The Adventures of Dex Drummond (Detective to the Upper Classes) =============================================================== Prologue ======== Far , far, far away (further than the chemists infact) in a distant galaxy (3.74 cpu minutes as the VAXship Enter-Key files [1]) there was a planet called Pob.....and everyone on this planet was also called Pob , there was ; Fireman Pob , Schoolmistress Pob , all the little Pob children etc etc There was however one person in Pob who wasn't called Pob , his name was Dob (the result of a dyslexic tempoary typist). Now poor old Dob was outcast from society for not being exactly like the rest , and so poor old Dob left the planet never to return [2]. This , however , is not Dob's story...It is however the story of a man he passed while visiting a dingy little planet which the inhabitants call Earth... Chapter One =========== "Dex Drummond , Detective to the Upper Classes" , said the sign painted on Dex's office door...This is infact a lie , first of all the sign should more strictly read "Dex Drummond , Detective to anyone with money" and second the door on which it was painted was not infact Dex's nor was the office into which it led. These items did infact belong to the Bank as a result Dex's habitual desire to gamble , lose and get badly drunk (usually in that order). The inside of Dex's office did not have the air of class that he tried to project with the sign outside , infact it didn't have much of anything.The entire office consisted of four bare walls to match the ceiling and floor.The only piece of furniture was an old wooden desk with a drawer that wouldn't (or didn't want to) open [3]. Dex lulled back in his chair and put his feet up on the desk (another lie , the chair was also the Bank's , the desk however was his).... Suddenly there was a knock on the window , which was odd really since it was on the 13th floor.Dex leaned over backwards and opened the window behind him. ........Arrrrrrrrrrrrrrrggggggggggggggggghhhhh...boing...THUD...... "Yo , anyone out there?",called Dex....No reply. "Strange",thought Dex , but he had come across many strange things in his line of work ,not the least of which was that time with the two women , a sheep , and four.......A knock on the door interupted Dex's fond memory. "Yeah , yeah ",called Dex sounding as though he really wasn't that interested in who it was , though the truth was he hadn't had a case now for 3 months and he was desperate that whoever this was had a problem....and money. On opening the door a man who looked like he'd been wavaged by a wampant whino fell into the office. "Say I aint no doctor , but you don't look too good ",commented Dex as the man lay face down on his floor coughing up blood.The man was obviously going to die , and Dex knew it "But hey! Why ruin this guy's day by telling him?",thought Dex. "Seven....",the man was trying to say something,"..seventeen.....Sou..South Side....The old biscuit factory".And with that the man died , but Dex poked him in the the eye with a pencil just to make sure. "Seventeen South Side....yeah I know the place",pondered Dex as he wondered what to do with the body."Bugger it",he decided it'll sort it's self out. So Dex shifted the body to outside his office , put a sign on the door saying "Back when I bloody feel like it" and set off for South Side , "What else have I got to do?",thought Dex,"and besides , I'm out of Southern Comfort..." Who was the man who died in "his" office? Will Dex reach South Side alive? Who wants him to go there anyway? And will there be enough money in it to buy another bottle of Southern Comfort? If anyone is interested in the answers I will put up Chapter Two next week..... Footnotes to Chapter 1 ====================== [1] Copyright MM Corporation [2] It was infact rather lucky that Dob left his home planet Pob when he did , because soon after he left the entire population was out wiped in their first World War due to the fact that everyone looked like the enemy to everyone else , even themselves in the mirror. [3] Sparse though the office was it had one strange thing , the worst case of Black Hole Syndrome (BHS) ever discovered.BHS is an area where whenever a small object is accidentally dropped it immediately vanishes and can not be found no matter how hard it is looked for.However , whilst looking for the object countless other objects lost in a similar way are found. This phenomenon occurs in many variations eg. i) Not EVERY object dropped vanishes , but merely objects you want in the very near future (most commom variation) ii) The object lost will only be found at the exact moment it is not needed iii) The object will only vanish if how badly it is needed is less than it's mass cubed... ...to name but a few. NB: Black Hole Syndrome is in no way related to the shop British Home Stores (Though have you ever noticed the discrepency between the total number of people entering the shop and the total number coming out???)