Broken Bottles (620 hits)
Category: UberMadness! EntryRating: 2 on 4 reviews (Rate this item) (V)
Submitted by youarsoghey (View user info) at 2004-11-03 07:31:47 EST
This post was an official UberMadness! entry. Click here to view the original matchup.
"Honestly," said the brown-haired boy, named Alastor Windham, in an English accent that would have impressed the Queen. "You think I can be drawn into your tricks with shady proposals and slick talk? Do you think I'm an idiot? Over the telephone, we settled on a price that was nonnegotiable. One hundred thousand is all I'm paying, and the MDT is all I want."
The tall, lanky man sat in the Louis XVI chintz armchair that fit snugly between a standing lamp and a coffee table in Alastor's living room. The strong June sun highlighted the man's features through the open window shades. As he sustained his stone-faced stare that had wilted many men's steadfast fortitude in his long career, the boy wore a determined expression that told the man he would not budge.
"Where are your parents, boy?" the man wanted to ask. He couldn't be more than thirteen years old, thought the man.
"Alright, kid," said the man. "Give me the money in cash and I'll give you the MDT."
Alastor handed the man a silver Samsonite Traditional Attachés Focus V briefcase filled with one hundred thousand US dollars. As the man opened the briefcase to verify the amount, Alastor remembered spending hours trying to decide which briefcase would best put forth a professional appearance. So many small, and seemingly insignificant, details of his plan were pined over again and again in the year leading up to that week, but Alastor knew all too well the horrific downside of a single mistake.
When he finished his quick count, the man straightened the jacket of his Harvé Bernard suit and stood up, briefcase in hand.
"There is a white van parked around the corner with the MDT inside," said the man. "When I place a call, one of my men will get into the van and drive up to your house. When he sees the garage door begin to open, he will back into the driveway. When the van is completely in the garage, you need to close it with a remote control. The two men will get out of the van and unload the MDT. You'll then open the garage door again so they can leave and close it so we can take a look at the MDT. For any...faults, of which I assure you there are none.
"You must understand that the advanced electronics market is a very risky business. People acquire these devices in very illegal ways from very prestigious institutions and organizations, so naturally certain law-enforcement agencies are beginning to actively pursue the money-makers. Having close relationships with fellow businessmen is one of the biggest mistakes certain mafia families made before their downfall was triggered by one person who ratted them all out. This is why security measures are in place so that I can't finger any of my men, and none of my men can finger me. Nobody gets too close to anybody."
Alastor and the man watched closely through a window for the white van. When it pulled in front of Alastor's brilliant Tudor house in the heart of suburban New Jersey, the plan went into action and was executed perfectly. Alastor and the man walked into the garage and surveyed the MDT for problems and potential defects. When Alastor found none, he thanked the man and showed him the door without ever learning his name, as both of them preferred it.
The Molecular Destabilizing Transporter.
MDT.
This was the rather high-tech, extremely new, top secret item that Alastor had been actively searching for since the previous December, seven months before. Seven months of waiting culminated in this wonderful moment for Alastor.
The MDT was clandestinely developed by a top secret branch of the U.S. Army in the summer of 2014. By that fall, reports had leaked out to some members of the upper echelon of the high-technology black market, where Alastor had a few acquaintances, that a Molecular Destabilizing Transporter had been developed. In the winter, a black market dealer managed to acquire three MDTs by paying off corrupt guards and hacking into the Army's database to find security codes and transport schedules.
Alastor immediately learned about the MDTs from one of his acquaintances to whom Alastor had sold many knock-off electronics devices. He actively searched for proper paths of communication with the rogue tech dealer, but could not find one until the spring of 2015 when he managed to set up a line through a few middlemen so that he'd never actually meet the person from whom he'd buy the MDT. Finally, in June of 2015, after months of negotiations, he had gotten his hands on one.
However, the MDT did arrive in Alastor's possession for quite a hefty price. One hundred thousand US in June of 2015 was a considerably large amount due to the currency crash of 2012 and the rapid deflation of the US Dollar that followed, but Alastor came from "Old Money" which meant he had a significant amount of wealth in the form of various currencies and priceless items locked away in Swiss, American, and British banks for his own convenience.
After the great currency crash, Alastor's father, Jacob, told Alastor something he had not yet learned. He said, "Deflation is only problematic for those who don't have piles of money just sitting around as we do." Although this was a rare occurrence for Alastor, he sincerely appreciated being outsmarted by his father whom he respected more than anyone for his general genius and financial savvy.
Despite his frail body, pale skin, and other "physical deficiencies," this brown-haired thirteen year-old was a veritable boy-genius. When he heard or saw something, his brain soaked it up like a sponge. He learned how to speak in a mature manner with a full English accent by the time he was seven years old.
In the summer of that year, his parents realized a business opportunity in America and uprooted the Windham family's solid, English underpinnings. They bought what amounted to being a castle in the wealthiest section of Saddle River, New Jersey, and spent four glorious years turning vast profits in the stolen art market that was located primarily in downtown Manhattan.
Many respected private companies with offices in many of the most prestigious skyscrapers in New York City were actually used as fronts for a much more profitable business in the stolen art market. These companies were run by some of New York's finest businessmen who often stood squarely in the prime of some of the most illustrious careers ever witnessed by the Big Apple. But as Alastor looked at the MDT, he thought of just one office into which he wanted to get. He thought of just one man he wanted to meet.
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Jacob and Amelia Windham loved their son. They often told stories at dinner parties about how he had memorized the entire Periodic Table of Elements when he was just eight years old.
"It's a bloody marvel!" Jacob used to say. "When he was ten he built me an old-fashioned tube television which projected a clearer picture than some older high definition models! I still view my favorite programs on it to this day."
Amelia always directed new guests toward the fireplace over which stood nine strange bottles, all with the letters A and W on them. Amelia would explain, "These are probably the most valuable of all our various items in this house. One December when our son was four years old, he found a bottle lying on the streets of London that had 'AW and Family Brewery' printed on the label. He was so shocked and impressed that someone had named a brewery after Alastor Windham and his family that he brought it home with him and hid it in the closet in his bedroom.
"When Christmas arrived, he gave it to Jacob and I as a gift and said, 'Mother, Father, this is the one thing I could find that was personal enough to gift you on Christmas.' It was absolutely wonderful, and he has found a new bottle with AW on it every single Christmas. However, he still hasn't given us an A&W root beer bottle. Jacob and I have a sneaking suspicion that he thinks it's rather too easy of a find."
Amelia always insisted to others that they did nothing to raise him out of the ordinary and that all the craving for knowledge came from Alastor himself. They realized early on that standard schooling would not work for Alastor so they provided him a library of his own in their 16th century castle about fifty miles from London where Alastor could live and study in peace.
However, this peace would not last. A certain outside influence was trying to take advantage of Alastor's genius by taking Alastor away and teaching him the "way of the world." Jacob and Amelia would have none of that. Luckily, they had already planned the move to America for business purposes when these problems arose, so they never thought about it again. Since Alastor studied constantly at home and therefore did not have any real friends his age, the Windhams knew a move to America would not be so horrible for the boy.
On a glorious Sunday in June of 2014, when Alastor was just twelve, he and his father, Jacob, were easily solving the New York Times crossword puzzle when they both heard the gravel in the driveway crunch under the weight of many tires. They looked up and walked to the window where they saw three black Ford SUVs pulling up the long driveway and turning into the circular path that went up to the front door. The trucks came to a sudden stop directly in front of the house and the doors sprung open.
Alastor saw about fifteen men get out of the car, each carrying old-fashioned M16 assault rifles. Another man screamed an order and they all began firing into the windows of the house. Alastor hit the ground and waited for the shooting to stop as shards of glass from the window landed around him.
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The day after Alastor acquired the MDT, he had a light breakfast and read the newspaper. Once he finished, he walked out to his garage and switched on the complex device.
The molecular destabilization theory had only just been heavily researched within the previous four or five years, mostly in secret. In 2011, Dr. Henry Manning of MIT published the Manning Theory of Molecular Destabilization in which he detailed exactly how supercomputers could scan every last part of your body, down to the very atoms that construct it. He theorized that recent advances in light-mass conversions could allow a device to deconstruct an object, living or inanimate, and transport its light counterpart on microwaves to any one of the thousands of low-Earth orbit satellites for public use, and retransmit that information back down to any point on Earth where the microwave would reassemble the information stored in the light back into the form of the object it once was.
Alastor, at the age of eleven, had spent the better part of 2013 trying to figure exactly out how this device could possibly reassemble objects on the other end without another device, but in November of that year, Gregory Bodnik released his findings on certain informational qualities of light. He found that light could actually store key information to tell other things (like microwaves for instance) what to do at precise times. Alastor realized that Dr. Henry Manning probably knew more about light-mass conversion theory than his findings suggested.
Manning and Bodnik managed to figure it out, and the military managed to make it.
Alastor looked at the large, silver machine that had a chamber big enough to fit an adult human. At eleven he discovered its use, at twelve he needed it, and now at thirteen he finally had it. He took a look at the clock on the wall.
10:58AM.
Alastor walked over to the work bench and grabbed his fully-loaded CZ 85 9mm Luger pistol. He stepped into the MDT and flipped the switch from the inside. He noticed a cold, tingling sensation run down his spine as if someone had poured ice water down his back, and then he felt the MDT fully take hold.
Alastor's last thought before being sent to downtown Manhattan via microwave was, "The time has come, Pelias."
======================================================
The men had stopped firing. A frightened Alastor released his head from his hand's clutches and looked up from the ground. Shattered glass and bullet holes were everywhere.
His mother, Amelia, who had rushed downstairs to greet the guests when she heard the trucks pull up, was lying on the ground across the room moaning from a bullet she caught in the arm. Alastor looked to his left and saw his father bleeding from similar bullet wounds in both of his arms.
He looked up at Alastor and said, "Run, my son. Go to your hiding spot and don't come out all day. They will catch you if you leave the house."
"But, father—"
"GO!"
Alastor ran as fast as he could up the main stairs and down the first corridor to his room. Below him he could hear footsteps crashing on the glass and shouts coming from the men with the guns. He ran into his room and slammed on a button on the wall and a panel opened where he punched in an access code and scanned his retina. One half of an entire wall on the south side of the room slid away revealing a "panic room" into which Alastor quickly rushed. He closed the door behind him which would allow nobody but him access.
Inside there were monitors receiving video and sound from security cameras throughout the house and enough supplies to last him two months. He found the monitor that had the living room feed and listened in to a conversation already started between his parents who were now standing holding each other in front of the fireplace and a man in a black overcoat and black fedora.
"—How could you do this to us?" shouted Jacob, Alastor's father.
"You seem to forget my keen business sense, Jacob," said the man in black with a hint of a sneer beneath his fedora. He spoke with a perfect English accent. "You fled the country and denied me an important business opportunity, and that is just not acceptable. Gentlemen, please dispose of this trash. Good day, Jacob. Good day, Amelia."
"But you are my—" Jacob's cry was silenced by the sound of a dozen M16s firing. When it was all over, Alastor was in tears and his mother and father were in bloody heaps on the ground before the fireplace. He continued to listen.
"Pileas," said one of the men after a few minutes, addressing the man dressed in black. "The boy's gone, we've searched the house and he's not anywhere."
"He must have fled the house," said Pileas. "Like father, like son. We will find him, he cannot hide."
The men left the house and Alastor sat down on the cold, metal floor of his miniature fortress. He put his head on his knees and tried to comprehend what had just happened.
His mother and father were dead.
Alastor was alone.
======================================================
On the top floor of the brand new Jennison Building on Park Avenue in Manhattan was the office of the man who was called Pileas. Most peole knew it wasn't his real name, but hardly anyone in the stolen art market gave their real names anyway. The large office had tall ceilings with authentic Greek marble statues lining the walls. The only lighting came from the roaring fireplaces on each side of the room.
Pileas sat in his comfortable chair behind his huge oak desk and waited. Then, just as he suspected, brilliant light shone from what appeared to be absolute nothingness in the middle of the room. A few moments later, a boy stood there holding a pistol. He looked around to find his bearings and his eyes were apparently not adjusted to the dim light, but otherwise seemed to be perfectly healthy.
"Alastor," said Pileas. "We meet at last."
Alastor's head snapped to attention at the sound of Pileas's voice. He lifted the pistol from his side and pointed it in Pileas's direction.
"You," said Alastor as he began to tremble with anger.
"Yes, me," said Pileas. "You look just like your father, except your hair. Your hair is of your mother."
"Don't you speak of them!" shouted Alastor. "You deserve to die for what you did to them!"
"Yes, I thought you might say that, Alastor," said Pileas. "You have to understand that I am a businessman. A true businessman cannot let a single person deny them a business opportunity. Your parents should have let me get to the one thing I needed most to achieve astronomical profits and nearly absolute power."
"What are you talking about?" asked Alastor. "My parents owed you nothing!"
"Do you have any idea how much of a genius you are, Alastor?" asked Pileas rhetorically. "Einstein wasn't as smart at your age. When you were seven, you drew a sketch on a piece of paper outlining how you felt the universe was probably laid out in its many dimensions based on the string theory. That paper landed in the hands of Dr. Augustus Oswalt at a dinner party where he had a mental breakthrough upon viewing it. He went on to disprove one of the most universally accepted principles of string theory which led to the beginning of development of wormhole technology.
"I remember he told me once, a few months later during a drinking session, that he had gotten the idea from a seven year-old at the Windham residence. He laughed hysterically at the fact that the seven year-old probably had no idea what he was even doing, but I knew better. I was the only one who knew your potential. You will be able to create miracles, Alastor, and it is my job to harness that power. Your parents owed me you, but they always kept me away because they knew I probably didn't want you to have a normal childhood. Genius does not deserve a 'normal' childhood."
"But I don't understand," said Alastor angrily. "Why did my parents owe you of all people?"
"Don't you know your Greek mythology, Alastor? Ever since I moved to New York to deal art and technology, I've proudly held the name Pileas as mine because, in a sense, it is my station.
"Alastor was a name chosen by your parents for you during one of their thievery excursions to Greece. I liked the name so much that I chose for my pseudonym my appropriate place relative to the Greek Alastor's life: his father's brother, Pileas. Your parents owed me because they were too incompetent to realize your potential, and I was the closest blood relative who did. I am your uncle, Alastor. My name is Jason Windham."
Alastor's head was spinning. He felt nauseous and could barely stand. He lowered his gun and rubbed his left temple.
"You killed my father and you're his brother?" asked Alastor. "You're an animal! You killed his wife too, just because they didn't give you their only son for their profit!"
Jason Windham, Alastor's uncle, shrugged his shoulders and said, "I'm a businessman. It is what we do to turn a profit and gain power. Luckily, my expansion into the technology black market led me directly to you. I remember when I heard that a young boy in the New Jersey area wanted to buy one of my MDTs, I knew it had to be you coming to look for me. I tried to track you down, but the business has built-in securities to protect against that sort of thing. So I waited to hear that the transaction was completed yesterday and I have been waiting ever since. By the way, where have you been, Alastor?"
"The one place I knew you wouldn't look," said Alastor. "My house. I kept everything private and sold the house in my father's name to a pseudonym I had created for myself."
"Very clever, boy," said Jason. "And now you have come to 'finish me' have you? Go ahead, give it a try."
Alastor lifted his gun and aimed it at Jason. The moment he did that, a wide sheet of thick glass shot upward from his desk, protecting him from any bullets that might be shot in his direction.
Jason laughed and said, "You actually think you can get rid of me that easily? Men, take control of the boy!" Five men armed with old-fashioned M16 assault rifles ran in from the edges of the room. Alastor was surprised that he hadn't seen them and realized that he still had to adhere to his plan. He dropped his pistol in accordance with the men's orders.
Jason stood up and walked around his desk. He stepped in front of Alastor and bent down to stand face-to-face with him.
"You will work for me now, Alastor, just as your foolish father never did."
At that moment, Alastor pressed a button on his belt that sent a signal to two places: One was a "Go" signal to the NYPD, and the other was a triggering signal to the bomb underneath the floor.
With a faint shutter and then a huge lurch followed by a loud, roaring bang, the floor launched everyone in the room upward as bits of the marble floor flew off in many directions. Alastor landed hardly on the cold marble and crawled behind a plant to hide. Many of Jason's men were rendered unconscious from their awkward landings, but Alastor could see that Jason was not.
Jason got up slowly and brushed off his black suit. He cursed and shouted at his men to get up. "Alastor! Where are you, you little brat?!" He searched around the room, but he could not see Alastor through the dust in the air.
After a minute of searching, he finally looked directly in Alastor's direction and spotted him. He smiled, pulled a pistol out of his jacket, and walked toward Alastor. Jason grabbed Alastor by the collar of his shirt and pulled him up.
Just then, the police department's SWAT team burst into the room. The first officer through took aim and shot Jason in the left shoulder. Jason fell back and Alastor ran toward the door. The NYPD officers arrested Jason and all his men. The city of New York and other law-enforcement agencies thanked Alastor for his help in busting one of the biggest black market dealers in the world.
In the weeks that followed, Alastor often thought about what Jason said about his intelligence and cleverness. Perhaps, thought Alastor, despite his supposed understanding of the boy, Jason still underestimated his cleverness in that he didn't think that he might use the MDT and the building's blueprints to plant a bomb beneath Jason's floor. Alastor also planted a radio transmitter inside Jason's desk that recorded all audio in his office from the moment Alastor arrived at 11:00AM. The NYPD heard every confession Jason made and used it in court against him.
Alastor gave the MDT back to the US Army and declined an immense reward for its safe return. After Jason's arrest, Alastor returned to the Windham castle in England to start a new life with what remained of his family.
======================================================
Many hours after the man in black and his killers left, Alastor finally emerged from his secure room. He walked slowly downstairs to find a sight he could have never imagined.
Shattered glass was scattered across the floor and the walls were riddled with bullet holes. He looked across the room toward the fireplace and there, lying among broken pieces of glass, were his bloodied and mangled parents.
His mother's brown hair shined with blood. The thoughtful, sincere face his father usually wore was replaced with a look of horror and anger. Alastor turned away and suppressed his nausea.
He knew that he had to face his parents to understand the reality of it, so he turned back around and stepped closer toward his parents. He looked down and saw A's and W's littering the area around the fireplace. Pileas had taken from him the two most important things in the world to him: his mother and his father. Now Alastor realized that he had also managed to take away the things that solidified their bond more than anything.
As Alastor's life lay in shards all over the floor, he realized that the broken bottles could never be recovered, but the honor of his family could.
User Reviews
Submitted by thaumaturge (user info) at 2005-01-18 11:56:28 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
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Submitted by mikethescottish (user info) at 2005-01-16 15:41:08 EST (#)
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I think I missed this first time around. Shame on me.
Submitted by Spooner (user info) at 2005-01-16 15:28:16 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
Magnificent!
Submitted by Bigmike (user info) at 2005-01-16 11:52:34 EST (#)
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