by David Gullen
‘Der muddy in der car?’
Jimmy gave a profound sigh. ‘Yes, the money is still in the car.’
All one hundred and ninety million. The money they were meant to drive to Vegas and lose playing blackjack, craps and roulette at certain tables in certain casinos owned by a certain member of the executive in DC. A decade ago one hundred and ninety million USD was a kill-your-own-motherfucker of a fortune. Today, it was still a shit load of money.
More than enough to die for.
Jimmy slapped Black on the shoulder, pushed himself to his feet and made his way towards the diner. He took one last pull on his cigarette and flipped the tab away. Beating on Black had loosened the broken dental bridge even more. Taking hold of his top teeth he pulled them out and slipped them in his breast pocket. Maybe some dental surgeon could reattach them.
Finally, his head was clearing of that hippy drug shit. He’d check on Morgan, fix Black properly, and make the call to Gould. Once that was sorted they’d get back on the road.
One foot on the step up to the diner, Jimmy shook his head and gave a brief, sardonic smile. That blonde bitch Josie was something else. He was going to enjoy tracking her down. Her and that flop-haired lanky freak she travelled with.
‘Hey, Jimmy.’
Jimmy turned around. Black was up on one knee. He held a gun in a two-fisted grip.
Shit, Jimmy thought. Where’d Black get a gun? Jimmy held up his hand in a peace sign. ‘Chill, man. Don’t be so, like, infra-dig–’
Black shot him. Like, a lot.
- 4 -
Exclusive! It’s Official!! The Steel Nymph is the biggest woman in the world!!!
In this issue, Venus Maxima is proud to announce twenty-three year old Ellen Hutzenreiter Crane, secretive daughter of Canadian mega-trillionaire Palfinger Crane, has surpassed Carol Yager’s alleged peak weight of 1,600 lb. Eat your hearts out, all you wannabees, the 900 club has a new paragon of amplitude. Ellen Crane is the Empress of Embonpoint!
Self-proclaimed celebrity fat watcher, Wesley Strosner is delighted. ‘This is great news for Ellen. Now she really is the biggest and the best. What an amazing family!’
Known by her fans as the Steel Nymph because of her multi-million dollar life-support exoframe, Ellen has allegedly eaten nothing but vitamin and mineral supplements for the last two years. Even Strosner admits his ambition to become her Feeder and make her ‘big, bigger, biggest’ is unlikely.
‘I’m moved by love,’ Strosner announced. ‘I live in hope.’
Doctors continue to be baffled by Ellen’s astonishing weight gain.
– Editorial, Venus Maxima magazine
‘Unbelieveable.’ Novik was lost for words. The Cadillac’s tyres slewed across the loose gravel of the enormous mall’s gigantic parking lot and headed towards the onion-domed floodlit entrance.
He’d been trying to avoid Roswell. The car kept telling him they were nowhere close but he didn’t believe it. Four o’clock in the morning, and Novik had no idea where he was.
Josie was asleep in the passenger seat, her bare feet up on the dash. She wore a paisley scarf over her hair, ray-bans covered her eyes. All Novik could make out of her face was a dreamy half-smile, high cheekbones, and her left ear, decorated with nine silver rings.
The change in motion woke her. She swung her feet down from the dash and watched the distant neon glitter and cloud scrawl of laser lights from the multi-domed mall. ‘Where are we?’
‘Ultra-mall 20-19, between Midland and Abilene,’ Mr Car said. ‘Seventeen hundred hectares of Tech, Fash, Chill, Trans, Pharma, Meeja and Mil.’
‘Main or .alt?’ Josie said.
‘Main, .alt, .eth, .ret, and .X.’
‘This is where we need to be.’
Novik dug around in the glove compartment and pulled out a fistful of loose change, sticky candy wrappers, and dried peyote.
So this was what heavy dudes in suits lived on. He opened the door and dumped the lot on the ground. It was time to begin. ‘I need some juice. Fresh fruit, vitamin green, whisky. Some shades,’ Novik said.
‘All of that, and more,’ Josie said. ‘We’re here to shop.’
They’d put the camper in storage and driven through the night, anxious to put as many miles between them and the diner as they could. Still mildly spaced and paranoid from the f-LSD, sustained by psychedelic rock from the orbital pirate stations, Novik instinctively dog-legged west and east down dirt roads and two-lanes, the Cadillac easily coping with the terrain as they headed for the southern border like any punk with a trunk full of stolen cash and a picogram of common sense.
Mr Car was a dream ride, the passenger compartment a smoked glass womb of comfort, an upholstered cocoon of atmospherically controlled ambient security. It was what Josie needed; she kicked off her shoes, curled up in the armchair-like seat, and slept the sleep of the emotionally exhausted.
The retro sounds faded as they got out of the car, the last few bars of the Doors’ ‘LA Woman’ segueing into Hillage’s ‘Glorious Om Riff’. They’d driven fourteen hours straight, stopped only for food, legals, and to freshen up. Josie had to shop when Novik became convinced he was in a submarine. She’d put on gloves before handling the dust-covered money. By now the shopkeeper’s spirit guides would be in low orbit over Albuquerque.
When Novik felt better they stopped again and he cleaned the money. Masked and gloved, he laid the boxes out on the ground, stood upwind and swept them with a long-handled feather duster. Thin plumes of drug dust and a dozen hundred-dollar bills blew into the sky and across a flock of crows perched on a power line.
Novik repacked the trunk and they sped away. Behind them, the crows stared at each other with glassy black eyes. One by one they toppled forwards and swung upside-down from the line, softly cawing.
Mica in the Ultra-mall pavements glittered like diamonds. Ahead of them stood the mall itself: a gleaming dazzle of red, gold and blue neon, the sky above it swept by searchlights, while laser-projected logos and testimonials were written on the clouds.
Josie began a slow, turning, dervish dance. ‘This place, it’s as beautiful as Camelot, as deadly as Chapel Perilous, but I’m not scared. Not of the future, not failure. All that exists is this moment, the eternal fleeting instant called “Now”. All that matters is that I’m with you.
To Novik it felt as if Josie stood still and the world revolved about her. He watched purple and green caterpillars of light stream from her fingertips and transmogrify into camo-patterned moths wearing mirror shades and army boots. The boots were too heavy for flight. Fluttering gamely, the moths imploded with faint poink sounds as they hit the ground. Each corresponded to the last drug-affected receptors in Novik’s brain as they flushed free of psychoactives. The last one died and his cerebral cortex resumed normal service.
Family groups from condos, apts and bungalow ranch-styles stared enviously at the muscular Cadillac as they hurried towards the mall. Flashlights twinkled as they snapped the trunk and hood marque logos, the ‘AFC-16’ embossed hubcaps and wing detail.
Novik watched Josie’s slow trance dance. ‘What can you see, babe?’
‘I’m blinded by the beauty of Mammon. His retail palaces are so vast their delivery bays are concealed by the curvature of the earth. His hairs are fibre-optic cables and his teeth are zirconium. His voice is made of brass and all I hear is the sound of three-for-two debit authorisations.’
A small crowd of libertarians had gathered. ‘Amen, sister,’ they whooped and chorused.
Novik set his jaw. This was what they had come to fight. The Cadillac’s trunk swung open at his touch, Josie loaded her shoulder bag with bundles of cash.
When she was done, Novik took her hand. He thought about what they were about to do, and where it would lead, and squeezed tightly. Together, they walked towards the waiting mall. Returning pedestrians parted around them: families loaded with enough food for a month who would return in a week; single-product completists, weighed down by expanded ser
ies re-issues, retro-media variants, tie-ins, spin-offs, and collectable merchandise; upgrade warriors trading in, back, and up; blindfolded mystery-shoppers, white canes tapping as they hurried home to discover their purchases.
Behind them, Mr Car extended a multi-jointed arm from the offside ‘C’ pillar and began cleaning the solar cells on the roof.
Benny the Spoke knew his lift was due. It might be today, it could be tomorrow, but it was definitely coming soon. He disconnected from the FreeFinger Jamboree tower, removed his headphones, stretched, yawned, and looked around.
FreeFinger left him dissatisfied. The service had everything you could want – demos, try-outs, beta-products, time-expiring loss-leader gadgets, bolt-ons, strap-ons, medical, leisure, financial and spiritual service packs, legal and a-legal Pharma, holidays, non-doctor implants, auto-loans, freemium tasters, the list went on and on. Freefinger was compulsive, and, just like the man said, it was free.
Benny considered his acquisitions: an AI/solar auto-mulch combo upgrade to a lawnmower he didn’t own; a series of online counselling services for expectant fathers; and Larger Than Life, the official autobiography of Zeppelina, the nineteen-year-old pop diva of the Meeja mega-group, the Bariatric Babes. He didn’t need them, he didn’t even want them. He’d shipped them straight to self-storage.
FreeFinger was methadone for the retail addict and it was all that was left for Benny to do. He’d squandered his funds on shopping, the resources that were supposed to see him through his entire mission. He hadn’t been adequately prepared for the malls, he could see now that his profile was wrong, he was too easily led, his personality too addictive. They should have sent somebody else, someone more ascetic, less like the natives.
Nobody had appreciated the sheer depth of the problems here. There was so much stuff and it was so very easy to buy. He’d known the waiting would be hard but not that failure could be so very, very easy. Or that it would feel so good.
It came to him, perhaps nobody really liked him and he’d been set up to fail. It made a pitifully lonely kind of sense. All he could do now was wait, and hope this really was the place where the butterfly would first beat its frail wings.
He had wandered the mall for days. Wherever he walked there was mood music, announcements, sonic logos, and focused purchasing suggestions from the transponders embedded in his shopping.
When he was tired he crashed in the chill bays, he ate at the three-4-two grill and cleaned up in the washrooms. And waited.
Now the music, celebrity testimonials and adverts blended into a composite structure. New genres formed in his mind: metal baroque, thrash a cappella, speed-rap opera and death-folk hip-hop.
It was more than he could bear. He had to tell someone.
A young couple walked through the hundred-foot-wide, ever-open mall doors. She was fair, he was dark. Both were slim, unusual enough to make Benny look twice.
The woman radiated the transcendent inner glow of someone who had come to terms with fate. The man had the set jaw and determined stride of a gunslinger stepping into the saloon.
‘I’ve g-got this musical Shoggoth inside my head,’ Benny stammered as they walked past.
‘That’s a heavy vibe,’ Novik said.
Benny held out his hand. ‘I’m Benny.’
‘Novik.’
Benny looked down at the collection of bags, boxes and holdalls at his feet. He couldn’t remember what he had bought, only that he had wanted it at the time.
‘This isn’t why I’m here,’ Benny said. ‘I couldn’t help myself. I haven’t come to shop, I’m supposed to bear witness.’
Josie felt a sudden empathy for the confused loose-limbed young man in cavalry pants and denim. She put her hand on Benny’s shoulder. ‘Hang out with us, we’re shopping for the USA until the malls come down.’
With a growing sense of wonder, Benny realised that this might be it: First Contact. He had to be sure. ‘If you want something, why not just get it from FreeFinger? Get it for nothing?’
Novik shook his head. ‘Palfinger Crane is not the solution. Companies and Corps, Pharma, Fash, even .alt, all give it to Crane, and he gives it away for free. He’s just chumming the water.’
Benny felt like a novice crouched at the foot of his guru. The foyer filled with a silvery light.
‘FreeFinger doesn’t break the loop, it reinforces it,’ Novik continued. ‘We’re going to subvert it, we’re going to reverse entropy and collapse the retail-wholesale wave form.’
Now Benny was certain. This really was it, his one chance to turn things around. If he failed, there would be no pickup, no going home. They wouldn’t come for his body because once it was all over, they wouldn’t be able to find his atoms.
It was time to reveal himself.
‘My name is Benny the Spoke. I am an Ambassador from far Achernar, and I have travelled across the dark gulf to observe an incipient phase-change in the human race.’
Novik shook Benny’s hand, happy to humour the harmless stranger. ‘I’m not sure what that means, but I like the way you said it.’
‘You’re a pair of butterflies, what you do next–’ Benny shut his mouth, already he had said too much.
Josie studied Benny carefully. A guardian of secrets, he also projected an aura of vulnerability, a poor combination for a store detective, though excellent for a scamster. ‘We can do what?’
‘I meant, if you spend enough money, you can change the world.’
Josie extracted a fistful of hundred-dollar bills from her shoulder bag. The sooner they started, the quicker it would be over. Even so, she was determined to have some fun. ‘Watch and learn.’
- 5 -
“As the sources of supply and demand become more and more centralized and we face the inevitable shortages of raw materials and energy, the question is to what extent our society has become inflexible. How will we adapt to the necessary changes in our life style? How will we light a fire in a house with no fire places?”
– J. Burke, Connections.
Back in the day, Clinton said the oval office was his favourite room. Guinevere Snarlow, 51st President of the United States of America, leaned back in her chair in that same room and spoke into the air.
‘Coffee.’
‘Yes, Madam President,’ a male voice, high and nasal, replied from the intercom.
Clinton had it easy. Despite the scandal he had been the most powerful person in the world. Just like Queen Victoria on the British throne, the Ottomans at Topkapi, and the Emperors of Rome.
She wondered what that felt like.
Coffee arrived, wheeled in by a thin, middle-aged man with little hair and less chin.
‘Thank you.’ Guinevere’s smile was broad and genuine, her gaze direct. It came easy, she could smile all day. It was one of her campaign assets.
Guinevere sipped her coffee slowly, and enjoyed a minute of calm and solitude. Then she straightened her blouse, tugged down her jacket and made her way to the latest meeting of the Executive, to see who had bothered to turn up.
None of the few still-loyal generals and advisors were her friends; she had long ago realised true friendship was one of the sacrifices one made in politics. They were allies at best, the enemies of her enemies, united by power, desire, and self-belief. They were pretty pissed off, too.
‘Those tree-hugging European pussies are selling out the futures of our sons and daughters.’ General Andriewiscz’s pale eyes glittered under a furrowed brow. ‘We bailed them out twice and now they won’t even buy our goddamn sun buggies.’
Secretary of State Cheswold Lobotnov agreed. ‘Henry Ford must be spinning in his grave.’
And so it went, bad news on every front: economic, political, legal and military. The business of America might be business but nobody else wanted to do it with them any more. South America was federating, China was full of geriatrics, Europe was so green people called it the Emerald Union. India and Brazil had GDPs to die for, Oman was the new California. It went on and on, and
it was depressing as hell.
‘What about Crane?’ Guinevere said.
Lobotnov shook his head morosely. His jaw was narrow, his skull above the temples high domed. Together they gave him the appearance of an ancient, wise child. ‘Crane won’t help us. I’m not even going to ask.’
Vice President Oscar Millhouse Gordano took off his glasses, ran his fingers through his wiry grey hair, and put them back on again. He was handsome as hell and looked great on any sized screen. It was why he was there — to take off his glasses, smile, and put them back on again. He also thought he could contribute.
‘I can understand the Europeans wanting us to use more wood.’ Gordano held up his hand at Andriewiscz’s reflexive guffaw. ‘No, I really can. It’s this zero-C thing, they’ve chosen their way and we need to respect it. But Crane? Crane’s mother was from Montana, he’s half American, he needs to do his patriotic duty.’
‘His father was Canadian, he’s a Canadian citizen,’ Lobotnov said.
‘What leverage have we got on him?’ Guinevere said.
Lobotnov blew out his baby-smooth cheeks. ‘How about this: none at all. What can you offer the richest man who has ever lived? His personal wealth is greater than our total GDP, and it’s growing while ours is shrinking. His business interests are so vast I doubt anyone knows exactly what they are, not even those Wall Street AIs. Squeeze him and he’ll put our nuts in a vice. Seize his USA assets and he’ll shut us down. Ginny, we’ve got nothing he wants.’
‘There’s that fat blimp of a daughter. Maybe we can do something for her?’ Gordano said.
Andriewiscz jabbed at the table with his finger. ‘People got a right. People got a right to buy stuff. We make it, they buy it. Then we buy their stuff back and all.’
‘What are you saying?’ Guinevere said.
‘We rebuilt Europe. When they beat the crap out of each other we propped them back up and dusted them down. We did it twice. Now they won’t buy a new gadget until the old one’s wore out, and it’s got to be compostable into the bargain. What’s the sense in that? Where’s the gratitude? How can I give my boys and girls some back-pay?’