Tomorrow’s World by Davie Henderson

last month we’ve had reports of broken limbs resulting from frenzied disco moves, and people collapsing from dehydration and exhaustion after dances that would have made the whirling dervishes of old look like they were doing a slow waltz. There was even word of a couple of young lovers being found with their hearts stopped and faces frozen in expressions of awesome ecstasy, legs entwined and arms wrapped around each other like they were holding on for dear life. The man’s back was apparently torn to shreds by the woman’s nails, and her spine had been snapped in two by a spasm of pleasure-pain that was too much for her body to bear. I don’t know if the thing with the lovers is apocryphal, but it’s helped Rush achieve cult status in a couple of months, becoming the drug of choice among people who want to push back the boundaries and don’t mind how much they abuse themselves and others in the process.
    â€œDoug MacDougall doesn’t come anywhere close to fitting the user profile for Rush,” I said, thinking aloud.
    â€œHe wasn’t taking it for recreation. He was taking it to kill himself. Which would explain why he took it undiluted and intravenously rather than orally.”
    â€œHe’d no reason to kill himself,” I said, giving voice to the thought that had been going through my head all morning.
    â€œWe’ve worked together for two years and four days, yet there are lots of things you don’t know about me,” Paula said. “I think it’s safe to assume there’s a great deal you didn’t know about someone you only had occasional contact with.”
    I would have dearly loved to find out some of those things I didn’t know about Perfect Paula, but now wasn’t the time to ask. So, instead, I said, “Don’t you feel the least bit curious about why Doug MacDougall would have taken his own life?”
    â€œNo,” Paula said. “His reason was probably pathetic. It’s certainly academic. The case is closed, Travis.”

CHAPTER 5
L OVE, OR S OMETHING L IKE I T
    T HE CASE MIGHT BE CLOSED FOR P AULA, BUT NOT FOR me. For the rest of the afternoon we had the usual mix of minor incidents and dramas to deal with, each demanding my complete attention. But, when I got back to my apartment at the end of the shift, my thoughts soon turned back to Doug MacDougall.
    I tried reading one of Calum Tait’s travel articles but the words didn’t register, and when I looked at the photos they dissolved into Doug MacDougall’s face or Paula’s.
    I put on a Meg Ryan film, but for once she didn’t win my heart or make me laugh, and my mind kept straying to the scene I’d walked into in apartment 331 that morning. I switched the movie off halfway through and sat there staring at the blank wallscreen, projecting my own thoughts onto it. The result was a mystery that seemed insoluble. Doug MacDougall simply wasn’t the sort of guy to mess with drugs. He got his rush from looking for plants and sharing his love of them with other people. To me, that made an accidental overdose a non-starter. If it wasn’t an accident, then it had to be on purpose. Which meant suicide or murder. Suicide didn’t make sense, either. The autopsy failed to reveal any life-threatening physical ailments that might have led him to end it all. His body had far more toxins in it than was good for him, as you’d expect in someone who spent so long Outside. But, although those toxins would have taken twenty or thirty years off his life, he’d still had a good ten years left before it was an issue. Meantime, he wouldn’t have felt anything worse than a shortness of breath and recurring sore throat.
    Of course there was always the other kind of ailment, the kind that afflicted mind rather than body. In my job you become a good judge of character. You notice things other people miss, tell-tale signs of stress and worry, guilt and