The Girl and the Pendulum (An Original Story – Part 6)

Part Six

At least there were still phone books, Cattrell thought as he dusted one off at the Presidio branch library, the last one standing in San Francisco.

The library employed one sole librarian, an eighty year-old woman with lines so deep in her face, she could have been 105. She was deaf; she was blind; she couldn’t walk. But she was dedicated to the last few books left in the building.

The librarian led Cattrell in her electric wheelchair to the reference section. The collection was longer re-shelved in the large, empty shelf stacks. Now, they were set out on long folding tables in the library aisles.

Books were haphazardly strewn about, defiant of Dewey and all his attempts at classification. She came to a shorter table, paused in front of a row of phone books, then made a turnabout and sped off.

The phone book had remnants of ketchup on the page with New Dynamic’s information. Or maybe blood. Two vagrant women started fighting over a copy of a Jane Austen novel, off in the distance.

Cattrell drove to the main corporate office in South Beach. The foyer of the place was dark, the only light coming from electronic digital screens displaying their latest sex droids.

The receptionist was a young brunette wearing a cropped leather jacket. Beneath that, she displayed her midriff in a threadbare black-and-cream French brassiere.

“How may I help you?”

“Private investigator Cattrell. We have a 101 droid that disappeared from its owners. I need to see if anybody has ordered parts for this type of unit in the last year or so.”

The receptionist shirked back. “I’m sorry sir, but we don’t give out private information --”

Cattrell slapped a few coins on the counter. She shrugged. “I make more than that in a day.”

Corporate folk. Apparently they still despised cryptos, preferring the funny money stuff of yesterday, which still circulated but never retained its value. “You can’t be more than, what, twenty?”

“Nineteen.” The receptionist rolled her eyes.

“I can get you into Heaven. I got all the connects.”

The receptionist’s eyes rolled straight back to him. “Seriously?”

“Any night you wanna go.” This was one of the few times Cattrell smiled.

Currency was what you made of it.

Read from the beginning:
Part One | Part Two | Part Three | Part Four | Part Five

Read the next chapter:
Part Seven

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"The Girl and the Pendulum" is an 18-part future-noir science fiction story about a a private investigator's search for a missing android. How can a man who searches for missing women find lost artificial intelligence? I welcome feedback on this story about a man and his difficult case in a post-war, post collapse world. Stay tuned, as I also will begin publishing my 300,000 word epic novel "The Messiah" on Steemit in 2017.

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