The Hipster Who Leapt Through Time (The Hipster Trilogy Book 2) (9 page)

As she went on about the headlines, which consisted of immigrants and a rise in the squirrel population she saw Tom, his beard glistening in the shadows. He looked angry.
 

***

A fanned-out hand, waving in front of her face. A cool breeze blowing against her forehead. The studio lights dimmed. Not so overbearing now. Not here, wherever she was.

A cold classroom with rows of single desks. A high-tech blackboard on the side of the class behind a teacher’s desk. There were no windows, but monitors and equipment with lights and displays. No outdoor views of football fields or tennis courts. Instead, there were floating pictures of animals in trees, rainforests, insects. An origami montage. Screensavers. Fake views of the natural world.
 

An inconsistent light pointed at her from the ceiling. A projector light, shrouding her body and her face in the image. She stood up, stepped out of its way, and looked back at the undistorted image. It was a picture of a child. Blond hair cut like a bowl around his head. Bright blue pupils that glowed like stars. Beneath the picture was a name — Arron Turner.

“Such a waste,” a voice said from behind her.
 

She jumped in her skin and turned around. A short man wearing chunky black platform shoes to make himself appear taller. A skin-tight black top to make him look slimmer. And hair, charcoaled with hair dye.
 

Nisha recognised the man. Most people in England would. It was Dr Warwick Dalton — the famous astrophysicist and pro-atheist. He’d had a burgeoning media career after his meltdown on live TV. He’d found himself stuck on a reality panel show with some religious zealot and children’s television host. It began with the children’s host asking him how he could live in a world without a God and it ended with Dr Warwick punching him in the groin.

A fine to pay for the assault and a sudden celebrity-status.

Memes, GIFs, YouTube clips. An online cult following.

The online hacktavist group, Anonymous, said he “wasn’t too bad”.

“I’m sorry,” Nisha said. “I didn’t mean to pry. I don’t even know where I am … or how I got here.”

“It’s truly unbelievable that the world has lost such a talent without ever realising it,” he said as he took a step towards her.

“What?” she said. “What do you mean?”

He took another step, his finger scratching his chin. Nisha followed his eye-line to the image behind her. The boy.
 

“Dr Warwick?” Nisha said, but he didn’t answer. He paid her no attention at all. He walked on past Nisha and all the way to the wall.
 

“Somebody is killing the indigo children,” he said to himself. He looked at the image of the child like it was a puzzle. Like math problems were hidden in the boy’s eyes. “
My
indigo children.”

“Dr Warwick, can you hear me?” Nisha said, a little louder. “Dr Warwick!”
 

He stopped in his tracks and turned around. He looked around the room as his hand fell from his chin.
 

“Hello?” he said, looking around the room before focusing on Nisha. He looked angry. He paced towards her, reached his hand through her torso like she wasn’t even there and picked up a small remote. He pressed a button and the projector switched off and the image vanished.
 

“What’s happening to the children?” she said. “Dr .Warwick?”

It took her a second to realise she wasn’t even there. She was a ghost. Invisible and without a physical presence.

Dr Warwick turned around and walked to the door, opening it with a push.

“What’s happening to the children?” she shouted after him, but he didn’t answer. He was lost to the corner of the corridor she couldn’t see around.

“What children?” a voice said. A different one. A female voice, frail and tender.
 

“The children. They’re in danger.” The light in the room flashed and Nisha found herself in the TV studio again.
 

“Are you okay, dear?” the woman said.
 

It took a few seconds for Nisha to remember her name — Janet Bridge — the TV chef who baked. Or, as she called it, a bakerpreneur. Her guest on the show.
 

Her blonde hair was dried straw in the studio lights. Her eyes had a big circle of black around them and she wore a white jacket over a black dress.

Nisha looked around herself, the cameras, lights, the wall of crew in the dark.
 

“The children are in danger. The … indigo children,” Nisha said.

“I think something’s wrong with her,” Janet said to someone behind the camera. “Can we get her some water?” The old woman was playing the host. Normally Nisha would back that sort of thing down with a well-timed sarcastic comment, but it didn’t matter anymore. Nisha had a message to tell people. It was her job now.

“We need to save the indigo children,” she said, looking at the camera. “They’re in danger. Something’s killing them.”

Tom arrived at her right-hand side with the bottle of water. He placed his hand on her shoulder again and went to lean down to her, to whisper something.
 

“Neesh, chill, I think you’re having an aneurysm or something.” He put the bottle in Nisha’s hand, but she shoved it away, shrugged his hand from her shoulder and pushed past him to the camera.
 

“No, listen, this is important. We need to save the indigo children.” She wasn’t even sure what the words meant, but their importance felt real to Nisha. There was a reverence to each syllable.

The more she spoke and raised her voice, the more Janet shied away. “For fuck’s sake, take me seriously, we need to save the goddamn children before they’re killed.”

Tom waved his hands and the red light above the camera faded away.
 

The millions of Britons, eating their breakfast and watching the TV, had just been cut off. It didn’t matter. The internet would surely pick up on it. The message would be out there. It would go viral.

What was just a moment ago a cacophony of brewing chaos in the studio seemed to switch off when the camera went dead. Like it was all a part of the show. A play they’d been performing for the audience and the show was now over.
 

Somewhere a crew member coughed.
 

And then …

“Nisha, what the fuck do you think you’re doing?” Tom screamed. “We’re fucked! Do you understand? We are fucked!”

Janet, who didn’t sign up for whatever this was, stood up, removed her microphone and left as if it were business as usual. She even waved to Nisha as she left.

“Tom,” Nisha said, her eyes welling. “There’s something wrong with me.”
 

There was silence again and Tom ran his hand through his hair and said, “We can fucking see that, Nisha. We can plainly see there’s something wrong …”

Tom stopped talking. He turned his head and pointed at Nisha’s nose.

“What?” Nisha said as she ran her hand beneath her nose. She looked at her hand and saw a smearing of blood over the edge of her finger.
 

“You’re bleeding,” he said. “Your nose is bleeding.”

Luna Gajos

Back in Luna’s flat her world was full of images of the faceless child. A waking nightmare that had rooted its claws into the underside of her eyelids, forcing her to revisit the scene with each blink.

“Gary has mission,” he said as he leapt up onto the kitchen table, purring and walking back and forth. “Gary has mission.”

“Sure,” Luna said. They hadn’t even called the police.
 

“Is there food?” Gary said.

“Sure,” Luna said. The police would ask too many questions. “I’ll get you some.”
 

Why were they in the house in the first place? Coincidence? How could she explain it to the police? Tell them it was her cat’s idea. A sure-fire way to find herself locked in a mental asylum with the nut jobs who, for example, were convinced their cat talked and that they were able to talk to aliens.
 

“Gary hungry now,” he said.
 

Sounded like a crazy person to her.

“Sure,” Luna said.

She opened the fridge — already half-empty. Some milk. A half-eaten sandwich she’d not finished. Some slices of cooked ham. And a tin of cat food, half-eaten. By Gary, of course.
 

She grabbed a fork and scooped out the jellied meat into a ramekin on the kitchen floor. She wasn’t even sure what ramekins were for but they made fancy-as-hell cat dishes.

“How did you know to go there?” she asked as she sat back down at the table. “How could you know that child was in danger? Or even Moomamu. How did you know he was a Thinker? And the parasite? How do you know any of the things that you do?”

“Gary already told Tall One,” he said as he grabbed a meat chunk with his good paw and pulled it to his mouth. “Gary has chip in neck.”

“Yeah, you did say that, but I don’t know how that means you know stuff.”
 

“Chip is Network connected.”
 

“Like WiFi?”

“No. Similar. It connects Gary to the Freelance Network. It gives him insight into what’s happening around the galaxy. What jobs are being posted. Who has taken them. How much they will be paid for doing so.”

“And … what does that mean? Someone posted a job to kill that family?”

“No. Just the boy. The boy was the job. Parents must have gotten in the way.”

Luna felt sick. She could almost see the faceless child standing behind Gary, looking over at her. Unable to breathe. Unable to cry. Unable to ask for help.

“Some sort of Freelancer’s job to kill a fucking child? Why would somebody need that to be done? Hiring some hit-man like I hire a cleaner? Why? Gary? And on that note, why are cleaners becoming more and more expensive? It looks like I’m gonna have to clean the toilet myself.”

Gary stopped eating. He turned and looked at Luna. He looked at her with all the resolution a cat’s face could muster.
 

“Gary doesn’t know why people would want child dead, but Gary intends to stop it.”

“What?” Luna couldn’t grasp what he was saying. The job was done. It was over. They’d failed. “The kid’s already dead.”

“That was the first,” he said. “I saw the buzz on the Network. There are many more. Many, many more. And once Gary has eaten he will re-connect and will try to find out where. He will find Freelancer who kills Earth children and he will kill him.”

Luna saw the restrained anger in Gary’s eyes. He’d appeared stoic and calm this entire night but the facade had dropped. Just a little. Just enough to betray him. The faceless child standing behind him wasn’t just Luna’s vision of her failure. It was Gary’s too.
 

“Okay,” Luna said. “Okay.”

She stood up and walked over to the phone on the kitchen side. She pulled open the kitchen drawer and grabbed a laminated green and black piece of paper.
 

“I’m getting a curry,” she said. “Do you want any?”

“Sure,” Gary said. “Gary wants meat.”

Moomamu The Thinker
 

The wind kicked dust into Moomamu’s face. He squinted and rubbed his eyes. Human eyes were terrible at dealing with dust. They went leaky and sore. Not ideal, especially when surrounded by a group of slaves who wanted to kill you.

The slaves, a handful of cats and a single human, all holding weapons and pointing them at one another, were ready to fight to the death.

Killing, Moomamu thought. It was the worst thing that living creatures gave to the universe. Death. Primal. Mostly for recreation, for fun.

He looked up at the stadium full of furry heads and pricked ears and hissing mouths. The only two doors to the central dusty ring of the Scrapping Grounds were both locked. One with a heavy metal chains and bolts, and the other was a simple trap door in the floor that could only be opened from beneath. Both sealed now.
 

“Are you ready?” the shouting cat, Payton, bellowed. He wasn’t talking to the slaves. He was talking to the audience, and they responded with all the cheering of rabid madness.
 

Moomamu rubbed his eyes some more and noticed the slaves disperse and pair off. At first he thought he’d been left alone, but turned to see the fat ginger brute behind him. The one with half a tail, with whiskers the size of Moomamu’s arms. This was no pet. This was a mountain of a cat.
 

His skin felt cold at the certain death to follow. He looked at the other pairings of slaves, circling each other. The one on the right, with the metal helmet over his head and holes for his ears, and the other a shivering mess, urinating on the floor around himself. The stronger one had armed himself with a blade and the weaker one with a spiked-club. He looked like he was struggling to lift the thing. Poor choice.
 

Moomamu looked down at his weaponless hands and sighed.

Across the other side of the grounds, he saw the other human wielding a curved blade. His naked bronze flesh reflecting the sunlight. He wasn’t muscle-bound or battle-scarred like the cats, but he held his blade with confidence. The fabric tied around his head and mouth kept the dust out and any emotion from being seen. The human’s opponent, though, looked every bit as tough. He was pointing his long blade towards the human’s throat, readying to pounce.

Behind Moomamu were another pair of brutes, bodies covered with scars. They looked like they’d popped out of the womb fighting and had spent their lives clawing and biting between meals and sleeps.
 

“Wait,” a voice shouted, a posh twerpish meow from next to the shouting cat. The royal kitten walked to the edge of his booth. His wrists were covered in golden circlets and his tail looped with silver jewellery. This one was smaller. Possibly smaller than Gary. It wasn’t a fighter. It was a bald and ludicrous-looking thing. “I wish to make the fight more interesting,” he said, his voice a soft purr in comparison to the bellower. “I am a generous prince and I wish to incentivise the battle. Only a shallow prince watches a competition without giving a prize to its victor.” The crowd quietened. “I am not my father, strong of heart and cruel beyond reason, or my mother, with tail-fur too soft for the cold world of cats, and so I find I must strike a balance. Whoever is victorious in this battle will win their freedom, and the rest of you will be taken to the far-coast and your remains will be used as bait for the sea-worms.”