Jones arrived at the half-vacant strip mall that housed his detective agency. Then sun had begun to set. Amelia was nowhere in sight, although she’d been hard at work in his absence. Two knotty pine planks covered each window. Crates of water lined the walls. Amelia had put up blackout curtains.
Jones retreated into the corner of his office and turned off the lights to cool down the room. An air conditioner dripped and sputtered in the window. Jones went to turn it up, but the dial was already at 10. The potted plants lining the windowsills drooped, wilted and brown. Jones heard sirens in the distance.
Before Jones, the office space belonged to a notary public who did tax prep. Outdated posters describing the ins and outs of the Schedule D and worn purple carpet still lined the hallway to the bathroom. Jones liked the space because the reception area, where Amelia sat, and his own office both had good light. Jones disliked the space because the washing machines in the laundromat next door often sounded like they were building up to an explosion. The fact that the explosion never happened left him feeling chronically exhausted, as though he’d climbed a long staircase only to find the door at the top locked. The rent was good, perhaps free. Jones was never clear on how, exactly, Amelia paid the bills, but he was happy to leave it all to her.
Jones closed the door, hoping to block out what sounded like a pair of shoes in a dryer. He stepped between piles of loose papers and old software textbooks and grabbed a half-filled spray bottle from the back of his leather couch. Plopping down at his desk, Jones lifted a curling tendril from the fern perched on its edge. He found a dry frond hiding below it, and snipped it off. He added the sprig of wizened greenery to a pile on his desk. Jones poked the soil in the pot with his fingertip. Even though he'd watered that morning, it was already loose and crumbling. Jones turned the nozzle to his own face and pulled the trigger. He reveled in the momentary shock of coolness and moisture. He closed his eyes and breathed in, enjoying the feeling of hydrated air reaching his lungs.
The door to the office flew open and slammed hard against the wall. A heavy, booted foot kicked into the room. Startled, Jones dropped the spray bottle. He tried to grab it before it hit the floor, and smacked his head into the potted plant. The fern careened off the desk. Jones changed course, abandoning the spray bottle, and dove between the fern and the ground. He caught the plant like a football, drawing the pot to his chest. As he rolled on his back, the fern lurched out of the pot and landed on his on his face, filling his nostrils with dirt. Jones heaved and struggled to sit up and brush the soil out of his eyes. After a few false starts, the pot rolled off his chest and cracked against the floor. Jones sat up, grasping the clumped roots of the plant. Amelia glared at him.
"Thank god you're here," said Amelia. "I need your help."
“You seem to be doing fine on your own,” said Jones, placing the loose fern on his desk. “Why did you board up the windows? Are you expecting the Next Economy to bomb us?"
"This is about the cheese surplus," Amelia said, plopping down at his desk. "One of my sources at the Fed told me that National Cheese Surplus is back to the highest levels it’s ever been. Six billion tons of cheese. They've been in overflow mode for over 18 months now. The USDA has been appropriating its own warehouses for the cheese. There's a government storage facility in Pacific Grove. Its chaos. Piles of cheese on the floors. Inventory is a mess. My contact can get me a good price."
Jones paused to digest this. Amelia stared at him from under lowered eyebrows, waiting for him to process. Finally, he shrugged, and walked over to close the door.
"That sounds complicated.” Jones shrugged. When Amelia didn’t respond, he thought some more. “There's a pretty good sale on cheese over at the International Foods. We have Humboldt Fog in the fridge, actually. Or, we did this morning." Jones frowned.
"Did you eat my Humboldt Fog?"
Amelia shook her head. "This is not about snacks," she said. "I'm talking about regional distribution. People are still going to need dairy in the Next Economy. Didn't you say that Bugs' Society is facing a dairy crisis at this exact moment? By definition, cheese is more stable than milk. In fact, I fully expect cheese to become the new milk. Milk is going to go the way of yogurt. I want to get in on the ground floor."
"That is smart business thinking," said Jones, bewildered. He had not discussed Bugs' diary problems with Amelia. “What do you need me for?”
“I need you to hack the Surplus Reserve's database and adjust the inventory levels at this warehouse," said Amelia. "Otherwise, once they sort themselves out, there will be questions."
Jones knit his brows and frowned. "This sounds like criminal activity, Amelia."
Amelia nodded, and picked the broken pot shards up from the floor. "I agree," she said. "It sounds like the black market. But I work here, for you. So how could I be working on the black market?"
Jones had no answer to this. A crashing sound came from the reception area. The door to his office banged open with a splintering sound. Amelia leapt to her feet. Two Federal agents stood in the doorway, their badges glinting in the early evening sun. One of them held a battering ram. Amelia vaulted between them, somersaulting through the door and into the back hall. Jones heard the alarm go off as she barreled out the back exit.
“I’m Agent Moss,” said the woman on the left. “This is my partner, Agent Mirokowski.”
“Call me Hal,” said Agent Mirokowski. He leaned the battering ram down against the door. As Jones gaped, the two agents walked in, uninvited, and made themselves at home on his couch.