Per 
They had left him behind, a slug having creased his head.
That wasn't the way they did it in the real world, but this was the Foundation.
The slug had obliterated his left ear.
Agent Johnson made it up only a few more steps.
He didn't know if his brain was exposed.
It felt like it.
Blood pattered onto his left shoulder, the steps. Like a terrible rain.
He had to get to the roof.
Johnson had been on 'easy' detail for months. Or so he thought until Commander Greff took over. And told everyone that there was nothing easy detail in the Foundation.
Sure they traveled the world, consficating old football shit and amensticizing people.
But the Foundation still didn't quite know why the Tallahassee Tigers had to be erased from collective reality. Or at
least Johnson's detail did not know.
It was almost routine. Pull into town, meet some guy in a McDonald's or police parking lot, give him cash for his father's
football cards and then spray him with some silly gas or give him a special bottle of water. And now he thinks he sold
some regular baseball cards for pot money.
Johnson was five floors from the roof.
He had vomited.
He didn't remember that.
Worrying.
It had been three years past the time of the Superbowl Shuffle when the NFL tried to remake it again. With their Tallahasse Tigers team. Some sort of weird country western song, even though Florida was it's own special societal dungheap and not *really* part of the South.
The song, whatever it was (they weren't allowed to listen) came with it's own stupid dance. Some weird knock off of
the Electric Slide. The name of the dance had already been erased from consensus reality. But not it's existence. The
team had found a recording of the dance on an old VHS player, in a long abandoned school. Greenberg had shot the
VHS to SHIT. Absolute shit. There were fragments left and the wall behind it was blown clean open.
That's where they found the dead folks.
An extension cord led from the other room Greenberg had shot into. To the TV.
The theory was the dead people had watched the tape, killed each other, someone else moved the tv.
TV had still been playing. Somehow.
Greenberg was in Site 44. They told everyone he had been transferred. Johnson knew Site 44 had extensive therapy
facilities for traumatized agents. Either Greenberg was in a padded room, monitored 24-7 or they had wiped his mind
and transferred him again to some Safe Class facility, watching stupid shit in boxes and threatening D-Class.
All this time and Johnson was only four floors away.
Johnson had done his part. They had taken old Tigers tickets. Jerseys. A calendar. Even a signed helmet, once worn by
a man who now thought he had spent ten years as a high school football coach and who still woke up some days with
throbbing migraines caused by way too many tackles.
But Johnson remembered the VHS cassette. Remembered the dance.
And just a little while ago … well.
The Craigslist seller didn't show at the pre-planned spot, the parking lot of a Burger King. Johnson, assigned as a civilian monitor, had eaten his disgusting burger as the commander called it in. Johnson knew the routine. The
Foundation was hacking records, checking cameras…and yes. An apartment building four blocks away. The guy with
the merchandise had waited around in his lobby with a bunch of stuff in a cardboard box, then gone back in his home.
By the time they got there, everyone was in FBI disguise.
Two of their team had actually been FBI once upon a time.
The apartment lobby actually had some people in it, none their suspect.
Fox and her partner, the two former FBI, cleared them out. The duo were high on charm and had dozens of pre-
planned stories primed to convince civilians to move along. Johnson thought they had used 'That famous guy is signing
autographs down the street' but he had been point. Didn't hear exactly.
Or maybe the giant gaping hole in his skull had erased some memories.
Johnson had been first in the door. The Foundation didn't have any intel on who might have been inside. Sure, they
knew the layout, they knew the renter's info down to where he took his first shit (Blue Angel Memorial hospital, eight
thousand miles away). But no webcams, no smartphones, nothing to link up on in time.
This should have been a warning.
There had been three people inside. Two opened fire. Johnson dropped the first Tango with three shots to the chest.
The second one fired. Johnson and three other agents returned fire. The second person's head clean vanished but he
still managed to get a shot off.
As Johnson fell to the floor he saw a large window to the left. And legs going UP a fire escape ladder. Legs with the
same pants and bright purple shoes recorded from the lobby cam.
The others left him where he was.
He expected this.
The guy headed for the roof had memetically dangerous shit. That was far more important than an agent with a
creased skull.
Johnson was one floor away from the roof.
A little while ago he had been laying on a stranger's floor with two dead men.
Or so he had thought.
The one shot in the chest sat upright.
No, he hadn't been wearing a bullet proof vest. From this angle Johnson could see the huge chunks torn out of his
back.
The man, if it was a man, leaned in towards Johnson.
"Look. I'll level with you." he said. "I got excited about this Tiger crap too. Especially when I remembered going to NFL
games with my grandpa, cheering for a team that never existed. But that doesn't mean I want to do all this crap. I was
just curious. Please note I never opened fire on your men."
The shot man left the room.
Then he came back.
"Oh yeah. He had some shit on the roof too. Remember the VHS player your man shot?" Again he left.
There was no way this gut-shot zombie could have known that. If in fact a man was walking around with his intestines
blown to hell.
Johnson had struggled to his feet.
Time swam.
Johnson was puking again. Blood came out. Not from his temple wound, but from deep inside his throat.
He stumbled onto the roof. Three large smart tablets, hooked to mobile battery systems.
The Foundation should have scanned the whole building for smart phones.
There were screams. It was night. Johnson must have blacked out on the stairs longer than he had thought. Why was
everyone screaming? Johnson couldn't see a thing. The tablets … so bright. Johnson kicked over the closest one,
sending it whirling face first to the roof. It caught on a wire, allowing a bit of flashing light to come through.
Casually, his training taking over, Johnson shot out the other projectors.
Then he saw why the screaming.
Sure, this was a tall apartment building but on the far edge of the suburbs.
That meant a lot of stars could be seen.
And, matching the blink and stutter of the lights coming out of the upside down tablet, the stars themselves blinked.
On and off.
On and off.
A few didn't come back on.
-FiN.-
