“Shit! Did I put salt in my coffee again?” Detective
Dumbass asked himself out loud, putting down the cup of coffee on the
countertop, and revolving his tongue around in his mouth with an expression of
disgust on his face. His taste buds were recovering from the dash of bitter
they’d just got.
“Salty coffee got your tongue again, Dumbass?”
Lieutenant Dickhead said, walking into the kitchenette, an octagon-shaped cabin
consigned to a sticky corner of the dioctagon lobby, located in a di-octagon building
with hexagon and heptagon rooms.
“Aye, Lt. Dick. I would think so,” Dumbass replied,
looking from the white button labeled ‘Salt’ on the Robo-Bev, the beverage-making
robot, to the red button labeled ‘Sugar’. It was the only robot in the building
that was mute and deaf and ran only on its buttons being pushed.
Which
button did I press? Every damn time. Of what use is a robotic coffee machine if it can’t even tell whether
you’re putting sugar or salt in your drink? , he mused, scratching his
head.
“There has been a murder at a seven-star hotel on 56th.
You’re on it, Dumbass. I have already sent you the details on your MacTab. I
need you there ASAP,” Dickhead spoke, pouring himself a cup of coffee from the
machine.
“Will anyone be joining me, sir?” Dumbass asked,
looking at his own abandoned cup of coffee. His fingers reached out to pick it up from the
countertop, hovered over it for a few moments of indecision, then retracted.
I
will have a latte from the Mars Café on the way. At least the Coffee-Maker-cum-Waitress
asks after me and chats while she makes the drink according to my
specifications. If she had been even half-human I would have married her,
Dumbass mused.
It was a brave new dystopian new world…where cafes
were slowly going high-tech. Waitresses were replaced by multi-purpose coffee-
making –and- serving robots, which interacted with individual customers as they
whipped up beverages the way they wanted them. All the humans had to do was input
behavioral cues and conversational material into the machine every morning.
Even the human managers had a robot each for
handling financial transactions.
Mars Café was one such enterprising café, and
Dumbass was a known patron.
Sometimes, if a customer happened to fall in love
with any of the ‘Waitresses’, they could meet the woman ‘behind’ the machines
with their consent.
Many life-long relationships were forged in these
cafes.
“Detective Kickass is on her way from home to the
crime scene,” Dickhead replied, taking a sip from his cup.
“Right. I should get going then, Lt. Dick,” Dumbass
said, and turned around to leave.
His attention on his MacTab, he didn’t notice the
leather couch in front of him and walked right onto it.
The chocolate brown couch happened to have a chocolate
brown Supercat lying on it. The cat meowed loudly as Dumbass walked on it, and,
in retaliation, sprang from its seat, grabbed his legs from beneath, and,
lifting him, hurled him towards the door of the kitchenette.
“Damn you Supercat!” Dumb mumbled, as he slumped
against the door, still reading on his MacTab.
You
should have thought of that before you walked right onto me, Dumbass,
the cat telepathied him.
I’m
sorry, Super. I owe you a Mutant Rat, Dumb tele-replied.
You
sure do, buddy, tele-replied the cat.
As Dumbass walked towards the bank of elevators
leading to the ground floor, the last thought on his mind was how to get hold
of one of the Rats, plaguing the New Mars City’s radioactive sewers. The rats,
mutants of a radioactive generation spawned by a world immersed in nuclear
waste, could do stuff . Like flying, swimming,
Kung-fu, making real mince-pies out of human beings they preyed on and serving
them at F-Rat parties, and teaching human anatomy to rats at Rodent Medical
Schools, also established in the sewers.
***********
Dumbass walked out of the NMCPHQ building, his body
automatically tilting as he reached the tilted front entrance of the building-
and straightening itself as he stepped out on the sidewalk.
He put his hand up to shield his eyes from the rays
glinting off the glass facades of the numerous buildings dotting the city
landscape; some edifices tilting sideways like the NCMPHQ, architecturally inspired
by the Leaning Tower of Pisa, others gnarled like roots, snaking like serpents
or shaped like human body parts and other things. All these under a blood red
sky, in which the clouds had chosen to be rose-shaped that day, the yellow sun
standing out with its luminescence.
BAM!
“What the hell!” Dumb shouted as his legs buckled
beneath him and his butt collided with a clang on a smooth metal surface.
“SQUAR! Again!” he added, realizing he was lying
spread-eagled on the bonnet of the robotic squad car, a fleet of which was owned
by the police department.
“You summoned me here! What am I supposed to do if
you’re in my way!” SQUAR boomed in reply.
Dumbass realized the hand holding his MacTab had a
finger on the green button which, when pressed, made the car fly out of the
garage and right in front of the cop. Without realizing it, he had summoned the
car and it had flew into him from behind.
“Absent-minded as usual, Dumb,” the car chirped, as
a pair of robotic hands emerged from the sides of the vehicle, grabbed him by
the waist, and placed him snugly into the driver’s seat.
“Yeah yeah. Off to 66th, SQUAR,” Dumb
ordered in reply.
The car sped away, flying five feet above the
ground.
**********
“Dumb! Where the hell where you? I’ve been calling
you for ages!” Detective Kickass, a macho woman in her early twenties yelled at
her partner as he stepped out of the car, which was resting on the ground.
“I’m sorry…I confused 56th Street for 66th,
and had to drive all the way back. You called?” he asked, looking at his
MacTab.
“Yeah…about 20 times!” Kickass replied.
Dumb saw that his partner had actually called him 25
times; he hadn’t realized it because his tab, lying on the passenger seat, was
in Silent mode. He had put it on Silent the previous night while going to bed,
and forgotten to switch back to Loud that morning.
“I’m so sorry…you’re not gonna punch me, are you?”
asked Dumb, to the woman who was a certified expert in 7 types of martial arts,
five time World Champion in Physical Combat and one of the strongest women in
the world. Her physical prowess was due to Peptide X, a supplement she took
every day and owned in plenty- courtesy of being related, by marriage, to a
Martian family whose multi-planetary pharmaceutical company made Peptide X. The
formulation gave its human consumers super-human strength.
‘That’s why
Detective Kickass doesn’t have any boyfriends’ a journalist had written
unkindly once.
“No…I’m not gonna punch you. Let’s go inside,” she
replied.
**********
“There’s a lot of heat on the NMPD with this murder,”
Kickass commented, as she and Dumbass looked at the mutilated body floating in
mid-air in an ornate suite of the Hotel Saturn-Solaris.
“I know,” Dumb commented.
The body, whose flesh was slowly melting and
dripping like candle wax on to the ground, was that of Mrs. Snob Elitist, wife
of spaceship mogul Mr. Rich Bastard-Elitist. Red vapors emanated from her mouth
and mixed with the air.
The city Mayor Good-for-nothing, a good friend of
Mr. Elitist, was pressurizing Chief Kiss-Ass of the NMPD, who was in turn
nagging Captain Corrupt-Parasite, who was, in turn, forcing Lt. Dickhead to
catch the killer and solve the case quickly.
“Which is why we are going to have to act very fast,
I suppose,” Dumbass commented, as the forensic pathologist, Dr. Chucklehead,
came into view.
“Yes we do. How’d she die, Doc?” Kickass asked him.
“She has probably been lasered to death by a
high-powered instrument, Detective. All her internal organs have probably
already started powderizing and her blood has vaporized, as you can see. We
will have to take her to the lab before she turns to biologic dust and we lose
vital evidence,” Chucklehead replied. No one understood where Chucklehead got
his name, because his facial muscles were always contorted in a grim
expression, and his voice was deep and had a somber quality.
“Yes please, Doc,” Kickass said.
As the detectives examined the evidence being lifted
by the Forensic Science Investigators in blue overalls, the coroner’s team,
dressed in green baggy suits, arrived to take the body away.
“Dumb! Look over there! What’s happening?” Kickass
commented, pointing to where the coroner’s team stood around the corpse.
Dumb looked to where she pointed, and his eyes
widened in surprise.
None of the green-suited people were moving. They were
also suspended in mid air like the corpse, their hands limp at their sides, their
legs dangling precariously, and a number of red rays were coming in from a
window, engulfing the team.
The FSIs on that side of the room were crouched on
the ground, looking fearfully at the weird tableaux.
“What is that? We must go to help!” Dumb shouted,
darting forward.
“Shhhhh! Shut up Dumb! Can’t you see these are laser
rays? They’re coming from outside…we’ll be roasted if we as much as step
anywhere them!” Kickass whispered, pulling Dumb back by the collar of his shirt
and pulling them both to the ground.
“Who’s doing this, and why?” Dumb whispered.
“Didn’t you hear Chucklehead? Snob Elitist was murdered
with a high-powered laser machine…by someone who doesn’t want us to investigate
further and find out what happened…they probably want to kill us all and probably
destroy all evidence by lasering this place and Snob’s body to bits. Let’s not alert
them to our presence,” Kickass explained.
“Absolutely correct, Detective Kickass,” Chucklehead
whispered from a little way off, huddled beneath a window.
Suddenly, a low rumbling sound came out of nowhere.
This was followed by the suspended green-suited people being bombarded by more
rays, and their suits started puncturing with numerous lacerations.
Cracks started to appear in the wall opposite to
where Kickass and Dumbass lay, and the people crouching on the ground hurriedly
scuttled over to where they were.
“They’re trying to kill all of us, Detective
Kickass. What do we do?” Chucklehead said in a loud whisper.
“We need to get out of here. It has through be
through that window, Doc. Come on, jump out and lead the way. Come on! Everybody,
buckle up!” Kickass instructed, pointing to the window above Chucklehead
“This is the 115th floor, for God’s sake!
We’ll all fall to our deaths!”
“We’ll summon our SQUARs…we have plenty of space to accommodate
everyone. Now! Before we all liquefy to death!” Kickass shouted, running to the
window and pressing the green button on her tab. Dumb did the same, as other
walls started to develop cracks too and the rumbling grew louder.
As the two SQUARs arrived outside the window and
opened their doors, Kickass pulled people and helped them get in the car, where
a large secret cabin would open up in the rear section.
When they had taken everyone who wasn’t already
caught by the laser, Kickass and Dumbass jumped into their cars.
“To the NMPD!” they both shouted together, and the
cars, emitting a flash of fire from its tapered tail-end, sped away.
Moments later, the laser rays vanished, the rumbling
stopped, and the room became silent again. All the humans, including the
corpse, melted into a fluid state as another, larger green ray entered through
a large hole in the wall.
And the room exploded with a BANG, vaporizing
everything it contained, and the rooms within its immediate periphery.
A huge, egg-shaped vehicle, floating at a safe
distance from the 115th floor of Saturn-Solaris, flew away into the
sky.
