Meditations of Jimmy Chu Part III

by Rabbi Ben Newman, the Bronx, NY, USA

Manendra Applebaum glanced around the tight space into which the slightly unhinged Mayor of NYC had led him. The room was a world of dust and artifacts of a lost age. An Obama-Biden '08 pin was displayed in a mahogany japanese china cabinet next to a bottle of '08 Macon Villages Chardonnay. Next to the chardonnay laid an unboxed ipod holo, and several other rarities. All of the furniture followed this pattern. Japanese tansu chests filled with treasures from decades past aligned the walls. The floor was covered with tatami mats. 4 zaisu chairs surrounded a small japanese chest which served as a table on which sat a bottle of '09 Aberlour scotch.

The Mayor gestured to one of the zaisu and Manendra sat down uncomfortably and cleared his throat. Mayor Chu bent down over the chest and picked up the bottle of scotch, pulling two glasses out of the china cabinet. He poured one for Manendra and one for himself.

"Here." he said, handing the glass to the awkward looking man, "it looks and sounds like you really need this."

Manendra accepted the glass.

"Nice chest." commented the young technician from IHS, gesturing toward the piece of furniture in between the 4 zaisu chairs.

"You have nice taste, kid." the Mayor remarked, "you wouldn't know it, but its Karakuri tansu, traditional Japanese shit. The Mayor pulled open a drawer in the chest and took out a box of cigars. He took one out, lit it, and took a drag. "Such a chest of drawers, of tansu, in Japanese might look like ordinary Japanese furniture," he blew smoke in the IHS tech's face, "but, it has a trick drawer which can hide what the user puts inside as if by magic. The trick is for security, to keep valuables safe." he tapped on each of the sides of the chest, and a secret drawer popped up. "It took enormous amounts of time and effort to develop and manufacture these chests," he said, "and I keep only my most valuable secrets here. My inner sanctum, or something." he smiled at Manendra, who took his first swig of 49 year old scotch.

"Better than Lansky's '50 Talisker, that's for sure." he said, "Now Mr. Mayor, I'm sure you didn't bring me here to your inner sanctum to share 49 year old scotch.

"They got some smart ones at IHS," the Mayor spat out in a plume of smoke.

"You're having problems with SOPHI?" he asked.

"Does the Buddha shit in the woods?" the Mayor farted and took another drag, followed by a sip from his glass.

"Like I said over the phone, I only talked briefly with SOPHI, but she seems fine to me. I mean, what do you expect from a simulated intelligence?" the orange hued skin on his face seemed to sparkle with an enigmatic smile.

"Well she's not! She's been spouting Buddhist proverbs at me indiscriminantly, and..." the Mayor of NY blew up like a puffer fish.

Manendra raised his glass to his mouth, "Well that can't be all bad,"

"You have no idea. I just want you to program her, it, with a different philosophy" replied the Mayor.

"Oh, you mean to reprogram the Beliefs Subroutine..."

"Yeah. Whatever. Just do it."

"Well, it might be a bit complicated. I mean all of her systems are connected. It'll be like untangling a big ball of string..."

"Can you do it?

"I guess so, sure..."

"You assholes at IHS have been dicking me around for years. If its not SOPHI, its glitches in the security system. All I can say is, if you don't do this, the city's going to just have to find another contractor, and you, Mr. Applebaum, are going to have to find a new job."

"Do you enjoy intimidating people, Mr. Mayor? Because its totally counter-productive to actually motivating your people to get the job done. I developed the greater portion of the programming for every piece of technology you use." Manendra reached for the box which held the luxury cigars.

“Then why are you doing high-end plumbing?” the mayor opened the box and gave Manendra a stogie.

“Touché, Mr. Mayor.” Manendra lit the cigar as the Mayor held out an ancient Zippo flame.

"So you can do it?" the Mayor held up his glass as if to toast the new endeavor.

"Of course." Manendra said, raising his glass to meet that of Jimmy Chu. "So what do you want her new belief subroutine to be, once I untangle it?" He began to suck on his stogie.

"I don't fucking care," the Mayor was slurring his words through scotch scented lips, "just make it something that works."

"What do you mean 'something tht works'?" the technician asked, enjoying the unique situation that he had found himself in. "Mr. Mayor, you need to be specific, so that I get it right next time and you don't end up calling me in again." He took another drink of his ’09 whisky.

"Something that's practical, that gets the job done." The Mayor gestured inquisitively with the burning tip of his cigar.

"So... you want that I should program it to be a Pragmatist?" Manendra drawled.

"I need something with a little more umph. You know, SOPHI does give me advice on a day to basis on matters ranging from the sublime to the ridiculous. I thought Buddhism was the thing when you guys first installed her, but now I'm thinkin' Buddhism's too tame, too dove-ish. A castrated tiger...I don't wanna machine that's gonna make me feel uncomfortable about my choices, my lifestyle, if you know what I mean." he took another deep swig from his glass, and then a long drag from his cigar, inhaling the smoke slowly. "I don't need a conscience or a fucking mother or a fucking wife, I need a trusted adviser. An Intelligence that will give me solid, practical advice that I can act on...." he paused for a moment, reflecting... "How about Sun Tsu?"

"Who?" Manendra asked.

"You know, the Art of War guy. Could you program her using that book?"

"I mean sure, in theory. But why bring me all the way in here to ask me? Why all the secrecy? I mean, I appreciate the scotch and the cigar..." a puzzled look scrunched Manendra's face.

"Fuck, you really are fucking dumb for an engineer. If 'she' knew what you were going to do, she'd try to defend herself."

"With all due respect, Mayor, I do know my business. She's not programmed to defend her ego. I should know," he said, "I'm the one who programmed her."

"Yeah, but I live with her." the Mayor remarked, finally relaxing down onto his zaisu.

"You're the one whose in charge, Mayor." Manendra said.

The Working Man's Blue's, Pt III

by R. Soon, Atlanta, GA

I-75 Southbound, between Cincinnati and Lexington

“*wheeze* …where are we?”

“Oh, you’re awake, good…we just crossed into Kentucky. You were asleep for a while.”

“I wasn’t asleep, I was knocked out by your soundbox,” Barry grumbled irritably from his supine position in the back seat. He coughed and wheezed again. “Did you give me bronchitis too?”

Arash chuckled. “No, Grandpa, it’s probably the altitude—“

“And how do I know you’re anyone but some crazy terrorist? The hell kind of kid kidnaps his own grandfather against his will?” Barry’s voice began to rise, accompanied by him sitting up and leaning forward accusatorily. “Not to mention my son didn’t have any children when he died, so as far as I’m concerned, you’re some lowlife who’s ruining my chance at a peaceful retirement—“

“Ssshhh…Saif is asleep,” Arash said quietly, directing a meaningful glance into the rear-view mirror at Barry, who glared back but fell silent, save for a controlled wheeze. Inwardly, Arash was ready to start a shouting match with the almost-toothless, infuriatingly stubborn old man, but he ignored the prickling heat and focused on driving, ignoring his nauseatingly sandpapery-feeling eyes as he strained to see the road with the car’s failing headlights.

After a moment, he continued in a low voice, “Grandpa, your son’s name was Thomas, right?” He felt Barry staring at him icily, now, even as he kept his eyes on the road ahead. “My father’s name was Thomas. And his girlfriend, soon to be his wife, her name was—well, is—Rashida. My mom’s name is Rashida…and she was carrying me when Dad died.” The stories she told him were all Arash knew of his father, but as he spoke, he could feel the older man’s emotions spilling into the car, and her words began to churn in his mind with a sense of loss he hadn’t felt before.

“My God…Rashida,” Barry half-whispered throatily, his irritation gone and replaced by the welling of tears in his eyes. Poor guy’s been through so much, Arash thought, even as he felt himself having to choke his own back.

In no time the older man was sobbing. “She was going to make him such a great wife, Rashida was…and they had already started looking at houses in East Cleveland, when that damn factory….” He faded into soft weeping punctuated by hoarse breaths. Arash felt himself regain control, and he stole comforting peeks at his son in the passenger seat, fast asleep.

They had captured one of the metal-tentacled guards a while back, and experiments on it yielded an immobilizing soundbox hack which granted Arash’s team a way thru the patrol line under cover of night, and two fences and four sleeping barracks tents later, they found the man who matched Mom’s painstaking description, albeit disguised by 30 years of time since she had last seen him. He had been taking a piss off of a slope down to a railroad, and nearly fell when he turned around and saw what probably looked like four ninjas creeping up. Arash had tried to calm him down and tell him about the plan to break him out, but the blustery old man was acting like he didn’t want to leave. “I don’t have a grandson!” he had shouted, red-faced, taking off at a fast limp toward the prison camp’s center. “I don’t know who the hell you are, but security won’t care—“ and one of the guerrillas had moved in swiftly and put a peaceful, meditative soundbox up to Barry’s ear. While not being particularly large, he was amazingly heavy; and squeezing him through the fences while keeping nervous eyes out for patrolmen fatigued everyone thoroughly.

Arash had dropped the team back off at the Shaker Square base, picked up Saif and a few supplies, and with hushed farewells to his comrades, set out toward Atlanta in his hideously ancient ’12 Cherokee. Atlanta was where Mom was, and just south of Lexington was a forward base for the Cleveland Reclamation Project, probably the only safe place to get gas for most of the trip down. Halliworks apparently had no idea they existed, and as far as they had spread out, Lexington was as close as the Project could operate on a larger scale while preserving that invisbility. The tiny, camouflaged hideout at Shaker Square was hardly more than a library and temporary supply depot, and the men still there were already packing up to head down a couple of hours behind the Cherokee. On the silent highway, two vehicles together would have been too suspicious, so the timing was good even if coincidental.

Nevertheless, he had worried for a few miles before finally settling into the journey, and of course Barry had come to not long after.

As Arash drove on, he thought back to when he’d first found out that his grandfather, now once more asleep in the back seat judging by the subdued, regular wheezing, had been alive and supposedly a prisoner at the Halliworks camp. That had been what…a year ago? Around that. Naturally he had started drawing up a rescue plan almost immediately, but it had taken forever to get the camouflage generator needed to set up a camp right in Cleveland. More importantly, it had taken some convincing of the Project leaders to let him undertake the operation, even taking badly needed men with him, on the eve of an assault designed to strike a decisive blow against Halliworks’ military assets. In fact, because of the rescue, he would probably still be in Atlanta when the Project moved north into Halliworks territory.

And yet here he was, having had to carry his target, his until-recently-mythical grandfather, out unconscious! He hadn’t wanted to be rescued from that hellpit!

Grandpa would adjust soon enough, Arash decided for the twentieth time. After all, his veritable daughter-in-law was waiting for him, he had a great grandson to spoil, and he wouldn’t have to work anymore. What better retirement was there than that? Arash glanced at his son, smiled inwardly, and returned his attention to the dark highway, entertaining thoughts about how happy his mom would be to see all of them.

The Working Man Blues

by R. Soon, Atlanta, GA, USA

The Cuyahoga River had caught fire when he was a toddler; Barry didn't remember too much from then, but every day when his train crossed the chipped concrete bridge, with its supports mutely bearing their streaked scars, he was taken for a brief but often painfully interminable moment back to the second time it happened. He usually closed his eyes when the train came around that bend nowadays, but he could still feel with three decades twice daily of memory yielded up by his ever-aching body when it crossed over the river, and the fire lit anew in his mind anyway.

Barry had been a proud, dedicated manager of a temp agency at that time, and ironically one of the only people remaining in Cleveland even back then with a benefits package attached to his position; ironic, indeed, given that the only way to get a steady check these days was to sign up for Halliworks, and there wasn't a more permanent job than that, not unless you were able to escape the camps and get far enough away fast enough. Only the lazy bastards doing chemical reclamation at the river and around the Case site tended to run off, though, and neural running speed governor implants prevented repeat attempts. Halliworks was the only thing sustaining the remains of Cleveland's economy, both in providing work and in redeveloping the city's infrastructure from the ground up. Sure it was dangerous work, but it had to be done.

But Barry didn't think about all that. He was too old to escape arthritis and the occasional mini-malaria bout, nevermind the horrifying security patrolmen with metallic tentacle-things for arms, rumored to all come from the same recruitment office/lab in New York. Besides, at 70 years old, with eight teeth, bad knees, and no neural or physical implants whatsoever, he was happy just to have a comfortable bunk and regular meals.

Nah, better to keep his place as Senior Building Inspector with the Halliworks Westlake camp. He was the one who came up with the idea of using amplified soundboxes to pacify guerrilla residents who refused to sell their houses and business properties, and the 60% cut in surface operations casualties along with the huge boost in live-capture recruitments catapulted him out of the Erie Tunnelpass project, whose survival rate was frighteningly low, to a relatively cushy management job. So what if he couldn't leave? He was doing right by Halliworks, and they were doing right by him as far as he was concerned. Five more years and he would even be eligible for retirement if camp recruitment kept pace.

But five years was still five years off. Today, it was cloudy outside, though he knew as well as everyone crowded onto the incongruously sleek and clean passenger train cruising towards the mothballed Old Lakewood/W.117th St. Station that the clouds didn't do a damn thing for your skin. He studied as he did every day, through the Solaplex window, the quiet, dusty streets, where every single mailbox and old newsbox in sight was shorn entirely of its paint by the stealthiest but most dangerous of the sun's rays, further removing them from his more distinct childhood recollections. Things have sure changed, he mused for the thousandth time, and the train rocked back and forth lullingly on the warped track rails, encouraging his mind to wander. He often mulled over his day's work of testing buildings for integrity at this stage of the daily journey, but sometimes less comforting thoughts crept in.

The second time the Cuyahoga erupted in hellish flames was five years to the day after the first day of the weeks-long Case Riots. Barry shuddered, but nobody on the traincar looked at him; life in a camp housing 11,000 people taught everyone to mind their own business. The riots, they were bad. Bu the poor guy the news van caught staggering up Euclid, that monstrous eyeball-looking thing that took up part of his head….

The trees growing back along the tracks fell away, and earth gave way to gravel along the bridge's path. He had been more lost in thought than usual, and having not closed his eyes in time, they were now fixed on the mesmerizing landscape around the twisting, winding Cuyahoga River.

Dominating the view on the Flats riverbank, a tall, majestic experimental biofuel facility left much of its shell, though one wall had blasted clear across the river, four pieces smashing some cars parked along Canal Rd. and one biting deeply into the eighth floor, the eighth floor of all of them!, of the Federal Corporate Management center, right where his dear, hardworking son had….

Barry shuddered again, harder this time. The fire had spread from the contaminated cooling system, the news said, and the river had plenty of fuel topping it off to blaze on down to the mouth, violently combusting everything too close to the water's edge. A fine blue dust had begun raining on the Flats and along the banks due to some chemical mixture catalyzed by the fire, and it was later decided that this blue dust was why all the plants and trees down there, even those away from the water, had died off with nothing ever growing back. And he vividly recalled the bridges being blocked off by police for a panic-stricken month, and the reports of a renegade driver heading off across the Shoreway only for a 30-foot chunk of concrete causeway to break off and fall, taking him with it down into the deadly water.

Barry hated how clearly all the images glowed in his mind, even has he fought to pull his gaze away from the now-empty site of the FCM building, seeing so sharply the jagged brick disc clutching at the eviscerated tower's tattered, ripped Solaplex windows once again. He hadn't tried to identify his son's remains, on the advice of the rescue squad at the scene, but imagination-driven nightmares had plagued him for a full three years anyway.

His traincar shook over a rail joint, and he squeezed his eyes shut. When he dared to open them again, the river was past and the train was off of the bridge, heading into the final tunnel leading to Halliworks Central Station.

The Deegan Pt. II

by Monk, New York City, NY, USA

A standard paingun is about the size and shape of an old billy club. Non-lethal, barring occasional heart attacks from the sudden, intense sensation of full-body burning caused by a 94GHz millimeter wave. It is the standard peacetime sidearm of the NYPD, powered by a fuel cell that nominally offers up to five days' juice, 2,356 yard range, and a networked targeting system plugged into the old ATHENA surveillance satellite for around-the-corner shooting and nighttime auto-targeting. It's a beast of a weapon, ruggedized for melee as well, with an enforced ceramic frame, integral shock baton function, and retractable bayonette.

Unfortunately for Detective Anton Choudry, those little beauties are tagged and tracked every time they're checked out of the 50th Precinct's weapon locker. So, for his purposes, he relies on the fallback: a twenty-four year old version with cracked plastic casing held together with duct tape. Thing's got the form factor of an old assault rifle and uses disposable batteries that have to be replaced every time it's fired, like a shotgun. It's also about as conspicuous as a samurai sword. He'd use the less obvious slugthrower he keeps as a throwaway piece, but he's saving it for an unspecified special occasion. Ballistic weapons are even harder to come by these days than disposable weapon batteries.

From the undercover police van, he spots his guy coming out of the Deegan Motel, dressed in dirty white kaftan, bright red Rocketeer™ boots, and one of those animated dragon belts everyone under 30 seems to be wearing. Bailey Avenue hasn't had more than three street lights since the mid-1990s, so the broad four-lane street is sort of ideal for an ambush, lined on the west side by a century of carbon monoxide-poisoned trees and the Henry Hudson Parkway, on the east by burnt-out old warehouses, a few trucks, and the two-story Deegan. Choudry's target tugs his robes a little bit to get them across his widening gut. He's gotten all the right body modifications, marking himself with blood red skin and goat horns jutting from his forehead. Very recognizable, Les Diables Nordiques, but not necessarily the smartest gang. All bodymods have drawbacks. Grafting external bone, for instance, increases sensitivity around the modified area, like a new piercing.

So when Choudry hits him with the paingun, it's like pouring lemon juice and saltwater onto fresh third-degree burns.

Guy doesn't even scream, just makes a gurgling sound before hitting the cracked pavement, clawing at his face until skin comes off. Choudry jogs across the street, kicks the guy in the face a few times to stop his thrashing, throws him over his shoulder, and takes him back to the police van. Loads a stimulant into the handcuffs, checks that the remote works, then snaps it onto the guy's wrist, looping the other hand to the van's back door.

Choudry sits back for a second, staring at his prisoner. 'This is the guy who killed you, Pete,' he thinks, reaching absently for the soundbox in his pocket, musing what blackout, the final mystery high, feels like. Consoled that he hasn't tried it yet, absently wondering if it's the last line to cross before he's beyond salvage.

"Okay," he croaks, fumbling at the tiny black remote, jolting the guy with a stimulant through his handcuffs. "Wake up, dickbag. We've got some talking to do."

When the guy rouses, his worldview has narrowed to the barrel of a gun. Choudry knows he's got his attention. "Remember me?"

"Oui."

"Then you remember my partner," Choudry smirks.

The guy nods. "Nous n'avons pas voulu dire pour n'importe quoi mauvais de se produire—"

"We're well past good intentions, jackoff. Pete's dead, you pulled the trigger, and you and I both know that as of right now, you're never going to see the inside of a courtroom. Your boss is lubricated like the fucking space elevator," Choudry says. His voice shakes. He's more surprised by that than anything. The guy gets very quiet, stares at the paingun. Choudry continues. "So here's how it's going to go. All Pete's accounts are mine now, you understand? Whatever you were paying him to keep out of your little thing in Melrose, you pay me now. Double. Once for me, once for my partner."

"Ce qui?" the guy spits. "Merde! Ce n'est pas juste!"

Choudry kicks him in the face. The guy spits teeth onto the van floor.

"Double, you understand me? Or I kick that fucking door open with you cuffed to it and go for a little drive," Choudry says. The guy nods mournfully, and Choudry smiles. Not for Peter Singh, who was a liar and a douche. But for the upgrade he's planning on the soundbox singing to him quietly from his pocket.

Dying From Too Much

by James Peach, Nashville, TN, USA

I've got 12 hours to live. I've managed to do things in the last 24 that most people spend their whole lives fantasizing about. Some of them I did so that when I do die, people will say, "Herman was a good guy in the end." Other things I did because most people spend their whole lives fearing the consequences. Most of the things I did because I just don't give a fuck now. Why should I?

I've stolen.

I've killed.

I've hurt myself.

I've eaten until I threw up. Four times.

I've given homeless people thousands of dollars. That was gonna be for a new game system.

I told my moms that I love them. Susan didn't care. Nokia didn't understand why I did it. She didn't think about it very long, though, before her soundbox finished charging and she went right back to what she does best, which is getting high.

I haven't done any drugs, because if there's nothing there after you die, it just isn't smart to waste the time I have left as a high retard. Besides, I can't think of any I haven't already done.

It's not fair, but there's really no time to cry about it. Not my fault, anyways, and I can't change it. The only person that may be able to fix me wants more money than I can get in time without doing things to myself that would completely negate my will to live anyways. If it weren't my own life that was ending, I might be amused that our very own local kingpin is also the most capable doctor in the country. I admire his drive, though. I had three jobs, but this guy…….Ah fuck that. Fuck Doctor Edgar.

People are telling me that there was a time when people in the poorest parts of the world died before they hit my age because they didn't have enough. I'm dying because we have too much.

All of a sudden, dying a high retard is sounding really good.

Later on, I'll go sit at Riverfront Park to watch the fireworks. Most people in Nashville don't remember why we have fireworks this time of year. I do, but I think it's stupid. Nobody throws a parade when a beaten child grows up to beat his kids, so why shoot fireworks on the fourth?

I hope hell isn't as bad as that dramatic reenactment they did on the news last week.

The realization of the stupidity of all of the things I wanted to be when I grew up is just now hitting me. If I weren't dying, I'd go back to school. I could've had my masters by now. I don't regret the way I did things, I'm just saying.

Well, it's about time to wrap it up, I guess. I'm gonna stick this note…….Shit, I dunno where. I want someone to miss me. Maybe as my last good deed, I'll go to the hospital and die there, so I can save people the struggle of schlepping my ninety-pound body to the crematorium. Hopefully, they'll see me and say, "Thanks, man. That was considerate."

I won't even see puberty. Goddammit.

The Deegan Pt. I

by Monk, New York City, NY, USA

Inside the cockroach-shaped van, Anton Choudry brushes coconut burfi crumbs off his chest, licks his fingertips, and swishes cold tea between his cheeks to wash away the copper taste of bile. He’s six hours without a hit, and the DTs are crashing hard. His upper lip smells like ghee and stale sweat, thinning hair feels greasy and brittle, and his wrinkled white suit is a roadmap of New York marked with food and sweat stains, Albany starred by a hole in his lapel, where he nodded off and let a cigarette eat through the cheap linen. Thirty pounds ago, the outfit wrapped his athletic build perfectly. Now, it resembles a circus tent, pants held up by suspenders, untucked shirt reaching to his knees. His pant cuffs are tattered and black from dragging the streets. The roof of his mouth feels like sandpaper. He moistens it with the rest of his tea, slug of condensed milk looking up at him like dead larva from the bottom of the paper cup. Absently, he takes the soundbox from his breast pocket, rolls the little powder blue cube around in his palm, and marvels at its chipped, dirty surface. Earbuds and a tattered lanyard dangle, meant to hang the thing around his neck. 'Like a noose,' he thinks, not completely inaccurate. One side is devoted to a touch-sensitive screen big enough for his boney thumb to cycle through highs and check the device’s settings. There's a moment of panic when he sees the battery's almost flat, but remembers his shift is nearly up, and there’s a charger in his car.

This particular soundbox is not cheap, made in a San Jose sweatshop, surgically embedded in some poor bastard's musculature, and muled across the continent to the Rotten Apple, where it is prohibited by no less than fourteen different agencies. Anton’s favorite setting, rock3rblue, rewires his brain for nothing but endorphin production. It’s an ultra-caffeinated non-stop brainless rush. He can go three days without sleep, run a thirty-mile marathon, rescue a busload of children from a burning orphanage, leap tall buildings in a single bound...and crash for a solid thirty-six hours after each hit. NASA is less volatile, but he couldn’t feel his fingertips for two days after the last hit, and didn’t find the sensation of weightlessness particularly appealing. There’s beepboxxx, which some people on the street call sexk1tten, but he’s too embarrassed by cum stains on the front of his pants to experiment while on duty. That leaves Aiaia, the one high he hasn’t tried. The little blue and green icon beckons from the soundbox, but he’s heard nothing of it on the street. It’s a mystery high, and Anton’s just not desperate enough to leave the safety of rock3rblue, just yet. He could download new, recognizable highs from that one Latvian site, but it would leave fingerprints on his financial records.
It would also be admitting he is an addict.

And cops are not addicts.

Cops are hardworking civil servants who put their lives on the line every day. They may occasionally overindulge, but they are not addicts.

Not when they are on duty, and especially not when they are staking out the archeological curiosity that is the Deegan Motel, gone through many incarnations, but clinging today to its essence as a cheap two-story whorehouse. Choudry’s undercover police van is stuffed mostly with surveillance equipment, but there is a bunk for late nights like this, moon rising above the ragged Bronx skyline. No sleep for Choudry, though. No rock3rblue, either, as Captain Mammoud has called down Internal Affairs on his least favorite detective. There has long been an unspoken acknowledgment of Choudry’s condition, and for a time the Captain was tolerant. But with his partner dead, the 50th Precinct's Vice Squad has whittled down to Choudry, Vincent Scutieri, Jean-Pierre Ngekwe, Philip Proudhawk, Tiny Schwarzbaum, and the ghost of Peter Singh. The Captain needs every officer he can get, but isn’t stupid or frenzied enough to keep a quasi-functional flophead walking the streets with a paingun. He’s tired of Choudry’s antics. Old Pete’s death is the last straw.

Internal Affairs tossed Choudry’s locker twice this week, and have an appointment to interview him in the morning. Altered soundbox neurology may not show up on urinalysis, but Choudry is pretty sure a two-day hangover qualifies him for the court-ordered EKG where it does. They pinched Tony Vasili over in Robbery/Homicide for that. Before him, O’Brien in Anti-Terror. Too many times, Choudry has witnessed people go to jail or die for being stupid. Not him. So for now, he bombs the DTs with forty cups of intensely sugared tea, fluorescent orange power drinks that taste like boiled styrofoam, and a weird vitamin concoction bought off a mad Nigerian on 217th Street.

Anton Choudry is vibrating.

He praises himself shamelessly for once again dodging Internal Affairs’ traps, tucking his precious soundbox back into the nest of his breast pocket, fumbling at his paingun, and waiting for his partner's killer to step out of the Deegan into the cold Bronx night.