How I Spent My (Terranovan) Winter Vacation

By Konlan Josef

(Tom McGrenery)

The holidays... ooh, yeah. They may not technically have ended yet, but that's only 'cause I haven't been back to work yet. I think it may not count, if I've been fired. Which I may have been, judging by those two or three (one of them may have been a civvy accomplice) of my SRID colleagues who tried to off me last week. That, after all, would seem unpatriotic if I were still at the bureau, I feel.

At any rate, the plan had been to slam up to the arctic, hang around Pioneer a bit with Rebekah's old cronies. She wanted to slide around on the snow with a plank attached to her feet, or something. For some reason. Don't ask me.

Moot point, as it is, since for the last four weeks I've stuck in Timmins, where we've been keeping a roof over our heads by entertaining the eclectic if uniformly seedy clientele of Lao Li's wine bar with our unique blend of cool, so-laid-back-I'm-practically-falling-over shock/classical fusion. Only for "our", read "my", since as enthusiastic as Beks is, there' s only so much ethusiasm can do to improve the quality of triangle playing. Especially when you have the time-keeping sense of a submerged clock. Don't tell her I said that.

The SRIDdies, they must have turned up, yeah, five days ago now. First one bore an uncanny resemblance to my old maths teacher. In fact, I thought he was Mr Rawlin until after I'd already hit him with the bottle. I was at Li's, by the bar, when he came striding in with his trench coat done up in that kind of "I'm either a hitman or just really annoying" kind of way. I suppose technically I struck first, but psychological trauma can do that to a man.

Once Rawlin was down, some bastard tear-gassed the place through the window, which seemed pretty unsporting at the time. It just took a little initiative to deal with the couple of goons outside, though. They weren't wearing armour or anything.

After that, there was the thing with the SWAT team. You heard about that, right? Funny story, yeah. Long one, though, won't go into it now. And the thing with the police Gears, ah yes. Where Rebekah crashed the Hunter into that low-flying chopper. And then she got lifted up on the winch and got dropped through the roof of that zoo? Nearly laughed myself to death. Into the water skag enclosure! And then the zoo catching fire, who would have expected that? Along with the rest of the street, too.

Actually, I bumped into an old friend of mine as we were running away. Solomon, went to university with him. Yeah, we were running in the same direction, in fact, him on account of his house was on fire. I chose not to mention my involvement. True, I hadn't actually been aiming the flame-thrower at his house, but he always was sensitive about these things.

APAGear II Archives

Volume 2, Number 1

February, 2000