Quick Brown Fox

Stan Mason

Description

DON WISE is a clever scientist but he is obese, ugly, and has big ears. In addition, he stutters, is tongue-tied with women, and isvery awkward in his body language. He has a crush on an old school friend whom he hasn't seen in years and a mishap in the computer of an marriage agency brings them together. However, they only write to each other for almost a year and he realises that he has to meet her to continue the relationship...but he is terrified of doing so because he knows he will be awkward and tongue-tied.He works in the brainstorming unit at Universal Energy inc. His colleague, ROBERT HARRIS, suddenly comes up with an idea called hydrogentics whereby a molecule of hydrogen can be moved to mass production, creating a heating process that will reduce the cost of all the energy in the world by seventy-five per cent, However it needs to be tested to check its veracity and capability.The project soon comes to the attention of Mr. G., a one-armed entrepreneur, who sends his subordinate, Jake, to obtain the formula and the accompanying notes. HARRIS proves to be extremely principled and refuses to hand them over even though he is offered a small fortune in return. Subsequently after a number of refusals, he is murdered. JAKE'S next step is to go to DON WISE topersuade him to hand over the details. DON refuses money and he will only do so if he can become good-looking, slim and attractive to women. It appears to be a mission impossible but JAKE arranges for him to visit a cosmetic surgeon, DR. SINCLAIR, who has been struck off by the medical council, MAI WAN, a Chinese psychotherapist, and HYWELL GRIFFITHS, a retired Welsh teacher. They take him in hand in a series of daily sessions over five months to undertake a total cosmetic, weight-losing, mind-blowing transformation.DAVID COLEMAN is the Controller of the brainstorming unit at Universal Energy. He steals the formula and the notes and wipes the computer clean of the files before leaving without notice. He arranges a pyramid scheme offering options to investors who wish to subscribe. When this comes to the attention of the one-armed entrepreneur, Jake is sent to get him to close the operation. He Coleman refuses to do so at first but, after being seriously menaced, heis forced to comply. This brings a mob of angry investors to his father's house where he is staying and he is subsequently arrested by the police for theft and fraud.ANYA SMIRNOFF, a young female scientist from Samarkand in Uzbekistan, joins the brainstorming unit in place of HARRIS, but she has to wear a mask because of a serious car accident. DON WISE falls in love with her, himself wearing bandages as a result of cosmetic surgery, while she wears a mask. The hydrogentics programme fails and Mr. G. moves on to find a jeweller willing to copy the famous Faberge Eggs for which he intends to make a fortune. However the security code that everyone uses when they contact each other is 'The Quick Brown Fox Jumps Over The Lazy Dog.' So how come the same code is used by the new Controller who takes the place of DAVID COLEMAN?

Sujets

• Thriller

Informations

• Publié par: Andrews UK
• Date de parution: 29 octobre 2014
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781785380266
• Langue: English

Extrait

Title Page
THE QUICK BROWN FOX
by
Stan Mason



Publisher Information
Published in 2014 by
Andrews UK Limited
www.andrewsuk.com
The right of Stan Mason to be identified as the Author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1998
Copyright © 2014 Stan Mason
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser. Any person who does so may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.
All characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.



Chapter One
In a world of reality it was never going to happen. In his heart he wanted it to be so but, in truth, the situation was hopelessly impossible. There was no doubt in his mind that Zelda was beautiful, intelligent, exquisite and sophisticated. At the same time it was clear to him that she could have the pick of any man she wanted. Contrarily, he was obese, ugly, timid, became tongue-tied, was not worldly-wise and sometimes he acted stupidly. And when it came to romance, he was a complete dud. People often thought of him as a fool and he became the subject of ridicule although he didn’t really warrant harsh criticism of that kind. He knew all about his deficiencies, deploring them, recognising that, when all was said and done, he had no chance whatsoever of claiming the heart of a woman of Zelda’s calibre to advance his romantic intentions to a higher level. Yet, for a long time, he had loved her from afar even though she had probably forgotten ever to have know him.
To step back into the past, they had been in the same class at school together yet, despite the fact that he spent most of the week only a few yards from her, she had hardly ever spoken to him from one term to the next. There was one particular occasion when she had dropped her schoolbooks and, gallantly, he had picked them up. His reward was a wonderful smile which he nursed in his mind for years afterwards. She had touched his heart and he reckoned that he had fallen irrevocably in love with her at that precise moment.
The problem was that he was extremely shy into the bargain, wholeheartedly reticent and very much backward in the ways of life His inactions were totally unlike some of the other male members in his class who seemed to be able to talk to the girls and woo them over in a junior kind of way. It was something he always wanted to do but it fell outside his ability. Furthermore, they seemed to know exactly what was needed for them to progress in the world after they had left school. They were all certainly worldly-wise. Unfortunately, Don was never afforded such advantages. Destiny had made him awkward, unsociable, wretched and particularly ugly. In addition, he always held back, was forever tongue-tied, regularly ridiculed by many other pupils in his class at school for his obesity and he was bullied by one particular schoolboy who made fun of him all the time. He was a pariah without any hope of happiness or satisfaction in his future life. As a result, Don was never going to enjoy his schooldays, let alone his youth, and, as far as the rest of his life was concerned, he was destined to become a failure. Nonetheless, his knowledge and ability to study was anything but impaired. In fact he was quite adept at a number of subjects at school eventually continuing his studies at a university with all the fees being helpfully paid for by his father, who was a doctor, and also by his mother, who taught English literature at a public school. However, despite parentage, nothing ever rubbed off on him and he was left to pursue his studies on his own.
Despite all the adversity, he never lost his feelings for Zelda being obsessed continually with his love for her. Admittedly when they were at school together, she was a skinny redhead but he knew that, in time, the pupa had turned into a beautiful butterfly as she matured, becoming well sought after by many men within the confines of her social life. Sadly, this fact was of no comfort to him, He was seriously affected by a number of deficiencies and he had no idea how it was possible for him to overcome them. It was a heavily weighted yoke that he would always have to bear.
After leaving university, he started working at Universal Energy Inc. an international conglomerate. He was appointed to the London branch which was a subsidiary of the major company having been formed to try to find a new means of energy. Naturally, it was a very small unit which depended a great deal on brainstorming sessions and testing out theories on the science bench, and it suited him very well. There were only two of them employed to undertake the task controlled by a senior officer who never seemed to be available., Little was expected for the tiny amount of expense required to run the unit as it was totally experimental but there was always the hope that a new invention would come to mind or there would be the element of an idea that would provide a new source of energy for the future. His partner in the unit was a man called Bob Harris, a quiet thoughtful scientist who had come to grief at another company and had found shelter with an appointment at Universal Energy Inc. The two men spoke very little to each other even though they had spent over two years working together. Their main aim was to find something related to magnetism which would establish an energy system capable of being useful in transport enabling trains to reach massive speeds safely, firing rockets into space instead of them having to use up heavy loads of fuel to lift off, or for being some use in industrial processes allowing products to come off the line more swiftly. However despite meeting twice each week to put their heads and thoughts together, they had come up with nothing to help the company. Nonetheless this was to change rapidly because over the past month, Robert Harris had started working on a new idea discarding the work they had done on magnetism. Clearly they were not going to make any kind of a breakthrough so the idea was left as a failure. They continued to try out a number of other ideas without success with Harris going into a shell, as he concentrated his mind and his efforts on a new project which he kept secret for a while to himself.
***
Even though some years had past, Don had applied to a dating agency for reason that were really beyond g his ken and through some dint of irregularity, they matched him with Zelda. It had to be a mistake but he readily recognised that no two women could be called Zelda and that he had been connected with his old school friend. Consequently he was able to make contact with her and he continued to do so in writing. One winter evening he sat at the table in his bedsit with a blank sheet of paper set out in front of him. He stared at it bleakly wondering what to write. Words did not come easily to him and he would have loved to write a beautiful poem but it was not within his power to do so. After a short while, he gave a long sigh and picked up his fountain pen preparing to start writing. Although he had not met Zelda since their schooldays, a fair amount of correspondence had passed between them containing many passages of personal attributes, minor achievements, and literary expressions that would have charmed the masters. Sadly they all came from her; none of them from him. Yet, despite the bluntness of his approach on paper, and the intimacy of thoughts they shared, he had not seen her for a long time... had never touched her... had never held her in his arms... nor had he ever kissed her. He paused to reflect the lack of those incidents and, for a moment, his concentration wandered and he looked up to watch the snow drifting gently past the window. Christmas was nigh and he felt that he couldn’t postpone meeting her any longer but what was he to say or do when they came into contact with each other. His mouth would go dry... he would start to become tongue-tied... he would utter the most ridiculous things in a jerky manner and she would laugh at him... ridiculing him for his failure to communicate properly. He would never be able to win her over. To get her to fall in love him was truly a mission impossible.
They had written to each other since the beginning of the year and he realised that if he failed to act positively now, they would both revert back to the point at which they started. She would tire of writing to him with no future in mind and that would be the end of it. He was twenty-seven years old, fairly short, very overweight, not interesting to talk to, an extremely dull person, a creature of habit, totally un-worldly-wise and he was still unmarried with no hope on the horizon. In truth, the matter of marriage had never raised its head seriously in the whole of his life for he had always been in love with Zelda and had never considered an involvement or a relationship with anyone else. In any case, women failed to find him charming, or stimulating, exciting, or desirable in any sense of the word, so he had crawled into a shell and had stayed there unattached and unaffected. Very much the same pattern applied to the rest of his life. He hadn’t achieved anything of merit... hadn’t done anything which would cause eyebrows to be raised... hadn’t graduated from university with an Honours Degree... and hadn’t pursued any venture which attracted public interest. Life had been extremely dull and very wretched. Yet, when all was said and done, he had not been tota