Chapter 2

Author’s Note: Thanks for the comments on the first chapters of C&G. I’m happy to get the feedback, positive and negative. As usual, I write too much about characters (and maybe I put some plot in there too), but not enough about sex. So, if that’s not for you, I’ll politely ask you to see yourself to the door. For the rest of you, I will assume you’ve read the first parts of this series before reading this. A good familiarity with the main characters is required and I don’t do much backstory in this one. If this is your first time here, please stop to read C&G #1 and C&G #1.5 as characters and events in those tales are referenced here. Reading the Primer is also recommended.

Anyways, the usual bits: “blah blah anyone engaging in sex in this story is over 18 blah blah blah”. Please do comment if you’ve got something to add that makes me a better writer. Or even if you hated it; those are pretty funny too. A last note, sometimes a cigar is just a cigar. On with the show...

Strange things blow in through my window on the wings of the night wind and I don’t worry about my destiny. - Carl Sandburg

“I’m troubled,” Grum said, sounding quite far from actually being troubled. His nature was not one to be contemplative or even have concerns. But his recent interactions with humanity had exposed him to new sensations. It was only natural, in a manner, for him to mimic or even adapt and implement some of the behaviors which he normally might not even know of, let alone try.

Corax’s expression was one of mild interest, maybe even curiosity. He knew his other half was impulsive, keen to try new things when they struck his fancy. Perhaps this confusion was a by-product of a mild bit of envy for him, well, them really, to try on different roles? The Raven let his colleague parse through his thoughts at his own pace.

“Are we to become ... involved?” he continued. There was a ruminating pause in the progression of ideas as the foreign concepts of evaluation, decision, intervention and then consequences were chewed and sifted through. “Is it our place?”

The point was a valid one. The Closed Realities they serviced in their duties were complete. This meant that, as viewed from the outside, all the events within that CR, from the beginning of time until the end of the universe, were contained in a closed boundary. An outside viewer could then observe any time from the inception of that CR to its eventual entropic end. So, would their interactions within just one CR, and then any resulting cascade down the timelines, be disruptive to the Collective as a whole? Or were their interventions already a part of the Collective web and thus, predetermined? Were they already factored in?

Corax posed a big-picture perspective. “Does our involvement prevent or alter a final outcome? Would these Closed Realities not achieve all the possible outcomes? Would these actions result in a CR which was prevented from having an ending where energies were harnessed?”

A thoughtful pause, as this was examined. Grum walked through the exercise in steps. “The Closed Reality would still reach a conclusion, and from outside, the results could still be examined, as required. The seeded perturbation introduced would be absorbed into the events, and subsequent spawned CRs would follow the newly established actions, as always. Effect always follows cause within the time loop. The overlaid seed would simply be an adjustment. All energies would eventually be collected regardless and the net sum remains balanced.”

“Back to the question then: would this be wrong?” Corax gently prodded him for the logical next step.

“If a successful conclusion can be achieved and energies gathered for the re-seeded CR, then the end result is still achieved. All possibilities are to be explored. Rewriting one event with another is emphasizing a bias in one manner, but the net effect is null. Energy is still energy. Complete is still complete.”

“So, is it wrong? Is bias against one event necessarily bad?”

“No.”

“Are you unable to perform your role under such conditions?”

“My role, as well as yours, is still the same. Energies are gathered, harnessed and delivered from within the Closed Reality to the Collective. An event, whether altered or not, whether biased or not, and played out to its conclusion, still results in a completed CR.”

“Do you enjoy seeing the ripples caused by our actions in re-seeding echo through a Collective Filament?”

“I must admit, seeing the beauty of the slightest rearrangement, and the resulting cascade of adjustments through the CR is pleasing.”

“So, back to the larger question. Would changing details of the Collective to something so pleasing be troubling?”

A pause. “ ‘The Devil is in the details, but so is salvation.’”

“Interesting. Is that from a poem?”

“A man of war. I find it ... apt.”

“Are we to be the Devil? Or salvation?”

“You know as well as I that there is no difference, only perspective.”

“Grum, you have depths beyond what I would expect from one of your beauty. So, I must ask you to answer your own question. Are we to become involved?”

“Is the imprint still available?”

“Yes.”

“Has it agreed to assume a role within the Collective.”

“If asked, he will serve.”

“Then there would be three for a decision. I see.” The noise Grum made would’ve been a sigh, if there was air to breathe in that Collective space or had he the lungs to breathe it. “How to choose the threads to pull?”

“We have a precedent. There is a certain resolution in rebalancing that which has been tipped.”

“We do. And, there is. This would mean we are to have a certain ... biasing perspective? Is this the course then?”

Rather than end the discussion, there was just an eternal pause in conversation, in that place without time.

There’s a primeval sense present in every species, a sense of self-preservation to shy away from the sick among the herd. It’s, of course, an evolutionary trait to avoid the transmission of infection from the sick to healthy within a population. In social animals, it’s a shunning. ‘Avoid this member or risk your own health’. It’s as close to a law of social behavior as there could be.

The effects can be just as real even when there is no real illness or plague involved. When the outcast isn’t sick per se, so much as has given up on the society and has separated themselves voluntarily, this lack of engagement, or actions counter to the group’s normal code of conduct, sets off certain non-verbal alarms that the member is to be shunned.

Kevin Houghton was shunned. Inside Drunkerland, a small dive bar in Hong Kong, Kevin had three fingers of house-label-scotch left in a bottle which he’d bought a few hours earlier. From his lack of social interaction, appearance and general surliness, he had no company during his time there and had done the damage both to the bottle and to himself all alone. Other customers avoiding him could see and practically smell the ‘stay away’ vibe; a self-inflicted shunning. In a place the size of Drunkerland, this was no small feat. Drunkerland housed small tables and not that many of them, so space was at a premium; much like every place else on the damn island.

He alternated which dives he nursed his wounds in; he tended to wear out his welcome if he spent more than a few nights a week in any one spot. He liked the Tin Hau neighborhood where Drunkerland was located since there were more than a few budget hotels nearby, which meant more tourists and fewer locals. He’d rather lessen the chances of running into people he knew when he was in his cups.

Kevin knew he was never going to heal. He knew the unseen damage to him was fatal, and he only marked time to the point where he would leave society and all else behind.

As it was, he didn’t need to worry about anyone wanting to sit with him, since he looked every bit like the bleary-eyed drunk he was. The complementary peanuts sat untouched, with Kevin only focused on his glass or his hands on the small table top. Around him, the small interior was busy with the post work drinkers, but the chair opposite him sat empty.

Kevin reached for the bottle when the lights and the noise around him were subtly lowered. He raised his eyes to see what had happened. Seeing what was in front of him made him look twice; if he was in fact seeing double, he should look twice. After all, it’s not often that there is an eclipse indoors.

Standing in front of him, blocking out much of the sound and light from the surroundings was a tall man dressed in black – suit, shoes and coat. In his current condition, Kevin couldn’t say exactly how tall he was, but he guessed he was much closer to seven-feet tall than six. The man was skinny to the point of being skeletal. Kevin’s jaw hung open. Suddenly, the man was less tall but his lean face was much, much closer than it was previously. He had leaned towards Kevin...

This did not put Kevin at ease. At all. Kevin recoiled slightly

“Excuse me, but I was wondering if I may use this seat, as there are none other available?”

He stared at the tall man; jaw still agape.

The man’s eyes were black with only a tiny dark iris around the pupil. His face was, like him, long and lean, with jutting cheek bones, a large but slender nose and skin looking like he had permanent five-o’clock shadow.

Then the man smiled. In the back of Kevin’s mind, he really wondered what they were doctoring the scotch with to put that hallucination in front of him at that moment. Teeth, too large, too many and a distinct yellow shade were piled into that grin, each of them alone would make him uncomfortable. Combined, they made him gasp.

The man turned his head in a way that made Kevin feel he was being examined, seemingly from the inside out. But the opposite reaction occurred. Oddly, looking into those eyes there was a hypnotic warmth, an ease he hadn’t felt in ages. It was a welcome feeling, a pause in the inner turmoil that had been tearing his life apart for – how long now? He couldn’t even remember. It was as if, held within that gaze, there was a piece of him that was missing. Here it had been found; not yet put into place, but at least it had been located.

He had no idea why he said it, especially in light of the shunning, but Kevin’s words were “No, please. Won’t you join me?”. It came out as a hoarse whisper, as Kevin hadn’t had much practice in speaking lately and unused vocal cords can make a creaky, withered sound.

The tall man removed his Scally cap and adjusted the chair to sit down.

Running any kind of enterprise in the modern world is like juggling chainsaws, a slip in one area can leave you maimed. Or worse.

If you’re running a criminal enterprise, the complication factor climbs by an order of magnitude. Wong Tsing Hai, known as “Jimmy”, was pretty good at running a criminal enterprise, and pretty savvy about keeping those chainsaws in the air, all spinning and slashing. It was a matter of balance and of using your advantages.

Culturally and formally, Jimmy wasn’t at the top of heap within his particular organization; that top layer was almost as ceremonial as it was actual leadership, filled with elders seemingly more interested in cards and mah jong than making money and keeping territory. Jimmy and his layer of the organization did the day-to-day work and kept the wheels turning. By the rules of the Wo On Lok gang, he was too young and his role within the triad was over too small a part of the group’s activities for him to be at the top of the organizational chart.

But the thing was, by headcount, Jimmy’s narcotics synthesis group, was small, but the impact it had on the organization, its profitability, it was hugely out-of-proportion. This made him a very influential man within the gang regardless of age or title. Before Jimmy, drugs were a sideline for the WOL, funneling smack to street junkies and old dopers. Jimmy had come in a little under ten years before, as a runner and a street dealer before working up through the ranks, until he was the reason that the business kept expanding.

Word got out that he had the organizational chops and guts to grow it to the point where he intentionally turned down cooperative requests with other gangs. This had brought some heat onto him from the top layer – ‘play nice’ they said, ‘think about the cooperative money’. Of course, he thought about the money; such advice was practically an insult. But if he couldn’t control all aspects of the supply chain, the risk wasn’t worth it. Frankly, those other triads were morons, and working with them on his projects was practically begging to get caught. That wasn’t gonna happen on his watch.

Politely, and with due respect, Jimmy told his bosses that he had considered them, and that he would never put short-term profits over a real risk them or the gang with anything that would come back to bite them. This earned him some quiet respect from those older guys, that he was looking to protect them over profits; respect which could grease his climb to the top.

Jimmy was an operational guy, a hands-on planner and organizer and for that he had reached the level of Fu Shan Chu, which directly translated to “deputy mountain master”. It was a high position for someone young. He had a distinct advantage in his rise within the WOL ranks. It was his family.

Jimmy’s immediate family was simply him, his brother and his parents. They weren’t wealthy. They didn’t have a strong connection with the triads and tongs. They were just a family. Two parents and two brothers who loved each other. They had lived in Hong Kong for the last thirty years, after coming over from Guangzhou, where they still had family roots. His dad was a mid-level bureaucrat in a government agency, while his mother was a seamstress in a high-end tailor shop. Not the most auspicious background for success in the underworld.

But both brothers were raised with an understanding of how large organizational structures worked, from their father while their mother’s contribution to their personalities was a keen eye for detail. Together, they both achieved success in their chosen fields, Jimmy’s just happened to be running an underground criminal enterprise, a field where both a big-picture knowledge of bureaucracy and micro-level for detail were critical in staying one step ahead of the both the competition and the law. Both types of adversaries were ever-present as well as lethal, so his skill set gave him an advantage within the WOL.

Long-term success in the narcotics business was more than not getting caught; it was about creating markets before they even existed. It was too easy to get caught with the classics, like MDMA, cocaine, heroin or methamphetamines. These were illegal everywhere and every hotshot Customs and Narcotics Suppression Bureau agent was ready for those. What they weren’t looking for were compounds which were not illegal, at least not yet.

Analytic chemistry labs were creating compounds which were analogues to those tried and tested workhorses of the clubs, shooting galleries and the home user, but were just a microscopic detail different, so that they weren’t on the watchdog lists.

Drug laws were maddeningly specific about what was and wasn’t illegal. The exact chemical formula had to fit the profile like a key in a lock, or else it was considered legal. It could still be confiscated if it set off alarm bells in some chemistry set, but it wouldn’t trigger the heavy hand of imprisonment or worse by the government. It was very precise.

In fact, regulators couldn’t hope to even keep up with these newer pharmaceuticals, they were so hopelessly outmatched. Those could be shipped anywhere and everywhere with impunity. And Jimmy’s extra advantage was that he was at the forefront of the trend; he was a greyhound running so far ahead of the bloodhounds who were sniffing behind him; they were so far back that he may as well have been running alone.

But today, Jimmy had another concern. Today, Joyce was on his mind. Or more explicitly, the problems Joyce causes were now his troubles.

Joyce Tan Xiao Li was Jimmy’s mistress and she was more than a handful. She was stunningly beautiful, elegant and well-connected. She was also a bitch, had two kids from a previous marriage and had been on the run for the last twenty months. At that moment, she screamed at him from his cell phone.

“Jimmy, you lazy pig,” she was building up to a good screech. He knew all the warning signs. Even over the phone, her anger gave her voice a grating quality. “You need to get off your ass and get us a better place, I can’t stand it here. And I need to get back into the city!” The last words were at a volume loud enough that Jimmy cringed despite holding the phone at arm’s length. Without a word, he put the phone in his pocket. He had known Joyce long enough to know that once she’d reached that volume on a call she’d hang up immediately after, so there was no need to continue “talking”. She had been on him for months about relocating and getting back to Hong Kong, but two years wasn’t up yet so she’d have to stay in hiding for a while longer.

“On the run” and “in hiding” were both subjective of course, as Joyce did neither. She was sitting pretty in a twenty-seventh story luxury condo less than six miles away from where Jimmy was standing in Hong Kong. But she may as well have been in another world. And in a way, she was.

Hong Kong, and its jealous, younger sibling city, Shenzhen, are located in the southeast corner of China, with HK as an estuary of the Pearl River jutting into the South China Sea. The two cities are connected by the Shenzhen Bay Bridge, meaning one can drive a little under four miles from HK into mainland China in less than half an hour.

HK had been glamourous international city for over a century due to the British occupation, but until 1980, sleepy Shenzhen was little fishing village with about 30,000 residents. But after the Chinese government declared Shenzhen a Special Economic Zone, intending to mirror HK’s success as a financial and shipping powerhouse, the mainland city exploded. By the mid 2010’s it was estimated that the full population of Shenzhen officially doubled and unofficially almost tripled the 7.4 million HK residents. Shenzhen had become not only a vital business and shipping port, but also a mecca for manufacturing and sales for goods, both legal and gray market. Which brings in the temptation for criminal activity. And those who would run and profit from it, of course.

The sudden influx of incredible wealth into Shenzhen resulted in a cityscape littered with slapped together skyscrapers, luxury goods and their knock offs and the nouveau riche with the just plain wanna-be’s tagging along, all of it with the distinctly China flavor.

That was Joyce Tan, to a “T”. Rich but bereft, posh but classless; a beautiful façade on a crumbling internal edifice. At times, Jimmy was wary of Joyce like an animal wrangler was of the venomous snakes; he knew about the fangs and the venom, those were lethal enough on their own. But the true danger was the unpredictability of the damn thing - when would it turn on him? Joyce was five-foot-four and 115 lbs. of writhing viper.

He knew there was no reasoning with her. She was the epitome of immediate gratification; he had reasoned with her that after two-years, she could re-emerge but she had to be patient. Waiting was not her game and she let him know that she set the rules; he would be rewarded greatly for getting what she wanted now. The implied threat was that she would just as easily punish him for disobeying. Joyce wanted something that she should’ve left alone.

She was biao zi, a real bitch, but get her in bed and all the nastiness outside seemed a small price to pay.

That’s how the whole thing got rolling in the first place, after all.

Kevin sat at the end of the bar inside The Pontiac, another bottle of cheap scotch in front of him. All of the seats at the bar were full, which didn’t take much, as there were approximately a dozen seats total stretched along the small bar. Despite the downright American flavor of the bar, its small size and foreignness in HK made him think of the pubs back home in England.

The shunning continued. The seat next to him was occupied, but the tenant sat with his back to Kevin, all but ensuring his isolation. No matter. There wasn’t much talking to be done, at least from Kevin’s side.

He caught himself reaching into his coat pocket for his card holder. It was a funny thing; he wasn’t aware he had done it until the slim business card holder was in his fingers. His hands had a mind of their own. Opening the lid, he took out the card on top. All black with a white Gothic font.

Corax & Grum

He blinked at the card, as the edges of it blurred into and out of focus. The reverse side inverted the front, white background with black font.

Lost & Found

Blinking, he was struck with the notion that the back of the card had said something else when the tall man had handed it to him back at Drunkerland a week ago, but he was damned if he could remember what it was.

He fiddled with the card, running fingertips along the edges, the irritation from reading the text giving him some sensation other than the constant inner anger and loss, or numbing of alcohol.

A few refills of his glass and a bit more numbing later, he still absently handled the card when the light and sound within his immediate area changed.

“I see I don’t need to reintroduce myself, Mr. Kevin Houghton,” came from over his right shoulder. Kevin turned, startled. Despite the ambient ruckus in the bar from the post-work crowd, and the distance of the speaker, the words had sounded in his ear, as if spoken from inches away.

Recognition of the speaker dulled the shock. Almost immediately after, he noted that the seat next to him was suddenly empty despite the bar being filled to capacity.

“Hello Mr. Corax. Funny running into you here.”

“Is it? Well, I suppose.”

“Won’t you have a seat?”

Corax grinned down at the drunk, sliding the cap from his head and into the pocket of the ever-present overcoat. It was early summer and the day time temperatures were in the mid-80s, but the man still dressed in black, except for the white collared shirt under his suit. But there was no acknowledgement of discomfort on his part, or any deferment to the temperature in the warm bar.

Corax slid into the chair. Despite his size, he folded himself into the tight space, almost as if he were perched on the stool.

The bartender, a lovely American woman, took his order and brought a teapot with a steeping ball and a used but clean porcelain cup. Corax’s hand reached into the overcoat’s inner pocket to extract a small billfold and peeled off notes without looking at them. Kevin’s vision was blurry but if asked he’d have sworn he handed her several US $100 notes. The reaction from the bartender was equally quizzical, but Corax was focused on Kevin. A beat, and she placed the excess under a marker, establishing a tab before she moved on to the next customer clamoring for her attention.

Corax turned and faced forward. “Well, Kevin. You were telling me about yourself last time our paths crossed.” The tall man’s eyes were straight ahead. “You are a lawyer, working in a patents office for a large pharmaceutical concern. You moved here from your home in Wales to head up the office here.”

“That sounds li’ me,” Kevin raised his cup in honor of the summary.

“A profession, not quite noble, but not worth the sorrow you’re demonstrating here, if I may say so.”

Kevin chuckled mirthlessly. “Why’m I here, then? Izzat the question?”

The grin came from Corax. “If that is how you’d interpret my concern, I would listen to that.”

Kevin lifted the tumbler to eye level, studying the honey-colored drink. “ ‘s not a nice story. D’you need to hear something like that?”

The giant turned to him, leaning in slightly. “I’m told I have a trust worthy face,” he flashed that graveyard smile. Kevin’s first impression of that smile and the eyes above it wasn’t particularly one of trust, but more of a predatory thing. “Besides, establishments like this were made for ballads and tragedies, no?” Corax lifted his tea cup in salute.

Kevin sighed before turning his red-rimmed eyes to the giant roosting next to him. “I miss my kids,” he began.

I came to Hong Kong eleven years ago. I had worked at the UK head office of my company, specializing on extending patents on existing products and ensuring we did not broach on competitors technologies. This means that I got involved with development teams at early stages. I’m not a techie by training, but just by osmosis, I could absorb a fair bit of the knowledge. Getting the background early in the process meant I could be better prepared to avoid problems later on. Not all patent attorney can or will do that, but my projects were always on time and had a minimum number of countersuits and infringement follow up actions.

It got me noticed within the company. And when they asked me to relocate here, I had no wife or kids and career-wise, it would be a huge leap for me towards the C-suite set.

For the first year, it was all I could do to keep my head straight. Sure, I was still employed in the same company, but moving from the UK to China was culture shock in itself. Yes, technically Hong Kong had a degree of independence back then, but the East versus West change was vast. HK is international enough that there’s a bit of a buffer built in. There’s enough English spoken here, and Western ideas have much deeper acceptance here than on the mainland or in other parts of Asia. Still...

The local group had a particular focus which I had to get up to speed with. It’s called ‘chirality’, and it took me the better part of that first year to wrap my head around it.

Apparently in chemistry terms, drugs can be right-handed or left-handed. It just means that as the different atoms are bonded to each other, they will reflect light in a certain direction. The lab here focused on creating compounds that are exactly the identical, but reflect light in a different or opposite manner.

That’s all well and good, but the way the chemistry usually works is that this opposite twist changes the property of the drug in many of the ways that make it useful in the first place. For example, you can make a safe drug into a toxic one, or change the smell or flavor simply by flipping the chirality. None of this is particularly useful, since what good is a drug that doesn’t work the way it’s supposed to?

Well, the local office has some kind of chemistry guru in place who had been busy. He’d been able to discover certain ways to use the chirals so that the original properties are preserved. This has allowed the HK office to establish patents on drugs which are already covered by other companies, but the chiral itself was not covered; what’s the point of patenting something that doesn’t work? Getting new drugs to market takes a long time, so the work we did once I first got here is just coming to market now. But we did it and we made them effective while not covered by the original patents. We could swoop in and piggyback on their work. We’ve had a decade head start on everyone else in the industry and have captured big potential advantages. In the meantime, my team has also moved to protect our own products and their chirals, to prevent the competition from scooping them up. My group has headed up this effort in secret, although it won’t be secret for much longer.

My chemist partner in this, Oliver, is a genius; like Nobel Prize level stuff. For me, the rewards were less internationally recognized; just more patents, but still worth the efforts. I get paid for patents granted and for successful defenses, and in that regard, we’ve done quite well. HQ recognized our contributions to both gain market share as well as protect our own portfolio. I was discreetly told that I headed for the executive level in just a few years.

After about eighteen months here, I got over my culture shock and work load and practically living in the office, and began to reenter humanity again. Honestly, my secretary told me she’d start sending hookers to my flat if I didn’t start getting out at night. So, I did.

Turns out HK has a great nightlife and I’d been missing it. There’re actually several different cultures that you can be a part of. There are the Western expat group, mostly gweilao like me, the mainland community and even a domestic helper culture. That’s for the Philippine and Indonesian women who work as maids during the week; turns out they get Sunday’s off and the gather in different pubs and clubs and cut loose. They call them “Tea Dances”, but it rivals almost any rave for sweat, skin and sex.

I bounced around those for a while, fitting in well enough to get laid, but not enough to find a partner.

Until I met Joyce.

I actually met her at a tradeshow in Guangzhou about three years into my time in HK. I had scheduled to meet with some execs who had come in from the offices in London and Geneva for the show, and she was a spokesmodel at a booth for some local government support agency. We must’ve bumped into each other a few times on the first morning as I crisscrossed the floor and each time, it took me longer and longer to stop staring at her. She was clothed in a trim professional business suit, but the way she wore those clothes? Heavenly. And as far as giving the eyeball, she gave just as good as she got, checking me out with enough heat that I had to adjust my trousers.