The Road to Woop Woop and Other Stories

by Eugen Bacon

  “Prison camp did this?” he observed in disapproval, especially of the condition of the bony lass.

  “Ah. Eh. These earthlings have been subjected to the same diet, environment and external conditioning as near as possible. But they have each experienced different motivational spurs.”

  “Spurs?”

  Freudo turned a key in the lock. “Eh? Yes, yes. The stimulus is implied. Perceived. Come, come.” The door snapped open. He pushed Bates into the room, led him to a podium with a view to the track.

  “That is Ego,” Freudo pointed at the girl built like a Spartan. “Vabe,” he indicated the latter who was malnourished, raggedy as cured salami. “Each subject is conditioned to respond to exact external stimuli but each carries different perception implants that we turn on and off. Vabe’s metabolism is adversely affected by the stimulus of the most recent trial but that is a temporary adjustment, a pure matter of tissue reload easily remedied.”

  He leaned forward with head gear, goggles and ear plugs.

  “Put these on for me, will you now, Professor?” Freudo fastened the apparatus. “Now, we’re going to watch a race.”

  Freudo pressed a button. A horn sounded in the field. It was a stimulus that both Ego and Vabe immediately responded to, albeit in different fashion: Ego burst to the starting point, muscles rippling in anticipation. Vabe, a wimpy thing in big shorts, faltered every two steps to the line.

  Bates, in exasperation, fumbled for his pipe.

  “Not here, Professor. Please don’t smoke in my lab. The atmosphere’s controlled. Everything in this experiment bar you and me is controlled.” He spot-checked his equipment.

  Bates leaned back and spread his legs, resigned for the talent drop to amaze him. He pried loose from his thoughts the woman with a sheath dress and dramatic heels.

  “On your marks!” chimed an automat in the air. The girls responded. “Get ready!” Bo-wow! The sound of a starting gun.

  Ego exploded from her blocks. Vabe twitched, climbed to her feet and careened. She toddled like a person without control of motion. Ego was already round the east bend and Vabe had barely made two steps.

  Freudo flicked another switch. “Internal stimulus increase by 170 percent.”

  Ego flew on a new gear. Vabe’s limbs grew more uneven: arms wilder, legs ever more desperate. Shoulders drooped, then dragged. Her face drew closer to the ground.

  “She looks just about to collapse,” observed Bates. “You had better stop this experiment.”

  Click! Another switch. “The stimulus is above threshold now,” Freudo proclaimed.

  Ego, now three-quarters of the way down the track, staggered and appeared to slow. Vabe, in turn, lifted from her stoop. Her shoulders broadened, strengthened. The arc of her back went straight. With a new pump of arms, her stride lengthened. She flew down the track, zapped north past Ego and lifted the finish ribbon with her chest.

  Bates sat upright, eye straining through the monocle. “That is—!”

  “Motivation,” said Freudo.

  “Please explain,” said Bates.

  “To do so, I must first demonstrate the girls’ stimuli.”

  Freudo flicked a switch. “This is Ego’s stimulus,” he said.

  Bates found himself viewing a crowd that filled the stands to bursting.

  “Go Champ! Ego!” they cried. “Ego! Ego! Champ! Champ! Ego!”

  “And this is Vabe’s stimulus,” said Freudo.

  The same crowd but it hollered: “Boo-woo! Boo-woo!” Rotten eggs flew down the stands. “Boo-woo!”

  Bates lifted his goggles. “Very well,” He said at length. “It’s obvious to me what you’ve done, you switched stimuli, haven’t you? Ego got the rotten eggs and Vabe the cries of Champ. Negativity blanks motivation.” He smiled. “Nothing is new in that theorem. I wrote it, swelled it, notarized it. The one and only thing that amazes me is the miraculous recovery of Vabe’s muscle tissue. Is it some metaphysical construct arising out of a refreshed mental state? I had miscalculated the supremacy of motivation.”

  “Sir, if I may. The amplified stimuli are not a reversal but the very same that each individual was already subject to.”

  Bates swallowed. “I do not understand.”

  “The mind is complex, amorphous as an opal. Easily ruined without nurture. One can flirt with it but not fully control it. Amplified stimuli on preconditioned operants result in mental disintegration of those very stimuli; the mind can grow muscles of its own to produce an effect that heartens survival.”

  Bates sagged. “Please explain.”

  “Eh? Good.” Freudo rubbed his palms. “Any faster, Ego would have died. Her body is not yet equipped for that degree of velocity. Any slower, Vabe would have collapsed. Her mind is not yet accommodated to that level of rejection.” He paused. “What you have witnessed is the application of inverted U-shaped behavior. The individual can respond to increasing complex stimuli to a point. By augmenting that trigger to above threshold, an inverse reaction occurs to decrease operant conditioning and produce an opposite effect.”

  ***

  Staggered, Bates fell out of Tottenham Court Road, faltered like a drunk all the way to New Oxford Street and threw himself into his mobilis. He took toward the Thames along Victoria Embankment and chug-chugged all the way past the docklands. Riding home under a darkening sky, John Bates acknowledged that the young scientist was more than a showman. The prat had once more disproved him with experiment.

  Bates turned, wheels bouncing, off the main road into a dirt path. He headed in a ride of wind toward his farm in Greenwich. The sky roared and broke loose. The mobilis hopped in an increase of speed as the first eastern droplets chased its progress.

  Damn Freudo, he cursed. Damn, damn you!

  Thunder bellowed. An orange stick of lightning broke into a zigzag. Bates thrust his thoughts from Freudo and focused on his wife Mabel. She would by now be worrying for him. Or perhaps trussing yet another of her pies that did little to narrow a waistline once needle thin inside a bunching of bustle and soft fullness of garment.

  He thought of a thigh-skimming skirt crackling with movement. High inch heels that carried a woman’s walk as she swayed, swayed in his head. John Bates would do well in his next life to come half a century later and leave the darn enthusiast of a Freudo to neurotic trials on proven principles as ancient as Rome. Bates had met his match in the young maverick. What Bates needed was a leap into the future, into a career change. Perhaps he could, instead, slip into fashion. He would invent thigh-grazing style, something diminutive, a micro skirt that accommodated a gleeful cha-cha of hips and long, long legs that vanished into steep, ivory boots. Oh, behave!

  Diminy. He smiled. He would call it a diminy. He closed his eyes and imagined a black, black dress and kitten heels. Bared midriff and climbing hem. Click! Click! The music of seven-inch heels danced in his head.

  Clippety-click! Click! Click! Clippety-click! He did not anticipate the towering chariot that slammed into the Edwardian mobilis. Nor did he imagine the shot of pain that carried him to a dark eddy of cloud and white, white stars.

  ***

  He swirled. A bout of exhaustion caught him. Inside shadows, he heard a voice, one ever so familiar. Finest, finest, finest . . . Freudo was saying within the labyrinth. Mind . . . mind . . . mind. Bates allowed the cloud to float him. Rare, rare, rare . . .

  Freudo’s words faded, leaving Bates with white pain and blinking stars. He tried to isolate the pain, to understand it. But the ache pulsed, and he was not sure what part of his body was broken. His awareness coasted into a burst of luminosity that compelled him to reflect upon beautiful things. Cha-cha! Cha-cha! a woman’s walk. He was still pondering the movement of hips in a miniskirt above long, long legs when he opened his eyes to a burst of light.

  He panicked. Was he in an alternate world? Part of an experiment? Had Freu
do set him up? The chariot . . . was it Freudo’s doing? His alarm grew. Was he, Bates, dead?

  “Sir,” the face of a girl leaned toward him. Starched cape. White collar. Brown eyes regarded him. She looked human.

  “How are you feeling?”

  “Is he awake?” another voice in the distance.

  “Yes, doctor.”

  “Sir,” sweet brown eyes. “Do you remember your name?”

  “Bates,” he said.

  “Weights?”

  “Bates.”

  A man in white, the doctor, approached. He was young. Familiar jungle eyes and flustered hair.

  “Eh. Ah yes. Good, good, for sure. My name is Dr. Brio.”

  “Fwodo?”

  “Oh, my, yes. Your head injuries are affecting your speech. But you know my name?” He looked at the nurse.

  “Sci . . . Kinic . . . Fury.” The doctor’s gaze was baffled. Bates gave up. Nothing he said was sounding like science, clinic or theory. But one thing was clear: this was an alternate universe. Perhaps the collision had opened a doorway to another realm.

  The doctor leaned forward. “Who are you, my good fellow?”

  Bates’s smile hurt. He wanted to say, “I am the distinguished Professor Bates.” But his mind was swamped with Cha-cha! Cha-cha! a woman’s walk. A miniskirt above long, long legs. His mind soared with purpose, a newfound passion. Yes. He would name the garment a diminy. No more would Freudo Brio—not even the one of this world—collapse his theories. So instead he said, “My name is John Bates.”

  “Weights,” the girl again.

  Bates tried to sit up.

  “Dear fellow, please,” the doctor.

  “My name is John Bates,” firmly. “Inventor of the diminy.”

  “Wiminy, sir?” the girl.

  “A fashion statement,” said Bates.

  MAHUIKA

  She fell from the sky, a daughter of the sun. She was many forms, how fiery. In Phoenicia, she wore a flame of feathers and lived as a phoenix. In Persia, the thunderbird built a nest and burst into fire and regenerated as a cosmic serpent. In West Africa, she was first a leopard and then a goldsmith who forged an iron sword for the Fon people, before she destroyed the divine tool in a blaze. In Greece, she found logic in the bed of Apollo, and then illogic that caused her to make fire in a sacred place that was the Oracle of Delphi—it melted. In her fifth birthing, she took the form of a human, and found a website.

  ***

  Scorcher sat behind the wheel on Coral Bay along the peninsula. Winding roads swept past Kauri trees and kopi, and toppled toward the coastline. You faced out the window, silent, as the car juddered after a van with a sign: How’s my driving? Call 0800 BE AFRAID.

  ***

  Basque—her online handle. No spas, massages, spooning or watching DVDs on the couch. She adored sunlit beaches, a hearty laugh. She sought someone who didn’t stress the small things, her profile. She didn’t ask what you were wearing within nine seconds of your instant chat. There she was, a brand-new someone in blonde shades gazing at you right there on your screen. She was hotter than your ex. A whole day eyeing your cell phone, Beethoven’s Fifth: the arrival of her text.

  ***

  On Little River Bay you sank bare feet through the opulent gold of hot, wet sand. Sweat made silhouettes of the contours of Scorcher’s skimpy undies and her braless torso through her ankle-length sarong, enveloped by shimmering air. She was Mahuika, your fire goddess. Her fecund laugh accompanied malevolent surf that washed you toe to crown. You tried swimming in a humping sea but the water’s resistance, the mercury in your shoulder, the mallet in your head . . . it was a swim through a rock. Ashore, one look at Scorcher and your sun shone through her eyes. Life without her didn’t bear thinking.

  ***

  But her temper! First time she roared, a pillow away, a boulder entered your stomach, and cuddled. You stared at the roar like it was a stray animal, a jackal or a serpent, wilderness sprung into your world. You gazed at the night long after the roaring. You questioned “in sickness and in health,” asked yourself over if you were ready. You understood, with her, you didn’t know what you were getting. As your mind formed the right answers, Scorcher laid her head on your chest, shone stars through her eyes.

  ***

  Moon—a powerful arbiter of relationships. The astrocenter assured compatibility. There you were, two water-signs in the Western horoscope: Scorpio and Pisces. In touch with your feelings. The Chinese zodiac told the story different. Scorcher was a fire tiger, her personality intense. You were an earth monkey, your nature playful. Your witty barbs speared the delicate ego of a tiger. Yet within your cosmic elements it was an affinity relationship: fire generates earth. You listened to your soul and behaved young again.

  ***

  Her rage! Second time she roared, you stayed away three nights, five hours, thirty-six minutes and one second. Rewiring put such rapture in your body, it was minimizing to think of it as a melt in your thighs and your buttocks and your big toes, but you did.

  ***

  On the way to Track Bay in a ferry, you watched as sweltering wind whipped Scorcher’s sand-speckled hair. You walked hand in hand a mile down the cliff and gathered oysters, scallops, mussels and pipi—bleached as Scorcher’s hair, fair as her eyes. Later you wore towels around your waists, wolfed eggplant chips with the shellfish at the terrace bar with pohutukawa trees, pheasants and tui in bush clad hills out yonder.

  ***

  Her vicious! Third time she roared, on a narrow and twisty road, her unreachability made you ravenous.

  But you said, “Stop the car. Put me on a beach.”

  “Your best work right here,” she said.

  Tears stuck in your eyes as you walked barefoot with mercury rising, the sand heating. You were like a cat on a tin roof when Scorcher chased after you, promised stars with her eyes.

  Soot in your heart, you kept walking. You wondered how it was that she burned everything she touched. Out in the horizon the cheet cheet of a piwakawaka; no sight of the bird anywhere.

  BEING MARCUS

  This was no ordinary crime, nor one of small scope. It was committed unexpectedly against a friend; ungratefully against a benefactor who had shown mercy after a war; lawlessly against a sovereign; in a senate chamber; against a pontiff wearing his priestly garb; against a ruler who was unique and useful beyond all men to his country and its empire. —Appian, The Civil Wars, Book 4, section 134 (cited in Lewis 1983, 58)

  Ting! A visitor’s bell chimes.

  Marcus lifts his head from behind the shelf, from stacking flyers warm still from the printer. The pamphlets announce new membership rates at Fitness Studio.

  “Do you do stretch classes?” a brunette asks across the counter.

  “Yes.” He watches her without interest or dislike.

  “How much?” She blows a perfect pink bubble with her gum. “For the classes?”

  Silently he slides a leaflet across the chipped wood.

  “Boxing,” she reads, manicured finger on the line. “I want to do boxing. And Pilates. Do you do personal training?”

  He looks at her, wordless.

  “Here it is,” she laughs. “When can I start?”

  “Now if it suits you.”

  She is taken aback. “It’s not like I’m fat-fat but Shannon—my partner—she thinks . . .”

  She yap yap yaps about her need for body shaping, reasoning aloud with her conscience why she should do it. Fingers her hair as she yaps, until Marcus cuts into her self-dialogue:

  “Discuss with Shannon, see what she likes.”

  Ting!

  Marcus considers the new one. She is flustered by his beauty. Men and women melt like snow to its fire, forever enslaved by his splendor. Like Claudia Pulchra, his first wife.

  She lit up like a diamond the first time he stepped
into her father’s courtyard . . . Allowed his fingers upon her flawless cheekbone, did not protest when those fingers slipped the belt off her sleeveless tunica to find the coolness of her thigh. She followed him unbidden to his house, loosened the straps of her leather sandalia (such perfect toes, she had), kicked off those thongs that knew no dust and curled, feet tucked, on his bed. She would not think to return home and so, to dignify her name, he wed her. But she contaminated him with her jealousy, tart like maderized wine the moment his eyes set upon another woman. Her beauty dulled and all he saw was a shrew. When he jilted her for youth, desirable as it was flawless, in the face of Portia Cartonis, the daughter of Uncle Cato, Claudia went mad.

  “I, um . . . . You do fitness evaluation?” the new one says.

  He hands her a flyer.

  She enrolls for assessment and dietary planning. When she trundles out, he does not return to arranging leaflets. That one needs more than evaluation and planning, he thinks. What she needs is a cuddle bunny.

  He sighs. He’s not on a good day today. Reminiscing has squandered any goodwill he has. Today, he does not bear the persona of Marcus, the fine gym instructor. He feels like Brutus. And most Brutuses he’s come across in this world are canine. “Here, Brutus! Fetch!”

  So today Marcus feels like a dog. Same one that bit the hand off its adoring master. Same one that joined the inner circle centuries ago in a conspiracy that shore an empire of its hero. Caesar was a god. He could have saved himself. Almost did too. With a single sword, he could have taken them all, sliced their treacherous hearts one by one. But the moment he saw Brutus approaching with a dagger, “You too, child?” he said, and covered his face. Heartbroken and resigned.

  But Marcus is changed. He is not Brutus anymore. After Caesar’s death, he traveled from Crete to Philippi. Torn with guilt and defeat, he fell on his sword and gave himself up to the spirits of his gods.

  He smiles wryly.

  Fate tricked him. Of all the immortals to attend his dying ground, it was Caesar who came, regal in his toga. Not his favorite white candida that symbolized purity of intention, but an all-lilac sagum cloak, a symbol of war embroidered with gold. As dying Brutus writhed, impaled on his own weapon, Caesar stood tall and handsome, a resplendent general of the new world, the ghost of a true emperor. He took a step toward his betrayer and Brutus cringed.