The Hipster Who Leapt Through Time (The Hipster Trilogy Book 2) (34 page)

Oh, that smell. Thick and hairy. It reminded him of the prison cells in Minu.
 

He walked forward, past a number of the chimpanzees in their cages. Their names in black marker pen on white bits of paper. Albert, Ham, Holloman, and then, Miss Sam. Each of the chimpanzees looked at him with confusion. Some of them came to the fronts of their cages to stare up at the unfamiliar man. He ignored them and walked to Miss Sam. She was at the back of the cage, hiding as if she knew why he was there. Moomamu bent over and looked through to the back of the cage. Tiny, horrid living conditions. No animal should be kept in such a thing.

He walked further on and found a table full of papers, folders, a crappy old computer, some bowls of fruit (lots of bananas), and some eating sticks. He picked up the sharp eating stick and walked back towards Miss Sam’s cage.

He sighed as unlocked the clasp and swung the door open. He got down to his knees and looked into the cage. He held the eating stick out in front of him, unsure of how he was going to do what he was supposed to do.
 

He looked at the sweet little brown face with the bulbous eyes. She had her back turned to Moomamu and was looking at him over her own shoulder. She was scared, clutching a green length of string. On the floor were some rags, dirty browns and yellows. It reminded Moomamu of his own prison.
 

He had to kill Miss Sam. He had to. She would go on to destroy the world. She would go on to become a menace, not only to Earth but the universe. He had to end it before it began, and, more importantly, The Light had told Moomamu that if he killed the chimpanzee, he would take Moomamu home. He’d be free again, free to watch it all from a distance; to go back to his life in the stars where he could be alone to think.
 

Miss Sam pressed her hand to her chest and looked up to Moomamu, a little more confident now. If a chimpanzee could smile, this was probably it.

He sighed and the vision of Nisha Bhatia came to his mind. The woman who saved the children.
 

“No Miss Bhatia,” he said. “I don’t think I’m a killer either.”

He crouched down by the cage and reached into it. The other animals were screaming now. Banging fists on the sides. It wouldn’t be long before a guard came to check it out.

“Come on then,” Moomamu said. “Come here.”

Miss Sam lifted her arm and placed her small hand on the cage floor. Her fingers were tiny digits wrapped in wrinkled skin. She looked fragile. Moomamu placed his hand on the top of hers and with a quick one, two, she shifted to the entrance and placed her arms around Moomamu’s shoulders.
 

“I hope you know how much you’re costing me,” he said before standing up and teleporting away.

A second later and Moomamu, Miss Sam still around his neck, his arm supporting her bottom, reappeared.
 

The others were now screaming and howling. One in particular. The name tag read Ham.
 

Moomamu pushed them out of his mind and walked over to the bananas and grabbed a handful before disappearing again.

Holloman Air Force Base, December 24th 1960

Dr Liz Cooper

“Where did you say these apes were from again?”
 

“Well, first of all, Colonel, they’re not apes,” Dr Liz Cooper said. She readjusted her glasses as she spoke, trying to get a clear focus on the man sat across from her. He seemed a mile away over that giant wooden desk. The Rolodex to his right. The hunk of metal that was his typewriter. She squinted and he came into focus. His face had been chiseled from years of use. Shouting and screaming and fighting and whatnot. That’s what colonels do right? They fight.

“Okay, whatever,” Colonel Glenn said. “Monkeys. Where … tell me where these monkeys came from.”

Donald sneezed. Liz smiled and went to continue but Donald sneezed again.
 

“Sorry,” he said. “Just felt a bit weird for a second.”

“Perhaps someone is walking on your grave, Dr Thompson,” the colonel said, no hint of a smile.

“Perhaps, sir,” Donald said.

“Sir, shall I continue?”

“No, no, forget it, I’ll cut to the chase. Given that this mission is as important as it is, the choice has been made clear. Dr Thompson. We know about the incident with Ham. We will be sending Miss Sam on the PR-2 mission. Merry Christmas Liz, sorry, Dr Cooper, but it looks like you won this one. Your monkey’s going to lead the way for the rest of us. Congratulations.”
 

“But sir, I have to say I honestly don’t think that this hiccup should fail Ham from—”

“Enough Dr Thompson. It’s not your fault. It’s not the damn monkey’s fault, but it is what it is. The path has been laid. Now, if you’ll excuse me.”
 

With that, the colonel reached over and shook Liz’s hand. A firm grip that almost made her wince. She held strong, refusing to show weakness. She squeezed back as hard as she could. The colonel then shook Donald’s too, but the outrage was clear. Donald wasn’t hiding it well.
 

As Liz and Donald walked out of the office stairway, down and outside into the cold morning air, with mist so thick you could taste it, they didn’t say a word to each other.
 

“I’m sorry, Donald,” Liz said as he walked away. He didn’t turn around. Didn’t do anything. He just disappeared into the mist like a hollow spectre. “Okay,” Liz said to herself. “We’re fine. We’re okay. It’s fine.”

She took a deep breath but then jumped when she heard shouting in the distance. The damn airforce. Men and their testosterone. She shook her head, wiped her eyes, and walked through the mist and towards the animal house. The chimps screamed as she entered. She grabbed a handful of banana pellets as she walked through, past the failures, and walked towards Miss Sam’s enclosure.
 

“Hey girl,” she said. The enclosure wasn’t much bigger than the back of a van. On the floor a bowl of half-chewed pieces of fruit. Miss Sam was out of sight. Hiding in the back. “Happy Christmas,” she said as she brandished one of the banana pellets towards her. “Guess who’s going—”

Liz stopped in her tracks, dropping the pellets to the floor where they clanged against the metal. Miss Sam wasn’t there.

“Miss Sam!” Liz shouted from the spot. “Shit … shit shit shit.”

Luna Gajos

“Are you feeling okay?” Luna said as they stopped at the traffic lights. The morning sun bathed the streets of London with a warm glow. The mist in the air, or smog as some would call it, looked glorious. The Shard building was a beautiful silhouette as the sun crept upwards from behind. A beautiful day. A beautiful day ind—
 

“Fucking move it, yer tosspot!” a driver from behind shouted. A black cab. Slamming his fist on the horn.

“Light is green,” Gary said. “Tall One can go forward now.”
 

“Yes, I know,” Luna said, reddening. She looked down at the empty fast-food cola next to her handbrake and sighed. She was thirsty. She was also tired. The day before had been a pretty epic one. Aliens, talking cats, serial killers, and a big space parasite. She thought about The Thinker. She could tell Gary hadn’t stopped thinking about him since they left the farm.

“I suppose, if you’re going to stay with me, we’re going to need to get you a litter tray and some cat food and a scratch post.”

“Nonsense,” Gary said. “Gary will scratch what Gary feels should be scratched.”

“Well, you shouldn’t just go around scratching whatever you want.”

“Gary will do what Gary feels is right.”

“And the litter tray?” Luna said.

“Same.”

Luna drove past a large number of flat buildings, past a particularly angry-looking postman in his orange hi-vis jacket, and then pulled her car up outside of her flat. She looked back at the postman. New guy. She’d never seen him before. Strange postman too. He wore jeans rolled up to show off the bottoms of his calves. Boat shoes. A denim shirt with a canvas bow-tie. An orange hi-vis jacket over the shirt. His grey hair tied up in a bun on the back of his head. A grey beard down to his chest, and he didn’t look to be doing any posting of letters. Maybe it was all emails now.

She got out the car, let Gary out, and then locked it, all the while keeping her eyes on the old man leaning against the post-box. She didn’t have time for creeps. She had to get an hour’s sleep in before going to work.
 

As they passed him to walk into the courtyard of her apartment, the old man noticed her. He smiled. Waved. Definitely a creep.

“Wait,” he said. “Don’t you remember me?”
 

Luna and Gary both turned around to look at him.
 

“The Thinker,” Gary said.

***

Luna handed Moomamu coffee and grabbed her own. She sat down on the sofa. The cushions were scratch-free. Gary sat on the floor and never took his eyes off Moomamu. He kept his damaged paw elevated and never stopped purring. The TV was on. Some news channel. Some Indian woman interviewing someone. Extremely white teeth.

For a while they sat there in silence. Moomamu tried a few times to start talking but stopped himself just as quickly. It was ten minutes before he managed to spit it out.

“I …” Moomamu squinted his eyes. He looked to the roof. His eyes reddened. “Wow, okay wasn’t expecting this to be hard. I ended up on a moon for a while, with some cats. Then made my way to Earth in the future, which was, at the time, being eaten by a massive alien force, and then I went back in time, I can do that by the way, and eventually found myself living in a commune with a chimpanzee and a lot of people who wanted to have sex with everyone and smoke a lot and do tabs of acid. That really was a strange time to be a human. The seventies. And then I made my way to London, went to work finally, kind of waited for a while until today. You know, I thought I might not come.”

“Why not?” Luna said.

“The Earth years take it out of you. It’s been a long time … for me, at least.”

“But you never went home.”

“Home …” The sentence hung in the air, unfinished. Moomamu looked down to Gary and finished his coffee. He placed it on the kitchen side and smiled. “I’ve got to go to work.”

Moomamu The Thinker

“CALLING AT OXFORD CIRCUS. MIND THE GAP.”

Moomamu opened his eyes. He looked down to his right to see an old man resting his head on his shoulder. His eyes crusty. A sliver of drool connecting his face to Moomamu’s hi-vis jacket.
 

He pressed his hand against the old human’s head and pushed it away from him. He stood up and gently laid the man’s head down until it held there, suspended in the air and supported by the limitations of his neck bend.
 

Moomamu walked out of the snake-thing … wait, the train. That was it. Train. He laughed before walking onwards.
 

Oxford Circus was the busiest station he’d ever been to. He hated it. As he queued for the escalator the hundreds of tourists, commuters, students, all pushed up against him. He held his breath as long as he could before finding his spot on the escalator. Too slow for him, though, he began to walk up the left-hand side, even asking a young Asian boy to “shift” when he was stood on the wrong side.
 

He bleeped his travel card through the machine with nothing but muscle memory and then made his way outside into the fresh(ish) air. He inhaled. Deep. Before shoving past a group of teenage girl shoppers with giant bags of off-the-rack clothing.
 

“Do yer mind, yer dick?” one of them said, but he ignored them and crossed the road.
 

He made his way out of the retail madness of Oxford Street and into a Starbucks for his usual — Pumpkin Spiced Latté. He was still a fan of cappuccino, but he liked to mix it up once a year or so. He watched as the European barista steamed the milk. He did an okay job. Before Moomamu left, he asked how long he’d been a barista and the guy said he wasn’t. “I’m a philosophy major”.

Moomamu said “Sure” and left, slurping on his coffee.

He made his way past a wine bar called The Old Rope Inn. It was painted in white and black. So old it looked like a safety hazard. He continued further on up a set of stairs to a giant modern office building. The glass along the outside reflecting a fluffy white cloud in the sky.
 

Several people in suits left the building, briefcases in hand. And then another group of people in flannel shirts with beards and skinny jeans. It was half an hour before she exited. She smiled and waved at the receptionist as she left the building. With only a memory he was worried that he’d forget her face, but just then it felt like less than a minute had passed since he jumped. Big, bleached white teeth that looked ever whiter against her coffee-brown skin. A pink shirt under a dark grey suit. She walked right past Moomamu. Or went to.

“Miss Bhatia,” Moomamu said.
 

She turned to look at him and smiled.

“Hello? Do I know you? Sorry. Are you a fan of the show?” she said

“I don’t watch TV,” Moomamu said. “Content’s all on the internet now. I just spend my time on there.”