Milo Moon: It Never Happened
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Authors: Derek Haines
Milo Moon
by Derek Haines
Milo Moon
Copyright © 2010 by Derek Haines
All Rights Reserved
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License Notes
This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
Disclaimer
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
Also by Derek Haines
Septimity and The Blood Brotherhood
Loss, Limbo, Life and Love (Poetry)
‘The very word ‘secrecy’ is repugnant in a free and open society; and we are as a people inherently and historically opposed to secret societies, to secret oaths, and to secret proceedings.’
John Fitzgerald Kennedy
Chapter 1 - Wednesday
Of course it had to happen on a Wednesday.
Milo was always wary of Wednesdays. It was the one day of the week that always arrived without warning and then tended to have a bad feeling about it after it had crept up on him. Nothing good ever happened on Wednesdays for Milo Moon. The other days of the week were not a great deal better, as they also had a habit of not bringing anything good with them, but it was Wednesdays in particular that he found the easiest to dislike.
Being a nobody was Milo’s speciality. If he had been average, it would have made him happier. But this wasn’t to be. His hair was receding, thinning and had a nondescript type of mousey grey colour about it that tended to be ignored by most people, as they concentrated on his unfashionable tortoiseshell horned-rimmed glasses. His optician told him that they made him look intelligent. Milo chose them because they were the cheapest.
He wasn’t entirely sure he needed glasses, but he had noticed that he bumped into things less, and his level of clumsiness had reduced somewhat since wearing them. A matching pair of prescription sunglasses came with the deal, but as he never went out in the sun, they tended to be reserved for just trying to look cool when he was not indoors.
At five foot three, he made no impression whatsoever, and was well accustomed to being overlooked. Since he got his glasses though, his eyes now looked close to something like normal. Without his glasses they were beady and too far away from the bridge of his nose. A weird mixture of grey, green and insipid lime would probably be the kindest thing one could say about the colour of his eyes.
However, Milo always tried the best he could to look good. His clothes were always clean, but he hadn’t quite managed to master the skill of ironing. If he had had an iron, it would have helped in this regard. The best he could do was to keep his entire wardrobe of clothes under his mattress and pray for some degree of flatness. His favourite colour was brown. All shades of brown in fact, and this gave him an air of a total lack of dress sense. It didn’t matter though as no one ever noticed Milo anyway. If anyone had taken the time, they would have discovered a very polite, honest and boring young man with a somewhat childish disposition who rarely smiled, as there was no reason to in his mind.
He had hoped to marry. Even if just to have someone experienced in ironing clothes, or perhaps for company and intelligent conversation in the evenings. For one reason or another, this miracle hadn’t happened. His job was mundane. Putting nuts on bolts, and then counting to ten, and sealing them in little plastic bags. He did get to work with different sized nuts and bolts, so that helped in relieving the boredom. The big ones were the most fun in Milo’s mind, but the smaller ones needed more dexterity.
However, today was not going to be a big nuts and blots fun day. He rose from his bed finally, after he had hit the snooze button five times, at eight-fifteen, and looked at his
‘Joe Your Friendly Neighbourhood Butcher’
calendar that was nailed to his bedroom door. Not only was it Wednesday, but it was also his birthday. This was hardly a good day to discover that you really don’t exist.
Milo dug around under his mattress and located the flattest pair of brown corduroy trousers and less than matching fawnish-brown shirt. After brushing his teeth, he discovered that he wasn’t motivated enough to have a shower, so he just sprayed deodorant around his body until he felt the stale sweat smell had been covered sufficiently. He had been promising himself that he would have the motivation for a shower today, but as had happened for five days now, he broke his promise to himself, again. He reassured himself with the knowledge that his last shower had been in fact quite a long one, so it wasn’t so bad. Anyway, it was time for breakfast. He was already running late, but a bit later hardly seemed to matter now.
No name instant coffee powder was Milo’s favourite. He was fascinated by the colour when he added water to it, as it always seemed to match what he was wearing. It also gave his stale bread a touch of colour, as he dipped it in his coffee and waited for it to be soft enough to eat.
‘Drrrinnggggg, ddrrriinng.’
The sound of his doorbell so early in the morning rather startled Milo, and nearly led to his bread being over soaked and tumbling to the bottom of his coffee cup. Luckily, it hadn’t sunk and he managed to get it to his mouth by scooping it out of his coffee with his fingers.
‘Whbhoo isst?’ Milo mumbled, and then realised he was still sucking the coffee soaked bread from his fingers, so he tried again.
‘Who is it?’ he yelled, in a clear and audible voice this time.
‘Drrrinnggggg, ddrrriinng.’
‘The lock doesn’t work, so you may as well just barge in and have breakfast with me!’ Milo yelled again in response to the annoying sound of the doorbell.
‘Drrrinnggggg, ddrrriinng,’
‘Are you deaf or what?’ Milo was now getting annoyed. He grumpily got up from his small kitchen table for one and stamped his feet all the way to the door, some five steps away. Then opened it.
‘Who are you then?’ Milo asked, with an early morning impolite intonation reserved for door-to-door salesmen and telephone marketers.
‘Good morning. I’m here to collect you,’ the man said.
‘Why are you sort of semi-transparent?’ Milo asked, surprisingly nonchalantly when confronted by an eighty-five percent visible man wearing an odd looking blue suit. Milo didn’t like blue at all. But the fact that the suit seemed to be made from a seaweed type of substance was what really concerned him. His skin seemed to have a bit of a mauve tinge as well, which didn’t help matters. He was just a little shorter than Milo. So that helped offset some of the negatives.
‘Oh, I am sorry. Does it disturb you?’
‘Well, yes it does a bit.’
‘Right. Hold on. I was in a bit of a rush this morning. Sorry,’ the semi-transparent man on Milo’s doorstep replied, and then raised his ring finger on his left hand and pointed it towards his mouth. ‘Sorry control, could you just check my beam. I seem to have upset a client here with a bit of transparency.’
Milo looked at the man, with his mouth held open, indicating a small amount of astonishment. A voice emanating from the right palm of the semi-transparent man replied.
‘Sorry about that, Victor Romeo. You know what it’s like here at the start of a shift. You should be on full power in about ten seconds.’
‘Is that better?’ the man asked, as he now became fully un-transparent.
‘Er. Yes, I suppose so,’ Milo replied, not knowing what else to say really.
‘Look, sorry for being so early, but I have a busy day ahead of me, so thought I’d make an early start,’ the man said, as he started fumbling with a very tatty old green file that seemed to be full of liquid. ‘Now, here we are. Milo Moon 35WBTR.’
‘Sorry?’ Milo asked.
‘Your name sir. It’s Milo Moon 35WBTR, isn’t it?’
‘Well, the first bit yes. But not the password at the end,’ Milo said, rather indignantly. ‘Anyway, what’s your name? Victor Romeo?’
‘Oh no. My name is George. George Smithe. With an ‘E’. Everybody gets it wrong. My father’s fault. Victor Romeo is just the call sign I use when I’m out of the office. Initials for virtual reality.’
‘Virtual Reality George Smithe. With an ‘E’?’ Milo asked, in complete astonishment at what was occurring on his doorstep. And so early in the day. Then remembering it was Wednesday, so why should he be surprised.
‘No, just George,’ George answered, with no aspect of humour in his tone.
‘Oh, I see,’ was all Milo could think to say, until he stumbled upon some degree of politeness. ‘Would you care for a cup of coffee, George?’
‘That’s very kind of you,’ George replied, as Milo indicated the direction to his table for one.
‘I recall you mentioned something about you being here to collect me.’
‘Yes, that’s right. But let’s get to that after a coffee. I’m really very thirsty. You know what being beamed is like. Dehydrates you like hell.’
‘I’ll put the kettle on then,’ Milo said quietly, and suddenly felt that his mouth was wide open. He closed it, and got on with making coffee for his strange guest.
‘I’m sorry, I don’t have any sugar, and only powdered whitener.’
‘Oh, that’s fine. I take my coffee black. Well, dark brown in this case,’ George said, when he saw the coffee and Milo missed the sarcasm completely.
‘Why did you call me Milo Moon 35WBTR?’ Milo asked, wanting to try and eliminate one mystery at a time.
‘Oh sorry, I thought you knew.’
‘Knew what?’
‘Your file name.’
‘What file name George?’ Milo asked. Now clearly lost, but a little intrigued.
‘You did get your BTR notification last week, didn’t you Milo?’
‘No. And how would I know what a BTR notification looked like?’
‘They are yellow. With BTR stamped in red capital letters on the front of the envelope, along with ‘
Very Important’
also in bright red. Inside the envelope there is a large plastic file with your name and BTR date and details,’ George explained very carefully.
‘Yellow, with big red letters and plastic details, right?’ Milo asked.
‘That’s the one. So you received it then?’
‘No.’
George went back to his left ring finger and asked about Milo’s BTR file. ‘He says he never received it,’ George said, and waited for a response from his right palm. Checking that his fingernails were clean while he waited.
‘He is probably right, Victor Romeo. Just checked. There is a backlog on BTR deliveries. He should get it next week. Probably on Wednesday,’ came the reply from George’s palm.
‘Thanks control,’ George said, and put his palm and digit back into a relatively normal position.
‘Told you,’ Milo said. ‘Will this take long? I’m running late for work.’
‘You’re already excused from work today, Milo.’
‘How do you know?’
‘Because it is noted in your file here,’ George replied.
‘Can we go back a bit? What does Milo Moon 35WBTR mean?’ Milo asked.
‘Milo Moon. That’s you. Thirty-five years old today. W is for Wednesday. And BTR, means back to reality. Simple really.’
‘Can I ask you something else, George?’
‘Sure, what is it?’
‘Can I have the chair please?’
George and Milo paused for a while, as each seemed to be filing each other’s confusion and misunderstandings before trying to proceed with such a difficult conversation so early in the morning.
Milo decided that he now had enough courage to try and venture forward. ‘From the fact that you were transparent when we first met leads me to think that I probably don’t understand everything I should. Am I right?’
‘Oh, I’m sorry. That was rather rude of me not to check first.’
‘Check what?’
‘That I was fully beamed.’
