PRL Serials

The day was hot in Houston, Texas and Thursday sat uncomfortably in his chair at the outside cafe. He was sweating, beads were growing from his head and forehead and occasionally he used a hand to swipe at the sweat, then he’d shake the hand at his side as the sweat sprayed the sidewalk. 

“Is that necessary?” Saturday asked. “You’re getting it on the robot.”

The robot who was Friday had sweat on the side of his face that was closest to Thursday, but it didn’t seem to notice.

“It’ll be alright,” Thursday said. “Why are we out here in this heat anyway? You said Tuesday was supposed to make his move in the tunnels downtown, tomorrow.”

“Yes but, if we can stop him today, there won’t be a move tomorrow,” Saturday explained. She was still wearing the Saturday suit and talked in a deep, manly voice. “If you’re hot, just imagine what it’s like in this disguise.”

“I’m surprised you haven’t fainted from heat stroke,” Thursday said.

“I’m ok, I just want to get this over with. He should be here any minute. Tuesday has been coming to this restaurant since he arrived in Houston. The Supremacist that I talked to said he comes alone to eat and then walk the route Beyonce’s car will take downtown. Wait, there he is.”

Thursday turned and looked in the direction that Saturday pointed. He struggled to find a face that he recognized until Tuesday emerged from the pedestrians on the sidewalk and then went inside the restaurant. Thursday got up and followed him inside, and Saturday and Friday followed closely behind him. The restaurant was fairly busy and Tuesday was sitting on a bench next to a large window and near the cash register, presumably waiting to be seated. He was dressed in the same clothes that he had been wearing at the dinner with Sunday, though he looked just as clean and put together as he had a few days ago. Thursday, Friday, and Saturday also wore the same clothing, as though it were the uniform of the Idiot days, and as they approached Tuesday, everyone stepped aside as though they were a party deserving respect.

Tuesday didn’t notice the other days approaching him. As he got closer, Thursday saw a look of panic on Tuesday’s face as he concentrated on the large screen of his smartphone. He seemed to be mumbling to himself, though Thursday could not hear anything from his mouth. Tuesday’s lips moved while his thumbs busied over the face of the phone and when he was close, Thursday knelt down on one knee before Tuesday so they could speak and be heard over the noise of the restaurant. Friday and Saturday stood at a distance watching Thursday and Tuesday speaking with their faces very close to one another. Neither Friday nor Saturday could hear their words and they both wondered what Thursday was saying. 

Eventually, Tuesday put a hand on each of Thursday’s cheeks and then kissed the man on the forehead. Thursday stood and joined his colleagues, leading them back outside as a waiter beckoned for Saturday to follow them to a table. When they were outside, Thursday sat at the table where the three had been before, and his companions joined him.

“So?” Saturday asked, leaning on the table.

“We got into a war of words, if you will,” Thursday explained very carefully, as though he was surprised by the details of his own conversation and he was listening to himself retell it to confirm in his mind that it had indeed been an absurd conversation with the man, Tuesday. “I had to think of a way to derail him, you see, I had to be sure that he would be occupied tomorrow when Mrs. Knowles Carter is expected to pass through the tunnels.”

“So what did you say?” Saturday asked impatiently. The way he stammered in his speech made the woman in the man costume angry and she thought about hitting his head to force the words out. 

“I challenged him to a mass shooting…” Thursday trailed off.

“How do you challenge someone to a mass shooting?” Saturday asked and the robot Friday scratched his head with a puzzled look on his face.

“I don’t know, or I didn’t know, but I was there kneeling before him and whispering in his face and I had to think of a reason that we all would have come here to find him, so I made up a slight. I said that a remark he’d made at the dinner with Sunday had insulted my mother and I needed satisfaction. It plays into the wiley nature of us Idiot days, doesn’t it? Aren’t we meant to be devil may care and prone to violence that will shake the next man’s faith in the civilized society that he believes to be indestructible? Unhinged in our own way. I’d say that I was a very convincing Thursday, Idiot follower of horrendous Sunday who will turn the world upside down and delight at the ensuing chaos. I said, ‘How about I show you what happens in the real world when someone incorrectly believes that they are more valuable than someone else?” And he said, ‘What is it then, Thursday? I have a tenuous truce with the black supremacists of my organization, they teach me how to avoid faux pas with you blacks. How did I insult you?’ To which I responded, ‘It’s not what you said, but how you said it. As if killing the most powerful woman in America will be an easy task for one such as you. I’d be a better pick to execute Sunday’s plan, I am much more likely to be able to get close enough to carry it out.’ And of course he’s no common idiot so he asks, ‘And how did that insult your mother?’ To which I stammered, ‘She is… a black woman! We protect our black women and I will see you pay for the implication that we do not! I challenge you to a mass shooting, starting tomorrow, three hours after noon.’”

“What is a mass shooting challenge?” Saturday asked again.

“I didn’t know when I said it, it just came out. I was trying to sound flippant and irreverent, but I guess he knew what it was. He said, ‘So whichever of us enters a room that the other occupies in a group of ten or more people will open fire with the intent to kill the other and as many innocent bystanders in the room?’”

“That’s not a thing,” Friday said sketically.

Saturday’s mouth hung open like she was speechless. 

“We agreed,” Thursday said. “And I had to agree to be downtown from noon to sundown.”

“Do you even have a gun?” Saturday asked.  

“No but this is America right, it can’t be that hard to find one. Besides, I don’t need one, I don’t plan to do a mass shooting. You two can help me track Tuesday tomorrow to make sure I enter the room that he’s in and then we can take him out or whatever. Can we arrest him? Do we have that power?”

They all looked at one another curiously. None of them had bothered to ask the man in the darkness at the deli. 

“I doubt we can call in backup or something,” Saturday said, thinking out loud. “We just have to apprehend him and secure him so we can get word back to the Order.”

So Thursday, Friday, and Saturday found a hotel in downtown Houston to wait for the mass shooting duel to commence three hours after noon the next day. 

Thursday sat with Saturday on the balcony of their hotel room that overlooked a busy street downtown where the underground tunnels were located. 

“Can you believe all this?” Saturday asked. “A week ago I was just a theater major, and now here we are trying to stop an assaination that might end life as we know it.”

“I can believe it,” Thursday said. He was sipping whiskey from a short glass with ice and staring down at civilization below them. It wasn’t Manhattan, but Houston was alive and beautiful in the night. 

“I had never heard of any of this before the Order approached me. I’ve never heard people use the word Idiot with such pride.”

“The world never ceases to amaze me,” Thursday said. “But we won’t let them win. We’ll stop this.”

He looked at Saturday who had taken off the disguise of a man. She was his age and most likely his classmate at Columbia. It was true that he spent his college years with the men and women who would control the levers of society in the future. This theater major was probably from a well to do family, why else would she spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on a degree in acting, and she would undoubtedly rise to some level of influence. But even if she didn’t, her actions with the Order of Sound Reason ensured her relevance. Thursday would succeed in thwarting Sunday’s plans, and he would use the Order to do it, so this woman who had been masquerading as Saturday would prevent real calamity in the US and stabilize the status quo into the future. 

Thursday was a black man, and he was a realist. If he ever hoped to achieve the life befitting a man of his stature, he needed civilization to march on as it had for hundreds of years. Black people were making up a huge deficit in the prosperity department and there had never been a better time in history for a black man to achieve wealth and the security that comes with real prosperity. If Sunday ended the civilized world as he planned, everything would be chaos, and sure black people could survive in chaos, but would all the lighter skins unite to prevent the blacks from achieving stability and comfort in the name of their own comfort? Well, fuck yeah they would, haven’t they always? Maybe it’s envy that the sun doesn’t burn black people so easily? But goddamn that’s some next level spite, to deny a people humanity just because their skin has a natural barrier to the harshness of sunlight. But I digress.

The next day, Thursday, Friday, and Saturday walked the busy streets of downtown Houston. They each had Bluetooth headphones in their ears and they were in constant communication as they split up to spot Tuesday on the street. Thursday inspected the shelves of books outside of a bookstore and he spent more time flipping through them than he did looking for Tuesday. After about an hour, though, Friday told them that he’d spotted Tuesday heading down into the tunnels.

Thursday ran to the street where Friday pursued Tuesday and he arrived just as Saturday made her way to the street in her man disguise. The three walked together, Saturday and Friday out front and Thursday using them as a shield. The tunnel was much more impressive than Thursday had anticipated. It was like an underground mall and much cooler than it had been on the street.

“There he is,” Saturday said and they all walked toward a store where Tuesday was standing out front with a baseball cap and shades. He had a hand in the pocket of his suit coat and he seemed to be looking for someone.

Thursday stood before Tuesday, leaping out from behind his companions to surprise the man. Tuesday smirked at him.

“This is a tunnel, not a room,” he said.

Thursday stared curiously.

“What is this?” Thursday said indignantly. “Do you plan to hide out here until sundown to avoid the duel? You’re compounding the insult to me and my dear mother. Fuck the mass shooting, let’s do a duel. Right here, right now.”

Saturday patted Thursday on the shoulder and whispered into his ear, “But you don’t have a gun, and it surely seems that he does.”

“I’ll pick the weapon,” Thursday whispered, “bare knuckles. Someone will call the police and they’ll lock us both up. Assassination averted.”

“Do you know what’s supposed to happen today?” Tuesday asked. “Today, Beyonce will be in the tunnels and there will be an attempt on her life.”

“Bare knuckles duel,” Thursday said with his fists up. “First one unconscious loses.”

“There are people here, sent by Sunday to kill Beyonce,” Tuesday said. 

“Yes,” Saturday said, “he sent you.”

“No,” Tuesday said and he removed his hand from his suit pocket. He had the badge of the Order of Sound Reason. “I’m trying to stop them from killing Beyonce. I’m a spy, and Sunday must have known that because he sent others to do the job that I was meant to do. Or maybe he sent others to ensure that it happens, he doesn’t want to take any chances. Either way, I was hoping to keep an eye out and prevent you from doing a mass shooting. So if you all want to kill me, do your worst. I’m not leaving here until I know Mrs. Knowles Carter is safe.”

Thursday’s mouth fell open and he looked at Saturday who was also dumbfounded.

The robot Friday flashed his badge at Tuesday.

“Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, and Saturday are all spies,” the robot said. “We came here to stop you.”

“This is curious,” Tuesday said.

“This is Sunday,” Thursday said. “He did this, somehow he made sure that all of his Idiot days were undercover investigators, and while we were busy fighting each other, he’s out plotting something much worse.”

“But how could he have known that we would replace all of his Idiot days?” Saturday asked.

“Because he knew that the Order was on to him,” Thursday reasoned. “He figured they’d infiltrate his Idiot days and he used the Beyonce plot to keep us busy. Are you sure there are people here to kill Beyonce other than you?”

“I saw Monday,” Tuesday said. “She’s here with a whole crowd of idiots in black. I think they’re going to cause chaos here so they can get to Beyonce. Look, some of them are coming this way. And there’s Monday.”

Thursday recognized the woman in the same black, hooded cloak she’d been wearing when he met her on the roof of the building where they had dinner with Sunday. She led a group of about twenty people in black uniforms and when they made it to the bottom of the stairs, she was pointing in their direction.

“They know we’re spies,” Thursday said. “Maybe if we run, they’ll chase us and forget about Beyonce.”

“It’s our best chance I think,” Tuesday agreed. “If they take us, we won’t be able to do anything”

So the four spies ran toward the other entrance to the tunnels, headed for the street above ground.