Dirk took a sip of his coffee. His day had just begun, and, as was his custom, he liked to start up his brain with drifting, unfocused, coffee drenched thoughts about the absurdity of his life, his universe, and the general predicament of the purpose of it all. The wrestling with low-key depression has apparently prevailed over the centuries. He considered it ironic that despite all the advancement's of the ape descendents had made in the neurosciences, this simple problem had only ever been attempted to be solved by shoving more nonsense information into the brains of the masses. As far as he could tell, even the latest generation of neural implants didn’t offer a solution to this particular concern. Not that he would allow himself to fall so low that he would even consider giving some company access, not only to read his mind but also write in it as they saw fit. The mere idea of it already appalled him. There certainly were benefits to it, that much couldn’t be denied, but the loss of control was unacceptable, or was it not?
Then again, how much control did he even have over his thoughts. His mind had settled on a comfortable conclusion, he had no clue. It was a bit of a habit. In his line of work, assuming truthfulness, but erring, could get people killed, and him in trouble, so he tried to stay away from it. And more so, he tried to keep his private thoughts away from work, but had a tendency to fail at it. Dead bodies had a way of creeping up on him, haunting his dreams, both asleep and awake. Very carefully, he nudged his consciousness away from them and gave himself new directions. It was an acquired skill, and a vital one at that, he developed and maintained over the years, lest he wanted to end up like his customers. In the early years of his career, the images of mutilated victims, had him drenched in sweat for nights on end and sometimes shivering unexpectedly during the day when for some reason or another he was reminded of something terrible. No, peace of mind was essential. “Be wary of your thoughts, they turn into speech, into action, into reality and shape the future” He quietly mumbled to himself as was his custom.
“Next coffee Dirk?” Stanni’s voice shook him out of his introspection and pulled him back into the here and now.
“I'll be taking that coffee Stan, and put it on Dirk’s tab, he'd just be letting it cool off without touching it anyway, so I might as well. Right Dirk?”
Stanni smiled and did as was suggested, it hadn’t been the first time. At first, he thought it to be weird, but there was obviously something going on with these two and who was he to not sell a coffee that was ordered.
“Alrite, but don’t leave me hanging here without something to drink”
Stanni already had a second cup in his hand as he turned to the coffee machine.
Ruth giggled her insane little smile and blew him a kiss.
“You’re doing well for yourself today? What's got you in such a good mood?” Dirk sceptically asked.
“You remember when we first arrived here, and I refused to tell you how I managed to get us into the city?”
“Yea, it was peculiar, and you still owe me an answer to that even though I have been reluctant to ask, the curiosity of it has persisted: So how did you?”
“Oh wouldn’t you like to know”
“Yes, if you’d finally be willing to indulge me?”
Ruth considered for a moment. She obviously enjoyed the attention and Dirks cluelessness. She had, at a point in her life, thought that they would make a great couple but blew it on several occasions, despite really wanting it to work out. It just didn’t. She had dragged his sorry ass out of the drowning hellhole that had once been the great city of Amsterdam, just days before the Oosterschelde-Barrage had broken and given way to the North Sea, indefinitely ending the Netherlands and with it all hopes of staying. Dirk had been less than reluctant to leave but eventually given way to her pleas and went with her to Hamburg, basically one step up the ladder of pending disaster, yet for now the city seemed save enough. He owed her, and they both knew it.
“Never mind, you don’t need to know”
“Fine, have it your way”
Dirk fumbled around in the pockets of his coat and drew out a pack, and lit a smoke. He hated that infernal woman, he loved her once, he knew she was trouble when he first met her. He just hadn’t figured out how much. He was grateful, and owed her his life, maybe, and when they had first arrived here he had thought they would be having a family together. They didn’t. Dirk had gone to do what he was best at, getting the lay of the land and solving its plentiful crimes. Ruth had done exactly the same thing, only that her vocation wasn’t particularly family friendly. He had hoped she would eventually drop it and find herself a new work and lifestyle, but she didn’t, and between his moody self, sullied by the dirt of the world, and her appreciation of other men and their money, whatever it was they had had, broke.
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“Dirk honey”
He slid the pack over the counter. And looked at her. She was still beautiful, nearing 40 hadn’t diminished her in his eyes. She was the kind of woman that was just naturally blessed with all the right features that made men of all ages turn their heads and salivate at the mere thought, however cut-throat she could be. Once, he gave way to his emotions and actually paid her for a night. He still regretted it. That had been the definite end to it all. Just another customer, he thought. She probably didn’t see it that way exactly, but it was hard to tell and mattered little because for Dirk it was just that. It irritated him how she could sustain his presence and how they both kept ending up in Stanni’s care despite neither of them actually wanting to meet, yet they were seemingly unable not to.
Dirk got up, he needed to leave, he didn’t have anywhere to be in particular, but staying wasn’t an option he cherished. His coffee sat at his place, untouched. He put some money under the cup and left it there for Stanni to collect, nodded to Ruth, mumbled something about work into his beard, and got up. It wasn’t over. Ruth would continue playing him. His only sane choice was to leave.
The outside world, that greeted him, was the exact reason why most people in the city chose to spend their time behind closed doors. Schmuddelwedder, vies weer as he knew it, the local brand of murky air and a thick cloudy curtain that hung over the city like God's blanket of disapproval, as if he had decided to have seen enough and needed a break. Apparently, the man had a habit of doing that each year for the majority of the cold half of it – much to the dismay of everyone involved. Dirk contemplated what to do next, where to go, wondering if the city would throw him a bone, a lead. The nature of his work included quite a lot of waiting – his services weren’t required on a daily basis, good for them bad for him, yet he needed to stay in the loop and remain sharp for when something happened. His smoke had burned down to the filter and reminded him of its existence by burning his fingers a bit. He cursed and dropped it, stomped on it angrily, and started walking. Without thinking, his feet chose to head straight for his office. He passed by the old Nazi Flak-Bunker, a huge, impressive castle made out of concrete that was topped off by a greenery hat. It had been a massive fortification designed to withstand continuous bombardment in the 2nd world war. Ironically, it had failed miserably at its intended purpose, shooting down aircraft, since the Brits always managed to take out its cannons on their bombing runs, but had proven to be a very permanent structure. Its two-meter thick walls were so impenetrable that after the war the Allied just decided to leave it be, for even trying to demolish it would have just levelled the surrounding buildings but not the Bunker itself. So instead, it just remained until eventually the city made use of it in quite a different manner than the Nazi’s had intended. The first to come were the musicians, being very fond of thick walls protecting them from angry neighbours complaining about the awful noise, then the clubs and before anyone knew it a hole ecosystem had evolved and the once dark reminder of a crueller past had turned into a central node for social life. And did come in handy when the bombs fell. A surprising amount of musicians and DJ’s survived the early days of the apocalyptic war inside its thick walls. Its greenery hairdo suffered for a few years, but came back stronger than ever as a veritably massive slightly irradiated jungle, looking a bit like nature's approximation of unkempt hair, until someone had the brilliant idea of making a climbable ponytail out of it.
Dirk passed it with a smile and strolled aimlessly around. He wasn’t looking for anything in particular, and if he found something intriguing by accident, then that would be it. It wasn’t a waste of time in his view. The city wasn’t familiar to him yet. He knew its basic layout, what parts of it had once been brilliant areas that now lay flooded by the ever so slowly extending Alster, what had fallen into disrepair due to lack of population, what had been lost and reclaimed, and where one was likely to die of radiation poisoning or nasty encounters. In his first weeks here, he had taken it upon himself to explore. It’s been a couple of years since then. He had done the tours, once. One though the port, in a little barge captained by a loud shouting man exclaiming trivia about the “Has been, Schönste Stadt der Welt”, that tried very hard to look like an old sailor, but presumably liked sleeping on land better. The other tour he took was on one of those very British red double-decker tourist trap busses. Amazingly, they were still around and in active duty despite two centuries of war, famine, global warming, rising sea levels, radioactive winters, and fallout that would melt your skin off in a matter of hours -fortunately that last one had got somewhat better. Someone must have cared, cared enough to maintain this once rather silly import from another culture. In a way that was comforting, not because of the stupid busses no one needed, but rather because of what it meant. The people here, their political representatives, their senate made up of old money rich families that date back to the Hanse trade federation that were somehow still around, the city itself cared about history. So much so that at times living here felt to Dirk like being in a museum. He liked that about it, there was still much for him to discover. It had a similar vibe to his old lost home, not quite the same but enough to embrace it as a substitute home, as many others had. Refugees from all around the globe made up a significant chunk of the population, but had fit into it all like feet into slippers. Maybe that was a quality specific to here, maybe not. Dirk had no way to tell, travel from and to places was risky business, so people stayed in place. His guess was that the German's intense need for historic pride, had something to do with it. And it probably helped that much of it was drenched in regret and ancient guilt, to be found on small bronze plates embedded randomly in some side walks, sticking out just a tiny bit, making you trip over them, and read the names and causes of deaths of the Nazi regime's victims.
He trotted on, his legs a little shaky from not having eaten anything yet, and substituting breakfast today with a good look into his emergency bottle. Eventually he reached his office in Seiler Street 5 and flung himself onto his couch, determined to be productive today.