Seven Demons Aidan Truhen (reading an ebook TXT) 📖

are fornicating as bears do. They are not real discreet about it.

GNARR! GNARRK HRONK! WHUF WHUF WHUF HRONK!

Go at it bear fuckers. Raise the roof.

The world turns and no doubt that is nice but I am working. I am working with my modern butchered consumer electronics and my anarcho-socialist ice kobold security to do crimes.

There are places on the interwebs where good children do not go. One of these places is called G-Bread. Do not ask me why it is called G-Bread. It is because of the witch’s cottage in the fairy tale. These people are deep into their dark-fantasy-lifestyle choices much of their technological security revolves around magic circles and naked chanting. Mr. Friday and Mr. Dory look at this place the way a consultant ENT guy looks at you putting a paper clip in your ear to scrape the wax out.

No but seriously do not put that shit in your ear it is not okay.

So in consequences of some poor admin decisions and a lack of basic competence, G-Bread is where you commission bored Chinese kids to run DNS attacks on your neighbor’s email and then because the whole place leaks like a slug’s asshole you go to jail. No sensible criminal person would ever go to G-Bread but I guess not every terrorist is a fucking ghost mastermind like in the movies so maybe they do.

Never do crimes on G-Bread.

But just like a nude masterpiece hidden under a crappy picture of a vase, so there is something under G-Bread. If you enter the wrong password three times and you remove the numbers from the end of the resultant URL you get sent to another place and if you enter the right password there you’re in Halcyon, and Halcyon is the place where your ENT guy goes to get laid with ophthalmologists.

Dirty dirty dirty ophthalmologists.

Not literally but that could also be arranged on Halcyon.

On Halcyon I have posted an offer: If you commit any serious crime anywhere in the world and publicly identify yourself as Jack Price you can claim an extra ten thousand dollars.

If someone is arrested in the commission of such a crime and you free them with violence you can claim one hundred thousand dollars.

If you are a member of the law enforcement community and you free them you can claim seven million four hundred and eighty-one thousand nine hundred and forty-one dollars from a total remuneration pot of one hundred million dollars.

If you can supply evidence of someone gaming the system you get a full ten million dollars on presentation of their polished skull on a stick.

I did not want to be too forward about this so I have used Sharkey’s login information and his bank account that seems only fair because I did try really hard not to explode his balls and it’s not like he had any descendants other than those formerly resident as potential in said balls. At least not that I know of but actually he probably did and I make a note to put someone on that.

Then I get up and jump in the river instead of showering and I discover that the river is glacial meltwater and my penis is very unhappy with me.

Lucille swims for half an hour he is secretly made of walrus. When he emerges his walrus man parts are like sweet potato. Doc looks at him through infrared goggles and says his groin is actually two degrees warmer than the rest of his body. This is autonomous urogenital thermogenesis and very interesting scientifically speaking. Doc says I should really look. I tell Doc she is a genius and a woman of tomorrow and I do not look at Lucille’s appalling nethers through high-tech surveillance gear that is not my jam. I go and make art.

But on second thought I do make Doc take pictures because art is where you find it and the more mysterious and horrible the better and if there is anywhere in the universe more mysterious and horrible than Lucille’s sweet potato walrus lovesack I do not know where it could be and I do not want to.

—

“Boss it is impossible.”

“Nothing is impossible.”

“Actually boss—”

“Yes all right lots of things are impossible what impossible thing is this?”

“The thing.”

“What thing.”

“The thing that you said.”

“What—”

“The guy in the marina. Boss he is not there. There’s pictures of the back of his head and like that. But he does not want to be seen.”

“Is there a picture of his ear? I read where they can do ID now with just ears—”

“Boss. I am the nerd in this conversation. There is no good picture of his ear also the availability of ear comparison data is not great.”

“So we have just his back?”

“Yeah shoulders head and butt—”

“How are there pictures of his butt?”

“Like in his suit from behind? The bellhops in the marina hotel wear body cams—”

“Oh so not like his actual butt—”

“No not his actual butt that would be weird—”

“If we had his actual butt could we identify it?”

“If we had his actual butt we would have the rest of him or else I guess it would not be so much an issue anymore boss.”

“But if we just as a matter of curiosity if—”

“No.”

“Seriously?”

“Boss—”

“Yeah okay. It’s just he worries about his body mass index so—oh.”

“What oh?”

“Soup.”

“Soup?”

“I am going to kill him with soup Charlie.”

“Um okay?”

“Not with soup maybe but definitely because of soup.”

“Yes?”

“Soup and emeralds Charlie. These are the key things here. I must go now.”

“Where?”

“Bogotá.”

—

Some things you got to do in person. There’s no phoning it in there’s just showing up. Often they’re little things like this but you still got to go and it can only be you.

Can’t take the Demon plane they will be watching that. Gonna be some guy named Urs in the bag-handling line who has a friend who has a friend who works for Eiger. A woman called Charlotte who works passport control. Someone.

Happily I have close relationships in the international pilot community I can draw on so I will