[python] MI5 Persecution: Dirk Gently on the Toronto Case

[MI5Victim na mi5.gov.uk]

Dirk was on the West Coast when he got the call. An old 
friend at the Toronto police department thought he would like 
to fly up and take a look at a homicide which had occurred 
the previous evening. He decided to skip the last day at the 
World Holistics conference and take the next plane out of 
San Francisco.

The flight was bad; Dirk had been hit on the back of the head 
by the Newspaper trolley, the drinks trolley, the dinner trolley 
and now the gift trolley. When the hostesses weren’t trying to 
tear his arm off they pestered him to stop leaning into the aisle 
- ignoring the fact that the guy next to him was taking up one and
 a half seats. Air Canada used to be the flight which was so 
good you just didn’t wanna get off - on this occasion Dirk 
would be glad to see the back of the plane and the over sized 
alternative comedian wedged into the window seat.

After breathing in a couple of lungfulls of crisp Canadian air 
Dirk took a taxi into town. There was a small group of 
demonstrators outside the MacDonalds and the taxi driver 
insisted on stopping on the opposite side of the street. ‘Don’t 
Eat Meat’ the placards read and the demonstrators chanted. A 
couple of policemen where stopping the crowd entering the 
restaurant itself - one held up his arm and challenged Dirk. A 
wave of the fax he had been sent and the policeman pushed 
open the door.

There were few customers in the restaurant. Not surprising 
really with a demonstration going on outside, half the dining 
area roped off with tape and a dead body seated at one of the 
tables. ‘Mr Gently sir’ the officer in charge called out as he 
peeled one end of the tape off a column ‘We were told not to 
touch anything til’ you got here’.

The body of the man slumped awkwardly in a chair. Then 
even a dead body would start getting uncomfortable in a 
MacDonalds chair after twenty minutes - and this one had 
been there for at least eighteen hours. Two back legs and the 
tail of a cat hung out of the man’s gaping mouth. Dirk turned 
to the officer, ‘I suppose you are going to tell me this is the 
darndest thing you ever saw?’

‘Ain’t this the darnd...’. The officer seemed annoyed that Dirk 
had second guessed him. ‘We’re removing the body in a few 
minutes, so if you can get through as quick as possible’

‘Many people eat cats in fast food restaurants?’ Dirk asked 
and without waiting for an answer leant over the table to pick 
up an untouched burger. ‘And what’s this?’ he asked waving 
it in front of the officers face.

‘It’s a Vedgie Burger’ The waitress, who was cleaning one of 
the adjacent tables, shouted across. She walked over to Dirk. 
‘We started doing them because of that lot out there’ she 
nodded towards the protesters who were pressing there faces 
against the windows ‘They’re called Linda McCartney Vedgie 
burgers - ever heard of them?’

Dirk suddenly felt faint, perhaps a combination of hunger and 
jet lag. ‘This is deja vu all over again’ he thought to himself. 
He glanced at policemen - at the badge on his shoulder ‘OPD’
but this wasn’t Ontario this was Toronto. OPD - Officially 
Pronounced Dead. It dawned on Dirk what was happening, he 
knew what he would see if he looked out of the window. Sure 
enough, there it was, the Volkswagen Beetle parked across 
the road - number plate 28IF - 28 IF Paul McCartney had 
lived. And amongst the lyrics of the song blaring out into the 
restaurant he could pick out the words ‘I buried Paul’. Now it 
was though Dirk was viewing the whole scene though a TV 
screen. This was conspiracy. Not -a- conspiracy, or -the- 
conspiracy, but just plain conspiracy.

‘You look faint - are you OK mister? The waitress asked. 

Dirk shook his head ‘Probably a bit hungry’ Then to 
economise on dialogue took out a pack of cigarettes and held 
it out towards the girl. She was about to take one but Dirk 
snatched the pack away, held it up to his mouth and drew out 
two cigarettes. He lit both then passed one of them to the girl. 
It was the closest he had come to a sexual encounter in three 
months.

‘Want a Burger?’ the waitress asked.

Dirk looked down at the Vedgie Burger on the table. ‘No 
thanks - just a plate of fries’ 

The waitress walked away and Dirk looked around the room. 
Apart from a family seated in the far corner there was only 
one other person in the restaurant - and he wasn’t eating. The 
guy was about mid twenties and had straggling, shoulder 
length hair. On the table in front of him were lots of pieces of 
paper cut into squares. Every so often he would pick up a 
camcorder and pan it around the room and then, when he was 
finished, speak into a microphone which was attached to a 
tape recorder. Dirk walked over to where the man was sitting. 

The small pieces of paper had paragraphs of text written on 
them and were stuck to the top of table with blobs of mustard. 
Lines had been drawn, some solid some dotted, on the table 
top with a marker pen. The lines ran from one piece of paper 
to another. 

‘What are the lines for?’ Dirk asked, realising straight away 
that ‘What the hell are you doing?’ would be more 
appropriate.

‘You see’ The man replied nervously ‘The dotted lines are 
weak links and the solid lines are strong links. The dotted 
lines are things which are happening in the rest of the world 
and the solid lines are things which are happening to me. Now 
you see I draw over a dotted line, replacing it with a solid line, 
when I can link something back to me. Like this’ The pen 
squeaked over the Formica and before Dirk could interrupt 
the man added. ‘You see I lost my short term memory and, as 
a consequence have a very short attention span. I write down, 
record and film everything then put it all together later’

‘So’ Dirk interrupted. ‘You filmed what happened here?’

‘Yes, yes, it’s here on this tape’ The man pushed the cassette 
across the table. On the label the words ‘Grassy Knoll’ had 
been crossed through and replaced with ‘MacDonalds’.

Suddenly the man sprung from his seat. Dirk turned and saw 
that the body was being removed on a stretcher. As it passed 
the man picked a small object off the edge of the stretcher 
itself. ‘This is important’ he said, laying a blood stained bullet 
on one of the small pieces of paper on the table.

Suddenly the room was filled with a deafening throbbing 
sound as a Black Helicopter landed in the street outside. Two 
men in United Nations uniforms got out and collected the 
stretcher. Back at the table the long haired man was replacing 
all the dotted lines with solid ones. Dirk panicked and began 
to walk backwards at some speed. Barging through the swing 
doors he stumbled into the kitchen, tripped and felt himself 
sink slowly into a large vat.

‘The guys fallen into the batter’ Dick heard someone shout 
before he sunk below the surface. He came to sitting in a chair 
with the batter solidifying all over his body. He surveyed the 
room through two eye-holes someone had cut. Suddenly the 
chair on which he was sitting was picked up carried through 
the restaurant and out of the building. As the chair was being 
lifted and put into the back of a van, Dirk caught a glimpse of 
the waitress following him. ‘Your fries mister, your
plate o...’. 

The doors of the van shut and Dirk tried desperately to steady 
himself as it sped across town. Eventually the doors flew open 
and Dirk was flung into the road at which point the solidified 
batter shattered and set him free. Standing up he found 
himself outside the international departures terminal of 
Toronto airport.

In the departure lounge Dirk had time to reflect on the day’s 
events. He had got caught up in the conspiracy theories and 
the haphazard welding together of pieces of irrelevant 
information. It was time to catch the person who was 
operating the  bizarre cognitive engine which appeared in 
front of him like a fairground mirror, distorting any flaw it 
could find in his own, fragile, map of the real world.

Dirk leant into the aisle of the plane as it took off for London. 
The oversized person next to him swung his arms violently as 
he complained about every thing from the supper in a plastic 
tray to the state of British politics. With a shaven head and a 
badly fitting suit the man looked as though he could have 
worked behind the reception desk of the Kremlin. However 
when he spoke he did so in a Liverpudlian accent. ‘Me I 
blame the Con-serv-a-tive government, me. The Tour-rees.
That-cher. Me. They need a good kicking’ He jerked his feet 
forward and struck the seat in front with his Doc Martins. 
‘With these. Me Doc Martins. Doctor Martin’s, Doctor 
Martin’s, Doctor Martin’s Booots!’ The phrase was now 
being sung over and over again as the man writhed in his seat 
and clicked his fingers.

Dirk looked down at the boots and thought of the reaction 
most people used to deal with the paranoids at the end of the 
wire. A nice quick kick. ‘Oi nutter - get some therapy’. This is 
the easy way out and perhaps the safest. After all there you 
are sat, alone, in front of the screen. No body language 
between you some paranoid. No way of telling if he really is 
some gibbering psycho. Look at it too long and you be drawn 
in. Fall into the tangled database of weird links with him. Who 
knows he may be watching you, reassembling and linking your 
experiences with his. How sure are you of you own cognitive 
threads. After all cognition is only a bug fix for a neurological 
system which was designed in a hurry - it’s abused by 
everyone from politicians to advertisers. If people really can 
convince each other that a bottle of washing up liquid is as 
exciting as an orgasm using just television God knows what 
they can do with a computer. Better to avoid the risk. A swift 
kick. After all if you’re Homophobic you put the boot in 
because you are scared of any ambiguity in your own sexuality 
- why not be Nutterphobic as well.

Although Dirk would have liked to devoted time to tracking 
the culprit down he decided to let it rest. The Internet 
changed over the next twenty odd years. A lot of the people 
who used it went out and got lives. And those who already 
had lives burnt them away. The number of users had dwindled 
after someone had invented a C++ program, with truth as a 
variable,  to deal handle politics and government. Dirk had 
already retired from finding old ladies cats with the help of 
obscure science when he got another call from Toronto.

It was 4th March 2025 when he booked onto the Air Canada 
flight from Heathrow. The silver haired woman in the seat 
next to him painted bright red lipstick around her mouth. ‘Of 
course it was no surprise to be offered the job after Claire 
Raynor retired’ she sneered’ After all I used to be a 
psychiatric nurse... Now if Blokes had periods they would 
understand...’ 

By chance the taxi ride to Toronto mental hospital took him 
past the MacDonalds - where the whole thing had started. Of 
course it was barely recognisable having become a Church Of 
Scientology Vedgie Bar. Police in riot gear kept the two sets 
of demonstrators apart. Dirk didn’t really know what to 
expect when he got to the hospital. The girl at the reception 
desk directed him to a row of chairs in a wide well lit 
corridor. There was a strong smell of disinfectant, the 
furniture and the carpets were immaculately clean and behind 
the rows of teak veneer doors the ‘nutters’ were all safely 
locked away. For some reason Dirk started thinking about 
CompuServe forums.

A tall blond woman in a white coat approached. ‘Mr Gentle, I 
assume’

‘Yes’ Dirk replied shaking her by the hand. ‘You’re the nurse 
who...’

‘Doctor’ She interrupted, ‘Doctor Killfile’ She led Dirk across 
the corridor towards one of the doors then stopped with her 
hand resting on the handle. ‘Now you know about this person 
don’t you?’ and after Dirk nodded she continued ‘Don’t tell 
him anything about yourself - don’t let him get into you head. 
If he does he’ll screw it up’

The door opened to reveal a frail man sitting in from of a TV 
screen. He had a keyboard on his lap and next to the television 
was a computer screen. Dirk glanced at the walls of the room 
and remembered that his settee at home need upholstering. 
The nurse left the room and the man looked up ‘So you come 
to my daughters wedding and ask me to kill a man’ he said in 
a dry cackling voice. ‘Look’ he continued, pointing at the 
screen, ‘I know that man. They’re talking about me now - 
listen’. The man stared at Dirk. ‘What’s your name? Are you 
one of my friends from the Internet? - Are the lambs still 
screaming Dirk?’

Dirk, at first recoiled in horror,  then felt a sense of anti 
climax. So this is what they hyped up to superstar status on 
the back of their own fears of madness.  Dirk was reminded of 
the film ‘A day on The Beach’ where a submarine had set off 
to search a post nuclear World to track down a signal coming 
from a remote military base - only to find it was being sent by 
a Coke bottle half balanced on a Morse tapper. Outside the 
room the nurse waited for him. Because his nicotine craving 
had returned - and to avoid an awkward piece of dialogue -
Dirk turned to her and asked . ‘Patch?’

Dirk took two nicotine patches from his wallet the first of 
which he stuck onto the inside of his arm. Stepping closer to
Doctor Killfile he opened her white coat and slid his hand
into the opening at the front of her dress. He pressed the 
patch onto her leg as close to the top of her inner thigh as
he dare. She took a deep breath and then slowly breathed out.
‘What Bogart could have done with these things’ Dirk 
thought to himself.

‘Is he crazy?’ Dirk asked tilting his head back to towards the 
door.

‘Who knows’ Doctor Killfile replied ‘We let him type away. 
He sees something on the TV in the morning and it keeps him 
busy all day. What he types doesn’t go anywhere it just stays 
on a mainframe in the basement. It can be read by anyone else 
in the building but that’s it. We got them all in here conspiracy 
theorists, racists, nationalists. They’ve created a world within 
a world really...’ Her voice trailed away and she stared down 
the corridor for a while then added ‘So long are two things 
are different neither will come to be in the other and so 
become at once both one and two.’

Dirk gave her a puzzled look ‘You mean their brains are 
fried?’

‘Fried?’ Killfile smiled at Dirk ‘No that was Plato’. Then the 
smile fell from her face. ‘You must remember, mister, plate  
o...’

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