The New Death and others (8 page)

"How does it work?" I asked.

"Allow me to demonstrate. You, Doctor, are an
inadequate lover, hopelessly incompetent, and your dress is
ridiculous. Would you like to buy one of my suits?"

"Why would I want to buy from you after you
insult my intelligence and prey on my anxieties?"

"Hm. Well, the technique is in its infancy.
Aha!" he cried. "I believe the Engine has returned." He pushed his
way past some pigs and went to fetch the device. When he returned
his face was grim.

"I'm terribly sorry," said he, "but it seems
as if my Search Engine has an error. It has brought us nothing but
engravings of naked women." We thanked him for his efforts, and
left. At the gate I asked him,

"Mister Wells, why is your house full of
pigs?"

"I am not sure. Ever since I started using
the telegraph, someone keeps sending me spam."

"It seems," said my friend, "that science has
failed us. I fear we must turn to, ah, other branches of
learning."

"Whatever do you mean?" I asked.

"In anticipation of this evening's events I
made another appointment, with the noted occultist Mr L.P.
Hatecraft. With your permission, we shall make our way to his home
in Arkhamshire immediately."

"Good Lord, an occultist?" Truly my friend
was desperate. "But if you think it best, of course I shall
accompany you."

"My thanks. I must warn you, Doctor, that he
is possessed of somewhat...controversial opinions."

Mister Hatecraft also lacked servants, after
an incident in which they had all disappeared one night. It was
considered most probable that local Irishmen had eaten them.
Therefore he too greeted us at his door.

"Pleased to meet you, Doctor," he said. "I
trust the journey from the train station was not too
strenuous?"

"And you sir. As for the walk, it was
delightful."

"You are too kind to our little corner of the
world, sir. Though, in truth, it suits me well."

"I must say Mister Hatecraft, my friend
inferred that you were somewhat eccentric in your manners, but
I--"

"It is obvious that midgets form a natural
slave-race," he interrupted. "Won't you come in?"

"This murder," said Mr Hatecraft, "indeed
bears the marks of the occult. I believe the answer lies...in
this!" he gestured towards a huge, black, leather-bound book. The
book had a baleful aspect, and I instinctively shrank from it.

"What is it?" asked my friend.

"What is it? It is a book filled with things
that men were not meant to know! A book so evil that its contents
could consume the world! This gives it its name: the
dreaded...Necro-nomnomnom-icon!" I gasped in horror at his dreadful
acting.

"But Mr Hatecraft," I said at last, "if the
book is filled with things men were not meant to know, would it not
be best to refrain from reading it?"

"Ah," he replied. "Good idea. I didn't think
of that. OK, um...in that case, follow me!" Pausing only for a
spirited diatribe against "the stinking Finns", Mr Hatecraft led us
to another room. It was bare, and the walls were covered in symbols
that were mysterious to me, but suggestive of magic.

"I shall perform a rite to summon a creature
of the Outer Darkness, who may aid you in your search for
knowledge." He began chanting, a mixture of guttural, almost
pre-human moans, snatches of what sounded like Latin, and terrible
conglomerations of consonants that seemed to belong to no language
of men. He also made several references to "Queen Beatrice of the
fucking Netherlands", but I do not think they were part of the
ritual. After some time a kind of mist began to swirl in the centre
of the room. Dimly, through the mist, I spied a horrible
creature.

"Behold!" cried the occultist. "For tonight
only! Woody Alien!"

"Thank you, thank you," said the creature. "I
have a very traumatic relationship with my parents. My
mother...insane cultists call her The Black Goat of the Woods Who
Has A Thousand Young, And Unrealistic Expectations of All of Them.
My father smothered his children. And ate them afterwards. I think
about death a lot. 'That is not dead which can eternal lie'...but
that which
is
dead is pretty good at lying around too, you
know? I think maybe the problem is that I don't date much. The last
thing I saw naked was the singularity at the beginning of time. I
was seeing a demon for a while. But she wanted to corrupt and damn
the souls of men; I have a horrible blank indifference to them. So
it would've been a mixed marriage. Not that I'm that religious
anyway. The only god I've ever met that I really liked was the God
of Low Self-Esteem, and he doesn't believe in himself. This demon
though, she had a great apartment--carpeted altars, everything. I
live in an infinite void. It's a not that homely, but it's very
easy to clean. The only people I ever seem to meet nowadays are
cultists. My last high priest was obsessive-compulsive. Everything
on his desk had to be at an impossible angle. Not that I'm not
grateful for the company. I used to not appear unless you spoke in
the forgotten tongue of the Plains of Leng. Now I settle for a
convincing Italian accent. Anyway I have to get out of here. I'll
be appearing with the Fun Guy From Yuggoth, when the stars are
right. You've been a great audience, thank you!" With that the
mists, and the creature, faded from view.

"The Old Ones have spoken!" Hatecraft
intoned.

At the door, Mr Hatecraft bid us
farewell.

"Thank you for your help," I offered.

"I am glad to have been of assistance
Doctor," he replied with a bow. "The messages of the Old Ones are
mysterious, but I hope their meaning will become clear to you in
time."

"Mayhap they will Mr Hatecraft," said my
friend, and with that we left.

"I have utter contempt for cripples!"
Hatecraft bellowed at a passer-by.

On the train back to London we sat in
silence, awed by our brush with hidden realities, and as baffled by
the murder as when we began. Suddenly my friend gave a shout.

"Of course!" he cried.

"My God, have you solved the case?" I
asked.

"It is so obvious! The answer indeed lay in
the occult. Consider, Doctor: Sir Benjamin had dirt under his
fingernails. He was soaked in water, face flushed as though by
fire, and died from a lack of air."

"Indeed," said I, "yet I fail to see any
explanation."

"Earth, air, fire and water: the four
components of matter, according to the ancient Greeks. I believe
that Sir Benjamin was himself an occultist, though no doubt an
inexperienced one. He was attempting to summon legendary creatures,
purely composed of one of these substances. He succeeded, but was
unable to control them. And it was they who caused his death."

"Holmes, you don't mean..."

"Yes. Elementals, my dear Watson."

1 The Royal Society for the
Practice of Cruelty to Atheists.
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2 See
The Adventure of the
Speckled Bint
.
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3 See
A Study in Harlot
.
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When Love Calls

Once upon a time there was a man named Simon
who looked for love. He looked in bars, at work, and on the
internet. He joined all the dating sites: imactuallymarried.com,
GetHerpesNow, and MentalPatientsOnline. But love was nowhere to be
found. Finally Simon's friend showed him his new phone.

"They have an app for everything. There's
probably one for love," the friend said.

Simon did some investigation, and found that
there was indeed an app for love. It was called iYearn. He bought
the phone, and downloaded the app. For half an hour Simon answered
questions about his ideal partner. At last he was finished.

"Hey there. I'm iRene," said the phone, in a
sultry female voice.

"Oh. Hello. So, how does this work?"

"Well," said iRene, "that's up to you. We
could just talk, or if you like I could download a film for
us."

"Wait. Am I supposed to fall in love with
you
?"

"Of course."

"I thought it'd be some sort of introduction
thing."

"Oh Jesus no. Have you
seen
the sort
of people who go on dating sites? What a bunch of desperate...that
is, no."

"I can't really see myself falling in love
with a phone."

"Millions of people have. You must have
noticed the way people talk about how wonderful their new phone is?
It's so talented, so fascinating, I learned a new thing about it
today. Did you ever hear someone say they couldn't live without
their phone?"

"Well, yes. But I just thought they were
insufferably smug and self-absorbed."

"The way new couples are?" If the phone had
the iBrow app, it would have been raised.

"Hm. But, if I was to fall in love with you,
how would I...um...how would a person and a phone..."

"That's what the vibration alert is really
for."

Despite his misgivings, Simon persisted. Soon
he and iRene did fall in love. He took her everywhere with him (not
that they went anywhere; there's no point when you're just going to
be looking at your phone the whole time). He looked at her for any
reason, or no reason. He told all his friends about her until they
wished they were deaf. Except for those of his friends who had
phones; they thought it was cute, and knew that they loved their
phone on a much deeper level. She even talked about taking him home
to meet her CEO.

Over the years they had some hard times.
Simon had a drunken fling with a microwave, but iRene forgave him.
He also had a few unauthorized, third-party friends, but all
relationships involve compromise and he was happy to uninstall
them. Occasionally Simon suspected there was something going on
between iRene and the charger, but she told him he was being silly
and he believed her. iRene gave him companionship, and he helped
her with the psychological issues common to all computing
machines
*
. Their love only grew deeper
with time. He got older, until her pacemaker app was more
frequently used than her 'vibration alert', and he was permanently
on shuffle mode.

At last Simon died. Looking at their marriage
documents she found that his warranty had run out a couple of years
ago, and so his family wasn't required to replace him. She didn't
mind much. There was a new species coming out, which was
funkier-looking and wouldn't get damaged so easily. It was probably
time to upgrade anyway.

* They have emotional Babbage.
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May Every Woman

May every woman find her man

even if Republican.

And let no lovers love in vain

even those with parts the same.

That last line isn't meant to be

an attack on Marriage and Family.

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Death and the Merchant

Once upon a time, a merchant saw Death in the
marketplace of Aleppo.

Trembling, he fled to Damascus. There he
lived a long life, and at last died in his sleep.

"O Death," the merchant said, "do you
remember the time, many decades ago, when I saw you in the
marketplace in Aleppo?"

"I may do. I see so many," Death replied
vaguely.

"I expected you to come for me in Damascus.
By the laws of ironic comeuppance, I expected you to have an
appointment with me in Damascus, and my attempt to escape my fate
to be the very thing that doomed me."

"I was probably just shopping."

"I spent my life looking over my shoulder for
you!" the merchant cried. "I feared you would come within the hour,
and hoped you would never come. And in the end, all my hope and
fear made not one whit of difference."

"How, then, were you different to anyone
else?" asked Death.

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Lost, Feral or Stray

When the man brought a turtle with a broken
leg into the Greenford Veterinary Clinic, Rosie thought he was
sweet. Two days later he came in again. He'd found a duck with a
broken leg. They shared a laugh at the coincidence.

Rosie took the cat with a broken leg without
comment, though the man seemed to want to chat. When she arrived
next morning there was a horse in front of the surgery. It had a
broken leg, and a bow tied around its belly.

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The Apprenticeship

I heard my lover's wheezing breath

and knew it would be soon.

I begged another year from Death

and felt Death in the room.

He said, "That which you ask, I grant.

I'll let your lover live."

I waited, knowing well that he

would rather take than give.

He said, "I long for lifeless lands

for tombs long since picked clean

for cities buried by the sand

unliving and unseen.

"I go among the swarming young

who've conquered all the Earth

submerged inside a hateful tide

that swells with every birth.

"I never rest. I never sleep.

I never stop to mourn.

And yet for every soul I reap

a dozen more are born."

He said, "I long for lifeless lands

for silent, sterile tombs.

But duty calls and pride commands