Cattle

He had been so close to freedom. He had escaped their sight, convinced them all that he didn't exist.

Damn Blumenbach. Damn Blumenbach, his dogged research, and his diabolic machines. Damn him to Hell. There was nothing he'd like more than looking into his eyes and ordering him to cut his own throat. He wouldn't even drink his accursed blood, so hot burned hate in his old, dry heart.

But he no longer had eyes or a tongue. All he could do was struggle pointlessly against the metal restraints.

"Count, Count..." mocked the detached voice he hated so much. "Why won't you cooperate? There's so much we are learning from you."

Then came the by now familiar prick of a needle and the feeling of blood being drained from his veins.

.finis.

The Price of Freedom

The first Presidential e-elections had been an astounding non-event so far. A very low turnout and a small but consistent Republican lead had all but killed, it seemed, interest in it.

Five minutes before polling websites would close down, pundits and reporters were already talking about the "no-show generation" and the expected policies of the new President.

Too old to be familiar with eBay, they had never heard about auction sniping.

.finis.

Further Good News From The Vatican

He was alive and could communicate. Centuries of tradition, a million people in the street, a billion watching on TV, and God's own will, all expected and demanded the Pope to come to the balcony and give his first blessing after his illness.

But the Pope was a bedridden man hardly capable of moving his body, communicating only thanks to the electrodes reading his brain patterns and translating them using the best voice synthesizing system ever to come from IBM's laboratories. Even if the cocoon of machinery keeping the Holy Father alive could be moved, what kind of message would that send to Christendom at large? It wasn't easy to argue that the Pope was unable to fulfill his duties, not when he could argue back at you with a strong, almost inhumanly perfect voice, but still... It was a difficult problem that would require years of analysis by the Church's finest minds, if they couldn't already hear the demanding voices of the crowd outside.

A young technician, acting with the brashness of youth and the surety of the believer, took an holographic screen from the diagnostic systems and the Holy Father's speakers, and moved them outside.

The crowd hushed, the world's attention focused on the balcony. The holographic screen showed a rendered likeness of the Pope, while his voice came from the speakers blessing the world.

Everybody in the plaza bowed their heads and chanted amen.

.finis.

Legwork

My paper's thesis was on the pre- and post-capitalistic linkages between the drug cartels and the civil society of the slums, but the man I was interviewing was stubbornly acting rather too much like my stupid MBA-obsessed brother.

"It's a business," the man said, finishing his coffee with a hint of impatience. "You look for ROI, that's all."

"But you do fulfill the functions abandoned by the Brazilian state in the slums," I pressed on. "Health, defense..." He shook his head and said nothing. As a last resort, I went for soccer. "I know you fund all those soccer schools. That means you act out of a shared culture, a..."

"Do you know how much you can sell a good soccer player to an European club for?," he interrupted me.

I blinked.

He smiled, looking through the window at the favelas we could see covering the hills. "There's going to be a good crop this year."

.finis.

Opening

He was the best chess player the world had ever seen. Never lost in ten years; he could almost see entire games ahead.

Rich, famous, and seemingly bored, he was offered to run for Senate. "Why not?", he said. An afterthought, a game.

But I know better.

He once told me he had never cared for chess.

.finis.

Armageddon

A group of Roman legionaries charged me, quick and disciplined among the chaos. Probably from the late Republic, I judged, picking them off with my M16. At my back, somebody in a pinstripe suit was mowing down Vikings with a machine gun.

I was grateful for it. I hadn't died for a few hours now, and although it wasn't as permanent as it had seemed to be the first time, dying still hurt like hell.

The man smiled and yelled at me. "Hell of a party, right?"

I made a noncommittal gesture with my shoulders and kept taking my shots. Ammo -like dying- wasn't a concern anymore,  but habits died hard.

The man took a cigar out of his pocket and lighted it as he shot a wounded samurai in the back. "You think it'll end like it began? Another trumpet opening the skies and bam! we all go back to our graves?"

I shrugged again. When and how this battle would end were very good questions, but if it would end was a better one. I expected he'd start thinking about it a couple of days from now, unless he was quicker on the uptake that I had been.

What really worried me, though, was not knowing which side I was fighting for.

A young woman in a plastic-looking uniform jumped from behind a pile of awakening corpses and pointed a weird rifle at me. The ones from the future were the worst.

I shot her, hoping that she hadn't been a good person and that her uniform wasn't bulletproof.

.finis.

The Quest

The door opened and trouble came in. Brunette, as usual. She always liked to have her hair black.

"Are you a detective?"

Again? was what she meant. I shrugged and said "It's what it says in the door." Signs mattered, as usual.

She sat down in a chair and pleaded at me. "I need your help. My husband is missing."

I lighted a cigarette, not offering her one. We weren't yet at the right point, although we would soon be. "And you want him back."

"Of course, I love him."

It had been many years since I had last believed that story from her. I was a good man back then, a knight in shinning armor. Nowadays being a man was all I could aim to.

"I don't care, precious. Just tell me what you know and I'll find your guy."

She passed me a photograph. There was a handsome man on it, holding in his hand a big diamond.

"That's my husband Arthur. He's a geologist, an expert on diamonds. I'm afraid he's been taken because of that stone he found."

Her words made me feel older than usual. A husband named Arthur, an special stone to search for. We had done this thing many times, but at least there had been some change to it, some variation, even if the betrayal, the lust, and the greed had remained the same. There was a time when I'd have preferred a Grail to a Maltese Falcon, but that had been long ago.

"Alright, Guinevere, I'll find the bird."

Her eyes widened. She looked nothing like she used to, and was as beautiful as ever. "How did you know my name?"

She played the innocence game as well as ever, too. "I'm a detective, babe. It's what I do."

And I didn't have any choice on that. None of us ever did.

.finis.