Story: The Disappearance (XIII)

(Part XII , XIV)

The story according to Rolf McGonagle:
It all started out very innocently. As I sit here held captive it all seems quite unbelievable. My father, the great Zod McGonagle called me into his office and said that he was going to retire but that first there was a secret that had to be passed on. He put on his most solemn and pompous expression. "Rolf, my boy," he said to me, "we have a secret partner in the business. You'll come to know them as you go forward in running this place. For now I shall simply introduce you to your cousin Dabney Sheldon."

I looked at Dabney Sheldon and saw someone utterly unprepossessing. He was of nondescript years and a little hard to pin down. Over the following years though, he exposed and used a will of iron on numerous occasions. Dabney's involvement was to bring an extra source of unbelievably inexpensive and reliable ingredients from an unknown origin, which he would not reveal for obscure reasons. And it was impressed upon me that we could not reveal said source without unbelievably bad implications for all concerned. I would not be assuaged and probed further, but the methods by which Dabney enforced the secrecy of the project first appalled me, and then beguiled me. The disappearances of detectives and innocent bystanders became less of an outrage and more of a price that had to be paid.

Dabney would discover someone had been asking questions and after a few questions of his own would then calmly order they be 'slipped the biscuit', and a few bystanders too for camouflage. His eyes never seemed to change as he gave the order but his lips did twitch. I suspect my lips twitch a little now too, as that responsibility has devolved unto me. Dabney left us many years ago. One day he was simply gone, and there was an order left on my desk to 'carry on and keep the schedules'. I gather now he was a transitional advisor sent to help me when I took over.

Even though the dirty tricks had long ceased to be a problem to me, the mystery of it all was too intriguing so as I followed the schedules I tried to learn more about what was going on. One evening on a routine walk around the tertiary supply dump I saw the supplies materialising from thin air and then never looked back. Ha, the future! Who would ever have thought it! Every time we sold something now with cheap food from the future we made a profit and became exponentially richer as a family fifty years from now due to the wonders of compound interest. Eventually I hitched a ride to the future and got the whole story, and then slowly took charge of both ends of the operation, taking over from a ruined and ancient version of myself there of course. The timeline would take a battering but who would care as we were getting richer!

My niece Agnes may look at me as if I were dirt, but money is power, and we need to be powerful in the future. It was worth it. It's always worth it. And if not, then the white knight always need someone to tilt at. And you'll never be able to stop us. It's all in place now. You'll never stop us, and if there's a singularity that kills thousands of people then that's worth it too, and from my point of view... Well, it's neither here nor there.





More will follow...