There were few other circumstances I would’ve left Lisa a SureFire Facemail. I was trying very hard to respect her wishes to give our friendship “a break” and had thoroughly succeeded up to the point that my power was shut off. Of course, none of this would have happened had I been reasonable from the beginning, but I’d spent 85 years being reasonable, and this seemed like my last chance to go at it differently. Lisa has always been like a daughter to me, and I didn’t like the way an ex-client named Sid was treating her.
The story starts with my newfound love of mushroom foraging. I studied books, watched documentaries, consulted with the mushroom authorities to locate the best foraging spots in my area. It was Turkey Tail and Hen-of-the-Woods season, early October just as the trees were blooming crimson, ochre, and rust, and the spike in drone traffic preempting the holiday season left an ever-present hum in the air. The big cemetery two streets over had a great many oaks and a lovely untamed tree patch with all sorts of felled wood, wonderfully fertile ground for the shrooms. At my age, I wasn’t exactly in long-distance forest-traipsing shape to go gather my fungi by hand, but a little creativity got the job done just as well.
I retrieved the Beetle from the attic, dusted it off and sent for some high-sensitivity manipulators. It turned out that a pair were being returned and in-transit two miles from my house, and because I’d clicked Get Nearly Now, they’d be half off and delivered in ten minutes. My lucky day.
I lugged the Beetle out to the back yard, awaiting my delivery, and I spotted my neighbor Patrick on hands and knees, jabbing at his garden bed. In October, of all times!
The man didn’t give me even a second of peace.
“There he is.”
“Here I am.”
Conversational distance never meant much to Patrick. At seventy-five feet away, he was perfectly content to shout at me as he went on assaulting the dirt.
“Whatcha got there?”
He was always so damn nosey. I’d often told people he has eyes on the top of his head, behind his ears, and up his butt. I trudged over to him through my precarious yard, or as Patrick calls it, my “menagerie”, in reference to the small community of critters that nest in the overgrown grass and catnip. Who am I to evict them?
Whatever floats your boat, Patrick liked to say. Short, spunky, and Jewish, with a lot of opinions and about ten years my junior. I called him The Pest, half in annoyance, the other half dependant on the day. Crooked glasses, usually something caught in his throat. His uvula, probably. We’d been neighbors for almost twenty years.
“It’s a Beetle,” I said, after a bit of huffing. “A remote flyer and crawler with high-res camera capabilities.”
He gave it a glance. “Sounds like spy equipment. Want a tomato?” By his knee were a pile of sad looking tomatoes, bruised and speckled brown, the losers of the season.
“No thanks. You can use the Beetle for all sorts of things. Gardening, maybe.”
“Gardening? Pah! Gardening means getting your hands dirty.” He scooped a heap of decaying plant matter with his dirt-caked hands and heaved it into the trash can behind him.
Just then my manipulators could be heard progressing towards us, that distant hum growing more distinct, less reverberation bouncing off the nearby houses. As the aerial couriers closed in, the more and more they sounded like a giant swarm of bees, and indeed the blades were so small and numerous that packages appear to be conveyed by a squadron of powerlifting insects.
Patrick grumbled something, completely lost in the courier’s buzz.
I moved to the Dedicated Landing Zone and the courier swooped down, its blurry form relinquishing the manipulators into my hands, already unboxed, a pair of fleshy half-spheres, scored like diced onions. Taped to the side of one was a plastic bag containing a pair of controller gloves.
The half spheres mounted to Beetle’s sides and swung inward at rest, quite an unfortunate look. When I put the gloves on, the manipulators shot out like a second pair of wings. I balled my hands into fists and the manipulators puckered like raisins. I spread my fingers wide and the flesh-squares came apart revealing small wires. The sound they made when they moved left a lot to be desired, too much like my teenage grandniece’s whining when her mother suspended her Gist account.
I worked with my back to Patrick, then I set the Beetle and its new bosom behind a patch of catnip. As soon as he saw it, I figured there would be no end to his comments.
“What’d you get?”
“Just some hands.”
“Why are they making that godawful sound?”
I walked away, so he was shouting again.
“Gotta go!” I waved and took my controller gloves inside.
2.
Now I must describe Lisa, my cleaning lady and good friend. Early fifties, single, moon-faced, very sweet, a bit unstable. She was on a boatload of medications, for whole-body pain, insomnia, depression, anger issues, brittle bones… information she’d offered freely.
She came over to do her weekly cleaning a couple hours after I installed the manipulators. I’d already sent my Beetle over to the cemetery. Some mourners had thrown rocks at me before I got a chance to harvest a particularly succulent patch of Hen-of-the-Woods. A well-aimed rock had knocked one of the wings askew during my escape towards the untamed tree patch. When Lisa came in, my Beetle was licking its wounds, searching the internet for a patch to correct the crooked wing.
“Spying again?” Lisa asked.
“Foraging. Where have you been?”
Lisa usually came on Fridays, not Sundays. Last Friday was the first day she’d missed and there’d been no word from her, no response to any of my messages until this morning, which was “B over 2day… tell u then”.
“Someone pranked my toilet and I ended up in the hospital.”
“Tell me more about this prank.” I was getting very worried about my friend.
“My toilet started acting strange, laughing in the middle of the night and then calling for an ambulance without me asking it to.”
I needed clarification we were still on the same planet.
“Who’s our president right now?”
“What?”
“Just answer the question.”
“You’re freaking joking right now.”
“Out with it.”
She turned to leave and I caught her hand.
“Forget it,” I pleaded, “I’m sorry. Please explain.”
She pulled her hand away and sat down. There was a quiet intensity in her eyes. “If you ever imply I’m crazy again, I’ll never come back.”
“Alright. Tell me about this toilet.”
She told me that her landlord had installed some kind of special health toilet in her unit, thinking he would live there a while. His situation changed but the toilet stayed, and it turned out to be fairly useful. Once after a fairly painful bowel movement, it told her she should get a mammogram. The voice had startled her, this middle-aged, white, well-spoken, gentle-yet-firm male-sounding stream of words emanating from the inside the bowl, talking about her fecal matter, and then her breasts. But then she went to her doctor and it out she had the beginnings of breast cancer and the toilet had caught it so soon it was no problem. The doctor excised the little lump right there in the office and sent her out with a couple of stitches and a bandage. Another time, she was having fairly frequent bowel movements, three to four a day, and after a couple days of this, it piped up once more, this time suggesting she ditch the coconut oil, again quite helpful. The rest of the time, the toilet was like any other, cold and demure, no different from her sink. That was until last Thursday, when she awoke in the middle of the night to someone laughing outside her bedroom. She grabbed her Louisville Slugger and crept out of bed, searched the flat, checked the doors, the windows, the stairwell she shared with her neighbor, and of course she found no one. Lisa went back to bed and locked the door to her bedroom, her bat clutched to her chest. A couple minutes went by and again she heard laughter. She recognized the toilet’s voice, though she could hardly believe it. Who would program such an appliance to laugh?
Even though she felt confident it was the toilet, she carried her bat with her. Typically the toilet looked like any other commode, except it had a red light at its base and cord that trailed to the nearest outlet. When she entered the bathroom, its light was pulsing, lapping the walls in a devilish hue.
“Why are you laughing, toilet?”
“Greetings,” it said, “I did not recognize your question. Can you try asking it in a different way?”
“Why were you making those noises in the middle of the night?”
“I still did not recognize your question. Is this an emergency? Should I call for help?”
“No, just please be quiet, please.”
“Okay, I understand. I’m sending for an ambulance now. Estimated time to arrival is seven minutes. Try not to panic and keep the bathroom door clear for the entry of rescue workers.”
“Cancel! Cancel!”
“I recommend laying on your side if you’re vomiting. If, on the other hand, you are choking, considering running yourself stomach-first into the corner of the sink, or, alternatively, you may use the rim of my toilet seat.”
“I’m fine! I don’t need an ambulance!”
“Okay, I’ve upgraded your emergency to Premier Tier. Be advised you may be responsible for additional costs depending on your health insurance plan.”
She unplugged the toilet.
“Switching to auxiliary power. Please be advised I will need to be connected to a stable power source within approximately seven days.”
Just then Lisa heard the wail of an approaching ambulance. She quickly dressed and hurried out to the parking lot.
Two buff men in EMT jumpsuits came hustling out the back of the ambulance with a battering ram, heading right for her door.
She intercepted them, hands raised, bat in one hand. “There’s no emergency. My toilet is just broken.”
They glanced at the bat and then each other.
“Please step aside miss,” said the slightly more swollen fellow, “there’s a man dying in that apartment.” A fat vein throbbed at his temple. He was radiant in spray tan.
Lisa didn’t budge. “No, no, it’s my toilet! Everything’s fine. My landlord–”
They shoved her aside, battering ram raised, running for the door. They didn’t bother with the handle. It exploded off the hinges with a loud crack, spraying wood splinters and a cloud of drywall into the stairwell, and then they barreled up to her unit.
She ran after them, screaming like a madwoman. She whacked the smaller one on the deltoid with the bat, and it bounced off like he was a fully inflated tire.
They strapped her to a gurney and she was routed to the nearby psych hospital. She spent the weekend attending one miserable anger management class after another, until she’d convinced the doctors, nurses, psychologists, and social workers it was all a big mistake, the toilet was at fault, and maybe she’d flown off the handle just a little bit.
By that point Lisa’s moonface had curdled into a sobbing mess. I went over and tried to give her a hug. She pushed me away. She really had an aversion to touching. Or maybe it was my cologne that day. I never got around to asking her.
“So what happened to the toilet?”
“My landlord sent it back to the manufacturer. Someone had hacked it.”
“Who would do such a thing?”
“I have my suspicions.”
And this was when I learned of Lisa’s ex-client Sid, a rich fellow who lived on the other side of town and collected swords. He had called her the week prior, demanding she pay for a sword that fell and broke while she was cleaning. She watched it topple off its stand while she was vacuuming on the other side of the living room. She left it on the couch with a note of what happened. Of course he didn’t believe her, so she blocked his number and thought that was the end of it.
“He has no idea what I’m capable of.” Lisa’s features were forecasting violence–a ghastly underbite, twitchy eye, snot-oozing nose. I fetched her some tissues.
“I have a hacker friend who could shut down his house for a week,” I lied.
“I’d rather break more of his swords.”
“Maybe we can do that too, all while keeping you out of jail.”
That seemed to satisfy her, and her attention shifted to a herd of dust motes gathered near the door.
“Don’t even think about it. Come back next week. I’ll have heard something from my friend by then.”
And with that she left, and I began thinking what sort of revenge plot an old fart like me could hatch to set everything right.
3.
In my living room stood a Seeing Real, As Real As Real Can Get–Hi-Def 7.0 Screen, which took up the majority of the wall and its three windows looking out to my front yard. I wanted the smaller one, but the bigger was cheaper. I ran instructional videos on Beetle repairs on one side and my Snooper Pro app on the other.
I was given a smattering of details about Sid for free, the kind you’d find on a birth certificate. The juicier and far more personal ones were available with the premium upgrade. I wasn’t surprised to find out he was single, unemployed, and one ugly fella. My first impression was Neanderthal meets redneck with a sprinkling of Hannibal Lecter. A mullet framed his formidable brow. Gray, glassy eyes stared me down from inside an oval of pale flesh. Most likely a tan line of eyewear for the blind. A few years back I’d read about cameras connected to brain implants and here they were. A faint scar ran from one eye and hid beneath a thick handlebar mustache, tugging the corner of his mouth into something like amusement.
Sid lived in a fairly wealthy part of town despite having almost no job history. I upgraded to premium-plus to snoop his parents, both deceased, dirt poor, fairly unremarkable. Sid apparently had a very high IQ (who still thought those were reliable?) and a slew of health problems, chronic seizures, a bad heart (cardio-something, I couldn’t pronounce it), asthma, congenital blindness, and had another condition, one I’d never seen before.
Unpredictable Explosive Disorder: Moderate-to-Severe. I immediately looked it up. Definition: a behavioral disorder characterized by random explosive outbursts of anger and/or violence, often to the point of rage, very nearly always disproportionate to current situation (e.g., sudden shouting, screaming, or loss of bodily control triggered by no detectable phenomenon).
A little further down his page I saw a link to various news articles. Most were reports of aggravated assault, property damage, disorderly conduct. Wedged in between a handful of these was an article announcing he’d won the Medium Mega Millions, five years ago.
It seemed quite convenient, given his work status.
“Good God that’s a big screen,” Patrick said behind me. He handed me the Beetle in a trash bag. It was missing a wing.
“Where’s the rest of it?”
He pulled the wing out of his pocket. “The thing about cut my head off when it crashed into my garden bed.”
“Damn mourners.”
“You flew that thing to the cemetery? On a Sunday?”
“You wouldn’t understand.”
“You’re damn right I wouldn’t.”
I scrolled up to Sid’s mugshot. “Recognize this guy?”
Patrick studied the picture for a moment and flinched. “Unfortunately, I do.”
“From the Medium Mega Millions?”
“No, from the garden store. He threw a spider plant right at my head for no reason at all. I was just standing in the checkout line.”
“It says here he’s pretty much blind.”
“Well, it was pretty close range. And he was wearing something over his eyes. I’m lucky it wasn’t a cactus.”
“Is he really six-foot-six, three hundred pounds?”
“He is quite large. Whatever your beef is with him, it’s not worth it.”
I disagreed, but there’s no point in arguing with Patrick. Conversationally, he was often immovable.
He stood there in silence for a moment, surveying my living room. It’d been a while since I’d had him over, and he seemed to think this was a good time.
“What’s the trampoline for?”
He was referring to the small trampoline I kept in the corner next to the couch. Lisa dusted the handrails on the sides, but the springs had rusted and it screeched like a dying animal whenever I bounced on it.
“Exercise.”
“You exercise?”
“Sometimes.”
I could feel his extra eyes were probing my gut, my double chin, the bit of cushion on my rear.
“Anything else?” I asked.
“How about a thanks?”
“Oh, yeah, thanks.”
He continued to linger, so I told him to fetch the toolbox from my closet. The wing was bent, but where it failed was its attachment point. I was hoping a couple new screws would do the trick. The fall had dirtied the manipulators, but they were otherwise unharmed.
“I was sure you were going to comment on these manipulators.”
“The breasts? That’s your own business.”
4.
“Tom, this is a bad idea.”
*“Why don’t you order us some pizza?”
“Pizza? I don’t touch the stuff.”
“Get yourself a salad. I’ll buy.”
That shut him up.
It took a lot longer than I’d expected to get the Beetle flying again. The crash had jostled the wing’s motor, so even after I’d reattached it, it wasn’t flapping properly, and the external battery I’d added to its lower abdomen for flying long distance made it even worse. After fiddling with the inner workings for a good while, I was able to get it to fly fifty-foot distances, or pretty much house-to-house, before it dropped out of the air.
“Throw in the towel, Tom. A good night’s rest and you’re going to feel a lot better about whatever that loon threw at you.”
Every time I tried to tell Patrick about what the guy had done to Lisa’s toilet, he plugged his ears, not wanting to “be a party” to whatever “vigilante-ism” I was planning, so he still thought I was Sid’s latest victim.
Taking the bus turned out the easiest way to get the Beetle to Sid’s house. There was a stop right beside the cemetery, so I flew from house to house until I got there. When the bus arrived, I crawled onto the back bumper and activated the Beetle’s suction feet.
The bus took me 90% the way there. Since this fella lived in the burbs I needed to hitch a ride on a car headed roughly in his direction for the rest of the way. I took a gamble and suctioned to the bumper of a stopped car where a young man was having a terrible time with a flat tire. Patrick kept yelling at him for his ineptitude through the Hi-Def screen, but I’d had the forethought to mute my mic. A little later, only blocks away from Sid’s house, I started walking the Beetle on foot. I ran into unleashed dog who promptly mounted me, the owners of which–teenagers, go figure–thought it was oh so funny and let him go and go, until I goosed the poor pup with the manipulators.
Finally I reached the front gates of Sid’s property, tucked away off a gravel private drive that dead-ended into a gorgeous open park. On either side of the driveway stood a stone turret with an eagle statue on top, wings spreads, bulging eyes glaring down balefully. The gate was black metal, with ornate, gothic ornamentation, quite a bit at odds with the birds. A high brick wall extended beyond the gates around the perimeter, affording a limited view of the property. From what I could see, the yard was sizable with lush green grass (no doubt maintained by absurd amounts of water pumped from sprinklers), peppered with many large, mature oaks. The house stood a couple hundred feet in the distance. Two stories, old wood siding, a massive wrap-around porch with swings, bookended by fat chimneys. The roof was steep and covered in moss-green shingles with dormers. Above them looked to be a hodgepodge of satellite dishes, several metallic landing strips that were charge stations for the drones, and something else. A black thing the shape of a curlicue that stood the height of a man.
The Beetle could’ve easily slipped under the gate, but before I could even attempt it, a swarm of drones emerged from the backyard.
“I don’t know how many ways I can say it, Tom. I don’t think this is a good idea. You haven’t crossed the gates and you’re already on thin ice.”
“Are you still hungry? I could order ice cream.”
“At this hour? My indigestion would be off the charts.”
“How about green tea?”
“It’d have to be decaf.”
“Order it.”
“I’ll just go get some from my kitchen.”
“Make me some as well. Non-decaf, please.”
“Tom… it’s called caf.” It was times like these when Patrick’s face appeared particularly in need of a good slapping.
I waited until Patrick left the room to pull out my ace in the hole, AKA the Drone Distractor Ultra (DDU). I was new to the app, which I’d downloaded in anticipation of this problem. The service offered various levels of distractions for drone patrols, such as a fake software patch that forced some models to land in attempt to update their systems and drone counter infiltrations that pulled attention away from a specific zone of their patrol. For a high dollar amount, you could purchase a boots-on-the-ground Distraction Technician, who could create the ultimate distraction, usually by feigning some problem (ex: broken-down car, lost frisbee, imminent childbirth), while simultaneously triggering a competing nuisance (ex: rabid dog, rat infestation, phernomone-induced avian orgy) in order to overwhelm drone surveillance.
DDU’s progressive tiers got very expensive, very quick.
My finger hovered over the button for the drone counter infiltration for a long time. Then I thought about that apish, redneck psycho corrupting Lisa’s toilet over a dumb sword, and all the pain and misery she endured at the psych hospital. weekend
I’m still making payments for services rendered that day.
Do I regret it? It’s complicated.
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