Dome War
Lenny

What a way to celebrate the climax of the strangest day of anybody’s life; tied to a chair, ears ringing, a mild concussion and painfully waking up to a man sitting on a chair in front of you and holding a cigarette lighter. ‘It is about time you woke up. You owe me an explanation, I do not and if you are spiralling about why you are in this low-key emasculating position well, let me just say I have an affinity for self-harm’, he said. ‘It’s you… you stole my life!’ spat Chuck behind an excruciation of a headache and the cloudy view of a familiar room. The man’s hand latched onto Chuck’s throat and with an assertive tone in his voice, he had the nerve to say, ‘I’ve been watching you Harrison, to the extent that I know this is the nursery you made for the spawn you so unblushingly murdered because where I come from, it is our sole purpose.’ Intentionally ignoring the little dent this imposter had just made to his heart of iron, he wriggled out of the choke hold and aggressively asked, ‘We are at Fiona’s house?’ ‘She’s dead, husband of the year. If you ever thought of visiting her or if you had not chickened out of ringing the doorbell yesterday you’d know. I was with her when it happened’, Lenny dared to say. And everything went red with ire. He chose not to believe it. The former love of his life died, with some stranger pretending to be him holding the only things he’d ever wanted for two whole years, her hand and her heart; the latter he betrayed like the wolf in a little red riding hood climax adjacent, complete with the man-eating. He twitched and wriggled, shook and tried to break out of his duct tape shackles which only led him to a crashing rendezvous with the floor instead of the desired outcome; his thumbs so far down this pretentious wife snatcher’s eyes until he could feel that rotten inclination to catfish dying, heartbroken women and gore it out. He shrugged and cursed through his clenched bitter teeth even in his limited position. ’You done not considering how lucky she was to go with the person she loved the most, you, as her freshest memory? Is your priority not what she wanted and not what you wanted? If anything I fixed the pity party of your relationship and lucky for me, got someone else’s attractive woman to consensually caress without her knowing she was even cheating on her ‘not’ husband.’

Chuck could not believe how insufferable he himself could be and it went without saying that it really does take one to know one. As humiliating as it was to be wincing with rage while trying to look unaffected by this arrogant devil’s snarky and intentional savagery, he would give this home wrecker the gratification of him being jealous and threatened over his resurrected masculinity. ‘Because of you sensitive data has fallen into the right hands, id est. NYPD dirty cops and I have to replace them. As you might have guessed from the loose lipped goon that harassed you at the lab, I am important to Hollow E’s Dome’s mission; Dome being a weapon running and manufacturing subsidiary of Harrison Enterprises, because I am a means to an end. And being the red notice holder of an Underground society obsessed with having backup plans for every geographical, political and economic calamity enough to experiment on your Earth, I hacked Hollow-E’s NYPD’s CCTV footage- not quite Swiss in precision but the feed will have to be an acceptable improvisation for the real NYPD’s cam footage.’ ‘In layman’s terms?’ Chuck satirised. Lenny then pulled out a computer from a drawer and pointed at some police database. ‘See? These are the people that attacked you yesterday. I got this from when I once had my traitorous hands on your Earth’s NYPD files. Willard Smoke and Dmitri Dagger, dead they are it says. And no this is not some corrupt government’s plan to keep someone who knows too much dead to the public; they really are dead. To replace them I would need eyes in the station I do not have tabs on. Luckily I am not too picky with equipment so what I have will do.’ ‘Which is what exactly?’ Chuck hissed. Lenny replied while holding up a black tinted lens, ‘Lenses. Put this over any camera and its feed will change from what it is actually recording to what the counterpart of this camera in a mirror version of your world – My World – is recording. This is not your typical monocle, Chuck. This is slicing edge fibre optic inter-dimensional networking and hacking device and I have it over one camera in the police dept. Your task is watching the feed until something unusual happens… anyone seemingly talking to…’ ‘There’s something already’, Chuck interrupted. ‘I swear if what you deem paranormal is a police officer choosing a bagel instead of…’ Lenny said, before narrowing his eyes to something unusual. Two cops he saw, staring at empty space then bursting into laughter and making full on conversation with … literally nothing?’

‘This is pastime for people of your underground society of stalkers, Lenny?’ ‘For a civilisation that feels threatened by the possible existence of apes with big feet this is going to be bomb drop. Project Second coming has been in the woodwork since the age of Babylon in the underground replica of Earth we call Hollow-E, for Hollow Earth. While I am ashamed of my civilisation’s word play it is certainly a haven for futuristic technology… including this forgery.’ He threw two police uniforms onto Chuck’s cramped lap, pointed at the screen and added, ‘See that? The car appears to be driving itself so whoever we replace we interrogate to get my data back. If there’s two in that car the merrier the chances of replaceing the flash because they won’t be split up but I need a diversion to get them to change course to my intended location. Do you dig your hillside cottage? Since it is always empty you surely mind me blowing it up to set off the necessary distraction. With some luck no one will recognise your face and the worst scenario being we do not replace them we just do it again someday. Their undercover mission goes beyond retrieving a data disk and not a crafty, nimble and capoeira skilled felon surprisingly. Unless you want to take a big swing and believe that I will not use your face in vain I would come with me if I were you. Plus you aren’t safe anymore because yours truly might have dragged you into this mess. Red pill, blue pill time.’ Even if the hard drive was to be a goner Lenny seemed more eager to salvage these allegedly dead people and to keep them tied up in a basement where they could do least damage. The choice was a no brainer; Lenny was not going to be running around town doing who knows what with and to his face. ’I’m in jerk. But once we do catch your loose ends I want you out of my life quicker than you ruined it. But why the heck are people in your underground life mimicking every move people on the ‘surface’ are doing including having conversations with people that do not exist in their world?’ Lenny, cryptic as usual, ignored and pulled a detonator out of his pocket. ‘Bang!’ smirked the pyromaniac and a pedestrian out there somewhere witnessed the mixed bag of sadistic awe, bewilderment and hopefully not, gore of a lifetime even before the thumb hit the button. ‘Oh my- are you mental?’ ‘The area was clear, boy scout’, said Lenny replying to Chuck’s horrified reaction. ‘I’m calling Susan. You are taking a sick day’, he added as he untied his suspecting doppelganger.