Eurasian Gambit
by S.T. Fargo)
“It was the middle of March, and the weather was disgusting. The streets had turned into rivers, the water following their curves as if the entire city were some weird urban canyon. Here and there, puddles were almost as big as Hudson Bay, and the parks looked like Louisiana swamps. The nasty winds made raindrops whip people’s faces like small daemon tails. The winters here are not what they used to be. It’s all different now, probably because of the Chinese. They messed up the global climate about a decade ago with their large-scale industrial revolution, and the country suddenly disintegrated, leaving the rest of the world to deal with the consequences.
I was sitting in my miniature office on Lacuna Drive 85 with a glass of White Bear whiskey in my hand and my feet on the desk, watching a portable TV set placed next to my shoes. I had just followed the latest news on the crisis in Britain and the wild idea they had to put the country up for auction. My desk was so crammed with the device that I could accidentally kick it down if I stretched my legs a little more, but I couldn’t care less. Firstly, the TV set was insanely old and, therefore, incredibly cheap—ironically, it was made in China—and secondly, even if it tumbled, it still wouldn’t hit the floor since my office was only slightly larger than the desk itself. There was simply not enough room on both sides for the device to fall.
For the sake of being precise, I should mention here that my office was exactly two hundred and thirty-five by two hundred and forty-five centimeters. It was the smallest one in the whole building and probably in the entire Greenland, too. I wasn’t even sure it was a good idea to rent it in the first place because I wasn’t using it much, but it was also because of the money. I just didn’t have it.
To be even more precise, I should probably note that I never have enough of it actually. Moneyless is my natural state of being, and sometimes I wonder whether god created me just to serve as a byword—so that people could say, “poor like a Murphy.” On the other hand, I’m not even sure that god created me, anyway. I have always had doubts, but after aliens turned up, believing in such a thing became simply ridiculous. Their appearance made a total mess of our heads.
From somewhere in the depths of my desk, the telephone gave a hollow ring and startled me from my thoughts. I slowly put the glass on the countertop and reached out to open the right lowermost drawer. I pulled out only the handset to say a brief “hello.”
At first, no one answered. I could hear heavy breathing at the other end of the line, though. Then someone cleared their throat and cautiously asked, “Mr. Mellrow, the PI?””
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