THE PATH OF DREAMS
A Story Set in the 'District 9' Universe
(Disclaimer: All items, characters, places, etc. not of the Author's creation are the property of their respective owners. This story will not be published and no money is being gained by its creation.)
I
The desk was nearly bare by the time Alex was halfway done clearing the office of the few things that he had decorated the workspace with. The only thing left was the office phone which he couldn't take because it was company property and would be forced to unplug before leaving. The noon-light had just begun to decay beyond the window behind him, filtered erratically by the metal shades he had dropped to half-mast in order to avoid the vicious heat of 12 o' clock in Mombasa, Kenya.
For a thirty-five-year-old programmer, he didn't have many personal possessions he had thought right for decorating his office with, but now that he paused to look at them piled in the cardboard box they seemed to have an air of grim finality, the echo of a life that had reached its peak and now had nowhere to go but downhill. Shaking himself from his reverie, he returned to the final steps of clearing out his workspace. He opened the drawer on the left of his desk and reached in, removing a stapler, a letter opener, a few American pennies and an assorted collection of their Kenyan equivalents, and, finally, an old letter.
He sat down and opened the letter, re-read its contents and grimaced. It was that same damned letter, the one that had lured him across the sea to Africa. At the time, America was still struggling with economic troubles twenty-six years after the Great Recession triggered by the arrival of the alien ship over Johannesburg. In the interim, Africa had suddenly become the new global hot spot of opportunity. And it was in that former cesspit of senseless violence and social upheaval that Cobol Engineering had been waiting for him, offering an attractive package of benefits, a hefty salary, and the directorship of their Department of Non-Human Computer Research. He had been enthralled by the promise of riches, and maybe even fame, if he could decode the algorithms controlling the mile-long Poleepkwa mothership floating over Johannesburg. So he had come, selling his stateside assets and transferring fully to Mombasa, the site of Cobol Engineering's Headquarters. There he had happily spent the last five years working away on the alien computer systems retrieved from the huge vessel hovering over Joburg.
At first it had been great. He had gotten the hang of the alien text used by the Poleepkwa with relative ease, though he had had to draw on various outside sources on how their technology was designed and how what little humans could understand of it functioned in order to understand the mindset behind the coding. After applying a few basic computer language principles essential to any operating system, even an alien one and spending three-long sleepless nights developing an algorithm that would have taken an team of lower-rated programmers a decade even to theorize about, he had cracked control for one of the basic life-support systems, which when tested in the field by directly wiring into the mothership's mainframe and inputting the commands, turned out to be the artificial gravity control circuits. He had earned a massive raise and his boss had held an in-office party in his honor.
Then, in the space of three months, it had all come crashing down and for Alex Castor Tyrone, the future had become a bad road through a dark valley full of briars filled with angry snarling noises. With the sudden departure of the mothership his department was rendered virtually obsolete. If it had been that alone he might have been able to cope with the severe pay cut and loss of many personnel, but the universe had other ideas. Less than a month later, the trial of Fundiswa Mhlanga for the theft of Multi-National United's corporate records brought to light the illegal genetic experiments the company had been conducting on captive non-humans.
The company's stock plummeted overnight like a block of lead and, by relation of being a subsidiary of MNU, so had Cobol's. Soon the cutbacks had started and within a week of the trial's conclusion and the incarceration of the Fundiswa, Cobol had liquidated his department and the assets related to it.
"Thirty minutes, Mr. Tyrone," a security guard said, from his office's door. The man didn't wait for a reply but continued walking through the maze of office cubicles just outside.
Alex sneered at the letter and went over to the little trash bin in the corner a small beige colored thing equipped with a shredder that he had been informed earlier was company property and therefore, not his to remove. It held an impressive variety of dead flies, victims of the fly zapper directly above it. The building was a very modern one in comparison with most of Mombasa, but no air conditioning system in the world could keep out the flies from the street market two blocks over. They just seemed to find a way in, no matter what, and today it seemed the system was not working because despite his attempts to check the heat in the room by lowering the shades. He stood over the bin and with a look of internal fury marring his usually calm features, shoved the thing into the hungry jaws of the machine which choked, then reduced it to confetti. With the loss of his job, he had been left with the contents of his life preserver of a bank account and a sea of debts that had immediately started to try and pull him under. It was only a mercy that he had made the right friends in this town. Otherwise he would have had the Kenyan equivalent of the Repo Service all over him the moment he had been laid off last week.
With the letter obliterated, he reached into his left pocket and pulled out a Smart-Phone, whose caller directory he then accessed with a few well placed taps and swipes of his index finger. He dragged the digit down the side of the small touch-screen, pulling down its scroll bar and scanned through his contacts, glancing at the small pictures of the people displayed in it as they whizzed past.
Three years ago Alex had been among the elite ranks of the finest programmers and hackers on the East Coast. This had made him a great many friends whose pictures and contact information he kept in the little device he now held.
Of course the thing didn't just contain people from America now. It also held ways to contact the friends he had made during his stay here in Africa. He was meticulous when it came to making the right allies and keeping track of people who owed him favors. As he skimmed, he wondered what he might do for his next job.
That detective, Inspector John Sheppard, might be able to get him into a job with the computer department in local law enforcement. Or, perhaps, he could go to work for Cobol's biggest rival, the Global/Massive Dynamics think-tank conglomerate. Few companies had made more attractive offers to him than those made by G.M.D. What's more, they had a building right here in Mombasa in the southwest corner of the business district. He wondered if that job offer they had made to him a few years back might still be open…
Banishing these thoughts to the back of his mind, he turned the PDA off and put it in the nearby packing case. There wasn't much in it besides what he had already cleaned out. On the desk, the office phone rang with the same cordial tone it had had since the day he had arrived. Sighing, he walked back over and checked the caller ID. It was his former secretary, Mrs. Anna Kimberly (She had stated the first part very firmly on the day they had met. Alex assumed it made her feel better). With a certain amount of subconscious hesitation, he removed the phone from its place and accepted the call.
"Yes?" he said, his slowly-dying anger still somewhat present in his tone of voice.
"Sorry to disturb you, sir, but Ron just handed me a letter that he says he was given by a man standing at the bus stop down by the parking lot. It's addressed to you.. He didn't give a name and the envelope doesn't have a return address. Do you want to come and collect it? Or should I send it to security for a check-up?" she said in a voice which carried a certain amount of the worry she must have been feeling.
Alex bit his lip in concern then ran his fingers through his black, smooth hair, now made greasy by the afternoon humidity. Was it safe to open an envelope like that? What if it had anthrax spores sprinkled inside it? Though it had never occurred to him until right now, with a reputation like the one Cobol Engineering had earned from recent events hanging on his shoulders, he could have become a target of a pro-non-human rights extremist group overnight. People around here didn't punch you when they got mad, they smiled and then went to the local Witch Doctor to get you cursed or your food poisoned.
Since the revelation of MNU's criminal experiments with live Poleepkwa, there had been a world-wide uproar and protesters had surrounded every single one of the buildings owned by MNU and its subsidiaries. The MNU Headquarters in Johannesburg had practically been under siege for the last three months by masses of protesters ranging from those against genetic experimentation to pro-Poleepkwa Equal Rights groups. The United Nations had predictably tied up the decision whether or not to bring charges against the company over Fundiswa's apparent evidence for weeks, which had only escalated the problem, resulting in the hurling of Molotov Cocktails by some of the more extreme factions among the protesters. There had been riots as well, when anti-non-human and speciesist groups had turned up to support the companies and had clashed with those already present. There had been deaths on both sides before the law had decided to intervene.
Rumor had it though that the extremist factions from the pro-alien groups had been resorting to violence against the high-ranking members of both the companies affiliated with MNU and MNU itself. Already, several major players in Cobol had been mobbed by angry protesters on the way to and from their workplaces and one had had his house bombed.
Alex had never liked the way the 'Prawns' had been herded into ghettos, but it was hard to care about or even relate to a race two-legged humanoid bugs that screeched and clicked to talk. And he certainly didn't feel strong enough about it to risk his job by joining a protest. In his opinion, both factions were as bad as those extremist factions like the Green Brigade or the KKK or the Westborough Church.
Alex wasn't a prejudiced man. He had friends back in the U.S. Who were homosexuals and on the one occasion he had actually met one of the aliens, he had maintained a polite demeanor and been as nice as possible. It was just that...well, like all humans in the presence of another, equally sentient creature, he had felt awkward and uneasy. It wasn't just their appearance that caused this in him, or even their method of speech. It was simply the fact that they were as smart as he was and yet looked so...alien that he couldn't even read their expressions. It was the divide of biology and anatomy, and no matter how much he wanted or tried to bridge that gap, the actions of those on both sides of the rift towards the other just increased the distance.
Still, he wasn't working here anymore. Not that that might've made a difference to a hardcore idealist psychopath of the kind from which extremist groups are made, but what the hell, sometimes you had to take chances.
"Send it Joan. I'll take a look at it." He said.
"Yes sir." She replied. Outside, there was a whooshing noise as the pneumatic mail tube came on. The ceiling was crisscrossed with the piping of the aforementioned system from which he had received sign-off forms for expenditures and various other, more classified documents for the past few years. Putting down the phone and making a final rummage through the desk drawers, he placed the lid on the last box and put it in the five-box stack he had created on a nearby push dolly, all of which were filled with the contents of the three large, immovable filing cabinets in the corner of the room. The thump it made as he dropped it on the top of the stack had all the qualities of the executioner's axe hitting the chopping block. He turned, made a final, depressed survey of the now empty room, then went to check the letter.
When he opened the tube using the key-card around his neck that made it his own personal device until he relinquished them upon his final exit of the building, he was rather surprised that no one else was about. The silence of the surrounding cubicles didn't surprise him because they had always been quiet in every company he had worked at, but this was a work day after all and it was noon, with lunch having started only a few minutes ago. You would have thought you'd see someone headed for the elevator on their way to the cafeteria on the ground floor, but the place was silent.
In all honesty he didn't mind. The lack of any people coming up and saying something like: 'Too bad about the layoffs, man. Sorry to see you go.' was good. He didn't want false pity and sympathy. He thought it was a waste of time and that it really didn't make the receiver feel any better, no matter how heartfelt it might be.
The letter inside the cylinder was just as his secretary had said it would be: no return address, crisp and business-like. He prodded it gingerly with his pinky finger. There was no explosion or release of any sort of neurotoxin like he was half-expecting. Then he remembered that he didn't work here anymore and probably had nothing to fear from some harmless loony's envelope. He picked it up and walked back into his office after locking the tube shut again.
Once inside, he opened up the box he had just placed on top of the stack and pulled out the letter opener he had stashed inside earlier. With a casual flick he slit open the small package of paper. Once he had replaced the tool in its box he shook out the contents of the envelope over the desk. Inside was a single piece of paper with a short paragraph, typed with none of the etiquette that a letter might have.
'Mr. Tyrone, I am part of a group of people who are willing to pay you a considerable amount of money for you to act as middleman in certain transactions and carry out small operations that, for reasons of security, must be kept out of the public eye. For similar reasons all information pertaining to the organizations I represent must be kept secret. We have observed you for some time and decided that your skills are suited to our needs.
If you agree we will see to it that your debts are resolved without incident and that you are well compensated for your trouble. I regret that the purpose and end result of your assistance in these matters, as well as my organization's goals and purposes, cannot be disclosed at this time but suffice to say, you will benefit greatly from participation, as will all beings populating this planet. In one year's time, if you are still interested, come to the 'Heart of the City' Hotel in the residential district and enter room 31. An operative of ours will be waiting to give you your instructions. Should you choose to refuse employment, then we will simply find another desperate man with the right abilities.'
"Desperate?" he said to himself.
He stood up and looked around the empty office, but saw no one. His face felt hot. This had to be a joke. Some jerk's cruel idea of humor. But who?
He sat back down in his chair. He re-read the letter. This was so over the top. No sane person could possibly think otherwise. But, how had they known his name?
He shook his head. It didn't matter. Maybe it would make for a good story over drinks when he got back to America. He folded the message back into its envelope and tossed it into the box. He would drop it into the shredder with its thrice-damned cousin on the way out.
Two hours later he was in his car, his boxes stacked in the back seat, and navigating the reckless traffic of Mombasa's streets, and the letter had vanished from his thoughts. Once at home, he tossed the boxes into an unused room of his five-room apartment in the better part of Mombasa's residential district, then went to his computer to begin typing a lot of job application letters.
That was nearly a year ago. Things hadn't got better. In fact, from that point on, they'd only got worse. MUCH worse