The Unpredictable Adventures of Inspector J.R. Pinkerton
The collected series, in one easy-to-access location, is in sequential order from the beginning.
Issue 1: Scent
upending.wordpress.com/2017/01/31/scent-2/
He perceived the world just like anyone else through his senses. His burden, though, was in his lack of both vision and hearing due to an injury sustained in southwest Asia when he was nineteen years old. Now in his thirties, he had become the first blind and deaf occupational health and safety inspector to work for the Hydrocarbon Inspection and Compliance Company of Upper Pennsylvania State [HICCUPS].
He had been unemployed for fifteen years until one day at a therapy session where he had been learning to read braille with his left hand and write what he was reading with his right hand, his unique talent for sensing odors was discovered. His therapists had been using sweet aromas when he wrote the correct words and bitter aromas when he wrote the wrong words. Suddenly, he smelled something unusual.
He wrote, “You’ve been somewhere unusual. You smell like polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons. Also, go to your doctor for a cancer screening sooner than later.”
The therapist to whom he was speaking instantly knew he was talking to her. She had taken lunch with her fiancée, who was recently hired as an inspector for HICCUPS. She wrote a note back to him through his braille reader, tapping his hand to indicate there was something for him to read, and broke down in tears.
The note said, “You are all too perceptive, my fiancée and I just had lunch together, and she told me of her recent diagnosis.”
He replied, “I can’t smell her over the faint petroleum scent on you, but I smell the cancer on you. Go.”
That was the day that he, and his therapists, realized that there was a place for him in the working world. He took a position as an inspector at HICCUPS shortly thereafter.
Issue 2: Resist
upending.wordpress.com/2017/02/01/resist/
Like everyone in his work unit, Inspector Pinkerton was resistant to change. He had a strict set of routines, a holdover behavioral pattern from his years as a soldier. J.R.’s resistance to change had become heightened by the nature of his disability; if anyone changed their toothpaste, soap, aftershave, hair products, or anything else with a scent, it would throw off his ability to navigate through the world by scent. His partner, a hefty sixty-two-year-old with a bushy beard, lived a life of rigid routine that never brought any new odors with it.
The partner, George Tomkinson, had been planning to retire, resisting the urge for about two years before the day finally came. Inspector Tomkinson had long ago – when he had worked for HICCUPS for thirty years already – resolved that if he had three bad days in a row, he’d retire on the fourth day. George’s previous two days were sufficiently filled with the horrors of industrial malfeasance, and he couldn’t stand to have a third day just yet. He made an agreement with the Chief Inspector to take Pinkerton to the University, where a team of researchers had been working on a device that could be of great use to a person in Pinkerton’s peculiar situation.
The Chief granted the request. He couldn’t resist the possibility of his top inspector becoming independent and, therefore, an even better asset to the organization. So, J.R. and George went off to the University, to the surprise George had arranged for Inspector Pinkerton.
Issue 3: Clean
upending.wordpress.com/2017/02/07/clean/
Pinkerton thought to himself, “Where am I?”, as his partner led him somewhere that smelled new. He could smell freshly cut grass, marijuana, putrifying beer and vomit, flowers, opioids, perfume, body odor, amphetamines, and a horrifying amount of body spray deodorant; the inspector suddenly knew he was on a college campus.
Soon, Pinkerton was led into the genetics lab, where his partner had arranged to meet a team of researchers that were on the cutting edge of gene therapy. The inspector was to be ‘set free’ from his ailments if Tomkinson had his wish. George spoke with the genetic tinkerers regularly since J.R. became his partner.
The scientists had isolated the genes responsible for the regenerative abilities of salamanders and newts. They had also shown in animal testing that insertion of urodele amphibian genes into animals with disabilities could ‘heal’ them. The intention was to use Pinkerton, a well-known combat veteran with well-documented disabilities, as the first human test in order to make headlines. J.R.’s partner convinced him to go along with the scheme, and Pinkerton signed on for the project.
Over the next several months, Inspector Pinkerton was kept in an amazingly clean and hypothetically sterile environment under constant surveillance. Within days of the first gene manipulation, his hearing started to return. Next came his vision. By the second week, the Inspector had a clean bill of health, but the researchers never found out. Pinkerton was a wily old soldier, and he knew the implications of this kind of gene therapy. He did everything he could to make the project fail.
Issue 4: Center
upending.wordpress.com/2017/02/27/center/
Inspector Pinkerton had been in the university’s research center for quite some time. He had been meditating on it to try to recall just how long he had been in the facility. It was a tough thing to figure out, but his best guess was somewhere in the neighborhood of five years. With his regained sight and hearing, he felt more alone in the quarantine room than he had ever felt in his life. J.R. fantasized about leaving the place, but he was burdened with cautious anxiety over the things he had heard his doctors speaking about. It wasn’t that he feared the doctors and researchers, as he was pretty sure they still believed his ruse – that he was still deaf and blind. It was that he now knew just how long he had been in the center, and he was wary of the ways the world may have changed in that span of time.
Pinkerton looked at himself in the mirror and thought to himself that he hadn’t aged one bit. There was no way the doctors and researchers were telling the truth. It must be a test. They must be baiting him, enticing him to speak out, trying to confirm that he could see and hear everything that was happening around him. Then the most curious thing happened.
He had been pacing, alone in his cell, thinking his way through his anxiety and reassuring himself to hold his steadfast resolve to never let them know that the procedures had worked. There was a researcher, a young intern, watching from just outside the room, and the most unfortunate thing to happen to Pinkerton in a long time occurred with a flurry of profanities. He tripped over a slipper.
When J.R. tripped, he lost his battle with the doctors and researchers, lost his calm, collected appearance, and lost eight teeth. He had been pacing with his eyes closed to keep himself from looking around and giving himself away, and he slowly had been drifting closer and closer to the bed with each pace. Pinkerton tripped over his slipper and hit his mouth – with all the force of Murphy’s Law and the laws of physics combined – squarely on the corner of his nightstand.
Pinkerton had unleashed a ferocious string of obscenities in multiple languages – he was fluent in English, Danish, Arabic, and Spanish – while spitting out blood and teeth and smashing the nightstand against the wall.
The intern ran as fast as he could to the lead researcher’s office while the lead researcher ran as fast as she could toward the quarantine rooms. If it weren’t for the CCTV system in quarantine, this would have been J.R.’s saving grace.
The intern rounded the corner in the corridor on his way out of quarantine with all the speed of an Olympic sprinter; with his head down and his lack of training in sprinting, he began having difficulty keeping his breath. The intern started to experience tunnel vision and auditory exclusion, as the position of his head was constricting his airway, and his muscles were demanding more oxygen than he had ever given them. His adrenaline was pumping, and his 100-meter dash at this pace would have handily been below ten seconds.
The lead researcher had been running through the park with her dog every day for five years, so she was no slouch. When she saw J.R. smack his mouth into the nightstand, she immediately took off in a graceful run, not an adrenaline-fueled sprint, but she was still moving at a pace that would make fairly high marks in a 5k competition. She entered the corridor leading to quarantine and could hear the multi-lingual obscenities echoing up from Pinkerton’s room. She decided she should probably pick up the pace a bit.
It sounded like a tuna had been dropped from some height into an ice tote. A wet, crunching, reverberating thud. A 230-pound intern traveling at about 25 miles per hour had just run headlong into his boss, a 140-pound Ph.D. traveling just over 12 miles per hour. It was like seeing a pickup truck hitting a deer. Nobody wins, and everyone gets damaged. They both awoke to the smell of ammonia. A student had seen the doctor running across the campus and followed her. The student witnessed the gruesome collision and called for an ambulance, then waited outside the quarantine building for them to arrive. Neither the intern nor the doctor could remember what had happened. They had sustained serious concussions along with some sprains and strains in their arms and necks.
The doctor and the intern returned to the university to continue their research a few days later and went to visit their favorite subject. Pinkerton had been worried about them, as the sickening cacophony of their bodies colliding was loud enough to stop his tantrum, and he hadn’t heard anything about their condition in days.
Inspector Pinkerton was sitting in a chair with his usual wry grin. The doctor thought his teeth were a bit whiter than before. She recalled them being slightly tea-stained, but they were brilliantly white that day. Were his eyes tracking her? No, that couldn’t be possible. Must be the concussion, maybe a hallucination of some sort.
As the doctor approached him, J.R. unconsciously stopped hiding his renewed abilities of sight and hearing. He responded to her half-mumbled thoughts about his eye movement with a wink and a nod. The doctor thought that it must be a continuing illusion.
Pinkerton said, “I think I’m done living in this place. Thank you for your hospitality, but I want to leave the center. Oh, and if you haven’t already, go watch the CCTV footage.”
“You might want to look at my calendar then.” replied the doctor.
J.R. looked down at the doctor’s calendar and the shock hit him, he had been in the quarantine unit for twenty years and there was a dramatically different world waiting outside the center.
Issue 5: Quicken
upending.wordpress.com/2017/03/01/the-unpredictable-adventures-of-inspector-pinkerton/
Inspector Pinkerton had asked for the one thing he could not have, his freedom from the most secure quarantine facility in the United States. When he was brought to the “University” twenty years before, Pinkerton was told that he would be genetically modified by having an isolated bit of urodele chromosomes inserted into his genome. He understood that the was a pretty good chance that the procedure would fail, and he would go on being blind and deaf for the rest of his life. So did the researchers.
One of the University scientists tasked with observing Pinkerton had found that, after three years, Pinkerton’s ability to heal had – according to DNA testing and observing brain function scans – begun to quicken. The scientist was fully aware that Pinkerton had regained his sight and hearing, even as J.R. tried to hide it. Nonetheless, when a staff meeting with the Director concluded that the urodele genetics weren’t working, he said nothing of Pinkerton’s functioning abilities. The scientist, along with a couple of his fellow researchers, proposed that they also insert cephalopod genetics. It was unanimously approved, and the Director instructed them to begin work immediately – noting that this project was to remain secret as a matter of National Security.
The University was a project funded by deep intelligence units within the Department of Defense, NSA, and CIA. The Director had a vested interest in the research being done, and his eyes lit up at the prospect, as it could make his operatives impervious to torture and most injuries, creating a super agent. This second round of genetic alteration using cephalopod genes might be even better than the initial hopes with urodele genetics, with a rapid healing ability compounded and the added ability to camouflage and kill its own kind without remorse. A super agent in terms of covert operations.
The Inspector’s stubborn resolve to keep from showing that he was healed had also suppressed his other abilities. The one thing he couldn’t hide was his lack of aging and an ability to nearly stop his heart, slow his breathing, and cool his body into a coma-like state for months at a time, going without food, water, or motion. His motionless state, like a hibernating salamander, gave the researchers all the time they needed to study him. These bouts of hibernation are the likely reason he could not recall three-quarters of the time he had been in quarantine. His resolve to hide his abilities had done nearly the opposite for him. It had confirmed that the urodele genes were working. What had stayed hidden through J.R.’s campaign of secrecy was that the fantastic camouflage ability and the darkness of a remorseless killing machine stayed in remission. Until the day came that he lost his battle with physics and smashed his face against the nightstand.
After ‘The Incident’, the trusted Doctor had told Pinkerton something he was not prepared for. That he was not free to leave. He shut down. He didn’t come out of his hibernation for three years. In the meantime, the Director made haste in extracting chromosomes from salamanders, newts, cuttlefish, octopi, and a Humboldt squid named Jim; modifying one operative’s DNA each week, the University was turning out its most prestigious graduating class of all time. Meanwhile, a leak to a website had led to the use of genetic modification in medicine throughout the United States, Europe, and Asia. Much like the space race of the mid-twentieth century, there was a race to perfect the medical science of curing ailments through the proliferation of genetic modification.
Pinkerton had become an unknowing and unwilling prototype for the future of intelligence, covert operations, and medicine. Soldiers could shake a powder out onto a massive wound and be healed completely within a week. Cancer patients were injected with a synthetic virus that modified their DNA and cured their malignancies. AIDS, malaria, and a thousand other diseases were suddenly as dangerous as a pollen allergy. A covert operative could change their skin color at will, providing perfect deep cover for operatives around the world. This double-edged sword changed everything. It led to health and happiness, death and destruction, and everything in between.
It was suddenly a scarier world to live in, and people were happier to live in it. Wars were no longer fought in an overt sense; everything that open war once accomplished could be completed with surgical precision and zero collateral damage. Intelligence could be gathered without anyone suspecting the person they were talking to was a foreign operative. Technology boomed, leaps and bounds of advancements were made every day, and progress was no longer hindered by secrecy – there were no more secrets, no way to keep them. Statues of Pinkerton stood in the capitals of every nation. He was the hero of Earth.
Earth had ceased to be the only home of humans in the solar system. In three years, humans went from meek inhabitants of Earth to daring colonists throughout the solar system. The ability to hibernate in a coma-like state was one of the keys, another was the loss of secrecy, and the master key was the amazingly rapid pace of technological advancement. A new rocket could carry humans into space on a test run, have an utter and complete failure, and the astronauts would just sleep it off in their space suits until rescuers arrived.
The biggest statue of Pinkerton stood in New Denmark, which comprised the western shores of the Inspektører Havet on the newly terraformed moon of Jupiter, Europa. It was originally a colony of the United States during terraforming, but a mutiny had been set into action by Libyan operatives that had been undercover in the American program for years. The Danish colony offered the mutineers and the Americans their own estates in exchange for allegiance to the Crown and took a controlling stake in continental Europa.
Pinkerton woke up from his catatonic nap to a different view through his glass wall. The next best thing to freedom was the view from his new quarantine location. He couldn’t believe it; he was in orbit. There was a note from the Doctor and the Director on what was left of his nightstand:
Jack,
We’re truly sorry that you haven’t had a choice in any of this, but for your mark on the documents to start the first procedure. You are the hero of Earth, and we couldn’t give you freedom. You will soon have a decision to make, and your awakening will trigger a response from your current neighbors. Until then, think of it this way, you are free to travel around the world and see every country.
We couldn’t keep you safe at the University any longer. The idea of secrecy has rapidly become obsolete, and every world leader wanted to have you. Your enclosure was attached to a modified satellite and put into a random orbit.
Your choices, as we know them at the time of writing this note, will consist of either staying where you are now or becoming an operative on Europa. If you choose the latter, you’ll have a bit of catching up to do.
Good luck patient 32317002488.
– Ellie and Mother
He couldn’t stifle his laughter. Pinkerton could clearly see two things, the planet Earth and a blinking red light that had transitioned to solid green in the corner of his enclosure. He finally got to see the world. He just never expected it would be like that.
Issue 6: Imaginary
upending.wordpress.com/2017/06/03/imaginary-injuries-daily-prompt/
The human mind is a curious place. We never quite know what the next person will think about anything, and we can never be sure of what our own minds will come up with. Inspector Pinkerton was no different. His mind could do wonderful things or terrible things. His mind could wander aimlessly for days on end without letting him know. If it weren’t for the sign in his blinking box hurtling through the blackness that read, “…days since arrival”, he would have no sense of time or place at that point. His unique abilities, gained through genomic manipulation, had landed him in a solitary confinement cell in a low orbit around the Earth. Pinkerton had been alone in there for long enough that he began to create an imagined dialogue with himself, and he could become quite argumentative when he said things to himself that pushed his buttons.
He knew he was slipping into insanity in his perfect solitude, but he began to enjoy it. Before long, the Inspector was as mad as a hatter, and he took enjoyment in counting the number of times he could regenerate a body part in a year. His personal favorite was the little toe on his right foot, which he regrew almost 52 times in his first year of complete madness. Not getting the toe back for the 52nd time made him fly off the handle. He cut off the whole of his right leg with a butter knife, and the mess it left – the cutting off of his leg – also made him become upset. He fashioned a mop with a cleaning sponge, some tendons, and his discarded femur.
J.R. still hadn’t regained his right leg when his first visitor arrived. He hadn’t had a visitor since being catapulted into orbit decades prior. The visitor looked at Pinkerton, tapped out a note in her tablet, and left without saying a word. It must have left quite an impression on the visitor to see the cage in such a state of disarray, to see a man with one leg smaller than the other and a necklace made from toes.
The visitor was the new leader of the Trans-Atlantic Confederation of States, the most powerful person on the planet, and she was curious about the genetically reverse-engineered man that was shot into space at the beginning of the Third World War. Her name was Samira Martinez-Hulthausen, and she had a plan for the exiled mutant now that the war was over and she only ruled two-thirds of the globe. Pinkerton was in for a surprise.
J.R. watched as the mysterious visitor jetted away in her shuttle. He just kept watching until it faded to a dot that was descending upon what he thought might be Argentina. He kept staring, hoping to figure out what was happening, hoping that the dot would turn around and grow larger, hoping for a visitor to spend some time with him, and eating what was left of his right leg. After staring into the void between his cell and Earth for several days in a trance-like state, Pinkerton had an imaginary visitor.
It was that woman he had seen. The one who shuttled to his cell and appeared to be taking notes. She seemed so real, so present in his imagination. She came in through the airlock and instantly the room smelled of hibiscus and honeysuckle, her care-worn caramel skin and sparkling intense blue eyes held his gaze, and she spoke to him.
“You are a man who was born three times, Mister Pinkerton, and you have a purpose. I need you, the planet needs you, please agree to work for us.”
“What will be required of me?”
“You have been destroying yourself for years as a form of entertainment, now you will need to destroy a very evil man and his lackeys for the greater good of the populace. They do not know what they need and are contented to live in a life of deceit and blind obedience.”
“I just watched you leave without speaking to me, how have you come back?”
“I haven’t. You’re off your rocker J.R., and you’re talking to yourself again.”
He shook his head violently to stop the imaginary conversation, which caused him to go into an uncontrolled tumble from the ‘lower front left’ corner of the cell to the ‘upper rear right’ corner. He pinballed around in his cell for a while before he decided to clean himself up. He put the necklace of toes back inside his nightstand and dumped the rest of the unneeded body parts through the airlock. J.R. watched as a single tear floated away from his face, and he sobered from his solitude-induced madness.
He began to tell himself that he would have another visitor, that he would smell the familiar smells of his homeland, see the familiar sights close-up, and hear the sounds of laughter and birds again. Pinkerton became more hopeful for his future, and he spent countless hours daydreaming about what Earth was like so many years later. What the people and places would be like, how society had changed, and what real food would taste like.
In the decades of his isolation, he could discern some sort of great row between the nations of Earth. He called it the Third World War, and based on the amount of destruction he watched from space during the twenty years of fighting, he concluded that a great deal had changed. Who was the visitor, and what did she have planned for the only man exiled from Earth?
Issue 7: Distant
upending.wordpress.com/2017/06/04/distant/
Soon enough, in terms of the Inspector’s sense of time, that distant shuttle port he had seen his visitor descend to in South America began to glow with the brilliance of a rocket launch. Pinkerton watched as the bright glow grew larger and larger, and he smiled for the first time in ages. He thought about the visitor he had been observed by so long ago, yet not so long ago.
He hadn’t been paying attention to his little incarceration timer for quite some time. He had begun tracking time by the number of freeze-dried meals he had rehydrated with his recycled urine. That thought never seemed to comfort him, he didn’t mind the memory of eating his own leg, but he found no solace in the urine recycler being his primary water source. With the supplemental water sources being the dehumidifier and the thingamabob that sucked all the moisture out of his crap. No matter how hard he tried to stop thinking about it, he felt like all of his rehydrated foods, and certainly, all of the water, tasted like ass.
“Meh. Sometimes you’re the pigeon, some days you’re the statue.” He mumbled aloud.
As he chuckled at the joke he made of his recycled bodily waste, he watched the glowing little rocket grow larger. Pinkerton wondered whether he would be removed from the fish bowl anytime soon or if the visitor would just be coming up to ensure he was still there again. Out of pure curiosity, he looked to the timer and deduced that his last visitor had come to look at him like a zoogoer who watches the polar bears swimming about three years before.
“What took you so long?” screamed the Inspector.
He continued screaming that question over and over for hours. The only reasons he stopped were twofold, he realized he was on the precipice of madness again, and he couldn’t recognize the flag painted on the side of the approaching shuttle. It was not a flag he had seen on Earth prior to his being rocketed into exile. It was an interesting flag. It had a blue background with an outline in the black of a raven apparently eating the eyes out of a lion. He was certain that it had some new connotation that he wouldn’t understand since he’d been in the heavens for so long.
The shuttle began making its approach, and Pinkerton saw another rocket being launched from Australia. ‘They never shoot two rockets up in one day’, he thought to himself. As the shuttle got closer to docking on his one-man space station, the Inspector could clearly read H.M.S. LIONSBANE on its port side.
The shuttle docked successfully, and Pinkerton got as excited as a child on Christmas morning. He was absolutely giddy as a team of people wearing body armor and carrying a bevy of medical monitoring equipment piled into the airlock chamber. The airlock hissed and groaned for a couple of minutes, and suddenly he was face to face with five of the best-trained doctors and nurses from Earth.
He was impressed by them and their equipment, and speechless to have human contact. The team of doctors and nurses were slack-jawed, looking beyond Pinkerton. The Inspector turned around and saw a shuttle launching missiles.
“So, I take it there’s no peace on Earth or safety in space at this point.” He said.
One of the doctors replied, “We have had a cease-fire between our kingdom and the Autarchy of Catamount for over fifty years to this point.”
“I guess that’s gone to pot. Correct me if I’m wrong here, but isn’t the catamount a type of lion? Is that the reason for your flag and ship name? And what is your kingdom? And why are you here?”
“Yes, yes, you’re quite right. We are the Kingdom of Atlantia, formerly the Trans-Atlantic Confederation of States. We had come together as a union of smaller nations to fight against Catamount and were nearly crushed, Queen Samira and King Arturo of the Hispaño-Deutsch states of South America married and put forth an offer to the Confederation to unite under their rule. It was a unanimous vote, all of the free nations knew they had to unite under one strong central government if they hoped to stave the tide of autocracy.”
“Are those missiles meant for me, or you?”
“Probably us.”
The team started attaching monitoring equipment to Pinkerton. They had to determine what, if any, damage had been done to the Inspector by his having spent decades in spaces. After taking some samples and monitoring his vital signs for fifteen minutes, the whole time watching the missiles get closer, the whole group was a little surprised to hear the airlock disengage without them aboard the shuttle.
H.M.S. LIONSBANE departed the cell and looked like it was headed toward the moon. The missiles were gaining on the shuttle as it jetted toward the moon with every ounce of thrust it could put out. Pinkerton watched patiently hoping the pilots had something up their sleeves, he didn’t want to be stuck in his box for another fifty years or more. The team of medics seemed nervous and tense. Apparently, they didn’t want to spend any more time with Pinkerton than was necessary.
Pinkerton looked at the medics and chuckled to himself. He started to bark and howl.
The medics all huddled in a corner, prepared for the worst, prepared to be torn apart by the mad cannibal that had been exiled from Earth.
The Inspector laughed at them, chided them for being so timid, then pointed toward the moon. The shuttle LIONSBANE came back into view moving markedly faster than it was moving on its approach to the moon. He applauded. The sharp pop of his first clap made his timorous visitors cower again. They all watched as the missiles ran out of fuel and self-destructed.
The doctor told Pinkerton that it was time for a full body scan, and the rest of the medics appeared to begin playing Tetris with the remaining pieces of equipment. In short order, the medics had assembled a machine that looked like a marriage between a tanning bed and a copying machine. The Inspector took his place in the contraption, and the scanning began.
Issue 8: Uniform
upending.wordpress.com/2017/06/05/uniform/
The medics handed Inspector Pinkerton a uniform and stared in awe at the test results. The decades spent in microgravity had absolutely no effects on Pinkerton at all, he was a perfect picture of health. The medics discussed the test results vociferously until the Inspector interrupted them saying, “You do remember that I’m genetically re-engineered, right?” That put a rapid stop to the incredulous bantering and brought the medics back to their professional bearing. The medics got back on task, disassembling the monitors and equipment to prepare for their return trip.
Pinkerton had a difficult time trying to put on the new suit, it was built entirely differently from the suits he had been wearing for decades. He needed to ask the medics for help, but there was no way he would let himself ask anyone for help at that point. Just as one of the medics finished preparing for the return voyage to Earth, the medic watched Pinkerton pop the elbow joint off of the uniform suit completely. Pinkerton saw that he was being watched and solved the problem rapidly. He asked if the medics had a scalpel, they obliged, and he cut off his right arm at mid bicep. He didn’t need the arm of the space suit, so he sealed it off at the broken elbow joint. The arm would grow back in a little over two weeks anyway. The medics were fascinated by the way the Inspector flippantly cut off his arm, and the way his body seemed to naturally stop the bleeding rather quickly. Pinkerton looked at them and said, “It only works with the extremities, the core and the head need to stay attached or I won’t recover.” The medics had quite rapidly decided to return to the incredulous bantering over Pinkerton’s physiological oddities. J.R. had to reign them in again, as he asked them to check the seal on the joint before they got into the airlock chamber.
The H.M.S. LIONSBANE was making its approach to Pinkerton’s cell as the Inspector and the medics loaded themselves and their equipment into the airlock. As the shuttle got close enough for them to read all the smaller print on its hull, like ‘Not a Step’ and ‘Aileron Service Hatch’, there was a blinding light, then a thump in their chests and everything went dark. The shuttle exploded and left the medics and Pinkerton unconscious and stranded in a cell designed for one person hurtling around the Earth in a random nongeosynchronous orbit. The tiny space station was designed and launched only to be visited or retrieved with great difficulty. Pinkerton was intended to die in orbit when he became another unwitting and unwilling primate astronaut, a thought that made him feel akin to a rhesus monkey.
The Inspector woke first from the dreamland induced by a rather large explosion. He watched as a second shuttle, painted all black except for a small flag of a puma eating a raven on a field of red and the stenciled words BOYEVOY. One person got into the airlock wearing a black uniform, carrying an ornate dirk, and wearing a mask. The person unceremoniously stabbed each of the medics through the heart and the head, then jettisoned their bodies. The medical equipment was transferred to the BOYEVOY and the assassin turned to Pinkerton, pointed to him and pointed to the shuttle.
Pinkerton shrugged in his mind as he got into the shuttle, “A free ride is a free ride, and beggars can’t be choosers.” The assassin didn’t even make a gesture in response to the Inspector’s comment. The Inspector was ushered to a seat, strapped in, and scanned by the Catamountan medics. They nodded to the pilots, and the shuttle began its return trip. Pinkerton was at once impressed and irritated with the taciturn nature of his new chauffeurs and au pairs. He chuckled to himself given the circumstances, he was imprisoned and exiled because of his genetics, and now people were willing to kill in order to bring his genetics back to Earth. A rather contrary turn of events, the planet’s population must have really done a number on themselves. He entertained himself by thinking about how the wars had changed the geographic boundaries, how the people had stayed the same, and how there could be only two governments left on Earth.
The shuttle bounced and its tires squealed as the BOYEVOY landed in Perth, an outpost of the Catamountan aerospace program. There were hundreds of people gathered at the terminal, probably the entire population of the outpost as far as Pinkerton could tell. Pinkerton became a bit sick to his stomach, although the doctors knew that the Inspector was structurally sound, he had just spent decades in orbit. He held it in until he was meeting the Commandant of the Island Dependencies in front of a cheering crowd with ticker-tape falling like snow from the sky, at which point J.R. let loose the most impressive projectile vomit stream he had ever seen to that point in his long life.
The crowd went silent, then a woman began to snicker. She was hauled off and through the door the sound of a gunshot could be heard. The CID immediately shot Pinkerton twelve times, then Pinkerton laughed a hearty and loud laugh. An aide whispered something in the CID’s ear, to which the bureaucrat responded with a huffing and puffing stomping speedwalk to his vehicle.
The CID held the door and said, “Efter yew, m’lord.”
Pinkerton looked around and all eyes were on him, “You talking to me?”
“Geet een ze car.”
Pinkerton shrugged and got into the car. It was a comfortable, though obviously well-used vehicle, and it amazed the Inspector with the smoothness and silence of its engine. Pinkerton had never been in an electric car before. This was a first. When he left the planet, the only reasonably designed electric cars cost more than a house. When he returned, everyone had an electric car. He looked out the windows as they passed by the cookie-cutter rows of houses, each with its roof covered in photovoltaic paneling, and marveled at just how clearly he could see the stars. He remembered that the stars weren’t so brilliant the last time he was on the planet.
Issue 9: Natty
upending.wordpress.com/2017/06/06/the-dapper-despot-and-the-inspector/
Inspector Pinkerton and the Commandant of the Island Dependencies remained taciturn in the back seat of the spacious car until the chauffeur stopped at the seaport several hours from the spaceport. The Commandant stepped out of the car and shook hands with a tall blonde man in a natty outfit. The man wore an impeccably pressed pair of slacks, obviously well-made brogues, a black shirt with the top button undone, and the most impressive vest Pinkerton had ever seen. Everything about the man’s manner of dress was obviously meant to give the impression of wealth and privilege, and his mannerisms exuded confidence and power. The Commandant kissed the blonde man’s ring and said, “Supreme Leader, this is the man we have violated our peace terms for.”
The Inspector, sensing his cue, stepped out of the vehicle and meant to reach for a handshake with the man when he realized something important that had slipped his mind. His right arm had only regenerated to a tiny hand protruding from a lumpy nub, the Supreme Leader chortled. The dapper despot ushered Pinkerton to his waiting vessel, and into the massive quarters below decks. He introduced himself to the Inspector as the Supreme Leader of the Tri-Continental Republic of Catamount, “But you can call me Alexander.”
“Supreme Leader Alexander, are there any clothes available for me to change into? This jumpsuit seems wildly understated given my surroundings.”
Alexander smiled wryly and took J.R. to his own quarters across the passageway from the expansive quarters. Pinkerton found that everything had been laid out for him in there, with no expense spared. He slowly dressed in the clothing laid out for him with his one good arm. The Inspector felt like a king wearing such a fine outfit and poured himself a glass of aquavit. As he capped the decanter, a knock at his chamber door startled him. A porter was standing in the passageway, and J.R. wondered what all else he could possibly need in his room. As the porter began lugging items into the luxurious room, a middle-aged man with a Japanese accent introduced himself to Pinkerton.
“I am the Chief Medical Officer aboard the PASTI, and I will personally be monitoring your health for the Supreme Leader.”
“Thanks.”
“I am Haruki and, before your meeting with the Supreme Leader, I must collect some samples for testing.”
Haruki opened one of the large cases the porter had placed near the bed and instructed Pinkerton to sit down on the bed. He removed a large syringe, a ball and a tourniquet from the case and placed them on the nightstand. Then he began removing vacuum tubes, Pinkerton counted twelve of them and raised his eyebrows, “Will I have any blood left when you’re done here?”
“Yes.”
Haruki collected the samples, bowed to Pinkerton, and left the room. The Inspector was more than a little curious about all the testing being done on him between the medics in his cell 1,200 miles above and on this ship. He wondered if there was some sort of unspoken scheme that he had unwittingly become a part of. He mused that he was probably the most interesting person on the ship due to his ability to regenerate and his centenarian age.
J.R. was ushered back into the quarters of the Supreme Leader before he could even get a drink from his glass of aquavit. Alexander was sitting at an ornate desk, staring intently at his tablet and grinning mischievously. Pinkerton felt awkward and a little woozy.
“You’ve been given a mild sedative, don’t worry about a thing Mister Pinkerton.”
J.R. awoke to the sounds of rockets being launched and noticed that his right arm had fully regenerated. He had been unconscious for nearly two weeks and was curious about what had been done to him in the meantime. Alexander and Haruki were standing over him smiling broadly when he finally opened his eyes.
“If that was a mild sedative, I’m the Queen of England.” He stated in a rather gruff tone.
Alexander took on a more serious candor and replied, “England doesn’t exist now. There is Catamount, and there are the lands of the dissidents who will capitulate or die.”
“Sounds like you have an ace up your sleeve Supreme Leader.”
“I do, and you’re it. We have managed to replicate your very particular genetic code. You were the only person to survive the genetic engineering project at the turn of the century, that makes you very lucky. Your ability to survive and heal makes you very special indeed, and your genes in every one of my most highly trained soldiers mean that I will soon rule the world.”
“Is that so?”
“It is.”
Alexander and Haruki left the room. Pinkerton chuckled lightly when he realized he had been moved from one prison to another, going from exile to being a highly prized lab animal worth killing for. He felt consternation over the dapper despot’s grand plans of global conquest but also held some deeply seated feelings of disappointment in the human race in general after they jettisoned him from the planet for fifty years.
The Inspector got himself to his feet and quickly got dressed in the suit again. He tried the door and found that it was locked, so he removed the jacket and opened the porthole forcibly. Pinkerton had to break his own ribs to fit out the porthole, and he began to swim in the opposite direction from where the ship was sailing. He agonized over every breath and every stroke for several hours as he swam aimlessly, hoping for land to appear in front of him. He was in the middle of the Indian Ocean and unwittingly swimming further out to sea.
The PASTI was sailing for Madagascar, and Pinkerton was swimming toward Perth. He swam until he was well and truly exhausted, then turned over and floated on his back, staring at the sky, wishing he was still in orbit where every basic need was provided for except entertainment and companionship.
Issue 10: Polished
upending.wordpress.com/2017/06/07/polished-through-trial/
Pinkerton had been floating face up in the open sea long enough to attract the attention of seabirds. He thought to himself, “A gem is not polished without friction and a man without trials.” The thought of having his eyes pecked out and swimming in the open ocean blindly was enough to motivate him to continue swimming. He had an epiphany during that moment though.
“Birds! Seagulls! They will lead me to land.”
Just as he started swimming toward the direction he decided the gulls had come from, he could see a battleship in the distance. It certainly wasn’t the luxurious cruiser of the despotic leader of the Catamount Republic and, within a matter of minutes, he could discern the distinct banner of a raven eating a lion. He hadn’t expected to see an Atlantian ship in the Indian Ocean, but it sure was a sight for sore eyes. As the ship got closer to him, he could see the woman who had visited his cell in orbit, he knew her now as Queen Samira by skimming one of the news articles on the tablet in his quarters on the Catamountan ship.
Pinkerton was beginning to glimpse pieces of the full scope of the war and what each side was willing to do to win. What he liked least was his position as a pawn, a prized pawn, but still a pawn. Out of his aversion to death, the Inspector decided that he may as well give the Atlantians a go at him to even out the odds for global domination. As the rescue craft was launched from the ship, Pinkerton wished he had managed to swim to land. He wished he could have made a tropical atoll with enough things to eat and drink to keep him healthy until both sides gave up looking for him.
Once he was aboard, the Queen introduced herself and asked Pinkerton to consider his options regarding donating his genetics to the Atlantians. J.R. was taken aback by the respectfulness and honesty of such a powerful political entity, and willingly donated blood and other bodily fluids to the cause. The Fleet Admiral arrived toward the end of Pinkerton’s donations and asked the Queen for a destination.
“Tokelau Admiral, the Inspector will be safe there.”
The Admiral nodded and returned to the ship’s bridge. As he walked up the passageway, his whistling to the tune of Gymnopédie No. 2. He was a tall man with salt and pepper hair and a curled mustache, wearing a stark white uniform with enough shiny stuff hanging off of it to make him look akin to a Christmas tree with the ‘snow’ on it. The echoing whistled tune made an eerie mood come over Pinkerton. He had heard that tune whistled before when he was quarantined in the ‘University’. He had only heard it at night when it was him, the other human guinea pigs, and the guards present. This naval officer knew more about the Inspector than he was letting on, and Pinkerton felt like he needed to find out more about the man.
The Inspector asked the Queen what Tokelau was, to which the Queen replied with a gentle chuckle. Samira nodded to her assistant.
The assistant told him about the wars of the preceding fifty years, and how her homeland was lost to the ravages of war long before it was formally taken into enemy possession. Eastern and Central Europe had seen the brunt of the collateral damage during a series of wars that came to be collectively referred to as World War III. There was no strong unifying force, each country hated the others after the treaties and accords started falling by the wayside due to powerful politicians who were acting in the interests of their personal finances.
The United States ceased to be united at about the same time that the European Union crumbled. The Russian Federation could have pounced on the opportunity to seize power if it weren’t for their civil war and concurrent wars with China and India. While the only remaining superpowers fought in a three-way war, they each fell from within due to civil unrest and internal wars. After a decade of fighting in Asia, other remaining powers began to pick up the pieces by force. Argentina took control of most of South America and the Carribean after making an alliance with the Unified German States, which consisted of the majority of the post-World War II country. The exception being the state of Schleswig-Holstein who had petitioned to rejoin the Kingdom of Denmark after a hundred year absence.
After thirty years of fighting side by side to protect each other’s interests, the Unified German States and the Argentine Republic merged to become the Trans-Atlantic Confederation of States. Samira, the leader of the Unified German States, married the Argentine ruler Arturo. They declared themselves King and Queen of Atlantia and campaigned to unify the Western Hemisphere under their rule. Through a promise of absolute protection, they gained control of New Zealand and its dependencies. The King built his most fortified base on a small atoll called Tokelau, where he launched attacks on the strongholds of the Catamountan forces and took highly valued prisoners for enhanced interrogation.
“Well, now I know what a Tokelau is. Where is it?”
“Well, sir, that’s the key. Nobody knows where Tokelau is.”
Pinkerton was ushered to his quarters, where he busied himself with a tablet that was left for him on the bunk. He eagerly looked for anything he could find about Tokelau, the Admiral, the Catamountan rulers and leaders, and the Atlantians. He made notes of anything that seemed reliable and worked diligently to plan his next move. A few boring days passed; during that time, he was treated as an honored guest and only spoken to in what seemed like prepared speeches. Everything about his return to Earth had his hackles raised, and the inspector was highly motivated to learn why.
Issue 11: Crisp
upending.wordpress.com/2017/06/08/crisp-cool-and-collected/
Pinkerton sat in his quarters for the remainder of the evening stewing over the suspicious circumstances both of his escape and his rescue. He had to find a rational explanation for it all. The Catamountans locked him in his quarters on the PASTI, but never pursued him after he went overboard through the porthole. The Atlantians had found him in the middle of the Indian Ocean like they were looking for the coin in the bottom of a glass of vodka. Neither of these sets of circumstance quite added up to him. Pinkerton went above decks to look at the stars and collect his thoughts. The night air was crisp and cool, and Pinkerton felt at ease in a comfortable chair on the deck. He decided to dissect one of the events at a time, starting with his current hosts since they were the more present issue.
The Atlantians had come to see him twice in orbit, the second time obviously didn’t go well for them, but they were determined to retrieve him from his exile. They must have had a good reason to expend such a large amount of resources in the middle of a war between the two hemispheres. Pinkerton recalled the comments made by Alexander just before he departed the Catamountan ship, that his genes were being replicated. That must have been the motivation for both the Catamountans and the Atlantians, to create a race of super-soldiers using the Inspector’s DNA.
Even so, the Atlantians could have collected all they needed by force to complete the task, yet they did not. The Queen herself asked for his permission only after the Catamountans had already stolen his genetic code forcibly. Pinkerton was treated as an honored guest here, but everything seemed so scripted.
The Admiral on this ship seemed a bit more of interest to Pinkerton, he had heard someone whistling that tune in the ‘University’. He never saw the person, but the pitch and tone of the whistling had been unmistakable. The Admiral must have been in the lab when the Inspector was there. That had been more than fifty years prior, and the Admiral only looked to be in his late-40’s to early-50’s.
“How did they find me?” he mumbled as he stared at the waxing crescent moon overhead in the clear night sky.
The Inspector theorized that the Atlantian medics must have injected a tracking device in him during his examination back in the Habitrail he called home for five decades. That was the only explanation he could come up with at the time. It seemed logical enough that the people bringing him back from exile might want to know where such a volatile – and apparently important – man was at all times.
He felt relatively at ease with the story he had worked out in his head for the Atlantians, they had gone to retrieve him from orbit and inserted a tracking device. After he was taken by the Catamountans, the Atlantians began tracking him looking for an opportunity to retrieve their ‘guest’. They brought him aboard and suspected that the Catamount forces had taken what they wanted and discarded the Inspector when they were done with him. The Admiral’s whistling to the tune of Gymnopédies No. 2 had to just be an eery coincidence.
The Catamountans obviously were ruthless, having taken the time to destroy an Atlantian spacecraft and killing every one of its crew to take Pinkerton from them. They never quite treated him well, and they never went looking for him after he escaped from their ship. This bit stuck in Pinkerton’s craw. Even if they had what they wanted, why would they take any chances with allowing their enemy to recover the all-important specimen? This brought him back to the thought about a tracking device, maybe Haruki had found the tracking device and told Alexander about it. Maybe not, it could have just been a flippant disregard for Pinkerton’s abilities. They must have thought he would surely drown before being found or finding land.
A young petty officer had been standing nearby watching the Inspector argue with himself silently. She tapped him on the shoulder.
“Sir, you seem angry and confused.”
“I am a bit confused, trying to rationalize the irrational.”
“I understand that sir, but maybe you should go to bed.”
“Novel thought, but it isn’t likely that I’ll be able to sleep.”
“Sir, I don’t care what you do in your quarters, but you have five minutes to get below decks before breathing becomes an issue.”
“Are you threatening me, sailor?”
“No sir, I’m warning you that this ship is submersible and we are scheduled to land at the Port of Tokelau. It’s down below.”
Pinkerton chuckled quietly, drug his chair back into the forecastle and made his way down the passageway to his quarters. He couldn’t help it, he stood staring at his porthole watching as the crystal clear waters rose then turned aquamarine followed by black in the fading moonlight. The ship made port just before sunrise, and the Admiral announced that all crewmembers were to be on a liberty pass until the full moon. A raucous noise emanated from the crew quarters, and shortly thereafter the ship was ghostly quiet except for the whistling of the Admiral. Pinkerton sat there in his quarters for the better part of an hour before Samira found him still aboard.
“You can leave whenever you like, Inspector.”
“I’ve not been free to come and go since I signed up to be a lab rat many, many years ago.”
“You’re safe here in Tokelau, no harm could possibly come to you here. Go out there and experience living outside of a box.”
The Inspector walked up to the cantina across from the entrance to the submerged seaport, they had a number of books on the history of the war lying on tables and a decent buffet of South Pacific delicacies. Pinkerton retrieved a book about refugees, a plateful of lumpia, and a drink that smelled like coconut. He took his treasures to a well-lit booth in the back of the cantina and promptly devoured them. The book left him with an unsettled feeling as he read through passages about massive migrations and the beginnings of a new ice age.
Issue 12: Tender
upending.wordpress.com/2017/06/09/the-north-wind/
Inspector Pinkerton’s curiosity was nearly sated after he read a few books about what had been happening on Earth over the previous fifty years. The stories of disasters, refugees, wars over resources, mass migrations, and the struggles of the remaining powerful nations jockeying for supremacy had made him sullen. He went to the bar and asked the bartender for something strong in a big glass, the bartender made a drink he called ‘The Abyss’ and slid it over to Pinkerton. As ‘The Abyss’ sunk into the Inspector and he sunk into the abyss, he made his way to his new quarters in Atafu by means he couldn’t recall. The last he remembered he was half way through his first glass, then he woke up face-down on the floor about halfway between the door and the bed in a room he had never been in before.
He got to his feet and wandered into the bathroom where he found a towel, a bathrobe, and a note saying, “Clean yourself up, get dressed, and meet me for brunch at the Tupuna Inn.” There was a hand-drawn map on the bottom of the note, but no indication of who had left it for him. He decided he ought to give it a go. After showering and finding an outfit laid out for him on the bed, Pinkerton followed the map to a large cabana near the beach with a small hand-painted sign telling him he had gone to the right place.
The Inspector looked around the Tupuna and didn’t see anyone that appeared to be looking for him, so he took a seat at a table facing toward the beach and asked for a coffee. Someone walked up behind him and poked him in the back of the head.
“How’s the head?”
Pinkerton turned around to see the Admiral standing there, “It’s a bit tender for some unknown reason. I suppose you might have some explanation for it though.”
“I do. You drank The Abyss after not having alcohol for over fifty years and fell off your barstool. Your head hit the floor hard enough that it got everyone’s hearts racing, we couldn’t have our honored guest be the first death on Tokelau since the occupation began.”
“And you carried me to my room?”
“You wouldn’t have any of it, I just walked behind you shouting directions. I opened the door and you walked a few steps into the room and fell face down, started snoring instantly.”
“Flattery will get you nowhere, Admiral.”
“The name is George.”
Pinkerton recalled instantly who the Admiral was. He was Inspector Tomkinson, J.R.’s old partner. He knew there was something familiar about the man, but he had never seen George’s face since he was blind when they worked together.
“So you didn’t drop me off at the lab, you stayed there?”
“I put in my retirement paperwork and was recruited by the University to join their genetic manipulation study. I was glad to sign myself up for the possibility of healing my own injuries, but when I learned the true scope of what they were planning to do, I had to bring you in.”
“Thanks, I guess. Why are you always whistling Gymnopedies No. 2?”
“It seemed to be the only song that calmed you. Your gene therapy had the unfortunate side-effect of occasional bouts of furious insanity.”
“Check.”
The waiter chuckled at Pinkerton’s request and told him that his coffee was free.
The Admiral and the Inspector walked to George’s house nearby and sat down to catch up. George told Pinkerton about the wars that happened while Pinkerton was hibernating, some of which Pinkerton already knew, and about the disastrous effects of climate change that had caused more wars.
The planet had been in a warming cycle when Pinkerton and Tomkinson had last spoken, sea levels were rising and they continued to rise until billions of people were displaced. Then, hypothetically as a result of the sea level rises and water seeping into magma chambers, hundreds of volcanoes began erupting. The ash clouds from the ring of fire and Yellowstone Caldera blacked out the sun for several years, dramatically cooling the planet in spectacular fashion and spiraling it into another ice age. Over the ensuing fifty years, the ice caps progressed to around 45° latitudes with winter ice and snow to nearly the Tropics. The rapid shift in conditions was attributed to a combination of the volcanic ash and the nuclear fallout when the wars for food resources began.
Tomkinson snickered and said, “Mexico built a border wall and wouldn’t let the Americans in, it still makes me laugh.”
“What about the space colonization?”
“Well, old friend, you were a hero to all for a while there. Somehow Alexander managed to wipe out all the stocks of medical and military technologies made from your DNA, then went on a crazed mission to rule the solar system. He wiped out all of the modified humans, then killed off all of the colonies. We were worried when he got a hold of you that he’d put an end to it once and for all, but he apparently saw the tactical advantage of only having supercharged DNA in his crack troops. It seemed a bit odd that he didn’t keep you for longer until we got this.”
George slid a tablet over to J.R., it showed an intercepted communication between Haruki and Alexander. The message stated that Pinkerton’s genes were breaking down and nearly unusable for the project, and his abilities would be rapidly deteriorating. Then George told him that the tests the Atlantians had conducted to confirm or deny those claims would have results by the end of the day.
Pinkerton walked back to his room, reeling from the information he’d taken in and the fact that he had a ferocious hangover and still hadn’t eaten anything. He found a freeze-dried meal on the table in his room with a note that said, “Nothing like home cooking when you’ve had a rough day. – George” on it.
Issue 13: Revelation
upending.wordpress.com/2017/06/10/revelation-of-revolution/
The previous days had been full of interesting information to Pinkerton. The true revelation came when he realized that his engineered genes became the basis of a global revolution. The true scope and magnitude of the changes to humanity and the environment over the sixty years between going to the University as a test subject and landing on what used to be a tiny atoll were bewildering. Especially considering the fact that Tokelau had become a series of mountains sticking out of the sea with coral-lined freshwater lakes atop each island. Before the ice age started just 50 years ago, Tokelau had all but disappeared beneath the waves. The combination of natural and man-made disasters had not only reversed the warming of the planet, it had gone too far on the backswing and displaced more people than the warming would have. Earth’s population just before Pinkerton’s exile was nearing 8 billion, and the best estimates after his return showed the population at around 3 billion. That scale of loss was stupefying to the Inspector, and it apparently sat heavily on everyone old enough to remember the old days.
Pinkerton ate his freeze-dried meal and walked down to the beach. He found a small boat with a sail and a double outrigger tied off about halfway between the road and the beach. For some reason, he couldn’t resist trying his luck with the craft. He dragged the little vessel down to the water and sailed off to the west. Pinkerton was at odds with himself over the choice between sailing away in his stolen vessel or coming about and returning to the island.
He decided that he should try to sail back to the island but soon realized that he didn’t know the first thing about sailing, not to mention sailing against the wind. As he turned the sailing craft about and began tacking against the wind, the wind grew stronger and capsized the vessel. Pinkerton suddenly found himself floating in the open ocean again, assessing all the decisions he had made in his life to that point. While he stared up at the sun and had his long moment of introspection, one thought became unshakable. He was unique among the dwindling numbers of humanity; he was durable and had longevity on his side. On the other side of the coin, he was floating in the open sea for the second time in a week.
“Maybe they’ll use their handy little J.R. tracker and come get me.”
As the sun was setting, Pinkerton started to question the existence of a tracking device and attributed George and Samira’s finding him the last time to pure dumb luck. On the bright side, the high salinity of the condensed oceans made him buoyant enough to take a little nap. The Inspector fell asleep, and his body went into hibernation status until he washed ashore at Rotuma. His body, still able to control skin tone and to heal itself thanks to some genetic tinkering, had camouflaged him to match the sea and healed itself over and over from the torment of the sun. The Rotumans tried to wake Pinkerton and were not successful. They didn’t know who he was and didn’t want to attract any attention to their island, so they took the apparently lifeless body to the other side of the island and cast it into the sea once more.
A soldier had found him on the beach and recognized him immediately. The soldier took the hibernating body to the barracks and put him in a hammock by the window. As the Inspector aroused from his slumber, he looked out the window and saw the snow falling. He nodded off for a few more hours, then got up to find out where he was. He looked around through the window and saw a sign on a nearby building, ‘Welcome to Midway Polar Research Center,’ and could see large submarines moored at the docks below.
Pinkerton felt rather hungry and began looking around in the soldier’s flat for something to eat. He found some apples, a loaf of bread, and a refrigerator full of condiments and beer. Pinkerton decided beggars couldn’t be choosers and ate the bread and apples.
Upending Wordism 