The Pandora Directive

Prologue

The world took a bullet in the head and now Old San Francisco floats face down in a red sea sky. No one ever really explained what happened. But now the heavens above are a bloody blanket, and the air we breathe is thick with radiation.

This year we bid adieu to the ozone layer and enact a time reversal. At least we don’t have to reset our watches. The banks still open for business at nine, only now it’s 9:00pm. The Surgeon General decided that sunlight was becoming almost as hazardous as cigarette smoking and real butter. It doesn’t matter to me. I’ve never kept regular hours.

My name’s Tex Murphy and I’m a PI. Somebody somewhere screwed up and sent me here about a century too late. I should be driving a 38 Packard with a running board and whitewalls. Instead, I fly a 38 Lotus speeder. At least I wear the right uniform — soft felt fedora, silk tie, rumpled overcoat, and wing tips.

It’s April 2043, forty five years since World War III came and went. New San Francisco rose from the ashes, but it was reborn without any of the style or favour of the old city. So I hang my hat at the Ritz Hotel, in a particularly run-down section of Old San Francisco. I’m one of the few non-mutants in this part of town, but that doesn’t bother me. Some of my best friends are mutants. Besides, the rent is cheap and my apartment is big enough to hold my office.

Nothing much has changed since I moved to the city 20 years ago. All I ever need is a good bottle of bourbon, a fresh pack of Luckies, a decent haircut, and one more case.