💾 Archived View for gemini.spam.works › mirrors › textfiles › magazines › UXU › uxu-023.txt captured on 2022-06-12 at 14:59:38.
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Underground eXperts United
Presents...
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[ Castle Chronicles Chapter One ] [ By THE CHIEF ]
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UNASSAILABLE EXPEDITIONS THROUGH A TORMENTED BASEMENT
CHAPTER ONE
Steve Castle took his hat from the shelf and paid the woman behind
the counter. Ah, what an excellent lunch. French toast and a cup
of coffee. That was a lunch for kings! He went out to the street
and started to walk down Gainsbury Road that lead down to the docks.
He was to meet a man who had vital information about the case he
was working on. Castle called the case "The Man & No Man" for reasons
he only knew himself. Apparently, a man had entered a shoe shop in
Regent Street on November 6th. This may not seem very unusual, but
in this case it was, because the man had, as said, entered the store,
but never left it! His wife was hysterical first, then after the
first year, she calmed down. Robin and James, his kids, didn't under-
stand what had happened because they were only One and Three years
old by the time of his disappearance.
Now, 15 years later, Castles first breakthrough was about to happen.
Warehouse 86, the man had said. Castle walked slowly in the warm
spring sun, facing the breeze from the ocean with great pleasure.
Aaaah, he filled his lungs with the salty air and got a bug with it.
Ahum, splutt! Duh! was his reaction to this. Left, Left and then
Right. Aha, Number 86! He entered the big warehouse. Pitch black!
Castle lit his flashlight and started to search for the door the man
had said he would be behind. Johnsson, Stevens, Bartholomo-Gainsville,
Turner, Jones, Harry, Imbehindthisone! That's the one. He opened the
door. If it is possible to describe something that's darker than
pitch black, this was it. Behind the door, Castle could just make out
the stairs leading downwards.
With careful steps he started to descend. The moisten air met his
face like a wall. When he examined it, he discovered that it in
fact really Was a wall. With the nose bleeding, he ran into a man
who was hiding in a trunk filled with used condoms.
"Watch it buddy!", said the man. "This is My hiding-place. You just
have to find one of your own." The man closed the trunk and continued
to hide (or whatever he was doing in there, I let your imagination
decide here, because there's a vast number of possibilities. No?
Well, consider that he May be eating dinner, reading a good book or
perhaps watching the late night game between Bruins and the Vikings.
See? Now I can't spend more time on this because it has nothing to
do with the story whatsoever!)
Castle continued to search with his flashlight, only to find that
there was nothing there. The basement was about 2x2 meters big,
and the only thing down there was the trunk with the... Ah, it must
be Him!, Castle thought out loud for himself. "Shhh!" said the man
who had re-opened the trunk. "Do you think we're alone down here!?"
Castle thought for a couple of seconds, and then decided that he
couldn't come to another conclusion and said "I have personally
searched the whole basement, and I can assure you that we are alone."
The man crawled out of the trunk, covered with slime and something
that looked like a half-eaten pizza. "Want a piece?" he asked
brushing off the slime. "Yes, thanks!", Castle replied and started
a process in his stomach that killed 137 million germs, but also
created 137 new ones. The man whispered something in Castles ear
that didn't make Castle very surprised. He walked the 22 cm to the
trunk, knocked on the side and opened the lock, revealing a beautiful
girl with only her underwear on. "Hi beauty", Castle greeted her.
"Hello" she said, "You want to join us?". "Sure", Castle said, but
remembered that he was on a case and turned down the offer with
apologies.
The man, introduced himself as Jerry Steinberg III, king of A-Shoes.
Castle stretched out his hand, but drew it right back when he saw
Steinberg's filled with cheese, pizza and a little stain of greebt-
ofla-bahajmatal, a deadly Indian take-away. Jerry started to tell
his tale.
"16 years ago, I owned a store up on Regent Street. We had the best
in leatherware. Jackets, trousers, gloves, but also Shoes."
"Aha", Castle said. "Continue please."
"Yes, as I said, we sold Shoes. Only the best of course!.. ehm,
where was I, oh yes, Shoes. So we sold these Shoes. Everyone wanted
them, and we sold about 300.000 pairs a week in the beginning.
"A remarkable number indeed", Castle let out with admiration in his
voice.
"Oh but it wasn't that, no, not at all. After four weeks, a month,
our production of these shoes had reached 4 million a day, and
the sales didn't go down, so in the end we sold over 5 million a
day, worldwide!"
"Really interesting", Castle mumbled.
"Oh but it wasn't that either, not in any way! No. When LIKE, our
largest competitor introduced a new design, our sales went down like
a banana split at a birthday-party for 8-year olds. We were finished.
We were bankrupt. We had to close the shop and fire our staff.'
"Uhuh..", "So is that what you wanted me to know?" Castle asked.
"No, it wasn't that! You have to listen to me Castle! Listen good.
When we moved out, another firm took over, and opened a shoe shop
at the very same spot, but they also sold computer equipment!
Joysticks, Harddrives, Printers and so on. One of their employees
used to work for me. He was somewhat of a hacker you might say.
Always hanging over the computer, running something they call a
Bulletin Board System and writing long stories that were greatly
appreciated around the world. A very fine man indeed. Oh, by the
way, it's the very same person who is writing this story right now!"
"Really? Well, it seems like he's doing a good job, doesn't it?"
Castle said with a smile on his face.
"Sure, everything he does usually Is good!"
"So, what have all of this got to do with the man who disappeared
in the shoe shop?" Castle asked.
"The what?" Steinberg said with a surprised look on his face.
"Listen, you called me and told me to meet you here because you
had vital information about this case I'm working on. The Man
who disappeared in a Shoe Store at Regent Street!".
"Hey, I don't know anything about no man disappearing. Aren't you
from Books International? I was told to meet someone here who would
print my story!" Steinberg said with doubt in his voice.
Suddenly a man jumped up from behind the trunk. He was about
1.93 meters tall, not very thin, and had a large sombrero on his head.
"Steve Castle?" the man said looking at Castle.
"Eh, yes?" Castle replied, slightly chocked.
"Good, I'm Howard Brown. I have some vital information regarding the
case you're working on. I called you earlier today, remember?" the
man said and reached out to shake hands.
"But why didn't you show yourself earlier?!" Castle almost screamed
to Brown.
"Well, I enjoyed Mr. Steinberg's story quite a bit. You didn't want
me to miss the end did you?!", Brown frowned.
The last Steve Castle saw before he fainted was the beautiful girl
crawling out of the box, completely naked but with a slice of pizza
in one hand, offering it to Brown who said he would rather take her
instead (and did so 2 seconds later).
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Watch out for the next chapter of the Castle Chronicles!
It will be Very revealing! In all directions!
ONLY from The Underground eXperts United!
(!) 1991 THE CHIEF & uXu Productions
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