I woke up early the following morning with horrible muscle soreness in my butt and back. At first, I didn’t realize the actual reason for it, and I thought I had slept wrong, but when I rolled over in my bed, still yawning, the memories from my last night’s fridge performance popped up, and the mystery suddenly cleared up.

Groaning, I got up and went to the bathroom. I literally walked like an oldster with bladder problems who had tried to break the world record for pee-holding! I peed and took a shower, hoping it would relieve me a bit, but it didn’t help. If the pain persisted until noon, there was a pretty good chance I would screw up a golden job worth sixty grand, and it made me think that my quickie with Bobby wasn’t a wise decision after all. It might turn out to be too expensive in the end!

At the beginning of the workday, around eight-thirty, Jill called to tell me she had sent me the information I needed. As far as I could gather from her tone, she was still mad at me. After the unsuccessful cuddling episode on her desk, I thought everything between us was alright again, but obviously, it wasn’t enough. She said she had a new cell phone now, but it didn’t matter because I would surely hate her new device just as much as the old one. She also suggested putting her in my contacts under her family name—Sanders—because this way, it would be easier for me to forget about her since she would be lower on my list. I had to assure her a couple of times that she had always been under “A,” and I had no intention to change that, and then, I had to hang up quickly because I really had no time. I had to leave for the Red Dragon in less than half an hour and urgently needed to check up on my mail before that.

It turned out the corrupt bastard in the GBI had done his job quickly and discretely as usual. Two attached files were waiting for me in Jill’s letter—one for Bobby Bjornson and another for Li Jin Tao. As expected, Sharon Vorderbruggen had no record within the database, which wasn’t surprising because I was sure she used a fake name. It was a disappointment because she was my main subject of interest, but there was nothing I could do about it—I had to live with the other two.

I started with Bobby. She had worked for a foreign company nearly eight years ago—New Delhi Carbide Industries—and the Bureau always starts a file for that person in these cases. From what I read in it, Bobby seemed to have risen pretty high in the hierarchy pretty quick—she had been Sales Coordinator for the entire South Pacific, which was just a step below the Regional Sales Manager. The division headquarters were in Pago-Pago, former American Samoa, and at first, the future looked promising for the young girl. Unfortunately, about five years ago, due to an unfortunate accident and the subsequent ecological disaster, which eventually cost one hundred lives and caused severe environmental issues, the corporation had to shut down its factory and headquarters in the region and lay off the employees.

I had such a memory in my head—it was a major news story at the time—but I wasn’t entirely sure whether the company involved was the same. The catastrophe ended with no one being responsible for it, as usual. I tried to remember something more about the accident but couldn’t, and I had no time to check it up. It didn’t matter, anyway. All Indian firms were actually so hopelessly chaotic in managing facilities that they produced disasters of this sort in different places on Earth every other year. Just like China, India grew such a vast population that, at some point, people became uncontrollable. Unlike China, however, India didn’t fall apart, so it infected the world with its exotic business style.

After the disaster, Bobby disappeared for a while, and then she suddenly reappeared in Greenland, working for a small pharmaceutical firm. She didn’t have much success there either. After a year or so, Bjornson resigned following a noisy corruption scandal and licensing problems for a new drug, which also caused a few deaths. She escaped a lawsuit but became too famous in the pharmaceutical field to find another job. By the way, nowhere in the file was a word about the Green Guards. I quickly browsed the Internet to find something, but the only thing that popped up was a small factory for gummy bears in Toulon, France. I wasn’t surprised at all, and when I repeated the search about Global Guards, the result was just the same.

Then, I moved on to Li Jin Tao. Naturally, his rap sheet was longer than the Great Wall of China! There wasn’t anything shocking in it, but it was too much to read, so I just browsed over it. The guy had a rich collection of standard criminal offenses from when he was young, like theft, robbery, drug possession, and blackmailing. There was nothing serious like murder or kidnapping, but maybe he was clever enough not to get caught. His gang in Nuuk steered clear of the other crime syndicates and operated mainly in Chinatown, and it was well known for distributing drugs and doing business with East Asian hookers. There had been several police operations on them, but none bore enough evidence to hold up in court. Only one thing in the memo was really unusual: the gang, whose name was “The Red Dragon”—just like the restaurant serving as its headquarters—was linked back in Shanghai to a clan called “The Red Scar.” The latter specialized in delivering illegal weaponry to African countries under an international embargo, and from there, it smuggled rare animals and exotic foods. “So not everything Bjornson and Vorderbruggen said is a lie, then!” I thought, hopeful.

Overall, I didn’t learn too much from the materials and could have easily guessed most things without paying for the information. The stuff about the Chinese, in particular, was virtually useless. I spent a few more minutes searching the Internet, but it was a fruitless effort, and at quarter past nine, I closed my laptop, grabbed my Glock from the nightstand and the bag with the cameras, picked up my car keys, and went out. There was still plenty of time, but I didn’t want the heavy traffic in Godthab at noon to surprise me. However, when I drove out of my neighborhood and turned north on Siaqqinneq, I promptly realized I had done the right thing, taking no risks. Despite the four lanes in each direction, the road ahead was perfectly jammed, and soon, I started berating myself for not leaving even earlier.

In fact, Nuuk is no such city in my memories. It’s a recent thing. When my folks moved here from Kansas shortly before I was born, the entire population of Greenland was no more than half a million, and when I grew up, I remember there were only a few cars waiting at the traffic lights. And they didn’t even blink green or red back then—just yellow. Now, the seaside area of the capital alone has more than five million citizens, and it’s nearly impossible to drive in the rush hours.

It all started with the first migrant wave in the 10s. At the time, the former European Union was caught totally unprepared, and the crisis caused a lot of trouble and chaos, but as it turned out later, the problems were nothing compared to what was next. The first wave was caused by the Near East and Northern Africa wars and was eventually brought under control. The subsequent three waves, however, were true nightmares. They originated from climate change, and no solution was ever found to stop the flooding of people on the continent. The third wave alone brought nearly a hundred million people into the now-European Confederation and changed its ethnicity for good.

Weirdly enough, the Arabs and other migrants didn’t settle in southern Europe, as one would expect based on the climatic similarities and cultural relations. Instead, they populated the Northern parts because of the wealthy social programs there. As a result, the situation up north became too complicated, and people started gradually migrating to the poorer but relatively unaffected regions of southern and eastern Europe. Eventually, the countries in the EC exchanged nations, which put an end to the traditional political map of the continent.

And then the fourth wave came! About ten years ago, the climate started rapidly deteriorating following the industrial revolutions in the countries of South Asia, and the change made the Near East and Northern Africa almost uninhabitable. Both places began experiencing temperatures of fifty-five degrees and above, and the shift from gasoline to hydrogen in transportation only worsened things. People grew desperate, and it became apparent that Europe wouldn’t get away with just a few waves. The rules of the game changed, and soon, the entire population of the Near East swept into the Old Continent, leaving only isolated clans surviving on piracy and looting in the desert.

Despite everything, this horrible situation had a silver lining, as it turned out. Climate change did bring millions of people to the EC, but it also melted down a considerable portion of the Greenland glacier, freeing new lands from the ice grip. This gave us some breathing space, and gradually, the island became home to a large mass of people from both Europe and America. Greenland is now the most populated country in the Confederation, and there is still a lot of free land in the inner territories waiting to be cultivated.

I impatiently looked at my cell phone to see what the time was. It read ten past ten, and I was still on Siaqqinneq with little progress on the way. I chose this route because it was an old but recently renovated street, which was turned into a highway. It cut right through the city’s heart and was supposed to be the fastest way out of downtown. Except, too many people had obviously made the same choice, and it wasn’t a highway anymore! Some desperate drivers even ditched their cars in the service lane, worsening the traffic jam further.

Some twenty minutes later, I nervously turned right on the next exit and went east on Aqisseqarajooq as the navigation read. At least I thought I was there because the damn name of the street didn’t fit on the screen! All the Bay Area districts are full of these, and since only one percent of the present population in Greenland is Inuit or Danish, I was sure no one even knew what these names meant. Soon, I passed the old airport and turned, consecutively, onto Gallahunna and Lexington Drive to come out of downtown, and then I sighed with relief. The traffic was relatively good at last, and I stepped on the gas, feeling hopeful now.

Incidentally, Europe wasn’t the only place suffering massive migration. On other continents, people switched countries due to globalization, too. It was inevitable: the world was rapidly changing. When Russia unexpectedly fell to the Tatars, and America and China declined, mutually exhausting themselves in a long line of trade wars—the latter disintegrated shortly after—the former EU surprisingly remained the only player in world politics. Then Britain fucked up, and North Korea devastated most of South Korea and Japan before it accidentally nuked itself, which redecorated the political landscape entirely. From a complete outsider, Europe suddenly became a superpower of necessity, leaving its leadership totally unprepared. That’s how Project EC actually emerged. Fortunately, the new format proved successful, and soon, more regions followed its lead. The contemporary world consists primarily of confederations. Those who stayed outside fell on tough times—Britain being a notorious example. Since the country never decided which way they liked better—in the Confederation or outside—their constant switching eventually brought them to such a deep and chronic recession that it filled the waters around the island with boats of desperate people trying to reach wealthy Ireland. In a way, the former Great Britain became Failed Britain.

And then the Couloongs came! Things became even more complicated, and the rules changed once again. The standalone countries were left out of reach of their marvelous new technologies because they were too small and insignificant to the newcomers. After the latter built the CSS—the Couloong Space Station—the global confederations secured the entire trade with aliens for themselves, and the rest of the world was gradually marginalized.

Speaking of aliens, it’s funny that the Couloongs smell of urine, actually. They are a life form based on ammonia, and it’s really tough to stay by their side. Our ex-colony on Mars seems to have no problem with that, but it’s probably because they had no choice. We kind of betrayed and abandoned them nearly a decade ago, and they saw an alternative source of much-needed supplies in the extraterrestrials.

In fact, the rift between Mars and Earth started even before the Couloongs’ arrival. The Martians have been accusing us of being indifferent to their sacrifice and backing out of our promise to support them for a long time, and it has poisoned our relations since almost the beginning. We didn’t do it intentionally. The truth is we had too many internal problems back then—we still have them—and we had no resources to continue sending food and equipment to Mars. Fortunately, the aliens appeared just in time to save our settlements there. As a result, the colony and we don’t get along anymore.

I looked at the time. I was on schedule now. It was ten-fifty, and I was just entering uptown, not far from Chinatown. I believed I would be at the Red Dragon by eleven-thirty. Sharon wanted me there at twelve-thirty sharp, but Bobby said precisely at noon. The former argued that Chavez’s thugs might check out the area, but I decided to trust the latter. I was simply going to keep away until they finished searching and then take my place in the red telephone booth.

By the way, in Nuuk, one always has a rough idea of where he or she is, even without knowing the city in detail. In the old urban areas along the seaside, streets are very narrow and winding—partly because there isn’t much space but also because of the Danish building traditions. However, as soon as you leave the seaside, everything becomes much bigger and broader, and further east, in the inner parts of the island, streets are even American style—straight and crossing at right angles. Chinatown, in particular, is about thirty kilometers away from the shore, and the moment the infrastructure changed, I already knew I was close. I promptly killed my speed, and very soon, typical neighborhood features appeared, like red lanterns, decorative dragons, and miserable restaurants.

I looked at my cell phone again. It was a quarter past eleven, and I reached into the glove box to take a pair of sunglasses and put them on. It was time to think ahead of the events now. I just didn’t know how many of the hookers milling up and down the streets were spying for the evil Chinese boss. If I had to bet, I would say probably all of them.

Ten minutes later, I finally arrived at my destination and pulled up to the curb, thirty meters away from the telephone booth. Then I looked at it. It glared red and alarming, promising a lot of troubles for Murphy Mellrow, making me lean back and down behind the steering wheel with a nasty feeling in my gut. I had nothing else to do now except keep my eyes wide open. I had to be extra careful because otherwise, there was a good chance twenty-five thousand dollars back home would become a lonely orphan, and I didn’t want that. Then I waited.

©2016 S.T. Fargo
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