“None of that stuff interests me.” Lucas wanted them to get off the subject. It made him feel uneasy.
“Let me summarise it for you, Lucas. The Professor believes spiritual guides trigger thoughts, whereas I believe we have an angel on our right shoulder and a demon on our left popping thoughts into our heads. We just have to listen to the right voice.”
“You’re both mad, and I’m going outside to have a cigarette.” The minister was just as mad as the crazy man he was dealing with.
<°)))><
Lucas lit up a cigarette but he would have preferred a joint. Tag was resting on the front of the car reading a magazine. Tag looked up, so he gave him a wave. He often wondered why Tag never attended these meetings. Sometimes wished he could swap spots with him, but knew if he did that he wouldn’t have any idea of what was going on.
He walked to the end of the veranda and stared out towards the shed. Dark storm clouds were forming to the right of the shed. More rain coming. People would soon be in the shed. He imagined their fear and panic after a transfer. They had set up sophisticated surveillance equipment inside and outside the shed. He had watched videos of all the transfers so far, and they seemed to be working quite well, although he did feel for the poor homeless people they used as guinea pigs. He also had strange feelings about the first transfer he did—he wasn’t quite sure what happened there.
They continued to test on humans. They needed to get it right, for they had great plans for this technology. They hadn’t had any more deaths. Lucas was thankful for that, and he was also thankful that the investigations into the first death had not involved them. He was now well-trained in the technology and getting plenty of practice. He preferred using the mobile units, each the size of a briefcase, rather than using the van. The van was normally used to hook up all sorts of monitoring and testing equipment.
He did his first ‘mobile’ zap last week—he followed the man into the railway tunnel, and just as the man lay down on an old battered mattress, Lucas brought the man into view on the device’s screen. The transfer location was already set, and Lucas pressed the green button. He knew the man would return shortly. The configuration of the equipment in the shed sent them back within a short period of time. He had watched the man as he returned. The man stood there scratching his head, as he had ended up next to the mattress. They needed to be more precise with the settings—he wouldn’t have liked the man to end up on the railway tracks.
For the past few weeks, Lucas had travelled into town to locate appropriate street people and zap them with the technology. He would then venture back to the property and check the videos to make sure the transfer was successful.
The vanishings had been getting publicity but no one believed the street people. Normal people equate homeless with mindless, which is why the Professor had suggested they use the homeless. Lucas was getting concerned about himself as he felt his heart getting colder. Sometimes he would watch some of the videos and feel enjoyment at the confusion and suffering of these people. It was like it was feeding something inside him.
He shook off the thoughts and went back into the house. Once again he sensed something, and the squeaky door just added to the deep dark atmosphere.
<°)))><
The smell of beer permeated the room. The drinkers didn’t smell it. Their senses got swamped, and their tongues loosened up.
Lucas sat down and grabbed a can. He noticed the minister’s eyes had a glazed appearance and his face was flushed. The Professor just had a permanent smile.
“Why did you still want to meet, Minister?” Starkey asked.
“No more Minister stuff, either, Starkey. Same with you, Lucas. It’s Grant to both of you. Now that we sorted out the pleasantries, I thought we would still have the meeting because this accident today just speeds up my resolve to sort this mess out. The poor driver and the girl’s family are shattered. But we need to do a bulk transfer because this will bring the attention we’re after. They need to know about this technology sooner rather than later.”
Lucas took a sip out of his can. He hoped this meeting didn’t turn into another drinking session. But at least if everyone was drunk, the tongues got wagging and he could find things out. He took another sip and looked at the pair. Bruce Starke had the same lack of fashion sense as Grant Windsor, but his taste for bow ties wasn’t as flamboyant.
“Out of curiosity, how long have you two known each other?” Lucas asked.
Windsor raised his eyebrows and looked at Starkey. Windsor spoke. “Many years. We attended the same secondary school and university. Starkey had the brains while I was the streetwise one. You know, better people skills and charisma.” Windsor gave Starkey a wink. “That’s why I’m a politician, and I mean no criticism of Starkey when I say that.”
“I have no problems with having a brain, Windsor.”
It seemed to take Windsor a while to work that one out. He let out a burp. A few more years down the track, and Windsor would look like an older version of Harry Potter’s Uncle Vernon. Lucas laughed at that thought.
“Lucas, have I told you when Starkey came to me with the technology?”
Lucas didn’t get a chance to remind Windsor that the story came up at the last meeting before he continued.
“After many had knocked his idea back and even had a few laugh in his face, he came to me and I listened. Big ideas started to take shape in my head. My department’s an innovative department, I’m an innovative man, and Starkey had an innovative idea. You know, Lucas, I always believed that there must be a better way to punish minor offences. The rich find fines to be a minor nuisance; they pay the fines but don’t change their behaviour. The poor can’t pay their fines, end up in jail and are the worse for wear from it.”
Starkey asked if anyone wanted another beer.
Lucas watched as Windsor looked at his can, responded in the affirmative and then took a big sip. Lucas declined. His eyelids were getting heavy.
Windsor carried on. “For traffic offences there was talk of impounding vehicles for a short duration, the theory being inconvenience would change behaviour. I saw merit in this, but thought a better way of inconveniencing people would be to impound the person. I believed such a strategy could be used for a number of offences, not just traffic offences. And we now had the means to impound people.”
Lucas was looking to the ceiling. There was a scratching sound.
Starkey looked at him. “It’s okay, Lucas. There’s no insulation, so you can hear the birds walking on the roof.
Lucas nodded and raised his eyebrows. “Are we still going to impound them in the shed?”
“For now.” Windsor’s phone rang. He picked it up and looked at the number. “My son . . . excuse me for a moment.” He got up and walked out on to the veranda through the squeaky flyscreen door.
A short time later the door squeaked and Windsor walked back in the room. Lucas thought he looked pale. “Something’s happening.” He was shaking his head. “My son was the driver who hit that girl. That dead girl. He killed that girl. Something’s at work here. My son’s devastated.”
Lucas agreed there was something strange going on. He remembered the two workers at the department’s outpost making claims about evil things. Lucas wondered if they were venturing into something unknown and causing events.
He thought he heard a chuckle.
Chapter 7
AARON WAS ON HIS way to do some fishing. He finally burst through the city traffic. His mum’s car radio kept him up-to-date with the day’s events—the accident this morning was mentioned briefly in the news and then discussed on talkback shows. Apparently the victim had walked straight on to the road, ignoring the pedestrian signals, totally preoccupied with her phone.
And of course the stories came in. A lady told of seeing a person fall down a manhole while texting, another walking into a street sign, and another with a broken nose after someone texting walked straight into them.
A sign advertising the greatest-tasting coffee in Brisbane caught Aaron’s attention. Good advertising? He wasn’t sure. Maybe it was just that he needed a caffeine hit. One sniff of the air as he entered the café told him they made good coffee here. The café had a number of small tables with cane chairs and a jar with a floating frangipani centred on each table. A few tables were occupied. The breeze from a large free-standing fan in the corner had the palms in pots dancing.
Aaron ordered. They handed him a little stand the shape of a pelican with number seven attached to it. He grabbed a newspaper and sat outside so he could see the river. He thought of his dad. They loved fishing together.
He started from the back of the paper as he always did. The Australian batsmen were making lots of runs in the cricket Test, but there wasn’t much else happening in the world of sport. He flipped the paper over to the dreaded front page, where the major headline stated ‘Australians addicted to speed’, as some 21,000 motorists were fined for speeding in the past week and police were at their wits’ end trying to curb this blatant breaking of the law. Fines and police patrols weren’t working.
