THE ORIGINS OF
4
A new email arrived, rerouted from “medicine.com” to the private servers of Dr. Radiation. Al quickly got to processing the message.
Dear dr_radiation,
I am a 20-something news reporter for the International Enquiry. I am suffering from radiation poisoning. I saw your ad on google on a FREE treatment on radiation poisoning and would like to receive help. Please respond as soon as possible,
XOXO,
Harry Smith
hsmith@international-enquiry-mail.com
Al read the message several million times over within a second, before generating a response and sending it almost as soon as the responded-to email had arrived.
5
Harry was scanning his report on the Pentagon disappearances when suddenly his computer screamed: “YOU'VE GOT MAIL!” in the most annoying television-man voice he's ever heard.
That was fast, was his fleeting thought as he sent the newly-scanned report to one of the Enquiry editors. He then opened up Microsoft Outlook 6 to check out his new message, which read:
“Click
here for nude sexy pictures of hsmith and all my friends cheap medicines on mortgage 90% discount!!!!”
Nude pics? he thought.
Craps, I thought I got rid of those!
Before he could follow this line of thought, the television-man once again said “YOU'VE GOT MAIL!” Still distracted, he barely read the new message:
Harry Smith,
You are person #0000 to give us a call on your condition. Seeing as you are the first one in almost a year to contact us, you are obviously desperate and poor; no-one will miss you! Which is a good thing, don't worry. Go to 933 Whirlpool Street to meet us.
See you there,
Al, on behalf of dr_radiation
He should witch-hunt his so-called friends for beaches of privacy...
wait, what? He read the email again and again before, “desperate,” “poor,” “933 Whirlpool Street,” and “no-one will miss you,” were all firmly planted on his mind.
Well, I've got nothing to lose and everything to gain, he told himself.
I think. Shaking away all his pessimism, he looked for his first aid kit, quickly bandaged his swollen, glowing red hand, stood up, took his coat, went out, then hailed a cab.
“Where to, buddy?” The driver was fat and Slavic-looking, in contrast to Harry's lean Aryan features.
“933 Whirlpool Street.”
The driver looked at Harry through the rear-view mirror, puzzled. “933... Whirlpool Street?”
“Yes,” said Harry irritably. His hand was hurting quite fiercely, thumping hard as though trying to break free of the tight bandages.
The Slavic man just shook his head and drove. “Shady fellow, ain't you?”
“Huh?”
6
Upon reaching Whirlpool Street, it became clear to Harry that this wasn't the sort of place a man like him should be going to, for any reason.
Well, I'm desperate. Okay, for
almost any
normal reason.
The place was sparsely populated by ethnic minorities of all kinds huddled in the corners, talking, drinking, smoking all sorts of thing, generally hanging out, wearing loose-fitting clothes and listening to hip-hop and rap. There were blacks, Mexicans, Cubans, Puerto Ricans, Jamaicans, Russians, Quebecois Canadians, and even some Chinamen and Yakuza-types; it made Harry fear for his life.
Checking his watch, he found that it was three-thirty in the morning.
“Here we are, buddy,” said the driver. Harry tried to pay him with his good hand, hiding the other one under his coat. The driver saw this, and said, raising his hands into the air, “Hey man, I don't want any trouble!”
Harry raised an eyebrow, then noticed that the driver was staring at his hidden arm. “Oh,” said Harry, then revealed the bandaged hand, which was now oozing some dark liquid, probably blood, but it was hard to make out in the dim light of the taxi.
The driver sighed in relief and took the money. Harry got out and stared at a massive warehouse before him.
“Yo,” came a voice from behind him. Turning around, Harry saw a bunch of gangster-types with bats and planks and brass knuckles who just swaggered in his direction.
“Uh, yes?”
“Who're you and what'choo doing here, boy?” said who appeared to be their leader, an apish man with large muscles and a blinding array of bling. “This ain't no place for bourgeois capitalist pig-biatchez like'choo to be.”'
Bourgeois... capitalist... pig-biatchez? thought Harry in a panic.
What is
this?
“What do you want?” Harry stammered.
“We want you to spread the wealth,” said the apish man, cracking his knuckles. “Since your bruthas up there in the social stratosphere are too high and mighty to return the value of our labor, I think you have to
stand in for them.”
“Value of your labor? You're criminals!”
“In some societies, thievery is an honorable profession,” replied the apish man. He then looked at one of his companions, and said, “Ain't that right, Mongŭc?”
“Word.”
The leader returned to looking at Harry. “And this society ain't any different,” he continued. “Except small-time operations like ours ain't sanctioned by the monopoly of coercion, unlike the big ones like car companies and too-big-to-fail banks.”
“Fo' shizzle, brutha!” added another one of the man's cronies.
“Anyways,” the leader man said, cocking his head up at Harry. “You gonna share the wealth, or” – he looked around at his friends – “do we have to
spread the revolution to yo' sorry ass?”
Jesus frigging Christ! The armed men were closing in on Harry, who was desperately trying to feel for for his wallet which, he just remembered, wasn't on the coat he was wearing just then.
Jesus mother-frigging Christ!
Al watched and correctly calculated that the sorry man about to be mugged was indeed Harry Smith. It then decided that it was just about time to step in.
To be continued...