Life is a Beautiful Thing (4-Book Box Set)

by Harmon Cooper

  Mask off, stand and wobble, task at hand, life full throttle. The language that connects us is a noose loosened. Across the room I go, back to the door (which is locked) with the urge to pound (which should be unfound) and instead of raising my fist (and twisting my wrist) I place a call to Yeshi (nothing rhymes with Yeshi except “he/she” which is, ummm … quite appropriate).

  Me: Yeshi! Christ where are you? How long has it been? Are you okay? Anonymous Two get @ me! Are you alive? Sorry for being an askhole. Madoka locked me in the room until I settle down. Talked to Noah too, he’s going to send info soon.

  Yeshi: I’ve just finished. I’m coming now.

  Me: Finished? What were you doing my electronic wet dream?

  Yeshi: Electronic wet dream?

  Me: That sounded better in my head. Wait, we are in my head. How long until you return?

  Yeshi: Morning.

  Me: Morning? Are you serious? But by the time … by the time …

  I can see the time clearly on my iNet screen. It’s almost five AM. Where the time went isn’t a question worth asking when the answer is so obvious. I blame curved spacetime.

  Yeshi: Relax, Meme. I’ll be back soon. I have a surprise for you. I also have some Soylent bars.

  Me: Good. I’m sick of being in Japan. It’s time to take our misgivings elsewhere!

  Yeshi: Mexico?

  Me: How did you know?

  Yeshi: You aren’t the only one who has spoken to Noah.

  SEVENTEEN∞

  “Eat your food,” the guard reminded Nelly. “Otherwithe we’ll have to forth-feed it to you.”

  She almost told the guard to fuck off. The words batted against the front of her teeth, hummed at the tip of her tongue. She’d grown to hate this guard, her lisp and the way her words all seemed sharpened to an edge, as if they escaped through a diastema of affectation between the woman’s two front teeth.

  Nelly begrudgingly took the tray and examined the slop, which looked like a slightly different colored batch of moist dog kibble, unexpectedly garnished with a single piece of wilted lettuce.

  “Thanks,” she said under her breath.

  Nelly had long given up hope of maintaining her vegetarian diet (what she wouldn’t do for a grilled lentil loaf with bell peppers, purple onions and cilantro). At least the Inmate Chow displayed a certain industrial homogeneity that rendered the original ingredients unidentifiable.

  She could feel her soul shrivel under the dehumanizing prison regimen. The way inmates were treated was incredibly depressing. Alone in her cell, she remembered her parents’ constant bickering about how soft the justice system had become. “These people are evil, the scum of the earth! They don’t deserve to have a bed, let alone a comfortable cell with possible access to iNet. They don’t need libraries, they don’t need a basketball court, they don’t need subsidized educational courses – what they need is to be locked away. Better, they need to be executed so the burden doesn’t fall on the tax payers! We already pay too much tax! It’s not right to punish the tax payer by giving a hoodlum a nice, institutionalized existence. I say let a private company handle the prison system through a government contract. Everything should be for profit, extreme profit, including institutionalization!”

  God, her parents were idiots. She’d had to unlearn most the things they’d taught her growing up. It seemed as if is freedom of opinion had disabled many people’s ability to think freely by convincing them that they were already thinking as freely as any human ever had.

  Eat, Nelly, eat.

  She spooned up some of gritty, unappetizing, lukewarm swill, pinched her nose shut, and tried to swallow. Her gag reflex triggered like the jackpot payoff on the dollar slots, and she barely made it to the combo sink/toilet before she brought up breakfast, lunch, and last night’s supper – such as they were.

  The lettuce. At least she could eat the piece of lettuce. She crawled on hands and knees (she’d been doing that more lately) over to the tray. . Nelly lifted the piece of lettuce, eyed it unenthusiastically, and almost lost sphincter control when she saw the guard’s extra-special garnish that it had concealed – el cucaracha grande.

  She screamed, and in utter panic kicked the tray against the door, scrabbling back against the wall as far as she could go. The impact didn’t kill the damn thing – it may actually have improved its health.

  The intercom clicked into life. “What’th the dithturbanth, twenty-three?”

  She could hear feet shuffling down the hallway. They were coming for her and all she could do was scream at the sight of the roach, at the confinement and dire situation she’d found herself in. The roach pried itself from the mess of food and took two steps closer to her.

  Overcome with sudden anger, Nelly brought her fist down onto the roach, squishing it instantly.

  The door buzzed open and two beefy female guards in riot gear surged into the cell. They crowded her into the far corner with their riot shields and leaned into her.

  “What the fuck are you doing bitch!?” Nelly shouted.

  “Keep calm inmate!”

  “Get the fuck off me!”

  “Language, inmate!”

  “Fuck you fuck you fuck you fuck you!”

  “Last warning, inmate!”

  Nelly scrambled to free herself. She tried to rip the face shield off the leading guard’s helmet so she could claw at her eyes. The other guard reached over the first, pressed a stun gun against Nelly’s neck, and zapped her with a million volts.

  Lights out.

  EIGHTEEN∞

  Lights on.

  Nelly awoke with a ferocious headache, plangent and searing. She turned to her side, quickly becoming aware of the fact that she was stuck in an enclosed space. She lifted her hand – the top of her knuckle grazing against something cold – and slowly brought it to her forehead. There was a plum-sized lump next to her temple. She tried to open her eye, but it was too swollen.

  “Where am I?” she asked aloud, as if someone would answer, as if anyone actually cared.

  She twisted around to her back, trying to come to grips with the throbbing wound on her head. She was disoriented, hyper confused; bursts of light fired against her eyelids and she was afraid, afraid to open her one good eye and see where cruel fate had placed her. It felt as if someone had used her brain as a piñata.

  Nelly lay like this for a good thirty minutes, trying to get a sense of where she was. Her nose told her she was inside something made of concrete. Her ears told her that she’d found herself in what was essentially a hollow box. Her skin told her that she was in an extremely tight place. This thought made her reluctant to move her arms around – sometimes it’s better not to confirm one’s suspicions.

  Her mind drifted to some faraway happy place, light years away from the prison in Colorado. All the luxuries she’d had in her life, from trips to the spa to exclusive parties, from food that most could only dream of to shopping sprees in Dubai with Antimeria’s MasterCard Black – none of it meant anything inside a maximum security prison.

  Maybe everyone needed to be imprisoned for a week just to see how good they actually had it on the outside. What she wouldn’t give to be anywhere but this prison cell, free from institutionalized confinement. Sure, there were problems associated with current day concepts of freedom, and sure many had taken it for granted, but shit, even working a drab office job was like farting in heaven compared to this.

  A sense of nausea swelled inside her. She realized then – most unfortunately – that there was something in her ass. She tried to sit up and hit her head on the ceiling.

  “What the … ?”

  To confirm if her suspicions were true, Nelly pointed her finger above her, ran it along a cold ceiling. Even though she didn’t want to, she opened her good eye only to see that she was stuck in what was essentially a concrete coffin.

  A concrete coffin.

  The space was just long enough for her to lie down in, wide enough to curl her knees to her chest if she wanted
to. It was cramped, dingy. There was no way for her to sit up.

  Nelly stifled a sob as her hand moved down towards her legs. Sure enough, there was a feeding tube thrust into her ass. She yanked the tube out, kicked her foot against the wall.

  A slot opened up over her right shoulder, letting a beam of light into the concrete coffin.

  “Take it easy, inmate twenty-three.”

  “What are you doing to me?” she cried. “Why in the fuck am I in here?”

  “Language, inmate. No one likes a potty-mouth.”

  “How long…” she gulped. “How long will you keep me in here? Please, tell me. I’ll … I’m sorry … ”

  “You assaulted a guard,” the woman informed her. “You’ll be in here at least five days.”

  “Please! No … I wasn’t trying to … I … I … I saw a cockroach! I don’t know what came over me! In my food. Please … My God please … PLEASE!”

  “You need to reinsert the rectal feeding tube, otherwise we’ll have to do it ourselves after we’ve sedated you.”

  “I’m sorry! Please, put me back in the other cell!”

  “Inmate, insert the tube yourself or we’ll sedate you and do it ourselves.”

  Sedate me? A solution came to Nelly. Yes! Sedate me!

  “I won’t do it,” she said. “You’ll have to sedate me.”

  “Suit yourself,” the woman said as she shut the viewing slot.

  _∞_

  Sauria drank his morning espresso alone. He was sitting on his veranda, watching as the sun burped lengthy bits of light over LA. It was a beautiful and relaxing day, another perfect California sunrise. His Humandroid maid and sexual partner at times, peeked her head out the sliding patio door.

  “Is there anything else you’d like, sir?”

  Heidi was a custom Humandroid, crafted especially for him by his connects at Walliburton. She was essentially a 1960s pin-up bombshell, with an hourglass figure, plutonium blonde hair and a beauty mark just like Marilyn Monroe. Heidi liked to do housework in lingerie and she was an excellent cook.

  “Come here, baby,” he said, patting his lap. She swayed over to him like a model on a runway. He felt something stir in his gut – morning wood – as she draped her legs over his lap.

  “What’s wrong?” She ran her delicate fingers through his grey hair. He reached his hand out, cupping the side of her cheek. Heidi pressed her cheek into his hand, staring at him through a pair of green, green eyes.

  “Nothing,” he said. “I just have a lot on my mind.”

  “Do you want to talk about it?” she kissed his cheek, lingering there for a moment.

  Even though Sauria trusted Heidi and Walliburton, her manufacturer, he still was reluctant to talk business with the Humandroid. Droids recorded everything, and even with hyper-encryption, their recordings could be accessed by a good protection proxy terrorist.

  “It’s fine,” he said.

  “I’ll listen, honey, you know that.”

  “The world is a big, troubled place, Heidi,” he said in a fatherly tone. “Sometimes the trouble thinks that it isn’t trouble at all, that it’s actually benevolent in some way, shape or form. This is the type of trouble that must be crushed at all costs. This is the type of trouble I’ve been dealing lately.”

  She relaxed into his arms, nuzzling her head against his beefy chest. “I understand, honey, but when I’m with you I don’t feel any trouble at all.”

  “Same here,” he said.

  An iNet call interrupted this heart-warming interlude; it was Connard Branleur, the head of Business Executives for National Security.

  Sauria made sure all video feeds were turned off before he took the call. “Hi, Connard,” he said. “Nice speech the other night. Sorry I wasn’t able to talk to you afterwards. You seemed pretty swamped with people.”

  “No worries, Sauria. This always happens after a RepubCorp fundraiser.”

  “Well, it was a nice speech, and you’re totally right about the need to monitor and eliminate Humandroid terrorists.”

  Sauria opened his eyes and looked at Heidi. “Can you poach some eggs for me, darling?” he asked her. “I’d like a caramel macchiato, extra foam and an extra shot of espresso as well. Oh, and don’t forget the rock salt this time. I like my caramel macchiato slightly salty.”

  She twisted her legs off his lap. “Do you want some freshly squeezed orange juice too? I bought some oranges at the Farmer’s Market yesterday.”

  “That would be wonderful, darling.”

  She bent over provocatively, kissed him on the cheek. Once she had taken a few steps away from him, she turned back, looking at him over her shoulder as she slightly arched her back. Much to his chagrin but also to his delight, Heidi stood nearly a foot taller than him.

  “Sorry, Connard,” Sauria said after she stepped inside. “I needed to send the help away so we could talk.”

  “Never a problem. Fill me in – what happened in Japan?”

  “A breach at MercSecure headquarters by two agents calling themselves Anonymous One and Anonymous Two. They stole data relating to Nelly, Antimeria’s ex, which is useless because there’s no chance they’ll make it into ADX.”

  “I’ve heard as much,” Connard said. “Any video feeds?”

  “They were using BlurYou.”

  “Why don’t we contact BlurYou’s CEO? He may have people at his company that can reverse engineer it.”

  “That’s worth a shot, although I don’t know how far we’ll get with the CEO. From what I can tell, Bill Bleak is a tree-hugging, pinko-commie-liberal, cry-baby, bed-wetting spotted owl lover and card-carrying member of the DemoCorp Party. I’m pretty sure he’ll do everything he can to stop us from getting that feed.”

  Connard laughed. “You’re jumping to conclusions, Sauria. You never know how a person will react, DemoCorp or RepubCorp. After all, how would he feel if someone broke into his company’s Japanese headquarters?”

  “I don’t know … ”

  A few small birds flew above Sauria, chirping away. He opened his eyes briefly, watching the birds flutter.

  “Bleak is in town for a tech conference; we should try to arrange a meeting with him. If he can’t be persuaded in person … ”

  “A MercSecure representative could do the job,” Sauria said. “They can be quite persuasive. In fact, I’ve been following the progress of one rep named Rinchi. She may be the most persuasive employee we’ve had in years.”

  “I think Antimeria mentioned her. She’s in the Middle East right now, isn’t she?”

  “Yes, but she should be back soon. It was a quick assignment to get her out of LA for a few days because … ” He recalled what Rinchi had done to Keva. The reason she was in the Middle East was to give Keva a few days to cool off after having her tongue sliced out. Most people didn’t fuck with MercSecure’s top rep; then again, Rinchi wasn’t a person.

  “Because?”

  “Because we, well Lorem, wanted her to gain some experience when it came to dealing with foreign leaders.”

  “That’s always a good thing,” Connard said. If he knew what had happened between Rinchi and Keva, he didn’t let on. “A well-rounded representative is what MercSecure is known for.”

  “Exactly.”

  “So, should I arrange a meeting with Bill Bleak?”

  “It can’t hurt,” Sauria said on the tail end of a yawn. “When?”

  “Does today work for you?”

  “I’ll clear my schedule. It is of the utmost importance that we decipher that video feed. I have a feeling about who is behind the attack, but I’d rather be sure before I send out a global alert. A manhunt is much easier with detailed information.”

  NINETEEN∞

  Yeshi my Yeshi, droid of my dreams. Xi Dada Mao boppers complicate things. (That little rhyme goes out to the Red Dragon!)

  The morning sun creeps into the room, adding light to the bookshelves and nearly reawakening the lit Leviathan. Down you overgrown book worm schlong-faced yo
gurt slinger! I’ve slept for nearly an hour, maybe two, maybe even three and some change. With the right intoxicant, anyone can fall asleep anywhere. We are no different, Reader, aside from the fact that I’m a black man with a Japanese man’s data on his life chip trapped in an out-of-shape Mexican man’s body, a dead Mexican man’s body, bye-the-bye, and inconveniently, my original body has also copped its wack. (The CliffNotes regarding my abnormal existence will be available soon wherever fine eBooks are downloaded.)

  In case you didn’t already know – the person inside my head is you. You are the person that I talk to when I’m most alone, when I’m most prone to outbursts. It’s you who exists with me, you who encourages me further – and the worst part is I can’t figure out if you actually exist or not. What if no one is reading this, no one is inside my skull watching events unfold? Who have I been talking to then? Who have I been confessing all my deepest and darkest thoughts to? Will you ever shake me alive?

  Yada yada yada rant rant rant we can discuss ontological metaphysics later.

  The door creaks open and Yeshi enters. My heart skips a beat as if we haven’t seen each other in ages (how long is an age?). Even with my pollute hangover, I can make out her face clear as day. She’s the same as ever. Bangs, the single dimple on the right side of her face, mahoosive breasts, seductive ballerina gait. Still, there’s something different about her, something I can’t quite place.

  “Meme,” she says.

  “Where were you? Are you okay?”

  “Are you hungry?” she sets her purse down.

  “Yes! Incredibly! Eternally … sorry … I need food. I’m running on empty over here.”

  She tosses me a Soylent bar like it’s a Scooby Snack. I’m munching on it before she can take a step closer to me.

  “Did you cause trouble last night?” she asks in a ‘who’s a bad puppy’ voice.

  “I wasn’t trying to stir the flames. I was just curious as to what Madoka’s girlfriend looked like. I should have probably restrained my curiosity. From what I remember she was a beast of a woman, twice the size of any human I’d ever seen. I suppose living most of your life in a virtual reality dreamworld will do that do you. Long story long – I was banished back to the room and I’ve been waiting for you ever since. Where did you go? You’ve been gone … ”