Chapter Thirty-Nine – Meetingus Interuptus

Chapter Thirty-Nine – Meetingus Interuptus

“Cheating? No, no, I would never. My wife and I have been in a loving relationship for nearly a decade now—more, maybe. She’s the one that tans my hide when I forget the date of our anniversary! Hah!

Why…”

–Excerpt from an interview with Mayor Dupont, 2056

***

The secretary jumped out of his seat and darted down the corridor ahead of me. “Th-this way, miss,” he said. “I’ve sent a message to the mayor to expect you, but, ah, he’s preparing for an important meeting.”

“What about?” I asked. We soon took a turn in the passageway and were crossing down the middle of a room filled with cubicles. Office drones were clicking away behind screens, some few leaning back while jacked into the net.

“Ah, it’s with the city council? There’s a meeting at ten this morning.”

I glanced at my aug clock and held back a wince. It was past nine already? At the rate we were going, I wouldn’t get to sleep until the afternoon. “What’s the meeting’s agenda?” I asked. “Is it an emergency meeting?”

“Ah, no? Just an ordinary meeting.”

“Huh, alright,” I said. I considered crashing the meeting instead, but we were already here, and there was no way I could just sit around and wait. Maybe I could have planned things a little better, but then, I wasn’t all that keen on planning things.

The mayor would be… interesting to handle. I didn’t know anything about him. I think I’d seen his face on some posters slapped onto walls and maybe a few ads between two posts.

“Hey, wait up!”

I stopped and glanced over my shoulder. Rac wasn’t next to me anymore, and I had no idea when she’d moved away. I spotted her a few metres back, tossing aside bits of paper and junk off her shirt. She had a stapler in hand, and there was an office worker staring at her from next to a tipped-over trash can.

“What’s that?” I asked.

“Stapler. Slightly used. Probably a broken spring or something,” Rac said. She stuffed it into one of her bigger pockets, and it clunked against something else she had in there. Then her arm darted out and she added a pen to her collection.

“That wasn’t in the trash,” I said.

“Meh, they won’t miss it,” she replied.

Fair enough.

“Uh, here,” the secretary said. He gestured down at the end of the room. There were some steps leading up to a landing with a mirrored wall beyond that. I bet that it was there so that anyone in the room could overlook their sea of keyboard monkeys.

“So, you know the mayor, right?” I asked.

“In passing,” the secretary said. “I’ve been an intern here for two years now. Just a bit more and I’ll be on the payroll! But yeah, I’ve seen the mayor before. Mister Dupont is… nice enough. I’m not his secretary, I’m just at the front lobby.”

“Uh-huh, so how do you figure he’s going to react if I tell him there’s a threat to the city that needs his immediate action to fix?”

The secretary winced.

“Right, got it,” I said. “Rac, stay close, and if you see me pulling a gun, cover your ears. I don’t want to hurt your hearing.”

“Aww, thanks!”

I walked up the steps and right up to the mayor’s door. There was a plaque next to it with “Mayor Dupont” written on it in big blocky letters. I turned the handle, then frowned as it jiggled in place. He left his door locked?

I checked with my augs, but there didn’t seem to be any electronic lock on the door. I knocked instead.

“I’m busy here,” someone said. “Come back in a moment.”

I heard shuffling, and with a twitch of my ears I could make out some of what was happening on the other side. The mayor had to be the big guy behind a bigger desk. The woman on her knees before him was probably not the mayor.

I shrugged and brought my foot up.