Me: That name makes me seem light-years cooler than I really am.
Yeshi: I agree whole-heartedly, Doc.
Me: Ouch.
I open a new window over iNet to review the data regarding Nelly’s location. She’s in the Alcatraz of the Rockies, a federal prison that houses the most dangerous criminals known to the FCG. The ADX (Administrative Maximum Facility) has separate male and female facilities, with a combined population of more than two thousand inmates. The place is as impenetrable as a paranoid, fascistic, dehumanizing Corporate Government can have it made– a Democratic People’s Republic of North Korea writ small.
Me: It’s going to be damn near impossible to get her out of there.
Yeshi: I was unaware that Sauria was that powerful. To have her placed in a federal maximum security prison without even the hint of a due process …
Me: ExEx is one of the biggest supporters of the RepubCorp party. The second largest supporter is the ACC, the American Corrections Corporation, which runs most of the prisons in the country. These guys give each other the courtesy of a reach-around all the time.
Yeshi: What humans have created never surprises me.
Me: And we would create so much more if we were given the chance. It only takes a quick glance over the twentieth century to confirm this.
The subway train slides to a halt and I smile at Yeshi. We are the new Bonnie and Clyde, fighting against a corporate entity that has overstepped its boundaries. (I agree, Reader, this thought is delusional, but let me savor it if you will. Damn it feels good to be a gangsta.)
“What’s next?” I ask as we step off the train.
“Next we speak to Noah.”
“Before we do that, I have two requests. I want a new body and I need … ummm … I mean I want to relax tonight over some Loathing Hunter with an Ayahuasca Topper.”
“You sure that’s a good idea?” she asks, and thankfully, there is no sarcasm in the way she asks this.
Me: I need a little Meme-time to wrap my mind around what we are about to do. It is essentially suicide going up against the FCG …
“Yet we’ve done pretty well so far,” she said, squeezing my hand.
“That doesn’t mean things are going to get any easier.”
“Do whatever you’d like tonight, Meme. I have some plans too.”
“You do?” I ask, watching her slide in front of me.
“Yes, and I think they’ll surprise you.”
EIGHT∞
Rinchi entered the private suite at the top of the Rashid Hotel; blood speckled her hands and face and the front of her burka. Prince Al Omid sat on a lavishly cushioned chair with his closest advisor hovering over him. He treated Clove and Monique to a scowl that would have made his any of his toadies and sycophants soil themselves in fear; the sibling reps remained impassive.
“Well?” he asked, tapping his sandaled foot impatiently.
She ignored the Prince and addressed Clove. “He was nobody; he knew nothing. He wasn’t after our client here in particular; any of the Saudi Royals would have done. Saudi airstrikes killed most of his family – he was just out for some payback. The guy on the roof was his cousin; he’d been camping up there for days. They got Prince Al’s itinerary from a friend who works near the mosque. They’d been preparing for his arrival for days.”
The Prince gave a heavy and theatrical sigh. “Fine, fine. Have him brought to me.”
“If you want, but I killed him,” she said with a shrug. Even with her burka on, Al Omid could tell she was smirking.
“You did … what!? Why in the FUCK did you do that!?”
“So that you couldn’t kill him. The only thing worse than a spoiled child is a spoiled man-child with a rich, powerful family to bail his fat ass out of trouble and clean up his messes.”
Clove and Monique cut eyes at each other, but remained silent.
“You … you stupid, stupid … infidel WHORE! I wanted him! I did! Me! You were ordered not to kill him!” He was working himself up into a fine, plum-faced temper tantrum. His advisor and serving staff backed away, trying to become invisible. The three MercSecure representatives were unimpressed. “You weren’t supposed to kill him!”
“Yes, but I did. Deal with it. I successfully extracted the information we required.” She turned to Clove, “Are we done here?”
Al Omid shut his temper tantrum down like he’d flipped a switch. He could take his frustration out on his serving staff on the flight home. His eyes narrowed as he took a deep, angry breath that shook his fat frame. “Fine. This is not the end of this.”
He turned to his assistant and said, “Saad, I will be leaving this afternoon. Alert the aircraft and arrange for transport to the airport. I’m suddenly weary of Baghdad and I am most displeased with the service MercSecure has provided. The company has deteriorated quite significantly … ”
Clove: Fuck this guy! Should we leave now? Let him fend for himself?
Monique: Breaks our contract.
Clove: Rinchi?
Rinchi: He’s a giant twat.
Clove: Agreed!
Rinchi: But we should see him to the airport. Follow protocol.
Clove: Speaking of airports, you’re not going to zap us in the back and cut our tongues out once we get there, are you?
Rinchi: You’ve heard about that?
Clove: Everyone has. No one fucks with Keva. No one.
Rinchi: She had it coming.
Al Omid sensed that they were ignoring him. His voice rose. “ … and I want you to tell our partner at MercSecure that I never want to see that,” he pointed at Rinchi, “again! The fact that a prestigious company like MercSecure would hire something like that, a monstrosity like that, goes to show that the Americans are getting soft and complacent. They’ve really let me down with this one. Really.”
Rinchi unsheathed her knife.
“What will you do?” He asked, baring his teeth at her. “I’ll have you… I’ll have you terminated in a heartbeat you mechanical whore! You soulless TOOL of SHAITAN!”
Monique: Rinchi, stand down NOW!
Rinchi threw her knife with a swift underhand motion. The knife lodged between his arm and his flabby torso, pinning his gown to the chairback. The Prince screamed like a sissy; a wet spot sprouted at his crotch.
Nobody moved save Rinchi. Stepping over to his chair, she placed her knee on the Prince’s wet spot and pushed hard into his inadequate man-parts. Taking her knife out of the chair, she went nose-to-nose with the Prince.
“You fear pain, Your Highness; you fear death. I do not, and that is the difference between us. This makes me a force to be reckoned with. For your own safety, do not fuck with me again.” She moved back and sheathed her knife.
Al Omid fell to the ground and scrambled to get behind his assistant. Still on his knees, he peered out from behind him like a toddler playing peek-a-boo. His face purpled; veins stood out in his neck and spittle flew from his lips as he bellowed, “Get OUT! All of you! OUT NOW! GO!” he screamed hoarsely. The man tried to stand, but his knees got caught in his flowing gown. “Out!”
Clove: What the FUCK was that, Rinchi?
Rinchi: A warning.
Clove: Go to the airport on your own. You can sweep the perimeter before we arrive. Have the concierge arrange a ride. We’ll try to sort this out.
Rinchi: Is that an order?
Clove: Does a ladyboy piss standing up?
NINE∞
I know I should be thinking about how I’m going to rescue Nelly, but even Batman needs a night off. (Yes, Batman still exists in 2083. In fact they just released a new movie in which he fights Bizarro Superman for I think the ninth or tenth time in cinema history. Yay originality. There is supposedly a controversial scene in which he cuddles in the Batcave with Zombie Robin – I don’t know how explicit the scene is, but it has caused some uproar. For those living under a rock – the late twenty-first century is defined by movie remakes. I really wish I could share a link for the Star Wars: The Empir
e Strikes Back remake that they just finished this year. Alas, while I may be immortal, you are mortal, and it isn’t exactly easy for me to transfer a data file backwards through time. While neither distance nor time is concrete, they are heavily tied to the location from which one observes them. I think Einstein thought that.)
Egads! Enough with the ruddy spacetime continuum and its ever perplexing spin on our piddling lives. Back to the topic at hand – Loathing Hunter with an Ayahuasca Topper. Where do pollutes fit on Maslow”s hierarchy of needs? Muy flojo existence to follow. How am I different from Schrödinger’s cat? Dead and alive one hundred percent of the time, yo.
Setting – I am on the third floor of Madoka the weapon dealer’s place, in his library of sorts, between Madoka (who lives or hibernates on the second floor) and his girlfriend, whom I’ve yet to meet. I’m assuming she is as pale as Madoka, who makes ghosts look vibrant. As for my Humandroid girlfriend Yeshi, she has stepped out and I am about to step in.
The mask is already on my face. It’s your standard Japanese pollution mask (Moso bamboo with retractable pollute dispensers and head straps that adjust themselves automatically), but at least this one has been modded as not to show any advertisements. I don’t think I can handle another cute image trying to sell me some sort of colon-cleansing product.
Pale as a pear but more of a peach, Madoka was able to procure some Loathing Hunter Special Reserve for yours truly. The Special Reserve doesn’t have as much Ayahuasca as some freshly made stuff (which as far as I can tell is only available in LA), but it will do. Again, it’s been two days since my last toke so … we’ll see how it goes.
I turn to the machine and adjust the distributor dial, allowing for the maximum distribution amount. A frog appears on the polypropylene lenses. Hello amphibian. Na-nu Na-nu. Japanese characters materialize and like always, I have no idea what the cute frog is trying to tell me.
“English … ”
The words morph into English. “Are you sure?”
“Yes,” I say.
Nothing happens.
“Ummm … hai!”
The frog bows and a little frog fart appears over its ass. The cloud explodes into pixelated fragments and I hear a whooshing sound from the distributor. A hissing sound follows and Viola!
Holy hell it’s coming fast.
I lean my head back, twitching as neurons spread leg to the new chemicals in my head. Synapses collapse neurotransmitter hair splitters. Bliss molecules sex me. Short term memory shot, I cough – capillaries burst and I hold on for the ride of my life. Rollercoasters rip off their tracks, pistoling into the night’s sky and splooging money shots off a balcony overlooking a fountain in Ass Vegas. The horses spin off their carousels, un-impaling themselves as they clop and shit through the fairgrounds of our collective minds.
Neigh I say nay!
Words spill out of my brain splashing onto the green polypropylene lenses. The lenses shatter and my eyes stretch out of the mask. Neo Subconjunctival hemorrhage – the blood vessels disconnect themselves from the sides of my eyes and disperse, crawling like digital daddy long legs to the floor.
Toto, I’ve a feeling we’re not in Kansas anymore. Disperse you fucks! I’ll get you my pretty!
I’m seething, breathing, heaving, leaving, keeling, meeting, sinking, blinking, braking, stopping, staking, gripping, griping, gasping, clasping, holding on for dear life AS IF life is dear enough to hold onto and it must be held because if it isn’t held … if it isn’t held! Don’t say it!
(Whisper things that don’t matter.)
Control everything, Meme! Control everything, Reader! Pull yourself together and make sure you tell those muttonheaded-bunglers what to do. Fuck them! Fix them! Manage them! Coddle them! Throttle them! Dodge their lawsuits! Smart cookies unite after we are adequately baked!
Get ahold of yourself. (Get ahold of yourself.)
Aha!
Breathe in the intoxicant until you and the intoxicant are one. Stare God in the eye and shout at the top of your lungs, I am eternally mortaler than you! I am the link between words and actions, the narcissistic lovechild of twenty-first century bastards! The misconstrued, misaligned scion of the twenty-first century, left to foster in a world finger-banged by a select few; the twisted and gifted, lifted and sifted. (Inhale!) The congruent revolutionary truant plenipotentiary mutant pulmonary. Squeeze the tears out of the denizens until they know they’re second-class citizens. The status quo must queue! The queued must crumble! I would like to click the thumbs-up button for our great people!
(Reminder: this is all a hoax and somewhere, in a galaxy not so far away, aliens are laughing at how stupid we’ve become.)
Christ, Meme, inhale, exhale.
Take this fucking mask off.
Share with me Reader. Hold still, wherever you are. I am eternal because of you and I exist only to exist alongside you. Let’s get back together. Let’s reconnect over pollutes and whores and laughs and giggles and tickles. Let’s breathe together, sleep together, think together, pee together, play swords like a bunch of Sikhs in front of a golden toilet in the Kremlin next to Putin’s immortalized gay porn lair.
What if what if what if what if what if I were real? What if what if what if what if what if you could see me, feel me, touch me, heal me? What if I could be both a man and a woman? What if? What if we used the same esophagus? What if we used the same digestive tract? The same condom? The same crampon, tampon, coupon, futon? The same paint brush to shade each other’s eyelids blue? What if we could inhale together?
Try it with me now. I am your digital yoga guru.
(Breathe.)
Okay, hold your breath. I am your abecedary who has infiltrated your psyche and it’s okay, I’ll be sure not to rearrange the furniture.
Exhale. Empty your belly until the words blur. Until we are both transitive, until we are both… until we are both – GIVE ME YOUR UMBILICAL CORD AND I’LL GIVE YOU MINE. LET’S SNAP THEM TOGETHER.
Breathe. (Don’t whip me with your umbilical cord. There is something seriously fucked up about that. Remember the time I gave birth to a child? My God there was something seriously fucked up about that as well!)
Hold your breath.
Hold it.
(It’s hard to speak with your umbilical cord in my mouth and placenta on my lips which tastes like sour Haribo.)
Don’t pass out on me and don’t look away! Keep your eyes here! Here! (A quick slap.) Focus, kid, you’re going to make it! We’re getting shwasted together. Wax on, wax off. Idea – let’s lizard our way out of this room. Now, not later. Mask off, help me unstrap it.
I pry the mask off and take in the simple room. We’re back in the void, or at least I am. I can hear circus music in the distance. Madoka’s bookshelf looms in the distance, not close not far.
And then all hell breaks loose.
An arm drags me through a sea of books falling like lead leaves from a curved book shelf. Sharp book spines prick the exposed areas of my skin. My toes rip some pages from a large hardback volume of War and Peace. My shoulder gets caught on an antediluvian copy of Moby Dick. A red leather Bible falls onto my nose, trickles off into the mass of books supporting my body weight as I slide through a river of literature. The whole place stinks of fresh ink, brittle pages, dusty attics, forgotten prose and stale parlance.
Strings of words slip from the pages of open books and waltz around my body. They burp malapropisms. They swarm up my arm, spilling over each other. They fornicate in the crevices of my armpits and my crotch. They swell and escape into my nose and ears. They whisper inside my head:
He quoted the planetary motto. “Community, Identity, Stability.” Grand words.
If they do not understand that we are bringing them a mathematically faultless happiness, our duty will be to force them to be happy.
There is a class that controls a country that is stupid and does not realize anything and never can. That is why we have war. Also they make money out of it.
M
ors ontologica. Death of the spirit. The identity. The essential nature.
There is no confusion like the confusion of a simple mind.
I see a tail swimming through the sea of novels. The elephantine tail is covered in books open like tents. A literary Leviathan, a crisp paper dragon, a spiny grimoire, a bestselling monstrosity, my mother with matted wings. The preterists are wrong!
(Terrorists and therapists – ten letters each. Brethren we are!)
Words crawled from the sides of my mouth, dribbling down my chin like vernacular globs of spit. The words! I’m assaulted by the argot, violated by the patois, fingered silly by the jargon.
Gordon, the haggard masturbator.
His eyebrows jiggle as if on fishhooks.
He was working hard at increasing his life span. He did it by cultivating boredom.
Like most science fiction writers, he knew nothing about science.
The words grab my cheeks and I puffer fish. For once in my life, words escape in to my mouth. My cheeks swell, my eyes redden. The larger words paint the lining of my throat with interior monologues. I try to wash them down with spittle, but my mouth is parched. Dry heave and continued to cough up literary quotes, Meme!
“When the moon is shining the cripple becomes hungry for a walk.”
Dark shapes of pariah dogs prowled in and out of the stalls.
A serpent’s feet are known to another serpent.
The lit Leviathan emerges from the sea of books at my feet. I look up to see the same arm still dragging me up a flight of helical stairs. Where am I going? Das ist mir egal! The Leviathan snaps its teeth and snarls, enmeshed in its own fury, its own literary abandon.
(Piss on the Flower of Life!)
The mysterious hand continues to drag me onward. As we near the door at the top of the stairs, the Leviathan sinks its syringe teeth into my ankle. My blottoness assails me. Somehow, I’ve managed to arrive at the fourth floor of Madoka’s home, to his girlfriend’s room.
Shall we continue exploring?
Methinks we shall.
Life is a Beautiful Thing (4-Book Box Set) Page 33