Dara Walsh was a journalist. He was always looking at the big picture. He was always looking for the big story. Until one day, almost by accident, he found it. And wrote a fact-checked article about it.
Dara Walsh was a journalist. And one day, he got a message. A text from a reliable source. Or rather a text from the phone of a source that had stopped being reliable the previous night.
To meet at a certain place. To meet at a certain time. Where he would be told a fuller truth. How his big story was merely one scene in one act. Dara Walsh was a journalist. He was always looking at the big picture.
#
The phrase “Extremity Frog Step” doesn’t make any sense.
It contains words that shouldn’t be in the same paragraph, let alone in the same sentence.
Which is the point.
#
Kevin had been going into that coffee shop every morning for several months.
It was on his way into work, and it had opened very soon after he had started his new job. A job that he was thoroughly enjoying.
It would normally be fairly quiet at that time every morning, but on this day, he was shocked to see that it was packed and humming with steady conversation. After he got his Breakfast Tea to go, he looked around and was astonished to see a certain grey-haired man in his early sixties chatting to a similarly aged, but still glamorous woman.
After a moment’s hesitation, he walked over to their table.
“I’m very sorry about this, Professor Mongey,” he said to the man. “I won’t stay long. I don’t know if you remember me…”
“Moloney,” the man gently interrupted. “It is, isn’t it? Kevin Moloney.”
“God bless your memory, sir.”
“I never forget a brain,” the professor replied with a smile. “Please, sit down.”
“I’m afraid I can’t stay too long,” Kevin said as he moved an empty chair closer to their table.
“It’s perfectly alright,” the professor replied before looking at the woman saying “This Ciara, is Mister Kevin Moloney. The very first brain, we implanted our chip into.”
The woman reached across and shook Kevin’s hand.
“Lovely to meet you, Kevin.”
“Thanks very much,” Kevin replied.
“How long has it been since the operation?” the professor asked.
“Well, next Tuesday, it’ll be the first anniversary,” Kevin answered.
“And a happy anniversary, by the looks of things. You’re still walking and talking.”
“It’s a bloody miracle, that’s what it is.”
Kevin looked at Ciara and added “I won’t go too much into the gory details, but my poor, spongy brain had experienced several electric storms. I was in serious trouble. The only alternatives I had at the time were death which would’ve been rather depressing or ending up on some kind of mental autopilot connected up to machines. Which probably would’ve been even more depressing. But then the Professor here came along with a third alternative.”
The professor looked at him almost proudly, as he said, “Look at you now.”
Kevin smiled and replied “I can both live in the moment and plan for the future. You’re a bloody artist, that’s what you are. Seriously. I really think that surgery at your level is an actual art-form.”
“There was some luck involved if you pardon my modesty. If truth be told in your case, it was a bit of a Hail Mary pass. Your chip was a prototype. But it obviously worked, and you’ll be delighted to know the same procedure’s been done several times since. There’s a whole team of surgeons qualified to do this operation now.”
Ciara leaned forward to Kevin and said in an almost conspiratorial way “One hundred percent success.”
The professor almost blushed as he replied “Well, nothing’s ever really one hundred percent, but so far…”
He knocked three times on the table in front of him.
“We’re doing okay.”
Ciara suddenly turned to the professor and asked, “Can I do it, now”.
“Now?” the professor asked.
“We might as well, since everything’s in place. And our special guest should be arriving soon.”
The professor looked over at Kevin saying, “She’s been wanting to say this for ages.”
Kevin suddenly looked slightly bewildered as he asked, “Say what?”
The professor quietly counted down from five to one before pointing at Ciara who leant back and shouted as if she was addressing the entire coffee-shop.
“Extremity Frog Step.”
And everything stopped.
Every conversation in the coffee-shop suddenly halted. Some in mid-word. Anyone who had raised a mug now slowly placed it down in front of them. The two baristas stood behind the counter, almost to attention. Everybody was staring into space, including Kevin. Everybody of course, except for the professor and Ciara who looked around the room smiling.
“One hundred percent,” Ciara said.
“Look at him,” the professor pointed at Kevin. “Look at that almost innocent face. How calm he looks. Almost childlike. Look at all of them, in fact. Waiting.”
He looked back at Ciara and asked, “Are you okay?”
“I’m very okay and very ready. Ready to be a witness.”
The professor nodded and said “And now all we need is…”
A figure suddenly entered the shop.
“And here we go,” Ciara said quietly.
The figure was a young man who suddenly stopped walking as he realised that nobody else in the coffee-shop was moving. Except for the one couple who was sitting at a table.
The professor looked at the third person sitting beside them and said “Kevin, you can turn around now.”
Slowly and almost mechanically, Kevin’s blank face turned around.
Ciara looked at the two baristas and said “Close the door, please”
They slowly walked over to the entrance and locked it.
The figure who had entered the coffee-shop suddenly found his voice and quietly asked “What’s going on?”
“Your name is Dara Walsh,” the professor said.
The figure stammered “I…I…don’t understand.”
“Oh, I think you do, Dara. You understand all too well. That newspaper article of yours has been disturbingly well-received. Not that many people have read it yet, but those who have read it have been seriously influenced. It’s about to go viral, as people like to say. It’s a good way of putting it. You’ve created a disease that could potentially kill a dream. A dream of a better, cleaner, less sentimental future.”
The young figure started to look around trying to find some kind of escape.
“There’s no escaping your destiny, Dara” Ciara said. “By the way, don’t think for a second that you’re going to be a martyr. Of course, we Irish love martyrs. But you’re not going to be shot by firing squad. Or suffocated. Or thrown out a window. That would lead to sympathy and corny ballads. It’s actually imperative that the general public hates your guts. Hates you so much, in fact that if you suddenly found yourself surrounded by what Flann O’Brien used to call the “good and plain people of Ireland”, their hatred of you would become uncontrollable. Or rather very controllable.”
“Everybody, stand up,” the Professor said.
All the people who were sitting at the tables including Kevin, slowly stood up.
The young figure at the centre of the shop started to panic, shouting “This is sick!”
“Sick?” the professor replied. “How can this be sick? We’re curing the world.”
The professor looked at the people who were standing and said “Well, there he is, ladies and gentlemen. The missus and I will sit here in shocked silence, paralysed by horror as you remove…this obstacle.”
Slowly, everybody else walked towards the figure.
______________________________________________________________
T.J. Matthews lives in Dublin, Ireland. His stories have appeared in Aphelion Webzone, Alien Dimensions, Tall Tale TV, CommuterLit, Infinity Wanderers, Emerging Worlds, Black Sheep and the Independent Fantasy & Sci Fi Magazine.
