Vanishing Point #1

I settled down at the breakfast table with a relaxed sigh. Things had been good lately. My acceptance of the multiverse and my place in it had made life seem so much easier than it had before.

That and my decision to hang up my detective hat and just let life lead me where it may.

The good lady slammed a plate down before me. On it quivered some thick, glistening, black-spotted, white discs.

Ah, what delights have we here then?

I boomed gaily, as if she had sprayed her yester-teats with fondant icing and offered me a spoon.

White pudding.

She replied suspiciously at seeing my happy demeanour.

Beef fat and oatmeal stuffed into a sausage skin, sliced and fried? How delicious!

I eagerly started forking the gelatinous muck into my suddenly dry mouth.

Mmm.

I rubbed my tummy in the direction of the good lady's suspicious gaze and tried to hold in my body's rebellious protest farts.

She backed off, her face still gnarled with distrust. I had fought weasels with happier faces.

No matter. I finished the turgid nonsense and prepared to leave for the office.

At the coat-stand I paused as I reached out for my Fedora and long coat. The assembled armour of detectivity that had guided me for so long.

Reluctantly I pulled my hand away from them. Not my life anymore. I pulled out a snazzy leather jacket instead.

Being happy with my lot, this was my new life. I shouted my goodbyes and headed out the door.

My nimble fingers danced over the keyboard as I attempted to force a connection to a new server like a fat cat squeezing through a pipe.

A sudden crack split the air like three-day underpants being struck by a toffee hammer.

I looked up, a pale man with white eyebrows and a white goatee looked over guiltily from the whiteboard he was deconstructing.

Sorry about that.

He muttered.

Albino! Screamed my inner detective and I quickly had to quell the urge to fling a stapler at him.

But no. That was the old me, the private eye. The man in the long coat and fedora.

What you up to?

I asked pleasantly whilst trying to control the twitch in my left eye that spoke of murder.

He looked at me nervously as if memories of being hunted through the heather clad Highlands by my blue-face-painted ancestors were bubbling up from his subconscious.

Who me? Erm, nothing.

He mumbled, avoiding my gaze.

My interrogation was cut short by the arrival of Thin Lizzy. A manager type, so named because she was old and tired and rubbish.

BoomDawg, have you seen Mikey?

I looked to my right. Mikey's desk was empty. His mug unwashed and mouldy.

I haven't actually. Has he called in sick?

Thin Lizzy made a face as if trying to knit a sweater with low grade arsehair

No he hasn't. If he comes in tell him I am looking for him.

Roger that ma'am.

I responded.

I cast an inquisitive eye at Mikey's desk. It wasn't like him to be absent. His desk looked as if it hasn't been sat at for many a day.

Mikey missing and hasn't phoned in?

How mysterious. Whatever the mystery was though, it would have to be solved by someone else. I was no longer that man.

The white-goatee'd whiteboard dismantler had finished and after loading the pieces into a small cart was heaving them away.

Hey, where you going with them?

I called.

He didn't answer, instead, quickening his pace as if to get away from me.

How curious.

My inner detective stiffened momentarily before I quelled it hurriedly back down.

Wherever he was taking it would have to be someone else's business. I was out of the game now and happier for it.

The clock on my desktop showed it was almost ten o'clock. Time for my morning shit. I trailed off to the toilet hurriedly, the white pudding was already knocking insistently at my brine cellar doors.

As I shimmied past Mikey's desk I noticed a solitary post-it, half crumpled in his out-tray. I palmed it out of habit and hurried onward to the toilets to read it out of sight of prying eyes.

I closed the cubicle door and quickly un-crumpled the post-it. It had only one word scrawled desperately on it...

Ganymede.

Ganymede?? Jupiter's largest moon? What the hell did that mean?

My torpid detectivity once again snarked from deep within. Something was wrong here. Something bad was going down. What had Mikey gotten himself involved in?

No matter how I fought it, I couldn't let this lie.

I clenched the turtle's head back inside my billabong and marched determinedly back into the office to my locker

As I thumbed at the combination, my colleague BinJuice called out.

Hey, something wrong? You look serious?

I wrestled my locker open and pulled out my emergency Fedora. I pulled it onto my head and turned to him adjusting it to that oh so comforting rakish angle over my eyes.

My mouth opened and the voice that rang out was as familiar as the dog that scratched at my back door every night, calling out my name.

Just when I thought I was out they pull me back in...