Meta Zero One (2 page)

   “Let’s not talk about your nonexistent sisters’ nonexistent breasts right now, what I want to know Stanley, is do you love me?”

   “Let me think?”

   “Let you think? Ok, you can think, but exactly what is there to think about?”

 “Ok, can I phone a friend?”

“Only your sister.”

“No I can't do that,” Stanley grinned.

“Why not?

 “She's not talking to me.”

 ”Why not? Or can I guess?”

  “She got fed up with me staring at her tits, she said that it made her feel uncomfortable.”

   “Can't imagine why, I like you staring at mine.”

  “Good news all-round then, anyway, back to the question, do I love you?”

  “Yes, do you love me Stanley, because, if it makes it easier for you, I love you.”

   “Ok, if you want my final answer, then bearing in mind what you just said and that I'm not going to be rejected out of hand, which makes a change. Yes.”

   “Yes?”

  “Yes, of course I do, I love you, I wake up every morning with a huge smile on my face”

“A huge smile and a little stiffy.”

  “Well most mornings yes, it's the sign of a healthy heart after all, and less of the little if you don't mind, I would rather use the term, about average for a man of my height.”

   “So I've managed to put the smile on your face?” Susie took her final bite of tart.

   “Yes, you have. So the truth is, I love you, every inch of you, some more than others obviously, and I wake up every morning and can't believe my luck that you agreed to go out with me.”

   “I asked you out remember,” Susie poured a glass of white wine for both of them and took a sip. A small amount of lipstick stuck to the rim, Stanley resisted the urge to pick it up and keep it forever as a memento of the moment.

   “Yes, and I am so glad you did, thank you by the way.”

   “My pleasure, by the way. Anyway,” Susie continued, “now we've got that cleared up, I've got some really good news.”

   “You're not pregnant are you?”

   “Would it worry you if I were?”

   “Only because you have been drinking like a fish for the last hour, and you probably shouldn't have had the goat’s cheese. Oh and if my parents are anything to go by I'd make a crap father.”

   “No,” Susie looked sheepish, “I'm not pregnant, not yet anyway, but I do have another job.”

 ”Another job, shit where?” Stanley spat out $3 worth of Champaign over his $15 soup.

   “A great agency, a big opportunity, and a great job, oh and the other thing about it, it's based in London.”

   “London,” only the other side of the bloody world, thought Stanley, fingering the ring in his pocket, all thoughts for the future crumbling around him.

   “London, yes, I applied ages ago, before I knew I liked it at Clayton-Lowes. They rang me up last week and offered me the job of senior copywriter. It's a bit out of the blue I know, I wasn't expecting it at all, I'd half forgotten about it to be honest.”

   “And you've accepted it?” Stanley felt like crying, the wonderful, beautiful woman, who said she loved him was going away. A month from now he would be back to wanking into a rolled up sock in front of his life sized Megan Fox poster.

   “Yes, it's great isn't it?”

   “Great?” well, he thought, no, no not at all, it’s a fucking disaster, why does she think it's great? Thank God I can probably get a refund on the ring, and we are definitely not having any desert, she can sod off if she thinks she is getting any bloody coffee profiteroles after this fucking bombshell.

   “So,” Susie smiled, she knew at this moment exactly how much she loved him, the look of complete and utter panic on his face was absolutely priceless, “how about it then?”

   “What?” Stanley sipped his wine, it tasted sour and bitter like his whole life did, he wanted to spit it in her face.

   “Stanley, do I have to do everything for you? I asked you out, I told you that I love you first, so now it's your turn Stan. Isn't there something you've been planning to ask me for the last few weeks? London is to say the least, big enough for the both of us.”

   “Oh,” Stanley said, and then the mist cleared, it all made sense to him now. Of course Susie knew full well what he had planned for the evening, he was woefully transparent; of course she knew it and knew she would say yes.

   They could go to England together, even if he didn’t get a job immediately there were hundreds of agencies in London, or he could just freelance.  It could be perfect for them.

  What the hell did he have to stay in New York for anyway? A one-room apartment? Easy access to Hooters? Not forgetting some tired and extremely crusty old socks?

  “Susie,” he said, reaching into his pocket, taking her hand in his other and looking her straight in the eye.

  “I love you so much,” he gestured to the waiter, who he saw in the corner of his eye reaching for the roses behind reception.

  “Will you marry me?” the ring was out of his pocket, and he held it out to her.

   The diamond glinted in sunlight, it seemed to sparkle as if it was on fire, and Stanley felt the hairs on the back of his neck stand up with anticipation.

  “Yes Stanley, of course I will, I'd love to be married to you, and to be honest I thought you'd never ask.”

   With that Susie died.

  If Stanley could slow down time, he would have seen the beam of coherent energy flash through the window and strike Susie on the side of her head. He would have seen it cut through her skull like a hot knife through butter and burst out the other side, spraying bone and brain matter across the elderly couple at the table next to them.

  He would have seen the beam carry on across the room, cutting the waiter in half.

 He would have seen the top half of the waiter fall forwards spilling the roses across the floor, and finally seen the energy beam flash fry a bucket full of lobsters in the kitchen beyond.

   He would have seen her hair frazzle then vaporise, and her skin blister and burn. He would have seen the smile vanish from her face, and the light dim in her eyes, just before they exploded out of her sockets.

 He would have seen her dress ignite, and her body collapse in on itself as the bones crumbled.

  He would have seen her turn first to dust in a vaguely human shape and then to nothing as even that dust was broken down into its component atoms and blown away by the wind from the shattered window.

   As it was Susie’s death took place in a fraction of a second, she went from happily looking forward to her life with Stanley in London to dark nothingness in an instant.

 She was dead and gone before the waiter realised that the weird feeling, like he’d wet himself, was in fact the lower half of his body falling away.

    Susie was dead before the first rose petal hit the floor.

   Susie was dead before the Meta  Powered Hero; having successfully melted the gun in a muggers' hand had flown away, not noticing the damage his first, far less accurate energy blast had caused.

   Stanley was left holding Susie’s hand, staring at the empty chair across from him. Her hand was still attached to her wrist, but not much else, because her arm terminated just below the elbow. As he watched blood sprayed out from the stump coating the chair in sticky red  fluid.

   Stanley started to scream and he didn't stop for a very long time.

   What the fuck…

Chapter 2
–
Margaret
’
s life changes dramatically.

“Do you know how many people have died since I sat down on this fine, expensive leather couch, not,” he glanced at his watch, “four and a half minutes ago?”

“No, sorry, I've really no idea.”

 ”In the whole world, there are approximately 19,098 so far, the war in Russia is warming up I'm afraid. A thermonuclear bomb went off 12.5 seconds ago and it's not going to be pleasant there for the next three thousand years. And in the immediate vicinity, let's say within 50 miles of your oh so lovely office, which takes you right to my back garden there have been exactly 123 deaths.”

   John Smith cocked his head slightly to one side as if listening to something far away.

  “Sorry, 129, no it’s 134 now; there was a ten car pile-up at the Newport exit ramp, it’s a nasty business. A drunk driver crossed the central reservation and hit a school bus head on doing 55 miles per hour. It's sad, and it could have been so easily avoided. It's quite heartbreaking for me to hear the children screaming for help.”

   A tear ran slowly down his face, he made no move to wipe it away; he made no move at all starring as he was across the room into the middle distance.

   “Ok, if you say so,” in 15 years of practicing psychiatry Dr Margaret Mason thought she had seen and heard it all. The lunatics justifying their sick little needs, murders full of imprecise remorse, arsonists with their burning desires, rapists, wife beaters, she’d treated them all, had cared for none of them and been disturbed by only a few.

  Foolishly, as it turned out, she was confident that this first appointment with her newest client, John Smith, would prove no more challenging than the hundreds of others she’d sat through over the years. She thought, wrongly, that was nothing new under the sun and that at worst she could get through the session by mentally running through her shopping list.

   “What makes you so sure?” she asked, toilet roll, ham slices, bottle of red wine. Keep him talking she thought, get out of him what the problem really is and eventually his ramblings would start to take on their own structure. Give it time and it's own internal logic would become clear.

   “I hear them calling out to me now, calling my name as they take their final breaths, looking for someone to drag them away from that proverbial tunnel of light,” he seemed strangely pleased with himself.   

   “They want me to save them,” he continued, “they don't want to die, of course they don't. They want someone to help them, they want a hero, but no one is coming you see, not this time I am afraid. They have grown far too complacent; the people of this city need to become much more self-reliant. From now on they need to save themselves, because I won't be saving them anymore.”

   “Schizophrenia nutter,” she wrote on her notebook, “absolute, god complex, freak show.” Her own version of shorthand, it was insulting, unprofessional but usually fairly accurate.

   John Smith smiled at her grimly and nodded, “Perhaps, perhaps not, that will be for history to decide, not for you or me.”

   “Anyway of the 139 deaths, 26 were household accidents, 15 were the victims of crime, and one was a particularly nasty assault which ended with the young woman having her throat slit from ear to ear. She was so young and so pretty; and she had such a long-drawn-out and painful death. It's such a shame no one stopped the attacker when they could have. It’s such a shame to be honest, that I didn’t stop him. Anyway 56 were standard medical problems, heart attacks, old age, things like that, interestingly one young man choked to death trying to swallow a live hamster which had just spend 20 minutes up his arse. And there I was thinking there were no surprises left in the world. The other deaths were what I would now class as unassisted suicides.”

   “They were thoughtless people throwing themselves in front of cars, diving under trains or tossing themselves off buildings,” he continued.

“Thoughtless people taking stupid risks and expecting someone to save them.”

“Thoughtless people who were looking for their 15 minutes of fame, looking for the interview with the Daily Globe, looking for something to tell their grandchildren, “remember the time was I saved by...” Well we will see what happens now won't we.”

  “I see,” she said, crossing her legs and settling back into her seat, this one's a talker she thought, butter, olive oil and three bottles of milk.

  “No, no you don't really, not yet anyway, but you will, we have an hour after all don't we? Of which there are now what, 53 minutes left?” Margaret nodded and he continued. “It's almost 140 deaths now, how sad, for me in particular. You see the last one; number 140 is going to be my wife. I am afraid she's just got far too used to being saved, she takes, sorry took she has just hit the pavement and shattered her skull,  as I say took far too many risks. This time she took her last risk in search of that next great story. She is, again sorry, this takes some getting used to, she was, a newspaper reporter for the Daily Globe.”

   “It's a shame, but she really shouldn't have crawled out on that ledge, she really shouldn't have worn those high heels, she really shouldn't have worn such a short tight skirt. I am afraid that she really shouldn't have expected me to save her again and again and again. In a way it was quite selfish of her. I suspect that her last thought was one of confusion why I'd not been there yet again to grab her at the last minute.”

   He paused for a second then his face changed, “Stupid bitch, really, she made me sick sometimes.”