Antenna Syndrome

ANTENNA SYNDROME

by

ALAN ANNAND

Copyright © Alan Annand
2014

Published by Sextile.com at
Smashwords

Antenna Syndrome

© Alan Annand 2014

V.14062015

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters,
places and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or
are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales,
or persons living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved. No part of this
publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any
means without permission in writing from the publisher.
Distribution of this electronic edition via the internet or any
other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal.

ISBN 978-0-9869206-8-4

“
I foresee that man will resign
himself each day to new abominations, and that soon only bandits
and soldiers will be left.”

~ Jorge Luis Borges

MONDAY

~~~

14 September 2026

Chapter 1

I was sitting in my office late Monday
morning, nursing the mother of all hangovers with aspirin,
electrolytes and lots of water. For lack of something better to do,
I was watching BBC World News on my iFocals. Frankly, I was fed up
with local bad news and wanted to share in some foreign suffering
too.

Last Friday had been the fifth anniversary of the
Brooklyn Blast. Over the weekend all of the major networks had run
documentaries on it, as if any of us needed reminding of an event
that had been tattooed onto the skin of our collective soul, never
to be erased. Ads for liquor and medications had run heavily
throughout the weekend.

Brighton Beach had been ground zero for the homemade
nuclear bomb that had gone off on September 11, 2021, five years
ago. But it had taken the CIA, the FBI and Homeland Security over
six months to figure out what had happened, because the instant
death toll in the vicinity of Neptune Avenue and Brighton 7th
Street hadn’t left any neighbors to tell any authorities about any
suspicious characters leading up to the event.

Eventually, the NSA had delivered. A spider’s-web of
emails and phone conversations had finally patched together a murky
plot. It had involved two cousins from Azerbaijan who’d come to the
USA on scholarships to study physics at MIT. Somehow they’d ended
up spending weekends at an uncle’s house in Little Odessa, building
a nuclear bomb to celebrate the 20th anniversary of 9/11.
Apparently it had gone off accidentally before they could deliver
it to downtown Manhattan that fateful day.

Brighton Beach had been reduced to a wasteland.
Declaring a national emergency, FEMA had ordered total evacuation
of Brooklyn and Staten Island. Of their own accord, half the
population of Queens and many in Manhattan and the Bronx had
decided life was too short for this shit, and it was time to
relocate. Almost overnight, New York’s mushroom cloud of disaster
had turned into a bonanza for Arizona, California, Florida and
Nevada, whose real estate was snapped up in a frenzy of bidding
wars.

For those of us who’d remained, nursing chronic
hangovers, today was just another of those days – no business, no
agenda, and no prospects. As some great blues man had once sung,
“If it wasn’t for bad luck, I wouldn’t have no luck at all.” As for
work, I hadn’t had any in weeks, and was thinking I’d soon have to
start selling the furniture to cover the rent.

There wasn’t much to sell. Two filing cabinets
contained my case files and twenty years worth of old
Rolling
Stone
magazines I was holding onto, waiting for them to become
collectibles. A mini-fridge held some energy bars and protein
drinks. My modest library of police procedure manuals, law books
and true crime filled a small bookcase. I also had an old oak desk
the size of a coffin, its rim scarred with cigarette burns from a
previous owner.

Outside, a gaggle of low-hanging clouds hung over
midtown Manhattan, like a street gang of Chernobyl orphans with
head colds, weeping a fine drizzle of radioactive mucus, diesel
fumes and coal dust. My third floor office on 33rd Street looked
out over the Amtrak rail yard where trains coupled with noisy
frequency all day long, like honeymooners deaf to the world around
them.

On the sidewalk below my window was a dumpster full
of office trash, its huge transparent bags of shredded paper
evidence of another business gone bust. Even when I sometimes felt
like hurling myself out that window, it’d be just my luck those
bags of shredded paper would cushion my fall and save my ass to
suffer another day.

The intercom buzzed and I went into yellow alert. It
was probably the landlord looking for the rent. I toggled my
iFocals from TV to lobby view. The scene changed from riots in
Beijing to a woman in red latex jumpsuit and motorcycle helmet
looking up at the camera. I knew she was a woman because she had
more curves than a mountain road.

I couldn’t guess her age because, even though her
visor was up, she had a scarf wrapped across the lower half of her
face. Respiratory scarves were the new fashion accessories,
consisting of brightly-colored micro-fibers sewn in layers, knotted
behind the neck or held in place with Velcro panels. If you had to
live here, they were practically standard issue these days for
anyone who walked the streets of the greater New York area.

I tapped the stem of my iFocals to activate the
built-in microphone. “Can I help you?”

“Is this the right number for
Centaur
Investigations
?” She had a vaguely mid-Atlantic accent,
although it could have been Ivy League and I wouldn’t have known
the difference.

“Yes.”

“Will you buzz me in?”

“What do you want?”

“I have a job for you.”

That piqued my interest but, being the naturally
suspicious type, I rarely took things at face value. I cued the
lobby camera to pan. As far as the lens could see, there was only
wall-to-wall boric acid, a thick carpet of it to thwart invasion by
giant cockroaches, rumors of which were no longer urban legend but
grim reality. I saw no ruffians lurking behind pillars.

“Show your face.”

She tugged her scarf below chin level. I saw an
attractive young woman whose face triggered no memory of mug shots
nor gave any indication she might be a murderous psycho, of which
there were many in New York. Like a lot of us these days, she wore
a pair of barely-visible lenses – data goggles – for mobile access
to GPS, breaking news, security alerts and so on.

“Carrying any weapons?” I asked.

“Pepper spray.” She took a dispenser from her
shoulder bag and held it up to the camera.

“Is that all?”

“Yes.”

“There’s a scanner when you enter the elevator,” I
warned her. “If you’re concealing anything else, I’ll seal you
inside the elevator and send you to the basement with the rats and
the cockroaches.” It was true about the scanner, which I’d acquired
for the super on the black market from a guy who knew a guy who
used to work at LaGuardia. The rest was bravado.

“I’m not armed,” she said, “and you’re totally
paranoid.”

“Welcome to my world,” I said. “Third floor. Suite
311.”

I pressed the buzzer to open the elevator door. She
stepped inside and I toggled the camera from lobby to elevator.

“Don’t touch anything you don’t have to,” I
cautioned her. “They hose the elevators down with DDT every month.”
Once banned, DDT was unofficially back in vogue, driven by the need
to suppress insect infestation throughout the greater New York
area, especially Manhattan.

She pressed “3” on the control panel. She gave the
camera one more brief look and turned her attention to the door,
which opened moments later on the third floor.

I switched cameras and watched her come down the
hall in a quick staccato march that seemed almost military in its
pace. I had to admit, I was a little excited by her impending
arrival. It had been a dull day and a cash-strapped month. The
prospect of an attractive woman with a loaded purse had accelerated
my heartbeat to a steady flutter in my ears.

Chapter 2

I took my pistol, a 9mm USP Tactical Heckler &
Koch, from my desk drawer. It was a retro model, but sufficient for
my needs. I rarely had to shoot anything bigger than a sewer rat,
although many times I’d been tempted to use it on squeegee punks. I
stuck the pistol behind my belt and opened the door for my
prospective client.

She scanned the room as she walked in and, seeing
nothing more threatening than poor housekeeping, went to the window
to inspect the air scrubber. A white patina of boric powder clung
to the ankles of her knee-high boots. She took a small device from
her bag, waved it around and checked the readout. Assured the air
was clean, she removed her gloves and helmet, and shook out her
blonde hair.

Her latex jumpsuit was the color of fresh blood,
with a waist I could have spanned with two hands. She unzipped it
just enough to reveal a modest show of tanned cleavage. She wasn’t
wearing much makeup and yet her face was pretty much flawless, so I
guessed she was in her late twenties, maybe thirty. Her eyes behind
the data goggles were slate green.

“Have a seat.” I offered my hand. “My name’s Keith
Savage.”

“Natalie Jordan.” She gave my hand a quick swipe,
just enough to say we’d made contact. She remained standing. “My
father is Harris Jordan.”

“The
Harris Jordan? Who’s running for
mayor?”

“Yes.”

“How can I help you?”

She sat in one of the club chairs opposite my desk.
“I want you to find my sister, Marielle. She’s twenty and she
disappeared two days ago.”

“Happens all the time with twenty-year-olds. What
makes you think she’s not coming back?”

“We tried all weekend to reach her, but no response.
We’re worried she’s in danger. Has she been kidnapped, or just run
away? Even if it’s just the latter, she may need help returning.
She’s paraplegic.”

“Accidental?”

“Congenital. Born with vestigial stumps for
legs.”

“Have you notified the police?”

“No. It’s complicated. Are you aware of my father’s
position on law enforcement?”

“I recall a sound bite from one of his speeches.
Something like, the NYPD’s like a rotten log hosting a colony of
termite ants?”

“A comment taken out of context. All he meant was,
the police force needs a shakeup, a greater degree of transparency,
a return to the values of law and order that made New York what it
is.”

“A crumbling city-state bordering on social,
financial and infrastructure collapse?”

“Are you this cynical with all your clients?”

“No matter how cynical, it's never enough to keep
up.”

“Now you sound like some of my father’s
opponents.”

“There’s a lot to cope with these days.” On the
streets, an openly-hostile environment gave any sane person pause
for debate each morning, whether to seize the day or stay in bed.
“But the police are usually discreet, especially in a
kidnapping...”

“No. Somewhere in the chain of command, we’d
encounter someone who hates my father. All it takes is one phone
call to a reporter. If the media got wind of this story, they could
jeopardize his chances for election.”

“What story, exactly?”

“It’s just an expression. All I meant was, our
family drama shouldn’t be dragged into the spotlight.”

“It’s a drama if she ran away. If she’s been
kidnapped, it’s a crime.”