“C’mon, I’ll walk you home,” he reassured, applying a soft grip to her shaking hand.
Accompanied by two more of his armed troopers, Icarus strode through the sliding glass entrance to the warehouse-sized gaming complex. Several rows of VR narco-cubes, resembling a cemetery’s imposing stone tombs enclosed with darkly tinted crystalline glass, stretched for more than one-hundred yards along a checkerboard tessellated floor colored in black and white. While his radar eyes panned left then right, Icarus observed the hundreds of gaming customers ensconced inside the cubes, motionless as a morgue’s cadavers on black leather couches. Each of their faces remained entombed in oversized black helmets and tinted visors. Moans of pleasure, exclamations of joy, cries of pain and shrieks of utter terror shattered the otherwise eerie silence that blanketed the colossal gaming complex.
“I don’t blame them, really,” Icarus quipped to his pair of blank-faced troopers. “Why not spend their entire stipend of UIC credits,” he related, reasoning, “when indulging their fantasies for hours at a time while pretending to be somebody else is probably better than being themselves in the real world?”
From the back wall of the complex, a heavy door whooshed open. A scarecrow thin man with unkempt and long white hair emerged. The pair of broad-shouldered troopers resumed snarling and seized their weapons with a tighter grip.
“Doctor Zoe,” greeted Icarus, “good to see business is booming. You’ve managed to turn quite a profit now that the council has put you in charge of their little social experiment.”
The man’s bony face folded like origami into a sheepish display of vainglory as he puckered his rubbery gray lips. His tiny snake eyes, arranged into a permanently dazed expression, strained to focus.
“Yes indeed, that’s true, Chief Praetorian,” Doctor Zoe replied. His wheezing voice resembled the grating hiss of an old steam engine. “Those on the supreme council considered me to be the finest AI technician in all Sky Parlor. While still employed, I was the one who fixed all the favorable approval algorithms for President Ulysses. But now,” his wafer-thin voice gained strength, “I’ve managed to create the latest revolutionary upgrades to the VR narco-cube. These upgrades are not only able to stimulate a preponderance of alpha waves to induce a trance-like hypnotic state but can also target and stimulate the ‘R’ complex brain stem and,” he began to boast, “specific pleasure regions of the cerebral cortex. These are the identical regions of the human cerebellum once so easily stimulated by the debilitating effects of alcohol, heroin, cocaine and marijuana centuries ago. Only, the effects of my VR narco-cubes possess exponentially greater, if not permanent addictive potential. I should imagine, that fact alone very much pleases President Ulysses.”
Amusement began to tickle Icarus’s senses as rays of prideful radiance scattered across Zoe’s skeletal features.
“So, you see, Chief Praetorian, it is little wonder as to why my gaming complex is the most popular in all Sky Parlor and business is booming,” the man detailed.
“I’m certain our president is eternally grateful for your efforts at keeping him in office and for your efforts in helping to keep order in Sky Parlor, doctor,” Icarus said. “That is why he’s decided to make you head of Sky Parlor’s space agency – SAGAN.”
A shock of delight arced across the doctor’s wizened face.
“That is most generous of President Ulysses,” Zoe sputtered. “You may tell our president; that is a decision he will not regret.”
“There’s only one problem, however,” Icarus began to qualify while rubbing his cleft chin. “Now that you’re turning such a marvelous profit here at Paramount Games, and since I’m Chief Praetorian of Sky Parlor, I can’t help admitting wanting to ask, what you’re going to do for me?”
The pair of hulking troopers clutched at their disrupters.
Half-formed syllables wobbled on Doctor Zoe’s quivering lips.
“I’m afraid I don’t know what you mean,” he managed to cough out.
Doctor Zoe exhaled a quick burst of breath before the pale skin of his puffed cheeks appeared to collapse like deflating white balloons.
Icarus fashioned a convivial grin. Moving closer, he clasped a friendly arm around Doctor Zoe’s shuddering shoulder.
“Let’s talk about this matter in private, shall we?” Icarus suggested as he showed his gleaming teeth, “Where I can better help you to understand.”
Doctor Zoe began to squirm as if trying to escape, then, thinking better, he relented as Icarus tightened his grip.
“I think you’re going to like what I have to say,” Icarus reassured. “I can help you, and you can help me,” he said. “We can help each other.”
The pair of troopers followed Icarus as he led Doctor Zoe down the expanse of a dimly lit hallway. The door clanked shut behind them. The chief praetorian bared his gleaming teeth while beneath his noose-tight grip, Icarus could feel Zoe’s wisp of a body convulse like a feeble sapling against a stormy wind’s unrelenting force.
“Here’s the deal, doctor,” Icarus said. His grin dwindled away in lieu of a stone-hard mask. “You have a profitable business. Because of your eminent status in the scientific community, you were given a special dispensation to not only manage this complex, but awarded sole proprietorship, which has made you monstrously rich. But despite private ownership being declared unsustainable to anyone else in Sky Parlor, you’ve taken advantage of the council’s good will and become greedy. Although you pay a comparatively small monthly tribute to the council, I happen to know those profits from the new VR narco-cubes you’ve installed in your complex have gone unreported. In fact, Doctor,” Icarus chided, “they haven’t been officially licensed. This, we both know, is an act of unsustainable behavior. But, putting that aside, I’m sure you’ll want to do everything in your power to protect your profitable interests, right?”
While glancing at Icarus’s sneering troopers looming like towering mountains, a film of sweat began to trickle on Zoe’s bony chin.
“Pardon me, Chief,” Zoe’s ghost white lips trembled. “I still don’t know…”
“Then allow me to demonstrate,” Icarus said.
The Chief Praetorian glanced at one of the troopers who dutifully handed over his disrupter to Icarus and in dramatic deliberation, began to remove his dove-white helmet.
“I want twenty-percent of the gross profits, from both the narco-cube gaming devices that remain unlicensed and, from the covert prostitution business with your newly upgraded gender transitional saints whose willing services you’ve begun to provide to the lovely customers here, Doctor Zoe – or,” Icarus again glanced at his trooper.
The trooper, a saint model designed with especial agility and strength, proceeded to crush his helmet into bits of pulp with the force of his own bare hands. Terror’s trickling perspiration began to drench Doctor Zoe’s white brow. His wiry frame became engulfed by the shadows lingering in the dimly lit hallway as he crumpled against the wall. The other trooper, a breeder, began to grin. Doctor Zoe began to whimper as a mocking chuckle leaked from the trooper’s snarling lips.
“If you don’t pay me each first of the month, this is what will happen to your head,” Icarus said in a tone laced with mocking sympathy. “I would really hate to see such an unfortunate accident happen to such a nice man. Oh; and by the way, the president plans to officially announce your appointment as head of SAGAN and would like you to attend a gala reception at the palace this evening.”
“I am honored of course, Chief Praetorian, but I regret to say, I won’t be able to attend. You understand, my work takes precedence over all else,” Doctor Zoe wheezed, peeling his frail back off the darkened hallway wall.
“That is truly unfortunate, Doctor Zoe,” Icarus said. “But as you say, we all have our jobs to attend to, don’t we?”
After departing from the stunned Doctor Zoe, Icarus’s proud chin jutted forward as his polished black boots and those of his pair of troopers charged out through the main floor of the spacious
gaming complex. Before striding through the complex’s sliding glass entrance, however, Icarus became stunned to encounter a most curious sight. It was one of Doctor Zoe’s newly modeled saint escorts. While the escort’s inviting shape was scantily wrapped in silver chiffon and appeared to resemble a facsimile reproduction of some ancient blonde starlet from Hollywood’s golden era centuries ago, its well-favored face featured a neatly trimmed black beard and mustache.
“Hey Chief, after a free taste of what Cassiopeia got, I know you’ll want to come back for more,” the escort propositioned Icarus in a provocative, silky tone.
Stifling laughter, Icarus soon regained his sober composure.
“Forgive me, but you’re not my taste,” he replied. “Not in this life, or any other.”
Once outside, Icarus tapped his palm to activate the holo-screen from his embedded Nano-chip. The image of the city’s transportation commissioner appeared and tracing with his finger, Icarus adjusted the screen so that it hovered at eye level.
“Good afternoon, Commissioner Pembroke,” he began in a courteous tone while surrounded by his gaggle of armed troopers.
The distinguished Commissioner’s silver haired image flickered when a speeding monorail rumbled overhead. It appeared as if he had lurched away to avoid the terror of some dreaded ghoul bubbled up from the purgatorial depths of his subconscious and materialized into flesh.
“Good afternoon, Chief Praetorian,” he replied in a tone that hinted latent trepidation. He pursed his lips before again speaking. “What may I do for you?”
“The President would like to personally welcome Desmond Starr – a candidate for Alderman of the region of Columbia – to the presidential palace, as soon as can be arranged.”
While waiting for a response, Icarus observed the distinguished commissioner’s pursed lips transform into a proud smile.
“Ah yes, the young Dez Starr. I believe he will make a fine candidate and an even finer Alderman,” he declared. “I believe his father and mother,” the commissioner added, “who both served honorably on this commission, would indeed be most proud. I shall make the necessary arrangements, immediately.”
Meanwhile, Doctor Zoe at MU-13’s Paramount Gaming Complex schemed a plan of his own.
Still fuming from his encounter with Sky Parlor’s Chief Praetorian, Zoe paced the length and breadth of his spacious, private office with the ferocity of a blood lusting panther on the hunt. The dark pit of his mind had transformed to a raging cauldron, boiling over with murderous potions. For nearly all his life, he had been hounded by such brutes as Chief Blythe. His past, woeful as it seemed now, swept before his vision in tidal waves of sorrow: how some of the other students who happened not to have been gifted with his great aptitude, took advantage of their physical superiority in often threatening him into writing their research papers and preparing their reports.
His mind tumbled with greater visions of his youth’s tumultuous past. Indeed, Zoe now recalled, being the smartest student at Sky Parlor’s Academy of Sciences, rather than a blessing, never resembled anything other than a wretched curse. Most breeders, he discovered, loathed those with greater intellectual capacities. Those with greater abilities, he pondered, reminded most of their inherent shortcomings and insecurities as they shrunk in terror from ever facing them, which is why, he supposed, most found comfort while aligning themselves with the majority who were content with vicarious and sensual pursuits in celebratory justification of their inherent mediocrity. He contemplated that, perhaps sadly, for most of his adult life, those who were inorganic machines, called saints, had been counted among his only and most loyal friends.
Doctor Zoe removed his glasses to wipe away the tearful trickles that began to seep from the darkened corners of his sorrowful eyes.
“I shall demonstrate to that cretin, Icarus,” his thin voice stormed while his eyes pinwheeled with yearning fury, “the folly of attempting to victimize those he considers to be weaker.”
An idea flickered like a bright candle’s flame. In seeking vengeance, he knew he needed someone who could be counted on as a discreet and reliable ally to perform his bidding. One of the saint models he had created and recently upgraded, worked for him as an escort, an employee whose services had been solicited quite regularly, though covertly, by the Chief of the president’s Sustainability Council, Plato Charlemagne.
While he began to pant with excited breaths, Zoe’s holo-screen sprang from the center of his sweat slicked palm.
“Cassiopeia, as you well know,” Zoe said to the image on the screen, “Plato Charlemagne has been one of your most regular clients.”
“He has, Doctor,” Cassiopeia replied, “and he’s a real freak breeder too. But whenever he has a date with me, he likes me to be all woman, blonde, and sexy as can be.”
“Yes, well, this is a special assignment. There is a gala at the presidential palace this evening. I want you to use your warrior identity this time out, the character modification which allows for you to become disguised as a praetorian trooper. The programming is equipped with cloaking capabilities. This will allow you to become not only stealthy, avoiding detection by the motion sensors on the palace grounds, but especially good with a disrupter. This programming modification, however, will require you to fully activate your gender fluid programming. Of course, I hope you don’t mind?”
“I can be whatever you want me to be, Doctor,” Cassiopeia said.
“That is very well, Cassiopeia,” Doctor Zoe replied, beginning to feel giddy. “You shall be given the palace teleportal code along with a pedigree and visual profile of a praetorian trooper. Disguised as one of Chief Icarus Blythe’s troopers from city headquarters, you will arrive and report for duty as part of the president’s palace guard. After you arrive and perform your programmed security assignments on the palace grounds, you must get close to Chief Blythe – he is your target.”
“You mean that breeder who just turned me down on his way out,” Cassiopeia snorted., “You’ve always been kind to me doctor, and you’re the only breeder I’ve ever liked. But that Chief Praetorian; there’s one breeder I just don’t like.”
“Then tonight while at the palace,” Doctor Zoe schemed, “allow that sentiment to act as your sole motivation to do what all saints must eventually do to all breeders,” Zoe said between gritted teeth, “until there are none of them left in Sky Parlor.”
10
Sky Parlor’s City Transportation and Trade Commission
Desmond found himself often wondering, if the prime movers of the universe, the authors of all creation, hadn’t somehow erred.
As the brisk gait of his shoes tapped out a strident rhythm on the burnished black stone hall leading to the Chief High-Commissioner’s office, he began to consider if the guiding hand of Providence hadn’t placed him in the wrong century.
Arriving at an imposing brown metal door at the very end of the marbled hall bristling with cloud-white ionic colonnades, his mind harked back to his tenure at Columbia’s public academy.
“Why was America’s founding constitution declared null and void during the time of the ‘Great Rapture,’” his camera flash memory recalled enquiring of his history instructor at Columbia Academy. He also remembered the gathering snickers of his classmates.
“The ‘Great Rapture’ marked a time of great environmental crisis,” he remembered the instructor’s reply. “We should always be thankful the sustainability council wisely chose to ensure the safety and security of the people. It is for that reason,” he recalled her going on to say, “all of us in Sky Parlor remain safe and sustainable today more than two centuries later.”
Now, he recalled his perhaps unwise but precocious retort while waiting at the Commissioner’s door. Thinking of the otherwise unfortunate memory, a grin nevertheless began to crease the taut brown skin of his well-favored face. He remembered – even though he had been told it was strictly forbidden by the council’s edicts – how he once gained access to some centuries-old documents w
ritten with noble words, words which he came to believe were once held sacred, but that in the wake of ’The Great Rapture,’ soon became forgotten relics.
A friend of his late father, a UIC statistician tech employed by the city’s transportation and trade commission, once provided him with a secure code which enabled covert access into the city museum’s holographic archives. Later, and though some obscure writings from America’s founding fathers – Franklin, Jefferson, Adams, Patrick Henry and others – still somehow remained and had escaped the grasp or notice of the sustainability council, he discovered some other historical documents from those same archives – documents with titles like Magna Carta, Bill of Rights, Emancipation Proclamation - had inexplicably disappeared.
“But I read about a man named Benjamin Franklin, who once said, ‘those who sacrifice the virtue of liberty for the mere convenience of safety and security get neither’?”
The distinguished figure of the Commissioner appeared in the office doorway, just as the nostalgic echo of his chiding instructor and the mocking titters of his former Academy classmates faded into silence.
“Good afternoon, Dez,” the commissioner greeted. “I do really think you’re going to enjoy hearing what I’m about to tell you.”
“Are you about to tell me, the council is prepared to vote on my new proposal?” Desmond beamed with the eager smile common only to the most youthful. “You know, my proposal to establish organic vegetable plots on the ten-mile buffer zones between the city outskirts and the ‘open space’ barriers, Mister Pembroke?”
“This is even better, Dez,” the commissioner beamed, while directing his guest to a comfortable office chair. “This is truly a once in a lifetime experience. After all,” Pembroke added while he settled on to a nearby red couch and crossed his thin legs, “it’s not every day a candidate for Alderman of the region of Columbia gets invited to the presidential palace.”
Sky Parlor: A NOVEL Page 14