Looking for Dementia

Kenny Weezle started out as a DJ with the Roving Raves of Technopolis, as they were once called, and eventually established a permanent club, Dementia, on the eastern, remote shores of the Indian River. One room had a panoramic view of SpacePort, the space travel center, which was the best view of takeoffs and landings anywhere in the metro-Technopolis area. The part of Dementia facing west over the Indian River had no windows at all and was camouflaged to look like jungle overgrowth. That you had to know about the club through word-of-mouth was by design.

Off to the side of the largest room, filled with gyrating people working hard to have a good time in the dim light, was a smaller well-lighted smoke-filled room. It was sound-proof, had a separate air conditioning system, and had its own side-entrance. This secret room could only be accessed by boat from the Indian River.

Boats docked at a covered pier and a valet quickly lifted the boats with a large crane onto storage racks out of site of the river. Boats that usually docked there bore the World Wide Corporation logo of a brown eagle head in the middle of a laurel leaf semi-wreath. It looked like Julius Caesar had lost his laurel crown to a marauding bird of prey. Which, to the small resistance movement hiding under the radar in Technopolis, was a fitting symbol.

Kenny spun the latest tunes and sold liquor and drugs to the disenfranchised young people of Technopolis who came to this remote club on the Indian River. They were habitually too strung out on whatever the current illegal substance was to notice the secret room right next to them or that the air conditioning didn’t remove all of the smoke that occasionally leaked into their bar. They didn’t know there was a lounge for their older counterparts, also addicted, but to an age-old mood-altering drug that was now also illegal. Even if they had bothered to put it together that people still smoked tobacco, these young people would have no interest. Tobacco was so last millennium.

Inside this windowless room, called the Humidor Room by those select few who knew about it, was a walk-in cabinet kept at lower temperatures and humidity that housed hundreds of contraband cigarettes, cigars, pipe tobacco, and other tobacco products that only a very few highly vetted guests could afford to buy. They could smoke and play cards at one of the many padded tables provided with antique ashtrays. In a alcove, there was a boardroom-sized conference table, equipped with ashtrays and individual Visi-docking stations, so business could be conducted without missing a beat and with all the amenities.

This evening, the night before the first space travelers were to depart for the Moon, a larger than usual crowd had gathered to celebrate the event. Kenny had been playing tunes appropriate to the occasion and was entertaining a sweet young thing in his private booth. He was late for a date with Rita Tracer, but right now he was with someone more to his taste than the thirty-something Rita. He wanted to see Rita, sure, but first, he had to take care of another kind of business.

Kenny sat at his console, earbuds in. Behind him was a collection of old CDs, the medium of music distribution from a few eras ago. He kept them more out of nostalgia rather than anything practical. With earbuds, patrons could hear their own blends of favorite music or the special mix prepared and aired by Kenny.

Kenny housed this CD collection in a specially made wall-to-ceiling case, which did more than just display collectibles. It hid the only way in to the Humidor Room from the club side.

His visitor, a young woman wearing the latest clubbing style, pretended to be fascinated with his CD collection of old music.

There was a rap at the door and a man, way too old to be part of the usual crowd, came into the booth. He was dressed casually but correctly as if he were on a nautical jaunt, but his anxious frown suggested he was a messenger with bad news.

Ignoring the girl, he said to Kenny, “Medusa wants to see you in the Humidor Room. Now.”

The man withdrew like a well-trained butler, closing the sound-proof door behind him.

Kenny sat down heavily, shaken, his swagger with the girl gone.

“Out. Get out, right now,” he said to the girl. “And you haven’t seen or heard anything. Understand?”

The girl tossed her hair, smirked at Kenny like he was the last of the Big Time Losers. She didn’t know much about what went on behind the scenes in this place, but she did know there were dangerous people here. Maybe someday she would get to be part of it. She wanted to live dangerously. But not tonight. In spite of her assumed bravado, she left quickly.

Kenny looked at the time. He was already late to meet Rita. She called it a date. He called it, to himself of course, a business meeting. It was his part of a business deal he had with Car-ith Medusa. At the last minute, Medusa needed him to be on that list of travelers who were leaving for Eagle’s Landing tomorrow, and with Medusa, what she demanded from you was never an option.

Not being a relative, to get on the list he needed to have a legitimate reason for the trip. Rita could provide one. Rita didn’t want to go because that meant a confrontation with her husband Jarod and she didn't want to spring her plans to divorce him during the holidays.

Kenny was banking on Rita agreeing to let him escort her children on their journey to the Moon. Even though they were eight and ten, surely she could see they were too young to be traveling all that way alone, but she obstinately insisted there would be plenty of people to take care of them. Besides, she wanted Kenny with her for the holidays. She needed him. They would have a very cozy Wintermas. Just the two of them. Still, she was beginning to waver.

He locked the door after the girl and looked for an old Steely Dan remastered CD. As he took it out, the whole wall of ancient CDs moved just enough for him to slip into the hidden room.

Medusa was waiting, tapping the conference table with a slim envelope marked Personal and Confidential, her claw-like nails picking tea leaves out of her teeth.

Kenny wondered if he should sit. He looked around the conference table. There were papers still spread out in front of six places waiting for people to come back and resume the meeting. Medusa motioned him closer but did not offer him a seat.

Good. Maybe this wouldn’t take long and he would be able to salvage the date with Rita. He started to light a cigarette, but he then thought better of it. Medusa wasn’t smoking. He took the cigarette out of his mouth, trying to hide what he was doing, but Medusa wasn’t watching.

“Bad news,” she said, still not looking at him. She tapped the envelope again. “We have a setback, but nothing we can’t handle, of course, if we are steady and stay the course.”

He was still standing to one side of her so that she would have to turn to face him. She didn’t. She stayed focused on the envelope.

“You are going to the Moon tomorrow,” she said at last, stating a fact they both knew.

He was relieved. He was afraid she was going to throw him a curve. He had Rita half convinced that he should go to the Moon with the kids. To change plans now would ruin everything with her. She would get clingy, thinking he wanted to stay with her.

“So what’s the deal-eo,” he finally said, still nervous about this meeting.

“My sources tell me someone was added to the passenger list at the last minute. Some kind of high level scientist. Dr. Ted White. Who is he?”

Kenny shrugged. If the guy wasn’t on his favorite Visi-tainment or wasn’t in a band, he didn’t know him. Or cared to.

Medusa swirled around her tea mug, took a sip and made a face. “Ted White. Ted White. I must know him, but from where? He’s going to meet with Hawks. Something about security and the research being done. But who is he really?” she said again, tapping the table.

Kenny watched her long nails, wondering if they were as lethal as they looked. He ventured, “So I’ll be back before the New Year. I would sure like to have some time off.”

"Dr. Hawks prepares a Wintermas Holiday welcome"

Medusa ignored him, tapping her tea mug with her nails. Kenny worried that she might try biting them next. That would be downright ugly. “I don’t like this last minute stuff,” she went on. “Watch him. Report to me anything that doesn’t look … right.”

He nodded but he hadn’t a clue as to what she was talking about.

“I’ll send you a postcard.” He turned to leave.

“There is just one more thing.” He stopped moving toward the hidden door. She reached into the envelope and pulled out a single cigarette and held it up as if it were the Holy Grail and she just found it.

“We must get this to the Moon,” she said reverently. “There can be no delay. The next shuttle isn’t due to fly for another month and that would put us way behind schedule. We want to launch the product in the first quarter. With the research this cigarette contains, CABEL will set the financial and scientific community back on its heels, with CABEL dictating the future.”

Kenny didn’t know what she was talking about, but he nodded anyway. He gazed longingly at the cigarette Medusa still held up.

She finally looked straight at him and he wished she hadn’t. You never wanted Medusa to acknowledge your existence, never wanted her to realize you were a flesh-and-blood person who could be hurt. Especially when she was dangling a cigarette in front of your face. Disaster swirled around that cigarette.

“Spend New Years where you want. But if you want to be still breathing, you must get this cigarette to the Moon. It has to be this cigarette, do you understand? And get it to my man on the Moon colony.”

She held it up to catch the light better. “No one must know it even exists.”

Simple, right? Kenny grinned with confidence. Just get a pack of cigarettes, plant the dummy cigarette, give over the pack with the stash to “source.” He could even sneak a smoke when he could. Then come back to Earth. Collect his courier fee. Live happily ever after a rich man.

“I will know if you dare substitute another one. It would not be good for your health if you even try.”

Medusa tried to grin back at him, but the attempt was frightening. She looked at him, hard. “Don’t think you can slip in a substitute. It must be this cigarette,” she said again.

His smile faded. Maybe this was not going to be an easy job after all.

“But how do I connect with your agent? How do I….”

“That is your concern. When you get it there, my Moon operatives will take over.”

She fingered the cigarette, handling it like the most exotic and rare thing in the world. It was.

Hawks rehearses his Welcome speech

“You must tell no one about this. No one. The cigarette must not be discovered. You must keep it hidden. Then get a message to me when it is done.”

“But, but,” Kenny sputtered, all at sea again, “how do I get a message out to you from the Moon? You said you were blocking the communication link with Earth after the shuttle lands at MoonPort. It will be impossible….”

How did he know that? Kenny could kick himself. Now she would know that he listened in on the CABEL meeting that took place in this room earlier in the evening.

She stood, turned, and looked at him as if she wanted to be sure she recognized him if she saw him again. Suddenly, he was right back in her sights. Right where he had tried so hard not to be.

“You will find a way,” she said coldly. She put the cigarette back into the envelope, sealed it, and handed it to him.

“You will report when it is done.” She dismissed him. He took the envelope and almost ran back to his DJ cubbyhole.

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