Into the Fourth Universe

By Robert Wingfield

Probably one of the bawdiest and most scathing lampoons of science fiction and big business ever written.
Just when he thought he was dead and could have some time off, Tom is catapulted into leading a business in a chaotic world where bureaucracy and process have taken over from all logic and good sense. Everything is in place to perpetuate an organisational structure, but nobody knows what his company actually does, to rake in its profits. Tom's biggest challenge is to sort that out.
Add into this multiple attempts on his life as people try to stop him, his quest to find true love (again), an investigation into a murder without a victim, the first rule of being a private investigator, and the impending total collapse of four universes, and we have a tangled knot that even Alexander the Great would have trouble cutting through.
Tom has to do something, otherwise it will be the end of everything he knows, and quite a few bits he doesn't.
We have here not beep-beep, fire main phasors, science fiction (well, not much), but a lusty romp through everything wrong with business and life today
Adults only, and only those who are not easily offended... and managers everywhere.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Robert Wingfield
• Release date: Mar 21, 2019
• ISBN: 9780463989692

Robert Wingfield

Robert Wingfield used to sleep in the technology department of a large organisation between 9 and 5 each day, (except on Fridays when they woke him at 4 and sent him home early), but he finally got tired with this taxing routine and left his job for good. A prolific writer, to date he has over twenty works, electronically and in paperback, available through various outlets—all can be tracked through www.robertwingfieldauthor.co.uk.His work covers several genres:Satirical sci-fi novels, 'The Dan Provocations', hopefully having you laughing out loud (or cringing, when you realize how closely satire matches reality).Gothic chillers in the form of the 'Ankerita' series (The Seventh House) featuring a Tudor anchoress reborn in modern times.Travelogues in the 'One Man in a Bus' series, currently cover Sicily, North Cyprus and Syros in the Cyclades.Other short stories with a supernatural flavor ('The Black Dog of Peel' is free for you on this site).For the younger reader, 'The Mystery of the Lake' and 'the Mystery of the Midnight Sun' have a Swallows and Amazons feel, and are suitable for even your grey-haired old great-aunt.'The Adventures of Stefan' kick off with 'Stefan and the Sand Witch', a modern day fairy-tale, and 'Stefan and the Spirit of the Woods', an eco-fairytale.For those who have elderly relatives telling them about embarrassing ailments, you need 'Everyone’s Guide to not being an Old Person', a gentle satire on what people do when they get old, and how to avoid it.For those struggling authors, he runs The Inca Project, a set of free resources to help you get your works into print. He also provides formatting and editing services through the project, to ensure you get the best result from your masterpiece. See www.incaproject.co.ukHe has written many reviews on management books and was a member of the Chartered Management Institute and the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers when he was working and could afford the subscriptions.His other interests include digital forensics, nature and building conservation, photography, and resisting emotional blackmail from his Labrador.Favorite quotes:Don't give up your day job... whoops too late.(Robert Wingfield)

Book preview

Parking the Issue

T

he party was still in full swing when the man left. The girl he wanted there did not want him now, and even consolation from the statuesque blonde had not been enough; he had found out that she apparently had ‘consoled’ a lot of other people that evening. He liberated a bottle of fine Scotch and was now erratically piloting a ‘borrowed’ hover-car over the waves to where he expected to find an island. There was a girl there who he hoped would be waiting for him. He set the car to automatic, and settled down to doze.

Barely an hour after he put to sea, a bank of mist loomed. With unnatural speed the vehicle was swallowed into damp darkness. He blinked awake with the change in the air. The moon he was using for navigation had disappeared. He took the controls and the auto-pilot disengaged. Try to keep on course, he muttered to himself groggily. Mustn’t miss the Island.

The fog seemed to go on forever and he strained his eyes, trying to make out anything to confirm that he was still on course. There was nothing; it was like being in a corridor to another world. He shuddered as he felt the vehicle passing through a curtain of rain, almost as though he was entering a different reality. He smiled. This is what he had been searching for, the threshold between his world and the Island. The light-headedness from the alcohol dissipated instantly. Hangovers obviously could not pass through portals; something he thought must be useful in other circumstances.

Despite his new level of concentration, he was totally unprepared when something dark and solid loomed up ahead of him in the headlights. He cut the engines, but it was too late. There was a tortured screaming of metal and the car concertinaed into what looked like a bulkhead of a ship. His head bounced forward, and off the emergency airbag. Power failed.

Bugger, this isn’t the Island, he muttered.

It was dark, but the odours from the crash site were not what he was expecting. He climbed shakily from the ruined vehicle and fished a star-shaped object off his belt. A blue glow leached outwards as he held it aloft. His eyes adjusted, and he realised that he was in a vast warehouse, some sort of storage facility, packed solidly with plants and trees; solid that was apart from the furrow he had ploughed with his car. It felt like he was on board a ship, but the silence of the whole space made him wonder if it was moving at all. At sea, he would have expected some vibration or rolling with the swell of the ocean. There was nothing. He gazed around, bewildered.

Oh for Phoist’s sake! Realisation dawned. I’ve got it wrong. That fogbank must’ve thrown me off course and I’ve hit this thing. I should have guessed that there was more than one possible destination from that portal.

He leaned dizzily on the side of the car, ignoring the salt-water soaking into his shoes from a puddle draining off the vehicle. The sodding thing’s dumped me somewhere else, but where?

Almost as if in answer to his question, there was the sound of a large door hissing open, and then the sound of military boots on a metal floor, and then the sound of a dozen lethal blasters being unsheathed, and then he was staring into the helmeted face of a very attractive woman, a woman who looked strangely familiar. Unfortunately, she was backed up by a number of unfamiliar faces, and way too many unfamiliar and unfriendly firearms.

What the fuck do you think you’re doing, parking in here? The strangely familiar face used a strangely familiar voice, the tone of which sounded dangerously unfamiliar. Don’t you realise that these plants are priceless?

But… Where am I then? The man was trying to grasp what was happening; the ringing in his head from the impact on the airbag was not helping.

The strangely familiar voice continued. You must know, you unforeseen hooligan. You broke in here and tried to destroy our cargo.

Broke in? He retaliated haughtily. Crashed more like. Look at the state of my car if you don’t believe me.

Your car? What, that thing? The woman shone a powerful torch on it. Sorry, I assumed it was one of those Executive Skyunpriatsu special star cruisers. They all look like that to me. She walked closer and studied the wreck. I can see it doesn’t have the Skyunpriatsu badge, but otherwise it seems identical.

Really, it was quite different before it crashed. The man relaxed slightly—perhaps the locals were a bit simple if they were having this much trouble identifying his car. Perhaps he would be able to talk his way out of the situation. Anyway, where is this place?

I’m sure you know, but in case you’re suffering from concussion or are a traffic warden, I shall remind you that you’re parked illegally on the star-ship, ‘Small Business’. We’re en-mission for the planet, Skagos, to repair damage done by a criminal strip-mining operation. You’ve had the nerve to damage our stock. Who are you, by the way, before I give my men the command to fire?

I’m Tom $mith (sic), sometimes known as Two-Dan. He extended his hand. She regarded it with disdain. I’m just a guy looking for true love, he continued hopefully, and going down in flames. He indicated the car, which was starting to smoulder.

Aren’t we all? The strangely familiar face looked wistful. She turned to one of the troops, who was scanning Tom with a hand-held device. Is he armed?

Apparently not, captain.

Good, this helmet’s buggering up my hair. She pulled off the offending article and shook her head. A mass of golden ringlets cascaded round a very familiar face. Captain Suzanne Chips. I would be at your service, if I wasn’t so angry and you weren’t a scum-sucker.

Suzy!

Do I know you? The captain challenged. I really don’t think so. Pretending to recognise me will not save you, even if you think it might help you to gate-crash a party. You’ve committed a criminal offence as a stowaway, she regarded the smouldering car, pyromaniac and trespasser. In space I’m sure you know that this specific combination of crimes is punishable by death. She snapped an order at the troopers. Take him out and shoot him.

Look, Tom shouted back as he was being ‘taken away’, Can you give me some time? I might be able to help.

Of course, said Suzanne kindly. Hold there, men.

Thank you, said Tom, much relieved.

Yes, continued Suzanne. Get him to put the fire out first, and then shoot him.

Tom Crashes

Thinking Outside the Box

A

small man walked with a spring in his step, his detective’s fedora set at a jaunty angle. The world was a good place to be. The familiar fragrances of his home planet, Glenforbis, assailed his nose. There’s nowhere in the cosmos that smells like this, he thought. Some people don’t like it, but for me and my beloved lady, Rannie, it’s home, aromatic home.

He thought back to when he first brought his woman to see the massive estate which he had purchased with the cash from a particularly lucrative class-action lawsuit, one that had been very straightforward, building evidence to enable the removal of an honorary title from a businessman who had nearly brought the galactic dung markets to the brink of ruination. The payment would have only bought a small family car on other planets of course, but property on Glenforbis was particularly good value. Rannie had made some comment about the bracing atmosphere, but when she saw the ‘surprisingly spacious’ house with its ‘many features, character and charm, in exceptional decorative order’, the ‘Olympic sized’ swimming-pool and the ‘extensive’ grounds, even the doku busily fertilising the fields around the estate, went largely unnoticed.

Admittedly, his later clientele were picked up via word of mouth and engaged through the Universal Wide Web (UWW) and it meant he had to travel further and more often than he had hoped. After that successful investigation though, his fame meant that he could now choose the easier and better paying jobs: galactic benefit fraud, cheating spouses, sex android piracy and the illegal flying of miniature spacecraft by underage life-forms who should have been at school.

They were comfortably successful. Rannie did the books for him and ensured that tax was paid after only the usual three red reminders. And of course, he always had her waiting for him with open arms when he returned. He knew she loved him without reservation. He was concerned about leaving her alone for long periods, but she seemed quite content, saying that she had plenty of on-planet activities, such as the Local Women’s Gilding Society, where they thought up ingenious ways of persuading tourists that their planet was one which really had to be visited—‘see Glenforbis and Die’ was one of their favourites, although they did issue warnings about getting too close to the Doku.

I hope she’ll be in, he thought. He was slightly concerned that she had not replied to his call when he landed. She usually met him at the spaceport, but this time his flight had been delayed by a supernova and had been forced to make a detour via Glasgow, so he did not expect her to wait. I expect she’s in the shower. She always seems to be in the shower—can’t think why.

His security gate was open. He stopped and investigated the mechanism. It appeared to have been forced. Now he was worried. He broke into a run and then remembered the technique he originally used for getting himself out of tight corners. It had been a while, but back in the old days when people spent considerable effort attempting to kill him, he had perfected a way of teleporting himself short distances. The type of life-form he was (actually, he was the only one he had ever met), although it looked like a normal human, seemed to have the ability to take its molecules apart and transfer them to anywhere he could see or remember, subsequently reassembling them into an identical shape. He suspected that he could change himself into different forms if he tried, but that seemed to involve a knowledge of anatomy that he was currently lacking, and could have resulted in a number of embarrassing mistakes. Like riding a crocodile though, the skill was something that once mastered, he could not possibly lose. He took the long driveway at a run and teleported himself to the front door of his mansion, cannoning straight into the doorpost. His hat flew away into the potted meat-bush under the ‘reception room one’ window. Bugger, I forgot that accuracy was never one of my strong points, he muttered.

The door came open under his touch. He paused. The house was silent. There was a strange smell not there. The scent of shower gel which always filled the house when Rannie was in. He picked up the baseball bat he kept in an imitation elephant’s foot inside the door (solving that ‘imitation elephant’ scam was one of his greatest sleuthing achievements) and crept slowly towards the study, where the scent was not coming from. He thought about teleporting inside the house, but there was no way of telling if Rannie had rearranged the furniture and he certainly did not want to materialise inside a sofa. He carefully poked the door open with the bat. The sight that met his eyes made his heart sink. His criminal case processing equipment was scattered across the floor and smashed into pieces, the furniture was scattered across the floor and smashed into pieces, and his lady was lying on the floor and not looking very hearty at all. He rushed up to the nearly naked body. Blood oozed between her thighs and splattered the floor around her. Her clothing and skin were torn in many places by what looked like animal claws, and her neck was fixed at an unnatural angle. He gave a sob and bent down to take her head in his hands.

Her eyes flicked open. Moggy, darling, she whispered. I’m sorry, I tried to stop them but… look out… There was a crash on the back of his head, and before the investigator’s world went black, he remembered the first rule of being a private detective; never take your hat off.

* * *

After what seemed like an age later, the man opened his eyes. I’ve gone blind, he thought. Ow, that hurts. He gingerly felt a tender lump on the back of his head. Someone hit me. Where am I? He reached out and his hands touched something solid. He reached sideways and felt the same material. He was inside a box, a wooden box. He pushed upwards. Nothing yielded. The air was getting warmer; his breathing became more laboured. He levered his arms against the lid of the container. There was a slight movement. He focused his strength and pushed. This time the cover moved and a trickle of soft earth (smelling slightly of dung) joined him in his enclosure. The reality dawned. He was buried; buried alive. How, why? Thoughts rushed through his head. The terror of the situation gripped him. He pummelled the lid and only succeeded in letting in more earth. He could feel the weight of the ground above him. Calm, be calm. Save the air. I can get out of this. I can teleport out. Just got to find where I am, so I can work out where I’m going.

His mind searched upwards. Where is the air and the light? Why isn’t it there? It was dark as far as his probing could see. He could not get away. There was nothing he could do except run out of air. He thought of Rannie, and then he thought of the people who had murdered her, and the anger built up. He breathed more heavily and the atmosphere became fetid. He gasped and desperately imagined what it would be like to breathe fresh air; he thought of the scent of the open space above him. Suddenly the box was full of that air. He took a deep breath and absorbed the unmistakeable sulphurous odours of nocturnal fire beetles. That was why he could not find the light; it was night-time above him. Perhaps he was not so deep in the earth.

How can I breathe? he thought. Maybe the panic of not being able to teleport out has teleported air into the box with me instead? As he pondered, he began to pant. He tried concentrating on the air again, and managed to bring a few more breaths into the container. The effort was making him sweat. He thought of Rannie. Was she dead? Suppose she could have been saved if he was not buried? Panic gripped him. The more he thought of her lying there, the more he felt the dread of her dying without him doing something. Dismay mixed with anger and the desire to revenge himself on the people who had done this. Lights flashed in front of his eyes as his rage built up. Negative emotions he thought he was incapable of spiralled round and round in his head. He let the whole force channel into a blast upwards. There was a massive explosion. He was staring at the stars. A column of broken wood and earth rocketed skywards. I guess that’s what you call, ‘thinking outside the box’, he groaned, clawing his way out of the crater.

Soil and rocks rained down as he lay panting at the rim. The air misted with his breath and then something wet and hot nuzzled the back of his neck. He rolled over, ready for battle and stared up into the inquisitive face of one of the Doku. Oh, just go away will you? he slapped it gently on the muzzle. It backed off and looked over its shoulder at the other members of the herd. He could have sworn it shrugged. The beasts gathered around him expectantly as he struggled to his feet. He pushed them aside and tried to build his strength to teleport back to the house. How long he had been unconscious he had no idea. At least half a day, he guessed as he materialised by the door again. This time he took no chances and barged in to the office with the entire elephant’s foot raised over his head. He switched the lights on and reeled backwards. There was nothing out of place. The furniture was intact, the crime processing unit was in its usual position and even his collection of Humphrey Bogart movies was back on the shelf.

What the Phoist? he said.

He ran from room to room, checking the rest of the house. It was completely empty. He investigated the doors again. There was no sign of the break-in, but worse, no sign of Rannie either. He switched on the intruder detection systems and scanned for life-forms of any species. Apart from the cluster of doku now congregating round the front door, there was nothing to see. He double-checked the house control unit for signs of a hacked entry; again nothing. Back in the study, he bent down to examine where Rannie had been lying. There was the white rug he had picked up in a shop in Alicante (his ship had been diverted by a flock of bison-geese blocking the shipping lanes on their annual migration towards the tropical warmth of the Scottish Highlands—apparently the weather had improved considerably since Scotland gained independence from the English). Or was it his rug? Where was the damage from that spilled pint of ‘Woodlouse-Slayer’ after the all-nighter with his mates from the guano mines? He picked it up and sniffed. The unmistakable smell of no ale was conspicuous by its presence. Someone had cleaned the carpet, and rather thoroughly too, he thought. (The house washing-machine had been unable to completely remove the stain, despite the application of different cleaning agents which were all very good at removing beetroot, red wine and chocolate, especially when applied together, but were stumped by a slick of his home-made beer. He had even tried the cleaners all at the same time and only succeeded in turning his washing red. Rannie had taken over and managed to rescue most of the items which had not already dissolved.)

Anyway, he shrugged, enough of those thoughts. Something’s been going on here. I’m not sure how long ago; oh, two days by the undamaged clock that was lying in pieces last time I was here. He sat down and put his head in his hands. Think. What can I do? Where do I start? His mind was blank and then cleared as he stood up and headed for the kitchen. Ale is what I need, he muttered, following the advice of the ‘Investigators Association’ fridge magnet, When in doubt, guzzle.

* * *

And now to find out what’s been going on. I guess I’m now my own client for this investigation. I’ll do it at a cut price for myself, and keep the expenses to a minimum. The detective, suitably loaded with alcohol, and freshly showered, was ready to begin. He sat down in the study and ran a bio-scan on the area to try to find out what had happened to Rannie’s body. It turned up nothing; either she was buried very deeply under the surface of the planet, or she had been vaporised and her remains scattered into space, or his detector was broken.

He tried a remote investigation of the local hospitals, cemeteries, bars and Young People’s Binge Houses, and this too yielded nothing. He knew he had to expand his search area. Somebody must have seen something. Again he turned up nothing out of the ordinary. This had to mean that the murderers were strangers on the planet, so the answer was to check the spaceport records for recent arrivals and departures, possibly with excess luggage on the way out. Better make sure I’ve not got company though, before I go over to the port. Don’t want to get another crack on the skull.

Again he checked the area surrounding his house, and again there was nothing visible except the doku. He put on his best sleuthing coat (a long black leather number that was fractionally too big for him, but had been a bargain at the last ‘Snoopicon’ exhibition), slipped his favourite gun into his pocket and stepped outside to retrieve his hat. Confident in his total security and safety, he shouldered his way through the milling Doku.

Stop where you are, Magus. The voice seemed to come from inside the herd itself. The investigator whirled round to face it. Put the gun down, said one of the Doku. You are covered. Don’t try anything stupid.

What, like hang-gliding in a litter bin?

That’s enough of that, now drop the gun. Yes, the one in your coat. The Magus gingerly extracted his weapon and released it. And the one in your shoulder holster continued the Doku. One false move…

What, like ‘Pope to Queen’s Elf Seven’?

Are you taking the piss?

It’s hard to concentrate when you’re being menaced by what’s basically a big soft old cow.

Oh, sorry about that. Have you got rid of all your weapons?

The Magus nodded. As you instructed.

I’ll come out then. A man stepped from behind one of the animals. He was short and stocky and reminded the Magus of a gangster in a Bogart movie. That was where the similarity ended. The man was dressed in a nicely cut hairy animal skin and he held a sawn-off multi-tube laser rifle, loosely pointed in the Magus’s direction. The Magus did not move. At this range the weapon could