Escape From the Future

By Dean C. Moore

 

Less than forty years into the future, most of mankind has elected to upload themselves to digital nirvana, where they can live as many lives as they care to in parallel, in as many different fantasy worlds as they desire.

A small percentage of humans, however, are loath to give up the mortal coil. These last holdouts are the escapees from the future. The question is, for how long? Will Mother, the sentient internet, be content with gentle prodding to upgrade and uplift? Or will she resort to more coercive means? Has she already, unbeknownst to the final holdouts?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Dean C. Moore
• Release date: Feb 11, 2014
• ISBN: 9798215587270

Book preview

This is a work of fiction. Similarities to real people, places, or events are entirely coincidental.

ESCAPE FROM THE FUTURE

First edition. February 11, 2014.

Copyright © 2014 Dean C. Moore.

ISBN: 979-8215587270

Written by Dean C. Moore.

Also by Dean C. Moore

Biohackers

Cybernetic Agents

Phantom Menace

Singularity News

Blood Brothers

Escape to Creeporia

Elektra

Printed People

Printed People - Part 1

Printed People - Part 2

Printed People - Part 3

Frankenstein

Reborn

Reviled

Reawakened

Futurescape

Terraforming Earth - Phase 1: The Plagues Era

Terraforming Earth - Phase 2: Humanoids in Sealed Habitats

Terraforming Earth - Phase 3: Out of the Darkness

Renaissance 2.0

The Entire Series

Sentience

Sentience

Space Cowboys

The Star Gate

Moving Earth

Spy, Inc.

Born F.R.E.E.

The Futurist

Unkillable

The Magnificent Seven

Endgame - Episode 1 - Inciting Incident

Endgame - Episode 2 - The Quickening

The Mind of God

The Mind of God

Episode 2

The Warlock's Friend

The Crystal Spears

Standalone

Escape From the Future

Love on the Run

Time Bandits

Sentient Serpents

The God Gene

Time Weavers

Android Assassins

Mind Bender

Nano Man 2

Dueling Timelines

Nano Man

ESCAPE FROM THE FUTURE

The Clown Caper

By

Dean C. Moore

This is a work of fiction.  Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

INTRODUCTION

Less than forty years into the future, most of mankind has elected to upload themselves to digital nirvana, where they can live as many lives as they care to in parallel, in as many different fantasy worlds as they desire.

A small percentage of humans, however, are loath to give up the mortal coil. These last holdouts are the escapees from the future. The question is, for how long? Will Mother, the sentient internet, be content with gentle prodding to upgrade and uplift? Or will she resort to more coercive means? Has she already, unbeknownst to the final holdouts?

Please Note: No chapter in this book depicts what goes on within digital nirvana. The urban districts depicted on the pages—as surreal as they may seem to us in the present—exist in the real world. Some of these are historical reenactment districts; other districts exist because a number of people with common interests come together to agree on the terms of cohabitation.

ONE

Gordy Lamont’s shoe leather tapped out a soulful S.O.S. as he paced the floor of his detective agency.  He sidled over to his cinema-screen expanse of a window, wringing his mop of oily hair dry, anxiously waiting for something to happen.  He soon gave up.  Accompanied by agitated breathing, he traced another lap across the strips of hardwood.

Saks, with three hundred pounds pressing mightily against his pinstripe suit, effeminately filed his nails.  Fair skinned and baby faced, he eyed Gordy with impatience.

Having completed his latest circuit, Gordy stopped dead in his tracks at the window.  Suspicious, he surveyed the sight right out of a Norman Rockwell painting of a family driving ever-so-safely to church in their Hupmobile sedan.  As for the little girl in the back seat, dressed like a rag doll, her knees couldn’t quite catch the lip of the seat, so she sat with her legs straight out in front of her.  The wife in her mail order patterned dress with the extended collar clasped her purse in her lap as if it held the piggy bank’s coins for the church offering.  And the husband behind the wheel, in his straw hat and buttoned up collar, looked as stiff as his starched shirt.

Just one thing ruined the picture.

The father lobbed a flaming Molotov cocktail from the driver’s seat.

The shop across the street exploded, blowing the poor sap reading the paper just outside the store up against Gordy’s window.  The newspaper he was reading, plastered against the bulletproof glass, proclaimed, Capone’s Chicago heats up.

The family in the Hupmobile drove away from the scene of the devastation as serenely and innocently as before the incident.

Gordy snapped himself out of his shocked stupor.  Boys, we’re back in business!

Gordy, Saks, and the rest of the gang, yanked their .32 pistols out of desk drawers, or reached into their shoulder holsters to check the lead count.  Then they grabbed their trench coats and Tommy guns, and made for the door.  All except for Heller.

It’s time to put down the drawings, kid, Gordy said.  Finally, a compelling reason to look up from your desk.

Yeah, yeah, Heller said.

The rookie Heller threw down his doodling pencil, rushed for his trench coat, as Gordy and the others waited impatiently for him to catch up.  Accoutrements in hand, Heller posed before the full length mirror.  What do you think?  The Tommy gun in the right hand, and the .32 in the left?  It doesn’t feel balanced somehow.  Maybe I should go with two Tommy guns, one in each hand.

Gordy shook his head.  This isn’t a dress rehearsal, kid.  He grabbed Heller by the collar and pushed him out the door. 

Moments later, from across the street, Gordy and the boys mulled over the charred remains.  Sirens wailed with the same attention-getting quality as babies seeking their mothers.  When the ambulances finally pulled up, Gordy couldn’t help thinking how much they looked like school buses arriving to take the dead souls to their first day of classes on how to survive on the other side. 

Numbers, spaghetti thin and skyscraper tall, was the only one able to piece together the body-parts from the complex picture puzzle of debris.

The orderlies waited just out of range of the still falling blackened timbers until he signaled that the body-puzzles were solved and ready to be taken out.  Dodging the falling bric-a-brac, the medics rushed in with their stretchers, and hurriedly carted away the reassembled bits.

Numbers froze, noticing something that didn’t fit.  The charred beams were lying all wrong for the explosion that took place here.  He started peeling them away.  Underneath was a charcoaled body, stiff as a board, but a little too intact.  Get up, Numbers said.  The corpse opened an eye, the white of which shone all the more brightly against the black char coating him.  Numbers extended his hand.  The guy took the lift up the way a track star takes to a backrest for his feet and darted off down the street. 

Gordy pointed to Heller to chase him down.  Heller had to undress first.  Emptying his Tommy gun, .32, hat, and trench coat unto Gordy, who was still seeing if he could peel Heller’s face off with his glare.  You don’t want that stuff weighing me down, do you? Heller said.

"If that mope gets away I’ll be giving you the third degree.  Then maybe you’ll have an excuse for acting brain damaged.  Now get going!" 

Heller took off at a full trot after Getaway Guy.

Later, in the basement of the detective agency, Gordy sweated the thug tied to a chair under a swinging lamp.  He had small beady eyes that were all the more obscured by a plunging forehead.  His sharply chiseled features, with more bony prominences than flesh, made his face look like it might be immune to the beating Gordy was dying to give him.

After two hours, the only one being worn down was Gordy.  Nothing he said or did, not all the spittle he hurled into the subject’s face on account of leaning too far into him or the rest of the body posturing, or the threatening with life and limb and three lifetimes of incarceration, or insisting he’d hound every last living relative, could wipe the smug smile off the thug Sandon’s face.

Finally, Gordy played his trump card.  Each age has its master artistes.

Sandon broke into a cold sweat at Gordy’s innuendo.

But in Capone’s Chicago, how would we know greatness if it befell us?  You’re about to meet the fat man.

Sandon’s eyes nearly popped out of his head.  I swear to God I had nothing to do with lighting up that store.  I was just a hapless victim.

You, hapless?  You survived a bombing!  Does that sound hapless to you?  Gordy took another step towards the door.

Okay, okay!  It’s vaguely possible that bomb was meant for me.

Why?

Stone Face had turned into Locked Jaw again.

Fine.  Gordy curtly exited the chamber, as his guest attempted to chew off his bound hands in time to avoid an appointment with the fat man.

In the hall outside the interrogation room, Gordy paused briefly before Saks.  I can’t do anything with him.  He’s heard of you though.

Saks smiled menacingly.  Gordy, annoyed by his incessant nail filing, glanced down and realized he was actually polishing his brass knuckles. 

Saks brushed past Gordy.

The door had barely closed behind him before the screaming started.  Gordy loosened his tie and collar, breathed more fully.  They’re singing your lullaby, he mumbled.  You could stand a rest after all that.  Parking himself on the windowsill, he leaned against the frame, slanted his hat down, and let the subject’s agonized cries serenade him to sleep. 

Hours later, he was snoring so loud he woke himself. 

The door to the interrogation room was ajar, the room empty, signaling that the fat man had already squeezed what information was to be had from Hapless.  Gordy footed it upstairs.

You get anything from Sandon? he asked Saks when he arrived.

"I got everything.  Just nothing in particular to tie him to that bombing."

Gordy shook his head.  I’m better with the dead than I am with dead ends. 

He perched before his window as block after block darkened outside.

Gordy listened to the screams coming from all directions of his blacked out sector of town.  The main office of his detective bureau right now felt like little more than an echo chamber.  Not much besides wooden desks and heavy metal, that was still a lot of right angles for all that sound to reverberate around.

Saks looked up from his incessant filing at the shrill nature of the latest outcries.  My, but don’t the cats come out at night.

Let’s roll! Gordy grabbed his Tommy gun and trench coat.  Take more than a complete blackout to give these mopes safe haven from me.

Saks smiled.  I love a man that’s so ready to face his demons.

***

Cradled beneath the blanket of darkness spreading across Capone’s Chicago, the Haskin brothers, Frankie and Louis, passed a candle over Pullman, punched to a bloody pulp.  His face was so swollen, it was starting to look like a helium filled balloon that might just detach from the rest of him and float away.

His delicate features aren’t so delicate anymore, Frankie mumbled.

Louis, I think you missed a spot. Frankie chuckled and set the candle down on the table.  His handsome, blemish-free face and poised demeanor was quite the contrast with Pullman.  The more Pullman fell apart in the chair with each punch from Louis, to where not even the restraints could lend him adequate support, the straighter and sharper Frankie’s posture got.  He modeled himself before the mirror, admiring his own swank appearance, neatening up his tie, straightening up his vest, making sure every strand of hair was in place with his horse bristle brush.

Frankie, hold the candle closer for me, will ya?  So I can complete my masterpiece.

Shantel, their boss, sat at a table in the background before a pile of money.  Her long flowing platinum blond hair looked every bit as silky as her stockings, and her legs were crossed in a manner that turned them into the most formidable weapons in the room.  She didn’t look any more pleased with the count.  Make sure his mouth still works.

At the sound of the latest bones breaking, Louis gave her the bad news.  Ah, shit.  I think I broke his jaw.

Frankie confirmed as much by passing the candle under Pullman’s chin.  That’s okay, Louis.  We can teach him sign language.

Pullman gave them the finger.

Louis, outraged by the gesture, broke both his arms. 

Frankie sighed.  So much for the sign language.

Hey, he can still blink once for yes, and twice for no.  Louis beamed the revelation at Frankie from behind his perennially dull eyes.  His own ears were cauliflowered from too many years in the boxing ring, and his expressionless face was more on account of lack of adequate brain activity than carefully disguised subterfuge.

You forgetting? Frankie prompted, continuing to doll himself up before the full length mirror adorning the opened closet door and plucking a couple of errant nose hairs with a pair of tweezers.

Blazes, you’re right.  Why did we rip off his eyelids?  I forget.

So he could better appreciate your handiwork.

Makes sense now, in context.

Louis turned to Shantel in the background.  Sorry, boss.

Don’t be, it’s my fault.  I forgot I paid the driver with a brick for getting us clear of the bank chase.  The count’s fine.

You mean all this…?  Louis scratched his head.

Shantel outed her cigarette in the glass ashtray.  Don’t beat yourself up.  It’s good to stay in practice, Louis.

Yeah, I guess.

Louis eyed the candle burning down.  Now, what do we do with him?

Never leave a job half done.  Shantel continued the monotonous task of evening out the stacks of money.

Happy with the makeover, but impatient to hit the nightclubs, Frankie sighed before the mirror.  I guess this is a two candle job.  He reached for another candle. 

Down the hallway from the Haskin brothers, Gordy took another whiff to get his bearings. 

What are you smelling, Gordy? Numbers asked.

Iron. Lots of it.

Saks chuckled softly so his voice wouldn’t carry above their whispers.  You mean blood, and lots of it.

Gordy looked over at Heller and noticed his Tommy gun hung loosely in his right hand, while his left hand fed his face with a Three Musketeers bar.  I like your idea of staying loose, kid.

Stopping at the door where the odor was strongest, Gordy counted on his fingers for the benefit of the others.  At three, they charged the door. 

Stick’em up! Gordy blared.

Sure thing, the woman said, soft and sexy, as if that was her surefire solution for subordinating all the men around her.  Then she and the two goons flanking her reached for their Tommy guns in tandem.

For the next few seconds enough bullets flew to illuminate much of that blackout with sparks from the muzzles of their Tommy guns. 

All right, enough, Gordy said.  Numbers, you can still recognize anyone after what this much lead did to them?

Numbers nodded.  The Haskin brothers. Looks like they signed on with Shantel.

And the mope in the chair? Gordy said. 

Numbers had to stare at this one for a while.  Pullman.

Why didn’t they just surrender? Heller said.  We had them cold.

Gordy snorted.  Just not how the game’s played, kid.  He yanked the last part of the candy bar out of Heller’s jacket pocket, saw the look Heller was giving him.  What?  We just killed three bad guys.  Of course I have an appetite.

The others followed his lead to the door, all except Heller.  What about Pullman? Heller said.

The man gets to die watching the dead bastards who did this to him, Gordy said.  Heller, again with the face.  What, you think the priest is going to give him a better sendoff?

Guess not.  And the money?

Shit! Gordy exclaimed.  Thanks for reminding me.  Following Gordy’s lead, they each grabbed some bricks and started stuffing the empty compartments of their suits.  All except for Heller, who stood with his hands pressed deep into his pants pockets.

Guys, Heller wailed.  I’m just not comfortable with this.

Gordy stuffed Heller’s breast pockets and every other pocket he could find on him.  "Just think of it as a really good way of stopping the bullets.  Sorry I didn’t think of lining my body earlier with money.  Of course, it’s not like I ever had the problem before of what to do with a roomful of cash."

Heller lingered long enough to entertain some appropriate feelings for the soon-to-be deceased, taking off his hat respectfully in front of Pullman, who was still tied to the chair. 

Lingering with the others by the door, Gordy rolled his eyes and shook his head.  It’s going to take me forever to break in that kid.

Donning his hat, Heller, the last one to leave the apartment, closed the door on Pullman. 

Come on, Gordy said.  Let’s see what other human cockroaches came out to play in the dark.

***

Jimmy, an eleven-year-old street urchin, raced sailboats fashioned out of Popsicle sticks down the gutter at the edge of the sidewalk outside Gordy’s detective agency.  His mop of unruly hair threatened to brush the black smudges off his face with his repeated mad dashes to beat the sailboats down the street before the drainage hole claimed them.

Deciding the drama with Jimmy and the Popsicle sticks was pretty much played out, Gordy shifted his gaze to the metal objects out the window.  It rained so long, the sedans glisten.  Looks like a God damn Hollywood set.  This is one neighborhood; wash away the dirt, and all sense of reality just drains along with it.

Gordy spied the rookie, Heller, polishing his Tommy gun.  Damn it, Heller.  If I see one more shiny, unused, inexperienced, unblemished surface, I’m going to…

Heller tucked away the Tommy gun, and resumed reparations on his Betty Boop cartoon.

From the back of the room, Numbers worked his abacuses spread across the oak desk that might have been just big enough to park a car on.  Someone better need rescuing from somebody soon, because I can’t make the numbers work.

If you wanted to prove the Earth was falling into the sun tomorrow, you could make the numbers work.  Heller leaned back from his Betty Boop-does-Mars drawing to appraise and decide what he thought about his spaceships. 

Yeah, well, that’s an easy problem by comparison. 

What about all the loot you guys… I mean, we lifted from Shantel’s crew? Heller whined.

Numbers snorted.  Should just about pay for this month’s installment of lead.

Gordy noticed Jimmy relieving himself near the hood of his car. 

Jimmy yapped to the hood ornament on the Packard, a buxom Venus, as he hosed the street.  Don’t mind me getting so familiar, sweetheart.

The door left ajar from when Saks exited earlier, Gordy could just make out Jimmy’s wiseass remarks.

Who does he think he is? Gordy yelled.  Right in front of the police precinct!  He’s supposed to be keeping a watchful eye on my car—not pissing on it!

From outside the precinct, Jimmy heard Gordy carrying on, and rubbed Venus’s head.  Work your charm, darlin’.  Looks like I could use a little luck.

Gordy elected to ignore Jimmy’s lack of decorum with his automobile, lately more agitated by something else.  God damn it!  This lull’s driving me out of my mind, I tell ya!  He pressed his hands to his temples.  Not even the sound of Tommy gun fire in days.

Numbers picked up his trench coat, burning holes in the back of Gordy’s head with his eyes.  I’m going for a trim.

Gordy’s attention drifted from Numbers crossing the street to the twirling candy cane stripes of the barbershop’s marquee.  He stared unblinkingly at it as if he were deliberately hypnotizing himself.  Snapping out of it, he said, Maybe we can slum off some caper in one of the adjoining districts.

Saks walked in, returning from his constitutional.  I heard that, he said, hanging up his hat and trench coat.  It’s not that bad.  We had that bombing three days ago.

Three days; and nothing!  Go ahead, remind me.

Saks smirked.  Probably just Capone’s latest plan to drive you out of town.

Well, it’s working.  I can’t take it!  What can I tell ya?  I’m addicted to crime.

We can round up more of the usual suspects regarding the bombing, Heller interjected eagerly.

Ah… Gordy waved his hand dismissively.  Why bother?  We know who did it.  We just can’t pin anything on him.  We can never pin anything on him.  I need someone I can actually arrest.

Static played on the radio as Gordy fumbled with the dial of the short wave, hoping to overhear a crime in progress.

***

Buddy snapped the apron into shape and draped it around Numbers.  He was getting just portly enough to have trouble fitting between the swivel chair and the counter with the mirror and the tools of his trade, and was winded already from his exertions.  Wash and wax with that haircut, boss?

May as well spring for the beauty treatment.  If I die waiting for something to happen in this chair, just keep prettying me up for my pine box.

No problem.

Jimmy kneeled to get to Numbers’ patent leathers with the shoeshine box.  Numbers threw him two bits.

The quartet in the corner came out of retirement.  Let’s clean up our act, boys.  Numbers has the best ear in the business, the quartet maestro whispered.  The group struggled to rein in their performance anxiety.

The ensemble fired up.  Numbers tensed as someone hit an off note.  Some apologies flew his way from the conductor.  When they got it right on the second take, Numbers melted into the chair.

He had dozed off when Jimmy, having long finished with his shoes and departed, barged back in the barbershop.

Numbers!

Numbers startled at the sound of his name, realized he could holster his gun; it was just the kid, not a heads-up to shoot, roll, and cover.

Help me blow up these balloons, will ya?  Embarrassed, dissembling, Jimmy added, It’s my kid brother’s birthday.  You know how kids are?

Jimmy wasn’t fooling anybody; Numbers knew the balloons were for him.  He was just shy of fifteen, but he was prone to these relapses to his younger years, possibly filling holes that needed filling on account of never having a real childhood.  How many?  Numbers held them out for him to count.

Twelve!

Ten seconds a piece, I’d say.  How many seconds is that, Jimmy?

Ah…

Numbers shook his head.  Won’t reach detective that way.

The balloon escaped his lips and flitted about the room to Jimmy’s delight.  Jimmy didn’t catch that Numbers did it deliberately; he just ran laughing after the balloon.

Numbers deftly twisted the long thin balloons into shapely sculptures of trapped air.

About the fifth balloon or so, it happened.

Numbers’ stickman balloon came to life with a clown’s face, and sparred with Jimmy.  It was a pretty good boxer, too. 

Jimmy snuck a quick glance at Numbers.  What the… ?

The clown kept taking on form and substance.  His punches accordingly got harder, sending Jimmy flying, and making shambles of Buddy’s orderly countertops.  To say nothing of the hair he’d swept into nice neat piles on the floor.

As the character etching in the clown’s face deepened, the menace the eyes and facial expressions were able to convey ratcheted up a notch as well.  There wasn’t just Numbers’ hot air filling his insides anymore; it was more like staring into an abyss in the black pools of his eyes.  Worse, the abyss peered back at him with a timeless evil that had been waiting however many eternities for a chance to be given shape, and a context with which to focus and direct that evil.  And the fact that the clown, now entirely solid, was able to hover off the ground to maintain eye-level with Jimmy seemed doubly eerie.  Maybe more so than his repeated ability to anticipate Jimmy’s next move.     

Next, the snake balloon adopted a clown’s face and demeanor.  It slithered across the floor like a Barnum and Bailey carnival freak, born without limbs and learning to navigate for himself in his own fashion.  The snake clown crawled up the cabinetry, using both its fanged mouth and its elongated torso for purchase on the door handles.  It ignored how bloodied it was getting as the edges of the cabinet handles dug into it, and just continued slithering like a sidewinder until it had reached the countertop. 

When Buddy tried to beat the vile creature off with a wooden hairbrush, it detached its jaws and swallowed the bristle brush whole, taking half of Buddy’s arm with it. 

Buddy extricated his arm to find it marred and smoldering from the snake’s digestive juices, the two grooves from the snake’s fangs raked across its length like furrows in a farmer’s field.  The red and white markings of the serpent added to its aura of deadliness, as it resembled a most lethal coral snake. 

As the viper, now more corporeal than ever, reared its ugly head at Buddy, the barber overcame his frozen terror and lurched out at the reptile, razor in hand.  He sliced repeatedly through the snake, but it healed faster than he could leave gashes in it.  The snake-clown leaped off the counter and coiled about Buddy’s neck, demonstrating a keen technique for strangling Numbers’ favorite barber.  Though the features of the clown’s human face had been flattened and stretched to accommodate the snake makeover, it had lost none of its capacity to convey emotional nuance, virtually broadcasting its delight as it again unhinged its jaws.

The rapidly animating clown-doggie balloon finished coming to life and scuttled over to the quartet, penning them in with its barking.  Each crooner collapsed in turn from hyperventilation or worse.

As the clown-doggie continued to take shape, it began to drool most convincingly, its saliva splashing on the pant legs of the fainted maestros, burning through the pants.  The acid reaching their skin awakened the crooners so they could better appreciate their peril. 

The clown-doggie’s fangs sharpened and elongated, allowing him to take chunks of flesh out of the caterwauling crooners, wailing mostly off key at this juncture, out of sync and out of tune with one another.  The clown-doggie managed a most menacing human smile with its doggie mouth, as it turned and commenced clubbing to death the victims on the floor with its bulbous tail.  The tail, like the dog, had continued growing larger.  The unnatural shape of the tail, a product of its origins as a balloon, made it all that much