The Devil On My Shoulder

I’ve been staring at the wrist transmitter on the table for about an hour now, hoping that a convenient solution to my current dilemma would manifest itself out of thin air. Or failing that, maybe I could just die from a hitherto unknown, but suspiciously convenient medical condition that only afflicted people in moments of crippling indecision. Given the general pattern of my life so far, I’m probably perfectly healthy at the worst possible time though. On the other hand, given that I’d spent most of the last hour discussing bad options and worse options with an imaginary devil on my shoulder, I might need to stretch the definition of “perfectly healthy” a little out of shape.

My wife once told me that the devil on my shoulder must be either very proud or very exhausted. Either way, he was clearly putting in overtime. I acted insulted on principle, even though she was right. I hadn’t exactly come up with a full slate of good decisions since I’d left the station security force ten years ago and taken up teaching in a desperate attempt to be able to afford food.  

Right now the little bastard was sitting on my shoulder looking at the wrist transmitter. It was sitting on the table going “Beep,” so I guess that means it was working.  

“Go on,” said the shoulder devil. “Press it! Tell Earth what happened! It’s the right thing to do!”

“Isn’t this more shoulder angel territory?” I asked, “You know, doing the right thing and all?”

“Yes, but in this case, the right thing is going to destroy society and cause mass chaos, so I can justify it to HR.”

“HR?”

“Yes. They’re very good at the whole ‘eternal suffering’ bit. Also, your shoulder angel took a sabbatical ten years ago, when it became apparent that you were never going to listen to him.”

“That’s fair.”

My wife was also fond of noting that I hadn’t exactly set the world on fire. This was also technically true. My life goals now included getting everyone to leave me alone until I could retire, and then die. I once put on an annual evaluation -under the “Professional Goals” section- that my only goal was to be good enough to not get fired and bad enough to not get promoted. My boss wasn’t amused. I wasn’t kidding. We compromised by having me promise not to write it on the official state forms anywhere. Teachers are hard to come by on the station. It gives me just enough leverage to be ridiculously petty about utterly inconsequential things and gives my boss enough stress to eat antacids like breath mints. 

But I digress. I’ve been suspended from teaching for a few months now. (Not my fault. The shoulder devil made me throw the eraser at a student who totally and completely had it coming.) Enough time to get hired as an IT consultant, even though I know nothing about computers. That didn’t matter to Thalia, my temporary employer and resident lunatic. She had a chip on her shoulder about getting fired from station security ten years ago too. Over the same murder case that had ended my career (my leaving may not have been as involuntarily as I implied a few sentences ago). Her mind was brilliant - like a star going nova. Amazing, fantastic and a force of nature like I’d never encountered before, and just as likely to leave no survivors. 

Thalia’s incomprehensible brain had started to piece together things that no one else had been able to, or even cared to, on the murder case. In her mind, it had gone from a bungled murder case (I could feel the shoulder devil glaring at me, on account of a good chunk of the bungling being blamed on me) into a full blown conspiracy, involving the highest levels of the Hinterlands government. I thought she was crazy, but I went along with it? Why? She paid me a shitload of money. Why else? I’ve got kids to feed.  

At any rate, between the chip on Thalia’s shoulder and the devil on mine, we’d stolen classified files from the security station and from the Chancellor’s mansion. Once we’d decrypted it, we confronted the culprit.

We had to really, on account of Thalia turning out to be right. Right and incredibly smug about it too. She had some of the details wrong, but she was right in that it did go straight to the top. To my old detective partner Fritz, or Chancellor Wolfe, as he’s now known, what with him being in charge of the whole station and whatnot.

We’d confronted Fritz and the bastard just went ahead and confessed. I didn’t even get to gloat. I had really been looking forward to that. But he just laid it all out for us, calmly, point-by-point, like he was addressing the station Council at the monthly stated meeting. He’d told us everything, including the details we’d gotten wrong (which were relatively minor), in his calm, condescending manner that I really hadn’t missed at all since we stopped working together.

The guy that had been murdered was a deep cover agent for Earth. His whole job was to stay on the station and keep tabs on us. If we started to get restless or if he just thought this place wasn’t worth Earth’s money or support, E.T. would phone home and Earth would pull the plug. Earth had decided secrecy was paramount, so all he had was a transmitter that sent an “All’s well” message back to Earth at regular intervals.

Trouble was, he’d gotten sloppy and hacked into the station’s budget. Fritz had been working on that case and traced it back to the dead guy. In the process he’d found a data file. Once he decrypted it, Fritz learned that the agent had decided Hinterlands wasn’t worth Earth’s trouble anymore. As soon as he finished his report, he’d send it to Earth. So Fritz had finished him first. He took the transmitter too, and just left it to broadcast. He figured Earth probably didn’t care enough about us to follow up. He figured right.

Being a homicide detective, Fritz really knew how to murder someone. He and I were the lead detectives (a dubious honor since the two of us made up half of the homicide division). The case was never solved, thanks to Fritz’s behind-the-scenes interference. He set me up and a number of mistakes that he made intentionally got blamed on me. The security force decided that I needed a career alternative enhancement and thus began my teaching career. Everyone even tangentially related to the case got fired or reassigned. Karl Hooper, the homicide detective sergeant, even died. Karl was, I don’t know, born in the late Cretaceous or something, so that one may have been a coincidence but I’m still blaming it on Fritz.

Fritz, who got cast as the long-suffering detective who tried to do it right, went into politics and started pulling strings. And, like all good puppets, we danced for him just like he wanted us to. Everything went exactly the way he wanted it to for ten years, until Thalia and I came along.

Now that we knew the truth, Fritz told us that we weren’t going to tell anyone. He didn’t threaten or plead. He just told us very matter-of-factly that we weren’t going to tell. He explained, in excruciating detail, what would happen if Earth pulled our support. We didn’t want to be responsible for destroying society did we? As far as I’m concerned, at this point society can take one for the team but he got through to Thalia. Despite all my expectations, she finally saw the big picture. She’d solved her mystery, unraveled the conspiracy that had consumed her for God knows how long, so she could compromise on this. She agreed to keep quiet and I followed her lead.

I didn’t mention to her that I’d gone ahead and palmed the wrist transmitter from Fritz’s desk and replaced it with a replica when she and Fritz were arguing.

So here I am, sitting in my kitchen with a glass of booze on the table and a devil on my shoulder, trying to decide what to do. There’s no right answer here. Do nothing and a murderer walks. Phone Earth and God knows what will happen. Probably nothing good, since Earth is still footing the bill for a good chunk of the station. Quite the dilemma, isn’t it?

“Do it. Call them,” says the shoulder devil, polishing his pitchfork on his robe. “Do the right thing for once.”

“Look, you’re not helping,” I reply, checking my glass to see how much I’ve had to drink, if I’m talking to imaginary devils.

“Helping isn't really in my job description,” he snaps back. “C’mon, what kind of example are you setting for your kids if you let a murder go?”

“The kind who doesn’t cause a civil war, probably? Can you go away?”

“No. Full-blown civil war, though? Don’t you think that’s a touch overly dramatic? Do you really think that Earth, who doesn’t want to drop any dime they don’t have to on us, would really sign a blank check to come in guns blazin’ over one little murder? Aren’t you assuming the worst-case scenario, just so you can justify not doing anything?”

“Aren’t you assuming that my luck is going to be a lot better here than at any other given point in my life if you think the worst-case scenario isn’t the default setting the universe has for me?”

“Nah, I’m sure it’ll be fine, just this once. I mean, you have to be due for some good luck by now, right?”

“Are you sure I can’t talk to the other guy?”

“Fine. Hold on.”

The shoulder devil disappears in a puff of smoke. A second later and another puff of smoke and he’s back. There’s a puff of smoke on my other shoulder and a second devil appears.

“Oh come on!” I yell.

“Look,” says the second, newer, albeit identical devil, “We told you the angel is on sabbatical.”

After a quick recap of why I should choose the worse, although more ethical, of my options, both devils are dancing around on my shoulders chanting “Do it! Do it!”

“FINE!”

I pick up the transmitter. The black screen lights up in my hands, probably the first time it had done so in decades. It's a relatively simple interface and I remember owning a data link with a similar one a long time ago. It doesn’t do anything besides transmit and receive. It’s simple, but if you want to make sure it will function for a long time, simple is the way to go. This one is still working perfectly and in a few seconds I’ve disabled the constant signal it’s been transmitting.

A number of buttons then appear on the screen. I press the transmit button and begin to speak.

“This is Detective Johann Schmidt, formerly of Epsilon Eridani L-3 security force. I would like to report a murder to who ever is in charge of Earth right now.”

The shoulder devils start to snicker in my ear and begin subdued (for them) celebration.

It takes me a couple of minutes, but I relate all the details to the transmitter and flick it off. I sit back with a sigh of relief and grab my drink. 

“That wasn’t so bad, was it?” asks shoulder devil #1, sounding even more self-satisfied than Fritz on his worst day.

“Screw you,” I snap back.

“You did the right thing for a change. Shouldn’t you be proud?”

“Yep. That’ll be a great comfort when the station inevitably collapses around us. At least I did the right thing.”

“Hey, it’s a 10 light year trip one-way. Look on the bright side.”

“What’s that?”

“Maybe you’ll be dead by the time Earth’s reply comes in.”

“Great. Any chance you could leave me alone?”

“Oh, of course. You just have to ask,” the smarmy little bastard says with a wicked grin and he and his partner disappear with a puff of smoke.

I get about 3 seconds of peace before there’s another puff of smoke and a shoulder angel appears.

“I thought you were on sabbatical,” I said.

“Yeah, I was, but the...other guy said I should probably check in,” he replies.

He glances down at the transmitter, which is clearly showing its now inactive status on the screen.

“Is that…?” he begins.

“Yup,” I reply. He glanced down again.

“Did you…?” 

“Yup,” I respond once more.

The shoulder angel glances back and forth between me and the transmitter a couple times.

“Okay,” he says, fixing his gaze on me. “You know what? Fuck this. I’m out.”

And he disappears in another puff of smoke.

Jesus. How drunk am I?

I stare at the wall in silence and drink for about ten minutes. Then the transmitter beeps.

“Uh...hello?” I ask, flicking the receive button.

“Is this Johann Schmidt?” the voice on the other end asks?

“Uh...yes?” 

“This is Earth International Security. We would like you to elaborate on the details of your previous transmission.”

“I thought there was a ten light-year delay.”

“Obviously not.”

They’ve mastered instantaneous communication? I really hadn’t counted on that.

“Again,” the voice continues, “please elaborate on your previous transmission.”

“You know I’d really rather not.”

“Try again Detective.”

In the back of my head, I hear the shoulder devil laughing.