Whatever Happened To Annie Manning?

"Come with me if you want to live, pet", he had said. Annie had not gone with him. Her brain had worked swiftly and she had rationalised that if he wanted her to live then it was unlikely that he was going to shoot her, so she had simply picked him up by the ears of the pink rabbit onesie, and shaken him until he dropped the gun. She had then locked him in her attic with a plate of fish fingers and a large colouring book.

Annie Manning was now glaring at her computer screen. How could they do this to her?? How could they leave her to be taken by a small man with a large gun wearing a pink rabbit onesie, and never refer to her again?? Weren't they worried that she had been taken captive by a wee Geordie? Did nobody want to save her? Did nobody care? Had she made a bad impression by slapping flat footed up the tiled path? It was a disgrace, an outrage.

All the attention seemed to be on Iris Green, the brogue loving woman from across the road who liked to spy on everyone. Even Douglas had a thing for her, and Douglas was supposed to be Annie's husband. Annie was furious. After all, Annie was the blonde, busty, attention grabbing female around here, NOT robotic Iris, who was flat-chested, wore her hair in a prim little bun, and looked like a stereotypical school teacher from the 1940s.

Annie was jealous and she didn't care who knew it. First she frowned a bit, though her pretty eyebrows remained arched above her milky blue eyes due to botox, and did not aspire to making random items of knitwear, and then she pouted. Annie had a plan. A big plan that would change EVERYTHING. She also had a loaded gun.

Rennie Takes Flight

At that very moment, Rennie received a message via the microscopic speaker implanted in his ear canal.

“The Iris unit has been compromised. Make haste.” 


It was the voice of SpodeChode69, the self-applied nickname of Super Computer 6900. After all, what good was artificial intelligence without a sense of humor? The earlier text message from Iris had actually come from SpodeChode. Its highly evolved algorithms had detected the imminent breakdown in Iris’ relatively crude system (the early models always were a bit twitchy, as the movie quote goes). Its summations were proved by Douglas’ tugging at Iris’ tag. Why had they left that there, anyway? Oh, well, that decision had been made before SpodeChode’s time. Now it was up to SpodeChode to fix the problem. Typical.


Rennie said to the Uber driver, “I’m going to need to take over.” As the driver turned a wondering look toward him, Rennie snatched up a banana that the driver had been intending to eat for lunch from the cup holder in the center console and rammed it into the pressure point behind the driver’s left ear, momentarily stunning him. In practically the same fluid movement, Rennie unbuckled the driver’s seat belt, opened his door and shoved him out, then slipped behind the wheel and sped away.


The driver came too as he was doing a fast barrel roll right into the path of an oncoming light rail vehicle. “Oh, well”, he thought, “that job sucked anyway”.


Rennie made great time to the airport. His speeding and the many incongruously placed vegetable stands and stacks of cardboard boxes that he smashed through failed to initiate a police chase, thanks in large part to SpodeChode’s ability to control many human systems and activities, such as 911 calls, traffic cameras, police bulletins and even to issue “do not pursue” orders anywhere in the world.


When Rennie arrived at the airport, he didn’t bother with such mundane affairs as ticket counters and boarding gates. Instead, he took a service road to a seemingly disused hangar in a remote corner of the complex, where a super-fast stealth plane waited to whisk him to England.


During the flight, Rennie had time to reflect upon his relationship with Iris. He had seen her dancing at a go-go club, and had taken her to dinner at St. Ermin’s Hotel. He was trying to impress her, so he told her fantastic tales of espionage, when in reality he was only a private in the army, with dreams of one day being a spy. Be careful what you wish for.


He didn’t know then that Iris wasn’t a human. Even Iris didn’t know her true nature. By the time he found out, it was already too late for both of them. He had already gone down a dark path, one lined with laboratories where his body and mind were modified and enhanced to serve a powerful master.


He realized he was still holding the banana. He ate it. Mmmm, banana.

Beauty (and Bananas) are only Skin Deep...

 Douglas squeezed his eyes shut in an attempt to concentrate on the many questions brought into being from the situation he found himself in.  He had to whittle them down to just the three important ones, but Iris's staring eyes were putting him off.  How was he supposed to think?!

 After a minute or two of fruitless reasoning, Douglas still hadn't decided if "Should he play Iris's favourite Beatles tune?" was an important question or not - and he really fancied a banana which didn't help matters.  He was dithering between including the question or not because a) he wasn't sure if he knew for definite which Beatles tune was her favourite - despite her singing "Hey Jude" somewhat incessantly in that underwater cave to take her mind off not having a toaster, and b) the fact that the question had cropped up surely meant that it was a plot point to be remembered at a later time, so it had to be important.  Right?  He didn't know so he opened his eyes.  Iris seemed to be staring even more intently, even though, from her recumbent position on the bed, her line of sight was directed at the ceiling.  He looked at his watch - time was escaping him.  All thoughts of bananas evaporated.

 "Sorry, Iris" Douglas muttered as he stooped down, brushed an errant chocolate raisin off the bed, then slid his forearms between Iris's unconscious form and the rather old fashioned candlewick bedspread, and turned her on to her side to face the wall.  "What the hells...?"

 A faint, blinking light behind Iris's right ear caught his attention.  He gently brushed aside a lock of her dark hair to get a better look.  It was probably a bluetooth earpiece, he told himself as he moved closer.  Or a hearing aid?  Although, Iris never had any hearing problems as far as he knew?  But there was nothing there.  No audio technology, no medical devices, nothing.  Except for the light that continued to blink once every second or so.  A light that was flashing under her skin!

 Douglas was momentarily stunned.  After a second or two that felt like hours, he gathered his wits and looked as his watch again.  Then at Iris.  The light was still blinking and, from his new position amongst the shoeboxes and notebooks, he noticed that the light was reflecting off a small, white triangle jutting out from her skin next to her hairline.  He moved in for a closer look.  The triangle looked like the corner of a label.  There was even something printed on it - a letter, by the look of it, but only part of it was showing above the skin's surface.  Gingerly (Douglas was proud of being a red-head), he gripped the label betwixt finger and thumb and gently pulled it out.  One centimetre, two, three, then it stopped - clearly fixed to something within Iris.

 Douglas read the fine, block-cap text: MADE IN TAIWAN

Chapter 3: Rennie Awakens

Rennie quickly messaged Iris back, asking what was the matter. Almost immediately her response came, and it was rather long.

"That's weird", thought Rennie, "She couldn't possibly have written all this in a few seconds."  He read on, however, and became more puzzled. Her message was a reprint of yet another boring diatribe by one of the more annoying members of their P.G. Wodehouse fan group on Facebook.

As Rennie tried to make sense of the passage, and figure out how this seemed so important to Iris, his eyes kept being drawn back to the first word in the each of the first six lines of the paragraph. What seemed significant about those words? Taken in order of appearance, they didn't make any kind of coherent sentence, nor did they if rearranged in every possible combination. Rennie felt a vague sense of surprise that he was performing this mental exercise. Puzzles and brain challenges weren't really his cup of tea. Or...were they? Then something clicked in Rennie's brain.

And Rennie wasn't Rennie anymore. He couldn't say for sure who he was. That wasn't important. But he suddenly knew what he was, and what he needed to do. He clicked a sequence of keys on his Chromebook, and a secret function buried deep within this particular device wiped away all traces of everything he had ever done on it. Then the function removed any trace of itself, but not before initiating a sequence which would remove any public or private record of Rennie Hightower.

Rennie (for that name will do as well as any other) stood up. No grunting or difficulty this time, but he was now much more aware of his body and the effects that an unknown period of relative inactivity had wrought upon a formerly fine-tuned physique. He wondered idly how long he had been dormant. Oh, well, no matter. He'd quickly sort that out.

He walked to his closet and knelt and moved aside shoes and pulled back the carpeting, then worked loose one of the floorboards. From the cavity underneath he withdrew a lock box. From memory he punched the 32 digit pass code into the electronic lock's keypad. Inside the box were passports from several nations. All had his picture. Each had a different name. Also in the box were credit cards, with names to match the passports. Lastly he took out a phone and powered it on. This unremarkable-looking "smart" phone was connected to a very exclusive network, operated by a super-computer that actually was smart, in the sense that it was capable of highly intelligent thought.

Rennie selected one pair of passport and credit card and put them in the pocket of his jacket, the phone in another. He put the other items in a backpack and walked outside, where an Uber was waiting to take him to the airport.

Magical Mystery Tour.... [Chapter two-ish]

"Iris, what are you doing? Can you hear me?"

Douglas shook Iris's shoulder in an effort to wake her.

"What did you see? It's really important that you wake up now."

Iris lay on her bed, her eyes were open, staring at the ceiling, but she wasn't dead.

"Iris, FOR PITY'S SAKE WOMAN, what did you see? And when did you see it?"

Douglas thumped his fist against the wall and as he did so a framed print of Salvador Dali's Persistence of Memory fell to the floor. Douglas bent to pick it up [if nothing else he was always tidy] and as he did so he noticed that stored under Iris's bed was an impressive array of shoeboxes.

'Wow', thought Douglas, 'this is an impressive array of shoeboxes, but Iris always wears battered old brogues, how peculiar.'

Douglas stopped thinking and pulled out one of the shoeboxes, he opened it, and gasped for dramatic effect. The shoebox did not contain leopard print mules, as suggested by the picture on the lid of the box, but three bulging scrapbooks and 10 used notebooks of the school variety.

He opened a notebook, this was exactly the information Douglas was looking for. He looked up fondly towards the slender, brogue wearing woman still laying unconscious, yet wide eyed on the bed, "I knew I could rely on you Iris, I'm so sorry I referred to you as a wretched curtain twitcher in a previous post, you were always such a meticulous record keeper, even when we were trapped together in that underwater cavern for days on end without food, water, a cuddly toy, a toaster, or your favourite Beatles album, you still found a way to keep meticulous records. What a woman."

Douglas began to read Iris's last entry, as he read his eyebrows began knitting together like two hairy caterpillars trying to make a sweater. When Douglas had finished reading he had three important questions:-

1) WHO IS THE SHORT MAN IN THE PINK RABBIT ONSIE WITH THE BIG GUN? [Clue: He isn't Mr Short]
2) WHO IS THIS RENNIE CHARACTER? AND WHY DID IRIS NEED HIS HELP?
3) WHERE IS ANNIE?
4) WOULD HE GET TO HARWICH IN TIME?
5) SHOULD HE PLAY IRIS'S FAVOURITE BEATLES TUNE?
6) WOULD IRIS'S FAVOURITE BEATLES TUNE WAKE HER FROM HER OPEN-EYED SLUMBER?

So many questions...but, as in every good epic, only three are important...

Chapter Two - Continued

Iris returned the scrapbook to its hidden spot. Glancing down at her ankles, she questioned her mental abilities for remembering daily tasks. Why can’t I remember to moisturize my legs, she mumbled to herself.

As Iris applied lotion on her long legs, memories of past adventures flashed before her. Life in London was fast and fun long ago. She was sure it was those shapely legs that landed her a dancing gig in the London go-go cages at an early age.

Her mind’s eye had stored images of a luxurious dinner at St. Ermin’s Hotel. Lamb shanks roasted with pomegranate. Her handsome young host sitting across from her. The man whose mysterious life she would come to know through their shared adventures. Distracted by his eyes, she recalled difficulty in keeping track of his espionage story’s connection to the hotel.

The exciting thrilling trips with him were a joy to remember. However, it didn’t take long before the scary memories engulfed her mood. A rich fast world she never had known shock her with its dark dangerous side. She escaped from it but now she feared that some part, some secret was back looking for her.

Why did Douglas Manning appear so strange. Was he watching her?

Chapter Two

Meanwhile, in a mid-sized city in the Pacific Northwest, Rennie Hightower looked up from his Chromebook to check the time on the digital clock on the gas range, barely three feet from his “desk”, which also served as dining table and kitchen counter in his tiny efficiency apartment. 3:15...in the morning! Jesus! He’d been staring at the damned internet since he’d gotten home around 7 the night before. He hadn’t even stopped scrolling long enough to eat.

“I’ve got to get up in 4 hours,” Rennie thought reproachfully to himself, “What is wrong with me?” Not that his job as a janitor at a strip club required much mental alertness or peak physical conditioning. In his self-induced guilt, he thought he’d better throw himself headlong into the bed. It wouldn’t even be hard to do, even from a sitting position. After all, the bed was only about two feet to his right and back a bit. Efficient, indeed.

But having broken the spell held upon him by the siren song of social media, he realized he was too hungry to sleep. Now that he was again aware that he had a body (such as it was), all he could think about was sustenance. As he began the difficult process of prying his carcass from the wooden chair with a foam cushion in which he had been sitting for the past 8 hours, he spied a notification that he had a message from his friend Iris in the UK.

Thoughts of food were immediately pushed from his mind as he settled back onto the chair. Rennie was a little bit in love with Iris. More than a little, if he was honest about it. He was not well acquainted with any females “in real life”. He had “met” Iris on-line in a Facebook group for fans of author P.G. Wodehouse. While they of course loved Bertie and Jeeves, their shared favorite character was Psmith (“the P is silent, as in ‘pshrimp’”). Iris and Rennie would often type this “Psmith-ism” to each other whenever chatting about the character. Rennie laughed every time Iris did it, and he liked to imagine that Iris was laughing when he did it. It would have done his lonely heart no end of good if he could have known that she did laugh. But only we know that, and we mustn’t tell.

He hadn’t heard from Iris for a few weeks. She seemed to have developed some sort of obsession with the doings of her next door neighbors - David or something, and his wife...Angela? No. That couldn’t be it. Oh, well. Nevermind! He rather feverishly clicked onto Iris’ message, and what to his wondering eyes should he see but “Rennie - I need your help!”

Iris had never asked for his help before. His heart skipped a beat, both out of concern for his friend, and the excitement of possible romantic adventure. He began to type to ask how he could be of assistance.

Chapter One, continued, part 2.14

Douglas eased his cuff back and checked his watch (not the too-flashy Rolex; no point making yourself too noticeable.)

10.15am. Hmm... he might be cutting it a bit fine, but, provided that bloody farmer with the muck-spreader didn't get in front of him he should make it home after Annie usually left for work.

But that wretched curtain-twitcher next door might still be at her window! He wondered if she also had a watch point from the back of her house. He'd have to wing it...

Hardly any traffic and he really would have liked to give the car a good, racing run. Better not to spoil things by getting a ticket to the Policemen's Ball. He eased his foot up and settled at 60.

He allowed his mind to go over his plan once more. Mr Short had never seen him and the money had all been odd bills, from various sources. So, really, all he had to do was nip back into his house, pick up the second briefcase, nip out and head for Harwich. A doddle, really...

Chapter One - continued

07.18hrs.

Annie is dreaming of fur-lined slippers as she sidesteps a snail, and her slight shiver is caused by a distinct nip in the air, rather than the basilisk glare hurled at her from behind the net curtains.  Another half hour before getting up, she decides, shutting the door, but is suddenly wide awake as an intruder appears from the kitchen.  It is a small man with a large gun.

A good six inches shorter than Annie, he cuts a peculiar figure with his tubby physique, extraordinarily bushy eyebrows and horn-rimmed glasses in a style so far undiscovered by hipsters and Post Modern ironists.  He would perhaps resemble nothing so much as a garden gnome were it not for the pink rabbit onesie he is wearing.  When he speaks it is in an incongruous basso profundo, with a pleasant Geordie lilt.

"Come with me if you want to live, pet".

Chapter One....

07.16hrs.

Iris Green peers through the white net curtains, through a carefully cut hole, about one centimetre square, and spies Douglas heading out for work. A soft brown leather satchel containing his laptop, lunch, and paperwork, is slung over his shoulder. She watches him as he carelessly throws the satchel onto the back seat of his Range Rover. She blinks as the sunlight reflects from his wing mirror and glances her eye. Iris looks at her watch, thumbs open a school exercise book and jots down the following:- ‘07.16hrs, Douglas Manning leaves for work,’ beneath an entry that reads ‘20.16hrs, Douglas Manning returns from work.’ She takes a photograph with her camera as Douglas drives off up the road and out of focus. She will print it off later. She will then stick it, with Pritt Stick, into a scrapbook filled with similar images, and items of sentiment. Iris looks back at the red panelled front door where moments earlier Douglas had stood. Even though he isn’t there she takes another photograph anyway. The red panelled front door opens, and Annie Manning, in a pink dressing robe and bare feet, slaps flat footed up the tiled path and stuffs a black sack of rubbish into a wheelie bin. The sack is torn and a chocolate wrapper drops onto the path.

Who's Going First???

Invites have just gone out!!! Who would like to go first?? If nothing has been written by this time tomorrow morning I will write the first chapter, but I thought I'd offer up the opening chapter to anyone who is willing.

Sxx

How it works.....

Testing, testing!!!

Publish then edit to hold your writing space! If you are inspired by the current chapter go into the Blogger dashboard and create a new post by tapping on the orange circle with the plus sign. Type your name and 'is writing'. Tap Publish. Edit the post you have created by writing the next chapter.

Rules - No more than 500 words per chapter.

YouTubes, pictures, etc are welcome.

Have fun!!