Minions Read online

  Minions

  By Garrett Addison

  Copyright © Garrett Addison 2012. All rights reserved.

  http://www.garrettaddison.com/

  This is a work of fiction. All characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  ‘Do not fear the devil and all his minions’ - Anonymous

  Chapter - 1.

  Devlin Bennett rifled through his backpack with each person who strode past as he sat in a small, mid-Melbourne park. He wasn’t really looking for anything, but what was important in his ruse was that his eyes were cast downward in an effort to prolong his anonymity.

  No matter how he looked at it, his day had not gone as he’d hoped. While he wasn’t so naïve as to expect his life would return to normal immediately, he expected at least something from people he knew. A long time ago he could have described them as friends, but now apparently they were no more than acquaintances. Of the five people he’d planned to meet today, two wouldn’t even speak with him, two met him only to say they couldn’t, and perhaps more correctly wouldn’t help, and the last wanted to add a little physical assault to the rejection.

  For now though, sitting on a small grassed area in a mid-city park allowed him to participate in the world without being noticed. It was just what he needed. His scan of the newspaper didn’t feature his photograph, which was both a blessing and a curse, but his notoriety would mean he was sure to be recognised eventually. Moving interstate and staying overnight in some suburban rat-hole might have bought him a day’s grace, but he couldn’t escape from the inevitable. He was sure to be identified sooner or later and his bruised ribs were too sore to face any confrontation that would require him to thrust his chest out to demonstrate whatever self-assurance remained.

  It didn’t take him long to summarise his situation; it was mid-afternoon, he was out of people he knew to try for a job, and he was down to small change in his pocket. His predicament wasn’t ideal but he tried to keep positive. If nothing else he was well dressed in his court-room suit and he had his iPod. At least his attitude was far from beaten.

  He recalled the simplicity of his hope to make a clean start, quietly confident that a job wasn’t going to be too hard to find. He remembered actually stressing over whether to be picky, aim high and accept low, or take anything. If only he could get that chance. He hoped he wouldn’t need to relocate again, but perhaps this too was unavoidable.

  He looked at his phone willing it to ring, but he’d not had the chance to pass on the number to anyone so the odds if it ringing were decidedly remote. Then again, that it might ring was arguably more stressful. It almost warranted turning the phone off, but he couldn’t bring himself to do it.

  Amid his current stresses there remained something therapeutic about the dappled sunlight through the trees with a slight breeze. Eyes closed, relaxed and distracted, he failed to notice the approach of a hooded individual behind him.

  It only took a second, but in one movement the previously unseen youth closed the last few steps, grabbed his phone and sprinted away. Instinctively, Devlin leapt to his feet in an effort to give chase, but he quickly appreciated the futility of any pursuit. He also accepted it was just a phone and not a particularly good one, and that doing anything would only draw attention to himself. He gave up before he began.

  Devlin swore out of frustration and anger. Now devoid of any means of being contacted, there was little point in even reporting the incident when he didn’t even have a contact address. He felt the heavy blow to his morale; his glass previously half full was now decidedly empty.

  Desperate for options, he flitted through his wallet, naively hopeful of unearthing a previously hidden cash reserve but all he found was an otherwise forgotten business card. He picked up the card and fumbled it between his fingers, the action prompting him to remember its source. Glen. He thought of the man he’d met earlier on the train and his offer, even if it was invariably only made to be polite. “Let me know how you get on,” he’d said. He had nothing to lose. At worst, the guy could only hang up, but then again, there was even a possibility that the guy would give him a break.

  He considered making a nervous call when it struck him that Glen’s address was also on his business card and within walking distance. Sure, a call might save him another assault but it wouldn’t allow him to assert his innocence in person, if it came to that. The fact that coinage for the call was going to bite deeply into his remaining cash was the clincher. He grabbed his backpack and set off.

  Chapter - 2.

  Nebojsa Kendic made no effort to hide what he thought of all those around him in the conference room. He wasn’t there to be nice to these people, these insects, that was why his employer had asked him to be present. Internally described as their ‘big gun’ and externally as the ‘attack dog’, everyone knew he was there to push his cause over the line, whatever the cost. The net effect was the same; he would have his effect on people. It suited him perfectly.

  He smiled at the very thought that he was now in demand. The contrast with before he’d come to this country justified his lapse into recollection. He missed the old days, not so much the people, but definitely the opportunities where under the pretence of ethnicity he could do many things. For this very reason, he enjoyed his time during the war immensely. He didn’t need to pretend to have any social conscience, just as he didn’t need to hide what drove him. He didn’t need to consider the enemy people, though none of his peers did either, and through this common interest it was possibly the first time that he ever really mixed well with others. The truth, however, was that what he was, what he did, was not the result of some nationalistic fervour or pack mentality. Nebojsa was born the way he was, and he was simply fortunate to be born in a place and a time when his particular qualities would be well regarded.

  That all good things come to an end was a problem. As the end of the war approached, there was a time when he actually worried for the future. He wasn’t important enough to be indictable for any alleged war crimes, and a distinct lack of witnesses alive and so able to come forward was in his favour. It also helped that his efforts were typically on a smaller scale than the incidents that seemed to attract wider attention.

  His time waiting for asylum to be processed was very trying. Forced into close co-habitation with others he was perpetually on edge. Worse still were the stories that others incarcerated with him felt necessary to share. He shelved his want to kill them like the scum that they were and focussed on using the time to his advantage. He listened intently, said nothing, and even taught himself to shed a tear at will. His efforts were noticed, just as he’d planned. That he kept to himself and was seen to cry regularly spoke volumes to the staff watching over them in their caged confines. They bandied terms like ‘Post Traumatic Stress’ and by simple analysis of geography managed to glean that he was simply too scarred. The fact that his home town was currently being investigated as the site of a massed cleansing helped him no end. There was no-one alive to challenge him, so who would argue at his assertion that he was alive only for the fact that he’d left the village days before the arrival of the squads. There was some truth in this in that he’d visited his family there, sure. But his family couldn’t believe that their son was an active participant in the madness of the war. In that sense, he was, and wasn’t, in equal measure. That his parents’ bodies were found in their home, rather than needing to be identified from limited dental records after exhumation was testimony to the real fortunes of war.

  Fortune continued to favour Nebojsa. Queued for psychoanalysis by the woman they variously called the ‘pijan’, the drunk, one day she called in sick. The following day, probably with only a marginally lower blood alcohol level, her
records incorrectly noted that he had been processed without raising any red flags. The final hurdle in his migration was easier than he expected.

  Now surrounded by natives of his new home, he remembered the anxiety he felt at the prospect of becoming like those around him. He didn’t want his relocation to be the start of his demise, such that in years to come he’d look back and wonder what he’d become. Far from his homeland, he made a decision that his new setting would be the making of him, and that he would better himself thereafter. As a new migrant, he appreciated that he was expected to take one of two paths; assimilate, implicitly turning his back on his past, or join the sub-cultural enclaves of his homeland. Nebojsa chose neither. He didn’t align himself to those with whom he shared a common language, because they were never ‘his’ people and they meant nothing to him. He wasn’t prepared to deny his history either; his history helped make him who he was. Who he is.

  Chapter - 3.

  When Devlin got to the address on the card his first reaction was to stress that he’d been misled by the corner store owner he’d asked for directions en-route. Simple logic however calmed him; he had the right street and the right suburb; he had the right address.

  Glen’s office was a pair of non-descript, single-fronted, double storied, Victorian shopfronts. On either side was a brothel, or Devlin assumed they were brothels on account of the large recessed entrances covered by closed circuit security cameras. Of course the business names were dead giveaways. The brothels and Glen’s office, intentionally or otherwise, appeared to be the centrepiece of the street, like two feature clocks on a mantelpiece with a small, plain knick-knack between them.

  On closer examination, Devlin thought the building could just as likely have been a private residence or a business. There was no signage to indicate it was a professional venue and the more Devlin looked, the more feasible it seemed that it could be part of the brothel complexes. He suddenly felt as if he’d just been let in on a joke. Surely, Glen was all above board. He might have been down, but he certainly wasn’t out and while he’d convinced himself that he would probably take any job, he didn’t want to have to confront that kind of job. He knew he could always walk away, but hoped that it wouldn’t come to that.

  He strode the final few steps to Glen’s door and knocked a confident knuckle based rap, ignoring the adjacent buzzer. Devlin felt his heart race waiting for Glen to answer. He tried to calm himself, remembering he had nothing to lose.

  Glen opened the door and immediately started talking. “You aren’t late, but we don’t have much time. Come on in. Let me sort you out a job.” He turned and gestured for Devlin to follow. “Close the door and come this way.”

  Devlin almost baulked at the invitation and considered challenging Glen’s assertion that he would need a job, but what was the point? The assumption was right on the money and didn’t warrant any feigned attempt to convince anyone otherwise. He allowed himself to be led down a long corridor and into a sitting room with a semi-circle of large leather high-backed armchairs facing a wall of televisions. He sat adjacent to Glen in one of the central chairs. He scanned the screens before him, only then noticing that the right most screens appeared to display closed circuit vision of other rooms, presumably in the same building, before Glen blanked the screens en-masse.

  “I know who you are. I know who your family is, who your father is and who he could, might have been,” Glen began. “But that doesn’t matter.”

  Devlin slid his hands under his thighs. “Not that it’s a big deal or anything, but why didn’t you tell me you knew who I was?” he asked. It was a big deal.

  “You and your family have had more than your share of media coverage.”

  “So how much do you know?”

  “What I know about you isn’t really important. What is important, however, is getting you started.

  Devlin struggled a gesture between incalculable gratitude and cautious apprehension. He made to say something but no words seemed fitting.

  “Welcome to I.M.A. Independent Media Analysis.” Glen smiled briefly. “We started doing media analysis, but we evolved with technology until I inherited some money from my uncle. Actually, he was particularly wealthy and left me a lot of money. Everything really.”

  “Sorry to hear that. Were you close?”

  “My uncle was a bastard,” Glen said, pausing only to drink from his bottle of water. “Let’s just say that he owed me an apology and my family disowned me for my very accusations. My hope he would apologise died with him.”

  Glen was quiet, distracted. Sensing an uncomfortable pause, Devlin waited for him to continue.

  “Anyway,” Glen re-focussed. “I was checking my email one day while watching an old movie with a guy on his death bed when it came to me. What if I could extract one last message from my bastard uncle? It made me think. I figured, what if someone could store an email to be sent when they die? ‘LastGaspStore’ was born.”

  Devlin couldn’t help a look of shock. “YOU started LastGasp’?”

  Glen smiled. “Everyone’s reaction is the same. Everyone’s heard of LastGaspStore, or LastGasp’, but no-one really knows much about it. That’s what’s so surprising given that about 50% of the population are active users.”

  “Where’s the surprise? Maybe your numbers are wrong.”

  “Until now it’s been a private company, and so I don’t need to advertise my numbers to keep the share price inflated. More important though is that I need that secrecy, for both the good of my members and to prevent the competitors and hackers. There are actually many more users, but not all of them are active.”

  “Why the big deal about wanting to prevent hackers?”

  “Perhaps this would be clearer if you understood more.” Glen took a breath and started what seemed a well-practised summary. “A LastGaspStore user gets to write a message which will be delivered after their death to a number of people that they identify. User accounts are free for a nominal number of addressees. Additional addressees or additional messages, each with their own distribution list can be purchased.” Glen paused, as if no matter how many times he’d given his summary it never failed to yield the same questions. Now he just waited.

  “Who would pay for an email after you die?”

  “Not everyone is thirty-something and single like you, Devlin. Some people like to have their house in order, and as for your question about paying, most users just use the free account. It gives them the means to say things that perhaps they never got to say, or wanted to say, or maybe they just want to make sure that a secret doesn’t die with them. The catch is that they can’t edit their message. For that, they need to pay.”

  “So if most users don’t pay a cent, who makes the money?”

  “One of the interesting elements of the system is how active users are identified. Periodically, users are sent confirmatory emails or are required to touch base to ensure they are kept active. In much the same way, all message addressees are emailed. This provides the means to ensure the addressee can be contacted in the event of a user’s death. All of these emails represent focussed contact with a particular demographic. Various parties are only too keen to pay for the opportunity to be mentioned or advertised in our periodic contact. Life insurance companies, for example, are always on the lookout for people doing wills and starting to think about their own mortality. I might add that LastGaspStore secrets are not for sale.

  “There’s no competition. Small players periodically come and go, lured by the niche and advertising revenue. But this isn’t like your average dot-com. They always underestimate the many pitfalls in what they are trying to achieve, and there are more than you’d believe. I know mainly because I’ve had to overcome them all, some before and some after someone found them. For example …” Glen stopped and checked his watch. “Actually, hang on a minute. We need to watch this,” he announced before turning his attention to one of the televisions. He reached for his remote control and operated it to re-activate the bank
of screens, increasing the volume of one and muting all others. “Top row, second from the left” he said, directing Devlin to the correct screen.

  Glen’s timing in tuning into the television was not perfect. They’d missed the first part of the featured business news report, but Devlin picked up on the nature of the item immediately. Glen smiled a proud, confident smile, while Devlin took a little more time to absorb the news. LastGaspStore was to be purchased by the largest internet company of them all. The price was not disclosed but rumours abounded.

  Glen silenced the television on the completion of the report. “I took the liberty to include you in my staff lists prior to the sale.”

  “Thanks,” Devlin said cautiously.

  “The big upside is that all of my staff have just obtained a sizeable chunk of stock. You included.”

  Devlin’s appreciation settled in and overpowered his inherent scepticism. “Holy crap! Thank-you!”

  “Anyway,” Glen continued, ignoring Devlin’s fervour. “It’s easier to buy than to develop from startup and attract adverse publicity and associated hits on your share price when you get it wrong. Thus the sale.”

  “But why would they bother to buy into the niche? Websites are a dime a dozen.”

  “LastGaspStore is not a website,” Glen paused. “It’s a service, and frankly it doesn’t worry me if it goes out of vogue. Perhaps you might appreciate things more if you understood the nature of our members’ messages. It’s about time for a staff meeting anyway.”

  Chapter - 4.

  The new day hit Malcolm Venn hard. He woke restrained in what could only have been a hospital bed. He hated restraints, and this was not the first time.

  He looked around the room keen for any cue to aid his orientation, but all he saw was the solitary, empty seat beside his bed. The room was small with little space beyond the clinical stainless steel bed with dropdown rails, and the obligatory locker for whatever personal effects he’d managed to keep hold of. At least it was a single room so the sounds and smells were his own; something which could not be said in a room shared with others.