Glitched

Andrew Williams was many things. He was rich for a start, and that was one of his favourite things about himself, and he was famous, of course, and he was also a genius.

That last one had brought him the rest, first through developing new computer tracking systems which brought him fabulous wealth, then through three marriages in quick succession to respectively a high profile underwear model, a household name TV presenter, and a movie star.
And they had provided the fame.

He was thirty-two and had already written four autobiographies with a fifth in the pipeline. And not ghost written either, but then he was a genius and writing had proved to be no harder to master than programming or playing the piano or quantum physics, or indeed any other activity he had turned his impressive brain too.

Understandably it had given him quite an ego too.

But it had also given him a private jet from which he was now disembarking.

He did not smile at the attendant who stood beside the open door at the top of the steps, not because he was in a bad mood but simply because he had not even noticed her, she may as well have been a part of the steps he was now walking down for all she registered in his world.

His mind was full and buzzing because today was the day he was going to make the breakthrough.
The big one, the one that would change humanities course forever and secure his place in history for just as long.

Today was the day he was going to prove Einstein wrong.

The answers were all so close now, forming neatly in assembled patterns in his carefully organised mind.

He stepped off the bottom of the steps onto the tarmac of the runway and did not register that either.

He swept by the row of uniformed airport staff waiting to greet him without ever leaving the inside of his own head to acknowledge their existence.

And his body, working entirely alone, strode him automatically across the space of empty ground between the staff and his waiting limousine.

It was therefore with a huge deal of surprise and shock, and to the detriment of all his calculations, that Andrew Williams was knocked twenty metres in to the air and some considerable distance down the runway by a speeding greyhound bus that seemed to have come entirely out of nowhere.

Intriguing!

{{{It's like ra-i-ain on your wedding daaaay....}}}

Sad to say, those who do genius work in physics have historically never married super model types. They must all get run over by greyhound busses.

He sounded a bit egostitical for my liking, Petty - so maybe he got his just desserts. Also, he didn't sound the type who God would like, so it could have been divine intervention. Also, bus drivers never seem to give way, but just come out and expect you to stop, or be crushed. Anyway, it seems there were a number of factors at play. See what your tales do. They make one think!

{{{Love that song, Amarie!}}}

those who do genius work in physics have historically never married super model types- Halfwise

See the fabulously rich part of that equation!   

There was a ringing in his head. No more than a ringing, a blaring, a series of panicked alarms mushrooming inside his head.

He had been thinking about something, what had it been? Oh yes, how much pain there had suddenly been and then when his back snapped, none. He had actually been quite relieved about that.

But now, the ringing in his head. No, the ringing outside his head.

Oh God, he thought, I survived and I must be paralysed after that.

He panicked and sat bolt upright, or at least he felt like he had sat bolt upright, he had not dared to open his eyes yet. But around him alarms still sounded, then abruptly they stopped dead and only empty silence replaced them.

He opened his eyes and looked downwards. He saw the lower half of his body, his legs stretched out before him, he appeared to still be attached to all the right bits in their right place and he was indeed sitting upright.

How could this be? If he was not dead then he should be in broken mangled bits. A horrible thought occurred to him. He was dead.

He peered about himself, if he was it was a pretty drab and stark sort of afterlife. He was sitting in a faded pool of yellowish light whose source above him he could not determine, in what seemed to be otherwise a space of complete blackness on a smooth but featureless floor.

Again a flourish of panic rose up in him but then he remembered he was Andrew Williams and whatever was going on here he would work it out and take control of it.

He took his pulse. Racing but present. He tried moving various parts of his body. They all seemed to work. He wondered if he should try standing up.

He stood up and stretched.

“Well I don't appear to be dead,” he said eventually to himself, “Go me!” He punched the air with one fist.

“No, not dead, but the whole system is a day out somehow,” a rather terse and slightly annoyed sounding voice said, “It'll be the rotors again,” the voice went on moving from right to left somewhere in front of Andrew in the black.

“Hold on, I'll put the lights on,” the voice said.

A moment later Andrew was flooded with a harsh bright light that seemed to come out of the walls and floor and ceiling around him without source, it faded slightly after its initial burst but was still just a wall of glaring white, “Sorry, the last species in there liked it bright. Is that better?”

The light faded to a tolerable level.
Andrew squinted he was in a semi rounded room, a domed roof above him.

Suddenly the beautiful mathematical patterns came flooding back into his head, the dancing figures falling into place that had filled his mind when the accident had happened, if it happened.

He had to get out of here, he had to complete the pattern before he lost it from his mind, he had his breakthrough and his place in history to take.

The wall in front had an opening in it that was like a long window, although it did not appear to have glass in it and on the other side of it stood a thin tall man with dark short hair flecked with grey, beneath which was a slightly harassed face of someone in their fifties who still had not reached senior management level. He was wearing a boiler suit of navy blue with a utility belt around his waist from which hung various tools and he carried what looked like a clipboard in one hand.

“I demand to know what the hell is going on here?” Andrew said.

“Oh no time for that, there's been a shocking cock up and heads will role, but not mine if I can find out how to fix it in time.”

“Do you know who I am?” Andrew bellowed indignantly at the man who peered down at his clip board.

“I certainly hope so,” the man said, “or there will have been another shocking cock-up,” he consulted a sheaf of papers on the clipboard, “Andrew Williams, married three times, aged thirty two, and according to your biography of the same name, a genius. You're the Faster Than Light program.”

Andrew frowned at him, “What program, whose program?”

“Its a screw up of the worst kind,” the man lamented, “haven't had one this bad since the Jesus reboot.” He disappeared down behind the wall and Andrew heard the sound of low muttered cursing and what sounded like metal clanking, “it's a mess in here,” the man said re-emerging.

Andrew sighed and wondered perhaps if he was in fact still dying on that runway tarmac somewhere and all this was just a hallucination. But it didn't feel or look like one, it just sounded like one.

“Did you say Jesus?” he queried.

“Yeah, another shocking cock-up. Simple bit of social implanting for later fruition, the program runs and comes to an end, we all get reassigned to new projects and then three days later a routine maintenance program develops a glitch and bang! starts the whole bloody Jesus program back up again. Absolute disaster, still not worked all the kinks that caused back out the system yet, and now you.”

The man shook his head at Andrew and then disappeared out of Andrews view to one side.

Andrew went closer to the opening and tried to see if he could peer around inside it slightly to see where the man had gone and nearly leapt out of his skin when the boiler clad man popped up right in front of him, he was holding a spanner.

“What about me?” Andrew demanded.

“You?” the man said and grinned at him which for some reason was quite unsettling, “you aren't supposed to be finished yet. You've your breakthrough to make yet.”

“Yes,” Andrew agreed nodding vigorously, “so you do understand, you have to let me go and finish my work.”

“Of course, of course we do,” the man enthused, “once every thing’s sorted, then tomorrow once you've finished you can get hit by that bus right on schedule and die,” the man grinned enthusiastically back at him.

Oooh. A new Petty story is always a treat and this is most intriguing.

Thanks Eldo, more to come!

My mind did an over run...thingy....I can see a couple of ways a story like this can go....Oooh, exciting   Im looking forward to reading this  

Loving it!

Agreed.   

Very original concept. And since the main character is so dislikable you end up hoping they'll get the glitches figured out.

Andrew stared at the man beyond the opening and took a deep breath, he had taken just about enough of this and he wanted some answers.

“Where am I?” he asked, “what happened to me? And how do I leave?” he demanded in almost a snarl.

“You are here, now,” the man said with a frown, “you were there, and now you are here. Your program ended prematurely and you can't leave until I fix the system,” the man said by way of explanation and stared at him.

“OK,” Andrew replied taking another deep breath as his expensive therapist had told him to at times of high annoyance at minions, “Let's take those one at a time. You didn’t actually tell me where here is. Where am I?”

“I did tell you,” the man replied, “you are here, rather than there.”

“So where is there?”

“There is everywhere you know,” the man replied with a tilt of his head, “and here is not there. You're supposed to be the genius, you work it out.”

“Am I dead?” Andrew asked startled.

The man sighed, “Might be more than a glitch in the system,” he said wearily, “ask about point two.”

“The program? You said it ended prematurely?”

“Exactly, it was supposed to terminate tomorrow when the bus hit you.”

“But the bus hit me today, at the airport. What was a bus doing on the runway?”

“It glitched, that's the whole problem. Right now the whole kit and caboodle is on hold, but we can only hold back the rotars for so long before the system starts moving again, and I had to pull your program so I can reset the bus and then I can reactive you in the system you can make your breakthrough, and tomorrow you get killed by a bus.”

Andrew considered this in silence for a moment, “But why?” he demanded eventually, “I'm Andrew Williams, I'm a genius. Why kill me? The world needs me!”

“Its adds to the story of your life, died tragically after making the greatest breakthrough in the history of humanity, people speculating on the wondrous other things you might had done were it not for that tragedy. They'll create new unforeseen ripples in the system all stemming from the story, your story. It gets added too of course, two weeks from the now the bus driver will take his own life unable to live with being the man who lost your genius to the world, he's a program too.”

“So you are saying, I am a program? A program in a computer?” Andrew said incredulously.

“No, a program in the system. The system is there, we are here. From here we aren't confined by the rules in there, we can look ahead and see how things turn out and go back and insert programs to alter outcomes,” the man said.

“But why?”

“I've no idea, I'm just a System Automated Monitor, you can call me Sam,” Sam said.

“And you run the system?” Andrew asked Sam.

“Oh no, I'm just a motoring and repair program in the systems outer levels, there's millions of us, but you'll need to go see my number one pal.”

“Who is your pal?” Andrew queried.

“Not my pal,” Sam grinned back at him, “my number one Pal, everyone’s number one Pal, Program Area Leader 1. And she's waiting for you.”

The "here/there" part was brilliant.   

*snickers* Number one pal. This is awesome.

its got a Matrix feel, I like this, yum yum.

I have to admit to being rather curious myself as to where this story is going!

That's usually what I say before I run a program I just wrote.

You should know, of course, there will be other writers here who will be jealous - especially of how cleverly you put things together - and may seek to undermine you, Petty. Just saying...

Harry Stanton continued to stare. He had already been staring for some ten minutes in complete silence, and this was because every time he opened his mouth to formulate his thoughts, the thoughts the evidence clearly pointed towards, it was so ridiculous he lapsed back into silence again and stared.

What Harry was staring at was a bus. A greyhound, long sleek, with side panels of silver grey that under the airport lights took on a blue sheen.

He walked around to the front of the bus which had clearly impacted with a  stationary body, a body about the size of a human body. He stared at the impact point.

He looked up at the gaggle of people being kept under a watchful eye by the local Sheriffs department aided by Harry's own FBI unit in their characteristic dark jackets and yellow logos.

Harry gazed further down the runway to where a small squat airport baggage truck was parked.
Counting out his paces he slowly crossed the distance between the front of the bus and the truck, noting at ten,  fourteen and sixteen paces the smears of blood on the tarmac where the body had bounced, and then at eighteen paces onwards how a long thin streak of blood from the body skidding along the surface led to an abrupt stop behind the baggage truck.
He stared down at the spot there too.

“Harry!”

He turned to see who was calling to him and saw that it was another Agent, Arthur Trunner, younger than himself and keener, and far less cynical.

Harry and Arthur were part of the same Unit, with the same remit within the FBI.
Arthur loved their remit and delighted in it. Harry hated it, he hated most of all being called Mulder after the tv show character in the x-files.

On his first day assigned to the Unit someone from his old department had pinned an “I believe “ poster to his briefcase.
With Harry it could not be further from the truth, he did not believe, not even a little.
And he had proved very good at showing others that their belief was wrong too.
A record he was very proud of.
A record he suspected he was about to lose.
He continued to stare and let Arthur come half jogging up to him.

“What's the cover?” Harry asked tersely.

“Terrorists, suspect package,” Arthur replied, “what do you think it is?”

“Well I've got a bus that's nearly two hundred miles west of its scheduled route and fifteen passengers who all swear blind today is tomorrow. I have a hit and run on one of the most famous and brilliant minds in the world, with all the evidence including several eye witnesses who knew him well, except there is no sign whatsoever of his body, so yeah,” he trailed off.

“We ran the bus through the system,” Arthur informed him and Harry could tell from the tone it was not news Harry was going to want to hear.

“And?” Harry asked.

“And this can't be it,” he said waving at the greyhound, “it was still on its scheduled route. We are having it pulled in now. Why would someone go to all the trouble to pretend this bus here is one from out west when we can check it so easy?”

“What if its not?” Harry ruminated half to himself.

“Well it has to be a duplicate,” Arthur pointed out.

“And what about the passengers, they all think this is tomorrow, hell one of them told me what happens tonight in my favourite tv show.”

“Collective trauma from the collision?” Arthur suggested uncertainly.

“Yeah, sure it is,” Harry replied glumly, “I want both buses stripped where they stand,” he ordered, “I want the ID's of the engines, exhausts, everything and anything thats got a damn stamp on it.”

Arthur nodded and hurried off again to pass on the instructions and Harry went back to glumly staring.

I like it !

Thanks Azriel.

About bloody time.. was there a glitch in your system?   

“And what about the passengers, they all think this is tomorrow, hell one of them told me what happens tonight in my favourite tv show.”


And don't you hate that!  

So many things to do, so little time to do them.
Im even behind on my weekly buckie quota   (Although I am bravely attempting to catch up all at once    )

Apparently tomorrow you are going to be turned down (again) by a pretty girl in a miniskirt at the bus stop. Not sure you want to know that though...