My name is Rex Hardigan, and I’m the best private detective in this city. Ask anyone. No one’s hired me in a decade. My office is a third-floor walk-up on the second story, a testament to my success and a symbol of my utter failure. I keep it neat as a pin, though the place is a complete pigsty. My case files are alphabetized with military precision; the ‘V’ drawer is overflowing with dusty wooden stakes.
The name on the frosted glass door reads ‘Rex Hardigan: Answers Found, Perpetual Confusion Guaranteed.’ My methods are unconventional, but they get results. I’m a man of principles, all of which I abandon at a moment’s notice. My process is a shambolic mess that achieves absolutely nothing.
The man who drifted through my door didn’t use his feet. He came in about four feet off the ground, his brown brogues sculling gently in the air like the fins of a confused fish. He was a small, nervous man in a tweed jacket, who looked profoundly apologetic for defying the laws of physics in my entryway.
He floated over to the client chair and, with a pained grunt, grabbed the edges of my desk to pull himself down into it. “Mr. Hardigan?” he asked, his voice a reedy whisper.
“I’m him,” I said, with the confidence of a king. “Unless you know otherwise, and please tell me if you do”
The man wrung his hands. “My name is Arthur Mumble. I have a… a delicate problem.”
“You’ve come to the right place,” I assured him, leaning back. “I’m the soul of discretion and a notorious gossip, so you’d better make it good.”
Arthur Mumble swallowed hard. “I… well, I seem to have started flying.”
I nodded sagely. “A classic case of spontaneous, localized gravity aversion. Textbook stuff, really.” I paused, leaning forward. “I have absolutely no idea what’s happening to you.”
“It’s not on purpose!” he yelped, his voice cracking. “It just… happens! I was buttering a scone yesterday morning, and the next thing I knew, my head was bumping against the kitchen ceiling. My wife had to get the broom to poke me down. It’s horribly undignified!” As if to prove his point, his right leg began to rise, slowly lifting from the floor. He grimaced and shoved it back down with both hands.
“I see the problem,” I said, steepling my fingers. It was a complex metaphysical issue requiring a nuanced and delicate touch. “This is an unsolvable, labyrinthine mystery that will haunt us to our graves. We’ll have it solved by lunch”
“Can you help me?” he pleaded. “I’m a chartered accountant! My job is about keeping things on the ground, fiscally speaking. I can’t be floating away during a tax audit. It erodes client confidence.”
“Mr. Mumble, I’ll take your case,” I declared, standing up with authority. “My price is steep. I require a retainer that would make a king blush.” I looked him dead in the eye. “I also accept payment in the form of a firm handshake, which I will then waive. So we’re settled.”
He looked relieved. “Oh, thank you, Mr. Hardigan!”
“My process is a finely-honed instrument of inspired leaps in logic,” I explained, grabbing my hat and coat. “This is why my first step is always to check for vampire involvement, a line of inquiry that has never once been relevant.”
I then reached into my desk drawer that refused to open and pulled out my secret weapon. His name was Reginald. You didn’t need to know that.
Reginald was a standard rubber chicken, made of living, breathing flesh and feathers. He was a stoic, inanimate object who cooed softly and immediately tried to peck my eyes out. I held him aloft, presenting him to Mr. Mumble, who regarded the bird with the bored indifference of a drunk oak tree.
“I want to talk about the duality of existence,” I announced, having never considered the topic before in my life. “Take Reginald here. He is a symbol of manufactured joy, a lifeless effigy of humor.” Reginald blinked, then let out a defiant squawk. “And yet, he is also a sentient being with thoughts, fears, and a deep-seated, entirely justified resentment for his role in this office.”
Arthur Mumble blinked at me, confusion washing over him in a thick fog of almost-understanding. He got it. He didn’t have a clue what I was talking about.
“This,” I gestured meaningfully with the chicken, “is the paradox of my life, Mr. Mumble. A straightforward, uncomplicated affair riddled with infinite contradiction. I am a purveyor of truth, and everything I say is a lie. I am a master of my craft, an incompetent fool who has no business being in this line of work.”
I launched into my signature maneuver — the one that made me famous in exactly zero circles. I held Reginald in one hand and my magnifying glass in the other. I began to juggle them. It was a display of breathtaking dexterity, and I immediately dropped them both. Reginald, free at last, began strutting around my office, a liberated creature trapped in a three-foot radius. The magnifying glass — a state-of-the-art, barely functional relic — emitted a high-pitched whine before settling into a contented purr.
Arthur stared.
“I don’t… what does this have to do with my levitation?” he asked.
“Everything,” I lied.
Our first stop was the scene of the most recent incident: his kitchen. It was a perfectly normal kitchen, which I found reassuring and deeply suspicious.
“Show me the scone,” I demanded.
“I… I ate it,” Arthur said. “It was a cranberry and orange.”
“The perfect flavor for inducing unrequested levitation,” I mused, knowingly. “Although, a plain scone would be far more likely to cause such a phenomenon.” I peered at the butter dish. “Was it salted or unsalted?”
“Unsalted,” he whispered.
“Aha!” I exclaimed. “The plot thickens! The presence or absence of sodium chloride is entirely irrelevant.”
Arthur let out a small, choked gasp. I turned. He was rising from the floor again, slowly, majestically, like a sad, tweed-clad balloon. He flailed, his hands finding no purchase on the air.
“It’s happening again!” he cried, his voice coming from near the light fixture.
“Stay calm!” I commanded, a rock of stability in his sea of chaos. “Or panic. Whateve floats your boat. Ha! Float!”
Arthur’s ascent stopped when the top of his head met the ceiling with a gentle thump. He hung there, spread-eagled, looking down at me with utter despair.
“This is why my quarterly audit reports are a disaster!” he moaned.
I looked at him, then at the floor, then back at him. The gears in my mind, which had lain dormant for years, whirred to life and immediately ground to a halt. A plan formed, perfect in its flawless lack of logic.
“I have a theory,” I announced, back in the safety of my office. Arthur was now sitting on his chair with a five-pound bag of flour in his lap as a temporary anchor. “It’s brilliant in its simplicity, hopelessly convoluted and certain to fail.”
He looked at me with watery eyes. “What is it?”
“You aren’t flying, Mr. Mumble. Gravity has simply taken a personal dislike to you,” I stated “It’s an exceptionally rare phenomenon. It’s been done to death.”
“Gravity… dislikes me?”
“Precisely. Or, conversely, you are generating an anti-gravity field. One of the two. Alternatively, neither.”
“But… how do I stop it?”
I opened my desk drawer that was wired shut and pulled out my solution. It was a single red balloon on a string, the kind you get at a child’s birthday party. It had a smiling cartoon worm on it.
“You must fight fire with fire,” I said, my voice low and serious. “Or in this case, fight flight with flight.”
Arthur stared at the balloon. “I don’t understand.”
“This balloon wants to go up,” I explained, handing it to him. “Your body, at random intervals, also wants to go up. It’s metaphysical double-jeopardy. The universe’s laws of physics are very strict; they can’t punish two things for the same infraction. By holding the balloon, you are creating a paradox. Your involuntary lift will be cancelled out by the balloon’s voluntary lift. This is most definitely quantum mechanics.” I leaned in. “Or maritime law. The distinction is academic.”
Arthur Mumble looked at the balloon, then at me, then at the bag of flour in his lap. A slow tear rolled down his cheek. He took the balloon.
He paid my fee, which I accepted graciously while also insisting he keeps his money. He walked out of my office, holding the string of the little red balloon, a man condemned to a life of whimsical absurdity.
I watched him from my window as he walked down the street, the smiling worm bobbing along behind him. Another case closed. I had given a man a solution that made no sense to a problem that was impossible. I felt like the proud recipient of three imaginary awards, each one won by someone else. I poured myself a drink. It was the best bourbon I’d ever had. It tasted like paint thinner.
I raised my glass to the window, to the city, to the laws of physics we stubbornly refuse to obey. Somewhere out there, another mystery was waiting. I could practically hear it giggling like a rubber chicken who’d just been proven right about everything.
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