Nightside 08 - The Unnatural Inquirer

a lot more to say, but none of the reporters present wanted to hang around long enough to find out what…There were some intriguing Before and After photos of Jacqueline Hyde, poor soul. Jacqueline and Hyde were in love, but doomed never to meet save for the most fleeting of moments…Another story insisted that the Moon really was made of green cheese, and that the big black monoliths were just oversized alien crackers…And right at the bottom of an inner page, in very small type: Old Ones Fail to Rise Yet Again.
    Most of the rest of the pages were filled with excited puff pieces about various Nightside celebrities I either hadn’t heard of, or didn’t give a damn about, including two whole pages given over to photos of young women getting out of limousines and taxis, just so the paparazzi could get a quick photo of their underwear, or lack of it. As far as the Unnatural Inquirer is concerned, taste is something you find in the restaurant guides.
    I skipped through to the personal ads and announcements in the back pages; all human life is there, and a whole lot more besides.
    Soul-swapping parties; just show up and throw your karma keys into the circle. Bodies for rent. Sex change while you wait. Go deep-sea diving in sunken R’lyeh; no noise-makers allowed. A whole bunch of pyramid schemes, some involving real pyramids. Remote viewing into the bedrooms and bathrooms of the rich and famous; highlights available on VHS or DVD. Time-share schemes, involving real time travel. (Though those tended to be stamped on pretty quick by Old Father Time, especially if they weren’t cons.) And, of course, a million different drugs from thousands of dimensions; buyer very much beware. The paper felt obliged to add its own warning here; apparently some intelligent plant civilisations had been attempting to stealthily invade our world by selling their seeds and cuttings as drugs. Sort of a Trojan horse invasion…
    And then, of course, there were the personal messages…Lassie come home, or the kid gets it. Boopsie loves Moopsie; Moopsie loves Boopsie? (Oh, I could see tears before bedtime in the offing there…) Dagon shall rise again! All donations welcome. Desperately Seeking Elvira…Mad scientist who digs up graves, steals the bodies, and sews the bits together to create a new living supercreature seeks similar…GSOH essential.
    The Unnatural Inquirer has the only crossword puzzles that insult you if you take too long at guessing the clues—very cross word puzzles. And they had to cancel the kakuro because the numbers kept adding up to 666.
    I dropped the paper back onto the table, went to wipe my inky fingers on my coat, and then realised that’s not a good idea when you’re wearing a white trench coat. I took out a handkerchief and rubbed briskly at my fingers. I hadn’t realised how much I knew about the paper. The tabloid had insinuated itself into the Nightside so thoroughly that pretty much anything you saw or thought of reminded you of something that had appeared in the Unnatural Inquirer. For a while there was even a rumour going around that the Editor had a precog on staff, who could see just far enough into the future to view the next day’s edition of the Night Times, so that the Unnatural Inquirer could run all their best stories in advance. I had trouble believing that. First, I knew the Editor of the Night Times, and he wouldn’t sit still for something like that for one moment, and second, the Unnatural Inquirer had never been that interested in news stories anyway. Not when there’s important gossip and tittle-tattle to spread.
    Not that the Unnatural Inquirer gets everything its own way. The Editor once sent a reporter into Rats’ Alley, where the homeless and down-and-outs gather, to dig up some juicy stories on rich and famous people who’d been brought low by misfortune and disaster. Razor Eddie, Punk God of the Straight Razor, and defenders of street people everywhere, rather took exception to such hard-heartedness. He sent the reporter back to the Editor in forty-seven separate parcels. With postage owing.
    “The Sub-Editor is ready to see you now,” said the Receptionist. “He’s sending a copy-boy to escort you in.”
    “Does he think I’ll get lost?” I said.
    She smiled coldly. “We don’t like people wandering around. Personally, I think all visitors should be electronically tagged and stamped with time codes so they’d know exactly when their welcome was wearing