OOC: Folks, I'll be up front with you. This is satire. In case you're not very educated, that means that all the parts you like and think are good were interpreted correctly and all the parts you don't and think were shitty were intentionally that way and you just don't get it.
THE PIECE is very high-minded. The piece is very cerebral. The piece is allegorical. The piece is noteworthy. The piece is eclectic. The piece, this piece, would be well received at Cannes or Sundance. Essentially, what I'm saying is that it's not very good.
IC:
Flash back to one space year ago, on board the space ship Signalia.
It was almost exactly one space year ago. Almost to the day. It was raining. That was when I saw her, standing on the promenade of the Signalia in her slutty red dress, her slutty hair getting tossed in slutty curls by the slutty space wind. She always had a derringer with her. You might call her a fatal female for that reason. She always had wet wipes, too, but I think that was unrelated.
“It always rains in space.” She said to me. You might think that was the first time she said that. Or the last time. But you’d be wrong. She said it way more than that.
Flash forward to the actual beginning of the story.
The name’s Christon. Christon Mills. It’s important that I tell you that because it’s tax season so the name on my door says something else temporarily. But below that it always says “Private Investigator” because that’s what I am. I’ve tried a lot of things to take my mind off that slutty blonde. Femboys. Alcohol. Gambling. Femboys. Other blondes. Femboys again. None of it worked, although I still have sex with femboys a lot.
She moved up in the world fast. Like an elevator that skipped odd floors. But she was broken, I knew. Also kind of like an elevator that skipped odd floors in that way. So anyway, it was raining, as it often seems to in space. I kicked open the door to my own office and approached Ms. Barnett, my secretary, lover, friend, and amphetamines guy.
“Any messages for me, Kitty?”
I called her Kitty. I was pretty sure it wasn’t her name.
“No, Mr. Mills.” She was dressed as a nurse for some reason. “As a general rule, not having messages as a private investigator implies that you’re not very successful because messages represent possible revenue. This fact could also be gleaned from the drab, alcoholic vibes that your rundown office gives off.”
I ignored her boring talking sounds and poured myself a drink with one hand and lit a cigarette with the other. With the other hand I loosened my tie. Then, the phone rang. In spite of my obvious lack of funds and the kind of financially crippling ketamine addiction that can only arise from sharing an office with your dealer, someone calling my place of business was an inconvenience to me for some reason. I mean, what could some asshole calling me at the place where I earn my living possibly want?
I picked up the phone. I then arranged it so the part you talk into was near my mouth and the part you listen into was near my ear. It was the most effective orientation for this piece of technology.
“I’m not buying anything!” I shouted in my most money-losing voice.
“Dammit, Christon!” the moustached voice from the other side boomed, “That’s no way to talk to the Mayor of the Ship, which is a normal thing for ships to have!”
“Mayor.” I said, completely unimpressed by his very real ability to lift me out of my squalor.
“Listen up, space investigator, and listen good. Ship elections, which are a natural logical extension of there being a Ship Mayor, are coming up! And that means all these broads being murdered on the lower decks is a problem I need to worry about now.”
“You mean the killings that started pretty much right after the last election?”
“The very same. Now, everybody knows that you are an absolute fucking genius. You have this gruff exterior but beneath that is a keen analytical mind that makes you just so good at solving cases. It’s a shame about that thing that happened that was just bad enough to get you kicked off the force but not bad enough for you to go to jail and it wasn’t weird or sexual. And that’s why you have to be a pretend cop now instead of a real one, you goddamn space genius. God you’re so amazing.”
“Get to the point, Mayor!”
“I want you to handle this for me.” I could hear the space rain hitting his windows in the background through the part of the phone that sounds come out of.
“Alright.” I said into the part of the phone that your voice goes into, “But it will be on my terms. I do everything by the book. All above board. Nothing to go against my very strict ethical code of conduct that I adopted ever since that thing I did that was pretty bad but not too bad, like it was bad but it wasn’t murder or anything.”
“That’s almost exactly what I had in mind, Mills. Just a few tweaks: You don’t do anything by the book, nobody knows about this, this conversation never happened, you tie any loose ends leading back to me, and when you find who’s doing this you kill them extra-judicially, dispose of the body, and I pay you a lot of money in cash under the table that was embezzled from the Pitiable Orphans Fund.”
“Fine. But I get to have a brief internal struggle about it.”
The Mayor chuckled. “I wouldn’t have it any other way. By the way, I’ve left like thirty goddamn messages with your secretary. Why haven’t you responded to any?”
My mind was filled with questions. Who had a beef with broads in the lower decks? Why was the Mayor coming to me for this? Would I ever find a competent secretary? Should I have clarified how much money "a lot" was? And why do they make all the best drugs for horses?