He knelt down beside his dead landlord and searched through the man’s pockets. He found a wallet, some hard candies, two condoms and finally, car keys. Outside, he shoved his belongings into the car’s trunk. He called for Doom. The animal formed a black shadow in the dark doorway, then galloped across the yard to the open, waiting car door. He flopped onto the back seat as if this had been his plan all along.
--Wait here, The Doctor instructed. --I have two more things.
Inside, he now sensed the metallic blood smell. He moved in a wide arc around his slain landlord to his laboratory. There, he plucked a single sample vial from the wooden rack, its cool glass reassuring in the dank gloom. He tucked the vial into the pocket of his tweed jacket.
Finally, he retrieved a small metal box from under the lab bench and stole back through the house. Outside, he locked all three of his locks, then got behind the wheel of the car.
He got lucky—the car was an automatic. He pointed it in the right direction and pressed the gas pedal, driving haphazardly up the road he himself had fashioned from a pile of dirt and landfill. Once he was off his property, he took the metal box and headed back, on foot, toward the house.
But he kept going. Up to the base of the enormous billboard. A latticework of scaffolding greeted him there, waiting to be climbed. And climb it he did, to its midpoint, more awkwardly even than might be anticipated, due to his dragging the box along with him.
He unlatched the box and from it drew two of the four remaining patches of explosive, a roll of duct tape and a considerable length of fuse. Sweat stung his eyes as he worked, and exhaustion threatened to plunge him to his death, but something in him overrode it: a new, strange vehemence.
He recognized, distantly, that at the moment, and for the first time he could recall, he served a purpose outside the realm of science, was taking action that did not serve research. He didn’t pause, now, to wonder why.
A short while later, Doctor Encludsmo Stuckhowsen headed south on the freeway under which he had lived for so many years. Behind him, the very earth let loose an ominous, terrible thud, which nearby residents would first mistake for an earthquake.
There in South Central, at the intersection of the 110 and 105 freeways, this billboard—a colossal monstrosity people drove past daily without ever seeing—this gargantuan thing of metal and wood crumpled and fell, collapsing onto a boarded-up house covered in gang symbols.
The Doctor, from the car of his dead landlord, felt the rumble of earth and steel, and he smiled. An unfamiliar, self-satisfied smile.
--Always did hate that sign.
CHAPTER 2
Tyson Woolritch sat in his silver Camry, wondering idly if the planet had finally hit the tipping point. This was in part due to the six solid lanes of traffic. And in part because of the red sun scorching the parking lots of competing gas stations and convenience stores, its mean white glare blinding the men and women unlucky enough to walk in L.A. Bigger, faster, more…. But better?
He peered through the windshield, searched for his joggers. There. The blonde came toward him, pink shorts and a pink running bra gleaming as she headed south on the 6-lane street. The other runner, he caught sight of in his review mirror, her long copper hair fierce against the bright morning. The joggers remained a constant thing in a world that seemed ever more rickety.
The light changed and he eased his car forward. Five, seven, twelve cars turned off Roscoe and onto Balboa, then…red again. Northridge was residential as Los Angeles neighborhoods go, meaning more than two blocks of houses existed between main thoroughfares. Still, on weekdays, thousands of people traversed those thoroughfares at the same time, making for a twenty-minute mile each morning and every damn night. What else to do but gaze at strangers?
The joggers passed on opposite street corners, the red-head running across the Wendy’s driveway, while the blonde sprinted through the 7-11 parking lot. The copper-haired girl’s pony tail flipped and whirled like a gymnast’s ribbon, blazing against her black bra. Tyson had never seen her in anything but black and her T-shirts depicted skulls and monsters. But today she clutched her shirt in her fist, allowing Tyson to once again marvel at the incongruous masterpiece on her back: A tattooed angel taking flight, lovely as any Michelangelo.
The seraph’s wings dazzled in gold-tipped white, her gown an open-sky blue. The angel’s hair matched the runner’s, billowing down the length of the runner’s back; tendrils of copper showed below the woman’s black sports bra. Tyson had seen the jogger, and, in the scorching summer months her remarkable tattoo, nearly every workday for two years now. The drawing captivated him equally each viewing. But today its ethereal charm lasted only moments, eclipsed by concern for an old friend.
Encludsmo Stockhausen had phoned the night before. They saw each other seldom now; with Encludsmo’s former annual holiday visits having been reduced to phone calls a couple years back. Thus a call in late summer made Tyson anticipate something afoul. He hadn’t been wrong.
His friend, an award-winning, Ph.D. scientist, was living in a condemned house beneath a freeway overpass. Worse, the man’s bank account was depleted to the point where even this dubious shelter might be taken from him. An insultingly inappropriate lifestyle for a man so brilliant.
Tyson had gone through his inventor friend’s current projects and sent Encludsmo to his own employer, the peculiar engineering firm Survivanoia. The company was expanding their research department, so Encludsmo’s chances of employment in some capacity seemed good. But Encludsmo’s living conditions concerned Tyson. Should he invite his friend to stay with him? Could Encludsmo survive in Northridge?
Then there was the awful advertisement Encludsmo had shown him.
A horn sounded and Tyson realized the light had changed. He responded appropriately, turning onto the freeway ramp, then waited there for another stoplight to allow him access. His drive to work was “in the right direction,” out of the Valley. On the opposite side of the freeway, cars streamed south in a thick ribbon of gleaming metal. By now, seven-thirty, they no longer flowed but crept. Head South, young office slaves.
But Tyson headed North.
A mere twelve minutes from the time he hit the freeway, he pulled into his company’s generous parking lot, where a corrugated steel roof protected the employees’ cars from the worst of the sun’s vicious heat.
“Survivanoia,” a creepy-letter sign above the entranceway said: “Purveyors of the Post-Apocalypse.” Despite his admiration for the company, office jobs didn’t generally agree with Tyson. It seemed to him that corporate cultures spawned the same cliques as high school. Cubicles had replaced the classrooms, and managers the teachers. But a dress code still prevailed—polo shirts and khakis; jeans on Friday, with loafers.
And just as in high school, Tyson ignored it, choosing instead a dark linen dress shirt and a pair of Timberland hiking boots, worn under crumpled earth-tone corduroys. He kept his unruly chestnut hair at mad scientist length, and still wore glasses when even his optometrist had had corrective surgery.
He passed through the retina-scan, and an angular metal sign in the foyer informed him that “The Revolution was Yesterday.” Another said “Armageddon is over…we lost.” He rolled his thumb over a scanner to enter the elevator, reminded as always of Star Trek. On his floor, the second, the door opened silently to a cool blue sea of cubicle walls and filing cabinets. His department (customer service) was further down, its walls and cabinets sea foam green.
Harker, Chaz, and Julio worked from five until two, EST business hours, and so were always there when Tyson’s arrived. Upon spotting him, they lunged down the cubicle aisle, a three-headed six-legged monster.
“We have a new…girl,” sniggered Harker.
Chaz followed suit: “Yeah, maybe you can show her the ropes.”
“I’m telling you,” complained Julio in his slight Spanish accent, “that bitch
is going to get us all fired!”
Tyson snatched his UCLA mug from his tidy desk. “Can you at least let me get coffee before you start with the goon squad routine?”
“You don’t understand,” Harker giggled.
“Yeah, Melvina is not your everyday girl.”
Julio made a face and wandered back to his cubicle. “Even the name is phony. I think we’re being punked or some shit.”
Tyson squinted against the tightness in his forehead, predicting a headache. “Melvina?”
As if summoned, a voice responded, gravelly. “That’s me! I’m new.” A flutter of lavender and yellow streaked through the cubicle alley, an outstretched arm seeming to pull it forward. Melvina snatched Tyson’s hand and pumped it like she was filling a water bucket.
Melvina did not walk with a sway or speak with a lisp. Melvina was not effeminate, not small in stature, no floppy wrist. There was nothing even vaguely feminine about Melvina. Tyson saw stubble on Melvina’s chin. Melvina was a man in a dress.
“Miguel says to come see you about getting trained,” Melvina told Tyson.
“Oh? Oh! Yeah. How about some coffee for starters?”
Tyson held up his mug in defense.
“Great! I’ll get my cup and meet you in the break room.”
Melvina strode off. Julio leaned on his cube entrance, frowning. Chaz and Harker doubled over in silent laughter, slapped each other on the back. “Better close your mouth, there, Professor.”
“Or Melvina might stick something in it!”
Tyson did his best not to smirk. “How much did you pay him?”
Harker’s eyes widened. Chaz’s mouth formed an O.
“We didn’t—”
“—not our gag—”
“—started this morning—”
“Go ask Miguel.”
“Yeah, ask me.” Miguel, all five-feet-seven of his skinniness, stood with his arms crossed and a regretful smile on his handsome Hispanic face.
“Who’s training the new… person?”
Miguel nodded. “Come with me, Professor.”
Tyson followed Miguel, sighing inwardly at the predictable nickname. He supposed they meant it as a compliment—after all he had a Ph.D. in Languages—but on bad days it only drove home the ninety thousand dollars of student loan debt and his inability to maintain a job in his field.
Once in the safety of his glassed-in office, Miguel spoke as if the words pinched his tongue. “I know it’s awkward,” he said. “But you have to be diplomatic. Melvina thinks of herself as a woman and must be treated accordingly.”
Tyson squinted again. “Can I ask—”
“No. Don’t ask, just do, and do it right.”
“Can I ask about an unrelated topic?”
“Depends on the topic.”
“Did you see the ad in the Bi Weekly? On Sunday?”
Miguel nodded. “The class action business for the people whose relatives died of Flower Flu? Don’t worry about it.”
“Don’t worry about it?”
“We’ve been sued before,” Miguel waved a hand, dismissing the entire legal system. “It won’t go anywhere. We’re certainly not planning on downsizing.”
Tyson wanted to know if it were true, the claim that his company was withholding the cure to a deadly virus that killed people in a violent, torturous way. Flower Flu purportedly had been derived from the Venus Fly Trap, and manifested in the way of auto immune diseases, so that the body digested itself from the inside out. For some reason, unknown or at least undisclosed, the disease seemed to target Hispanics, though New Orleans had experienced an outbreak shortly after the virus manifested in Los Angeles.
Why would a company purposefully withhold the cure to something so nasty? And if it weren’t true, why wouldn’t they respond immediately to accusations of such criminal negligence? Were Tyson the boss, this question would have consumed him. No work would be completed, certainly no new employees hired, until he had answers. But Miguel didn’t seem to know and quite obviously didn’t care.
So, Tyson spent the day as he did with all the new hires, trotting Melvina around introducing everybody. “This is Melvina. She is new in sales.” He tried not to catch anyone’s eye, ignored the open mouths and stifled giggles.
Melvina seemed not to notice, instead barraging Tyson with friendly questions: How long have you worked here? What exactly do they make? What exactly do you do? Do you like it? They were well-meaning but, like “Professor,” made Tyson uneasy.
His wife’s rocket lab supplied some product to Survivanoia, and she’d suggested the place to him for possible employment after he’d quit his third translating job and been fired from Berlitz. Tyson just couldn’t be interested in French or Spanish. Russian had lost its appeal once he got Cyrillic down pat.
He was a purist regarding languages, interested only in those like Encludsmo’s, with no traceable roots or origins and no sister languages. The obvious place for him was a university, those final bastions devoted to curbing the human hunger for an answer to why. But so far none of the local universities had had openings, and Annie’s career was not something Tyson would ever ask her to sacrifice.
So he worked for this odd place, whose perverse humor at least granted him a crooked smile. They sold gadgets and novelties for profit, to pay for the real science. They developed, manufactured, and distributed Constant War Gear (our CWG line!) items like bulletproof cat and dog vests, radiation resistant jogging suits, gas masks and barbed wire in fashion colors, as well as more practical things such as radiation pills and sensors.
Similarly, the company designed and sold a furniture line, HABITAT, which included, among other things, sofa coffins, panic beds (why waste an entire room when your bed can do the job?), and tables sized from night stand to dining room that performed a cornucopia of tasks, including filtering your water and alerting you to poisons or allergens in your food (personally programmable!).
Tyson acknowledged the world view required to market such things. The hardcore research, though, was largely kept under wraps and instilled in him admiration and wonder. The West Nile Virus and Avian Flu vaccines had been developed by Survivanoia’s research teams. Currently, he knew, they were working on Dense Food, nutritionally concentrated rations to fight starvation. Unlike Nomnasto, whose genetically modified staple foods were developed for profit, Survivanoia’s science, the real science, seemed guided by humanitarianism. Perhaps even—dare Tyson think it?—compassion.
“I like what they do here,” he told Melvina, and left it at that.
He led the new hire to the courtyard, where Melvina gasped at the garden and Tyson had to admit he’d been stunned when he’d first seen it as well. The courtyard was housed in the U formed by the building. The office/production facility had been constructed recently, as specially designed by Survivanoia engineers. The layout, a horseshoe with the hallway running the center of each wing, ensured that every workspace had sunlight.
The square was fashioned after a Persian garden: Laden with fruit trees, adorned with a shallow pool in the center, and home to a handful of strutting peacocks. Melvina gasped when they entered it, said in a reverent, husky whisper, “My god it’s gorgeous!”
They wandered in silence for a while. The thick scent of sweet roses and the crisp fragrance of crisp lilies made Tyson almost light-headed. He sensed his breath slow, felt the soothing cool of the garden embrace him, an organic relief much more gentle and calming than the smacking, utilitarian cold of an air conditioner.
Melvina whispered again, “I can’t even hear the Freeway.”
Tyson paused, listened. Heard the cooing of the colorful birds, the rustle of lizards he knew were there but that he never saw.
“You’re right,” he said. “It’s spooky.”
“It’s like a movie set! Or, or a ho
use in Beverly Hills or someplace like that. I can come here every day?”
Tyson smiled, pleased that someone else appreciated the place. “Both the cafeterias have entrances. Most people seem to forget about it in a few months.”
“I won’t!” Melvina promised. “I’ll find an extension cord and work out here if I can.”
Tyson left the new employee under a fig tree with a stack of reading material.
Back at the cubes, the boys were winding down to leave. Harker played his daily round of Mine Sweeper while Chaz answered email. The area reeked of fast food and Julio sucked soda from a FUIE cup with its snarling star.
Julio sucked air through his straw. “Settle a bet, Professor. Which bathroom does Melvina use?”
“The one by the photocopier.”
Chaz snickered. “Figures. The newly installed handicapped, unisex toilet. You’d think we knew he was coming!”
“You owe me lunch, though, don’t you!” Julio tossed the empty cup into his trash can.
“Maybe they get money for hiring freaks like that,” Harker mused. “You know, like how you get a bonus for hiring the handicapped?”
“Like this company needs more money,” Chaz scoffed.
“Well, why else would they hire him? Her. It?”
“They say it’s the new company president,” said Julio.
Tyson was curious. “What’s the new president?”
“All the weird stuff that’s been going on. The underground wing being built for R and D—”
Tyson dismissed that. “Have you seen any digging? That’s just gossip.”
“—the virus that we cured but won’t release—”
“That’s a media contrivance.”
“—and she threatened Geo.”
Tyson waved that away, too. “Geo deserves to be threatened. If it happens enough maybe he’ll turn into a human being. Besides, she also got us the new benefits package, right? That’s not only normal, it’s positive.”
“What about the clown suit meetings?”
“Yeah…that’s a little weird,” Tyson conceded to the recently confirmed-by-witness rumor that for quarterly meetings the managers were now required to dress in clown suits.
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