phil jones2 (28 page)

When he had faced the Voravians it had been with the help of an incomprehensible other in the form of a pink glove. He had no doubts in his mind that without this aid he would have perished in short order and now that he was without it he was very much on his own.

He had come to terms with his amazing journey and the effect it had upon him, the life or death experiences had extracted him from a rut he hadn't realised he was in.

He stared at the key chain for a moment, eyeing the ship attached to it and reinforcing that which he already knew. He grasped the keys, pulling them closer as he rose. The journey wasn't over yet, and when it picked him up once more he would be ready for it.

Initially he had tried to sink back into old habits as a means of recovering from all he had been through, but when you had commanded a starship through exploding Voravian vessels and survived legions of their death squads hunting you down in their mother ship there wasn't much excitement to be had from killing pixellated wolves.

No, gone were the lazy pleasures of the past and in their place was the joy of slowly preparing himself for the voyage to come.

A ringing sound from his house phone cut his thoughts off, he crept over to it with some suspicion, given that this was the first time in months that anyone had called him without being prompted to first.

'A-hoy-hoy?' he spoke cautiously into the receiver, listening to the faint background of a dozen chattering voices.

'Mr. Phil Jones?' came the strangely-accented voice.

'Who is this speaking?'

'I am Guy from your ISP. It turns out your complaint was correct, we were able to fix the problem and have credited you free service with our compliments.'

The line went dead.

'Hello?' Phil said stupidly into the clearly dead line. 'Hello?'

The line remained dead in spite of Phil's cajoling efforts to make it otherwise.

On the third attempt of asking he managed to mash the redial button, only to receive a series of strange tones and an automated female voice.

'The number you have dialled does not exist, please put down the phone.'

Phil complied, not wishing to upset the automated voice.

It was a most odd occurrence, given that he couldn't recall making a complaint in the first place. Then again, who was he to complain about a mix up that resulted in free broadband?

He mulled over it further, noting that Guy was a very unoriginal name and that he hadn't mentioned the name of the ISP he represented. And since when did a phone tell you to put it down? They were getting awfully pushy these days!

Chalking it up to another oddity of life, Phil proceeded to struggle into his tracksuit bottoms and trainers in preparation for his morning walk.

The phone interrupted him once more. This time he was a bit swifter in picking it up, realising that lightning didn't often strike twice.

'A-hoy-hoy?'

'Mr. Jones, this is... Raymond, yes. Raymond from Pixelbitch Studios. I'm just calling to inform you that your account was hacked by Russian mobsters!'

'Oh no!' Phil cried, secretly thinking that the mobsters were pretty desperate if they were after his character.

'Yes, a tragedy. Fortunately we were able to recover your account and have credited you with a free Power User subscription to make up for all the lost hours playing time.'

'Well actually, I haven't been playing that mu...'

'Thank you for your time Mr. Jones, happy gaming!'

The phone line went dead again, this time without inquiry from Phil.

How odd. There now seemed to be a definite causal link between his getting calls and his acquiring free stuff. A man could get used to this whole phone business.

Phil straightened up and prepared to head off for his walk, navigating his now clean and surprisingly spacious room with ease. He had no idea he possessed this much carpet, or how he had managed to move at all without it.

Enough about the carpet though, he needed to focus! For the third time this morning, Phil returned his concentration to the task at hand, chiefly getting out of the front door and going for his morning walk, wondering if any more free things would befall him on the way.

'And now here's Tom with the weather.'

Phil spun and fell backward, landing uncomfortably due to the distinct lack of pizza boxes to cushion his landing. Staring in the direction of the noise he was bewildered to find that his television had flicked on without any prior warning. He searched the floor for the controller but to no avail, it sat neatly upon the arm of the couch and couldn't have been activated from his previous vertical position.

Rising slowly, Phil crept over to the phantom set and reached for the controller, intending to turn it off and get on with his day.

That was when he noticed the moustache.

Well, not the moustache itself, which was rather unassuming and groomed to perfection to withstand the rigours of national television. No, it was the quality of the moustache that proved most baffling, with every strand and every fleck of grey clearly visible to Phil's naked eye.

There were many things wrong with him, he would be the first to admit that, but he had never needed a visit to the optometrist in all his time here. His eyesight was perfect and there was a notable difference in picture quality here.

Fishing for the remote while refusing to take his eyes from the image on the screen, Phil flicked through a series of channels to see what would happen.

All of them sparkled with crisp definition, inviting him and imploring that he revel in their aesthetic perfection.

Phil's willpower briefly reasserted itself by hitting the power button on the remote. No, he had to go on his walk. He could deal with the high definition television and the free internet and such after he got back.

Turning once more to go, Phil strode determinedly toward the door and reached for his keys to unlock it.

A thump came at the door, causing him to jump. 'Special delivery!' came the familiar call.

'I think you have the wrong number.' Phil replied, noting the smells that had started to waft through into his apartment.

'Would you be Phil Jones? This pizza is addressed to you, all expenses paid.'

A pizza? Delivered to him? At this hour in the morning? This day was getting stranger and stranger.

'I am Phil Jones, yes.' he replied, unlocking the door to be greeted by the familiar sight of a delivery man.

'Triple pepperoni with mushrooms and olives and...' the man stared at the order, his eyes scrolling down it. 'Well, let's just say I hope you like your toppings, this thing is more pyramid than pizza.'

The Phil Jones of a few months prior would have nodded vigorously, thanking the heavens for the bounty which had been freely bestowed upon him. As it stood there was still a rather large portion of him that felt this way, but it was tempered somewhat now by that growing flame of hope within him.

'I'm not sure I can accept this pizza.' he finally managed, tearing his eyes off the steam rising from the heated box as it was slipped from the cover of the delivery man's satchel.

To his credit, the man tried his best not to look perplexed at the possibility of Phil turning down free food. He had already been informed of the dark day that had befallen the company prior to his employment, when their most beloved customer had suddenly stopped ordering and brought them to the brink of administration. 'What's stopping you from accepting?' he queried. 'It's labelled for you, someone has to eat it.'

Phil shook his head, the pangs of hunger and greed waging war with his self control. 'Can't you have it?' he managed, forcing his eyes shut and trying to imagine a lack of pizza anywhere near him.

'Sorry, they're very strict about us eating on the job. Best I can do is leave it outside your door.'

Phil nodded, his face pale and sweating under the self control he had imposed. 'Do it.' he muttered, rather rudely slamming the door in the man's face and sliding back-first down to the floor.

The pizza remained outside, entirely unaffected by Phil's neglect and continuing to send enticing steamy tendrils under the crack in the door.

He opened his eyes and rubbed away the sweat that stung at them, taking a deep breath before rising to his feet and wondering just what this day would throw at him next. He knew he had to pass the pizza in order to get out on his walk, but would his willpower withstand a second encounter with such a tempting crust?

Another knock came at the door, Phil was about to shout at the delivery man to leave him alone when he noticed that the cadence of the knock had changed. Another visitor?

Opening the door he was greeted by a wrinkled old hispanic woman who beamed up at him over a pair of thick-rimmed glasses.

'Can I... help you?' Phil asked, trying not to pay attention to the sensuous pizza between their feet.

'Housekeeping!' the woman chimed, her thick accent affording the word a strange sibilance.

Phil blinked. 'I... er... I don't recall ordering a housekeeper. Are you sure you have the right house?'

'Señor Jones?' the lady replied, though the way she said his name made it sound more like 'honez' than anything else.

Ordinarily old ladies did not fill him with a sense of dread, but this was one coincidence too many. Someone or something was determined to keep him from his morning walk, and he couldn't help but think the intentions for doing so were sinister.

'Who employed you? Are you even allowed to work here?' Phil asked.

'I notta Mexican!' the old woman proudly stated, puffing her chest out and entering Phil's flat uninvited. She surveyed the scene as if observing a terrible tragedy unfolding and promptly crossed herself. Phil's hygiene may have improved markedly but clearly his flat was still beneath the levels of cleanliness this small woman demanded.

Without further word or command, she proceeded to shuffle into the room and tidy. Phil watched on, completely at a loss for what to say. One minute she had been a stranger on his doorstep, the next she seemed to own the place, tsking repeatedly in a fashion that he felt was most judgemental.

Too many coincidences, or was he merely being paranoid? No, he definitely wasn't, there was no way all these things could happen so close together.

'I... I'm going out to get some fresh air.' Phil announced to his new cleaner, who briefly nodded at him and resumed her duties. Without further preamble he grabbed ahold of his keys and saw himself out, finally ready to resume his previously aborted walk.

He made it out the door, closing it behind him and pocketing the keys with a glance at the attached space ship model. It had formerly been the Delta Flyer from Voyager, but after his previous adventures he had returned to find it transformed into the unnamed ship he had Captained.

So lost was Phil in his thoughts that he didn't notice the svelte figure silently watching him from afar.

'Hello there!' she called out to him, an easy smile upon her face as she walked over with cat-like grace.

Phil was not an overly paranoid person, but having someone cheerfully approach him that wasn't trying to sell him something was an entirely alien concept prior to his adventures. He sighed and thought of Annika for a time as this other woman approached.

'Can I help you?' he managed to get out, more from frustration at yet another roadblock appearing in his schedule than any genuine concern over an attractive woman speaking to him.

'I'm new to this apartment.' the mysterious woman replied in a cheerful manner, her voice sounding like she'd just won first place in the helium balloon swallowing contest. 'Just thought I'd say hi, my name's Anne.'

'It's er... nice to meet you, Anne.'

They stood staring at each other for a brief moment. 'I... I'm Phil.'

She beamed at him in what he suspected would have been described as a radiant fashion. The sort of smile that could pierce men's souls and disarm defences, like a wet dog running through paper mache.

Phil couldn't tell whether it was a defence mechanism on his part, but he now had the image of a large sloppy dog bounding in slow motion to the tune of Vangelis.

'Well... it was nice to meet you, Phil.'

Phil nodded dumbly, not saying anything else and proceeding to wave goodbye when prompted to the retreating Anne as she crossed the hallway and entered the adjacent apartment.

Blowing air through his pursed mouth, he proceeded to make his way down the stairs and out for his walk.

A crack opened in the previously closed door, a single eye surveying him as he trundled down the stairs and out of the apartment block.

'This is low-hanging fruit to base one, I have made contact with the blimp. It's floating out now.'

The sound of static resolved into a familiar voice. 'This is base one to low-hanging fruit, you have a go on your situation. I repeat, you have a go on your situation.'

Anne terminated the transmission from Star Command and put her plan in motion.

Chapter 34

Pizza! Jelly! Anniamqtrappenmroahthazzzoomaothovvsahhhandshh!

T
he walk was uneventful in the end, with no more disturbances or protrusions into Phil's life than he had expected. It was good to finally get settled down into his routine and allow himself time to mull over recent events, of which there had been far too many of late.

Was it really feasible for a mountain of luck to suddenly hit in one great avalanche? He'd certainly built up enough bad luck over the years through his previous life to warrant it, but he'd have much preferred it being less disconcerting in presenting itself.

By the time he'd made it back to his apartment there was no sign of either his newly-acquired cleaner or the bubbly tenant who had accosted him from the adjacent apartment. He would have almost written it off as a bad dream were it not for the rearrangement of certain items in his apartment and the lingering smell of bleach.

Settling down into his computing chair, he was quickly greeted by the familiar wallpaper of the five Captains smiling back at him. At least the cleaner hadn't changed that then.