A Small Gray Dot

After thinking about it, it struck me that the reason the people on the streets had appeared to be such unfriendly assholes might’ve been because they were trying their damnedest to make it to where they were going without losing their way. They had simply been desperate not to allow a distraction by some bumbling fool who had. Not friendly, but understandable now that I knew. I was lucky to come up on that kid and that he hadn’t run off, too. Maybe it was easier for the young to find their way.

That’s also when it occurred to me that there wouldn’t be much crime on the streets. If you happened to get past the guards, which wasn’t easy, then you’d have to be lucky to find somebody out on the streets to rob after which getting away could get complicated. Worrying you were going to be caught would be very distracting and being distracted was how you got lost. By the time you managed to find your way out – that is if you did – somebody would’ve alerted the guards who would be waiting when you finally dragged your lost ass back up to the entry. In fact, the worry of being caught committing any crime wouldn’t be conducive to finding your way around, though, with people being people, I was sure there were some types of lawbreaking that could be had in Blue Heaven.

I thanked the bartender, collected my thoughts, and tried for the entrance again, and that time I made it out without any problems.

Later, Adam laughed and shook his head at my blunder. “Better start listening, son,” he chuckled, as he verified it was the same bar he’d found.

He didn’t have to worry about me listening. I told him I’d do future deliveries for him – to other locations.

I wasn’t ever going to Blue Heaven again.

Chapter Nineteen

IT WASN’T UNTIL AFTER MY LAST TRIP THAT I learned a few more things about Blue Heaven including the fact that most of the people worked for Semptor Labs.

I acquired that information from a client, a man who was a technician at one of the radio stations and lived in Blue Heaven at one time. He hired me to find his brother a couple of weeks after I made that last delivery for Adam to that disorienting locale.

“He’s not somewhere in Blue Heaven, is he?” I asked warily.

He shook his head. “No, he’s not. He headed out west a while back.”

I asked my client why he left Blue Heaven.

“My brother and I were roomies and we both left soon after… well you know soon after what.” He didn’t want to say the name. I didn’t blame him. “I was a sound tech for channel nine news and he worked at the airport. You know what happened to those businesses so we were out of work from the start. I’ve gone back a few times to visit a couple of friends but if you’ve ever been there you know how hard it is to find your way around, so I don’t go often.”

I nodded. I understood. “It’s not a pleasant place to visit. Why would anyone continue to live there?”

“For the work. Most of the ones that stayed work for Semptor Labs. I’m not real sure when they moved in, I don’t remember seeing them before but I imagine they were there, just smaller. The company sent out recruiters a couple of months after… that day. The place wasn’t that bad at first and a lot of the people didn’t want to move, and as folk lost jobs in other places, well, they went to Semptor since it was right in the neighborhood. Guy came up to me and my brother wanting to know if we’d sign on but I was still thinking television would come back, and my brother wanted to go look for some girl he knew. We still had some savings at the time, so we told him no.”

“What kind of work do the people perform at Semptor Labs?” I was certain the company couldn’t possibly be making all the products they sold. “Is anything manufactured there?”

He shook his head. “Not as far as I know. A friend who works for them said the stuff comes in from somewhere else. It’s always waiting for them when they get there. They package the goods and load them on the trucks to be shipped out to retailers.” He shrugged. “It doesn’t pay a whole lot but they can make more with overtime, and, it’s a job.”

He was right, and what’s more, jobs were getting increasingly hard to come by, but I think I would’ve been trying to find something to do elsewhere. And, I’d been wrong about the production of some kind of chemical there, though, I had to wonder where the eye irritant was coming from. And, why the word Labs in the name? My ex-client didn’t know.

I found his brother in a Texas jail. Nothing serious, a misunderstanding between him and a couple of guys in a bar. I bailed him out, he called his brother, all was well.

This brings me to the case that saw me making my way back into Blue Heaven.

It was a month after finding the ex-client’s brother, and one of the two surviving members of the state’s most prominent families hired me to find the other member: her missing younger sister, and the trail led to Blue Heaven. I took the case for two reasons.