Story: The Pickup

orward: First, a few words on the background and the original recipient of this—for want of a better word—story which is to follow. I met C at the end of the seventies here in Cologne at a ‘Neue Musik’ concert where a piece of his was being played, reproduced, or constructed. Over the years, we got together for curries, painting his flat, concerts, and general silly talk, usually in October.
Why October? I’m not really sure. We wouldn’t see each other that often, but if I were to plot our contacts over the last 30-odd years, they would invariably fall in said month.
Over the years, what started as a silly talk session became our contact signature code or phrase. It all has to do with three shirts that were ready to be picked up at his Chinese laundry. It is still as silly now as it was then, but it is always "worked in" to our emails and calls, rare as they are.
A while back, I was in the office and a colleague poked his head in the door—fortunately, it was open—said I had a call, and remarked that he was asked not to say who it was. I hesitated a moment and looked at my watch: middle of October. I was primed for what was coming. Although it had been at least two years since our last contact, we went straight into our repartee.
Following the preliminaries, he told me of a concert he was giving in November while taking a sabbatical. For the last six years, he has held a chair in electronic music in Santa Barbara. As he was in town, he wanted to "kill a curry". After the killing, he was off to China to give a workshop, then to India for family business, before returning for the concert.
Well, after the curry and while he was away, I thought I would see if I could spin our silly intro into an even sillier story, which I presented to C after the concert. Below is the result. There has been no feedback from C, but this is not unusual; maybe in October...

ackward: You may (or may not) want to Wiki some of the references. They should be valid in some way or other. If you feel the need to comment on anything, please do, but only if your questions or remarks are weirder than the content or references.
In keeping with modern-day "gadgetonomies"—if there is such a word—I’ve added a PDA with a difference and an Imp which is not always helpful. Both should keep the dialogue moving and get me out of the tight spots I’ve written myself into.

Note that this was written in 2009, when PDAs were still around and had not been completely overtaken by the diverse handheld multimedia communication devices that followed.

The Þarty:

Narrator/Boss (mostly human)

Vane his Imp (mostly demonic)

Savi/Savitri his PDA (mostly sentient)

I pulled my cloak tighter against the biting air. It was a dark, wretched night with no sign of summer on the horizon, though the rain had at least slowed to a dismal halt. Crazy, distorted shapes danced in the oily puddles by the roadside, mirroring the mess in my head.
I glanced down at the PDA and tapped the screen for the umpteenth time, my patience fraying until the display finally flickered back to life. Having the device possessed was starting to get on my nerves. Ever since Vane had sniffed out a backdoor into the hardware, I’d had nothing but trouble. Savi was constantly locked in conversation with her uninvited house guest, distracting her from my actual requests.

The screen cleared, replacing the street map with a devilish, grinning visage that had no business being in a piece of hardware. I tapped the casing of the PDA, my damp sleeve catching on the cold metal.
"Get out of the way," I snapped. "I want to see where we are. Stop using up all her CPU; she’s sluggish at the best of times."
"Hey, I can't help it!" Vane’s voice crackled through the PDA, his tiny image sneering. "She keeps badgering me about Ānanda for some reason. I'm getting bored, download a Waite pack for me. Where are we, anyhow?"
"You tell me," I said, squinting at the flickering display. "You're sitting on top of the GPS in there."
"No way am I going to look at that," the imp retorted. I could almost hear him folding his arms in the digital void. "I was never one for heights. Underground is my thing, not the dizzy heights of satellites."
"Oh, just move over."

I started to wonder if the ‘D’ in PDA should stand for Demonic. As the map finally crawled back onto the display, I could see that I was still three blocks away from the coordinates. I adjusted my pace, the damp pavement slick under my boots, and reflected on the absurdity of the morning and exactly why I was out on a cold, wet night like this.
A projectile had sailed through the open window of my office, arcing through the dusty air before landing with a pathetic plop in my cuppa. After a fruitless scan of the street below for the culprit—finding nothing but the usual East London shadows—I’d returned to my desk. I fished the object out of the lukewarm tea; it was a very soggy fortune cookie. Peeling the mess apart, I recovered a slip of paper with a cryptic address and an even stranger message:

Wangs WashieUpie
Xìngyùn Bǐnggān St. 3211
23:58 pickie up 三件衬衫

I wasn’t entirely sure where this was leading, but following a scrambled, static-heavy phone call from a Chinese restaurant in Pisa and the cookie’s first pictograph, I had just enough clues to be dangerous.
I glanced again at the screen, hoping for a progress update, but the map was gone. Instead, the display was covered in a digital spread of Tarot cards. My patience was wearing thin.
"Hey! No more apps!" I snapped, the damp air making my voice raspy. "I'm fed up with clearing up after you."
"Okay, okay, I'll tidy up," Vane chirped from the PDA.
"And what can I do for the master?"
"Don't start your genie routine; it doesn't become you. Before I left, I uploaded my copy of the Liber Abaci. Check if it’s lying around."
"A mo..." There was a brief flickering on the screen. "Yep, here it is. Why do you need a thirteenth-century tome in a language you can't read?"
"Not entirely sure at the moment," I admitted, squinting through the rain. "Maybe a classical mathematical sequence of premonitions."
"A what?"
"Leave it," I sighed. "Just go and clear up. And no more laying the cards with Savitri."
"Who is Savitri?" Vane’s voice took on a mischievous edge. "I thought her name was Savi? Ah! Now I understand..."
"I said leave it!"
"Okay, okay..."

Another block to go, and the sky finally gave up on its brief truce. It started to rain again, the kind of persistent, thin drizzle that finds its way through even the best-treated wool.
I turned the corner, and there it was. A desolate shop front on a deserted street that looked like it had been forgotten by the local council back in the seventies. The only indication that I still knew how to read a map was the neon sign hanging precariously over the doorway. ‘Wangs WashieUpie’ it read, with the ‘Washie’ part of the sign buzzing and flickering with a frantic, dying energy—just like in a classical film noir, though I wasn't feeling much like a leading man.

I glanced over my shoulder, checked the shadows, and crossed the street. There was something funny about the house number, though. It didn't exactly match the one on the cookie message.
My gut did a little twist—the kind that usually precedes a very long night.
As I approached the threshold, the muffled roar of distant London traffic seemed to exit stage left. In the sudden vacuum of sound, my tinnitus moved stage front, a high-pitched whine that felt like a needle in the ear. I tried the door handle. Even before its cold, iron reluctance hit my cortex motorius primus, I knew full well it was locked.

Typical. I looked around, scouring the gloom for a loose brick, a door mat, or a neglected flowerpot where a key might hide. Nothing but damp concrete and despair. That meant finding the back door. There was a dingy alley to the left of the shop and an even dingier one to the right.
I toggled the PDA searchlight, set it to a tight beam that sliced through the rain, and turned left. The display flickered violently, and Vane appeared on the screen, sporting a pair of ridiculously oversized sunglasses.

"What are you up to?" he hissed, shielding his digital eyes. "Blinding us like that!"
"Keep it down," I whispered, my eyes darting to the shadows ahead. "I'm going round the back and I need a light."
"You could have at least given us warning!"
"I said quiet!" I felt a pulse of irritation. "And what’s this 'us'? Watch yourself with Savitri. She’s a cloud wanderer and has strange connections to higher regions. Also, she downloaded herself—I had nothing to do with it. So just beware."
"Oh!" Vane paused, his sunglasses sliding down his nose. "But she can't be..."
I didn't wait for the rest; I hit the mute. The last thing I needed now was to be distracted by a discussion on hybrid savant AI. I had enough on my plate without the software arguing back.

I turned the corner and entered the alley, the walls closing in like a trap. As I moved deeper, the frequency of my tinnitus shifted from white to pink—a low, buzzing hiss that vibrated in the back of my skull. I raised the beam, sweeping the light over grimy brickwork and damp rubbish, moving hesitantly. Every nerve was on edge; I was practically waiting for the obligatory alley cat to screech, knock over a dustbin, and vanish into the night just to give my heart an excuse to skip a beat.

Fortunately, I managed to reach the back of the shop without any feline fracas.
A single, flickering sodium lamp bathed a long, sliding metal service entrance in a sickly yellow light. I holstered my flashlight and threw my weight against the handle, but the door wouldn't budge. It felt less like a door and more like part of the building's foundation.

Now what? I leaned against the cold metal, running through the possibilities. I wasn't happy with my conclusion—it felt like inviting a headache to dinner—but I saw no other way out. Or, in this case, way in.
I un-muted the PDA and tapped the screen sharply. Through the speaker, the faint, thumping rhythm of hip-hop leaked out into the silent alley.
"Vane!"
"Hey, here's the Man," he drawled, his digital image lounging. "What's up, dude?"
"Turn down the music, take off the shades, and pay attention," I growled. "Load the tri-corder app and scan the building for signs of encrypted low-power sources."
Vane gave a theatrical sigh. "Forgot your key again?"
"No," I snapped, "just get on with it."
He went quiet for a second, the screen pulsing with data streams. "Um, I'm picking up noise with arrhythmic fluctuations just in front of the door. They're weak and scrambled."
"That’s my tinnitus," I muttered, rubbing my temple. "Try again."
"Oh-kaay... there's a cluster of data entry points just left of the door. Interesting—it has a biological component. Maybe bionic."
"A what?" I frowned at the masonry. "I'll take a deco while you go and update that app; it must have a bug."

I moved closer, the searchlight beam dancing over the grime-slicked brickwork. I discovered a small, rust-coloured box with the faded outline of what looked like a cat on the cover. It opened with a sharp, piercing squeak, and a terrified mouse tumbled out into the wet shadows. Left behind was a grimy, hardly readable keypad, and over it, a dim red light pulsed like a dying coal.
Ah. Now this was getting interesting.

23:55:05 The PDA’s display glared back at me, a digital heartbeat reminding me I had just less than three minutes to crack the code and get inside.
The question was the length: a four or six-figure sequence? Four was too obvious—the kind of thing a landlord uses for a bin store. Six would be the smarter bet for something this clandestine. A minute isn't a long time to cycle through permutations, but I had to start somewhere. I’d try the first four numbers of the sequence first and hope for a bit of luck.

23:58:00 The light on the grimy keypad shifted, bathing my tired face in a dull orange glow. "Right," I muttered, my fingers hovering over the sticky buttons. "Here goes."
I tapped in 1123, hit the hash key, and held my breath.
Nothing. Not even a mechanical groan.
I wiped a smear of rain from the keypad and tried again, adding the next two numbers from the Fibonacci string. I hit the hash and waited, my ears straining against the hum of my own tinnitus. The orange light flickered, died for a second, and then surged back on with an angry pulse.
Ah. It was a tell—it wanted at least a six-figure number. But the code was still wrong. My mind raced through the possibilities, the damp cold of the alley seeping into my bones.

23:58:12 The sequence had to be the key. Was there a leading zero? No, that wasn't how the old books documented it. Maybe it was reversed?
Then it clicked. The house number on the building. I’d known there was something off about it the moment I’d laid eyes on it. It wasn't a typo on the cookie message after all; it was the missing piece of the puzzle.
I tapped the PDA screen to double-check the address, but there was no response. The glass stayed dark, mocking me.

23:58:16 I tapped again, harder this time. One of Savitri’s avatars shimmered into existence. For a second, I thought I heard the faint, ethereal pluck of a vina and distant chanting. She looked vaguely like Saraswati, or perhaps she didn't; it was probably just the stress of the clock ticking, but those extra arms always made my head spin.
"Namaske," she murmured.
"Namaske, Savi," I replied, wiping a droplet of rain from the casing.
"What’s Vane up to?"
"I gave him something to read about Śamādi ṣatka sampatti," Savi said calmly. "Shall I get him?"
"No, it’s you I wanted. Please display the first twelve numbers of the sequence, also in reverse. I need them as a visual reference."
"Coming up."

23:58:21 The numbers pulsed onto the display, glowing against the dark alley. I turned back to the grimy keypad. Referencing the reversed sequence, I carefully tapped in 853211 and hit the hash key.
Nothing. Not even a click. In Leonardo's name, what was I missing?

23:58:30 Maybe it needs an offset? But what could it be... "SAVI!"
"Yes, Boss?"
"Quickly now—scan Leonardo’s work and tell me where the sequence is first described."
"Starting on page 283 and finishing on page 284," she answered instantly.
"Dhanyavaad!"
"You're welcome."

23:58:49 Page 283. That was far too long for a simple offset. I chewed my lip, staring at the numbers.
"May I suggest numerological reduction?" Savi offered. "Two plus eight plus three equals thirteen, and one plus three equals four."
"Excellent idea. Okay... a four."

22:58:55 So, reverse sequence with an offset of four, that is ending with five.
In went 211385#. I held my breath as the orange light went out and started to breathe again when it came back green.

The door lock gave a reluctant click, hesitated a moment and then with a sluggish silence slid open leaving a black void. As I shone the light into the shop the beam disappeared into the gloom.
With nerves now on edge I expected anything from here on in.
Since Vane was still occupied with his studies, I entered the activation code for the tri-corder myself and stepped over the threshold. To my surprise, the scan suggested the place looked at least like a Chinese laundry. My eyes narrowed as I detected on the screen a power source with two unusual signatures; their spectrums were shifting with increasing intensity, humming with a frequency that made my teeth ache.
To my irritation, before I could analyse the reading any further, the light beam turned diffuse. I swore under my breath before realising it wasn't the tech failing—it was just my glasses steaming up in the humid air of the shop.

The cool London drizzle was a memory. The air had instantly turned thick, hot, and heavy with a humid stench that stuck to the back of my throat. Something had happened—something big.
I glanced at the screen. The date and time zone had rolled back over a century:
14th August 1900, 10:59:10 CST. I turned around, heart hammering, and peered out onto an unfamiliar, jagged skyline. The PDA lit up, and Savi appeared, looking as unperturbed as if we’d just stepped out for a pint in Shoreditch.

In the distance, a series of sharp cracks fractured the heavy air.
"Please don't tell me I just heard gunshots?" I muttered, my hand tightening on the PDA.
"Analysing sound byte," Savi said, her voice cool and academic. "That was a volley from rifles of type Hanyang 88. It is the Boxer Uprising, Boss. We are in Beijing, in the vicinity of the foreign legations. The siege is almost underway."
I felt the weight of the era sink in.
"Interesting," Savi added, her tone sharpening. "I'm picking up a transponder signal other than our own in this world-line event."
"Vane," I snapped, ignoring the chill that ran down my spine, "drum up an appropriate map of the area and add the coordinates from Savi."
"Your past catching up with you?" Vane’s voice crackled from the device. "Or is it the future?”
.. Back here again, and so soon..."
"By the look of it," Savi interrupted, "the source is the British Legation, just off Big Street."
"Savi, plan a route. Add the marauding bands to the display. Vane, get out here! I need you up front to reconnoitre."

The screen cleared, replaced by a maze of alleys and streets. Yellow, monster-like icons pulsed on the glass, marking the Boxers as they moved through the city. An icon looking suspiciously like a Pac-Man indicated our position. The ideal route flicked and wiggled like a snake, recalculating in real-time. The distance wasn't more than eighty-five metres as the Peking duck flies, but looking at that shifting mess of yellow icons, I knew the journey wouldn't be a direct one.
We moved off.
I kept my eyes glued to the map while Vane darted to the next corner, a shadow among shadows. Once he signaled clear, we set a frantic pace to the next turn.
Timing was everything.
This repeated a dozen times before the fortified walls of the British Legation finally loomed out of the dark. Vane looked haggard; his typical vibrant red had faded to a dull, sickly crimson.

"Are you okay?" I asked, keeping my voice low.
"No," Vane wheezed. "Shifts are not good for my kind. Had no time to cast a protection spell."
"Same here," I admitted, rubbing my aching temples. "It’s like continuous freefall in four directions at once."
"Now what?"
"Find the entrance to the compound. Savi, any luck?"
"Here’s the gate," she replied, a section of the map blinking a sharp, urgent red.

I scrutinised the updated map on the display, the nearest entrance now a rhythmic, blinking red pulse against the sepia tones of the 1900s street layout. After a tense moment checking for any yellow icons—those marauding bands—lurking in the nearby shadows, we moved on.

The gate loomed out of the darkness, a massive barrier of weathered timber and iron studs. No keypad here, of course; this was a century where security was measured in oak and mystery. I closed my eyes for a second, recalling the sequence from the soggy fortune cookie message.

I reached out and knocked three times in rapid succession, the sound unnervingly loud in the heavy, humid air. I paused, my heart echoing the beat. I repeated the three knocks, paused again, then followed up with two sharp raps and a final, single knock.
I waited. My hand was still hovering near the wood, the dampness of the Beijing night seeping into my coat. Nothing. Not even the stir of a breeze.
I was just about to repeat the sequence, my knuckles already tensing, when...

"The transponder," Savi’s voice cut through the silence, sharp with alarm. "It’s moving!"
I waited, my heart hammering against my ribs. Eventually, a small hatch in the heavy timber gate slid open, revealing nothing but a gaping, black void.

Now what? I had a hunch, a fragment of a memory from a case I’d rather forget, and only one try at this. I leaned in and whispered "Wangs" into the darkness. I immediately regretted it; the stench billowing out was abominable, a cocktail of open sewers and ancient rot. I held my breath, fighting the urge to gag.
Suddenly, a brown paper parcel tied up with string was thrust through the hatch.

I didn't wait for a thank you. I grabbed it and ran, only remembering to start breathing again once I was ten yards clear. We retraced our steps, dodging through the labyrinth as fast as the yellow monster icons on the display would allow. Vane was struggling; his skin was a ghostly grey now, and he was taking longer to signal at every corner.
I looked at the screen and felt a cold trickle of sweat down my spine. The marauders weren't just wandering anymore. Their movements were becoming coordinated.

Savi appeared, her avatar flickering with static. "Boss, we should move it. The storm on the Legations has begun. Also, on analysing the patterns of movement... detection is indicated. They're hunting us."
I looked at Vane—or 'Ypme' as I sometimes thought of the little nuisance—and urged him on. We scrambled around a final corner, and there it was: the back of the shop, looking exactly as we had left it.
A roar of commotion rose behind us, closer than was healthy.

I made a bee-line for the keypad and slammed my thumb onto the hash key. The light flipped from green to red, and the door began to groan shut. For the sake of dramatic effect—and because my legs were about to give out—I hurled myself through the diminishing gap. I landed flat out on the grimy floor just as the door sealed, followed a second later by the sharp ping of a salvo ricocheting off the outer iron.
I just lay there in the dark, my tinnitus ringing so loud it was almost deafening.

"Savi," I wheezed. "Scan, please."
"Nothing broken," she replied, her voice back to its usual calm. "Good idea to land on the package. It broke your fall."
"Vane?"
"He’s back with me," she said. I could hear the faint sound of the digital void behind her.
"Keep an eye on him until his colour returns to normal."
"Will do, Boss."

The humid heat of Beijing vanished, replaced instantly by the damp, biting chill of London. A glance at the screen confirmed it: we were back.
Reluctantly, I pushed myself up, clicked the PDA light on, and surveyed the room. The rear exit was definitely sealed now—probably for another hundred years. I headed toward the front, my boots kicking up thick clouds of dust. The place looked like it hadn't been touched in decades. Or centuries. It was hard to tell with time-shifts.

I awoke to the rhythmic vibration of ‘Om Aing Saraswatyai namah’ pulsing through the PDA. I rubbed my eyes, thinking I’d really have to have a sit-down with Savikri about her origins—and her choice of alarm clock.
Then I realised something was very wrong.
The parcel I’d nearly died for in Beijing was gone. In its place sat a single, perfectly formed laddu. I stared at the yellow sweet for a moment, then sighed and picked up the sticky note that had been left in the parcel's wake.

True friendship comes
when the silence between two people
is comfortable

I chewed the laddu slowly. It was delicious, which only made the mystery more annoying.
"Boss," Savi’s voice broke through my thoughts sometime later, sounding uncharacteristically puzzled. "I've just found two requests for pickups which I have no recollection of arriving!"
"Pickups?" I sat up, the springs of the couch groaning in protest.
"Indeed. One is for three serkrs located somewhere in Holyrood, Edinburgh. The other: three tongaks from the Patrang Marpo part of the Potala complex, Lhasa."
"Interesting," I muttered, licking a stray crumb from my thumb. "Can you trace the sources?"
"Analysing... I could follow the digital trail as far as... well, you won't want to believe this."
"Try me."
"Nevada! Plumb in the middle of officially nowhere. Except..."
"Don’t tell me, let me guess," I interrupted, a weary cynicism settling over me. "There’s a number involved that happens to be the birth year of your boss?"
"Spot on! Just before the restricted area notices and death warnings popped up, I caught an echo of the trace. Direction: West Coast. Any help?"
"It fits," I said, mostly to myself.

I reflected on the chaos in the Beijing laundry and what would be in store if I took the bait. Both locations were intriguing, but Lhasa required more than a weary PI and a cheeky imp.
"Savi, book a flight to Edinburgh. While you’re at it, get Vane to download Robbie Burns' version of Auld Lang Syne—the 1711 Watson edition. Can we expect a Shift?" "Not stipulated in the contract conditions," Savi replied. "Therefore, I expect we are locked to the present."
"Good. No extra baggage for period costumes. Just in case, see that we have local denominations covering the last two centuries." I stood up and stretched. "Locate Vane. I take it you tagged him before he left you?"
"Sure did. His signature is coming from the cellar. Also... I’m getting sporadic paranormal readings close by."

I headed down to the cellar, my boots echoing on the damp concrete. I found Vane crouched in the shadows, a stub of chalk in his hand, meticulously finishing off a pentagram on the floor. An ancient grimoire lay open next to him, its yellowed pages emitting a pulsing, unearthly light that made the dust motes dance like tiny ghosts. I caught a low, rhythmic mumbling; I sincerely hoped it was Vane and not the tome itself having a go.

"What on earth—and under it—are you up to?" I asked, leaning against the doorframe.
"Nothing in particular," Vane chirped, not breaking his stride with the chalk. "Just keeping my hand in. Never know what we will be confronted with in the Highlands."
"How did you know about...?"
"Madam is not the only one that can keep tabs," he smirked, his eyes glinting in the magical glow. "Mine are a lot older and—"
"Okay, you don’t need to ‘spell’ it out." I cut him off before he could get too smug. "When you’re finished here, pack my Bardo Thödröl for light reading on the plane. The Evans-Wentz 1927 edition."
"Maybe also his book on fairy faith?" Vane suggested, his voice dropping to a conspiratorial whisper. "Interesting stuff in there..."

I watched him return to his symbols, the chalk scratching against the stone. I wondered if there was a connection here somewhere, some thread tying a Chinese laundry in 1900 to a Tibetan Book of the Dead and the Scottish mist. Probably not.
Time will tell.
To miss quote Holmes:

“the game is ashirt”