Devolution

Daniel Smisco felt sick. He knew he had done the wrong thing and no amount of self justification could ease the guilt which hammered his stomach. A life full of much to regret, and even in this last act of what was supposed to be of great service to mankind, Daniel knew he was fated to die in ignominy. Not for him the accolades and memorials, nor the published papers treated as textbooks by educators and taken as gospel by eager students of genetic manipulation. Coming generations would remember him all right but not as mankind’s benefactor but as its betrayer.

Drawing no pleasure from either the barely dressed girls cavorting sensuously on the stage or the strong drink, he decided to leave the Strip Joint and did so quite unaware of his shadow who had been following him for a week. This shadow kept its distance and continued to remain undetected, using the skills and maneuvers programmed into it, by those who received regular reports on the whereabouts and actions of Dr. Daniel Smisco.

Even the streetscape seemed to point at him accusingly and all the faces looked angry. It seemed paranoid to think that way because as Smisco reminded himself, what he had done was a secret for now. Society was none the wiser, he was an unknown; a man walking around, either aimlessly or with intent, minding his own affairs with none to question him or challenge him. He was free for now, but only in movement, his heart was bound in chains and being pushed towards an inferno of condemnation. Selling valuable and potentially earth shaking research such as he possessed to the highest bidder was a pitiful thing for a man of his stature to do. Impatience and frustration with the government’s procrastination had caused it but that was no justification.

The shame he felt was like a huge rain cloud hanging over his head, threatening at any moment to unleash a torrent of cold rain which would drown him rather than wash away the guilt. This realistic judgment of himself was fair and reasonable. He deserved to feel this bad, to feel this seething disgust for himself.

Smisco decided he needed more alcohol so he walked to a nearby liquor store and bought a bottle of Black Douglas scotch whiskey which he intended to take home. Dark thoughts, dangerous evil thoughts kept popping into his mind like accusing voices yelling in his conscience, telling him how bad he was and what horrible disaster would flow from his decision to sell out. Worthless, worthless fool. Die. Die! Kill yourself, it’s the only way. Amongst it all, growing tenaciously in his subconscious, a way to make right the wrong he had done.

‘Watch it mate,’ warned one of Kings Cross’s vagrants as Smisco collided with him.

The doctor staggered but regained his footing to stumble along the footpath, not feeling as though he belonged in this world any longer. The accuser in his head now more urgent and angry, Daniel began to agree and strangely this cheered him up. In fighting the voice, in struggling against how he felt he was becoming weary and would soon collapse but by surrendering to the new truth, it was like being released. The sweet liberty found in the acceptance of one’s fate.

Finding a vacant park bench Smisco sat down and opened his bottle of Scotch, drinking it straight from the bottle. His thoughts now became clear; he would kill himself. It was the honorable thing to do, but how would he do it? Did he in fact have the courage to end his own life? Having a new problem to which he could now apply his considerable mental prowess really lifted his spirits.

Buses, cars and taxis cruised slowly along Bayswater Rd so walking in front of one would hurt but definitely not kill him. Security inside the plethora of shining office towers buildings in the district was not very tight but too tight for him to get past, especially in his inebriated state. Being drunk was now a problem. Would he be able to purchase an electrogun? Not without a license and he could not get a license immediately, and even if he did somehow manage to get one, there was a ten day cooling off period for all purchases. What about a knife? Sure he could probably buy some sort of knife but how do you kill yourself with a knife? Slowly and painfully probably.

‘What’s the best way to kill yourself mate?’

The derro sharing his bench nodded his head to show he had heard but did not look at Smisco. ‘Pills,’ he said. ‘Go to the doctor and get some pills. Easy and painless.’

‘Does it work?’

‘It worked for me.’

‘But you’re still alive.’

‘I’m dead,’ he said still staring at the ground. Slowly he tilted his head up to face Smisco, smiled and said again, ‘I’m dead, mate. Can’t you tell?’

The vagrant had black holes where his eyes should have been. Was he a ghost? Daniel didn’t believe in them but the ragged lifeless old man frightened him enough to make a change of mind possible.

Leaping from the bench in shock, Smisco started to run before he knew where he was going. Wildly and blindly. Blindly! The image of the vagrant’s eyes chased him down the street. Crossing Bayswater Rd without looking he ran straight into the side of a taxi-cab as it crawled along. Smisco fell but quickly sprung to his feet to resume his flight ignoring the wild curses of the cab driver. Bumping into people and things, power poles, garbage bins and sandwich boards he left a trail of mess and bewilderment.

The incline down past HMAS Albatross was steeper than he could cope with and halfway down he crashed headlong into a bed of pansies in a small front yard of a private house. Spent, Daniel lay there unaware of the pain of tortured muscles through sweat soaked clothing.

‘You all right mate?’

Daniel opened his eyes to find a naval officer in white dress uniform, pressed collared shirt with insignias, shorts and long socks, looking down at him with a helping hand extended.

‘Was someone chasing you? Can you get up?’

Ignoring the questions, Smisco felt around him for his bottle of scotch, but of course he had dropped it somewhere along the way. What should he say to this man? The truth? Who would believe a bum, a rambling and shabby man who stunk of booze? To everyone else, he was just another derro; a faceless wraith restlessly shambling through the real world trying to get out.

‘I’m fine,’ he said. ‘Leave me alone, I’m fine.’

Unconvinced, the good Samaritan hesitated. ‘Are you sure? You took a pretty heavy fall.’

Daniel waved him away as he struggled to his feet and made a vain attempt to straighten out his clothes and regain some lost dignity. ‘I’m fine, thank you.’

It was only then that he became aware of a dull pain in his arm. Sitting down on the brick front fence he removed his jacket and rolled up his shirt and as he felt the spot and inspected it closely he noticed there was a lump under the skin, about the size of a twenty cent piece. Initially alarmed, he wrote it off as a minor bruise, then rolled his sleeve back down and replaced his jacket.

He stood at the same time as a white ATV pulled up at the curb. When the door opened and Smisco saw a familiar face, he began to run again. This time he really was being pursued. Had he had time to think he would have doubted his ability to run any more. He was unfit and incapable of extended periods of exertion but adrenaline coursed through him. Survival instincts strong and primal were all he had left with which to fight and he still wanted to fight, despite his recent musings on the subject of suicide. Continuing down the hill the road veered sharply to the left as it reached the nadir and past the entrance to Garden Island naval base. The USS Invincible was in port on fourteen days shore leave, and the street alongside where she was docked was crowded with sightseers.

Daniel barreled through them like a bowling bowl through tenpins not looking behind or to the right or the left. Somehow he kept running and running, around Wollomoloo Bay and underneath the Eastern Distributor freeway overpass. He tore off his jacket and threw it to the ground as he ran and began to consider how he had been found so quickly. Having sweated all the alcohol from his system his thoughts now cleared as the fog of intoxication lifted.

The lump on my arm, he thought. It’s not a bruise, it’s an implant. A tracker. But how did they get it in me? Maybe it had been there for some time, since his first meeting with the shadowy go-betweens of this hellish deal he had struck. And maybe only just now when they had lost visual track of him had they activated the device. That must be it because he had run at least two or three kilometers through Kings Cross before he had fallen in the garden.

Suddenly he stopped and looked around. There was no one chasing him so now he had some time to try and remove the tracker. A knife was what he needed, but a knife was what he didn’t have so he had to find a shop. His clarity of thought fueled by what had now become a desperation for survival had long since erased any thoughts of suicide. Daniel wanted to live, and in living perhaps he could do something about righting this wrong he had done. Redemption or restitution or whatever label you attached to it, was a noble motivation.

Standing in the middle of a narrow laneway, being energized by new found resolve, the doctor failed to hear the vehicle speeding up on him from behind. By the time he heard it and spun around to face it was too late. Daniel swallowed hard and prepared to die but the impact he waited for never happened.

A shadow moved in front of him and the transport stopped dead as its front end crumpled like a paper bag. Looking to the sky, he saw the sun beaming in clear blue sky. Looking back to the damaged ATV, the shadow was gone. In only a few seconds the shadow which Daniel now felt was in the shape of a very large man, took the full impact of the collision without moving at all, touched Daniel’s arm where the tracker was and removed it painlessly, then disappeared saying, ‘Live Daniel. Live and make right the wrong you have done.’

Overwhelmed, stunned and exhausted the doctor collapsed to the ground and lay there half out of his mind, delirious with a cyclone of emotion, but alive and free. He touched his arm where the tracker had been and felt not even the slightest bump. Did the shadow remove it without breaking the skin of his arm, and did it heal the wound instantaneously? Did I imagine it all? Trackers, enemies, shadows to the rescue, a life-his life literally pulled back at the very last moment from the edge of a sheer cliff to safety-a new life.

Time passed without informing Daniel of its progress. When finally the narrow laneway began to darken as the sun gave up its guardianship of the day, Daniel slowly raised his aching body from the road. Turning his head to get some idea of where he was, he found himself beside the white ATV which was now a lifeless shell. Getting up onto his feet, Daniel looked inside and saw the cabin was empty. What had happened to the driver? Had there even been one?

Carefully examining the front end of the transport, he wondered at the force of the shadow to bring half a ton of metal and plastic to a sudden shattering stop. He felt inside his pockets for their contents. All still there, some coins secure inside the fob, his wallet and his mobile phone. A handkerchief still wet with perspiration, and a small piece of paper. Folded in two it was the size unopened of a business card. Daniel unfolded it struggling to think what it was and where it came from.

Inside, were the hand written words: Jacobssen Mumbai Police

Daniel flipped open his phone and began to dial the number for directory assistance but a low battery warning was flashing. Uncertain and still afraid, he decided to leave and try again from a land line. Not home, they would go there for sure if they had not already been. No, a hotel would be best. Although the tracker had been removed he felt reasonably sure that his pursuers would be able to pick up his trail again soon. In fact, it surprised him a little that they had not already done so.

Leaving the junked ATV in the deserted dead lane, Daniel walked out onto the main street and looked around to try to figure out where he was. Fortuitously the first sign he saw was the pulsing neon of the Royal Hotel, not more than a hundred meters away.

Inside the lobby he found a pay phone and waved his wrist in front of its scanner before gratefully hearing the sound of a dial tone. First he disabled the digital camera and then he dialed the directory. It was only a hunch to call the authorities, a sneaking suspicion. Thirty seconds later the phone was ringing at police headquarters.

Adrian Jacobssen was frustrated. The link between the murders of Senator Singh and Senator 15, and the attempt on his life was undeniable but impossible to prove. Despite days of intensive investigations by himself and his very best detectives, not a shred of hard evidence had been uncovered.

Pressure was mounting on him and it was coming from all sides. Initially, mainly the families of the victims which was naturally taken up as a cause to champion by the media and lastly when the tide of public opinion had been won over, the politicians wanted their names on the increasing petitions for the murderer or murderers to be caught and brought to justice.

In his long career, Jacobssen had dealt with similar cases, seemingly unsolvable at first, but they weren’t such high profile people. Two senators. The assassins were bold and well organized but what was their motive? To set two tribes against each other? To further destabilize the coalition? Why? What was there to gain by sending Earth down

the well worn path of tribalism which would lead once more to destruction? A madman? Someone interested in chaos and death as an amusement? Surely those kind of people only exist in movies and video games.

Sitting forward in his chair, Jacobssen lifted a bottle of beer to his lips and emptied its contents. He stood and walked to the kitchen carrying the empty bottle which he placed in the recycling chute and grabbed another beer from the refrigerator.

The videophone rang.

‘Jacobssen speaking,’ he said to one of three videophone wall panels in his apartment.

Recognizing the words and the tone of Jacobssen’s voice the screen came to life and the policeman heard a soft and desperate sounding voice.

‘I have information on the murders you are investigating.’

‘Are you blocking your image or is your videophone malfunctioning?’

‘I can’t talk for long. I am being watched.’

Thirty years experience of reading people’s faces made Jacobssen suspicious of those who tried to hide theirs. Voices weren’t to be trusted as they were too easy to tamper with or to alter, but a face was different. A face could easily betray a person and often did.

‘How did you get this number?’

‘Do you want information or not?’

‘I don’t accept anonymous tips. They can’t be trusted.’ Jacobssen paused waiting for a reply, sensing the hesitation at the other end of the line. ‘Turn the image block off and I will listen.’

After another long pause, the voice said, ‘I just want to help. I can’t remove the image blocker or the transmission may be intercepted.’

‘Don’t you have jammers? Where are you calling from?’

The screen flickered then displayed the words, Transmission Ended.

More frustration.

Jacobssen returned to his living room, beer in hand and sat down in front of the VDP.

‘VDP On!’

From the darkness clear and colorful images appeared as he thoughtfully sipped his beer. He had not been wrong to refuse the information from the anonymous caller. Stalling like that also helped determine the genuineness of the call and Jacobssen firmly believed he would call again. Whether he did have worthwhile and pertinent information for the case was another matter. Also of interest was how the mystery had managed to obtain his private number. Always questions.

Adrian called the station house and asked to speak to the duty sergeant.

‘Yes sir,’ said the sergeant.

Jacobssen proceeded immediately to business. ‘Did you receive an anonymous call earlier this evening or this afternoon in relation to the current investigation?’

‘Yes.’

‘And you gave the guy my home number?’

‘Yes. He insisted he would only talk to you and he said the information could break the case.’

‘Did he say anything else? Any indication of what his information might be about?’

‘No, he just said it was important and that he was being watched.’

‘Did he use an image blocker when he called?’

‘Yes.’

‘How did you know he was genuine?’

‘Gut feeling.’

‘Gut feeling? You should know better than that,’ said Jacobssen knowing that the other’s instinct was probably right on this occasion, but needing to reprimand him anyway because he was his superior officer.

‘Yes sir, you’re right.’

‘Don’t worry about it,’ said Jacobssen, softening his tone. ‘I think you are right about this one. I got the same feeling from my gut.’

‘What did he say?’

‘Nothing. I put him off but I reckon he’ll call again, and soon.’

‘Let’s hope so.’

‘Yeah. See you tomorrow.’

Exactly one hour later, Jacobssen’s anonymous informant called again and although it had been a somewhat anxious wait for him, it was definitely worth it. After the call, he showered and changed his clothes, packed an overnight bag in a mad rush, then caught a taxi to the Chatrapi Shivaji International airport and boarded the first available flight out of India. He had an inkling that this was a huge case, a career defining case but now with an international component attached he began to wonder if it was perhaps too big. Australia? He never imagined he would travel there for any reason. It wasn’t high on anybody’s hit list of tourist destinations to visit before you die but this information could be prove crucial to the investigation. The man was in Sydney, so it was to Sydney that Jacobssen had to go.