The Outlier #4: Zappers

ier #4: Zappers

  by Tom Lichtenberg

  One dreary morning, Dillon Sharif pedaled furiously while trying to think of an opening line. On such cold, gray and rainy days he unfurled the yellow awning above the elliptical machine out on his luxury penthouse balcony, and took to it to work out whatever was on his mind. Although his famous brain regularly solved the most complex problems, there was one nagging issue which continually recurred and to which he'd found no solution yet. He just couldn't figure out how to deal with his lover's other lovers. Dillon was involved in a polyamorous situation and he still wasn't quite sure of the etiquette of how one was supposed to relate to the others in the mix. He did not send them birthday cards, nor were they personal correspondents. He had met all the regulars at one time or another, usually briefly and always somewhat awkwardly. Their queen, Karen Clyde, was a famous actress and scene-maker, and Dillon was her brilliant billionaire. He was a well-known amateur big data detective, grandson and heir to the founders of the AllDat Corporation, Wilkins and Kintara Soh. They were the proprietary owners of all of the world's past, present and future human-generated information, with the contracts and patents to prove it and the high-powered lawyers to enforce it. Dillon could have whatever he wanted, and as it happened, he wanted Karen Clyde, but he knew that by himself he simply wasn't enough for her, and Karen, he freely confessed, was too much for him, so there had to be others. The fact of them was not the problem. He could just not figure out what to do about them.

  Dillon was not a social misfit, as so many extremely intelligent people seem to be, but he was not terribly sociable either. He preferred the company of his own mind, which spent most of its time occupied in highly concurrent processing and contemplation of the massive amounts of data to which he was unusually privy. There was literally not a single bit of information that he did not have access to, and he had developed some unique mental tactics and skills to work with it all. Surprisingly, he'd found little in the world's data banks to aid him in his task of getting along well with his fellow polyamorees. The reverse was far more common. Polygamist men were a dime a dozen historically, and although their women had not recorded all that much about their means and methods of dealing with one another, there were at least some sources, but the men involved in the opposite arrangements seemed to be far less likely to put their feelings about it down on paper.

  Most of the time this issue didn't even come up, but that day Dillon had a reason to think about it, due to a case he was working on. He wanted to contact one of the them directly. It was not Vitaly Fleschko, the reigning world heavyweight wrestling champion, with whom a conversation was never easy, seeing as the man knew only about four words in English, and none of those were especially interesting, and it was not Jasper Coleridge, the part-time celebrity chef and full-time hipster CPA who lived in Beverly Hills and never met a word he didn't like. The one he wanted to see was Joey Mangiamo, a Fiat mechanic who lived and worked in Brooklyn. Dillon had already told his right-hand person, the Commander, about his desire to travel East, and she was likely to inform him any moment of their imminent departure. The Commander was the most efficient person he had ever known, and served as his driver as well as pilot and all-around fixer and arranger. She would have him in New York facing Mangiamo by the end of the day, and he had to come up with an opening line as soon as possible.

  He knew that before anything else, they would shake hands. This much was certain. Dillon would be wearing jeans and a black leather jacket, a vintage Brooklyn Dodgers baseball cap and work boots. That part was easily planned out, and it was important to Dillon that he dress exactly right for every occasion. He had made some amazing discoveries based on wardrobe selection and their impact on human affairs, and took such matters quite seriously. He was vain, and with cause, for he kept his body in excellent shape and was still quite good-looking for someone who had celebrated his twenty-ninth birthday on several occasions. He kept his neat, dark hair trimmed and his pencil-thin mustache groomed just so at all times. He maintained a well-stocked wardrobe that was regularly rotated by Wearabulous, the super-upscale clothier subscription service.

  He pedaled like crazy on the balcony in the rain, worrying about the opening line, and puzzling, in the back of his mind, the case he was presently working on. Like most of his cases, it involved a variety of seemingly unrelated events filtered from his in-basket by his curiously telepathic secretary, Bermuda Hills. She had no idea why he had plucked her from poverty and obscurity to live in a pricey high-rise atop San Francisco's Nob Hill, and he never bothered to tell her, but he had known from the moment he first read the email she'd sent him about some mysterious late night beepings that she would serve him well, and she did. She had an uncanny ability to pick out the messages he would most likely be interested in from all the nonsensical ones he received every day from people all around the world. Ever since he had solved some baffling mysteries, and especially since the time he'd figured out precisely how a woman could win the lottery every single time, causing that entire industry to collapse overnight, people assumed he could solve any problem whatsoever, so they wrote him, constantly, asking and pleading for help.

  Most of the cards and letters and emails and text messages he received were mundane and rather pathetic. Before he'd hired Bermuda Hills, he'd had to slog through them all by himself, but now he let her do all that, and although not every one she forwarded was worth his time, more often than not they were. That morning's crop had been especially intriguing. From several sources came complaints about dogs that had run away. One such letter would mean nothing, but more than a dozen telling the same story in the same way on the same day was definitely suspicious. Then there were several from people concerned about loved ones who had suddenly gone off and joined the Zappers, a new religious cult that was gaining membership rapidly. On top of that, Bermuda had picked out a bunch of messages about people whose cars had failed to start that morning. To most people, none of this would have meant a thing, but to Dillon Sharif they formed a case worthy of attention.

  It was the matter of the cars that led him to the idea of consulting Joey Mangiamo. He could simply call the man, of course, but Dillon generally preferred to work onsite, and since New York was also the source of at least one of each of the problems, he could also justify the trip that way, but he knew the real reason he was going was to finally try and make some headway into the mechanisms of co-polyamory accommodation. Karen Clyde often teased him about his worries about it. Vitaly and Jasper, after all, were good friends and often spent time together, with Jasper talking all the time and Vitaly not at all. She told him that it didn't matter to her if her lovers got along, or not, or even knew each other, or not, as long as they were all happy with their own arrangement with her, and Dillon certainly was. He had very little interest in romance, apparently channeling most of his testosterone into database analysis, except when he was on a case, and the more fascinating the mystery, the more interested he became in Karen. She must have enjoyed this particular type of interest, because she often checked in to gauge the state of his mind.

  She called while he was finishing up his exercise routine and since the Commander ight be ready at any moment, he tried to keep the conversation short.

  “How's it going?” she asked. “Anything?” Most of the time she considered him to be 'difficult, but worth it'. Her other men wanted more of her while he often seemed to want less. His dry spells were all too frequent, and she didn't understand that. Surely there had to be enough mysteries in the world to keep him interested and occupied.

  “It might be nothing,” he said, “but I'm not sure yet. I am flying to New York, though. Today.”

  “Aww, I wish I was going to be here,” she said, “but I'm
at the airport myself right now. Off to South Yemen, you know, that movie about the modern goddess.”

  “It's about you?” he said, and she chuckled appropriately.

  “Hardly,” she said, “There's this goddess and she is like twelve thousand years old only she comes back and the world is divided into these two groups. One of the groups only eats rice and the other group never combs their hair. So she has to save the world or something. I don't even know.”

  “But you're the goddess, of course,” he said.

  “Naturally,” she replied. “Hey, just because you're going to New York, don't think you have to go and see Joey. I know it makes you uneasy.”

  “Actually,” he told her, “it's one of the reasons I am going. I want to see him. There's something I need to talk to him about.”

  “Okay,” she said, “but mind you, Joey's not big on talking.” It occurred to her that she maybe shouldn't have put it that way, but he knew what she meant and he