Terry Neale - Jo-el

“Cleaning crew going in tomorrow. They even disassembled parts of my motorcycles.”

“Bet that pissed you off?”

“Bloody right.”

We made small talk, then walked over to the Hyatt and went up to my suite. Maggie was impressed.

“Splashing out, eh! Not like you, Dad?”

“Another story.”

She plonked herself down on the sofa where Sally had been, then looked at me expectantly. “Do the change thing! Just to prove it.”

I changed into Jo-el with the wings.

“Amazing,” her eyes were beaming, she’d forgotten all the unpleasantness of our first moments. “You can change your face, you can be anybody, how does that work?”

“It’s a hologram, just like the clothes, they’re not really there.”

She came over and touched my face, poking her finger at my cheek to see if her finger passed through the holographic image. But it was so thin, so she couldn’t see it.

“So, are you going to tell me, or what?”

“Maybe I should show you something else.”

“Whatever!”

“It’s hard to know where to start. Let’s go have some fun.”

Maggie was excited, like the little girl I remembered on her first trip to Disneyland. “Where would you like to go?” I asked.

“What do you mean?”

“If you could go anywhere in the world right now, where would you go?”

It was like seeing a kid with a new toy, her face was alive. “You’re kidding?”

I shook my head and waited. “Oh, Europe is out, middle of the night there.”

“What? We’re going to fly somewhere?”

“Sort of.”

“Dad, tell me,” she begged.

“How about Hawaii? Waikiki Beach. It’s early evening there, we could have an ice-cream.”

“We’re going to fly three thousand miles for an ice-cream? How long will that take?”

I asked Sally what the temperature was in Hawaii, she said seventy-five degrees, perfect. “Take your sweater off, Maggie.” She did what I asked. I changed back to Dave Murphy in light slacks and a golf-shirt.

“Man, I’d love to be able to do that.” Maggie said.

“Hold my hand.”

“Bit weird, Dad?” Maggie was confused.

“Something I didn’t say on CNN earlier. I can travel anywhere in the world at almost the speed of light.”

Maggie yanked her hand from mine and stepped away. She stared at me incredulously. “You’re joking? No way.”

I nodded and reached to hold her hand again. “We need to be touching. You won’t feel anything, just maybe a little disorientation when we arrive.”

“You weren’t joking, were you? I don’t believe this.”

“Let me find a spot out of sight, okay. Ready?”

She bobbed her head once and I bounced us to a small park near Honolulu Zoo. The air was warm and the sun bright, a light breeze blew in from the sea. Maggie help my hand and stood still, with her mouth gapping wide open.

“Oh my God! I don’t believe it.” She looked around, there were local Hawaiian people along a pathway and towards the zoo.

“Come on, let’s get an ice-cream.” I pulled her out of her trance. We walked along Waikiki beach, watching the giant waves break on the sand, the surfers skimming the clear blue ocean. Maggie kept spouting expletives. I was taking my daughter on a trip and she was in awe. Every father’s dream. I’d jumped back in time to a period, long gone, that I had truly adored, when my children looked up to me and held my hand tightly. When an ice-cream or a new toy was enough for me to be the best dad in the world. My heart beat strongly and I savored this moment, I was as happy as I’d been for a long, long time.

We bought Ice-cream and sat on a wall watching the sun slowly set on the western horizon. I told Maggie the whole story, up to the pending disaster. I fought with myself if I should go that far. She believed me, everything. She said, how could she not believe me, we were in Hawaii, we traveled there in one second. Then I could see a frown appear on her forehead.

“Why Dad? If these aliens have been watching us for so long, why now?”

“The last thing I haven’t told you yet. I haven’t told anyone else, either. You would be the first to know. I was keeping it until I thought the people of the world could accept it and believe me.”

I had her complete attention. “What, Dad? What could be anymore nuts than all the stuff you’ve said?”

“Jo-el, ” Sally voice blared in my ear. “That Russian billionaire has just found out about Pippa.”

“What’s he doing?”

“He has a crew in DC, he just instructed them to abduct her.”

“How long?”

“Fifteen minutes, max.”

“Okay.”

“Dad, what’s up?”

“Small problem, we need to go.”

“What about the last thing you were going to tell me?”

“I’ll tell you later, really. Come-on, we have to find somewhere out of sight.”

I almost dragged Maggie away from the beach to a hotel close by. We found an empty corridor, I grabbed her arm and we bounced back to my hotel suite in San Francisco.

“You better go home now, sweetie. I’ll talk to you tomorrow, I’ve got to go, life on the line.”

“Jo-el, I can take care of it.”

Of course, I’m not thinking. Maggie was looking at me, she was about to say something, but I raised my hand.

“You’re just going to kill them!” I asked.

“Yes!” Of course, that’s what I do.

I had panicked. “Okay, Sally, sure, do it.” I said it out loud.

Maggie was confused. “Who were you talking to?”

“My computer, I call it Sally.”

“Why?”

“Hang-on!” I said to Maggie, she saw I was absorbed. I pulled out the disc-monitor and threw it in the air. “Put it on the monitor, Sally.”

A Three-D image of three men exiting a car in darkness appeared. It was raining, the men were wearing heavy overcoats, their faces hidden by baseball caps. Two of the men had their right hands tucked deep in side-pockets, the other had his hand tucked under his overcoat. It didn’t take a lot of imagination to understand what they were carrying. The street in view was empty, nothing moved. I recognized Pippa’s building. Maggie stood by me watching.

“What the hell is happening, Dad? They’re carrying!”

“Wait Maggie, just watch.”

The first man reached the front door and hit it hard with his right foot, it crashed open. They rushed in. “Sally, do it!” I shouted. But nothing happened. Then the Three-D video flickered and came back on, I’d never seen that before. The men were taking the back-stairs, Pippa’s apartment was on the third floor. “Sally!” I shouted. The video went off. Shit!

“Sally, what the hell is going on?” I started pacing around the room. But Sally didn’t answer. Shit! I was blind, I felt naked, I was sweating. I imagined the scene, then I calmed down, even if they got her I could find them. Maggie had returned to the sofa. She sat with her hands in her lap leaning forward, watching her father stress out.

Then the video came on again. The men were lying haphazardly in the emergency stairwell of the apartment building. They weren’t moving.

“Is it done?” I asked the air.

“Yes, Jo-el. They are all dead.”

I breathed easier, I thought of Pippa and Billy. “We need to inform the authorities.” I said.

“I’ll do it.”

“What went wrong, Sally?”

“What’s going on?” Maggie asked.

“Maybe we should talk when Maggie leaves?” I heard Sally in my ear.

“You killed those guys, Dad! How did you do that? You can’t do that. I’m a police officer.”

I looked at her, my mind all over the place. My little girl. I’d just bought you ice-cream in Hawaii, on the beach, we held hands. My daughter the police officer, trained to uphold the law.