It was a dark and stormy night
the rain covered the streets and danced in the electric lights
I smoked another cigarette and looked out at nothing
No cases and no money
The telephone rang
I reached for the curved black plastic
“Hello, Ambrose Whistletown, PI”
I said into the speaker, honging against the sweaty air

“Ambrose, it’s Clark, we need to talk!”
“Clark, hello! What brings you here, into my ear, and with it, my conscious space?”
“Ambrose, stop screwing around, I know that you know!”
“What? I don’t know anything that you know. At least, I don’t think I do. We haven’t talked in some time, and I’ve not thought of you once in all those years. To be honest.”
“Ambrose, the Evil is coming, I feel It!”
“Clark, I don’t doubt it, but what’s that got to do with me?”
“Ambrose, you must … ” but then there was a sound like a frog croaking or a man croaking or a neck snapping or a throat gagging on its own spit or a stick cracking and breaking.
Not that I’ve seen many sticks break, not that I’ve thrown many sticks to many yellow dogs with pink tongues trailing, not that I’ve been a TV show or even a radio program.

“Detective Smith?”
“Yes, and I take it you’re Ambrose Whistletown?”
“Sure. And this is my old friend Clark Gibbons, dead in his apartment looking over the crystal waters of West LA, at the very edge of our great Western Empire.”
“We’re doing such a great job! I can feel the world going squishy under our feet, can you?”
“I feel something going squishy under my bare naked feet. Not sure what it is though.”
“You discovered the body, I hear.”
“Yes, Clark called me for the first time in forever and then I heard a disturbing sound and so I came over to his apartment, where he lived alone besides an indifferent sea.”
“Very good, very good, and you left the body as it lay?”
“Of course, I know all about death and detectives. I even used a handkerchief to make my call to the precinct.”
“Excellent, excellent work. We need more like you in this city.”
“The truth is I’m writing this blind, having never been West of Arizona.”
“Weren’t you in Portland, Salem, Seattle, and the environs?”
“I don’t know. Maybe. But California’s always been off-limits. Although I can rollerblade fairly well.”
“Glad to hear you’re not completely useless! But tell me, Ambrose, what do you make of your old friend’s neck? Seems to be snapped in a nice clean line.”
“Yes, I noticed that too. Wonderful workmanship; too good, really. As if a machine were involved.”
“Precisely! I’ll call in the AI Squad. These infernal machines have finally spilled past their borders! Filthy messes of wretched Os and reckless 1s!”
“Maybe. Although that presumes quite a number of technological advances, and all for the sake of ending the life of a pleasant-enough nobody with no family and no money and nothing special to clip onto his lapel.”
“Well, we’ll look into. I leave no stone unturned!”
“Admirable.”

And so it began, in a haze of smoke and whiskey, back when the black and white stills kept us indestructible and the lead in our gasoline only proved that progress gave the air that sweet melancholy something we’d longed for all our dime-a-dozen days.

Now I light another cigarette to blow smoke out my nose, confident that my coolness is an eternal Good.
Now I take another drag and smile into the void, convinced that every cool tortoise-narrowing of my eyes hangs forever in The Great God’s Hall of Mortal Fame & How Impressed & Proud Am I That I AM?!?!?