smugglers-bible

[smugglers-bible]

№ 959 | Lemon

It turns out the big, dirty secret is kept in a slightly smudged envelope sealed with a ragged piece of cellophane tape. Sona eases it open and removes a single sheet of folded paper.

"Whoa, hold on. You can't look," Lemon says. "The boss looks. That's why he hired us."

"Exactly. The boss is paying us. We're, like, acting in his interests. So, basically, we are him."

"Your point has some small merit, but I am unsatisfied with your conclusion."

"Well, what if the boss doesn't want to tell us, huh? Afterwards?"

Lemon pauses, frowns uncertainly. "Fine. One quick peek."

[smugglers-bible]

№ 958 | Lowen

Lowen watches from a darkened room. Across the street, curtains flutters in a second-floor window. A light held against a cupped palm flashes twice.

He waits. Nothing more. Good.

A figure turns the corner and makes for the front door of the house with nonchalant speed. The face is obscured by shadow and a collar raised against the weather. A large bag hangs in one hand, the other is held stiffly in a pocket.

Paramo's voice whispers from the phone receiver. Lowen brings it to his ear. "Truly remarkable," she says, followed by a click and the sound of footsteps.

a story concerning Lowen.

[smugglers-bible]

№ 957 | Giacomo

Giacomo considers the files. They are stacked alphabetically—correct for most undertakings, but improvement is possible. He shifts things about nimbly, touching each item a single time only. Yes, once is enough for a manager of sufficient skill.

Voila. The employee records (for such are the files in question) stand sorted chronologically by date of hire.

Giacomo sighs and reaches for the first. Thirty-five years of good work. He wets his lips in anticipation. He raises the heavy, red TERMINATED stamp.

"Now, perhaps you scoundrels will learn," he says, scoffing, "something about the true cost of requesting a vacation day."

[smugglers-bible]

№ 956 | Hana

The whatever-it-is, much like heaven or abstract mathematical concepts, is positioned outside of space. Possibly also time. Close, though. Close enough that Hana had it.

It's like a song. Maybe it just rhymes. Once, she thought it was back. That turned out to be a toothpaste commercial playing in the apartment downstairs.

She jolted awake, whitening mint crystals whispering up through the floor, the other side of the bed ice cold. That seemed strange, but was it really?

Proximity and reassurance. Someone else's voice telling a joke. That's how it goes. Or that's how Hana thinks she remembers it going.

[smugglers-bible]

№ 955 | Michi

FOREST

The smell of damp leaves fills the air. You can hear goblins chattering nearby.

Exits EAST and WEST.

>look goblins

You can't do that right now.

>listen goblins

The goblins know you're eavesdropping. They consider you to be a very rude person.

>sorry

Don't tell me. Tell the goblins.

>sorry goblins

Seriously? Not everyone has to like you.

>east

GOBLIN HOUSE

You entered the goblins' house without being invited. Not a good look. Are you, like, obsessed with them or something?

Exits WEST.

>west

Nice try. The goblins strike you repeatedly with spiked flails.

You have died. Restart? (y/n)

a story concerning Michi.

[smugglers-bible]

№ 954 | Eiko

Whatever action is running on Caracalla Station (and there must be some) is buttoned up tight. Eiko doesn't even catch a whiff moving through the customs checkpoint into the scuffed short-term tenant mezzanine.

"Dull place for its size."

"There was some trouble not very long ago. Politics. Things got bad. If commerce remains timid for a year or two, it's only sensible."

Chrysoprase pauses casually to bribe a uniform who waves them into a private suite of corridors. "Now, we're here to see Kev Limbani," she says. "Pretend you've heard of him or it's absolutely going to ruin his mood."

a story concerning Eiko.

[smugglers-bible]

№ 953 | Agathe

It takes an hour, but the sidewalk is pristine. Agathe is down to her sweater and woolen hat. The windbreaker and parka are piled on the porch where she hucked them in her mad fury of scraping and salting.

She wipes her forehead with a mitten and is kicking her boots against the fence when the wind changes.

She turns, too late to see the start. The street is already gone, completely buried. Oh, god, Agathe thinks as the driveway dissolves in front of her, the car becoming a vague white hummock of snow, I left the shovel out there.

[smugglers-bible]

№ 952 | Loke

Loke slides into the back of the car and prepares for the barrage. He settles a blank expression under sunglasses and headphones, primes his noncommittals—uh huh and sure—to fire at the first whisper of small talk. They will detonate in the atmosphere and blanket the conversation with a deadening sense of distracted boredom.

A polite cough, but nothing follows. On the radio, a woman announces an hour of music uninterrupted by advertisement. The driver adjusts the volume very slightly. Peace reigns.

Loke feels like laughing. It's uplifting. Impossible. Color and light. An orange in the dead of winter.

[smugglers-bible]

№ 951 | Chrysoprase

Eiko makes a cup of bitter tea in the rig's tiny galley. She blows gently to cool it. Through the steam, she watches Chrysoprase, hunched over a terminal, eyes focused but expressionless.

"Why did you let me keep it?"

Chrysoprase looks up, taps a finger against the galley's countertop, considering. Then makes up her mind.

"The contract makes you my problem. Whatever shit-hot tech you looted is something else entirely. A headache. Very risky."

"You could just take it. Give it to someone with—"`

"You took it, and look what happened," Chrysoprase says. "So why the fuck would I ever?"

a story concerning Eiko.

[smugglers-bible]

№ 950 | Karpo

Sitting in his chair by the window, Karpo feels like he can see the whole world. It's expansive. Not creepy or anything.

Then he sips his coffee, sets the cup on the tray beside him and looks up to find that, in an instant, the vibe has shifted precipitously beneath him, rumbling and sheering away in huge slabs to fall into the sea. What remains is a jagged, wind-lashed promontory—the impression that now the whole world can see him.

He lasts twelve seconds observed in the glare, each distinct and awful, before dissolving into a hazy cloud of particles.

[smugglers-bible]

№ 949 | Saint Capriole

Satan drops two antacid tablets into a glass of water and watches them fizz. The riddle, he says, has a basic setup of some guards at a door. They never speak and won't meaningfully impede you in any way.

Oh, and you have a ball of twine in your pocket. That's it.

Already, I'm sure, you have a few questions. Are they really guards if they don't bounce anybody? Where's that crummy door go? Are you inside or outside? What's the difference?

Now, just imagine being the first guy in the room. Maybe you don't play it perfect either, huh?

[smugglers-bible]

№ 948 | MMXXV

Sometime around September the old year begins to flake and peel. Cracks appear. A feeling of constriction settles first over the joints, then also the throat. And then everywhere.

Yuletide hastens the process. Bright, generous and hospitable. It all has to go somewhere. The year dissolves everything down to constituent atoms. These it absorbs, packing on muscle for one last push.

When the fireworks start, the whole calendar rips straight down the middle and falls away. The new year devours this husk, then scuttles off to find shelter until its shell hardens. It's bigger and faster. It's exactly the same.

[smugglers-bible]

№ 947 | Rudolph Donner

He slips, in the end.

"Rudolph Donner. Friends called him Rudy. He was with one of the window crews, but nobody flagged him." Pontchartrain shrugs and turns up her collar. "A couple beat cops caught the APB. Hit the roof here with a flash and boom, there he was. He didn't even scream."

No, Barraclough thinks, he'd have imagined it a thousand times before. Terror, just like anything, fades away.

"All he had was the knife and a headlamp. Red filter over the emitter. Dead on the scene. So, I guess that's it."

"That's it," Barraclough says. "Until next year."

a story concerning Barraclough.

[smugglers-bible]

№ 946 | Pontchartrain

The footprints lead without veering from the cramped roof access of a building half a block away, along ledges and parapets, across heart-sickening gaps, to the old winch—rickety, abandoned, freshly greased.

Barraclough and Pontchartrain sip hot chocolate out of paper cups while the techs work. They have, so far, discovered a scrap of rag, itself returning traces of dish soap and trisodium phosphate. More, they hint, is not likely to be forthcoming.

"He'll clean windows. Or once did."

"In a nicer part of town, maybe," Pontchartrain says. "Although, he might consider this to be a sort of cleaning, too."

a story concerning Barraclough.

[smugglers-bible]

№ 945 | Barraclough

Barraclough's frosted mitten closes over the top rung, rusty metal crusted with virgin snow and a deeper layer of ice. He imagines, just for a moment, slipping, falling away toward the litter-strewn alley below. It's a long way down from here. Catch me if you can.

"Something on your mind, or just enjoying the view?" Pontchartrain is clinging a few rungs lower, looking up, squinting against the wind whipping her hair around her face.

"It hasn't snowed since early yesterday morning," Barraclough says. He pulls himself up onto the rooftop. "Whoever came down after the carolers didn't use the ladder."

a story concerning Barraclough.

[smugglers-bible]

№ 944 | Pontchartrain

The witness is in a hospital bed with wires and tubes running away to machines humming softly in the sterile half-light of the intensive care ward. Bandages cover much of their face and disappear under their mint-colored smock.

A voice whispers, groaning and cracking like ice on the lake. "The doctors tell me the cuts are very deep."

"Last night," Ponchartrain says. "What do you remember?"

"We were caroling. Somebody called out to us. In an alley. And then—" One of the machines begins chirping quickly. Nurses rush down the hall. "There was a light. A terrible red light, descending."

a story concerning Barraclough.

[smugglers-bible]

№ 943 | Barraclough

December, and the nights are long. They stick like molasses. Some places in Tinsel Town seem to stay dark, to stay cold.

The chief stands behind the podium, speaking wearily. The briefing is almost indistinguishable from yesterday's, except that things have gotten worse. But even this is reminiscent of the day before.

Barraclough and Pontchartrain sit among the others, listening just as wearily. Bodies discovered, circumstances consistent with previous, absence of physical evidence.

This time, though, something sparkles. The barest hint of dawn on the horizon. Single witness, the chief says, injured—and quite badly—but, miraculously, in stable condition.

a story concerning Barraclough.