Lacking Character

by Curtis White

  He looked at us and beamed. Gesturing toward the Rangers, he said, “Don’t mind them. I think their batteries are running low.” Then throwing open his arms, “Come to papa!”

  But for some reason Jake was diffident. Perhaps he was worried that the Marquis would be angry because he was still without employment.

  So the Marquis continued, speaking harshly toward Rory, “It goes without saying that I am bankrupt. As a consequence, the bursar fired you, Rory. I saw him check the box. Rory terminado. At least he said he was my bursar, although it’s possible he was just one of those Mexican boys who used to cut the lawn. But what do lawn boys know of bursting, or whatever it is that a bursar does? In any case, your hugs mean nothing to me now.”

  “Sir!”

  “Besides, as you can see, I am keeping different company these days.”

  “You mean these crash-test dummies?” I asked.

  “I can no longer afford to employ my rotating team of security peasants.”

  “Rotating peasants?” I queried.

  The Marquis looked at me suspiciously.

  “Who is this fellow? I don’t much care for his attitude. And what’s the matter with his face? He reminds me of Mortimer Snerd.”

  “I beg your pardon!”

  “Beg all you like. As a member of the landed gentry, I’m well used to beggars. Anyway, these fellows—‘dummies,’ as you crudely put it—are much better than the peasants. They are industry standard.” He winked stupidly. “That’s all I should need to say, but that’s probably asking a lot of you. See if this helps: they meet all best practices. Every one of them. They are personal security with enhancements.”

  He pulled a pamphlet from an inner pocket of his robe.

  “Here, Rory, read this, will you?”

  Rory reads: “Glockman™ is a life-size simulated male that appears to be six feet tall and one hundred-eighty lean athletic pounds. He provides the impression of a highly trained guard. He is a unique security product with movable latex head and hands.”

  “I dress him according to my own sense of style,” continued the Marquis, “the ball cap, the mirror shades, the copy of The Sporting News, and the button-on legs complete a powerful visual effect. Don’t you agree? I even got the optional zippered carrying tote for discrete portability so that at least one of my boys can come with me on vacations. I’ve become very fond of them.”

  Rory, reading the pamphlet, “Says here that sex parts are available in three sizes.”

  The Marquis put his arms akimbo, looked down his nose grinning, and said, “Now, Rory, you know I don’t roll like that. And that is not in the brochure. You’re being peevish and just maybe a little jealous. Would it help if I said that I’m sorry the bursar fired you?”

  “I see that you didn’t pay for button-on legs for everybody,” I volunteered.

  “No. But they don’t mind sharing,” he paused. “But you miss the fact that each is augmented in a way that makes legs superfluous. Those sunglasses they wear are more than mere sunglasses. They are equipped with MEG 4.0 ultra-compact wearable display devices, a peripheral treatment for Web-based but head-mounted eyewear. In short, they can browse the Web on their glasses. I’ve ordered the contact-lens version, the one with the bionanotechnology, but they’re on back order. I’m told that I’m in the first thirty million scheduled for order fulfillment, so it won’t be long. In any event, these boys are ready for whatever comes at them. A home invader will never know if Glockman is simply looking him over, doing a background check through INTERPOL, calling in air support, or watching a Latina she-male tearing up a MILF on PornFace.”

  Jake looked worried. He peered at his grandfather as an astronomer peers at a fuzzy patch that he hopes is a coherent galaxy but fears is just another nebulous jumble of space dust.

  “But Grandpa, these are latex. They’re dummies. They can’t actually see.”

  The Marquis looked a little flustered at first, but he pulled himself together.

  “First, I have known my share of dummies, and they are not limited to latex people. Second, do you have any idea how hard it is to live with nothing more to look forward to than the extermination of an eternal flood of digital aliens? It’s like living in order to kill cockroaches with wooden spoons. That’s nobody’s idea of a purpose-driven life, not even mine.”

  The Marquis began to cry with frustration and loneliness, but I was not deceived. I knew his wickedness. He cried only to deceive us. All I saw in his tears was the great baby, the world, that had tormented itself for the last 4.543 billion years.

  “These lads,” he gestured at the Glockmen, “have brought me kindness and the common touch.”

  The Marquis looked like he was dissolving, one cell at a time, some vile essence in a puddle at his feet.

  “I was so very, very alone,” he pled.

  Kindly, Suzanne spoke up from beneath her blanket. She was visibly moved by this emotionally extortionate spectacle. She had every appearance of being compassionate, and she probably was a compassionate person, but she might have been trying to make me feel guilty about bludgeoning her with a rock and dumping her in a lake.

  “They look nice to me! Where did you get your companions, Your Majesty?” she said, softly, her eyes nurturing.

  “Oh, Jake, you haven’t introduced me to your lovely if sopping friend. And please, call me Grandpa.”

  She smiled. Jake smiled. Everybody smiled. He could be charming.

  “And I’m glad you asked, young lady. It’s a curious story of the sort I never thought I’d live to see but, then, here it is. Well, one day—before my cellphone was disconnected—I was called by the nice people at Mass Platform, Basalt Cliffs, and Fringing-Reef Tectronics. They wanted me to know that as one of their very best customers I was eligible to buy a security system from them. You know, one of the marvels of these times is how easy it is to be a customer. And I did need a new security system, since my loyal peasant squads had been vanquished from the land, so I ordered one.

  “Well, you know how they work, once I had the Basic System they wanted to sell me the rest. I was offered my own Predator drone aircraft that I could command from my iPhone. Knowing me as you do, you won’t be surprised to hear that this was an exciting opportunity for me. Thanks to the Xbox, I can operate any form of remote thingee. I mean, I can make that shit hum. Unfortunately, I could only get enough credit from them to get the community-outreach software that provides coverage limited to the local zip code. I was disappointed. Sure, I could call in rounds on a few local towns, and the idea of blowing up Towanda had its appeal. Still, what they offered at this low, low introductory price was a lot better than nothing and no doubt adequate for policing the lower orders in the neighborhood.”

  Amused, I asked, “And where are the missiles?”

  He nearly hopped in his excitement, clapping his hands like Ed Wynn.

  “Oh, we don’t need our own missiles. We virtually own, say, two launches per contract period, but the actual missiles we share with other subscribers while Mass Platform maintains the arsenal.

  “Of course, a little skepticism was no doubt in order, so once the software was downloaded to my laptop I burned one of my missiles for the month and destroyed my own garden shed.”

  He pointed to the west of the château.

  “And as you can see, it is bloody well gone, and that includes that damned green riding mower.”

  All I could see was a featureless field of weeds and, of course, the artist with his easel, painting away. I caught his eye and he doffed his Borsalino to me, smiling gently.

  “But I was lucky to get even that shot off. The sheriff sent a man by to say that I couldn’t launch another until I had a license for concealed carry. Details! He put a block on my launch security code. Must’ve been a clause in the fine print, or the sweet man from Mumbai neglected to explain the license when he sold me the service over the phone.”

  “Who else has these things?”

  “Ah,” he laughed, “
that’s the rub, isn’t it? In theory, anyone can have the contract, anyone can have a Predator, and so it would be careless if I didn’t assume that everyone does have one and can fire a missile at will. Even the homeless have cellphones and so could, in theory, take down anyone foolish enough not to throw folding money into their outstretched caps. Imagine, a high-tech protection racket run out of a homeless shelter! That’s a sign of the times.

  “However, through our Neighborhood Watch Association we have negotiated an agreement and have declared sanity.” He laughed. “For all the good that does anyone.”

  Now he practically leered, bent at the waist, hands on his knees, chest heaving, like he was having a heart attack.

  “I hope you see the larger irony. We do not each have a Predator at our disposal. We don’t even have a missile on a Predator. The system, as the company readily admits, is over-subscribed. Their perfectly legal and perfectly legitimate assumption is that there will never be a time when everyone wants to scramble a drone and launch a missile on the same day. That’s covered in the war-of-all-against-all exclusionary clause. They’re quite upfront about it. It’s just like a bank assuming that there will never be a time when everyone wants all of their money on the same day.

  “There are two drones designated for local usage, and maybe a half-dozen missiles total, although even those rotate in and out of maintenance. The only thing required by the Federal Consumer Munitions Agency is that the service contract specify compensation for missile or drone non-availability, usually nothing more than ten dollars off of your next AK.”

  “So,” I suggested, “your neighborhood is a group of people all of whom imagine that they have instant access to a devastating weapon, but the truth is that they’re more like people seated in a circle with a single gun resting in the middle of the floor. A voice says, ‘You do not need the gun,’ and they all throw themselves at it. Is that it?”

  The Marquis beamed at me.

  “You are much brighter than your Donald Duck face suggests.”

  This was all very amusing, but Jake was getting worried at the mental frenzy of Grandpa’s stories. “But what about the security dummies, Grandpa? You were going to tell us about the security dummies.”

  The Marquis turned to Jake, a look of profound introspection on his face.

  At last he said, “I have heard it affirmed by not unphilanthropic persons, that it were a real increase of human happiness could all young men from the age of nineteen to thirty-one be covered under barrels.”

  Jake was mystified. Suzanne burst into tears. Were we watching as our dear friend the Marquis, with whom we’d been through so much, suffered a stroke? Were all of these thoughts leaking from a damaged mind?

  No one spoke, but the Marquis replied anyway: “What?”

  We looked at each other, uncertain what he could mean.

  Then again, his face twisted and contorted, coming apart, as if it were being pulsed in a food processor. Then again he said, “Whaaaat?”

  With that last “what?” Rory met his limit. He pulled the .38 from the small of his back and leveled it…at me!

  * * *

  —

  Like a planet that has calmly circled its familiar sun for billions of years but whose bright eternity is ruined when it realizes that it is dependent upon magnetic fields and gravity, and, not understanding the laws of gravitational force, ceases to believe in its own possibility, thinking, “And all this time I believed that I circled the sun because it loved me.” Meanwhile, it plunges sadly off toward the universe’s empty regions, a fine China plate spinning away. So it was with our company of friends when they heard the Marquis say, “What?” They realized that their drama, they themselves, this entire world was not possible, and they were ashamed of it and the poor, selfish roles they had played in what was only yet another cock-and-bull story.

  So Rory dropped his gun, and Suzanne dropped her blanket (woo-hoo!), and the artist dropped his brush, and Jake dropped beautiful, plangent ’Zanne’s modest hand, and then everyone just stopped. In their eyes there was a moment of fear, a brief moment of peace, and then, as if they had been stricken by mass contagion, they collapsed like the puppets they were, like children in a garden game: All Fall Down.

  Ashes! Ashes!

  It was really very sad to see: their faces sinking, shoulders slumped, eyes burning with tears, flesh flowing a little lava-like. I already felt the lack of my characters. I missed them. It was very tempting to sit with them, throw my hands in the air, and give up. But I also knew that this had to happen and that this was how it had to be.

  At last, I thought, Consumatum est.