Without looking up from her screen the HisCor agent prods me out of my hesitation with mellow words delivered in a soothing tone, “Just approximate time and location of the first strong memory.”

Despite the coaxing timbre her voice irritates me. Immersed she seeks confirmation of whatever is on her screen which makes me bridle. She’s attractive, she smells good yet her words and inattention are irritating.

“Tell me again,” I respond, “what exactly is the HCB?” The question brings her gaze up slowly to meet mine. Her eyes momentarily narrow before her reply becomes an exercise in studied patience. “We are the Historical Corrections Bureau.” she says as she lays the screen she is studying flat on the table between us. “Our remit is to confirm or correct the Historical Record. It has come to our attention that you are gifted with certain genetic markers that sets you apart from millions of others.” her tone is almost flattering.

“Markers?”

“Your genetically trisomic without any attendant impairment. That in itself is rare. So your a perfect candidate for the Bureau.”

“How so?” I adjust my voice to be less confronting. Difficult to be aloof from that face.
“I understand your reticence.” she says reaching her hand across the table to touch mine but pulls back a centimetre from contact. She continues but in a voice seemingly discomfited by her breach of a protocol that dictates neutrality. “You have a gift. You can explore your genetic memory but your uniqueness isolates you from being subsumed into another memory stream resulting from contact with another’s DNA.”

“I don’t want to sound venal but is there an immediate benefit for me in this?”

Her soft gaze abruptly changes to flinty, disappointed, I suspect she thinks I’m another one shrinking from the greater good to a position of reductive bargaining. Her voice changes to business.

“There is a stipend attached which would be adequate for your needs and an added remote area allowance for Junking.”

“Junking?”

“Junking is the term used for going into your genetic memory. Agents working for the Bureau are called Junkers.”

“Remote area allowance?”

“You will be away and compensated for that.” she answers and looks back to her tablet. “Added to remote allowances are bonuses for confirmable corrections to the Historical Record. All in all totalling an attractive package.”

It takes me long seconds to consider what she has just conveyed. She sits quietly, eyes to screen but listening carefully for any movement, shift in my seated position, my breathing assessing me. Undoubtedly later she will review the CCTV. Eventually I speak, “One more question.” she looks up and nods.

“Why now? The deeds are done. Nothing can change the past. What good can come of editing a paradigm we’re comfortable with?”

Her answer feels rote.“Recorded History is always from the perspective of those writing it. Neutral referees can observe and report the truth.”

“Truth as they see it?”

“No, truth as the consensus sees it. No single Junker is assigned to an event. Others observe the same event. Consensus determines what is written from there.” she gives me the stare before asking, “Satisfied?”

“And publishing of the new record?”

“What corrections are published is determined by the benefit to the whole in the long term.”

“Again, who determines what is beneficial?”

There is an exasperation in her next move. She reaches down to pick up the bag leaning against the leg of her chair and begins to put the pad she’s been studying into the bag. “We can go on forever with this to and fro. It’s alright. If you’re unwilling we can’t induct you. You have doubts and misgivings which is fine. You have to be agreeable, not greedy. Thank you for your time Matthew.” she says as she starts to get up. “If you have to think about it this might not be for you.” I can see a meal ticket walking out.

“Historical Corrections Bureau,” I say getting to my feet. She stops at the door, turns, “I’m not religious but a religious man called Augustine, later Saint, said about history and man’s role in it that it is all about the will and providence of God, that studying, discerning, praising the eternal design of God is submission to the true path. However you define God, the precession, genetic inheritance, quantum physics, whatever. The point is that I for one hope there is an eternal design and I am contented to study, discern and perhaps even praise that design and if the HCB can help find truth in such design I’m on board.”

She pauses at the door, debating with herself, assessing my sincerity to finally utter the words that will change everything. “Alright then.”

Without smiling she comes back into the room, sits back down at the table, retrieves the pad from the bag she has just put on the floor by the chair and says, “Shall we begin?”

“Where?” I ask as if its been an age since the earlier diversion.

Her mellow tone returns smoothly,“Just approximatetime and location of the first strong memory.”

Feeling she has manipulated me drops ontome like a lesson. Green eyes may well be my downfall. Despite my doubts if my candidacy is successful the money will be a lifeline. Poverty does not sit well with me nowadays where everyone is scrabbling in a world of shrinking opportunity. My genetic inheritance delivers an unanticipated but welcome respite. With that in mind I lock onto her green eyes and begin.

“I am the young boy standing by the iron picket fence on King street outside my house. My sister is standing next to me, one of her long socks around her ankle. She is wearing a pink bibbed dress and white socks and scuffed whiteclose toed flower girl shoes. I am dressed in long shorts, long socks and black shoes. My hand on my sister’s shoulder aswe both stare through iron pickets in the fence,peering at the window across the mosaic paved porch. I can hear the slap of the leather belt on my mother’s skin, her whimpers as the blows fall, and the guttural, demonic cursing of my father as he metes out the punishment for her daring to leave him. With the sound of every slashing blow I am diminished. Iattempted to shield my mother, but my father grabbed me by the hair and threw me outside onto the porch as my sister ducked aroundthe enraged colossus to follow me out. We stared up at the slammed door. I was in an agony of impotence. I vowed then that when the time came and I was big enough I would kill my father. Longbefore the impact, before I moved north, before I met Dalena.

2A.

Segue to an indeterminate period.

My name is Matthew Parrish. I am tasked with killing a man. An abomination who violated my contractee’s daughter. I’ve never killed a person but these are straitened times. The proposed target runs a nightclub for his uncle whose connections insulate him from lawenforcement.Rohypnol in a sweet, dark drink leads to the client’s daughter sodomised and left lying in her own puke in aninner city lane behind a dance clubthe target runs.The contractee is well connected too, but in the tax accountantworld. She could audit his uncle and their businesses into oblivion but that would take too long. She wants her daughter avenged. A rather masculine thing for a woman to contract. For her it is a compulsion. Pondering on how to kill this man I resort to my favourite thinking stimulus; Beverley Knight singing pop at the Albert Hall. I slip into her soulful intonation, the lazy impassioned articulation and as I slide into the magic of that magnificent voice the fog obscuring thought lifts and the way forward is unveiled.

First intimation of what is to envelop all else, is tangentially related to this particular commission.

I call Romany. Romany is tall, could be described as lanky without an ounce of fat on his frame. Lean like a WW2 camp inmate just released from Buna IV. His features are hatchet sharp, his eyes piercing green. He is called Romany because he claims to be Romany Gypsy. We shared a philosophy tutorial group and became friends but lost contact over the years. His mind is quick, capable of comprehending the most tortured and abstruse philosophical propositions. He often held his own tutorials after lectures to unravel and simplify what some lecturers failed to transmit through obscure didactics. He explained Zizek, Derida, Spivak and refreshingly held all the philosophers in equal contempt their conceited explanations of the inexplicable. Detesting chronic obfuscation of what is sublime and ubiquitous. His one hero philosopher is Socrates. Ironic considering the Socratic conception of the idyllic state is totalitarian and the philosophical underpinning of the National Socialist experiment. All the rest he considers unnecessary, absurd as the maths needed to justify their tortured, mimetic, Aristotelian syllogisms.

Romany is waiting at the Astoria, a cafe close to the university. The place is always busy, has good free trade fresh roast coffee and a selection of the Lebanese baclavas I like. I am sure he is the man for the task. Greetings out of the way I explain the job over the background din of the cafe, hissing of espresso machine underlining conversations and coffee cup clangour blending into a cacophony of white noise burying words under a sonic blanket. I can barely hear him as he leans forward across the table.

“Without a word of a lie,” he says conspiratorially, “I can be in two places at the same time.”

His line drops into the space between us, bait for a response. I oblige. I challenge him, “How?”

“Don’t know why or how but it simply happens. I can get away with murder.” Romany says, excited almost shouting to be heard over the background noise. Occupants at the nearby table glance at us before turning back to their own deep talk.

“Does that relate to this job?”

“Isn’t it obvious?” He asks leaning further forward across the table.

“Not really.”

“Well, you want to kill a person and you don’t want to be caught?”

“Correct.”

“You have three options; kill him in the past, the present or in the future.”

“What the fuck are you talking about?”

I think Romany’s marbles have been loosened when he says. “Given the parameters you have to operate in and the state of forensic science and considering Edmond Locard’s axiom,”
I interrupt him,“Edmond Locard?”

With hint of exasperation Romany schools me, “University of Lyon, 1910 floats the basis of forensic science with Contact Trace Theory; that a criminal will always take away a trace of the scene of the crime with him and always leave a trace behind.” He pauses, a tremor in his hands as he picks up his cup, knee bouncing under the table, the picture of drug affected nervousness, waiting for the dullard in me to digest the information he has just imparted.

I nod. “Got it.” and mirror his sip of coffee.

“So, eventually, you’ll get caught. If however you commit the murder in.. let’s say a parallel universe..”

Again I interrupt, “Ah no, this is just crazy.” I start to get up. Clearly he has lost it. Meeting him has been futile. It has been years and he obviously has sunk into a delusional mire through persistent inebriation. At uni his was an act of chic rebelliousness, getting wasted in the music rooms in the library stacks, but now, years later it is just sad.

“Elsewhere. It won’t matter if you are caught.” he reasons, his voice croakily weary.

“Where’s elsewhere?” it’s my turn to be exasperated. Standing at the table, I demand, “In a fucken alternate universe?”

“Antistius.” he says by way of protest..

“What?” An urge to be sympathetic comes over me

“Antistius, forty four B.C.”

I hover while concentrates on sipping coffee.

“Alright, who is that?”

“Forensic derives from Antistius’ involvement in determining which Senator delivered the fatal blow to Caeser. Julius, you know.” his voice trails off.

“Relating to now, how?”

“It’s tangental I grant you”, He says, looking up at me with his clear green eyes. The pupils are normal, his eyes aren’t blood shot and apart from the shaking leg and hands he just seems tiredly edgy. Then he says, “Presenting his deliberations in the Forum, forensic, “before the forum” he gives birth to the eventual science of forensic pathology. Now let’s postulate that an outside observer witnessing the assassination could point the finger directly at the Senator responsible for the murder, thus the others in the plot might not have been collectively executed and the present might then be different.”

Still standing and uncertain of Romany’s sanity I hesitate reflecting on his acuity in the past, Exasperation with him spent and resigned to indulging him I ask, “How?”

“A tangent.” he says a little excited by retaining me as an audience, “rather actually a parallel universe sprung from a tangental intersection on the great spirals of time when one universe moves through another universe due to the phenomenon of gravitational lensing, from one big bang acting on another universe’s big bang, or another of a multitude of others.” He reins in his agitation holding his hands out palm down and muttering ‘whoa’ to himself. Then he looks at me again, “I can be in two places at the same time. Or even different times.” he says stressing the word ‘can’.

His delusion demands an answer to the improbable possibility. “Prove it.”

He looks up, his left eyebrow arching independent of the right. I remember this theatrical gesture he uses to sow doubt in debate before presenting a rebuttal. “I can and you’ll find it hard to believe.”

I sit back down to hear him out. It is at this point a shifting of the ground I thought was firm has begun. Later looking back this is the moment my assumptions – all my assumptions – become baseless and my universe became plastic.

He gets up, takes the coffee cups to the counter and orders two more from tattooed barista. The comely server notices him at the counter and briefly speaks to him. He returns and sits down at the table quickly to watch her bring the coffees. As she moves between the tables her unrestrained breasts sway against her tee shirt. Most of the heteros in the room also notice her. It’s seeing hyenas on the African savannah spotting prey. She sets the brews down with the faint smile she is conscious of the attention and goes to another table takes their order and returning with the assured bearing of a model on the catwalk confident her tip jar will be full by the end of shift. I notice the clientele is mostly male with a few lesbians also appreciating her kinesis, all glancing surreptitiously of course.

He picks up the piccolo she just put in front of him deeply inhaling the aroma of the coffee and her residual scent. He says archly after taking a beat, “I think its a single source Yemeni Blue Mountain.” and sighs with satisfaction. “Black and unsugared gives the measure of the coffee and the barista.” He looks over to where the young woman is standing at the counter as the barista works at the machine drawing off the endless orders for afigatos, cappucinos, lattes, long and short black, whites and in-betweens. Romany approvingly, “The barista keeps the machine clean. I like that.” he says as he carefully places the cup on the coffee ringed surface of the unvarnished table, “and she keeps the cafe full.”

In the pause between songs in the muzak when the hubbub dies briefly, I prompt him,“Two places at the same time?”

“No tricks. I’ve always been able to do it.”

“Be in two places at the same time?”

“To be clear, not be. See.”

I take a sip of the coffee he’d placed in front of me. “Explain.”

“Right then.” He takes another sip then asks “Do you know what epigenetics is?”

I can’t ignore the shake as he picks up the cup. Tremors of an old person, or Meth head. A certain attenuation, like an overwound string, I overlooked when we met. Remember he supported himself dealing acid at uni. Trip for days consuming product, perpetually on the edge of eviction from the cockroach infested hovels he could barely afford. Always acute mind despite the punishment he inflicted on his body. I remember he talked fast, like someone with thyroid issues, really fast. Not now. Fatigue shrouds him despite the nervous leg. A residue of excitement, like the stain on the inside of a much used coffee cup, animates his voice briefly from croaky to clear.

I answer his question,“Environment altering inheritable genetics.”

“That’s self evident.” he says finishing the last sip of his short black and placing it down. Abruptly he reaches across the table as if to slap me stopping a millimetre from skin. I feel the air rush on my cheek. “Hitting you, or not, as it happens is now etched into your memory which a descendant, if you have any will inherit. I’ve just altered your genome.” he says subsiding back into his chair.

My composure startled by Romany’s power move I feel embarrassment I’m trying not to show. Romany’s sudden, exaggerated action has drawn the attention of the other tables. “You’ve not proved anything other than you’re an asshole.”

“Ah, you’re peeved. Don’t be.” to placate me, “When you replay that in your mind later, away from here you will be in two places at the same time.”
“So what.” Embarrassment is turning to irritation, he must be able to hear it in my voice but ignores it.

“Now for the step further. I can see what happened just then from your viewpoint.”

“Bullshit.”

“Two places in actuality at the same moment.” he says holding my gaze without blinking.

“This is one place.”

“Alright, here’s a bad example. We shook hands in the past. Transferred some of your DNA to me. I have the capacity to access your epigenetic file now.”

I am sceptical to how he can prove the authenticity of his claim?

“Two places in actuality at the same moment.” he says holding my gaze without blinking.

“Alright, I’ll bite.”

“Don’t get angry.” He said, his hands up theatrically, palms out.

“Why would I?”

“I saw you having sex last night.” he drops a bombshell.

“Bullshit.”

“You were with a dark girl.”

Struck silent, waiting. How could he know? Stalking?

“You know..” he raises an eyebrow theatrically.

“No I don’t.”

Almost in exasperation he says, “You curb crawled last night you picked up a Maori girl in a bright pink barely there skirt, wearing heels.”

I look around to see if we are being overheard. “You were stalking?”

“No.” Romany says simply projecting his voice to lift above the din. “I was watching a Korean melodrama at home while you doggied this long limbed honey for half an hour.” He looks around to see if anyone overheard, “and then you read Winnie the Pooh to her for at least an hour. You said you admired her Tigger ink on the left side just above her mons veneris. And then went the dog on her for another half hour.”

I stare at him. It was true. How could he know. Intrigued, offended I ask, “After that?”

“You went home had a shower, wanked again in the shower and then went to bed.”

“How?”

“I was there.”

“But how.”

“The same way I saw Antistius deliver his conclusions of the fatal wound to Caesar in the Forum more than two thousand years ago.”

He pauses, waits for the pair at the next table to get up and leave. He avoids any suspicious glances by attracting the server’s attention to bring more coffee.

After its delivered he explains cradling the cup in his hands as if trying to warm them. “We shook years ago. Touched hands as we passed joints or shared bottles, right.”

I nod.

“That was enough of a DNA transfer.”

“So?”

“My gift, if you can call it a gift, I’m not sure anymore. is..” he pauses, I assume to consider whether to disclose any more. I wave my hand as if signalling to a reversing truck for him to continue which induces out of him the words, “Where I, as me can see your past experiences.”

“What?”

“I as me, observe, through your eyes but apart at the same time.”

“Mmm,” disbelief in an involuntary growl escapes me.

“What’s the DNA got to do with this?”

“DNA harbours genetic memory from inception to regeneration. You and I share a common ancestor six generations back, a Jennish lutenist from Bavaria. That’s how I accessed you.”

Again, “Bullshit!”

“Find another word, will you.” then contiuning, “You have to understand everything is informed and formed at a quantum level.”

“Hold on,” now it is my turn to hold my hands up, palms out, “I don’t follow.”

“By observing and I suppose being you I altered your universe. Something like the Heisenbergs bullshit thing. Observing you alters outcomes, sets in motion an alternative stream,” he pauses to consider the words, “universe if you will.”

“Parallel, you mean?”

“Not so much parallel as tangental. The line diverges from the point of observation and alternates reality while this one continues.”

“Which one are we in?”

“Both.” he says without hesitation.

“Both?”

“Both.” he picks up his cup and takes a long sip, puts it down and adds, “That’s how I can be in two places at once. I was there when Antistius accused Brutus as Caesar’s killer. I was there as you ploughed your oats into that honey coloured beauty. ”

“You’re describing myriad universes all of which we inhabit?” straining to find the words. “Which means,” the train of induction slowly leaves the station, “by inhabiting them all there must logically be the all encompassing One.”

Romany nods slowly at the portent of this. I can see he’s unconvinced I believe him.

“Believe it or not,” he states,”I see into the past of anyone who’s DNA I contract.”

“Anyone?” doubt vanishes over his witnessing of my previous night with Tigger girl.

“I already know what you are going to ask. What’s the point of all this? I swear, I’m not an assassin. I can’t change this,” he waves his hand to indicate the room and beyond, “and I can’t change the tangent that ensues from this.”

“How is this possible?”

“Years ago, remember at that first philology tutorial when you shook my hand you transferred your DNA to my hand. That sent a shot of epinephrine through me. My

Hippocampus picked it up, told the amygdala to start processing the information received via the hand shake.

The first time I junked you, because we’re relatively close it triggered a tangental universe resulting in me watching your ancestor who was a midshipman on the Royal Oak commanded by Prince Rupert in the Second Anglo Dutch War. For your information in that universe the Netherlands becomes a province of England and England never becomes Great Britain as it does in this universe in 1707. It allies itself with Germany in the third world war of the 1940s and reestablishes with its German allies the global slave trade. In that universe you currently are a mulatto manservant with a black mother and Mongolian father.”

“What?” I am not keeping up. “You can see both? And junked.”

“Yes, junked. Most of our DNA is junk DNA which is where the ancestral memories are.”

“How many universes according to you generate out of a, what do you call it, observation?”

“Too many.”

“How many?”

“Before I found junking, or rather junking found me, I thought these intimations was an occultic thing, which I suppose it is. Premonition, de ja vu, that sort of thing. Then sometime around twenty five the psychiatrist I was seeing lifted the lid and put me in touch with HisCor.”

“HisCor?”

“Historical corrections.” he says matter of factly. Abruptly he stands up, “Want another coffee?”

Without waiting for an answer takes the empty cups to the coffee station and embarks on a second attempt to flirt with the server. I feel disembodied, credulous, yet mind blown as I watch him, like in a grainy, black and white silent movie showing the little tramp break against the barrier of polite indifference on the part of the server. Is he raving the truth?

Returning to the table he thinks he momentarily made some ground in winning favour with the pretty server. He can’t see her expression change as he walks away dismissing any attraction she might have projected however briefly with the grimace to the barista who had watched the approach. Romany is junky thin, she is voluptuous. She’d break him in half.

“Historical corrections?” I prompt as he puts the coffees down.

Pushing the cup over to me he says, “Observing, and where it requires correcting the historical record for the accuracy of the first hand.” pauses while lifting his cup and ceremoniously imbibing the scent steaming off it’s surface. After, “I file a report every time I junk.”

“Where?” Will it be a bureau, a department in some huge grey building staffed by what.

“I don’t know.”

“You don’t know?”

“No.”

“An example of a correction?” I ask allured by the idea of exploring the past at the same time wondering is it enticement into a trap?

“Alright, now at this moment. This is a correction in that you’ve told me you want this creature dead.” I nod. He replies “Amen.”

“Will you do it?” I ask thinking he might be up for a contract killing.

“You’ve done it.” he says.

“What, in a tangental universe?”

‘No, in this one.”

I stare at him thinking I need to leave, he’s mad, when he says, “I’ll come.”

“Where?”

Without a scrap of hesitation he says, “With you.”

“I don’t get it, what’s happening?” I say, understating my perplexity

“You’ve set the wave in motion, my friend. The done cannot be undone. We’ll surf the consequence.”

“Oh shit!” I mutter as he smiles at me which I find unsettling. His eyes wide enough to see all the whites. Words form in my mind, “I’ll be fucked!”

2b. This might explain the fluidity of knowledge.

Quickly returning to the problem of executing my commission. I’ve taken the money now I have to produce a result which does not lead back to me which is where Romany comes in.

Client wants her daughter avenged. It is a compulsion for her. She is Nemesis bent on revenge.

I know all about compulsion. Compulsion located in past trauma dissolves control. Compulsion is a flowing current sweeping the psyche along. Action earths and salves the urge. Unappeased it goes latent to emerge later like Syphilis. Compulsion is the parent to madness.

Romany’s involvement initiates me into junking. My client’s compulsion to murder. If I believed Romany I would be absolved of murder in all the other universes. I only had to commit murder in this universe.

To that end I contrive to take Romany to meet the target at the target’s club in a suburb in the west of the city. We approach the club from the street pretending being drunk. As expected it is garish, deafening with the anvil beat of a soundtrack, made more so by a group of women on a hen party outing for some bride to be. Men in the establishment are there for the strippers gyrating on poles set on 3 stages. Some disappear into the curtained off blowjob cubicles with the entertainers who are bidden off stage with handfuls of notes.

The target is a young man wearing a purple shirt stretched across a muscular frame and a thick gold chain with a star and crescent medallion hanging outside his shirt. He has a neatly trimmed three day growth and a shaved head with a single tail sprouting from the back of his skull. It is clear he is a gym junky. He is standing with his back to the bar, which runs the length of one side of the room, surveying his demesne. To add to the cliché he is wearing sunglasses. Standing beside him is a companion thug, similarly dressed, leaning over saying something over the noise.

“You act most drunk.” I say to Romany and he instantly begins wavering on his feet. “We’ll go over to the bar and you stumble against him.”

“Sure.” he says, “And you stop him from belting me.”

“I’ll try. He’s big.”

“Nope, change of plan. You do the stumbling.”

Weighing his thin frame which wouldn’t take a beating very well I relented, “Alright then I’ll do it.”

“I’m with you bro.”

We saunter over to the bar where they are standing, both of us now mock drunk and quite plainly standing too close to our target.

“What the fuck, cunt?” Purple Shirt pushes me to arms length and says, “Distance dickhead.”

Romany comes around me and grabs his hand as if to shake it slurring his words, “Pleeesed too meet you friend. This is my friend, Digby.” he looks at me stew eyed, over acting, “We’re from..” he turns to me and shouts over the thumping of the sound system, “Where the fuck are you from Dig?”

I look at him blearily, “Coonafuckinbarrafuckinbran.”

“There you have it.” Romany says swivelling his face back to Purple Shirt, “He’s from Coona.”

“Who the fuck cares.”

“Well that’s unfriendly.” Romany replies drunkenly aggrieved.

Purple Shirt’s bouncer friend comes and stands towering over Romany and says, “Fucken buy a drink or a girl, mother fucker.”

Romany looks up at him and takes the bouncer’s paw in his hand which is promptly shaken off and says, “I think we’ll get a drink.” He nudges me to move along the bar away from them. He orders two boiler makers from the bare breasted bartender. He leans against the bar with his foot on the foot-rail, whispers to me, “He did it while the muscle watched.”

“Are you certain?” I ask.

“Yep. I saw it. The big bastard didn’t want to have anything to do with what happened. He detests his scum boss. Afterwards he came outside and got a cab for the girl, weirdly apologised to her for what happened. He’s partnered with the blonde stripper on the pole over there.” Romany says indicating over his shoulder to one of the stages. I glance over and see the fake-blonde hanging upside down on the pole on a raised dais, legs akimbo and as naked as the day she was born. “Crime by omission.” I say. “What about the boss?”

Romany looks over not even trying to hide his contempt for Purple Shirt. A long moment as Purple Shirt and Romany lock eyes.

“What are lookin at?” no mistaking the roid rage in his voice. Romany has his hands up in surrender as he whispers the aside, “He’s irredeemable. He’s done it before.” It’s a miracle I hear him through the throbbing percussive noise blaring from the speakers hanging from stand at the corners of the stage. After a long couple of seconds Purple Shirt starts to move towards us. I grab Romany’s arm, “Okay. I’ve got enough, let’s go.” We stagger out of the club leaving the untouched boilermakers on the bar. Punched by glaring sunlit heat outside we continue reeling up the street until we were out of camera shot. Around the corner I straighten up to chide Romany, “Mate, he would have popped you like a blackhead.” I am annoyed by him forcing the situation before I was satisfied with the reconnaissance. “You’re not coming next time.”

He shrugs, “Bury me standing, mother fucker.”

“You think you’ve been on your knees you’re whole life?” I’m irritated by him.

“How’d you know that expression?” he asks obviously intrigued.

“It’s a gypsy prayer. My grandmother is gypsy.”

Now it’s him looking at me perplexed. “How did I not see that?”

The contractee lives wealth in a harbour-side suburb. I visit her in her home office next to the garage housing an expensive European SUV and a smaller EV runabout. She opens the small door beside the roller door of the office and bids me come in. Wearing grey tracksuit pants, loose grey tee and a clip bunching her greying hair on top of her head she is barefoot with the gait of a much younger woman judging be the swing of her hips as I follow her in. Easing into an Eames Executive on the other side of the desk, a chair worth more than the car I drove up in, she gestures for me to take a seat.

“Mr Parrish.” she says as she blanks her computer screen and turns to face me. I slide my phone across the desk where she looks at it. Her expression turn stony as she looks at the face on the screen. “You’ve identified the right animal.” she says nodding.

“That’s him, then?”

“Yes.” she says drawing out the word in a sibilant hiss. “I’m encouraged you’ve done your due diligence.” I study her face as her unflinching gaze studies mine. Seconds stretch the silence. I need to see how stabile she might be under questioning. She is unfazed by my silent stare. Majority of people abhor silence. Most are compelled to blurt to ease their discomfort. A small bar fridge on a stand in the corner hums quietly in the background. “What’s your next step?” she asks. Only her lips move, the rest is sculpturally serene.

“Nothing for a few weeks and then you’ll just hear he’s dead because the cops will call you in for questioning. There must be no crypto trail between you and me, no link. No trace DNA to mark this visit.”
“I haven’t offered you a drink for that reason.”

“You’ll wipe cctv recording in the drive way outside.”

“Of course.” She replies. I am satisfied she will keep her word. “You’ll get it done, yes?” I answer with a nod.

Relief cracks the veneer of toughness. “My girl hasn’t left the house, much less her room. Showers, bathes ten times a day, her skin’s raw from scrubbing. Hasn’t been back to school. Hasn’t seen her friends, dropped all social media. She’s broken.” As she she talks she stares at the framed photograph on the desk by the computer, I assume of her daughter. Reaching into a draw of the desk she hands me a fat package of used bills. I weigh it in my hand without opening it to check.

“I expect you to fulfil your contract with extreme prejudice.”

Noncommittally I say, “Your definition?” I stand and go to the small door beside the roller door.

She rises from the desk and follows, “I want you to cut his eyes out, like the Iranians do.”

She is deadly, glowering at me from the shadow before I open the door to leave. Light floods in, “You’ll not be seeing me again, so goodbye.” I say and close the door leaving her in the shadow woman lost to suppressed fury and grief.

For the next few weeks I do a deep dive on my target. He leaves his club in the west shortly after 1pm every day and visits the same brothel hidden amongst warehouses and factories out near the new airport. He stays precisely 90 minutes, never with the same girl, before he gets back in his black plug-in beamer and crosses to the inner city nightclub. He leaves there about three and visits another brothel for an hour or so, arriving at his beachside apartment just before daybreak. Obviously he has a meth and coke fuelled sex drive. He has a reputation for the rough play for which he tips well. As long as he doesn’t kill a girl the houses allow his sadism. None of the sex-workers will entertain him a second time, Meaning only the Asian girls fresh off a plane or rotated from other establishments in the network will take him on, once. Almost every day he goes for a swim in an ocean pool near where he lives, then late afternoon spends more time at a beachside cafe, the same outside table every day, usually with a coterie of gym junkies with various Lebcuts. He doesn’t seem to sleep much, or at all. Tailing him exhausted me. More I learn about him by asking and observing the greater the breadcrumb trail I am leaving behind for any investigator.

I consider poisoning him with a fentanyl analogue available at any EDM venue when I chance on an article about jellyfish and a plan crystallises.I have never killed and in retrospect I can’t explain what I was thinking to acceptthe commission from the mother of the girl. I put it down to the modern syndrome of losing the ability todifferentiate fact from the fictionwe use for entertainment. My work has been confined to insurance fraud and property disputes over adultery but work thinned drastically in the epidemic so meeting rent moved higher on the urgency list. The job offered enough to see me through to next year and then some and delving into the details Ithink the world will benefit from the removal of this piece of scrunge.

The Tropics provided the neurotoxin and using a simple fine mesh sieve to collect a couple of jars of the thumbnail sized Irukandji jellyfish. I came back south with the plan to drop a jar of cranky Irukandjis on him. The adrenaline and noradrenaline reaction to the toxin will result in a heart attack. Genius I think. The pitiful extent to which my deranged thinking has led.

As it turns out the victim’s father who is divorced from the contractee sorts the whole thing out for me. He goes to the club and slashes the target’s throat. Purple shirt bleeds out within twenty seconds, problem solved. My fee becomes a tax deduction as a business expense for the client confirmed by the invoice I provide on request. I take the tax hit over the disclosed income, pleased I didn’t have to kill anybody. She returns a note emphasising the need for discretion and that is the end of it.

From all of this another idea occurs, no killing, full stop. To help diversify the services I offer I meet with Romany at the same cafe a few weeks later. I get straight to the point. I ask him which drugs open the door to junking.

He looks at me over the table cocking an eyebrow in surprise. “You either have it or you don’t.”

“How do you know if you’ve got it?” I ask leaning closer.

He studies my face for a moment. “De ja vu.”

“What?”

“Do you get de ja vu flashes?” he asks picking up his cup and sniffing the steamed aroma of coffee before taking a sip.

“Sometimes.”

“Sometimes often or sometimes rarely?” placing the cup back on the table.

Considering the question for a moment I answer “Often there are is premonitions rather than de ja vu flashes. Anticipations of things that haven’t happened yet.”

“Do they eventuate?”

“Rarely.”

He looks at me intently, “When you say premonitions do you mean educated guesses for outcomes or momentary insights like visions? Are they something or somewhere you’ve been or done before?”

Meeting his eyes it suddenly occurs to me I know next to nothing about Romany’s activities since we parted ways after University. He dropped out over a disagreement with a lecturer over curriculum. I never finished. His distemper was over a girl though he never said. I met him on the Corso years later. Said he moved from the inner city to the beach, implying it was for his health. Had a small flat overlooking the ocean on East Hill. He preferred spending time on the Corso watching the inexhaustible variety of passersby. Never went into the sea. Didn’t like the surf. Watching people, he said quietened his mind. Worse for wear yet without a detectable hint of any sort of intoxication. We talk but never about personal subjects. Abstracts are the mainstay of our association.

“So how do you get by?” I ask him the only time I ever do.

“I audit.” he says without hesitation.

“Does it pay?”

“Money is deposited in an account.”

“By whom?”

“People who want answers”

“To what questions?”

“Ancestors, past lives, holes in memories.”

“Dead relatives?

Romany seems affronted. “I’m not a fucken medium. I don’t contact the dead. They don’t speak through me.” He is silent, poking at a fried chip in the cardboard tray on his lap.“Remember I told you I saw what you had done the night before, you know fucking the kiwi, I investigate memories and experiences ingrained into DNA.”

“Lamarck.”

“Nah. It is what it is. Every action has an effect. On you, on the universe. You’re DNA is a palimpsest taking on successive impressions.”

“You can read them?”

“No, I watch them.” We don’t speak for a while as he eats his chips while seagulls and pigeons congregate at our feet. He eats, chewing slowly, abstracted staring into space. I get a two coffees from the kiosk nearby. Putting the cup beside him on the bench seems to break him out of his revery. With a sidelong. “Tagging into alternate time lines like having de ja vu moments is tapping into parallels, premonitions is tapping into tangents.

“What does that mean?” I’m hard pressed to hide my frustration. Instinct tells me what he says is significant. Its meaning eludes, like glimpsing something in your peripheral vision that’s not there.

“It’s hard to wrap your head around but trust me, I think you might have it.”

“How do I know for sure?” I ask.

In two words. “You’ll know.”

Then belatedly answering my question asked earlier he says., “Shrooms.”

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