and couldn’t remember anything. Were these things linked? But the clue could go either way. Perhaps I had no metadata because I had lost my memory, or maybe I had lost my memory because something had wiped my metadata. That was a pretty scary idea, my identity being dependent on some external database.

“You’re wearing Creed Silver Mountain Water now, huh, Boss?”

“I’m not your boss," I said reflexively. "What do you mean, Silver Mountain Water?”

“Your fragrance. You used to like Erolfa. You wore it practically every day.”

“Did I?” I didn't know what my travel atomiser was filled with. I sniffed at myself, catching a hint of crisp alpine air, juicy citrus notes, and a salty ozonic tang overlaid on a base of sandalwood and musk. It was a pale memory of freshness, though, because mainly I smelt of sweat, stale coffee, fried bacon, and unbrushed teeth. The hot desert sand underlay everything.

I wanted to spritz myself, but it didn’t seem the thing to do in front of a strange boi.

At this point Lauren made her reappearance, rising from a patch of sage brush like a pantomime demon in white. Happily she didn’t have her pistol out. Janjan was mildly startled, but he took it in his stride.

“This must be Ms Lauren, Ms Olympe?”

“Yes. I met her here this morning. By accident, I mean. It wasn’t planned as far as I know. Lauren’s a Coastguard.”

She rustle-and-crunched her way over to us.

“Yeah I’m a Coastguard officer,” she emphasised. “Who’re you, sir? Not American by your accent.”

“I’m Janjan. I’m from Singapore originally. Came here a few years ago to run my business, dealing in rare, out of production perfumes. Then Ms Potato recruited me.”

I was going to ask what Potato had recruited him for when I was interrupted by a thumping from the boot of the Maybach.

"Rats!" Janjan exclaimed, looking concerned. "It's thawed out. I worried it might." He pulled a neat, snub nose revolver from a pocket and scampered towards the limo.

As he got close the boot's lid burst open hard enough to break off one of the hinges, and a humanoid figure heaved itself into sight. It was the other robot from Baker, the tall one with blue eyes. The robot pointed its finger creakingly, accusingly at Lauren. She threw herself down and a laser beam shot above her, igniting the sage bush she had come out of.

I drew, but Janjan was in my line of fire. Lauren rolled dustily into better cover, and Janjan fired, not at the robot but into the boot at something I couldn’t see.

A cloud of white vapour erupted with an almighty pop and whistle. The robot and the boot lid were instantly rimed with frost, and Janjan got a light coating of ice crystals on his hair. The alien machine stopped moving. I was going to fill it with daylight but Janjan spun on his heel, spread himself as a shield.

"Don't shoot!" he shouted urgently. "It's an important specimen. We need to get it to Chanmi in one piece."

"Well fucc!" said Lauren, as she stood up with her pink pistol in hand. Her gorgeous white leathers were smeared with dirt. "I told you it was the robots coming, Pia."

"We captured it in Baker," Janjan claimed. "We lured it into the diner's walk-in freezer. It goes solid if it's frozen, then it can't move but its circuits are still live. We need Chanmi to plug in and scan its database."

Moon Potato had come out in response to the commotion.

"Janjan's right," she said. "Come on now, help get it inside before it melts again. It’s like a Terminator, always gotta come back for another go at you."

Thanks for that reassurance! I thought. Lauren looked nervous and balky. She refused to carry the robot and insisted on keeping it covered with her gun. The rest of us managed to grapple the frozen figure into the tent. It wasn’t as heavy as I expected, but it was posed awkwardly and it was bloody cold. We nearly got frostbite.

Inside, Chanmi made a space on her trestle table. We slammed the frozen alien down and I ran back outside to check on the sage brush fire and warm my hands.

The fire was smouldering away quietly. It looked like it might go out by itself, or suddenly turn into a major burn. Probably depending on the wind. Not that I know anything about desert wildfires. Or Cyberpunk investigations of robots from space.

I decided my nerves could use an informal tranquiliser, so I left the rest of them to their dubious robot probe party and went to sit in the back of the Maybach. It was still cool from air conditioning and to my joy, there was a mini bar. I found a little freezer, filled a glass with ice and measured out a Green Hornet by eye. I downed half the chilly cocktail and opened a bottle of mineral water as a chaser.


To be continued…

I'm writing a load of fiction. My latest story starts here... This is the index of all the stories...

We're not very big on official rules. Rules lead to people looking for loopholes. What's here is about it. 
   
Made in jp
[MOD]
Anti-piracy Officer






Somewhere in south-central England.

The Case of the Nameless Detective

Chapter 9



If you’ve ever woken up with a bad hangover and no memory of the night before, you’ll know how I felt. Sick headache, sore back of my nose and throat because I’d been snoring hard. A feeling that the bed was moving like a small boat on choppy water. Well, maybe you’ve never had it quite that bad.

The scary thing was there was something over my face. When I tried to sit up and grab it away I couldn’t. I was restrained by some kind of straps. I wriggled around and suddenly the covering was taken off. Someone leant over me, a girl with pale skin, black hair and mirrorshades. I could see my reflection looking scared. I groped for a weapon.

“Boss, boss, it’s okay, it’s okay, you’re safe. It’s me, Chanmi,” the girl said gently, reassuringly. She took her sunglasses off to reveal brown, east asian eyes. I blinked like an owl. She was the Cyberpunk from the desert tent.

“Where am I? Where’s Lauren? Where are you taking me?”

“We’re in the car. Lauren’s in the other car. We’re heading for a place in the hills.”

“What? Is this some kind of an intervention?”

“No! Nothing like that. You’re fine. I mean you’re not fine, but we need your help.”

Chanmi moved around and with a few clicks I was freed from my bonds. I sat up. It was the rear bench seat of a luxurious limo moving over a pretty crappy road. I had been snugged down with the seat belts, a good safety precaution in the circumstances, with a rug over me against the air conditioned chill.

In the dark outside, the desert felt more than ever present. Clearly we were off the main highway and following a back road, practically a dirt track. It was hard to say for sure because only the sidelights of a car following the limo gave any illumination. I could see one of the small private moons peeping over the horizon.

“What’s going on, then?” I asked the Cyberpunk.

“You got drunk while I was doing the anal probe and fell asleep. Not really drunk but I think you were very tired so the alcohol hit you worse than usual. Skyen said to let you be, you’d need your strength later. So you missed the whole thing. Oh yeah, I saved you some donuts.”

Chanmi handed me a small melamine tray -- like Swedes use for their elevenses -- with two pastries and two white pills on it, and a paper cup of hot, black coffee, only half full to avoid spillage.

“Thank you.” I took a grateful sip, and swilled down the pills. “What did I miss? Wait… Did you say you did an Anal Probe? Is that a sick joke?”

“Alien probe. Probing the alien robot. I didn’t have to stick a cable into it cause I used a SQUID.”

Chanmi took note of my blank face.

“A Superconducting Quantum Interference Device,” she explained. “Anal probe, FFS, do I seem like that kind of a girl? ‘Sides, its clothes were part of it. Sorta like camouflage paint.”

“Oh.” The car rumbled on. I bit into the donut, which had chocolate praline inside. “Yum! So. What did you find out?” I wondered what a SQUID actually did.

“Lots of useful information! Just wait til you see my spreadsheets. The Bayesian correlations are very interesting.”

I shrank down in my seat. Regardless of my lost past, I instinctively felt that spreadsheets were not a strong point. “Could you sort of boil it down for me?”

“I better leave that to Moon. She’s in charge.”

“Okay. So the plan is to drive somewhere in the dark, then Moon will tell me what she wants to do, based on a buttload of spreadsheets you pulled out of an alien robot.”

“Pretty much, yeah. If you want the boiled down version.”

“And I should just go along with that?”

“A lot of your plans are less detailed, Boss. I’m not gonna say anything against them, cause they generally work out.”

“I’m not your boss.”

Maybe I could have tried to persuade her to give up more information, but I let it go. Although I was far from happy with the situation, I wasn’t ready to throw myself from a moving car into the desert maybe 160 kilometres from any kind of civilisation. Especially when the nearest towns were in flames or infested with laser blasting alien robots. Or both. So I just waited to see what would happen.

We bimbled along slowly because the heavy limo’s suspension didn’t like the road surface. I ate the donuts and drank the coffee. Chanmi played a game on her phone. My headache abated. I was beginning to feel like I needed to stretch my legs and have a massive wee when the car slowed down and slewed into what you would only call a car park if you had very low standards for safe, secure parking. Basically a roughly graded flat area with some piles of rocks and cactuses around the edge of it.

Everyone got out of the two cars; the other one was my poor Giulietta, driven by Ms So-called Moon Potato with Lauren in shotgun and Skyen in the back. I wondered what the desert track had done to the finely tuned suspension. Janjan left the headlights of the Mercedes on low beam.

I looked around. There were no facilities. If I wanted a slash, and I really did, I would have to go beyond the vague boundary into the desert, where several wrecked and abandoned off-road vehicles sat eroding from sun, heat, wind and cold.

Ahead of us, the horizon was a dark cliff face cutting the star spangled sky in half. Perched on top was the kind of building a Bond villain would build for their lair. I just knew we were going to go up there and I wasn’t going to like it.


To be continued…

I'm writing a load of fiction. My latest story starts here... This is the index of all the stories...

We're not very big on official rules. Rules lead to people looking for loopholes. What's here is about it. 
   
Made in jp
[MOD]
Anti-piracy Officer






Somewhere in south-central England.

The Case of the Nameless Detective

Chapter 10



The cars ticked their residual heat into the night. It didn’t feel deliciously cool because I had been in an air conditioned cabin for hours, but it certainly wasn’t desert hot any more. In fact I thought it might get rather chilly as the night wore on.

Skyen, Moon and Chanmi put their heads together to discuss their next move. There was a lot of muttering and pointing at smartphones, Chanmi’s laptop, and the cliffs which harboured the Bond villain base. Janjan just wanted to check the cars after the bumpy ride.

That left me free to talk to Lauren. We only managed to exchange basic pleasantries before the need to splash my boots overwhelmed me.

“Sorry Lauren, I’ve really got to step outside for a few minutes.” I grabbed the necessaries from my Giulietta and made my way beyond the car park’s loose boundary, into the naked desert.

It was pretty fuccing dark out there until my eyes began to accustom themselves to the available light from the stars and the rising moons. I did my business, thinking it would be handy if I could trace a kabbalistic sign in the raw dirt to summon preternatural aid, but I didn’t know any. The physical relief was greatly energising even so. I returned to the dim lights of the cars feeling ready for any challenge.

“So what happened at the alien probe?” I asked Lauren.

“I was nervous to watch it in case the robot reactivated itself so I kept my gun out but no-one asked me to put it away,” she replied. “That Cyberpunk girl had a fire extinguisher. She made the driver boi hose down the robot with CO2 every few minutes. That kept it frozen. She put this kind of plastic arch thing over it like you see in the Med Bay on Star Trek and she was taking readings on her computer. Eventually she said she had enough data and we could dump the body back outside. So we did that and then I shot it before it could thaw and it shattered into fragments like the others. No-one said anything. I don’t know why they shatter the same way whether they’re active and moving, or frozen stiff.”

“Yes. Something to do with material science, I expect.” I said, “Actually I’m a bit worried they may be able to come back from that, like the liquid metal Terminator where the blobs kind of roll back together even after it’s been blown into fragments.”

“Yeah, me too, but it must be miles away cause we had a long drive here so I don’t think there’s any immediate danger.”

“I hope you're right. Well, what happened next?”

“We found you zonked out in the back of the limo. Moon and Skyen said we needed to break camp and head out ASAP. They look like they know what they’re talking about so I helped pack everything away, then we drove here.”

“And here we are. I had a pretty good rest on the way. How are you doing, Lauren, in yourself, I mean?”

“Yeah, I'm okay.” She paused. “A bit scared but they,” -- she gestured at Skyen and the others -- “Seem to have got a plan. I kinda feel like I’m along for the ride when normally I’m in charge. Making the key decisions. Whether it’s a rescue op or just me and my bike.”

“That’s hard. But you’ll fly again, I’m sure. You’ll be running your crew like a girlboss. Just keep hanging on for now.”

Laruen looked hopeful, but she said wistfully, “I wonder if I’ll ever get him back….”

“Who?” We hadn’t asked each other anything about boifrens. The scenario didn’t conduce such intimacies.

“My bike I had to leave in Baker. Maybe the robots blew him up.”

“Your bike’s a boi?”

“Well, uh…” Lauren smiled, “All that throbbing power between my thighs, that I can make go as fast or smooth as I like.”

“I get the picture.” I smiled too, at the mental image. “I don’t remember ever riding a motorbike, but it must be such fun.”

While we were talking, Moon and Chanmi directed Janjan to set up a folding table from the vast boot of the Maybach. They laid out various equipment on it; computers, other bits and bobs, and a violin case. Two pump-action shotguns and a box of shells. I groaned.

“What is it?” Lauren asked.

I indicated the ominous weaponry with a jerk of my head.

“Oh. … Kay. …” She said in a flat voice. “This isn’t what I signed up for.”

“Me neither,” I agreed. “I’ve got a pistol and I know I’ve used it but basically I think I’m a lover, not a fighter. But I just know they’re going to make us go up to that place on the clifftop.”

“Yep. Can you think of a way out?” Lauren asked.

“Grab my car and peel off,” I said. “It’s faster than their Mercedes. Run and run.”

“Once we get on the highway, yeah, only we’d be heading back towards the robots from space. I don’t wanna bet they aren’t everywhere by now. Or maybe it’s just chaos out there. I still don’t remember a lot and you don’t remember anything. We could end up wandering around lost and hopeless. These weirdos at least seem like they’ve got some kind of a handle on the situation.”

I sighed again. “Then I suppose we had better put the best face on it we can.”

We walked over to the table. Skyen smiled toothily. Chanmi grinned broadly. Janjan’s face was placid. Moon looked stern.

“Who’s in charge here?” I launched, “Cause Skyen looks like she’s running the show but Chanmi told me it was Moon Potato.” I swept my gaze across the four of them.

Moon answered. “Good question. Skyen’s our client, so we broadly pursue the object of inquiry she’s set out for us but operational matters are my decision.”

“Who’s ‘us’?” Lauren wanted to know.

“The Moon Potato Yancey Kuudere Detective Agency,” Moon replied. “MPY for short. Discreet and reliable. Well, more reliable than discreet. Depending on circumstances. The point is we get results. We’ve been working cases for the Mods for years.”

“Okay, you’re Moon Potato and you're in charge. Where do Chanmi and Janjan fit in? And who’s Yancey?” I demanded.

“It’s a long story. To keep it short, Yancey was my original partner. We set up as detectives together and did a couple of cases for Skyen as well as a bunch of other stuff. Then it began to grow.”

The Wolfgirl nodded and interrupted, “That is correct. However I knew Yancey before he became a detective.”

“So did I,” Moon continued. “Me and Yancey were gambling buddies until he had some bad luck at the Great Casino. We set up the agency to provide justice, at 100 clams an hour plus expenses, because he needed to make a load of money. It’s not a charity.”

“We do some pro bono work,” Chanmi cut in, “For deserving clients.”

“Yes, that’s part of our kuudere principles” Moon agreed. “Anyway, we were doing okay but not well enough, cause Yancey needed a ton of Coins, so we recruited Janjan and Chanmi to help expand operations.”

“Uhuh,” I said. “So where’s this Yancey now?”

“Yancey kind of went away and sent you to replace him, Pia,” Moon claimed.

The other two detectives looked at each other, then they looked back at me and nodded agreement.

“Why did Yancey choose me?” I asked. “Who am I?”

“You wouldn’t believe us if we told you. It’s better to help you get your memory back. Then you’ll understand everything by yourself, and you’ll know it for the truth.”

“Right.” I pointed at the Bond villain base, perching on the cliffs like a poisonous ambush toad. “I suppose all the answers are up there?”

Moon nodded.


To be continued…

I'm writing a load of fiction. My latest story starts here... This is the index of all the stories...

We're not very big on official rules. Rules lead to people looking for loopholes. What's here is about it. 
   
Made in jp
[MOD]
Anti-piracy Officer






Somewhere in south-central England.

The Case of the Nameless Detective

Chapter 11



“Yes,” replied Moon. “We go up there and we'll get the answers.”

“What is that place? Why is it important?” I asked.

“Uh,” Moon paused, and looked at Skyen as if wanting direction. Skyen said, “It is a place from where we can contact the moons, Olympe.”

“What?”

“It’s an astrophysical observatory with optical and radio telescopes,” Chanmi said, “And there’s a communicator. Because that’s where the Imperial House of the Frog had its main uplink. If my Bayesian spreadsheets are correct, the robot faction infiltrated it and took it over, used it to compromise all the metadata. If we can kick them out, the robots already down here will be cut off from their space control base. That might fix the memory loss problem, and we can use the communicator to contact the Frog people to get help.”

"'If' and 'might' doesn't fill me with confidence," I objected, but Lauren interrupted urgently.

“Where do the lizard people come in?”

“We’re not sure about that. We think they’re allied with the robot faction,” Moon said. “The robots are working for them because the lizard people are unstable in normal conditions down here, is what we think.”

“That’s right, I’ve seen it myself!” Lauren cried, gleefully. Her eyes shone; she had been vindicated. “What about Jenn’i and her people?”

“Lauren, wait! Who the fucc are the Frog people?” I asked. I had a horrid vision of lizards fighting frogs fighting space robots fighting whoever Jenn’i’s sugar loving aliens were, all of them fighting us.

“Oh, they’re ordinary humans like you and me,” Moon said matter-of-factly, “Only from the future. You’re one of them.”

At this point my subconscious mind decided a faint would be a good option.

...

When I recovered my senses I was being carried piggy-back by Lauren. It was rather fun until I noticed our situation. Lauren was ascending a steep mountain path with precipitous views over the yellow desert dimly illuminated by the stars and moons. The vista appalled me. My head reeled. Apparently I suffered from a severe irrational fear of heights. I barely had time to notice Chanmi ahead of us, and I fainted again.



When I came to, I found I was lying on a flat, cool, stone pavement, with the stars shining overhead. The air was distinctly cold. I looked around quickly. Lauren was squatting next to me, a ghost in her white leathers. She immediately noticed I had recovered, put one hand gently over my mouth, and made the shush sign.

Moon and Janjan were crouching behind a nearby low stone wall, shotguns in their hands. Chanmi was operating her computer, plugged into an odd piece of hardware which looked like a radiogram designed in a Jonathon Ives/Vivienne Westwood collab while they were both on LSD.

“Ready,” Chanmi whispered, and Moon checked me. Noticing I was conscious, she shuffled over quietly and whispered in my ear.

“Pia,” she began. “I’m sorry you missed everything up to now. You’ve got to believe me when I tell you what we need you to do.”

“What?” I sat up.

“We’re setting up an ambush outside the uplink station. Skyen and her wolf pack are going to create a diversion to draw the robots out. We have to gun them down and get inside before they recover and call in reinforcements.”

“Wolves?” I asked. That sounded dangerous. Developments clearly had progressed bloody fast while I was busy fainting.

“Yeah but don’t worry. You’re safe from them, and Skyen will protect the rest of us.”

“Okay. What’s this about an ambush? I’m not a soldier. All I have is a little pistol.”

“Here.” Moon said, and slid the violin case over to me. It was a lot heavier than you'd think. Clearly it wasn’t a violin inside. I flipped the lid open. The contents were a disassembled Thompson submachine gun like you see in black and white gangster films with Humphrey Bogart and so on.

“Fucc!” I exclaimed, and Lauren shushed me.

“Sorry,” I whispered. “Is this… thing supposed to belong to me?”

“Yes,” Moon said. “It’s The Gun. I know you’re gonna think it’s inelegant but Yancey liked it. Too much, in fact. He got afraid of it in the end.”

“Thanks for that reassurance.” I told her.

I could see why the mysterious Yancey had been scared of The Gun. I felt it was aware of me. If this was a movie the SFX would show it almost imperceptibly quivering in anticipation of my hand on it.

I paused for a moment’s reflection on my situation. A machine-gun fight with robots from space was never on my bucket list. But there was no way out. I knew I wasn’t capable of climbing down the cliff by myself, and no way would Lauren carry me until she had got her fateful encounter with the lizard aliens. I could see it in her eyes. And, you know, who was I to stand in the way of her need for resolution?

But still. What bad life choices had brought me to this point.

I sighed, and reached into the violin case. The metal parts were cold and heavy. They slotted together easily; I had no hesitation about how to assemble them. Soon I had a complete weapon with a big drum magazine full of fat bullets. It was very inelegant, and it practically throbbed its need to be fired, its confidence that I would fire it. I hefted The Gun into a combat stance.

“I can do this.”

Moon looked pleased.

“Good. Now, here’s the plan.” She pulled a detective notepad out of her handbag and flipped it open to a rough sketch map of the local area.

The cliff edge was clearly, alarmingly etched. Swooping lines of HB pencil indicated the curvy walled approach to the facility with its vital circular hubs and domes. Moon was clearly a girl who licked the tip of her pencil before putting it to the paper.

“We’re here,” She put a dot on the sketch. “Chanmi's set up a spoofing program to feed false data into the observatory’s outside cameras, so they can’t see us. Skyen will approach from the east with the rising moons behind her. She’s gonna summon the Avatar of Holo, and the wolves will be around her, so don’t be shocked. The robots will come out to chase Holo, then we blast them from ambush and rush in before the doors close. Got it?”

“Who’s going to be blasting, and who’s going to rush in first?” I asked.

“We’re all going to be blasting, but the first one in has to be you, Pia, and you need to carry this.”

Moon held out a gold token or medallion about the size of a £2 piece, if you remember them. I hesitated before I took it. An electric thrill ran up my arm as I touched it.

“What is it?”

“It’s your ID which confirms you are the Frog Prince. That’s how you can get us through the Imperial security protocols.”

WTF!?”


To be continued…

I'm writing a load of fiction. My latest story starts here... This is the index of all the stories...

We're not very big on official rules. Rules lead to people looking for loopholes. What's here is about it. 
   
Made in jp
[MOD]
Anti-piracy Officer






Somewhere in south-central England.

The Case of the Nameless Detective

Chapter 12



"Just because I’m wearing a suit which buttons up boi style, it doesn’t make me a boi, Moon, so I can’t be a prince.”

“You can take it from me you are!” she insisted. “You just don’t remember that your Husbando is the Frog Princess, which makes you the Prince.”

bs to that! How can a princess be a husband? WTF is a Frog Princess anyway? My passport says my husband is a French boi called Tremblay.” I waved my left hand with its wedding ring at her for proof.

“You idiot! That’s only a prop for your undercover work!”

“Are you saying my marriage is a lie!?” I gasped, though I had suspected it, even despite the faint memory of hot nights with Tremblay, whose first name I couldn’t recall. Maybe it was all a sad fantasy. Maybe he was a spy too.

Moon paused briefly, to centre herself. “I’ve said too much. You need to remember everything for yourself. Otherwise you won’t believe anything I say.”

“Damn right I don’t!” I spat. “That’s why I’m not going in first with your stupid token.”

“For Goddess’ sake, Pia… Olympe…. You have to do this.” Moon grabbed my hand and put her palm on my shoulder, and tried to make me look her in the eyes. I avoided her direct gaze, glancing around anywhere else.

Lauren looked excited, checking her pink pistol. Chanmi looked nervous. Janjan looked like he was suppressing his emotions. The two detectives looked at each other for a moment, then back at me.

“Pia,” Moon said softly, and went to enfold me in her arms. I stiffened at first; it seemed an assault I should not have tolerated, then I smelt her hair and somehow it relaxed me.

“Pia, listen. Please listen,” Moon whispered into my ear. “There was a time I needed your help very badly. I got so lost I could never find my way back. You held onto my memory for weeks and months, you never lost faith you would find me, and you came with Chanmi and Janjan, you rescued me, and you brought me home. I’ll never forget that.”

Obviously I didn’t remember anything about this supposed incident. I said nothing. I waited to see where she was going with the narrative.

“Now it’s my turn to rescue you, and I am absolutely, 100%, going to do it,” Moon continued, “But I can’t do it without your help.”

I wriggled in her clasp, then I breathed her scent again and stilled. There’s something very primal about the sense of smell. That’s why it’s important for detective work. Moon’s odour was familiar and… not just calming, it evoked some kind of loyalty in me. I wanted to believe her.
.
I thought about how I had got here. The promise I made to myself to solve the mystery and how I needed allies to do that. Lauren was good on tactics even if she was a bit flakey regarding aliens. And she thought Skyen and the detectives knew what they were doing. They claimed to confirm my identity even if I still didn’t remember or believe it.

“Okay,” I said, and unwound myself from Moon’s embrace. “I’ll do it, but I want Lauren with me.”

“Sure, Pia,” Lauren replied. “You and me against the robots. I’m down for that.”

“No, Lauren” said Ms Moon Potato, with quiet authority. “Thank you for your offer, but I’m going in with Pia. We’ve always had each other’s backs. I’m not changing now. I need you and Janjan to help Chanmi.”

“Makes sense,” Lauren agreed. “We’ll have a shotgun and two pistols. You’ll have a shotgun and a machine-gun.”

“That’s Plan A,” I said. “What’s Plan B? If something goes wrong.”

“If things go wrong enough we run away into the hills and hide,” Moon said calmly, as if it was a great plan. “Everyone must stick close to you, Pia, because Skyen can always find you and she’ll help us.”

“Did I tell you I’m basically a city girl?”

“I know. Listen, we’ve been in jams like this before, Pia. You’ve got more guts and adaptability than you think. So don’t worry,” Moon smiled, “But we won’t have to go to the hills. Plan A will work.”

This was not the moment to remind Moon of that military principle that no plan survives contact with the enemy. I sighed. I rubbed the Imperial medallion, which tingled my nerves again, and put it safely in my trouser pocket. I checked my Tommy-gun.

“I’m ready.”

There was a distant howling of wolves.


To be continued…

I'm writing a load of fiction. My latest story starts here... This is the index of all the stories...

We're not very big on official rules. Rules lead to people looking for loopholes. What's here is about it. 
   
Made in jp
[MOD]
Anti-piracy Officer






Somewhere in south-central England.

The Case of the Nameless Detective

Chapter 13



There was a distant howling of wolves. I knew I had heard that baleful chorus before.

And…

You know those silly listicles on websites -- best 25 stunt scenes of all time -- that kind of thing? You’ve never seen half the titles mentioned, but there are some that are such famous old classics, clips are shown, and you’ve read other articles about the same film, and you’ve seen so many clips that you know the plot and all the exciting scenes even if you’ve never watched the whole movie. And you kind of believe you have watched it. Or maybe you read the book, and overlaid your memory of that with dribs and drabs of film lore. Like Harry Potter 8. I really don’t know if I’ve ever watched it all the way through. Maybe I was drunk at the time, fell asleep halfway and just woke up for the end.

That’s how I felt now, about my supposed life.

But the wolves were howling, the moons were rising, and a pale figure appeared from the west. Skyen in her long grey cloak, strode elegantly across the rocky land. At her heels paced a pack of grey wolves, a dozen and more, hard to count as they mingled and slunk and stopped to howl, their vari-coloured fur like camouflage in the night.

The Mod stopped a hundred metres away, raised her arms and her cloak fell away, exposing her nude body to shine in the moonslight. She gripped at the sky with both fists, drew down some unknown power, and something woke in her; she grew, she became fierce. Her ears pricked, her tail bristled.

The wolves howled in chorus.

The hair stood up on the back of my neck. Skyen was no longer a Wolfgirl, or even a Mod, she had become some kind of a goddess. My left ear prickled. I rubbed it.

The pale goddess bounded forward, leading her pack towards the observatory doors. I shuffled myself into a firing position, looked down the barrel of The Gun, and aligned the sighting pips on the target zone. Beside me, Moon racked her shotgun.

There were more click-clacks as Lauren, Janjan and Chanmi readied their weapons. We waited for the robots’ next move.

The main entrance was a moderately imposing two door structure made of wood panelling, about 2.5 metres wide and the same high. Basically a slightly oversized domestic double door. Set deep in an approach channel of native stone, it reminded me of some of Frank Lloyd Wright’s work in Arizona. One of the doors opened and an MIB emerged, and another, and another.

“Actually, Moon, has anyone thought of looking for the back door?” I whispered. “Cause we might not have to shoot our way in.”

“Too late,” Moon replied. “Skyen’s going in and we can’t stop her now. Just stick to the plan.”

She was right. Skyen and her wolves challenged the group of robots with a chorus of howls. The aliens came forwards, calling out that nonsense speech I’d heard in the diner in Baker. Nothing I recognised, and I knew I spoke French and Japanese as well as English.

Skyen and her wolves on one side faced off against three robots from space.

A shotgun blast split the night. Janjan. One of the robots dropped. The other two screeched and pointed. Sudden blasts of laser shot from their index fingers. A wolf howled and fell, filled the cool air with the smell of scorched fur and flesh. My eyes watered, not from the smell. I felt sorrow for the beast, and anger.

Skyen shrieked with rage. For a moment she looked ready to charge the two remaining robots, then the one Janjan had shot stood up unharmed, and lasered another wolf. The goddess howled, turned, and began to run, her surviving wolves a grey cloud at her heels.

Two more robots came out of the observatory. It was obvious the five of them would nail Skyen in her back so I stood up and let rip.

The Gun soaked up its recoil as I squeezed a long burst down range, the heavy bullets pinging off the stone walls of the entrance revetment. The robots staggered under the impact, then Janjan and Moon both opened up with their shotguns. The aliens were caught in a deadly crossfire, knocked around and down by the heavy impacts from different directions but they weren’t shattering like glass, the way I had expected. They recovered and began zapping lasers towards my position. I dropped behind the wall.

“Something’s wrong!” I gasped. Moon dropped into cover beside me.

“Yeah, my gun too. It doesn’t kill them, they just get up again.”

Chanmi and Lauren were firing with their pistols.

“Got you, fuccer!” Lauren’s voice rang out in triumph. I risked a glance. One of the robots had dissolved into a pile of shards.

“Reloading,” the Coastguard called, and got into cover to swap magazines. I fired another burst, hitting two of the remaining robots but again, they weren’t destroyed.

Janjan’s shotgun also was booming. The robot he hit was slammed down, only it just got up again.

“What’s happening?” Moon asked me.

“I don’t know but the guns don’t work.”

Skyen and her wolves were halfway to the horizon. Lauren and Janjan were reloading. Chanmi popped up and fired several rounds, hitting an MIB which shattered, but another one of them zapped her in the head, setting her beret on fire. She ripped it off and threw it away.

The doors were flung wide open and more robots began to march out.

“Moon, we’ve got to get out of here before we get overrun.”

To her credit, Moon was a decisive leader.

“RUN AWAY! EVERYONE RUN AWAY!” She shouted, and led me in a scuttling crouch westwards. I dumped The Gun as I followed her. It was too fuccing heavy for something which couldn’t smash robots from space. I could move a lot faster and quieter without it.

We scrambled away from the combat zone with lasers zapping at our heels. I think it was Winston Churchill who said there is nothing more exhilarating than being shot at and missed. Not with lasers, though.

I don’t know how no-one else got hit. But anyway, a few minutes later we regrouped behind a kind of tor or kopje which gave us a distant view of the facility. We made sure we weren’t being chased, then began to take stock of our dismal situation.


To be continued…




I'm writing a load of fiction. My latest story starts here... This is the index of all the stories...

We're not very big on official rules. Rules lead to people looking for loopholes. What's here is about it. 
   
Made in jp
[MOD]
Anti-piracy Officer






Somewhere in south-central England.

The Case of the Nameless Detective

Chapter 14


“Is anyone hurt?” was Moon’s first question once we were apparently safe.

It turned out I had been hopelessly optimistic about the laser firefight. Several of us had been hit during the scrambling retreat.

Chanmi had a zap mark in her hair, ugly, physically harmless but it shook her confidence. Lauren had taken a beam through her left forearm she didn’t even notice thanks to the adrenaline of her fight and flight response. The wound had self-cauterised and she wasn’t in much pain, yet. Janjan had sprained or broken a finger by falling over during the scramble to escape.

When I took the little medical kit from my handbag, I found a hole burnt in the leather, revealing an anti-stab lining which was shot through. The beam had hit my powder compact inside and stopped there, shattering the mirror and saving me from a laser in the back, thank Goddess.

Anyway, we were safe for the while. I patched everyone up. I checked Lauren’s wound, bandaged it, and immobilised her arm with a tight sling, improvised partly by cutting up the sleeves of my jacket. Janjan’s finger got splinted with an eyebrow pencil. No shotguns for him for a while, and no more emergency make-up for me.

I gave them both a couple of paracetamol and ibuprofen, which is good in an emergency because the drugs synergise. Don’t make a habit of it. It was hard for them to swallow the pills, since we had no water. That was another potential problem. Also, the only way back to the cars was down the steep cliff, which I would never even dare go near on my own. I couldn’t see Lauren or Janjan managing to carry me with their injuries. Moon and Chanmi were too small. I was stuck in these miserable arid hills, unless we could think of a way to defeat or evade the robots. I stared at the distant base, throbbing with anger at the alien robots and their allies who had got me into this jam.

While I brooded, Moon, Lauren and the others discussed the failure of our best weapons. Everyone was shocked and dismayed. But when you think about it, why should bullets designed to injure human flesh have any effect on a space robot made of whatever sort of living glass they seemed to be? They would just bounce off a battle tank. Then again, Lauren and Chanmi both managed to shatter robots with their pistols, which were much less powerful than a shotgun or a submachine-gun. How could science explain this?

Since I had nothing to contribute, I focussed on thinking bad thoughts at the alien robots in their stupid James Bond base, hoping I could explode it with the force of my mind. Unsurprisingly, nothing happened. I gave up, and began to consider more practical ways out of our dilemma. If we couldn’t get down the cliff, maybe there was another road out of the hills. At the very least we had to find water and shelter, or we’d be fried meat by midday tomorrow.

“Lauren, have you got your map.” I asked.

“Got it!” she said brightly, and snapped her fingers.

“May I borrow it, please?”

“No, I mean I worked out the problem with the guns.” Lauren smirked. She had lined up examples of several cartridges in front of her.

“That’s great but…” I began. “What is it?” Moon interrupted. “I only want the map,” I said. “You can have it,” Lauren replied, “But first…” “Pia, this is important,” Moon interrupted again. “Really?” I said. “How many bullets have we got left?” “It’s science!” Moon insisted. “It’s a clew,” she said, and I had to admit clews are important to detectives, so I shut up.

Lauren held up the different rounds from her pistol, the shotguns and The Gun, one by one to point out their characteristics. She seemed quite the ammo maven. It was probably fascinating if you’re interested in weapons, otherwise pretty boring. I kind of zoned out. To cut to the chase, Lauren thought that her pistol and Chanmi’s were effective against the robots because they shot a supersonic round, 9mm Parabellum.

“What I think is, the high velocity of these bullets propagates a shock wave through the robot’s structure faster than it can deform and absorb the impact, so they shatter,” Lauren argued. “Which is good to know, assuming it’s right, except Chanmi and I only got 10 rounds left between us.”

I was going to offer Lauren my box of 9mm when suddenly it came to me it was 9x17mm, a different type of cartridge, lower velocity, and wouldn’t work in Lauren’s and Chanmi’s guns. I had chosen it over 9mm Parabellum because there is less recoil, allowing me to put rounds on target quicker and tighter. And shot placement is important. There’s a certain type of American boi who likes to scoff at anything smaller than .45ACP, but they soon stop when you shoot them in the face.

I don’t know how or why these ballistic factoids emerged from my dark memory. If this was evidence of my lost identity starting to surface, it wasn’t the part I would have asked for first. What kind of stunted personality cares about pistol calibres over family, friends, and lovers? But beggars can’t be choosers. I took what little was offered and tried to build on it.

“Wait a moment,” I thought out loud. “If supersonic shock waves disintegrate the robots, maybe we could do it with the right mixtape. Like shattering a glass with a high note.”

“I could get Taek_101 to make a supersonic mixtape,” Chanmi said enthusiastically. “He’s well into chiptunes.”

“Need a chonky sound system too, which we ain’t got,” Moon pointed out.

The mood was already flat enough. Several seconds of miserable silence passed. I felt it was bad to leave everyone to stew in a slough of despond.

“Um, Chanmi?” I asked, “Who’s Taek_101?”

“My AI. Don’t shoot your mouth off about him cause I got to worry about the Turing Cops and I’ve been hitting the donuts pretty hard lately. Point is, he’s great at chiptunes.”

“Okay. So can Taek_101 make a mixtape?”

The Cyberpunk tapped a few strokes on her keyboard. “Done.”

“Pia, we’re wasting time,” Moon said. “We should regroup with Skyen and her wolves, and find a different way out of here.”

“No wait, Moon. Chanmi was able to spoof the external surveillance system and inject false imagery. What if she can do the same for a sound track?”

Moon stared at me.

“This is where you say it’s crazy, but it might just work,” I told her.


To be continued…




I'm writing a load of fiction. My latest story starts here... This is the index of all the stories...

We're not very big on official rules. Rules lead to people looking for loopholes. What's here is about it. 
   
Made in jp
[MOD]
Anti-piracy Officer






Somewhere in south-central England.

The Case of the Nameless Detective

Chapter 15



“That’s not… Totally crazy,” Moon replied hesitantly, as she thought about the plan. “Chanmi, you’re our cyberpunk. What do you think?”

“I can do it.” Chanmi said confidently. “The security system is Frog Empire Base 8 software. Me and Taek_101 have been screwing around with that stuff for a year. The robots only just got here. All they did was use a bunch of script kiddy level hacking tools to get past security and take over the comms systems. I can slip a probe in there like a… Like… erm…”

“A well greased butt plug? And fucc them up good.” I suggested. Janjan’s eyes popped, and he coughed.

“Whatever the simile, we’ll be in their base, killing their dudes,” Chanmi declared, with great satisfaction.

“As long as my supersonic theory is correct,” Lauren pointed out. “What if I’m wrong?”

“I believe in you, Lauren,” I told her. “But you’re right. We need a plan B in case it doesn’t work.”

“Plan B is we slip past the base, get down the cliff and escape in the cars,” Moon said commandingly. “Run away and live to fight another day.”

I knew for certain I wasn’t going anywhere near the cliff again, but I didn’t want to impede everyone else’s escape, so I said nothing. Better to wait behind and give them covering fire if the robots chased them. Maybe that sounds brave and selfless, but the fact is just looking at a tall ladder can chill my guts.

I decided to take my chances of getting away to join up with Skyen and her wolves. I might have to spend a few days sleeping in caves and drinking blood or something. The idea was unappetising, but much less horrifying than a view of the abyss.

“And I’ll carry you if it comes to it, Pia,” Moon added.

“No way. You’re not strong enough.”

“I can do it.” She seemed sure. “Just make sure you’re alive, because a warm body is lighter than a dead one.” I nodded and smiled thanks, while wondering how Moon had gained her experience of body portage. I decided to slip away quietly before we got to that stage.

“Assuming plan A works, you still have to be first inside, Pia.” Moon reminded me. “Keep your medallion in your hand, to authenticate yourself.”

“Okay.” I checked the token. It seemed warm to the touch. It had been in my trouser pocket for a while.

Lauren and Chanmi shared their remaining 9mm Parabellum shells. Moon checked her shotgun, and Janjan slipped out a mean looking snub-nose revolver. I readied my Sig-Sauer. Most of our weapons might not destroy a robot, but they could at least knock it off balance and buy us time to run away again.

We crept towards the observatory until we were close enough for Chanmi to connect to its WiFi network. Then we crawled into a position where the Cyberpunk could set up her decks and run the intrusion op.

There was no use taking up a tactical ambush formation. If Taek_101 and Chanmi could work their magic, we were home free. If not, everyone would need to run away as quick as they could. We just checked we had a good path to the way down the cliff.

I surveyed the moonlit terrain, trying to mark my own separate line of retreat. It was hard to make out the colours of sand, rocks and sere brush in the monochrome light of the moons. My French blue suit seemed to glow almost radioactively. I briefly wondered if I should ditch it, until I realised that wandering around desert hills in white shirt and knickers was even stupider than running away by myself to rely on the help of a Wolfgirl demi-goddess.

We were soon as ready as we’d ever be. There was no point delaying further. Moon nodded to Chanmi, and the Cyberpunk tapped the Enter key on her computer.

You know Gerschwin’s jazz symphony, Rhapsody In Blue? It’s about New York, and when I say New York I mean Manhattan. It opens with a clarinet solo which consists of a trill, and a legato glissando ascending a diatonic scale that lifts your spirits to the heavens, until it reverses and brings you back to the wonderful real world. If you haven’t heard it, you need to check it out.

Chanmi’s laptop’s speakers were tiny but they were the best quality, crafted by the Sandbenders clan who originally built her extensively self-modded computer. Now they pealed out that famous solo in pure 8-bit chiptune glory, shorn of its analogue harmonics. Except the clarinet solo never peaked, turned and fell, it just went up, and up and up, until it spiked our ears and we had to shut the music out with hard pressed palms. And it went further up, passing into supersonic regions the human ear wasn’t built to register. Any dogs or bats in the area would be seriously fucced off. Wolves too, actually, which was a drawback to my escape strategy, I realised.

IDK if Chanmi accessed any microphones inside the base. Probably not, because it would create a feedback effect like when they cross the streams in Ghostbusters, and crash reality. Anyway, we all had our ears closed as tight as possible by our hands and wouldn’t have heard any tinkling, shattering of the living glass robots who occupied the observatory.

I took my pistol in my right hand and the gold token in my left, and ran towards the double doors of the front entrance.

And there was a robot standing guard. It pointed its finger at me

And I shot it again, and again, and it staggered with each impact but it didn’t go down, and more shots rang out from behind me, Lauren and Moon right at my back and the alien shattered into a pile of shards and I reached the doors and bust them open with a Jimmy Choo kick and inside there were more heaps of glass and we rampaged through the whole facility, and found brooms and dustpans and we could sweep up every particle of alien debris and chuck it in a bin out the back and someone wanted to push the bin off the cliff but we decided to lock it in an outhouse, and we went back inside to survey our new domain and think about what to do next.


To be continued…

I'm writing a load of fiction. My latest story starts here... This is the index of all the stories...

We're not very big on official rules. Rules lead to people looking for loopholes. What's here is about it. 
   
Made in jp
[MOD]
Anti-piracy Officer






Somewhere in south-central England.

The Case of the Nameless Detective

Chapter 16



Even though our invasion was successful, or perhaps because of that, the aftershock was intense, a massive comedown when the adrenaline wore off. No more danger.

I felt so tired and dirty. I wanted more than anything to find a shower, a cup of tea, and a change of clothes. Lauren and Janjan both needed their injuries checked, though, because they were in pain.

So, while Moon and Chanmi investigated the observatory control and communications equipment, I took the injured duo to the living quarters in search of the nurse’s station. We got better dressings and stronger painkillers.

When they were fixed up I asked them to make food and drink for everyone, and I sneaked away for some ‘me time’. I put my filthy, ragged clothes in a laundry machine, showered luxuriously, and thought about self-care. Does it have any meaning if you don’t have a self to care for? But my mind was intact even if it didn’t recognise its identity. Well, the body has its needs anyway.

I checked myself over in the full length mirror. A tall, athletic girl, handsome rather than pretty, with an odd scar like a cut, on my right butt cheek, WTF?!

My laundry was still turning over, so I put on spare panties from my handbag -- I was a seriously well prepared girl in my former life -- and wrapped myself in a towel. I connected my smartphone to the base WiFi and did some research into my background and relationship with my companions. What I found was… interesting.

I won’t bore you with a recitation of my discoveries about the MPY Detective Agency. If you want a clew, just remind yourself that Sherlock Holmes used cocaine as a sharpener during half his cases. Then imagine that Doctor Watson was taking psilocybin when he wrote them down.

I soon gave up.

I made up my face and checked the laundry. The ruined suit and my underwear were still too damp to wear, but the boi style white shirt was almost dry, so I slipped it on though it was creased. Its long hem covered enough of my thighs to count as modest in present company. The so-called Imperial token went in the breast pocket. I put on some yoga socks from my handbag rather than barefoot Jimmy Choos.

Lauren and Janjan had done good work in the kitchen. A big pot of microwaved chilli bean stew, toasted canned bread, a jug of Tequila Sunrise only it was made with vodka, coffee, and UHT milk, which I hate but I prefer coffee black anyway. They were already eating. I hadn’t had anything except waffles and donuts for about two days, and I tore into it.

“This is seriously good catering!” I congratulated them.

Moon and Chanmi came in, grabbed plates and sat down. They looked hopped up and tired at the same time. They must have had some success exploring the base. As I was the freshest, I served their food and drink. After a couple of minutes of nomming, Moon spoke.

“We fired up the communicator. We couldn’t contact the Frog people directly, cause there seems to be some sort of code involved, but Chanmi activated a doohickey we figure is the emergency beacon.”

“That’s great!” exclaimed Lauren, “The aliens will be here soon.” Janjan’s face was impassive. He was busy with his meal.

“I reckon a few hours and they should get in contact with us. I set up an alert in case there’s a signal. Someone needs to monitor it,” Chanmi added.

“A few hours?” I said. “You guys go and get a wash and some rest. I’ll keep an eye on things.” I felt rather chipper. Everything bad that had happened was in the past, and we only needed to wait for the friendly space aliens to arrive. And then I would get my identity back.

“Thanks, Pia,” Moon said. “That’s a big help. Chanmi can show you the equipment.”

Once I understood the electronics, Chanmi joined the others in the showers and so on and I was left to myself. I wanted to look through the big telescope but it doesn’t work like that. It’s all computers these days. I went back to the control room and began to fiddle with the equipment in hope of getting a picture on the main screen. Which in retrospect was a bit silly.

I was twiddling a dial when there was an ominous subsonic “Vrooom” sound and the lights flickered. *That can’t be good!* I thought. The screen lit up, showing a huge area of sky that was black. Most of the stars had gone out. Then I realised it was a blocked out by ship, not a sea ship, I mean, a spaceship I could hardly see, like it had a cloaking field but suddenly it lit up with all kinds of fairy lights, and coloured laser beams shot out in a regular rock concert display and there was music, some kind of a march, and letters rippled around the hull but I couldn’t read them. Something like that Star Wars font.

I was fuccing hoping this was the Frog aliens come to rescue us, but it could have been the robots or the lizard people so I ran down to the main doors to try and lock them before anyone came in. If it was the enemy, we were probably basically screwed but I had to try.

When I got there, the doors were already open. There was a rippling kind of shadow in the hallway. This visual effect cleared to reveal two huge robots, all metallic green armour and about 7 feet tall,, with large, scary weapons. I figured if they were going to shoot me they would have done it already, so I had better try to brazen it out. I drew myself up to my full height, put my fists on my hips, and glared at the invaders.

“What do you mean by coming in without knocking?” I said censoriously. “I’m barely decent!”

I preened as well as I could in my creased white shirt.

To be continued…

I'm writing a load of fiction. My latest story starts here... This is the index of all the stories...

We're not very big on official rules. Rules lead to people looking for loopholes. What's here is about it. 
   
Made in jp
[MOD]
Anti-piracy Officer






Somewhere in south-central England.

The Case of the Nameless Detective

Chapter 17



The lead robot made a Japanese style bow and removed what I now realised was actually an armoured space helmet. A pale, vaguely East Asian looking girl about 30 years old, with a close-cut pixie bob of blue hair was revealed. Her purple eyes were elaborately made up, as if she had stuck butterfly wings on her face.

“My sincere apologies for our informal entrance, my lord. We came at your summons. Please forgive us for our tardiness,” she said in oddly accented Japanese, and bowed again. “We’re here now.”

“Who are you? I’m not your lord,” I protested in Japanese, though now I looked closely, their suits were emblazoned with an emblem of a stylised frog. These must be the Frog Empire people. If Moon had told the truth I was supposed to be their prince.

“I’m Tomoko Dammijj, space marine major, security chief of The Starship The Heart of Choko, a semi-demilitarised fast light reconnaissance frigate of the Imperial House of the Frog Totem.” the girl answered, and bowed again. “This is Sergeant Lastovskyte.” She gestured to her companion. “And you are our prince.”

The second marine bowed and flipped up their visor. He was a brown boi in his mid-30s, maybe. His eye make-up was somewhat plainer than the major’s, though remarkably snazzy for a boi, in my eyes. He smiled and slung his weapon. “My lord,” he stated formally. “I have fresh robes for you.” He held out one of those folding travel bags executives put their suits in.

“Ooh! New clothes!” I exclaimed with a smile, and went to take it but the sergeant held it back.

“I shall help you robe yourself, my lord.”

“Thank you. And stop calling me lord. My name’s Olympe.”

“Of course, Ms Olympe.”

“Please would you take off your spacesuits, or they’ll scare everyone?” I asked them.

Dammijj nodded. The marines’ suits opened at the back and kind of folded off by themselves. They stepped out of them wearing dark blue bodysuits, pretty near skin tight, which showed they were seriously buffed. Both were attractive. The Major was even taller than Lauren, and overtopped Lastovskyte by an inch.

I was about to suggest the Sergeant and I head for the dorms when Moon Potato came round the curve in the entrance hall, dressed in what looked like a disposable paper jumpsuit.

“Tomo!” she called out happily. “It’s so good to see you again.”

“You too, Moon!,” the major replied in modern English, and they hugged warmly. Clearly they knew each other well. I suffered a pang of something -- jealousy? Was this something else in my forgotten past? I took Lastovskyte’s arm, intending to make myself scarce, however the major stopped me from sneaking away with an announcement.

“Moon, I wish the circumstances could be happier. I am here to take the Frog Prince,” -- she nodded at me -- “into space. Also to organise the evacuation of this facility, and a thorough demolition job. All of you must come with me or you will die when I detonate the charges.”

“Oh fucc!” I said, but Moon just nodded as if she had expected this kind of outcome.

“I’ll get everyone except Skyen,” she replied. “Cause she’s run wild as Holo. She’s somewhere in the hills. Will she be okay?”

“I won’t press the button until the scanners show that she is clear of the fallout zone.” the Major replied.

I began to feel faint again. I really didn’t want to go into space. But I didn’t want to stay there and get blown up. Sergeant Lastovskyte sensed my mood.

“Ms Olympe,” he said, “Let’s go and change quickly. You will feel stronger with your proper clothes. I will help you with your make-up.” I hung on his arm and his male strength sustained me. We left Moon and the major working out evacuation details. A big group of members in a different uniform were coming in with all sorts of equipment on trolleys. I supposed they were going to set the demo charges. They looked unreasonably cheerful to carry out such a duty.

The Sergeant seemed to know the layout of the base better than me. He led me to the changing room I had used before, and waited outside to give me privacy while I put on the new clothes.

The luggage contained a rather ornate three piece suit with a gold coloured waistcoat embroidered with little frogs, a scarlet frock coat with gold epaulettes and some medal ribbons on the left breast, and tight white trousers with a red stripe. It all buttoned up boi-fashoin, left over right. There were black, slip-on dress shoes with gold buckles. The whole effect was rather Disney Prince, if you get my meaning, not my style at all. On the plus side, the clothes seemed to adjust themselves automatically, and fitted very well. My creased white shirt wasn’t entirely in keeping, I felt, so I tied my sky blue tenuguiwith its dragonfly pattern around my neck as a stab at an elegant cravat. I checked my look in a mirror. It could be a lot worse. I grabbed my laser-burnt handbag and I was ready to go. But Lastovskyte had other ideas.

“I must see to your make-up, Ms Olympe.” He sat me down, and made me wear a kind of heavy face mask which printed an elaborate pattern around my eyes. “This is a badge of rank,” he explained, as he showed me the results. “It’s important you appear in the right uniform and with all your honours. I regret that I was unable to bring a coronet.”

*Bloody hell! Why would I want a coronet?* I thought, but there’s no point antagonising someone who’s trying their best to help you.

“I think this will do very well,” I smiled at him. “Thank you for your kind assistance, Sergeant.”

Lastovskyte smiled back. A siren began to wail over the internal PA system. His face immediately assumed a business-like mask.

“Time to go, my lord,” he said decisively. Taking my handbag under one arm, he offered the other as a support to me, which I accepted. It’s sometimes rather nice to be squired around by a tall, handsome soldier, especially when you’re not sure what’s going on generally.

Together we trotted to the facility’s exit, past gangs of what I assume were space sailors rigging ominous blocks of explosive and stringing them together with wires. They seemed to be enjoying their work. I’m glad someone was.

Moon and the others were gathered in the hall, wearing a variety of slapdash clothes, and carrying bundles of their belongings wrapped up in sheets. They looked very much the group of refugees. Lauren boggled at my finery, though it did not seem to faze the MPY detectives. Lastovskyte stepped back into his space marine armour -- the major’s suit had already gone -- which folded itself back around him. He picked up my precious bag again and led us outside to… the rescue ship?

To be continued…

I'm writing a load of fiction. My latest story starts here... This is the index of all the stories...

We're not very big on official rules. Rules lead to people looking for loopholes. What's here is about it. 
   
 
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