It was the glass box that had done it, he decided afterwards.
If it hadn't been for that damned glass box everything would have worked out happily for all concerned.
Well, maybe not for all. But at least no one would have died.
OK, almost no one.
It had been his agent's fault of course - it was always his agent's fault. "Writers don't make money these days," his agent had explained to him one fine day, his nasal drawl containing its usual mixture of patronisation and condescension. "Books don't sell themselves. You've got to go out there and grab the public's attention! Do something that fires their imagination, that really makes them sit up and take notice and say 'Wow! That Francis LeRoy can really write'"
He had wondered at the time why he couldn't just achieve this by writing damn good novels, and had said as much. His agent had just laughed.
"Francis, I'm not criticising your abilities as a writer. No one is. There isn't another writer alive that has won as many awards as you have. And your fans love your work. But awards and love don't always translate into profit and recognition, you know."
Francis had pointed out at this point that actually awards and love did translate into recognition, but his agent had carried on regardless.
"It's not your fault of course. There's just too many exciting things happening in the universe these days, or at least there is in those bits thought worth mentioning by the media. No one wants to bother stretching their imaginations for something fictional any more, which is why we have to get them to notice you before we can point out your books. What we need," he had enthused, his excited tones putting Francis in mind of a steam jet, "is a gimmick. Something that will draw in the crowds, both of fans and newcomers, and make people take such an interest that your name will be renown throughout the stars!"
He had been right, unfortunately. Ever since the birth of television, mankind had become obsessed with filling the ether with transmissions, to the point where people these days could go to college, push back the boundaries of science, become a universally recognised authority, and die with full public ceremony, all without leaving their bedrooms. And this, when combined with galactic expansion, now meant that Earth was a very limited market for anyone, especially writers. Even if you ignored the non-human races out there who understood the concept of reading, there was still a mind-numbingly large population of colonists and explorers and minor dynasties who would take to Francis’s high-speed action-packed thrillers like a pulp detective novelist to an overblown metaphor. And more readers meant more recognition, which would please Francis. Not to mention more money, which would please his agent, his wife and many of the major credit-card companies whose trust he had accidentally abused
So it had been agreed. Francis LeRoy, Master of Suspense would bring his talent for tale spinning to the myriad of worlds beyond his own in such a way that he would never be forgotten as long as there was hard currency and printing materials a-plenty. The question was, of course, how?
Again, his agent had come up with the goods here. What better way was there, he had suggested, of selling the Master of Suspense than to have him involved in something that was, in itself, full of suspense. Something that no one could predict the outcome of, and yet everyone could watch taking shape. In other words, having Francis writing one story a day in public, with the completed pages stuck up for all to see, for however many days made up a week in whatever part of the galaxy he was in at the time. Each day's story would be based on a one-line suggestion offered by whichever local celebrity desperately needed the exposure that week (to make sure that nothing was pre-prepared) and then at the end of the week all the manuscripts would be auctioned off with the proceeds going to charity.
And so everything was arranged. Only one problem emerged, however, and that was making sure that everyone could not only see Francis at work but also see his finished pages without disturbing him in the process. It was fine on worlds where there was a breathable atmosphere and the local economies had grown enough to include the idea of shops with glass storefronts. But on some of the simpler colonies, especially the floating ones in space, this wasn't so easy.
Until some bright spark (probably his agent yet again) had come up with the idea of the glass box with its own controllable internal atmosphere.
Almost overnight, this became almost a big a talking point as the author inside it. Not only did it mean that he could be seen by all and sundry, but it also meant that he could be set up to work anywhere.
No matter how public the place.
Or how crowded the location.
Which is where the problems began to emerge. It wasn't that Francis was claustrophobic - if he had been, the box idea would have been unbearable to begin with. Nor was it the fact that his presence attracted the size of crowds that would have made a travelling evangelistic happily give up his faith and declare himself the founder of a new sect. No, it was the fact that, for the very first time, Francis LeRoy was forced to come face to face with his fans.
And it scared him.
It scared him the way they looked at him like he was their only reason to live, like his words and stories were the only reality they acknowledged. It scared him the way they dressed, the way they moved, the fact that they were always the quietest, the loudest, the sorts of extremists and fanatics that he would not have wanted to share the same universe with, let alone eye contact. He had always known that his flashy, throwaway material and excessively technical detail attracted the sort of person who kept themselves to themselves and lived most of their lives in just one room that never received visitors. But then they had been at a distance. Now, he was seeing them in person for the first time, the only thing keeping them away from close physical contact being a wall of reinforced glass on which he stuck his pages of text.
Some of them carried guns.
Legally.
There was one in particular that really frightened him; a tall, gaunt figure dressed in shabby combat fatigues and dirty brown boots who seemed to follow Francis from planet to planet, watching him with large, unblinking grey eyes that never seemed to move from where Francis was working. It was unnerving, the way the figure simply stood there and watched, occasionally switching his unwavering gaze to the short stories, which he would take in with an intensity that was almost as bad. He was always the first to arrive and always the last to leave, and unsurprisingly the stress of repeatedly seeing him in the same place behaving in the same way on every planet began eventually to take its toll on Francis. He began to see the figure in his dreams at night and write versions of him into his stories during the day. Not to mention the fact that everywhere Francis looked he saw people and objects that immediately reminded him of the figure (usually because said figure was standing just behind them at the time). Indeed, things got so bad at one point that Francis was almost prepared to give up and call the whole event off when his agent emailed him to tell him that he had managed to wrangle him an invitation to Garantix Prime.
Garantix Prime!
A planet so intrinsic to the fickle game of fame that was played throughout the stars that it appeared three times in the top ten list of happening places in the sector. A planet where anyone who was anyone went to be seen, and those who weren’t tended to get a bit lost in and left early. Ruled over by the mysterious billionaire Mortis Humphrey, it was the kind of place that most people would have willingly sold half their family and most of their internal organs just to catch a glimpse of. And here was Francis being given the chance to show his face there - no, even better, his work - without being charged so much as an extra finger or a maternal grandmother. Even the prospect of being followed there by his ever-present fan didn't seem to be enough to put a damper on the situation, and so he agreed to it like a shot.
At first things went better than he could have dreamed. Word of Francis's invite had spread quicker than the plague and so the usual throng of people surrounding his place of work now included more journalists, reporters and TV cameras than he could have ever imagined. What was more, the figure that had been so haunting him up to this point was nowhere in sight; a fact that caused Francis to give daily praise to the brave men and women that guarded Garantix Prime from anyone who earned less than 4 figures a week. And to top it all, rumour had it that the final story suggestion of the week would come from Mortis Humphrey himself; an event that Francis knew would boost his book sales so high he would be guaranteed rich and galaxy-renown for the rest of his days!
It was all so perfect that Francis could not resist letting himself slide into dreams of how he was going to spend all that well-deserved money instead of concentrating on his writing. Which meant that, as the week past, Francis took longer and longer to write each story, often leaving the box well after the suns had gone down and all the crowds had gone home for the night. Not that this mattered - before starting there had been some debate on how long they could judge a day and Francis had managed to wrangle himself some breathing space by insisting that a day ended when he went to sleep and began just after he awoke. But there are things that occur in the darkness that would not necessarily happen in the light. And when you are all alone in a glass box with only a word processor and your imagination for company, you might start considering such things and giving them that little bit more credence than would normally be the case. Which is why Francis reacted as badly as he did the night that he looked up from a barely finished manuscript and saw a lone figure standing outside, staring in at him.
The word processor hit the floor with a crash as Francis leapt up in terror from his seat. A myriad of panicked visions whirled through his head; it was the unblinking fan, it had finally managed to sneak itself onto the planet and was now choosing as its moment to put into action its dark and hideous plot involving knives and him and blood...
But as the seconds past and nothing seemed to happen he realised that he was over-reacting and began to take in the scene before him with a little more care.
As he did so, he quickly realised that the figure outside was clearly not the fan. It was slightly shorter, much thinner, and (and this was the clincher) unmistakably female, dressed not in the rich stylish fashions that dominated this planet but rather in a plain and grubby jump-suit that hung awkwardly under a long and pathetically tattered blue cloak. The figure’s hair was mousy brown and straggly as it hung limply around her neck, and her eyes... Her eyes were soft blue pools that looked at him in a way that suggested their owner had seen all the pain and misery that the world could throw at them and knew that the worst was yet to come. She was truly a mesmerising sight; an unusually detailed study of destitution on this otherwise wealthy planet, and Francis felt himself transfixed, unable to tear himself away from those eyes that seemed to speak to him alone, that told him...
In three days time, I'm going to be murdered.
The words arrived so suddenly in his mind that it startled him. He blinked, and in that second she was gone; swallowed up so swiftly by the shadows of the night that it made Francis wonder if he had really seen her there at all. For a few moments he stood there, wondering whether she would return. When she did not, he decided to forget all about her and teleport himself back to his hotel, and bed.
Where he spent the night dreaming about drowning in blue lakes of pain.
The next day he wrote like crap, his thoughts and imagination being taken up by the strange young woman he might have seen the night before. He had heard rumours about developments in the field of psionics - everyone had - but the official line was still that telepathic powers were virtually impossible, especially of the kind that he had experienced. Of course, she could have been a ghost or a banshee, but then why talk about her own death as if it were about to happen? It was all terribly confusing, and the more he thought about it the more frustrated he got.
Which didn’t help his writing any.
So it was with a great sense of relief that he finished his story that night; the sound of his typing stuttering to a halt just as the last rays of sunlight vanished beneath the horizon outside. He had practically forgotten about the woman by now - her memory having been overshadowed by the relief of finishing - and in the silence that followed he closed his eyes and rested. Clearing his mind of all thoughts except those familiar ones of wealth and success and how
In two days time I'm going to be murdered.
His eyes flew open, and there she was once more.
Help me.
"How?" he had wanted to scream. "How can I help you? I don't even know who, or what, you are!" But he knew this wouldn’t help since the glass was too thick for sound to travel through and the sight of him shouting might scare the woman away. Besides, for all he knew she might not be able to understand speech, and since he couldn't communicate the way she had… For a moment he was at a loss as to how to get his message across.
Then he remembered his word processor.
Quickly he rattled off a question - three letters and a question mark - then tore the freshly printed page out of the printer. Nervously he watched the woman's reaction as he pressed his message against the glass. Would she understand? Would she be able to read what he had written and give him the information he required?
The answer came soon enough.
Take me with you.
The moment the words appeared Francis felt sick to the pit of his stomach. He hurriedly started typing once more, explaining that there were no doors in the booth and the only way in or out was the teleporter, which was set for his hotel room only and couldn’t be changed even if he knew how and he didn't know where the hotel actually was so he couldn't give her directions and he was truly sorry and deeply guilty and hoped that this wasn't too much of a disappointment for her.
The waves of grief and rage that buffeted against Francis in response hurt more than he could possibly have imagined. He hung his head in shame, embarrassed by his powerlessness yet unwilling to look up in case he caught the young woman’s gaze and was forced to share more of her pain. Secretly part of him hoped that with this one gesture he might be able to help the woman understand how badly he felt and how he wished things could be different and, above all, how this situation was not his fault!
But when he looked up, the woman was gone.
After that, Francis was determined to make amends in whatever way he could. He knew the woman would return the next night - she still had one day left - and when she did, he would move heaven and earth to help her escape, even if he had to break the glass to let her in. And so he allowed himself to dawdle on his story, dragging it out and taking frequent, nervous breaks to make sure that it was well after dark by the time he was finished. And once he had done that, he just sat there, staring out into the darkness, and waited.
And waited.
Finally, just as he was about to give up, a figure materialised out of the darkness outside.
It was not the woman.
In fact, it wasn't anyone who Francis had ever seen before. It was an old man, stopped with age, leaning upon a fine oak walking stick that was inlaid with patterns of moons and stars. His clothing was nondescript and his face was sharp and angular, and covered with a network of fine lines that ran all the way back across his scalp, which was bald. He looked perfectly harmless, and yet there was a fierce light burning in his steely grey eyes that made Francis feel strangely afraid: a fierce light that fixed quite suddenly upon Francis and held him there as the man reached into an unseen pocket and pulled something out.
A tattered blue cloak. Stained a darkening red.
Seconds past as Francis stared, shifting his horrified gaze from man to cloak and back again. The figure was smiling now, clearly enjoying the horror that showed in Francis’s eyes as he stood there, still as a statue. More moments past and then the figure bowed mockingly, releasing the cloak from his claw-like hand as he did so. It dropped like a wounded bird and lay there on the ground, heavy and unmoving in the night’s gentle breeze. But Francis didn't notice. He was too much in shock to do anything other than watch as the old man turned and walked away, retreating into the darkness from which he came and leaving Francis alone with the quiet and his thoughts.
The next day was the big one. It was the final day of that gruelling week and the one on which the fabled Mortis Humphrey was going to make his long-awaited first appearance in public for over forty years. Outside it looked like the galaxy and his wife were waiting in front of the booth, all trying to catch a glimpse of the famous recluse as he came to deliver Francis his starting line. But Francis ignored them all. He had slept very badly indeed, having been plagued by nightmares that were difficult to wake up from. On the one occasion that he did manage to, it took him ages to fall asleep again afterwards, and now he just sat there, lost in a cloud of regrets, shame and sleep deprivation. It was only when the noise of the crowd increased that he returned his attention to the present, realising that the moment had arrived and he still needed to make a good showing. Even if he felt numb inside.
Above the crowd a black hover-car made its way slowly towards the booth; casting heavy shadows over the people below as it went. An escort of alert and watchful men on hover-cycles orbited the craft as it approached, looking not unlike a collection of aggressive and heavily armed moons, although Francis had to remind himself that their shape was all muscle and armour, not fat. He watched as the car lowered itself through the air, setting itself down carefully just outside the booth before letting its main hatch open with a majestic swing. A figure stepped out from the darkened interior, and as it did so Francis felt his heart quicken with fear; an accelerated beat that was lost in the roar of adulation from the crowd at the sight of the bald-headed old man leaning on his intricately-carved oak walking stick.
Mortis Humphrey had arrived.
The ageing billionaire made his way carefully towards the booth, a piece of paper clutched firmly in his claw-like hand ready to be displayed to Francis and used as the inspiration for what was going to be his most famous work yet. He paused when he reached the glass and smiled at Francis, holding the paper up against the glass so that the author could take a proper look. It read:
A young psionic begs a writer to save her from certain death but he refuses.
As he digested the full inwardness of these words, Francis felt the world threaten to lurch away from him. He stepped back in order to steady himself and found himself staring once more into those steely grey eyes of the night before. In that instant he knew he was caught. He knew he had to write the story, and he knew that he would write about the girl of the last few nights, because that was all that filled his mind right now. And once he had done so, he knew that no one would be willing to believe his tale of real-life murder because it would have already have been claimed by fiction.
And Mortis Humphrey would be in the clear, and Mortis Humphrey knew it.
And he was enjoying knowing it
Of course, he could always refuse to write the story on principal, denounce Mortis Humphrey there and then as a murderer in front of everyone.
(Yeah, right!)
Francis heard the crowd roar once more as Mortis Humphrey returned to his hover-car, and then it was rising into the sky, slowly making its way back to wherever it had come from, leaving Francis alone with his moral dilemma.
Along with the fifteen thousand or so people standing outside watching him.
Despondently he swept his gaze across the crowd, and for a brief, mad moment he almost wished he could see the figure that had so plagued him on other worlds. In comparison to the events of the past three days, he seemed almost friendly now, almost familiar.
Almost exactly like the figure in the second row from the front.
Almost exactly...
A strangely disorienting feeling swept through Francis’s body as he checked to make sure he wasn’t hallucinating. Sure enough, there he was, same shabby combat fatigues, same unblinking grey eyes, looking at Francis in a way that almost seemed like recognition. And he wasn’t the only one. There was another familiar fanatic beside him. And another, and another. In fact, the entire front three rows were made up of recognisable lunatics Francis had seen on previous planets. All of them standing there like a big maniacs' day out, nervously proud of having smuggled themselves onto a planet where their very presence would put them under a sentence of death if caught. Risking it all just to catch a glimpse of the one person who made them feel real, the one person
Whose every word they clung to.
Like it was the only reality they knew.
The keys of the word processor were clattering away before the thought had even settled in Francis's head. It was a wildly outlandish idea that relied too much on co-incidence, too much on assumptions and prejudice to be guaranteed successful. But it was also just about crazy enough to work. And as the pages started to assemble on the glass wall, he sensed the mood of the crowd changing, watching with pleasure as the fans studied his words carefully, looking back at Francis in a way that suggested an unwritten communication between them and the author. By the time the story began to reach its conclusion, Francis found himself almost giggling with anticipation, knowing that Mortis Humphrey would be returning soon to read the story, to make sure that it was written to his satisfaction, just like all the other celebrities had done before him. Francis could almost picture it now: the eagerness of the crowd as the car touched down, the nervousness of the bodyguards as the hatch swung open.
A brief moment of calm as Mortis Humphrey stepped out and then...
And then...
The court ruled later that Francis LeRoy was in no way to blame for the unfortunate riot that broke out shortly before the auction of his stories on Garantix Prime. Similarly, he was not responsible for the tragic and unfortunate death of Mr Mortis Humphrey during said riot; both actions could be held firmly to be the responsibility of the unidentified loner who had also perished in the riot, along with seventeen other unstable fanatics. Sadly, however, this was not enough to prevent Francis’s career from being destroyed. Especially when he admitted that his last story ('Hiding In Plain Sight') was a complete reportage of the riot that he had tried to pass off as fiction; a fact that the galaxy was more than willing to believe because no-one these days was that original.
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