It was a little after ten AM when Evermind came by my stand.
“Hello, my friend Leslie!” it said brightly, all ten legs at eager attention and its thorax at a jaunty angle. “Are you very busy?”
“Kind of,” I said distractedly. I’d just put on the last of my first full batch of lunch wieners, and now I was trying to figure out how many buns I wanted ready and waiting. “Make it quick.”
“I have been murdered!”
“Yeah that’s niwait what?”
Evermind beamed happily at me, then fell over stone dead.
I went back to unpacking buns until Evermind came back, this time in a cleaner-form.
“Told you not to do that in front of the stand,” I told it.
“Sorry,” said Evermind apologetically with one mouth as it fed the runner-form into its primary mastication pinchers. “But I was so excited! My friend Leslie, I’ve been murdered! Just like in one of your mystery novels that you so generously have shared with me!”
“How does that even work?”
“I have no idea! That is why we must find the murderer, to understand how they did such a thing.”
“’We’?”
Evermind’s eyestalks looked everywhere but at me for a second. “I told the police at first, and they told me to contact the garbagemen. Then the garbagemen told me to contact the police.”
“Did you tell them it was murder?”
“Yes but they didn’t care.”
“Most people don’t bounce back quite as readily after a murder as you, Evermind.”
“Bounce like a what?”
“Never mind. You PROMISE this won’t take long?”
“Not long at all – especially with your expert assistance, my friend Leslie!” said Evermind, chitin standing at attention and vibrating with eagerness.
“I just read lots of shitty thrillers, you know.”
“Yes! Lots! Making you an expert.”
I gave up and swung the little sign on my stand from OPEN! to BACK IN FIVE!!! You just couldn’t say no to that face. Or the other ones in its lower abdomen.
“Okay,” I said. “Take me to the crime scene.”
“Wonderful!” cried Evermind, aquiver with violent enthusiasm. “You’re standing in it.”
“I’m sorry?”
“Yes! I was murdered in town!”
“More specific than that, please.”
“Oh. About three blocks south.”
I pursed my lips. “So… in one of those shady little backalleys the up-and-up restaurants stuff their dumpsters in?”
“You are entirely correct! I was having lunch.”
***
The crime scene was a mess. Evermind’s feeder-form had been a big one, rounded and full of delicious nutrients to share with itself. Something had gone at it with…Christ it was hard to tell. I wasn’t a police officer; I didn’t even do my own butchering. It looked like it had been stabbed with a shotgun and then fired into over and over.
“Behold! The crime scene!”
“Sec. Gotta throw up.”
“Of course.”
Luckily there was a dumpster handy. Luckier still that I was too preoccupied to smell whatever was brewing in it. “Okay. Ok. O. Right. Alright, describe what happened.”
“I was murdered!”
“In more detail please. If possible.”
“Well, I was processing more nutrients from the dumpster you just vomited into. This is a convenient place to leave a feeder-form – there’s always a nice meal handy, and it’s right along my main trunk. Under normal circumstances I’d have a runner-form here every three minutes on the minute.”
“You’re not going to starve are you?”
“Only a few dozen of me. It’s very surprising though!”
I looked at the corpse, then opened the dumpster again.
“Shall I describe the wounds to you?”
“Hrlllrlpppghgl.”
“There is a powerful incision on the left-”
“SLORT!”
***
“Alright,” I said. “You can put me down now.”
“Sure thing, my friend Leslie,” said Evermind in the great grey monotone of its hauler-forms. I’d passed out after the second vomiting fit and in the middle of the third paragraph of a very detailed autopsy, and woken up being courteously held upside-down so my breakfast would leak out my mouth instead of down my windpipe.
“Alright. Alright. Okay. So… you have no idea what did this to you.”
“No. I was alone when it happened, and didn’t see who did it. The blow came from behind me.”
“We need witnesses. Anyone who might’ve seen what happened?”
“Trudy might have.”
I squinted up the seven feet of chiseled Evermind-abdominals. “Trudy?”
“My neighbour, Trudy. She lives two dumpsters down from my murder scene.”
“Oh. We should talk to her.”
“Excellent. Onwards.”
“Yeah.”
“My friend Leslie, are you going to get up anytime soon.”
“Yeah I just need a moment.”
“Because I can carry you.”
“I’m aware.”
“It would be no problem.”
“It’s fine.”
“Because I know you’re dying to solve this-”
“One minute. Please.”
***
I knocked on the dumpster for a good twenty seconds before it opened.
“What?! Can’t you see it’s noon!”
“Eleven-thirty,” I said.
“Whatever,” said Trudy, crossly. “What’re you doing making such a racket?”
“We’re investigating a murder,” said Evermind.
“Oh yeah? Whose?”
“Mine.”
Trudy stared at it, then at me. “The hell?”
“Just roll with it,” I said wearily. “Did you see anything? Hear anything?”
“When?”
“That’s a good question. Evermind?”
“Exactly nine twelve AM.”
“I was asleep. Like I was before you started up with your damned racket just now. Why the hell would I notice something if I were asleep?”
“Evermind was being murdered sixteen feet away from you with some sort of giant blade or firearm?”
“None of my damned business, frankly. You heard the sounds this one makes when it’s eating? I don’t pay attention anymore. Maybe the retired guy did it, now fuck off and leave me alone.”
“The retired guy?”
Trudy’s dumpster slammed shut about a centimeter shy of my fingers.
I looked up at Evermind’s sensory plate. “The retired guy?”
“Oh yes. LMT-CQ04281. He’s in the square we walked through to get here.”
“I didn’t see anyone else around.”
“He lives in the exact center of it, my friend Leslie. You can’t miss him.”
***
“You know, this is a bit awkward,” I said.
HOW.
“I thought you were a statue at first.”
OH. THAT HAPPENS A LOT. DON’T WORRY ABOUT IT.
“Yes sir.”
NO NEED FOR THAT. I’M RETIRED AND YOU’RE NOT UNDER MY COMMAND.
“Yes sir.”
WHAT CAN I HELP YOU TWO WITH.
“I’ve been murdered,” said Evermind proudly – or as proudly as it could emote with a voicebox shaped like a little grey rubik’s cube.
WELL DONE. WHO DID IT.
“You don’t know?”
I HAD MY INFRASONAR DECOMISSIONED OUT OF RESPECT FOR THE PRIVACY OF MY FELLOW CITIZENS. MY SENSORY RANGE IS LIMITED TO SIGHT AND SOUND, AND I LACK EASY ACCESS TO THAT ALLEYWAY FROM MY POSITION. THE BEST I CAN OFFER IS I HEARD SOUNDS INDICATING A FATALITY AT THE MOMENT EVERMIND HAS ALREADY DESCRIBED TO YOU.
“Damnit.”
TRY ASKING THE FISH AND CHIPS PLACE.
“I’m sorry?”
THEY HAVE A CAMERA POINTED AT THEIR DUMPSTER. LIABILITY REASONS.
“Oh. Sure. Thank you. Sir.”
LMT-CQ04281 waved farewell to us and then settled back into a crouching position, all seven meters and sixteen tons of it.
“I thought most of the war criminalizer droids went to quiet places. Mountain peaks. Oceanic trenches.”
“Oh, the CQ-models prefer more urban environments. The right balance of open sightlines and confined horizons is essential to a proper and healthy state of mind.”
“You talk a lot?”
“Absolutely. We’re best friends.”
“How many best friends do you have again, Evermind?”
“Approximately 38% of the population of this planet, my friend Leslie.”
“Way to make me feel special.”
“You’re welcome,” said Evermind. And then it reached the end of its hauler-form’s life cycle and expired on the pavement next to me.
***
“Look,” I said in exasperation, “there’s been a murder.”
“If it’s THAT thing,” said the waiter tersely, “it’s just pest control.”
“That is very hurtful,” said Evermind’s observer-form from my shoulder.
“Shut up. You’re more eyeball than anything right now, I don’t have to pretend to like you.”
“Oh come on we just need thirty seconds of security footage.”
“Get out or I will call the police.”
I took a moment to decide whether or not I’d regret never eating fish and chips here again. It wasn’t a long moment.
“Catch,” I said.
“What?” said the waiter.
“What?” said Evermind.
I gently plucked Evermind from my shoulder and lobbed it underhand into the waiter’s lap.
“AUGH!” said the waiter.
“Oh goodness!” said Evermind.
“Good catch.” I said. And I walked into the backroom while the waiter was trying to detach sixteen sucker-covered tendrils from their arms. Six monitors, two of which were turned off. Three of them were security cam footage. One of them was pointed at the dumpster, Evermind still sprawled in front of it.
I rewound.
Password?
I entered ‘password1’ and to the everlasting shame of my species it worked, and I beheld the face of the murderer as it finished gutting its prey, because it stopped and turned to the camera and waved with a big happy smile.
“Happy birthday, my friend Leslie!” said Evermind, on the monitor.
“Happy birthday, my friend Leslie!” said Evermind, in the hands of the waiter.
“GET OUT!” said the waiter.
“Oh for FUCK’S sake,” I said.
***
And to top it all off, I missed the lunch rush.