Parsy Gawsh was a well known person in the city of Rems. His job was to make computer programs. His daily routine was very monotonous, yet somehow exciting.
First, he would wake up and have breakfast, usually something like oatmeal. He didn't have favorites, really. Breakfast was followed by a 'good bye' to and from his family, and he would go outside, observing the weather for the first time that day. They didn't have many windows, and Parsy rarely had enough time to go to the few they had.
He would drive down the road, turn left, then right, and veer into the parking lot. Why did he make his programs in a specialized building? It was a secret. At home his family would be looking over his shoulder, but his ideas were his alone, and it had to be kept that way.
After work, he would drive home, grab the lunch that he hadn't had time to pick up earlier, and return to work by a public bus. His wife now needed the car to drive their children to a school that operated later than most. He would get to work, eat his lunch, and get right back to his programming. At 6:00, he would return home on the public bus.
That day, at dinner, which would always happen right when his wife and the children arrived home, they had a dish of chicken, in addition to some rice. They all chose to drink orange juice. It was unusually silent at the dinner table.
Parsy felt he had to strike up a conversation, so he decided to mention the subject that was always brought up at such times. "Well, anyone want to hear the legend of Bad Wolf?"
"Oh, dad," their son groaned. "We've heard it a million times. It's almost as if you were advertising it." He put up a face like Parsy's, and said in a deep voice, "hear the legend of Bad Wolf, a very dangerous man who robbed a store a hundred years ago!" He returned to his normal state. "I mean, you're acting like a billboard on the road!"
"I find those billboards annoying on my way to the children's school," said his wife. "They have all kinds of stuff we've heard enough times on television."
Parsy felt he had to say something. His face was burning from his son's reject. "I always ignore those billboards," he said. It was quite true. Whenever he saw one, he would immediately divert his attention somewhere else, before he had enough time to read it.
What followed this statement was silence. The others all ate after a swift look at him. The two children looked at each other briefly, and they both stifled a giggle. His wife, however, merely took a bite of her chicken, and looked back up.
"Still, it's kind of hard to do that," she said.
Their daughter looked up. "He said to ignore him. Do it!" The children giggled some more.
"I didn't mean to ignore me!" Parsy said crossly. "I'm not a billboard."
The children continued taking unusually large bites out of their chicken as if they hadn't heard him.
"Oh, well, I guess I should ignore you," Parsy said, after his mind had rested on a sudden thought.
And that sudden thought was correct. The children immediately stopped, and looked up. They had already experienced their father ignoring them for a whole day, and didn't want it to happen again. Parsy gave a huge laugh, which was passed along the family in a somewhat nervous fashion.
"Well, I'm done eating. Anybody want seconds?" Parsy asked politely. No one answered, and he took that for a 'no'. He put his dishes in the dishwasher. "I'll turn it on when you're all done."
"Oh, dad," groaned their son again. "That means I can't have any snacks tonight. I'm hungry!"
"Then eat," said their mother. "You're not eating anything else tonight."
Their son looked at his chicken, and slumped away. "I guess that means he's not hungry."
"I just don't want chicken!"
They picked up his plate and put it in the dishwasher. When their daughter was finally full, Parsy put it in the dishwasher, and turned it on.
"Well, that's that. Don't forget to do your homework!"
"I didn't get any homework tonight," said their son in reply to his father.
"Nonsense, you're in middle school," said Parsly, washing his hands.
"I finished it at school."
Parsly dried off his hands on a towel hanging from the refrigerator handle. "Do you have a pass for that homework that you're chickening out of?"
"Yes," he muttered.
"At the end of the grading period, we will give you one ice cream for each pass you still have that doesn't mean bonus or treat at school."
His son looked up, his face shining. "I've got homework to do," he said, rushing off to his bedroom.
*
Parsy’s wife came home with the children the next day at 4:45. They waited until Parsy was to come home at 6:00.
It was 6:30, and no Parsy Gawsh. His wife was beginning to worry, though there was one day that he hadn’t come home until 7:00, though he had not warned them of such a delay, and of course, they couldn’t ask him why he had been so late.
At 7:10, Parsy’s wife finally decided to call up the police. They checked all the evidence they could find that something bad happened. At last, a police-man knocked on their front door to tell them the news.
“We have no direct evidence that anything queer happened, but we are quite certain that that is the case. We asked the public transport if they had taken him home when they should have, and they had a picture of him on the bus from their camera. Therefore, we think he was kidnapped or something of the sort.”
It was 5:55 when Parsy stepped off the bus, a block away from home. He was half-way there, when something queer did happen, just as the police suspected a few hours later.
A group of perplexing people confronted him from goodness knows where. There were 4, to be exact. They were all wearing long, black cloaks that reached their feet and buckled over their faces, and had hoods stretching up over their faces. The only parts of their faces that Parsy could see were the eyes and nose (the hoods reached down just below their eyebrows and a flap buckled over their mouth). It was as if they would have been freezing if they hadn’t been wearing the cloaks, though it was the same temperature as it is at 9:00 P.M. in the summer—fair, not cold. All of their clothing was black; their cloaks, as aforementioned, and their shoes were clearly regular walking shoes painted black (though some walking shoes are black, they are never pitch black, as these shoes were), and Parsy could see, as one of the people’s cloaks were a tad bit too short, that the socks were also black.
“What do you want?” asked Parsy.
“We want you to come with us,” said one of them.
“We think you would fit in very well with us, in our little town of Sepps,” said another.
“We’ve even planned a job for you,” added a third. They were all speaking in eerie voices that echoed in his ears, though he was sure that it would not have echoed in anyone else’s ear had they been overhearing the cloaked people speaking to him.
“I’m sorry if I’m being rude or anything, but… what the heck is going on here?” was Parsy’s reply to all of this.
“We are taking you to our little town of Sepps,” said the second cloaked person. “It is a separate and unknown place.”
“Unknown, meaning…?”
“No one knows about this place, which lies up North, except for its very inhabitants.”
“Well, sorry to bust your bubble, but I am not going to be an inhabitant of this place, therefore, you are just wrong about that.”
“Oh, but you’re already registered; you are to enter tomorrow morning.”
“Registered for what?” Parsy spat.
“You see, we even have our own set of laws, and anyone who has been seen as great character for a particular job gets registered immediately. And we have decided to register you as…” it seemed to take forever for the cloaked person to say these last couple words, though Parsy could tell that it was directly afterward… “a detective.”
These last words echoed in his mind for ages before he could put a stop to it. No way, he couldn’t be a detective, there was no way that it could possibly happen; it wouldn’t happen, and it couldn’t happen, not if he could help it…
He fought them, but they fought back, and he lost.
Though one of the cloaked people had said that it was a ‘little town,’ it was a rather large city.
It was the next day, and Parsy had just entered, and now decided to get himself familiar with the place. The first person he talked to was Orsit Blorph.
“What’s up?” Parsy asked.
“You new?”
Parsy took a moment to answer that question, for he was a bit startled by it.
“Yeah, I’m new.”
“That ain’t no normal way to talk to a person around here.”
Amazing, he thought. It’s just like they make it in the movies!
Then he bumped into someone else just nearby. He decided to talk. “Oh, hello, who are you?”
But the man he had bumped into didn’t talk back. He was looking past his shoulder at something, which Parsy saw, when he turned around to look, was a billboard. Parsy did his usual thing, ignoring it, but this man did not do so.
And then he looked at Parsy. “I’m Reach Porsh. Why do you ask?”
“I’m new here; I’m just trying to --”
“Stay out of my way, or there’ll be trouble.”
“Oh, ok, I’m sorry, I didn’t know that there were—people like you... here… that would act like you’re—acting—I mean…”
“Look, just don’t blubber in front of me like that; just stay out of my way, like I said, and there won’t be no trouble. Otherwise, it was nice knowing you.”
Knowing me for a few seconds, he muttered as he crossed the street to avoid additional collisions with Reach.
“You came in here of your own free will, is that correct, Parsy?”
“No,” he answered.
“According to our records, you came into this city in the company of 4 of our agents. Did you reveal abilities that show detective work to them?”
“If I did, I didn’t do so on purpose,” Parsy replied.
“Did they corner you?”
“Yes, they did corner me; I’m a famous person in the city of Rems and they forced me to come here, and—AAH!” Parsy would have continued ramping about how they had fought him to the punch, if he hadn’t received an electric shock.
“Lying to officials defies Law 32, all people who are questioned in any way are to speak the truth; any lying, whether during private conversation or official interrogation, is to be reported immediately. Would you like me to repeat that, or did you get it the first time?”
“Why are you asking me this when you know perfectly well that I heard?” asked Parsy.
“Law 148, whenever a law is stated, one must ask whether it should be repeated. Would you like me to repeat that, or did you get it the first time?”
“What?” cried Parsy, flinging his fingers into his ears.
“Law 148, whenever a law is stated, one must ask whether it should be repeated. Would you like me to repeat that, or did you get it the second time?”
“NOO!”
“Law 57, all people who are questioned in any way are to give an answer that makes sense with the question; this corresponds with, not only answers that are relevant, but also yes or now/Who, What, When, Where, How questions. Would you like me to repeat that, or did you hear it the first time?”
“Ok, so back up. No, they did not corner me, and yes, I came hear of free will—AAH!” he shouted for the second time.
“You have just indicated that you lied about free will coming here.”
“So, when do I train?”
“Now; what do you think you’re here for?”
*
“Remember, you must always keep a straight face and give specific orders for each circumstance.”
“What specific orders?” Parsy asked.
“Why do you ask? We have more important things to do than to answer dumb questions! Now, we’re going to train you up with the straight face half of the requirements, and then we’ll tell you about the specific orders to be given for each and every circumstance.”
Parsy was given every circumstance of straight face—running, walking, telling someone their under arrest, and most of all, not doing anything at all. Of course, Parsy doubted that was rated most important for any real reason, for he had no idea what kind of reason could possible fit such a requirement.
“There are a total of 456 laws and counting. You are to memorize them and get to business at once.”
“What business? A detective doesn’t arrest people, does he?”
“Law 385, a detective’s occupation is defined as breaking mysteries and doing whatever crime enforcement necessary in the process. If they must commit crime themselves, they are entitled to do so as long as they ask permission from a higher class person first. Would you like me to repeat that, or did you get it the first time?”
“SHUT UP!”
“Law 2, all people are to show respect to higher classes. Would you like me to repeat that, or did you get it the first time?”
“I got it the first time, OK?”
Then, of course, Parsy had to memorize all of the laws, which included much of a detective’s job description, so he got to see what the circumstances and orders were.
“You only got to memorize roughly, OK?”
“I’m going to kill you for this,” Parsy muttered through clenched teeth.
“Get to business, then.”
“Wait—where do I start?”
“I said GET GOING!”
Parsy was walking along the sidewalk, once in a while noticing someone he had met earlier, but mostly striding past strangers wearing cloaks. He couldn’t help but wonder why they did so; there wasn’t a single law that said anything about anyone being required to wear cloaks.
As he walked by, he swung his briefcase back in forth. He swung his briefcase back, and then he would have swung it forward, but it had suddenly disappeared. It took him a moment to take in what had just happened, and then he whirled around for the source of the strange disappearance. He certainly didn’t have to look far.
Towering above him, wearing a brownish cloak, was a man he immediately remembered as Reach Porsh. His pale-white skin flashed against the sun, which soon disappeared under dark-colored clouds. He was wearing the biggest boots, and had the briefcase clutched in his left hand. His right hand was holding a cell phone. Parsy couldn’t help noticing how strong his grip on both of these artifacts was; he could see the veins pumping toward his hands.
And he ran off, as fast as Parsy had ever seen anyone run. And the law flashed before Parsy’s eyes, just as he remembered that his briefcase contained more than $300 in it. Law 7, stealing more than $80 is punishable for a sentence of at least 2 years in prison. For every additional $5, 1 year is added. For every case in which they crave—
Parsy stopped his thoughts there, for the main point had been caught. He chased Reach Porsh as fast as he could.
“DM—Detective Member—is on your trail; FREEZE!” shouted Parsy with a straight face. “Failure to do so will result in doubled prison years. FREEZE! Failure to do so will result in tripled prison years. FREEZE! Failure to do so will—where’d you go?”
For Reach had turned around a corner, and as soon as Parsy reached the corner, Reach had disappeared.
He walked down the alley, looking around for any sign of Reach. Failure to do so would result in nothing whatsoever, except for a fine of at least $300—or was that just a result of losing his briefcase which had the money contained inside? Now that he thought of it, there was no law that mentioned failure to fit a job description. That probably meant that even if he was terrible at the job, he would remain; in other words, he was doomed to never see the city of Rems again.
At last, he found the faintest clue that Reach had passed here—a briefcase, which he immediately recognized as his own—was lying on the ground, next to a doorway that was locked.
When Parsy figured this out, he didn’t attempt to get through the door. If he wasn’t going to get fired for failing at his job, why should he work at his job?
It turned out that Orsit Blorph was a detective as well, and they got into better contact. At one point, they were driving in a car, talking about that previous occurrence.
“So you’re telling me that he just disappeared behind a locked door, leaving your briefcase, with $300 in it?”
“Yup,” answered Parsy.
“And he had run off with it? Surely he knew that it was loaded with greens?”
“I suppose,” Parsy said.
“Was there anything else you could tell me? Perhaps something you noticed by chance?”
“No, I don’t think so. I told you everything I could.”
“Something funny is going on,” Orsit wondered aloud. “Why would he steal something and then leave it behind?”
“I can think of an infinite number of reasons,” replied Parsy. “Of course, none of them have the least bit of a chance of being the case.”
“Well, there is a little something he might have known that could have made him drop the briefcase and hide.”
“What might that be?” asked Parsy in surprise. “You mean you think you’ve solved this mystery?”
“Nah, he would have to have had a reason for taking it in the first place; this theory doesn’t solve that part of it.”
“So, what is it?”
“Well, there’s a name for all laws that, if broken, are punishable for more than 1 year at prison. They’re called Federal Promises.”
“So?”
“Don’t you think there’s a reason for that?”
“I suppose that’s a possibility,” said Parsy with an air of someone who was wondering whether there was a God.
“Well, there’s never been a case in which a Federal Promise has been broken, and the doer of the crime wasn’t punished. Are you sure there’s nothing you might have failed to mention about this crime?”
“Wait, stop the car,” said Parsy.
“Why?”
“This is where I met him in the first place,” Parsy answered.
“You mean you actually met him before the robbery?”
“Yes; he was looking behind me, and when I looked back,” Parsy said, facing the same direction as he had done when he met Reach Porsh, and then turning around to look at the billboard, “I saw that billboard.”
“Are you sure? That billboard is a warning about the history of Federal Promises. Surely he would not look at that warning sign and then steal something worth that?”
The billboard was painted white, with the words Warning: All Federal Promises (1 or more years in prison) are bound to be punished; they never haven’t been punished, pasted to it in red.
“What did he say to you?”
“Don’t bother him or there’ll be trouble?” answered Parsy uncertainly.
“You should have been a little bit suspicious about him, shouldn’t you have?” asked Orsit.
“I suppose I should have. I didn’t really have time to think.”
“Believe me, the people at the Detective Den won’t be happy about hearing that you actually met him, and you weren’t suspicious. In fact, they’ll be angrier at you for being so naive than at him for stealing your stuff.”
“Are—are you saying I shouldn’t tell them about it?” asked Parsy, yet again rather uncertainly.
“Yes, definitely.”
*
But Parsy realized that this meant that Reach Porsh must think he could escape being punished for Federal promise. Though he didn’t report it, he did talk about it in a hypothetical sense, and, to his amazement, they didn’t seem the least bit suspicious that his hypothetical situation could have been reality.
“Well, if that was your situation, we’d just tell you that this kind of thing happens all the time. They think they’re powerful, and we overpower them.”
“But why would they do such a thing?” asked Parsy in great confusion.
“The laws have been found to be psychologically flawed, making people think they’re better than everyone else. The truth of the matter is that they aren’t; they’ve all been punished, doomed to misery.”
Orsit wasn’t willing to say anything else about the situation, so it looked like Parsy was alone with his case.
“Have you found a case, yet?”
“No,” Parsy muttered, looking at the ground so as not to meet the person’s eyes. He had the feeling that anyone would be able to see just by looking into his eyes that he was lying.
“Well, then, you should go back to your original home to say hello.”
“Didn’t you say you were famous in that city of yours? Don’t you have to come up with a cover story for your sudden disappearance?”
“Yeah, I guess so,” answered Parsy, his voice suddenly distant. He couldn’t believe his ears. He was being told to go back home!
He filled his car, and drove southward. At last, he was back in the familiar city of Rems. He stopped at a restaurant. As he got out of his car, he wondered what they would say; what reactions had occurred as a result of his disappearance?
Then he kicked the door open.
“Hey, it’s Parsy Gawsh, guys!”
“He’s come back from the dead, haven’t you?” said another person, looking at him.
“No, I just had a new position.”
“Had a new position, have you? The news media was all about how all the clues added up to just one possible conclusion—kidnapping. Eventually, they were talking about it as if they were certain that it had been kidnapping, ‘in other news, the police are still on the kidnapper’s trail, though they haven’t found a single footprint in the mud.’”
“Hey, Parsy, what would you like?” asked a waiter.
“Nothing, just water,” he muttered.
For a while, not a single subject was raised; Parsy’s kidnapping had been exhausted. But it was too obvious what would come next…
And when it did, Parsy’s stomach gave an uncomfortable lurch.
“Hey, what about that Bad old Wolf?”
“Yeah, what’s the story?” asked everyone in unison, though they all knew it by heart.
“Well, a hundred years ago, an owner of a shop, by the name of Zach UnLuk was cleaning up his store for the night. When he was done, he put up his rag on a shelf above the register counter, and went to bed.
“That night, a big, bad wolf came to the shop and took every last artifact that rested on the shelves, except for the old rag that lay above the register, dripping, dripping on the counter, dripping nonstop. At last, Bad Wolf left the shop.
“And when the shopkeeper came back the following night, everything was gone. No one knew what had happened; no one had seen a thing the previous night. But everyone knew that someone had disliked the constantly dripping rag.
“To this day, no one knows who that mysterious, Bad Wolf, was,” finished the story teller.
The story, obviously, was just to explain the disappearances; there probably was no bad wolf; maybe some terrible storm came by and only got the artifacts within the shop by coincidence.
But that didn’t stop people from researching the story, for it had happened, unless all reality began at some point after that with everything to account for previous occurrences, such as memories. There were many who had wasted their lives trying to find out the true name of Bad Wolf.
But for Parsy, if the others knew what he was going through at that moment, they would shut up.
That night, Parsy refused to sleep in his old house. “I no longer live here. Therefore, I should take the hotel down the street.”
“But why don’t you live here anymore?” asked his old wife.
“I have a new top-secret occupation,” said Parsy for the fifteenth time, “far off in the east.”
“Oh, really?” said his wife in a baby voice. Then she thundered, “And why didn’t you tell us ahead of time?”
“It was on such short notice,” replied Parsy.
“Must have been very, very short notice, considering you came all the way to our street before leaving for it.”
“Oh, uh…” Parsy hadn’t realized that they might have researched this deeply enough to have figured out that part of it.
He spent the night at Ian’s Inn. The next morning, he filled his car with gasoline. “Won’t be taking any stops,” he replied to anyone who asked him why he was taking so long at the tank. The truth was, of course, that he was getting more gas than would fit a normal car, so he could shake off anyone trying to follow him. That way, his risks of stopping for gas and meeting one of his friends when he would finally turn north would be virtually zero.
He did indeed spot a car that looked familiar on his way. It was following his every move very intently. In fact, it was following him so intently that the person driving it apparently didn’t notice the sign that signified the need for gas until the car completely ran out, and he had to pull over, or risk accident.
Parsy smiled, and turned at the next intersection.
Much to his surprise, Orsit gave him a report.
“Well, I saw the dude, and decided to give him a chase. It completely failed. I ran him down for two hours straight; by the end it was like running through water, I was so drenched in sweat. Why did I run him, you ask? He stole my car! That’s why I ran him!”
The last two sentences stumped Parsy, and for a few seconds, he was just sitting there, staring, as Orsit took a drink of water from his cup.
Then he got to his senses. “Wouldn’t he have been driving that car?”
“Indeed; that is why he managed to outrun me.”
That night, Parsy went home, stressed out by all the things that were buzzing around in his mind. He stepped in bed. Federal promises… Reach Porsh breaking them… believing that he can—
Suddenly, Parsy sat up bolt right in his bed. His eyes had just gone red with terror. Nothing in particular had happened; he had simply realized what all this meant. It meant that Reach’s plan was working; he was able to escape the law.
A few days later, Reach turned up again. This time, he stole Parsy’s last piece of corn as he was finishing eating. Despite the minute level of this offense, Parsy’s anger got the best of his sense. He immediately stood up and ran right after the man.
After a moment, he got his head cleared. “DM—Detective Member—is on your trail; FREEZE!” shouted Parsy with a straight face. “Failure to do so will result in doubled prison years. FREEZE! Failure to do so will result in tripled prison years. FREEZE! Failure to do so will result in quadrupled prison years. FREEZE! Failure to do so will result in a lifetime of prison. FREEZE! Failure to do so will result in stricter punishment. FREEZE! Failure to do so will result in the death penalty. FREEZE! Failure to do so will result in suffering before death. FREEZE! Failure to do so will result in loss of food supply. FREEZE! Failure to do so will result in loss of water supply. FREEZE! Failure to do so will result in no food and water for 3 days, after which suffering will be placed before death. FREEZE! Failure to do so will result in—ah, what’s the point?”
He continued running, but stopped shouting his orders. Finally, he managed to get a grip of Reach. He did so by reaching out and grabbing his arms. The muscles in the arm felt somewhat stiff. Reach thrust his arms away from Parsy, and slammed him on the head with incredible force, and as Parsy cowered from this sudden sharp pain, Reach ran off at an incredibly enormous speed.
That is the final straw, though Parsy. I can’t do this alone, or with one partner. I need help. So he stomped off to the Detective Den.
He reported everything, except for how Orsit had told him not to tell anyone about the case. He thought that would sound foolish.
“I’m sorry, but you were wrong all along. It’s a rare illness, in and out of Sepps. His muscles are stiff, you say? Yep, that’s the illness.
“If one gives a person like this a lot of exercise in a small amount of time, such as the anger that boils up inside when locked in jail, the muscles loosen up, enough so that the strength of the person in question is increased greatly. It’s a bit like free muscle.”
So Reach hadn’t thought he could escape their grasp. He had wanted Parsy to catch him, so that he could gain power while he was locked up. The reason he had been avoiding Parsy was to cover up.
So they were talking about someone who was virtually immortal. In order to kill him, one would have to make sure he doesn’t suffer. Otherwise, Reach’s power would outweigh his pain. The best punishment for him would be to leave him alone.
“Ok, so that’s that. Good job of telling us this. I know you feel too responsible to share the cases with us; every new person does.” Parsy’s stomach gave a twitch at the thought of them figuring out that this wasn’t why he hadn’t told them beforehand. “But it’s figured out nonetheless, and that’s all that matters.”
“Aren’t you going to scold me for having the wrong ideas about this person?”
“Nah, even if you had known about the illness, it wouldn’t have made as much difference, because it would be a 50-50 chance. Hey, do you want to go home and spend some time with your friends?”
These people were nicer than Parsy thought.
And so he did.
There, he saw someone standing in front of the restaurant that he always went to.
“Hey, what’s up?” he asked.
The man looked over at him, no hint of recognition. He just sat down on the steps leading up the stoop. Parsy looked around for subject of conversation. There was a poster titled Bad Wolf—Really Bad?
“I’ve heard there are people who have spent their whole lives searching for Bad Wolf’s real name, yet nobody searching for hard-core proof that he existed.”
“I tried to figure out his name,” said the man.
“Did you succeed?”
The man shook his head. Parsy said, “No, of course not. Say, why don’t you go in there and get me some pop or something?”
The man looked around, seemingly doing some quick thinking. “Why should I? There’s a cooler on the porsh.”
Parsy looked up. Yes, there was a cooler on the porch. But then he realized that… “Did you say that on purpose?”
The man nodded. “You new there?”
Parsy knew that by there, he meant Sepps, and nodded.
“He always goes after the new guy. He’s just always looking for trouble. We actually know now that he didn’t really rob that shop a hundred years ago, though he was alive back then; he’s almost immortal. Maybe he was involved.