NaNoWriMo, Day 1

Word Count: 2,551

*Disclaimer - this is a very rough draft, as the challenge stresses quantity more than quality. Hence, expect some sloppiness.


Fever Dreams in the Corporate Suite


My watch says seven-thirty a.m. but god knows what time it is here. The temporary assistant Cleaver assigned to me as he hustled me into a towncar with a hastily packed suitcase and a bottle of malaria pills is named Molly. She somehow looks just as pressed, prim, and together as she did when we took off in a company jet some seventeen hours ago. I, on the other hand, can’t get the taste of cough syrup out of my mouth, can barely see straight, and I’m suspecting am the source of the ever increasing body odor smell slowly filling the small cabin. Molly looks at me expectantly, having just handed me an itinerary that might as well be in Japanese for all of the good it’s doing me in my present condition. I pretend to scan it and nod, head bobbing heavily. Looks good I say. Good job, Molly. I reach over to hand the packet back to her and I see her nose scrunch up just a little bit. Yep, the stink is coming from me all right.

The plane dips sharply into descent and my guts do a somersault that makes me hold my breath and clench my ass shut as hard as possible to prevent something really terrible from happening. A long flight in a claustrophobic little jet apparently fuzzes your decision making process up a bit when presented with prepackaged sandwiches from a cooler. Chicken salad seemed like a good idea three hours ago. Now, not so much. Molly looks at me apprehensively, as if she can sense the epic battle going on in my rumbling innards but is helpless to do anything about it but pray and try to stay clear of the damage area. I consider making a break for the bathroom and try to maintain some dignity through the awful trial that is soon to come but the captain turns on the fasten seat belts sign and I am well and truly screwed. C’mon big boy, I think to myself, you can get through this. Just tough it out until we are on the ground. A cold sweat starts dripping down my sides under my shirt and my knuckles are ghost-white around the armrests but I hang on just enough and we land safe and sound.

I can’t tell if it is dawn or dusk when we step down to the cracked tarmac but this is definitely the quietest airport I have ever been in. There isn’t another plane in sight. The place is military controlled, or at least whichever military is in vogue this week. I breathe a sigh of relief that my stomach seems to have settled down for now. Molly is already on her phone speaking quickly in Chinese? Arabic? Hindi? I’m too jetlagged to care and she seems to have things under control so I let her go about it and scan my surroundings. There are soldiers scattered about at various posts around the runway and that’s about it. Heavy black steel gates block my view of anything beyond the perimeter, it looks like they are pretty serious about keeping people out. Molly wraps up her conversation, picks up her sensible little travel bag, and motions for me to follow.

We walk across the airport to a makeshift customs office fronted by a steely-eyed higher up of some indiscriminate Asian descent planted behind a stainless steel counter. I assume he’s a higher up because of all of the decorations and fancy stripes on his chest, but I guess he could have gotten those anywhere in a place like this. Molly greets him and starts speaking rapidly in the same language as before but his gaze stays fixed on me, which is starting to make me a little edgy. Molly finishes and it sounded like she hung a question on the end, but Commander Grumpy just stands there. After too many excruciating seconds, he holds out a gloved hand and asks for my passport in harshly accented English. I nervously fumble through my jacket pockets, having forgotten which one I put it in just like I told myself not to. The third pocket offers success and I hand the passport over with a chuckle that is entirely too high-pitched. Constant, Joseph Constant is my name, uh, sir, I am here in your fine country representing the interests of Nanodyne Defense Systems, Incorporated, and its various affiliates throughout the world. It is an honor to be permitted inside your borders and I hope our time here will not be a burden to you in any way.

He studies my passport for a good long time before handing it back to me. He motions for our bags and we heft them up to the counter where he proceeds to search through each as thoroughly as humanly possible. I begin to wonder just who in the hell they sent to my condo to pack a bag for me as I look at the clothes being crumpled up on the counter. There is stuff in there that I haven’t worn in years, some of it I didn’t even know I still had. There is no doubt in my mind that it was Jenkins, that son of a bitch. Hardy har har, asshole, just wait until I get back. Apparently satisfied, General Spic N Span repacks the bags none too carefully and ushers us through an x-ray tube. I come through fine but all hell breaks loose when Molly steps in and suddenly we are at the wrong end of six screaming army guys with automatic rifles. If I could see myself, I would bet that I am white as a sheet, but for some reason Molly’s face has gone deep crimson. The man in charge keeps gesturing at her crotch and repeating the same command over and over while Molly frantically tries to explain something. With a head jerk, the commander orders two of the men to grab her and they drag poor Molly off to an unmarked room across the hallway. I stand there, still at gunpoint with my hands in the air, sweating profusely and wondering what the hell I was going to do without an interpreter. It is deathly quiet and tense until everyone starts in surprise when a bout of uproarious laughter bursts from behind the door of the closed room. Molly comes out moments later, still deep red and tears running down her face. She has lost a good deal of her former poise, and I’m confused as hell. Luckily, I’m not the only one who has no idea what’s going on, and one of the guards comes out of the room behind Molly in stitches and holds up something proudly. The other guards all start laughing as well as we all realize at the same time that he’s holding a tampon. Damn, those x-ray tubes are sensitive. Oh man, poor Molly. She’s staring at the floor and shaking a little, but I still have a gun pointed at my chest so I can’t really offer much in the way of sympathy. The commander barks out an order and the guards back down, clearing the way for us to leave. Just like that, Molly takes a deep breath, straightens her sensible skirt, and she’s back to her old self. I have to hand it to her, she’s a pro all the way. They lead us to the big gate, which starts to open with a slow groan as we approach. There is a limo waiting on the thin dirt road when we step out, the only thing visible in the immediate area. The seats are like leather heaven as I sit and melt immediately. Molly throws a few quick instructions at the driver and settles in across from me. As the limo starts its trip to wherever the hell we’re going, she keeps her gaze locked out of the tinted window. I want to ask if she’s ok, but it seems like it would be really awkward, so I just stare out of my own window. Before I know it the quiet rocking of the car makes my eyelids start to droop, and I fall helplessly into blessed unconsciousness right then and there.

I wake up in a completely different world and the shock of it is like a bucket of cold water to the face. I can’t even see where we are because there are too many bodies on the sides of the car beating on the windows for attention. I look over at Molly, who looks a little overwhelmed herself but still in control. There are children pressing their faces on the glass, teenagers throwing bizarre gang signs, and grown men trying to sell whatever they have on them. The car is surrounded by pure chaos, and I am understandably confused. I frantically ask Molly where the fuck we are but the name she spits back at me doesn’t help one little bit. It had too many syllables to remember in one try. The limo driver is screaming obscenities in a vulgar tongue and blaring the horn at the crush of humanity that seems intent on pushing us over but can’t decide which direction it wants us to go. Apparently tired of the game, our driver guns it and with a distressing bump or two that may have been the result of someone’s appendage rolling under the tire we break from the crowd into the narrow streets of the ugliest slum I have ever seen.

It’s like someone scooped up a little bit of every neighborhood in the eastern half of the world and dumped them all together in one place. In my hasty briefing, they showed me where we were going on a map, and I believe it was somewhere near what used to be the Indian and Chinese borders before the war. Now there doesn’t seem to be any separation between the two cultures at all, plus it looks like there is a good deal of the Middle East thrown in for good measure. One thing these folks all have in common is that they look like they are dirt poor, with an emphasis on the dirt. There is filth and grime caked everywhere, covering every surface. The streets are like a depressing petting zoo, I have already lost track of how many different types of emaciated animals I’ve seen staggering around.

Eventually, the concentration of shacks and tents thins and ceases and we drive through the industrial part of whatever city this is. The air is so thick with soot and smoke that you can’t see more than a block in either direction. Molly says something about main exports and manufacturing but I’m too busy watching some guys with gas masks loading leaky barrels of god knows what into the back of a truck to pay attention.

Pretty soon, we are clear of the dreariness and things start looking up dramatically. Paved roads, well-kept houses, functional business establishments, we finally arrive in civilization and I let out a breath that I hadn’t realize I’d been holding. The limo eases into the reception driveway of a very spiffy hotel and I relax for the first time since we touched down. Uniformed bellhops take our bags from the trunk with polite bows, the doorman greets us with a friendly nod, and a smiling Indian host welcomes us in English at the front desk. Finally, we are in the real world and I can get to work.

The bed is soft, softer than my bed at home, and I’m barely able to turn out the light before I am fast asleep. I dream but the images are hazy. The picture of the man I am here to find drifts over throngs of dirty children and bleating goats. A knock at the door wakes me with a start entirely too early, and just like that my day is off to a shitty start. I stagger to the door in a groggy haze, not yet fully recollected where I am and what I am doing there. Molly is standing in the hall waiting for me, already dressed and ready to go, uncomfortably trying not to notice that I am hanging out of my boxer shorts. She tells me that we have to meet the Secretary of the Interior in half and hour, and I curse a good deal and stagger into the shower. While trying to scrub the haze away I yell over the water that I would really appreciate it if she made some coffee, and I am terribly disappointed when I come out and discover that she didn’t hear me. She apologizes, a bit too sarcastically if you ask me, and assures me that we can get some on the way. She ties my tie with a sigh while I am tucking in my shirt and trying to step into a shoe at the same time. It seems Molly is quickly losing patience with me. I am whisked into the limo and we are on our way into the bustling downtown federal district, which evidently does not contain a single coffee shop.

The Secretary of the Interior is a round, pleasant fellow and he offers us tea. I accept for lack of anything better to get my brain working and we sit. Molly begins the corporate spiel about caring for developing countries and working hard to assist in the creation of a stable and beneficial government, but the good Secretary does not appear to be paying attention. When she finishes, he turns to me and asks what he can do for us, almost as if Molly wasn’t even here. Still not firing on all cylinders, I stammer for a bit before Molly slides a picture of our man across the table. His name is Freidrich Brandt, I explain, and he is a very valuable asset to our corporation. Mr. Brandt was working on a research project and was last seen in this area before the regime change of two weeks ago. If they would be so gracious, we humbly request that we be allowed to search for our missing compatriot with assistance from the local authorities.
The Secretary considers this for a long two minutes of silence, and then casually waves over a servant who hands him a gaudy old-timey gold telephone. The conversation with whomever he calls is brief, but it sounds good. He hangs up the handset with a smile and turns to me once again. He tells me that they would be honored to have me as their guest, I assume they meant Molly too, and that whatever we may need would be provided. He starts to rattle off the names of various contacts that can help us but lord knows I’m not writing it down, so I interrupt him and gently attempt to bring Molly back into the thick of things. The Secretary sighs and motions for one of his servants to assist Molly, and stands to leave. He insists that we meet for dinner before I leave the country, then shakes my hand warmly and leaves the room with a bow. Molly finishes gathering names from the servant and we leave, me feeling quite accomplished.