Martin Watts, P.I. - Part I

            All the sudden, I couldn’t remember what I had been doing. Then there was a light, and I could hear my heart shoving blood into my head, and I gradually became aware that I had skin. I was dying in reverse. The proverbial tunnel was behind me, and in front of me was the only thing more dreadful and mysterious.

            Wake up, Martin. It’s time to rejoin the living.

            “Uff. Five more days…”

            That’s what you said five days ago. It’s time to wake up.

Good cryostasis is more expensive than an Earthside studio apartment. Bad cryostasis is cheaper than three hot meals, and that’s how I found myself crawling across the cabin of the Maltese Falcon looking like a science experiment. I grappled blindly with the net of probes and wires ensnaring me, and I could already feel the ants coming on. Metal ants with little stabbing feet. They start on the shoulder blades and work around to my arms and my chest and down my torso, puking hot acid as they go. Soon, the part of my nervous system that told my brain whether or not I was on fire would start to get confused.

            Martin, now. You have a phone call,” said Kira, my ship’s computer.

            A phone call! I tried to run to the phone, but then realized I was on the floor. After a few seconds of the frozen pond routine from Bambi, I managed to get my feet under me and grab onto a rail.

“Answer it! Huhg- Put them on speaker, and tell me where I put the lotion!” I shouted. The ants were starting to catch on fire.

“What?” Came a woman’s voice from everywhere at once. I snapped to attention and scrambled to engage the professional part of my brain.

“You’ve reached Martin Watts, P.I.” I said “I apologize; you’ve caught me disadvantaged.”

            “I can call back,” she said. Her voice was rain on an empty street. She sounded like Jane Greer in Out of the Past. “Hello?? Why don’t I just call back-” she said.

            “That won’t be necessary,” I said “You have my full attention.”

A flashing light grabbed my attention. A word crawled across one of the wall monitors. “LOTIONà” it said, and the floor lights lit up like a marquee. I stumbled after them.

“I was looking for Martin Watts who does odd jobs,” she said.

“Ah,” I said, as my heart fell through a trap door, “Yes, that is also me. I try to stay busy between cases. And, as luck would have it, I happen to be between cases right now!” I fumble the latch open on the footlocker under my hammock and did my best to tear through its contents as quietly as possible.

“Are you really a P.I.?” she asked, “Like a private investigator?”

“Exactly like a private investigator,” I said, collecting my pride, “Remember me if you ever lose something or someone you’d like to un-lose.”

“That’s very interesting,” she said, “I’ve never met a private investigator before.”

I wrenched the cap off my tub of anesthetic lotion and began shoveling gobs of it all over my body. The ants went out like sparks on wet pavement. Smooth.

“Would you like to?” I asked.

“I think I would,” she said, “Maybe we can meet up over you setting up the appliances in my new apartment.” I could hear her smile.

She beamed me her address and Kira threw the details up on the wall. A one-bed-one-bath with a sod lot on the outer ring of Riker Station. High society. At full burn, I could dock in three days.

“I look forward to meeting you, Martin Watts, P.I.” She said. It wasn’t condescending, per se. She played with my name the way a cat would – aloof, capricious. She let me wonder whether she’d bite or purr.

“Before you go,” I said, “I never got your name.”

She paused.

No, actually, she had hung up.

“Hot damn!” said Kira. A Clark Gable deep-fake appeared on the wall, asking “would you like to?” over and over again in my voice.

“Stop, Kira. That’s weird,” I said as I struggled into my jumper.

“Too bad it didn’t work,” she said “You didn’t miss a beat.”

“It did work,” I said, “She liked it. She likes me.” I looked over the parameters and turned the key that authorized the full burn.

It would hurt. A regular Hohmann transfer would cost a fraction of the fuel but it would take too long. No, the margins for this job would be skinny, but this was the thing to do. The Itch was telling me so, and the Itch had yet to let me down.

“I haven’t been on many first dates. Do they all involve getting paid to move the lady’s furniture?” Kira gibed.

“There was a lot of nuance in that conversation that a bootleg, cereal box AI might not have been able to unpack.” I felt my gut turn as I pitched the Maltese up and around to its new bearing.

“Hmm, so now you’re making fun of me because you pirated me because you don’t have any money. I must be missing more nuance.”

 “Alright, shut up before I put you on a data stick and lose you between couch cushions,” I said.

I locked the orientation and tossed the throttle to the backstop. Suddenly, a hundred or so Gs of acceleration were superimposed on the ship’s artificial gravity. The gravistat groaned under the stress, but after a few seconds, down was comfortably down again.

“Okay, Kira. I’m going to take a nap – a real one,” I said as I sat up into my hammock.

“Naturally, sir. You’ve had a long day.”

I had Kira gradually dial down the gravistat, and the hammock slowly swung back until I was looking “up” through the bow of the ship. I lay awake for a few hours, falling up into the infinite nothing, until an uneasy sleep finally took me. I think I dreamed of ants.