Rift Grifters (Part 1)

Two dingy men stood in the middle of a Kansas wheatfield holding a fishing rod.

It was not really a fishing rod. It simply looked like one. But the wheatfield was really a wheatfield, which meant chiggers. And the two men really were dingy.

Pinto scratched his legs, drawing his pant legs up to his knees to really get a dig in. Pinto was round, the Hardy in a Laurel and Hardy duo, and he wore a bowler hat to match. He wore gray slacks that had seen better days—many, many better days—and a blazer which could only be descript as ‘non.’ He was covered in wheat fragments and dust. He was sweating, as one does when wearing a blazer and slacks and a bowler hat in a Kansas wheatfield.

“How much longer?” Pinto said over the dry whisper of the wheat and his own leg-scratching.

“Four minutes, two seconds and counting. Forty-eight seconds later than when you last asked,” said a tall and thin man whose name really was Laurel. He was gray all around and had bags under his eyes and even though his shoulders hunched he was still taller than Pinto. “Just wait. We’re in position. We’re in position exactly. Just chill out.”

Pinto sweated and grumbled and scratched.

“Listen, Pinto, we’re getting paid more than we’ve ever made in a year. In two years. And who knows, if we do this job well, maybe there’s more down the line. So we gotta let our client know they’re working with professionals.”

“Well I dressed up, didn’t I?” said Pinto. “That’s a good impression, like.”

“Doesn’t matter much if the client isn’t here, Pinto,” said Laurel.

Pinto looked around the wheatfield. “Thought he said he’d meet us here,” he said.

“Something came up.”

Pinto examined the dirt and sweat he’d picked up under his fingernails thoughtfully. He shrugged his blazer off. He kept the bowler hat on.

“Three minutes now exactly,” said Laurel. He adjusted his grip on the device that wasn’t a fishing rod. He gripped the handle with his left hand and held a crank handle in his right which jutted out from where a reel would normally be on a fishing rod. Instead, a screen flashed blue at the base.

“Sure that thing’s ready to go?” said Pinto. He eyed the fishing rod warily.

Laurel snorted. “Of course. I made sure it was fired up and charged right after we rifted here.”

Pinto turned pale. “Ugh, that always makes me sick. I hate rifting. It turns my stomach outside in. Me, I prefer a nice drive.”

Laurel frowned. “Humanity learned how to particulate physical objects into data to rift across space, revolutionizing the way we travel and transport goods, just so we could haul your sorry butt to Kansas, and now you’re complaining about it?”

“Looks that way,” said Pinto. “Explain how that thing works again. Are you sure we’re in the right place?”

“Pinto, I’m sure about that, I’m sure about how this thing’s ready to go, and I get more surer all the time you ask me. You’ve seen this thing work before, okay? Listen, with all the data flying around in the air these days, it was just a matter of time before someone learned how to scoop the data out of the air that they wanted to get. Particularly after rifting, actually, we done away with satellites except as a novelty. There’s invisible data and radiowaves buzzing all around us right now.”

Pinto glanced around as if he would actually see and hear the data buzz by.

“I just figured how to scoop the data I want out of the air with this thing. Social security numbers, ID info, even digital currency once I figure out a couple snags. All I have to do is take this,” Laurel said, brandishing the rod device, “And get equidistant between the two data transfer points—that’s some higher maths stuff I learned at college that you wouldn’t get, so don’t ask me to explain why—and with some basic info about the strings of numbers I’m picking up, I can yank it right out of the air like a fish on string,” said Laurel with a flourish. He was proud of his little speech and had been practicing it for investors, so he thought it wasted on Pinto.

“So how come we don’t get any clients?” said Pinto.

“Marketing,” said Laurel solemnly. “You need marketing these days to get anything done. Media makes the world go round, Pinto. And anyway, we’ve got this client, don’t we?”

“This client’s weird,” said Pinto. “Sketchy. We don’t even know what kind of data we’re getting.”

“But he sure has money, doesn’t he? And anyway, it’s not like the sweet cream of society are the ones engaging in grand larceny. Not usually, anyway. Well. It’s only natural he wants to keep his data under wraps. It is a massive amount of data, though. Ah, thirty seconds, here we go.”

That shut both of them up. For thirty seconds, there was nothing but the sound of grasshoppers and Pinto scratching.

Finally, the screen lit up and the device beeped. “Yes, we’re getting it. It’s sending right now!” said Laurel. “Now I’ve just got to hook it, basically. It needs to be exactly equidistant, exactly.” He waved the device in the air. The higher he went, the faster the beeps became. He stood on his tiptoes. “It’s higher than I can get. Here, I need to stand on your back.”

“What?” said Pinto.

“Get down, I’ve got to get higher up. We wouldn’t have this problem if you hadn’t forgotten the ladder in the car. Hurry up, or we’ll miss it!”

Pinto bent down on his hands and knees, lamenting the fact that the slacks he was wearing—which admittedly he had not gained in a strictly legitimate way—were going to get even worse. Laurel stood on his back, holding the rod aloft.

“Gah, that hurts, that’s my shoulder—”

“Be still and quit complaining, I’m getting it now!” Laurel said as he began to crank the reel. “The data is… it’s… what is thaaaa…” Laurel trailed off.

For there was something at the end of the fishing line. It shimmered in the hot Kansas air like a mirage, protruding from the tip of the fishing rod. It grew out of the rod slowly, like dripping molasses.

“That’s not supposed to happen,” said Laurel. “Never seen that before.”

“What’s happening?” said Pinto. He couldn’t crane his neck up to look.

“It’s like something’s getting caught on the rod, or growing out of it, or something. But the screen’s telling me we’re collecting the data all right, so I guess we’re fine.”

At that moment, Pinto’s phone rang. The burner phone in his left pocket that the client always called them on.

“I’ve gotta get that, it’s the boss,” said Pinto, adjusting himself so he could reach one hand in his pocket. Laurel wobbled.

“Quit that! If I fall over, we’ll break the data in half and we won’t get our money. This thing is really weird, it’s still oozing out the end of the fishing rod… it’s getting more solid.”

Pinto reached one hand into his pocket and brought out the buzzing phone. He answered it, put it on speaker phone, dropped it on the ground in front of his face and propped himself up on both hands again.

“Hey Boss,” said Pinto. “What’s up?”

“Do you have the data yet?” said the voice through the phone. It was a man’s voice, deep, rich, and comically villainous, though not German.

“Working on it,” said Pinto into the phone. “How’s it going up there?” he called up to Laurel.

“It’s weird, I feel like something strange is going on with the rod. What kind of data are we getting again?” said Laurel down to the phone.

The villain’s voice answered, “It’s not obvious yet? The data I want… the data you’re collecting… is a person that’s rifting. Specifically, the president’s daughter. Do you have her yet?”

Pinto gasped and Laurel choked and wobbled.

“Are you kidding me?” shouted Laurel, watching as the shimmering image continued to grow out of the end of the rod. “A person? I never said we could do a person. I never tried getting a person. A person?!”

“A person rifting, yes,” said the voice. “It’s the same idea, isn’t it? Rifting is simply data transfer. So do you have her yet?”

“Hang up. Hang up the phone,” said Laurel.

“But—” said Pinto.

“I mean it.”

“Okay. Bye, have a nice day. We’ll call you later,” said Pinto. He shifted his weight to lift one hand to hang up.”

“DON’T!” screamed Laurel. “If I fall and I break this data and it’s a person and I break the data of a person don’t you dare move!”

Pinto was still. But he still needed to hang up. The voice was trying to say something. Pinto bent his head down and hung up the phone call using his nose on the touchscreen.

“Okay, what’s going on up there, really?” said Pinto.

“Oh, oh, oh, it’s horrible. Now that I know it’s a person… I’ve never tried intercepting physical data before, not even a can of beans, I only ever made this device for digital data, not physical objects, I have no idea what’s going to happen…!”

“Well, calm down, and describe it to me,” said Pinto evenly. He badly wanted to scratch his legs.

“Oh Pinto, it’s awful. Now that I know what it is, I can see it’s like there’s the ghost of a person on the end of the rod forming from the top down. Who did the client say this was supposed to be? Their head is sticking out of the rod.”

“Mm, president’s daughter, I think he said. I seen her picture before. She’s a looker, isn’t she? Wish I could see.”

“The president’s daughter? Pinto, it’s worse than I possibly could have imagined. There’s no hair, it’s a bald head, and the nose… oh, the nose is horrible and huge and red. There must have been some data corruption somewhere, she doesn’t have any hair! We’re down to her shoulders now.”

“Hum, no hair,” said Pinto. He felt pretty detached from the situation, just staring down at the dirt and crushed wheat below himself. And the wheat stalks were digging into his hands something fierce. “Guess it’s the wigs for her.”

“None!” said Laurel, who was shaking and sweating but still reeling in the line. “It’s going down, down, it’s forming her body…”

“Ooh,” said Pinto.

“No, not ooh! It’s horribly misshapen, she has stubby arms, and a pot belly…! We’re getting to the end of the data now, it’s her legs, ugh, what thick legs… I can’t believe this is happening… the president’s daughter is rifting from San Francisco to D.C., and here we are in the middle of a Kansas wheatfield scooping her right out of the air and she looks like the Pillsbury Doughboy!”

“And you’re standing on my back still, which is not comfortable,” Pinto pointed out.

“We’re almost there. She’s getting more solid. Oh, will she even be alive? What if it messed up her brain? What if…”

And then the data transfer completed. The body at the end of the fishing line, which had been ethereal and nearly weightless all along, fully materialized. The body fell out of the air and pulled Laurel’s rod down heavily, pitching him right off of Pinto’s back. They all fell in a heap in the dust.

Laurel scrambled his feet first. He backed away.

“Is she dead?” he said. “My word, look at her stomach just jutting out like that!” Laurel covered his eyes and turned away.

Pinto rolled over and groaned. “My back hurts.” He glanced at the body beside him. He frowned and got up on one knee. He examined the body briefly.

“This is just a guy, Laurel,” said Pinto. “Just a random guy.”

Laurel burst out, “We killed her! Or even worse, now she’s got to go through the rest of her life being this loathsome, grotesque thing, always conscious of the beauty she once was, bald where she had beautiful locks of gold, fat and misshapen when she used to—!”

“Who’s loathsome?” the body said. Laurel turned back to where the stricken body lay, or rather, where it had lain. In its place, a short, bald man stood with his arms crossed. He pushed glasses up on a large, red nose. “Could you gentlemen tell me where on earth I am? This,” he gestured around to the wheatfield, “Is not D.C., by my estimation.”