floccinaucinihilipilification

Rennie tried to understand, were his dreams just shit hitting the fan. He staggered toward the doorway. The tight skirt resisting his movement.

As he reached the door, the buxom blonde’s long nails violently seized his arm and thrusted him against the wall. The cold metal gun barrel pushed on the back of his ear.

“Hand over your passport Nina” demanded Annie.

Momentarily confused Rennie thought, who the fuck is Nina. The pressure of the gun quickly cleared his thoughts. “Back off, it’s in the travel pouch tucked in the skirt.”

As Annie released her hold, Rennie kicked out her legs and lunged for the gun.

Rennie’s quick action failed much like his whole day.

A round exploded as he tumbled on top of Annie.

A burning flash across his chest stunned him. He was shocked but ok. The Dolly Parton bra and padding lie shredded across the floor. He looked up. Annie stood with the gun pointing down at him. “Now you know it’s loaded,” she shouted.

Iris ran to Rennie and pulled him to his feet. “Don’t shoot,” she pleaded.

“Yes Iris this will go easier without a dead body to dump. Just open his passport. It has information in it to decipher the code.”

Another odd thought floated in Rennie mind. Why do I smell dog shit?

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.