Wicket on Phi Phi

Several years later Wicket survived a tidal wave on Phi Phi Island, Thailand. Not only survived, but for reasons he was not entirely aware of he stayed on the island throughout the rebuilding and cleanup process. He was sitting in front of a dive shop when someone yelled that there was water coming up onto the island. He had to make a decision fast. He could run left or right.

He thought of a time when he saw in a road a right turn arrow and a left and a little further up a crosswalk and then he went to the right. At the time he had thought the marks were made by aliens from outer space to guide some birds in. He was glad he made the right decision.

He later felt fortunate that he had not gone to the left. “Not many of those that went that way survived” would be what he told those interested in the story. People would ask him what it was like when the tidal wave struck and maybe be thinking that he was tired of telling the tale, but he was never tired of telling the tale. He had run right, up the street, and had floated up with the rising water and had clung to a second floor balcony, saving his skin in the process. He would later see one of the foreign operators of a tourist agency on the island telling the CNN guy that the worst thing was the terrible smell. It was estimated that three thousand people died on the island that day. Three of the bungalow areas and one house that he had previously stayed in were completely gone. One was set on a slope rising some 150 feet up. The water had surged nearly to the top of the slope and then receded, carrying the debris of the crushed and broken bungalows and many bodies out to sea. A lot of people never would be found. There was a tremendous amount of sand moved around on the island that day by the surge. Some would remain buried beneath it. One thing that seemed to be everywhere were sandals and thongs. It appeared that these things had alone remained on top. At one time each of them held a human foot. At first he thought he would evacuate. Even a lot of the old time foreigners were leaving. “It was just too much” were words often muttered by those that left. He had stayed in one guesthouse that was picked up and set down a mile inland on a sewer reservoir. The owner of the house was on the second floor when the Tsunami struck. He was carried with the house and sat down, an amazing story of survival. Inside the water treatment pond were the bodies of 1000 Thais who had somehow come to rest there. A year later his hands trembled as he drank beer in the early evenings and recounted the story to Wicket, but Wicket didn’t leave. He had even started an honest business and had developed a sense of society and with age had become a better guy. It might be true that he was still living on money amassed in a life of crime, but he was done with that and was content in life. He ran a dive shop now and an internet café.
He really only still had one nasty little habit and one that he thought would harm no one. He had honed his skills at computer hacking to the point that he might very well have been the best at it in the entire world. His reputation on the net was revealing. People would talk about his exploits but only surmise as to identity. There was one computer that he would regret hacking. That was the computer sitting on the desk at the home of Golem Window. He didn’t know it at the time, but his act had not gone undetected by Golem. Golem even knew who it was that was going through his files. And this was not the time to have people looking at his computer. He was getting ready to kill a lot of people, and now, damn it, someone knew about it. And that someone was sitting in an internet café on Phi Phi Island on the other side of the world.

Wicket didn’t know that he was going to have a visitor. He spent the days on the beach and evenings listening to reggae at the Hippy Bar. Generally, he didn’t have a care in the world.


He sat in the bakery on the main street and sipped his twenty-baht coffee and contemplated ordering. Why did he have to get clever and snoop on Golem’s computer? The wife of the man he had not seen since the Tsunami came to the table with pad in hand. He looked in her eyes and saw something there the first few weeks after the tsunami. He remembered sitting in that café a year later when the piece of glass arrived to replace the one broken in the showcase in the front window that had good looking things to eat and smelled of bread. Why did he have to be possibly the only person in the world to know about a mass murder that would potentially kill millions? He ordered muesli with yogurt and an Iguanian breakfast. He watched as the solemn woman took his order to the kitchen.
And why, damn it, did he care about it? The place was full of morning tourists now. They were chatting of today’s adventures and yesterday’s follies.
He already knew the answer to the last question. He cared because he genuinely liked people. And now he might have to risk his newfound happiness on Phi Phi Island to try and save a good part of humanity.
Some of them would observe that he was Iguanian and take an interest in his way of speaking. Why did it have to be him? Was he finally being punished for prying into people’s private lives? Some people got up to leave and some people entered.
He even knew the date of the planned holocaust and was trying to ascertain the method.
A couple stopped outside the showcase to order a loaf of French bread. A few mothers pushed kids in strollers by and looked in. The TV, hung from the ceiling, blared out news.
This was certainly worse than being an Iguanian Idol contestant and having pictures posted of your naked body on the Net. The news was sort of always in the background in this café. Chat was of the essence. Golem picked up his fork and put the ham on top of his buttered toast. He cut out the soft yolk and put it in his mouth whole. That way it didn’t drip all over his plate. He looked around the café and up to the second floor that was always closed in the morning. It was the best place to eat breakfast on the island. The twenty baht coffee screamed this to patrons, and the menu offered more. The place across the street was always almost empty. It seemed they never learned. Their menu was confusing, and prices tricky to understand. It could have been a lesson in Business 101.
He thought of the pain in the woman’s eyes and the air of grief on the island that was there even while the island continued on in its pursuit of pleasing tourists. He noted that many of the Thais on the island seemed to be Bangkokians now and did not have the warm island spirit and eyed foreigners as if they were separate from them. The temperature of the island had cooled a bit. The happy carefree island Thais were gathered in the sewer pit. He left a tip on the table and made his way to the beach. He needed to see the sun.

If only Wicket had realized that his intrusions had not gone undetected, he might have protected himself better than sleeping in a hammock in front of his bungalow, in the dark of night, protected only by the canvass of a two hundred baht sling. He spent the nights snoozing peacefully in his hammock when he was not thinking that the time was approaching when he would have to help save some of the world. He was trying to come up with a way of revealing Window’s plan without implicating himself or his identity. He thought he knew what to do. He was about to do what he planned, when as he approached his bungalow after a night of dancing on the beach, he saw someone with a flashlight in his bungalow. He saw a man leave the bungalow and it did not look like a tourist. He could not believe the sight presented to him. It was Golem Window, a flashlight in one hand held above a gun in the other. He had gone into the bungalow S.W.A.T style. For a moment, Wicket had wondered if Golem had had some training. The only reason he was not asleep in the hammock was that on this particular night he had stayed out later because there was a full moon and the partiers were having a particularly good time. It seemed to him that Golem knew what time he came home and was waiting for him. He searched his bungalow for web cams and other such devices but found none. He did find the three condoms sitting on a homemade shelf that he kept there in case of need. He spent the night on the opposite beach and left on the ferry the next morning. He ended up on Elephant Island. The next best to Phi Phi or maybe even better he thought. He had never been to Koh Chang Island before and did not really know why he picked it. He also did not know that that was the one island that Golem had been to several years earlier. If he had access to that tidbit of knowledge, Wicket figured he would have chosen a different island to flee to.
It was a decision that almost cost him his life. For some reason, Golem, possibly out of a sense of déjà vu, decided to kick back on Elephant Island for a few days before heading back home to initiate the holocaust. One evening as Wicket had just relieved himself at the back of the KC Bar, in a place that was dark and just down a little sand alley, more precisely, a ways behind the bar, he heard a shot and simultaneously felt a searing pain on the left side of his head. He tumbled to the sand. Golem approached. He was going to run past as he made an exit and get a look to make sure that Wicket had taken a direct hit, but as he started to run towards Wicket, two girls walked out of the bar and screamed. Golem was forced to flee in another direction and, thus, never knew that Wicket was alive. Wicket observed Golem running off as he lay with his head to the side and saliva drizzling down his chin.

Those ears, that shiny head. Charlie pulled it off perfectly. He’s killed Wicket, and now finally it looked like Golem had done it. Charlie had followed Golem to the island and killed Wicket, and he did this as Golem was following around Wicket to talk to him…to have a little chat.

Charlie shot Wicket and got away clean and now Golem looked like a beacon running away and out the back gate, up towards the main road of Elephant Island. Wicket barely made him out jumping on a motorcycle and skirting off into darkness like one of Santa’s elves caught with a glass of Chablis on Christmas Eve. A little red suit would have fitted him perfectly. He even had a sort of evil mischievous grin on his face. Maybe a Grinch costume could describe it better. Wicket imagined that he heard the cackling laugh that he had heard so often while they were in prison and later in the executive suites of Window. It was a laugh that Golem didn’t seem to know he had. The man was bat fucking ape shit was all that Wicket could fathom as he lay in the sand feeling the blood trickle down the side of his head, over his lips, and into the ground of Elephant Island. At this point he had a vision that he could not explain:
The government man from the NSC told Golem that all the married people he met never had money. He talked about controlling the PC market and the idea that the technology had duel purposes that could also be used by a military. Golem knew there was no way to control the PC market. Strong encryption was everywhere. Copies were made or downloaded. It was like a dinosaur in Jurassic Park. They were later found on other islands. It was like the bird flu. It couldn’t be stopped by killing off the chickens. Any natural immunity the birds might have would be eliminated but that was about it. Birds flew over every trench in the world. Those with some immunity would survive. Those without would die. Nature was like that. Golem saw a school of fish in the sea today. The jellyfish were on shore. He wanted to see a fish caught in tentacles, but thought best to leave the school alone rather than to interfere with it and chase one member into the arms of a jellyfish. Nature could decide it. He saw a jellyfish left on shore by the tide. It was wiggling and he thought to save it, but nature could decide. Maybe there was a reason that jellyfish wasn’t meant to live. Nature needed that jellyfish to die. It would make her stronger. Why intervene in a process begun millions of years ago. Best to leave well enough alone.