The Infinite Policeman — Chapter 2.000000001->

The Game’s A Foot

Mathematically speaking 1.99999999 and 2.000000001 are so close together as to be essentially the same number, and for this reason chapter 1.99999999 and chapter 2.000000001 can be considered as comprising Chapter 2. But don’t, is my suggestion.

The question of what chapter he was actually in did not occupy the mind of Ergot Ergo as he folded the telescope and put it away. He knew he would not be needing this telescope again, for in the apartment directly across from the window where the telescope had stood ever ready to inspect for 20 years one chapter of his professional career had been most definitely closed by the revelation of a shoe, with stockings and foot and pant leg covering an ankle at the very last panel of the window in that opposing apartment that faced his as if a guileless suspect in an interrogation room faced their interrogator.

Ergot Ergo turned and went to the window situated to inspect the apartment facing his from the south side, in the building situated as far North in the world as one could travel from the apartment building of Ergot Ergo without beginning to retrace one’s steps, at that window was standing another telescope, the double of that which he had just folded and put away. He looked through this instrument of vision and saw to his relief that the policeman in the order of *[Police]5459, **which it was Ergot Ergo’s sworn duty to police, was walking about the long central corridor of his average middle class apartment, as was his habit, over the white polar bear rug while sipping from a gold rimmed cup one of his fancy rare teas that he favored.

Assured in the safety of his Southern neighbor, Ergot Ergo went back to the North window and opened it and removed all obstructions between it and the wall. Then he took the special grappling hook gun that many members of the higher echelons of Police forces policing police forces have as part of their equipment.

Well equipped he took the elevator from his own modest penthouse apartment ‘ to the bottom floor of his 99 story middle class residential skyscraper.

Walking out on to the street through the revolving door, boy what a boiler, the hot sun shone down relentlessly. People walked around at regular intervals. There was a regulation crosswalk right at the center of the street where the doors of Ergot Ergo’s building opened and he crossed upon it to the other side, and after that crosswalk there was red carpet laid to the entrance of the building that Ergot Ergo intended to enter in order to commit his policing.

The carpet went slightly past the steps towards the street, but not enough out that people not intending to enter, or at least interested, in the building would ever touch it with their shod feet. there were 4 steps up and then the gold trimmed double doors with the name of the building etched halfway across each door in gold lettering “Tower”, with the word “the” in smaller letters above the Capital T of Tower, rotated 30 degrees, and nearly touching the T but not quite. Pretty fancy for a member of the *[Police]5459** thought Ergot Ergo.

He entered the building, there was no doorman, a strange, even suspicious, lack, under the circumstances. The elevator elevated quietly, and Ergot Ergo exited from the elevated elevator via the only entrance to the apartment of his quarry: the member of the *[Police]5459 **that lived there, potentially previously.

He crossed the apartment and stood over the leg with at its end a foot and that foot shod with the elegant shoe of black leather and also covered by the blue silk stockings imprinted with fleur de lis already mentioned in the chapter 0.000000002 chapters previous to this one, and which Officer *[Police]5459**(1) favored. He had the suspicion this was going to be an especially tricky case, as the leg ran all the way to the gluteal fold, as legs should, but there was no buttock connected to that fold, nor any rest of the body, which was frankly not what bodies should, not at all.

He put the grappling hook gun down, no need to carry it about right now.

It was obvious that the body had been cut from the leg, or if you wish to take an alternative view, the leg from the body, and the leg transported and laid in the spot where it was deliberately, because if not there would have been a big pool of blood soaked into the rug at that spot which would have been evident from his apartment via his extremely powerful middle class telescope, and also because there was a little trickled trail of blood leading off from the gluteal fold towards the other end of the apartment to where the windows showed out on the East facing completely other apartments in other skyscrapers than his, where there lay a large still damp irregularly shaped pooling of blood and some few tears of meat and fabric from where the leg was removed, but no body.

This was disturbing. Highly disturbing, murder, butchering without a license, transport of body parts for illicit purposes, the list of crimes went on for thousands of pages but here is shown a simple list of three in order to show you that the list could potentially be quite long and intimidating.

Now that he was a victim and dead it felt wrong to refer to him coldly, as only *[Police]5459**(1). He was a person that was no longer being policed in the conventional way, due to death. His name deserved to be referred to directly, Reynard Rabblein.

Ergot Ergo took out his blue coded policeX tape, this had a running cipher along its length that when read by any police phone would show what level of police was policing the apartment. This would keep the police who policed the population from investigating the murder, and also any other police investigating lower echelons of police would not police the police who did not investigate the murder or not investigate the police who did not police the police who did not investigate the murder all the way up to the other member of [Police]5459(2) and at the same time notify whatever higher ups that must be policing the [Police]5460 of which Ergot Ergo was the only representative would see that the [Police]5460 were doing their jobs, that is to say Ergot Ergo’s job of policing the [Police]5459, in particular Reynard Rabblein, whose death was, by the placing of the tape, now officially under investigation.

Potential witnesses? Ergot went to the windows facing East, across the street was another skyscraper, slightly taller than the middle class skyscraper he was in, nothing to see there but.. there was a glint of light from a window opposite the window he stood at, although slightly higher by a few units of measurement that have not been specified, this glint caught his eye and he quickly took out the binoculars he kept in his vest pocket, and inspected the glint through them.

A man, wearing a dark green plaid suit, was inspecting Ergot Ergo through a long fancy telescope, noticing that he himself was also being inspected in return he stepped back for a second, revealing half of his face to Ergot’s inspection. He wore mirrored glasses, had slick thinning hair combed over his forehead, and half a mustache on the side of the face presented, undoubtedly doubled by another half mustache on the other side.

Ergot pointed at him with the index finger of his right hand. And, having made this vague warning of a future visit, put his binoculars back in his vest pocket, and went back to the windows that faced his own skyscraper.

He picked the grappling hook gun up from where he had laid it earlier, affixed one end of the line to the heavy sofa, and shot the hook with great accuracy from the apartment of Reynard Rabblein to his own, the hook catching on the sill of his opened window, took out his upper level policeman’s multitool, and ziplined from the apartment of the dead man to his own, thereby efficiently cutting more than 10 minutes off of the trip to his next destination, that is to say the Skyscraper directly to the South of his building.

Ergot Ergo for the second time that day descended in the elevator of his building, coming out in the lobby and exiting on the South side to see the a very similar scene as that he had seen maybe half and hour previously when he had gone from the his own building to that of Reynard Rabblein.

People walked around at regular intervals. There was a regulation crosswalk right at the center of the street where the doors of Ergot Ergo’s building opened and he crossed upon it to the other side, and after that crosswalk there was blue carpet laid to the entrance of the building that Ergot Ergo intended to enter in order to commit his policing.

As he walked into the building another man walked out. This man wore a conservative smoking jacket, with fox head cufflinks. He shirt was white, Egyptian cotton with ivory buttons, his shades a slight tint of green, his hair was curly and he was completely clean shaven around the jaw and cheeks.

The nodded politely at each other as they passed.

As Ergot came in he saw the Elevator doors were closing, obviously the man had just exited, he ran and caught them in time, saving himself some seconds of time. Efficiency is the watchword of the members of the *[Police]5460 **of which Ergot Ergo was the only one.

The elevator went directly up and opened into the main penthouse apartment of his target, the second member of the set *[Police]5459 **which Ergot was policing. However his expectation to meet with the man and to question him was cruelly dashed, for the fellow was lying on the floor with a large knife through his heart, one hand clutching at the knife handle and the other one gripping tightly a bit of paper. Ergot knelt and using a pencil and a pen together pried the fingers apart to release the paper, put some green rubber gloves on and lifted the paper up to open and read.

The paper had only one sentence on it, but it was one that meant a great deal more than almost any other possible sentence in the world, at that particular moment and place, that sentence being:

“Crooks crooks crooks crooks”

First Installment

[embed]The Infinite Policeman — Preliminary Movement We have discussed the subject of grammatical infinities in some previous articles, and how the sentence Police Police…medium.com

Previous Installment

[embed]The Infinite Policeman — Chapter 1.99999999-> Whatever Happened to Dimension ℵ0medium.com

The Infinite Policeman has been made available in a manageable size through the tireless efforts of Agent 6, the author of The Vaults of Fug (affiliate link):

[embed]The Vaults of Fug Weird Fiction - containing Science Fiction, Fantasy, Horror and Adventure stories in a modernized take on old Pulp…amzn.to