The Menial Task

Thirty hours.

Arthur was stalling. He knew he was stalling. He was running Monte Carlo simulations on the laptop, making the processor hum, pretending to be crunching complex data while he desperately tried to calculate a way out.

"I'm bored," Luca announced. He stood up and stretched, his joints popping like gunshots. He looked at Arthur, his eyes narrowing. "You're not done yet?"

"It's... complex," Arthur lied, sweat dripping onto his collar. "The encryption is... polymorphic."

"You're making words up." Luca walked over to the desk. He looked at the gun in his hand, then at Arthur. A cruel smile spread across his face.

"Hey, Artie. You ever hold a piece like this?"

"N-no, sir. I abhor violence. Statistically, gun owners are 40% more likely to—"

"Shut up," Luca said. He ejected the magazine and cleared the chamber. He slammed the heavy weapon onto the desk, right on top of Arthur’s spreadsheet. "Clean it."

Arthur blinked behind his thick lenses. "Excuse me?"

"Clean it. I'm tired of doing it. My hands are cramping. You got nimble little fingers, right? From all that typing."

"I... I don't know how."

"Figure it out," Luca growled. "Take it apart. Wipe the carbon off the firing pin. Oil the spring. Put it back together. If you mess it up, I'll beat you to death with the handle."

Luca walked to the mini-bar in the corner and poured himself a glass of scotch. He turned his back to Arthur, watching the security feed of the dance floor on a wall-mounted TV.

Arthur looked at the gun. It was a magnificent, terrifying machine.

He looked at Luca’s back.

Arthur’s hands stopped shaking.

For a split second, the terrified accountant vanished. His expression went flat, clinical. He picked up the gun with a familiarity that would have terrified Luca if he had been looking.

Arthur disassembled the weapon in seconds. He wiped the carbon. He oiled the slide.

And then, with a sleight of hand practiced a thousand times in dark rooms far away from Chicago, Arthur removed the firing pin. He slipped the tiny piece of metal into his pocket. He reassembled the gun.

It looked perfect. It weighed the same. But it was a paperweight.

"Done," Arthur squeaked.

Luca turned around, swirling his scotch. "That was fast. You sure you did it right?"

"I... I followed the manual on the internet," Arthur said, pointing to a browser tab he had quickly opened. *Heh-hee.*

Luca picked up the gun. He racked the slide. It clicked smoothly.

"Not bad, nerd," Luca sneered, tucking the gun into his waistband. "Maybe you're good for something other than giggling."