Sinuous Parameter

"Hey pal, watch where you're going. You nearly knocked me to the ground," Harper yelled as a man he had never seen before ran into him. Disheveled and sweating profusely, the man grabbed Harper by both sides of his jacket. "Please, make sure it gets to Interpol," he said in a panic. Noticing the blood dripping from the top of his head along with the cracked lens in his glasses, Harper realized that the man was terribly afraid of something, or someone.

The man abruptly ran off disappearing into the crowd of people inside the plaza. A few seconds later, two men came rushing through the crowd with flustered looks on their faces. As they both looked around shifting their gaze in multiple directions, they pushed people out of the way at random. As the men passed Harper, he overheard them talking about the mystery man. "He ran this way, let's split up. He couldn't have gotten far," one of them said. Harper's pathological fear of becoming a victim of tourist crime suddenly overcame him prompting a hasty return to his hotel room.

As Harper made his way through the crowd down George Street, his vision began to get blurry, and he started to hyperventilate. Suddenly, every person he passed was suspicious to him. After navigating through a labyrinth of paranoia and fear, Harper finally found himself staring at the front of the George Street Hotel where he had rented a room from the two weeks he had planned to stay in Sydney. Stumbling through the lackluster lobby that was a detraction from the luxury high-rise hotels most visitors chose during their vacation, Harper circumvented the elevator that had just opened so he could avoid any contact with people.

He opened the stairwell and peeked inside. Before he entered, he looked behind him to make sure nobody was following him. While running up the stairs, Harper fell down. When he stood up, he noticed that a little black book had fallen from his jacket. "What is this," he to himself as he quickly picked it up and continued running until he had reached the third floor. After repeating the careful observatory routine from the lobby floor, Harper walked down the hall and entered his room.

Suddenly he was relieved as a placid feeling took him over. He grabbed a bottle of water from the small refrigerator and sat down at the table. He began to think about everything that had happened. Trying to make sense of what the mysterious man said when he grabbed him confused Harper. But above all, it terrified him even more. "Make sure it gets to Interpol," he said in a low tone. Just what did it mean he thought. Then it hit him. He pulled out the little black book that had fell out of his jacket in the stairwell and opened it.

Harper's eyes scanned from left to right as he flipped through the pages. It seemed to be some type of ledger of some sort. All through the book were names and numbers. The names were alphabetized with chronological dates under them along with account numbers and dollar amounts. Harper kept flipping through the book until he man it to the last page. One that page there was MASTER ACCOUNTS written in capital letters at the top of it. Lowering his eyes, he saw two account numbers. It was what he saw next to each account number that made him drop the book.

In one account there was 258 million dollars, and in the other there was 642 million dollars; 900 million dollars in total. Harper noticed a folded piece of paper sticking out of a small side pocket at the back of book. Suddenly he froze in fear. This is something you only see in a movie he thought to himself. He pulled out his cellphone and searched Interpol. Just as he was a out to call the number, something came over him. He put his phone down and picked up the book. He took the piece of folded paper out and opened it. "Well I'll be," he said as he looked at an unsigned cashiers check for $20,000. Then he stared at the huge numbers in the book, numbers that he knew he would never make in 100 lifetimes. Although the thought mortified him, he decided to set his morals aside and take the risk of a lifetime.

Multi-colored lights from the George Street nightlife illuminated a portion of the wall as it streamed in through an elongated slit between the meager curtains that covered the window in Harpers room. He rose up in his bed and stretched. "Damn, I slept longer than I wanted," he muttered as he looked at his watch. After grabbing the television remote, Harper pressed the power button. He flipped through the channels until he came across a news station. As he made his way through the cramped room in route to the bathroom, he glanced at the little black book on the table and shook his head with a smile.

Harper knew that this would be an end to his frugality. No more dried noodles, cans of potted meat, old shoes and thrift store clothes, or economy flights with six layovers. But the thing that he was most glad about was that there would be no more cringey old hotels. While leaning up against the bathroom wall with one hand, he relieved himself and wondered how he would pull it off. His planning was suddenly interrupted by the voice coming from the television. "A man's body was found earlier tonight in an ally in Chinatown by a business owner who requested to remain anonymous. All we can say at this time is that the case is being investigated as a homicide.

Harper rushed out of the bathroom spilling a little bit of urine on the toilet seat and the floor. What he saw when he looked at the television made him sick to his stomach. He suddenly felt faint and needed to sit down. Looking up at the screen once more confirmed it. There, on the television was a picture of the man who had ran into him earlier that day. Harper looked down at the little black book and realized that it was given to him by a dead man. A man who gave him his dying request. Even though the two men Harper saw following the mystery man had not seen him, he still felt incredible fear. At this point he had to scrutinize his next decision; grant a dead man's request, or change his own life for the better.