It was the middle of March, and the weather was disgusting. The streets had turned into rivers, the water following their curves as if the entire city were some weird urban canyon. Here and there, puddles were almost as big as Hudson Bay, and the parks looked like Louisiana swamps. The nasty winds made raindrops whip people’s faces like small daemon tails. The winters here are not what they used to be. It’s all different now, probably because of the Chinese. They messed up the global climate about a decade ago with their large-scale industrial revolution, and the country suddenly disintegrated, leaving the rest of the world to deal with the consequences.

I was sitting in my miniature office on Lacuna Drive 85 with a glass of White Bear whiskey in my hand and my feet on the desk, watching a portable TV set placed next to my shoes. I had just followed the latest news on the crisis in Britain and the wild idea they had to put the country up for auction. My desk was so crammed with the device that I could accidentally kick it down if I stretched my legs a little more, but I couldn’t care less. Firstly, the TV set was insanely old and, therefore, incredibly cheap—ironically, it was made in China—and secondly, even if it tumbled, it still wouldn’t hit the floor since my office was only slightly larger than the desk itself. There was simply not enough room on both sides for the device to fall.

For the sake of being precise, I should mention here that my office was exactly two hundred and thirty-five by two hundred and forty-five centimeters. It was the smallest one in the whole building and probably in the entire Greenland, too. I wasn’t even sure it was a good idea to rent it in the first place because I wasn’t using it much, but it was also because of the money. I just didn’t have it.

To be even more precise, I should probably note that I never have enough of it actually. Moneyless is my natural state of being, and sometimes I wonder whether god created me just to serve as a byword—so that people could say, “poor like a Murphy.” On the other hand, I’m not even sure that god created me, anyway. I have always had doubts, but after aliens turned up, believing in such a thing became simply ridiculous. Their appearance made a total mess of our heads.

From somewhere in the depths of my desk, the telephone gave a hollow ring and startled me from my thoughts. I slowly put the glass on the desktop and reached out to open the right lowermost drawer. I pulled out only the handset to say a brief “hello.”

At first, no one answered. I could hear heavy breathing at the other end of the line, though. Then someone cleared their throat and cautiously asked, “Mr. Mellrow, the PI?”

“Yeah, you got me right here,” I tried to sound cheerful without raising my hopes too high. “How can I help you?”

“How much do you take, Mr. Mellrow?”

I frowned.

“How much do I take for what? Washing up your dishes? Going for a night out? Wiping out your neighbor?”

She hung up on me. It was some old lady, I gathered, maybe on the verge of her life, judging by the efforts she made to breathe. She wasn’t an actual client, for sure. No one who starts a phone conversation with, “How much do you take?” would be. I’m not selling apples, for god’s sake! I breathed a deep sigh of despair and returned the handset to the drawer. Then I reached for my glass again.

In fact, it all had been a very stupid idea. I couldn’t even say why I did it in the first place—probably because I felt lost. If you want my advice, you should never advertise in local newspapers, especially if you’re a PI! No one reads this shit these days except for old-timers, but they usually wouldn’t be your target clientele, you know. The Internet changed the world for good.

And the worst thing is, my moneyless situation actually put me in a catch-22. I couldn’t aim at the proper audience in other media because I didn’t have the money, but without advertising at all, I had no chance of getting a client. That’s why I had to listen to all sorts of bullshit the whole week: a lost cat in the basement to be rescued; an escaped parrot on the roof to be rescued; a drunk husband in the garage not wanting to be rescued; or an adventurous wife of ninety-three having a highly inappropriate attraction to the milk boy: I had to persuade her to give him up, thus rescuing her. I even received an offer to chase a pigeon in an old lady’s garden and stop it from stealing her beans!

I took a sip of my drink and reluctantly thought about the future. As always, I came to the conclusion that it wasn’t holding anything bright for me, but on the other hand, maybe I had to stop caring so much about it. The Earth had been changing rapidly since Couloongs’ arrival, and the future simply didn’t matter anymore because it wasn’t clear how much longer we would continue to exist. Lately, our lives have been taking it one day at a time.

Couloongs are actually an alien species hanging around for the past few years. They are much more advanced in technology than we are, and they could easily wipe us off the face of the planet if they wanted. For now, the little bastards were making their peace by just doing business, but if we think in perspective, a war is inevitable someday. This will likely be the last day of our civilization.

The phone rang a second time. I instinctively reached down, but it stopped before I could open the drawer. By the way, the weird communication device I had there resulted from the same catch-22 I talked about. My telephone company shut down my cell phone account a week ago because of overdue bills, and now I had to rely on the ancient technology my insanely cheap office was offering. Unfortunately, this weird gadget wouldn’t serve me too long either because I was already late with the rent and would probably miss the current month, too, if things continued like this.

The device resonated in the room again. I waited a few seconds for it to stop, but this time it didn’t. Maybe it would have been far more appropriate to have it on the desk with me, but there was not enough room, as I said because the desktop barely contained my feet and the TV set. In the end, I wearily reached down to pull out the handset.

“Mellrow’s office is at your service, and Mellrow himself is on the phone. How can I help you?”

“Hello, Mr. Mellrow.” A surprisingly pleasant and soft voice, seemingly belonging to a young woman, caught me off guard. “I would like to meet you to talk business. Can I come now? I could if that’s okay with you.”

“First, tell me what it’s all about.” I grumpily asked without giving the situation much consideration. I simply didn’t want another pigeon case.

“Well, I think it’s not very appropriate to discuss it in a phone conversation,” the stranger answered a little tersely. You know, it’s not professional to do it this way. Don’t you think so?”

“Maybe it’s not,” I was surprised that I suddenly had to rescue my professional image in this woman’s eyes. “I just wanted to make sure you are deadly serious. Many people have been pulling pranks on me lately, so I’m getting tired of it already.”

After saying that, I stopped. I had no idea what “deadly serious” was even supposed to mean, and I was a little angry at myself. Generally, I tend to act a bit weirdly around attractive women, which was probably why I behaved like this. Strangely enough, somehow, I was sure my client was beautiful. Maybe even deadly beautiful!

“I’m serious enough, Mr. Mellrow. Just tell me where to meet you.” She insisted.

I shrugged and quit monkeying around at last. I gave the woman my address, and she said she would be around in ten minutes, making me believe she was calling from someplace near my office. If that was the case, it probably meant she had already looked me up, which was weird because she pretended she didn’t know my address. Anyway, since I wasn’t in the mood to speculate regarding her reasons, I just hung up and decided to wait until I met her.

Right then, when I was about to close the drawer, the damn telephone unexpectedly started ringing again. I looked down in disbelief but didn’t pick up. It was too much for me—this sudden and unexpected consideration of my financial troubles for such a short time. Besides, it seemed I had just fixed myself with a client. Instead, I closed the drawer and briskly finished my drink, leaving the empty glass away. Then I placed the TV set on the floor beside my feet, took my Glock-47AK out of my jacket, and put it into the uppermost drawer on my right—just in case.

Soon, the telephone stopped ringing.

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