The Hipster Who Leapt Through Time (The Hipster Trilogy Book 2) Read online

  His fingers twitched as he ran them across the surface of his jacket — a long black coat made from the skin of a desert-turtle of Fradgor. It draped down to his exposed feet, hiding his overalls beneath.

  JoEl wasn’t any old engineer. He was an onsite engineer. Which meant he travelled for his job. Depending on where his work sent him, he could find himself in one corner of the galaxy one decade, and in the opposite corner the next. He was a nomad in many ways, only seeing his family back on Gamma Nebulous every twenty-five years or so — on the Earth calendar, that was.

  “Mornin’,” said an elderly woman with pale sagging skin and the grey hair of an almost-dead. She was supporting herself with a stand mechanism, using its four legs to supplement her own two. “The sun’s out.” She pointed to the star in the sky — Sol, the big flaming gaseous ball.

  JoEl couldn’t imagine it not being out. If it wasn’t, they’d all be dead.

  “Yes,” he said, looking up to it. “I’d say you’ve got about another five billion years or so.”

  The woman squinted at him, unsure what he meant.

  “Well,” he clarified, “once the sun burns all of its hydrogen, it will become a red giant. It will burn bright, becoming more luminous, hotter, and will expand all the way out to the inner circle of the solar system, destroying this planet in the process.”

  Her saggy skin sagged a little more and the creases above her brow deepened.

  “No need to worry,” the engineer said. “You’ll be long dead before then.”

  She turned and made a clicking noise with her mouth before scuttling away with her walking device. He smiled as wide a smile as the tendons in his face would allow.

  He crossed the road to the other side and found himself in front of a row of merchant shops — food, drinks, furniture, that sort of thing. The last time he was on this planet, he’d decided against eating any of the human food, on account of the plague that was rapidly killing humans, but he’d always regretted it. Eating ethnic food was part of the fun of working onsite. He’d read on the Freelance Network how good the meat and the alcohol was and he’d always felt a pang of regret that he never indulged.

  A group of Earth children, all in the same uniform of grey bottoms and red tops with a little white insignia on the chest, passed by. A school of them, led by a single teacher, bald of the head, bearded of the face.

  How fascinating, he thought, to see how small and hairless the humans began, and how hairy and saggy they became. Years were not kind to humans. One of the children in red bumped into JoEl’s side. His fingers twitched.

  “Sorry sir,” the little blond-haired boy said. He looked up and JoEl caught his blue eyes.

  “It’s okay, little one,” he said looking up to the teacher, who waved an apology to him.

  JoEl continued. He passed some houses, small red-bricked boxes with little patches of oxygen farms — squares of grass, flowers, and trees.

  He took a deep breath and pulled the Earth’s air inside. A rich mix of oxygen and smog that clung to the back of his two hundred teeth.

  “Marvellous,” he said again.

  He passed a shop window full of pictures of houses attached to monetary values. He caught his reflection in the glass. His skin was nice and tight around his face. He hoped it would stay that way for the duration of the job. A female inside waved at him and he waved back.

  Next up, a window display full of animal carcasses strung up. Their innards removed and exposed for all to see. JoEl’s mouth salivated.

  Tasty.

  In handwritten gold paint, a sign above the door read ‘Jim’s Butcher’s’. The white splintered door was closed but the smell of flesh still found its way to JoEl’s nostrils. He pressed his hand against the cold wood and pushed it open. A bell rang above his head as the fresh wave of meat-stink hit him.

  With all their progress, the humans still required analogue technologies such as doorbells. Disappointing, but still, the flesh appealed.

  Inside a cool breeze from a mechanical fan washed over JoEl and his finger’s twitched again. The shadows of the carcasses in the windows covered him. The counter was a display of more flesh. Some ground up and wrapped in organic matter. Some flayed strips. Some larger chunks of meat shaped into balls. A tongue of some sort — beastly, and full of pockets and nodules.

  “Oh yes,” he said aloud to nobody. “Lovely.”

  “You’d like some beef tongue?” a man said from behind the counter. His patch of grey hair and the tops of his eyes peered over the counter — a little piglet human with a belly full of meat and fat and fluids. Oh dear. Not too healthy. Is this the sign to come for the humans? Old and frail or fat and short? His chubby chin barely reached above the counter.

  “Yes,” JoEl said. “I’d like some tongue. And please give me some of those big pieces of … what are they called? “

  “Steak?” the piglet said. “You’d like a couple of sirloins?”

  “Yes,” JoEl said, showing him a good solid Earth grin. “I’d like to try a few of your delicacies.”

  “Right, great, well then, well … let’s see … How many would you like?” The upper corner of the piglet’s lip lifted and his nose scrunched up. A horrible display.

  “Well … friend, I’d like to have a whole tongue, please.”

  The piglet man danced his head side to side like his neck had popped out of place as he picked up a metal grabbing device, lifted the tongue from its well-lit resting place, and slid it into a paper bag. He flicked the bag over itself, tying the end of it. He then repeated the process for the sirloins and asked JoEl for £19.91.

  “£19.91?” JoEl repeated.

  The piglet nodded his head and blinked his eyes and said, “Yes, please.”

  JoEl opened his long dark overcoat, revealing, for a second, his overalls — slim and form-fitted to his skin for efficient travel and adorned with the tools for whatever the job demanded. He reached into a pocket for his per diems. He’d given himself just enough human money to get by comfortably on his work trip. He handed the piglet a crisp £20 note — printed the month before on Gamma Nebulous. The piglet held the note up to the light coming in from the window. Once satisfied he handed the bags of meat to JoEl and said something about a good day.

  Without leaving the butchers, JoEl reached his hand into the bag, pulled out one of the sirloins and held it in front of his face. The slab of flesh felt wet and firm in his hand. The animal that the flesh had been ripped from was a strong animal. Strong indeed. He saw the red run down to his fingers before biting down on the raw meat, ripping a chunk out of it.

  The piglet man watched with a loose jaw as JoEl gorged on the juicy raw flesh. He swallowed down the bite and smiled at the piglet man.

  “Thanks again,” JoEl said, showing his teeth in their reddened glory, the juices all around his mouth and down his chin. “You have a good day now.”

  Before he left he took another bite of the meat and stepped out onto the street.

  His tablet computer beeped and sent a shock of nervous excitement through his body. It was a notification, a signal, that only meant one thing. It was time to go to work.

  Luna Gajos

  “Tomorrow, when you’re in, can you make sure you give the floor a good mop?” Blaise said. “When I unlocked this morning I could see so many lines of dirt in on the floor I thought I was in a helicopter, looking down at a freshly ploughed field.”

  “What?” Luna said. “My mopping is fantastic. You’re lying.”

  Blaise looked at her with the big wide eyes of shame, his caramel skin already showing some wear and tear. His eyes had lost some of their vim and vigour. It was only six months ago that he was showing off about his Twitter followers and spouting nonsense about middle-management. And now look at him. The restaurant manager of CrunchyBites in the King’s Cross station. Doing the job that he heckled Luna for doing only a few months prior.

  “Well, I don’t bloody know, do I Luna?” he said. “Maybe you were having an off day
.”

  Blaise twisted a key in the wall and the steel shutters of the café screeched from the ceiling to the floor. She waited her turn to reply, to remind Blaise that it wasn’t that long ago she was teaching him how to clean the coffee machine, ring staff discount through the register, deal with a customer complaint. And now here he—

  The metal crashed as the shutters rooted themselves into a groove in the floor. Blaise removed the key and looked back to Luna.

  “You do realise that I was the one who showed you how to use the mop in the first place,” she said.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” He spun the ring of keys around his finger. The ring of responsibility that Luna used to look after. “All that was so long ago now … how long was it?”

  “Six months,” Luna said.

  “Oh yeah. So, you tell me then, what happened?”

  Luna thought about the alien, the cat, the parasite, the fact that she’d played an integral part in saving the world. She thought about the brother who was pulled apart by the beast. She thought about his lifeless face, similar to the butchered pig-heads you see on dinner platters, apples in their gobs. She hadn’t stopped thinking about it. Even now, looking into the café through the shutters, she could see the table where Moomamu was attacked. She could see the spot where Gary laid, bleeding out, missing his paw after jumping to protect his companion.

  “Nothing, I guess,” she said. “I don’t know what happened.”

  Blaise wished her a good night and scootered past her towards the entrance to the underground.

  As Luna stood there, looking into the café at the spot where Moomamu had fought the killer, her eyes drifted to the floor she’d just mopped. Crap, she thought as she saw a dirty footprint smack bang in the middle of the floor.

  ***

  The car grunted as Luna yanked the handbrake on. She placed the steering lock over the wheel, piled an empty crisp packet and bottle of orange juice into a plastic shopping bag and braced herself for what she was about to walk into. Her new flatmate — Gary.

  Every time she’d been home she’d found new claw marks in her curtains and sofa. Puddles of yellow around the litter tray. No, not in the litter tray. Next to it. She’d find him lying in the sun — his face as sour as an old grape. He’d been lying in the window, watching birds fly by, licking his lips.

  The only words leaving his rough tongue came in twos — “Gary’s hungry” or “Gary’s tired”. It was like he’d devolved from the sentient ginger wonder to something else. A stray moggy, depressed, lonely. It didn’t matter what Luna did for him, he wasn’t the ball of stoic calm he’d been when she met him. He was an old knife, ruined by what he’d had to cut down, blunted, flattened, in need of sharpening.

  She dragged the bags of shopping — milk, bread, cat-food and so on — to the building, holding the bags outwards so as to not catch her feet. She’d have to do the same again the next week. The Sisyphean task of the weekly food-shop.

  With the aching muscles of a mountain goat she walked past whatever was happening in the flat, dropped the bags down in the kitchen, and collapsed on the living room sofa, burying her face in the faux-fur cushion.

  It smelled like piss.

  She’d washed the cushion so many times its deep red colour was now pink, but still, Gary’s piss had permeated the cushion thoroughly and completely. His urine was now one with the stitching.

  She lifted her head just enough to move the pillow away when she saw him staring at her.

  His pink nose, scribbled with scars. His knife-sliced pupils. The fur around his neck standing on edge in wet peaks — he’d cleaned himself. And behind him, swaying side to side, his chunky tail slapping the floor on each side of his butt.

  “Hello Gary,” she said.

  “Gary has news,” he said.

  She sat up, placing her legs to his side. She looked around, but there were no fresh claw marks in the sides of the furniture or in the wallpaper. She looked over by his litter tray. Mostly dry on the sides and all around, and in the tray she could see the darker patches, where the litter had broken down, clumped together. He’d been using it. She wasn’t sure she knew what a cat looked like when it smiled, but this was the closest thing to it.

  When she’d first brought him back to the flat, after the parasite had gone, the plan was to wait for the next mission. She’d let him stay until he had to move on to the next project — adventure, quest, whatever — but here he was, still chewing and scratching and pissing everywhere.

  “Gary has new mission,” he said as he purred for the first time since coming to Luna’s flat. She didn’t think he could even do it. Physically. She thought it was more of a non-intelligent cat thing to do, but here he was, his little heart shaking in his ribcage with excitement. “Luna must come with Gary.”

  “Me?” she said, realising she’d not put the milk in the fridge yet. “What do you mean? I thought you were going to get on with your life when the new mission came along? Wasn’t that the idea?”

  Gary jumped onto the sofa and placed his front paw on her leg. She could feel his purr working its way through his paw and into her knee. She realised he was doing it on purpose. He was soothing her.

  “It’s too important for Gary to do alone. Gary needs quick-fire smarts of Tall One, like last time.”

  She brushed his paw off, stood up, and went to put away the shopping. It was a studio flat. Kitchen, living room, bedroom. All in one. Not enough for one person. Never mind a person and a cat. A couple of steps to the kitchenette and she opened the fridge. The smell of the old cat food was rank. It was stinking up her human food.

  Gary trotted along after her and pushed his body against her leg. As he glided past, his tail clung to the outside of her calf.

  “Well,” she said, and threw the old tin into the bin. It crashed at the bottom with a damp thud. “Tell me more about the mission. Where is it?”

  “Down from here. Kingston,” he said.

  “Oh, I see. You need my car now right? First it was the bed, food, shelter, and now it’s the car.” Images of her father flashed into her mind. Oh, how he hated cats.

  “They don’t really love you,” he’d always said. “They use you for your resources, like parasites.”

  Back then she’d defended them. They did love you. They just showed it in different ways.

  “Give me a dog any day of the week,” her father would say, and that would be the end of all arguments on the subject. Nothing could top that.

  “Tall One is Gary’s friend?” Gary asked as he walked over to his bowl, bent down and scooped up a bit of dried kibble into his mouth.

  “I thought so,” she said. “But maybe not.”

  “Tall One won’t help?”

  Gary’s eyes widened, moistened. The whiskers dropped. Luna sighed.

  “I never said that,” she said.

  Luna unscrewed the green plastic lid from a bottle of semi-skimmed milk and took a swig from it. A fine line of white rested on the hairs on her top lip. “Promise me we’ll be back in time for me to get a few hours’ sleep before work tomorrow,” she said as she took another swig of watered-down milk. “Tell me how we’re going to do to save the world this time.”

  “We’re not saving the world,” Gary said. “We’re saving a child.”

  Moomamu The Thinker

  It smelled sticky. This new room of his.

  It wasn’t so long ago that Moomamu The Thinker had awoken in a small box of a room with all the fresh eyes and senses of a newly-born human larva, crying about going back to where he came from, snivelling like fresh spawn.

  Some time had passed since then. He couldn’t tell how long, but his beard had grown down to the top of his chest and the muscles and fat that made up his human body had diminished somewhat.

  For all of time he’d lived in the stars. He was a floating ball of consciousness watching the universe unfold around him, but after a parasite had latched itself onto a neighbouring planet, he was pulled f
rom his place in the stars, and shoved into this human vessel. He’d awoken in the fleshy body, surrounded by the smell of urine and cat fur. And now, further on in time, he’d awoken in an even smaller room. The only light source was a fine slice along the bottom of the cell door. It was the sort of non-existent light that had him regularly touching his face and arms to remind himself that they were still there.

  How did he get here?

  This was a thought that often bounced around his mind.

  He’d saved the Earth from the parasite. The beastly thing with blood-stained teeth that tried to eat him. They burned it alive. Him, Luna, Gary, and the broken human. They set the beast alight and sent it back into the portal, killing it, saving Earth. And what reward does a being get for saving an entire race?

  Locked within a box.

  His belly wobbled with hunger. It hadn’t stopped wobbling since he’d first arrived on this little planet of cats — wherever it was. It wasn’t a planet of his domain. Some other Thinker must be sitting in space watching this unfold. If there were any Thinkers left, that is.

  Moomamu had many questions. Mostly about getting home.

  The cats on this planet were unlike the ones of Earth. They were similar in furriness and colour, and they were full of claws and teeth, but these ones were more brutish. Some of them walked on all fours as expected, but most stood upright on their hind legs, wore clothing made from weathered skin, and carried all sorts of nonsense within their claws — weapons, tools, satchels. They were still an analogue species, yet to discover any digital technology … or cappuccino.

  He’d been taken to a keep where he currently resided. A giant stone monstrosity with peaks that reached the skies and rooms buried deep into the ground.

  He sighed and touched his cold cheek. It felt tacky to his fingertips. He placed his hand on the wall to his side.

  He knew every inch of the cell. He could walk around the place with his eyes closed and only stub his toe or bang his face occasionally. The cold stone of the floor was damp, and the bed, if it could be called a bed, was a rolled-up collection of rags in the corner. He still had his human clothes — the fabric leg cover-uppers, the white body fabric and the black neck adornment— but he imagined they weren’t much to look at now.