Free The Dead Slam: A Tale of Benevolent Assasination by R.F. Bright

wanted to run away before Camille could see him disintegrate. He had been to therapy and knew what to do. Be here. Be here. In the present. Just be here. In this place. Look where you are, he kept repeating to himself, look where you are.
    He focused on the room. He hadn’t been inside an American home in eleven years. He grew up in a nice home, but not this nice. He studied the sleek living room, imagining his mother in this fashionable place. Snap out of it, he thought. No nostalgia. Be here. Right now. Right now! Right now! Right here . . . The sound of a door opening down the hall jolted him.
    He slipped back onto the couch and opened his collar. Damn, it was hot in here.

8
    A cross the Hudson River in midtown Manhattan, Thomka and Murthy were enjoying a late lunch at Pescadores Pronto. Thomka traded witty barbs about Murthy with the haughty waitress delivering their entrees: two applewood-smoked trout, raised in tanks on the roof, and hothouse asparagus grown in trout manure. Thomka slurped his Chilean Merlot and swished it around in his mouth. “You’re not going to hit on,” he tilted his head at the waitress, “what’s-her-name?”
    Murthy’s face gnarled into a lump of disappointment. “She lives in a far too poetic dimension, believes in things that can never happen. And! She’s not speaking to me. And I’m OK with that. There’s other fish in the Pescadores Pronto.”
    “You could make it up with a big tip,” he chided. Murthy was a bad tipper, which was embarrassing, unnecessary and everyone knew it.
    Murthy shrugged his shoulders and changed the subject. “Hey, you know what?” He dragged a sweet potato fry through a puddle of truffle-infused gravy. “That guy from Jersey, the guy who’s looking for Tuke. We tracked his call to a cell-tower in Pennsylvania.”
    Thomas’s fork hovered over his honey-roasted carrots. “And?”
    “And! Ta-dah . . . I called the Leprechauns. They are on the case, my friend. It’s all over but the River Dancing.”
    A worried breath drifted out of the corners of Thomka’s mouth. “I don’t think you understand who you’re dealing with.”
    “I’d be worried if you weren’t worried,” said Murthy. “They’re just regular old fashioned rent-a-thugs. A little quirky. You know they claimed the street that runs beside the wall they built across Pittsburgh. They call it New Hibernia. A brand new and sovereign nation, inside the U.S. Now that takes some blarney.”
    “You can’t play these guys,” warned Thomka, “you don’t have the wit for it. If you piss them off, and I assume you will, they’ll cut off your little tandoori balls and stuff them up your nose, in Times Square.”
    Murthy dropped his fork. “Not while I’m eating.”
    “They do that kind of thing. They’re very expressive. And don’t make fun of their one-street nation. They’re dead serious about that.”
    Murthy knocked over the salt shaker, and said indignantly, “Let me handle the Leprechauns. Keep your nose out of it.”
    Thomka agreed with a tipsy grin. “My eggheads briefed me on Tuke’s game — The Massive. I didn’t get it, even after they explained it ten times. I was completely baffled!” They both cracked up and Thomka filled Murthy’s glass so they could toast their shared lack of comprehension.
    “Here’s what I do understand,” said Thomka, “aside from the social games. What those are . . . I don’t have a clue, but millions of sophisticated players, many of whom work for us, most are just regular people out on their own, log on to The Massive. They’re given a mission based on some problem. They use whatever computers they’ve got, have built or stolen , to create data webs. They do it collectively. All the data they create along the way is available to everyone all the time. That’s part of their ‘open source’ lifestyle. Non-zero sum games philosophy. Whatever that is. Nobody owns the win. Talk about leaving chips on the table.”
    They sipped