"I just reality-checked you with your own Tweet. That's
what's needed as our reality is attacked." "What I saw is a cheap
parlor trick."
"There isn't a shilling's worth of proof in your
argument and I use 'shilling' on purpose." "You haven't noticed the
unexplained shortages?"
"And sudden unexpected outages?" "Why does
that have anything to do with it?" "Item: The Chinese corner the
market on rare earth minerals."
"Item: Droughts, exports and ethanol create a corn
shortage which produces a shortage in pork, beef and Doritos." "I
have one question."
"What?" "Are we talking football stadium
level power outages?" "Bigger than that. Think New York City in 2012.
That was part of the plan."
I was caught uptown with my pants down when the lights went
out and the tide came in. "Not the hurricane? How about the 2003 NYC
blackout?"
"NYC 2003 was just run-of-the-mill incompetence. But
include the Fukushima meltdown, the Eyjafjallajökull volcano and the Twilight
Saga."
This is all hard to swallow much less pronounce. "You
believe that every bad thing that happened in the past decade is part of some
plot?"
"Except 9/11, of course." "Which wasn't part
of the grand plot?" "No, which happened more than a decade ago."
"I find you hard to believe."
"So, Detective, you can find something, sometime. I was
beginning to think you stole Arkaby's identity." Nobody likes the smart
aleck dead.
He sits in my guest chair. "Which part of my warning
gives you trouble?" "All of it. Next you'll be saying we've never
been to the moon."
"If only. I'm not that kind of lunatic."
"What kind are you?" He stares balefully at me. "You must visit
three places" he says. "No thanks."
"'No thanks'?" "Last time I mixed it up with
you people my mind left my body, I ran naked through a hospital and I was
locked in a freezer."
"I was hit on the head, stung by bees, plunged
facefirst into a bowl of tapioca and nearly recited poetry." "Sounds
like a good time to me."
"I owe the hospital over $30,000. I'm on semi-permanent
police suspension and I wasn't showcased at last year’s #TwitterFiction
Festival."
"There's nothing you can say to make me get involved
again." "What if I told you that Regi was already deep into this and
in great danger?"
Damn! Regi is Regna RG Granger. Her name is the same
backwards or forwards and her initials don't stand for anything. "I'm
in." I say.
Her father, the late Willum Granger, who may not be as late
as expected and who may be standing before me, had an obsession for
palindromes.
"Willum" is almost a palindrome, flipped at the
end rather than reversed. How hard it must have been to live with a twisted
palindrome name.
If Granger's parents named him "Williw" instead of
"Willum" would he have given Regi a more unidirectional appellation?
Probably not.
But that, like a palindrome, is neither here nor there, or
perhaps both here AND there. Granger is no doubt dead. Regi is very much alive.
(The Twitter Mystery continues daily at @Twitstery)
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