Liz Dream:

The Faint Storm and The Tower in The Eye

“Liz was floating in the water, well it was more like flowing through it, like her body was part of it, part of an infinite ocean that was the fabric of all existence.

At first it was calm, only a morning breeze over still water, peaceful and quiet. She felt free and save and she had no care in the world. Her world was at peace.

She floated like that for what seemed a lifetime. Sometimes the sun was overhead and sometimes it was dark, the sky reflecting in the water as if she was moving through fields of stars. She was floating through the universe itself. Then it was sunny again. Then, all of a sudden, it was raining. An easy spring rain. Big colorful rainbows everywhere, with colors in them she never knew existed. At times, only the moon shone, its light feeling like pure magic.

And sometimes the sun would set and the world would seem more beautiful than anything she had ever seen before.

Eventually as the eons stretched by, things began to change. What was once quiet began to make noises, what once was calm started to get rougher. Big thunderstorms arrived, more and more rain began to fall and for a while, lightning was the only thing that gave light to the world. In that time despair might have struck, but for a strange new light far away.

For on the horizon a strange light had appeared. It was a bright white light. It gave her hope. Hope that there still was some peace left in the world. At first the light was only the size of a star, but in time, it grew. Now it was more like a distant lighthouse.

Al around her hurricanes swept by. Waves the size of mountains crashed on top of her. But for a small area around a tower, where it was calm, the eye of the storm. There was a small island with a stone tower on it, and on top of it, there was the mysterious light. Not on the horizon anymore, but close by now. The light seemed to be the source of the calm. Its protector.

She drifted to the tower and when she got closer she could see there where stairs coming out of the water, surrounding the tower, leading to the top, leading to the white light. Strange to feel solid ground beneath her feet after centuries of being nothing more than a wave, she started to climb. First slow and hesitant then faster and faster. Step after step, the stairs seemed to go forever. But she had already known that it would be so, for a tower in an endless sea would not be less endless than the world it rises out of. Somehow she knew that was an important rule.

Countless time later, she reached the top. The white light was blinding, she could not see past it immediately, her eyes needed time to adjust to the brightness. Slowly a shape started to appear. A long time she stood there, just staring at it. After what seemed like another century, she realized that she could see him. For when things change very slowly, one does not notice the change. How long might she have stared at him, not realizing she was seeing something she did not see before? He was a very old man with a long white beard and on his head he was wearing a blue pointed hat, with white stars on it. It was the stars on his head that seemed to make the bright white light. He smiled at her, a proud look. It was the look a proud father might have, when his daughter has spoken her first words. Slowly she came closer, she could she his eyes now. Pale blue eyes. Wisdom shone out of them.”.

Somewhere is the deep dark fold of the world, there was a noise. A sort of rhythmic chirping sound, growing louder and nearer all the time. Timothy somewhere knew what it was. It was like hearing something that he heard every day, but for the life of him, he could not place it. It was important though, he knew that. Anyway, it was much too nice here to care about that. It probably would stop anytime now. Yes, see. It just stopped..

Damn, there it was again. Why was this happening? What had he done to deserve hearing this irritating sound? Who was doing this?

“What are you?”, he asked, in the direction of the strange sound.

The sound did not answer.

“Please stop doing that!”, he pleaded with it.

Still no response.

Well, sounds probably could not speak, so why would he expect it to? That was just ridiculous. So, how was he ever going to find out what that sound was? Maybe he should open his eyes and take a look.. Why did he have his eyes closed anyway? No wonder everything was dark. There were no lights when you close your eyes. Light.. There was something about lights, or a light, or something, but he could not remember what it was. Oh well, he could do nothing about that now, he had to open his eyes and wake up. Wake up! That was it. He had his eye closed because he was asleep!

Timothy opened his eyes and sat up in his bed. He expected there to be lights when he opened his eyes, but it was still dark.

“Lights!”, he ordered, and the old lamp on the flaky ceiling above his bed lit up. Now he could see his small bedroom. Orange walls, one window to his right from which a soft night breeze was coming through the half open curtains. On his left the wall closet was open and his clothes were laying disorderly in front of it scattered on the floor. Right of him he had a small wooden nightstand with his notebook, his antique watch and his phone on it. His phone was what was making all the noise. It must have been going for quite some time now, for it to make so much noise.

“Yes, this is Tim.”, he shouted above the loudness of the ring tone, which was a signal for the phone to answer the caller.

“... hurry up and get those people out of ... wait; Tim! Tim, is that you?”, came out of his phone.

“Yeah Pete, it's me! What's going on? Why are you calling me in the middle of the night? What time is it anyway? Where are you?”.

“It's three fifty five and instead of lying in bed keeping my wife awake with my snoring, I'm standing here in the god-damn rain at fifth and Europa looking at three dead bodies, three fucking assassinated dead bodies, three fucking assassinated dead bodies that are hanging upside down from a freaking lamp post!”.

“Upside down!?”, Tim gasped. “Hands and feet bound with..”, he started.

“Polysynthetic nano fibers.”, Pete finished.

“Crap!”.

“So I take it that people have seen them hanging? Is there anyway you can still contain it?”

“It's going to be difficult, but if we're lucky we might be able to. Listen Tim, I need you to come in. I need you to come in now and I need you to be prepared for a hell of a difficult investigation. You're the only one who can do it.”.

Timothy was the last and only detective on the planet, that had any experience in solving murder cases. Five years ago, when the last murder, until now, was committed he was a freshly promoted detective and he got the job of solving it. He never really understood why they assigned the case to him, but he got it and solved it. Something which gave him a bit of a celebrity status with the public.

The scary thing was, that this murder had exactly the same ammo as that one. Come to think about it, it even was the same date! This was not good. Not many people knew about the murder. At least not many people remember knowing it anyway. Al civilians got the experience erased from their memories.

“I'll be there as soon as I can!”, said Tim while he jumped out of bed and started to trash around the room trying to find some clothes, “You know what needs to be done? Move everybody out of there, clear at least a block and what ever you do, don't disturb anything!”.

“I know, I'm handling it. See you soon!”, and with that Pete closed the connection.

“See you soon Pete. Too soon. Crap, this is bad!”, Tim spoke to himself while he almost fell over, putting on his pants. “House, I need some strong coffee!”.

“The coffee is already running.”, a soft friendly, but not too friendly voice answered back.

When he first moved in, his house had a bit too sweet a voice for his liking. Every time the house said something, it sounded to him like it was talking to a child. Apparently the house somehow picked up on that, because within a few weeks it gradually started to sound different, until it sounded like it sounded now. Which was perfect as far as Timothy was concerned. “Thanks house!”.

“You're welcome, sir.”.

His house started to really get to know him. He liked that.

So where did he put his shoes, under his bed or next to the couch? He looked around. Not under his bed, must be the couch.

Walking to his small living room, he took a look in the hallway mirror. Half long black hair, dark eyebrows, blue eyes, he should shave though. But there was no time for that now.

While he walked through his living room to the kitchen, he spotted one shoe in front of the television. One down, one to go.

In the kitchen his cup of coffee stood waiting for him on the counter, nice! He took a sip. Ahh.. That was what he needed, welcome to coffee heaven.. Carrying his steaming cup back to the living room, he spotted his other shoe under the window, that was two.

He took another sip of his coffee and put the cup down on the small table next to the couch and gathered his shoes together. Putting them on, it all began to sink in. A taikosuy killing. That was really bad! Another white zone murder, not five years after the previous one. Same ammo, but it could not be the same perpetrator.

These things should not be happening outside the dark zones, not on earth anyway. That's why they had

Forty years ago the earth government decided to change the way criminal law worked. All unnecessary or outdated laws where removed. Laws against things like substance abuse and prostitution did not seem to make sense any longer. People simple did not get addicted to drugs anymore since all the same effects could be obtained using direct brain stimulation through implants, without the harm of getting addicted. Further more it seems ridiculous to restrict sex, because everybody did it and sexual transmitted diseases where a thing of the past, together with all other diseases.

So the law was changes. All really bad things like murder and rape where still illegal, with the penalty of thought alteration. Burglary laws where withdrawn, because property did not mean anything anymore.

/* Maybe I should use this part later on in the story */

On the elevator, down to the basement he came across Charlie. She lived five floors below him on the twentieth and she was a prostitute. Not one of those that spends all there time, down in the dark corners of the city. No, a classy one. A real licensed prostitute, she worked for the rich guys, in the penthouses and offices of the managers of major cooperations, like Space Fair and Daihunda and even, he heard, one time for the major, when his regular girl was taking her mother to a spa on Venus. She came fully equipped with every implant you could ever fantasize about, she once told him. From multicolor toe nails and irises to a resizable nose and boobs. She could even change her posture, go from skinny to fat, or anything in between, if you asked her in advance and payed extra.

“Hi Tim, how are you doing? You look preoccupied, is something wrong?”.

Timothy composed himself and looked up. “Hey Charlie.. I'm fine,”, he lied,” it's just work. Sometimes it's a bit stressful. How are you? You look great. Going on a job?”.

“I'm good. Yeah, 'got a late night job. I usually don't take jobs this late, but she's paying a lot for it and I'm covering for Denise. She has the flue, poor thing. You remember Denise? Can't stop talking about shoes and earrings. You met her at my birthday party?”.

Charlie had a friendly intelligent voice and she always made you feel comfortable when she talked to you. He liked that about her. Trying not to notice her figure to publicly, he said: “Right, I remember her. Blond hair and green eyes. The one who gave you the gold plated nail polisher.”.

Charlie and he had met way back, when he was working on the first case as a detective.

© Mart van de Sanden