Every line of work has its indispensible tools. I would have found it impossible to get through some days without my twin-barreled Oerlikon 40 millimetre anti-aircraft gun. Not that you get a lot of low-flying aircraft dropping by the Lost and Found. No, it's because you get some pretty thick-skinned customers and the .50 Browning machine gun just wasn't cutting it any more.
I mean, the rules are simple, as any fool can (but usually doesn't) see. If you've lost something, and we have it – and we will have it, sooner or later – you have to prove that it's yours before I hand it over. If you can't, well, regrettably, "I am sorry, Sir/Madam/Other, good luck finding your x-y-z, good bye."
This is usually where the Oerlikon comes into play.
Not that this solves everything, of course. Say the customer has a bazooka, or ploughs through the wall in a tank. Then you look pretty stupid with your double toothpick. According to the regulations I have to protect the store to the fullest extent possible. I say, best to protect the store by letting them have what they think is theirs, so they don't blow up the store. Or me.
Usually, cocking the gun does the trick, though.
Women are the worst. Not because of any natural armour or a higher pain threshold, but simply because so many of them seem to think that they have some god-given exemption from being shot. Even in defence of store property.
So, when the Bronze Woman walked in, well, I actually didn't do anything. I mean, yes, I hit the pause key, got up and went to the counter, but I didn't do anything as such. Only my foot reached out and rested on the base of the gun mount, ready to wheel it in if she should get unreasonable.
Her eyes were strange, even by the standard of some of the shit you see around here. They were the same colour as her skin. Not metaphorically, or a similar colour, but exactly the same, like they were part of her skin. The centres were black, hollow. You could go right through them if you were small enough, or focused enough. Her skin gave off glints of light, but I doubt that she was doing that. Most likely it was fission-lamp light bouncing off her, but it looked good.
So she just stared at me. Well, if that's what she wanted, she could look. It's a free universe, and I was paid for being there, and she wasn't, or so I assume. Actually, the Tau Cetians, amongst others, might dispute this business about the universe being free, but you get my drift. I turned away and unpaused Suicyber Runn. SR IV, actually, and it wasn't nearly as good as the first three games, but Solitaire gets pretty old after a couple of hundred years.
She dropped to her knees on the other side of the counter, and I could hear her shuffling along on the floor. I could have followed her on the secube, but what for? Unless she had a claim on goods she was no business of mine.
Crap. There was a K'regg behind the Spawning Press. Dammit! I hate reloading. I hate this game.
Shuffle scuffle. People say shit to me like, "You're so lucky to have those ears. Boy, there sure can't be much that you miss." Remind me to tell you about people sometime.
Anyway, with her scratching on the floor it took me four runs to get through the Spawning Room. Four! And before I could even start regenerating, out leapt two cattlemages. With entourages. Okay, that was it. Pause. No way was I going to manage one CM, let alone two, with Ms Scufflebutt slf-slfing around.
"What are you looking for?" I didn't even have to look to know, but sure enough, when I leaned over the counter, that's exactly what she was doing. Under every scub of dust, in every crack in the linoleum, behind every-
"Lady," I sighed, "what the f–"
I stopped just in time. Protocol ...
"What the fudge are you looking for?" I made sure to say 'fudge' nice and clearly.
Stupid fucking regulations.
There's a certain earnestness that you only see on a statue. That's exactly the kind of earnestness she looked at me with, still on her hands and knees, big brassy butt making these tiny little wobbles. So, I'm a perv. Sue me, or rather, sue my bosses for employing me. I know I’d like to, if only I could find them. Little lost-and-found humour there, what, too subtle for you?
Anyway, she was looking up at me with those hollow eyes and a mouth that was just the tiniest bit puckered. Thinking-puckered, not slut-puckered.
"A smile that someone lost somewhere around here," she said. Her forehead crinkled, just this one line, but the rest of her stayed serious.
She was just so cute, I couldn't help it. What's wrong with that, anyway? I'm only human, in a manner of speaking. It was good to have someone crack a joke around here for a change.
A joke gives a peculiar happiness to those who hear it the first time. It lasts a moment, maybe two, but for that flutter, everything inside you is a little lighter. As if for that moment strings tug, and you lift a fraction closer to heaven. It's like finding a thing that was never lost. My trunk curled a tiny bit, and it was good that she couldn't see my tail giving little flicks. She straightened up so that she stood on her knees. She lifted a hand and pointed at my lips.
"There it is!"
The strings lifted harder, and I chuckled. She got up and stepped up to the counter. "Come home, J." She laid a hand on one of my paws. "Please."
Her touch was cool and smooth, and surprisingly soft for bronze. The strings let go, and I pulled my paw away.
"Look, Lady, I appreciate the gesture." More than you know, probably. "Now if there is something you've lost and have some form of provenance –"
"Oh my God, you really don't remember."
"Wrong. You see, if I had lost my memory, it would have ended up here. It would have jigsawed with my remnant memories, and I would remember. But I don't."
"C'mon, Jason, it's the line you used on me. ’A smile someone has dropped.' You have to remember." She reached over the counter. "Look at me."
I pushed her hand away with a tusk. No sense in risking a harassment suit. "If you believe you have lost something, Madam, describe it as clearly as you can, and mention the form of provenance that you have."
"I have lost my love. He was – he is sweet as Kolkata spice, gentle as a bear, light as a mountain in flight, and as solid as a dandelion. Provenance? You mean proof?" She put her hand on her chest. "I have a hole in here that only he can fill."
The computer listed 3,981 instances of Kolkata spices, not including dinners containing same that were lost after too many lagers on the way home. We had a shed full of bears, so full we needed an annex, but most of them were teddies. Yes, people do occasionally misplace a live bear, but that's rarer than you might think. Somewhere there's a mountain, near the warehouse of Lost Highways, but I will have to look it up. Dandelions –
You have to keep a tone of authority, else they will try anything to get at the goodies. "Our emotional identifier system is down at the moment, Miss. I will need a clearer physical description to identify said love object."
Her eyes blinked too quickly, and she pulled something square and leathery from the copper material of her dress.
The pictures weren't great, and they had the line-ness, the blue double edges of early holotech snaps. There was one of a girl, bronzed like her, only younger, having dinner with an elephant. The restaurant looked Italian, or possibly Spanish, and the elephant had a stupid hat on.
In another they were in a ski-lift, with a mountain and some pine trees behind them. Because of the width of the elephant's skis it looked like he was wearing a pair of sleds.
One showed the elephant on the stage of a nightclub. The really dingy kind that's run by people who kill rave stars and presidents. He wore a cowboy hat, clutched a mic in his trunk, and the drum behind him had "The Nashville Scorcherers" painted on it in big saloon-type letters. Well, now that was suspect, see. Even I would know better than to ever be seen in such a setup.
Some of the later pictures, the ones where the tech was no longer so fuzzy, had a pup in them. It looked more or less like an elephant, but its skin glinted yellow-brown. In the last picture it was getting a small trophy from someone in a suit, and its skin was an aluminium-white colour.
"Very nice. I've also got Photoshop." I wasn't going to tell her that I don't have a clue on how to use it. Also, it's hardly the latest version, nor the most legal, but the point is that you can fake anything.
"Think, J, think. Capri, Tiffendel, don't you remember any of it?" The holes were doing something to my heart. "Solar sailing on Io?"
I just stared at her.
Her hand gripped my skin. "It was the army, wasn't it? I knew they were going to do stuff to you." She leaned over the counter. "You have to remember."
She nearly had me there. Something in me really wanted to. Even though the army was the best thing that ever happened to me.
She sniffled. Her tears were the most beautiful you've ever seen. It was hard to tell if they were gold, or if it was just her eyes shining through them. I hooked my foot behind the base of the gun mount and hauled it closer.
"J, try! For me." She pulled herself onto the counter.
I swung the gun into her face. Cocked it.
"Madam, please. I don't want to use violence." The point of the gun is to drill sense into people. It's actually rare for me to have to shoot. This time I really didn't want to.
"Leave her alone!"
A young elephant stormed though the outside doors, taking one off its hinges. At least it looked like an elephant, kind of shape- and size-wise, but it was bulked out in a silvery exo-something.
Kee-rap.
The Oerlikon can handle an elephant. No problem, just ask the InterGurkhas on New Hanibhal. But adamant skin-gen, shit. I could throw mothballs at him and have the same effect as the Oerlikon, and they would smell better.
"Warner! No!" She was too late. He overestimated his stopping power and skidded along the floor, slamming into the counter. Bronze Woman tumbled to the floor, and the shock bumped me away from the counter. I still clung to the gun, and swung it to face him.
If he was winded, he wasn't showing it. "Leave her alone!"
She had a little trouble getting up. "It's OK, sweetie, he's your father."
He blinked, looked at her for a moment, and then glared at me.
"If you hurt her, I'll, I swear I will ..."
Not the sharpest pencil in the jungle, this one. But then, who am I to speak? Christ, look where I've ended up. I made a little gesture with the barrels towards the door.
"Take your pet and leave, lady. Now."
Gears ground. Struts clacked as they unfolded from under the adamant and slotted into place. Holy crap. The RPG-7 rocket-launcher is a crude and outdated weapon, but by God, did he have a shitload of them pointing at me.
"Warner! Put them away!" Robust as she was, she looked like a slip of a thing next to him, standing up on her toes to punch his shoulder.
He growled at me. No kidding. Growled.
A room full of typewriters clicked away. Only there were no typewriters, only RPGs priming.
Clickclickclickclick click.
"J, please. Come with us, just for a while. If you're not who we say you are, you can come back here."
OK, outgunned, out-armoured, out-reasoned. I could pretend to go along, have a couple of slap-up meals, maybe a little kip, then come to the store again. And then what? More of the same bullshit? Tears, demands, begging, and always, every time, no provenance. More gunplay. And I bet SR V is going to suck even bigger.
I looked from mother to son to mother. Something wanted to flicker inside me, but common sense prevailed.
I aimed the gun at his bull head and squeezed the trig–
© PuzzleMonkey, 2008.
Jason’s Very Last Day at the Lost and Found by PuzzleMonkey was read by Michael Redston at the Liars’ League Lost & Found event on Tuesday 9 December 2008.
PuzzleMonkey joined the human race as a freelance volunteer in South Africa. The furless creatures perplexed him, so he tried everything. Alcohol, Balkan GypsyPunk. Only fiction worked. Tales. Telling, reading, cooking with them. Jason's story is his first successful literary infiltration. His cover is teaching filmmaking to the unsuspecting in Oman.
Comments