RocketMan

Smoking weed not only helped with Emma's palliative care - the pain, anxiety, lack of appetite and insomnia, but it also helped reduce the frequency and duration of her seizures. She took CBD sublingually and hits from vape pens strewn around her messy dorm room.

The weed also helped her work. Stoned, high, medicated or baked, whatever-the-fuck you wanted to call it, she worked best after adding THC to her system. After the first few puffs, the chatter in her head died away and she could see far into the future.

She bought her weed from Fazal. It was still illegal in her country. She couldn't understand why the politicians didn't want to cash in on that billion-pound industry, but it was easy enough to get hold of. She set up a crypto transfer to his wallet and he delivered straight to her dorm room every Tuesday afternoon. She'd been buying off him for a year and a half, ever since her fist week at uni. 

One particular Tuesday, Fazal arrived all out of breath. He looked frightened as fuck. His clothes, usually crisp, clean and perfect, were all out of sorts. His shirt was untucked and a button was missing. He kept glancing at the door whenever there was a sound in the hall.

He brought out the weed, moving jerkily like a broken robot, and reached into the bag for a bud. He twitched so hard that crumbly buds spewed out through the air and dropped like rain into the carpet.

'Fazal!' said Emma. She touched his shoulder and he looked at her, wide-eyed. He bit his lip. He was shivering.

'What is up with you, dude?' she said, shaking him by the shoulder.

He mumbled at her through his bit lip.

It took twenty minutes of gentle prodding to get the story out of him. She rolled them both a joint, picking the green out of the carpet. Fazal took it from her, took a big hit and leaned back, blowing a sharp stream of smoke at the ceiling. He took another drag. The joint tip glowed like a fat cherry.

'I fucked up, Em.'

She saw a tear slide down his cheek. She assumed he'd lost money. Fazal was always gambling; be it the casino or the latest Reddit bubble, he was always one trade away from the big one.

Over time he did make money, but moment to moment, life was a roller coaster for Fazal Sayed. One minute he was up, enjoying the dizzying heights of cocaine and Airbnbs full of fake friends. Then he was down, wrecked in the hangover aftermath, penniless and full of self-loathing and pity.

So when he leaned forward, passed her the joint and said, 'Em, I killed a guy,' at first, she didn't believe him.

*

As Fazal told his tale, his voice cracked and he sniffed and began to cry. He twisted his hands in his lap. The joint lay forgotten, smoldering on the edge of the coffee table and Emma watched the wood darkening under the cherry. She took the joint and docked it.

She tried to keep up with his fragmentary outbursts. She built up a picture piece by piece. He met a guy at El Rio. They went back to Fazal's. They began fooling around. The guy said he was going to take a shower. Fazal followed him and found him posting pictures of them kissing.

Emma picked up the joint and relit it. She imagined her friend, all six foot six of him, losing his shit in his luxury bathroom. Sitting there, on her threadbare couch, Fazal put his hands over his eyes and began to cry. He made weird noises and blew bubbles out of his nose. She saw there was blood on his hands, more on the cuffs of his shirt.

*

Emma had never gotten rid of a body before, but it turned out to be disturbingly easy. Expensive, sure, but easy. She found the worst-reviewed mortician in town then paid him ten grand for the paperwork and procedure. 

A cop the coroner knew took another ten grand for a fake suicide report, while a family doctor took another ten and a local judge took twenty. It all took less than twenty-four hours and Emma was left with the uneasy feeling that it was all some kind of regular service.

*

Fazal and Emma collapsed on the couch and she sparked up a fatty. They were both now thousands of pounds in debt and had been introduced to the nasty underside of a free market economy, but a seed of friendship had been planted in that dark netherworld, somewhere between lifting the dead guy out of Fazal's shower and cleaning his blood from the tiles. And that seed blossomed into a beautiful business partneship the likes of which the world had never seen.

*

Starting from Emma's dorm room they disrupted every industry in town. First, it was social media then security, banking and cloud computing. Emma's code was so tight and Fazal's sales pitches so audacious that soon their client list included major corporations, national governments, and security agencies worldwide.

With time, they were able to expand and control a wider portfolio. One of their tentacles began researching and developing automated vehicles, while another drilled into artificial neural networks and machine learning software, while yet another, the Emergency Climate Response Unit, or M-Crew, began fertilizing the ocean with iron to combat the increasing levels of atmospheric carbon.

With newfound capital and processing power, Emma dove into experimenting with nanochip technology. She was trying to come up with a device she could implant in her brain to help eradicate her seizures once and for all. 

Fazal loved his job promoting the company. And after a few years, he was able to fulil his lifelong ambition of blasting rockets into space. Tin Can Rockets was his trillion-dollar pet project. Ever since he was a kid, he wanted to send a rocket into outter space and that's exactly what happened at 05:45 on Tuesday the 28^th of July when he became the first person in history to privately launch a rocket into orbit from a launchpad on an island in the Outer Hebrides off the west coast of Scotland.

Granted, Major Tom was only a basic three-stager delivering a payload of scientists, researchers and private space tourists to the Second International Space Station, but to Fazal, it marked the beginning of the best part of his life. Watching the exhaust cloud erupt at the base of Major Tom, tears sprang into his eyes. He looked like a dad whose kid had just scored the game-winning goal.

From that very first successful launch, it was all systems go. One after the other the rockets improved and Fazal whipped the media into a frenzy by promising to have operational moon stations by the end of the decade and a Mars base by 2045.

'Before the middle of this century, we will put women, children and men on Mars,' he said to the podcaster Pearl Hunter and her 1.2 billion listeners. 'When I look into the future, I'm optimistic.

'I see humans populating the universe, hopping from planet to planet, system to system, pollenating the universe like benevolent bees.' Fazal laughed. 'The alternative is to die out having never left this planet and that just isn't exciting.'

*

Emma got high in her atrium office. It was an old Victorian palm house she'd had installed on top of a skyscraper on the banks of the River Thames in London. Inside, it looked like a set from Jurassic Park with oversized palms, flaming lobster claws and Cobra lilies. Ivy dripped off everything and it was hot, humid and steamy.

Round about stood weed plants at various stages of development. Some had green leaves while others looked more purple and orange. One was so covered in chrystals it looked like white cotton candy on a stick.

Here and there were also Emma's work stations – a meditation cushion here, a yoga mat there, a hammock stretched between two palm trees. An ice tub and a cedar sauna stood by the edge of a plunge pool at the base of beautiful waterfalls.

A few parakeets flew over and landed on a low-hanging bough that drooped over the pool. They called back and forth, chattering to each other over the hubbub of the water then flew off with a few wing beats and disappeared into the dense canopy.

The wooden door to the sauna opened outwards and Emma stepped out, her body glistening and steaming. Without a pause, she climbed up the steps of the ice bath and lowered herself into it, exhaling until her shoulders, neck and head disappeared under the resettling ice.

Minutes passed. The parakeets returned. One flapped down then two then the whole gang joined them, preening themselves and chatting.

*

Underwater, the bird calls were muffled to practically nothing. Emma wasn't listening anyway. She was inside the maze of her mind, chasing an idea so quick, so elusive and yet she was sure so valuable that she needed to have it, had needed it ever since it popped into her mind that one winter's day long ago.

This was where she came to think. Her mind raced along nicely riding the THC wave with a few thousand micrograms of CBD to take off the edge. She'd taken some 80% dark chocolate along with a bulletproof coffee ten minutes before getting in the sauna and the caffeine was rushing along nicely.

The silence, the slight pressure, the millions of prickles from the icy water all over her skin, coupled with the drugs in her blood, provided her with the rocket fuel she needed to push through the next series of problems.

She was working on a tricky one to do with lowering the impedance while simultaneously increasing the charge-carrying capacity of the nanochip's interface. The poly-ethylenedioxythiopene doped with polystyrene sulfonate was showing promising signs, but Emma wasn't sure about its long-term biocompatibility.

She was halfway to the solution by the time she hit five minutes. She was aiming for seven. That would make it three days in a row.

Six minutes and thirty-six seconds in and she was about to grasp the tail of something real when she was hit by a massive tonic-clonic seizure. She could feel it coming on. It was like she was fading into it. She tried to stand up, to pull herself out of the spiral but she knew there was nothing she could do.

*

Fazal was pissed. The voice in his head clanged alongside his footsteps on the wrought-iron steps as he climbed the spiral staircase up to Emma's fucking weird-ass office with her stupid fucking plants, the fucking hypocritical cunt. He stormed in, knocking over a couple of weed plants on the landing. He looked around wildly.

Nothing. No Emma sitting in one of her weird little nests. He even checked the one on top of the huge air filtration system where she'd built a depressing kind of bed out of blankets and beanbags. He kicked over a bong coming back down the ladder, swore then stopped moving when he heard splashing water. He looked at the ice tub and his heart just stopped.

A pale bony back breached the surface like a weird kind of whale but it was unmoving and he knew shit was fucked up.

He looked down on himself as he took long strides over to the tub and plunged his arms in, wrapping them around his friend and pulling her out. The whole tub came over in the process but he didn't feel the icy water cascade up his legs or the bang on his elbow as he fell back. All he could feel was the cold, slippery corpse in his arms. Emma's lips were purple. Fazal pride open one of her eyelids and she stared at him unseeing.

He felt her neck. No pulse. He shook her and yelled at her. She wasn't breathing so he got to his knees and bent over her and brought his mouth down onto hers.

To perform rescue breaths correctly, you're supposed to pinch the person's nose while keeping their head tilted back. Breathe into their mouth, making a seal with your mouth on theirs. Each breath you give them should be about one second long.

After five rescue breaths, do CPR. To do CPR, place the heel of one hand on the casualty's chest and your other hand on top of it. Push down firmly about five or six centimeters. You want to aim for about a hundred and twenty compressions per minute.

Doing CPR to the tune of 'Stayin Alive' by the BeeGees can help you keep pace. Repeat thirty chest compressions and two rescue breaths until the person starts breathing normally.

Fazal didn't know that. He only knew was what he'd seen on Netflix and he was lucky as fuck because after a couple of puffs, Emma coughed and Fazal's mouth filled with warm watery spit. He fell back, coughing and spitting.

'What the fuck, dude,' said Emma, sitting up and wiping her mouth then covering herself with her arms and turning away from him.

He tried to speak but the adrenaline was making it hard to put thoughts together so he staggered over to the bar by the pool and drank straight from a bottle of Johnny Walker Blue. Emma pulled on a blue onesie and sparked up a joint. Fazal took another long drink then remembered why he'd come here.

He no longer felt the rage that fuelled him before, when he'd found out from his lawyer that she was cutting him out of his own company, he'd seen red. Now, he only felt tired and wrung out as if he'd just run a marathon. He was starting to wonder if it was all just a mistake.

*

The truth was, Emma had been planning to cut Fazal out of the company since day one. She had no room in her plan for a partner. He served a purpose and that was it. So, an hour and a half before Fazal saved her life, Emma had completely written him off, electronically severing his ownership and rights in the company in a smoothly-executed, methodical coup.

*

Fazal reeled into his automated roadster. He felt sick as it whisked him out of town through the industrial district to the airport where the runway stuck out like a tongue into the bay. He read his own obituary on social, flicking back and forth between profiles while simultaneously watching his portfolios crumble.

He watched his dollar value crash almost as fast as his reputation. By the time he climbed aboard his Learjet and collapsed into the cream leather seat, he'd lost two hundred and fifty billion dollars.

Flying over the Atlantic, he drank half a bottle of Blue Label, puked and cried himself to sleep.

*

When Fazal woke, he felt hungover and depressed. He'd gone to the only place he could think of - the only place where he was still in control: his Scottish launch base, Ground Control. Driving up in an old Land Rover Defender, he bumped over the grassy turf and potholes in the old access road.

There, standing silhouetted against the horizon was his very first rocket, Major Tom. He smiled a little, seeing the sunrise glinting off its smooth silver sides.

*

The launch pad was long disused and he shone his phone on the steps as he started to climb. By the time he got half way, he'd made his decision. He wasn't going to lie down and take it. He was Fazal. He'd killed a guy and gotten away with it, damn it. Who the hell did she think she was trying to outmanoeuver him? He was born for this moment. It was his future to reach out and take by the throat.

He was running, taking the steps three at a time. He knew why he'd come here. He could see it in his head: under the pilot's seat in the nose, a stashed phone full of crypto and kill codes for all the accounts.

*

The pilot's seat was positioned in such a way that he had to lower himself into it and almost fully lie down. He looked up at a bank of monitors and fumbled under the seat. For a heartstopping moment, he couldn't find it, then his fingers touched plastic and his hope was restored.

He tapped his way through the security systems and in ninety seconds he was soon gloating, sitting on top of a mountain of crypto with the kill switch firmly in his digital grip. He reflected for a second, a little surprised that he felt no doubt nor sadness at all. Instead, he felt a hot rush of dopamine as he mashed his finger down on the button.

Nothing.

He hit it again, sending the signal that would regain control. But even as he did so he knew something was wrong.

Very gently, a tremble whispered through the seat under his back. Or was it just his imagination? No, there it again, the slightest vibration. But this time it was more like a shudder that juddered through the whole cockpit. Lights blinked on in the monitor screens. A little motor somewhere whirred into life.

Fazal reached up and turned the handle to open the door. It didn't budge. He jostled it, trying to jimmy it loose but it was definitely locked. He took it in both hands and twisted it, gritting his teeth and making a small squeak with the effort.

'Fazal,' said a voice through the speakers. It was Emma. She was there, on the monitors. He could see a wall of plants behind her. 'I could say I didn't want it to happen like this.'

'You are so fucked,' said Fazal.

Emma smiled. Her eyes were bright. She leaned forward and blew a kiss at the camera. The screens went blank and Fazal was left on his own, staring at his hazy reflection. Then all the lights went off, a terrible roar filled his ears and he felt himself begin to jitter and shake.