Long Eyes and Other Stories

by Jeff Carlson

  The soldiers were a security detail assigned to two neighboring banks. They didn't have any blankets or tarps on hand, but one man gave Julie his pants, earning a round of hoots and commentary that doubled in volume when she thanked him with a chaste kiss.

  Minutes later, DHS came down on their location like a ton of horse puckey. No less than twenty agents pushed in among the soldiers, taking the bad guy and isolating Julie and Highsong. That was okay. Julie had already passed her camcorder to the corporal without any pants and asked him to keep it safe for her — and to smuggle it to the CNN crews outside of town if she didn't return for it. The digital Sony not only contained the machos' assault of the bad guy and Julie's pursuit but also the interviews she'd taped earlier with Highsong and herself, explaining everything with detailed maps, Em's documentation, and property records. Highsong had already uploaded the same files to YouTube, though he'd kept the videos private and inactive for now.

  The easy part was done. Agent Reaves brought them to the medical tents for their scrapes and bruises and then to the cafeteria for a hot meal, playing the good cop to the hilt — and Julie and Highsong were as sweet as butter, chatting him up like long-lost family. They'd violated a federal quarantine by reentering Missoula, but they'd also nabbed the villain. Depending on how Reaves decided to play it, they would sink or swim.

  Finally the claws came out. Reaves wanted all the information they had, their sources, an oath of silence, and their voluntary resignation from the bug teams.

  Julie grinned and made her counter-offer. Nah," she said. "I think DHS should give us a public commendation for our valor above and beyond the call of duty."

  "We can press charges."

  "We'll lawyer up and dump our videos on the net for the world to see how DHS is testing their bioweapons programs on innocent civilians."

  "What?"

  "You heard me. Organic firebombs. We know DawnTech is in bed with the Pentagon."

  Reaves stared at her.

  "We don’t want to pee on your parade," Julie said. "We're good Americans. We’d prefer not to make noise about your bug programs, but we will to protect ourselves if we have to. Which we shouldn't. We're heroes."

  Reaves slowly held out his hand. "You need a medal with that commendation?" he asked, and they shook on it.

  Julie laughed.

  But the next morning she and Highsong were covered in sweat and bugs again. The termite war continued. At least they seemed to be getting ahead of the machos with no one bringing new colonies into the city. She was more aggravated by the fact that four days passed before Reaves called to follow up.

  Julie had to dig her phone out of her pack when it rang, setting aside her TI gun and an Army radio.

  "Beauchain?" Reaves said, getting it right.

  The bad guy was a low-level assistant in Machovsky's research facilities. He'd spilled like a leaky bag. Working from his confession, DHS uncovered ties between DawnTech's board of directors and the ownership of Holiday House. Apparently business was down. Way down. More and more Americans were secularizing Christmas and buying all sorts of inane junk — blow-up lawn dolls, roof displays, plastic trees — but competition for those spiking sales was brutal and Holiday House lost their price margin when their tree sales went down the toilet.

  Someone had decided to cut corners, take advantage of the machos' outbreak, and kill the business and all of its subsidiary holdings. That was the extent of the scheme, Reaves said, no federal involvement, no Men In Black weapons programs, nobody but the usual suspects — a few inept corporate masters with their eyes on fat pay-offs instead of hard work. People were going to jail. Holiday House would be sued to the ground.

  Julie was almost disappointed when she hung up the phone, standing beside a gluey patch of termites on a smoke-ridden Missoula street. "It's over," she told Highsong. "There's no conspiracy. Reaves has everything sewn up tight."

  "Maybe next time," he said, smiling as he roughly embraced her.

  END

  Afterword

  "Christmas Fire" was even more fun to write than "Gunfight," partly because it's larger in scope and mayhem, partly because I looked forward to spending more time with these characters.

  What a pair. Nudity! Glue guns! Bug swarms! Hooray!

  I love blowing things up. Missoula is a great town, and I apologize for visiting a plague of termites upon it.

  Part of the inspiration for this story was a challenge by my German editor, who was assembling writers for a Christmas-themed anthology to be published early in December. A clever man, my German editor. He wanted to hook new readers for my novels, and the novels of all of the anthology's contributors.

  His one request was our stories should have something to do with Christmas, so of course I set mine in July and burned every Christmas tree in sight. Then I handed the same story to Asimov's for their pre-holiday issue.

  If I was always that smart, I'd be a millionaire.

  As for the super bugs, they came from the Joint Genome Institute, where I was given an eye-popping tour while researching a different project. Naturally I took my termites a step farther than any modification programs currently underway... but a year from now... Who knows?

  SNACK FOOD

  No one ever caught me eating hair before — and this dude wasn't shy. He shouted, "What are you doing!"

  I'd just begun styling a natural blonde, a wonderfully plump little thing whose body was all curves. She looked around and I nearly hacked open her jugular.

  "Careful." I palmed my scissors and used both hands to size out her bangs, pretending I didn't realize the dude meant me, hoping he'd go away. But he was a Watch. I'd already spotted the pin-point cameras tucked behind his ears, as if his puffy wolfman curls, shaped to conceal, weren't indication enough.

  The good news was that he probably wasn't live on-line. Not even tourist sites like 24Chicago or e-Seattle, notoriously desperate for footage, were so full of themselves as to believe that an audience would be interested in random points-of-view meandering through their ever-beautiful streets. I had a little time before this friggin' peeper could post his video.

  "You're eating hair!" he boomed, marching from the tiny lobby toward our eight chair-and-mirror cubbies.

  "Huh?" I play stupid with the best. Americans never expect a foreigner to be any sharper than a marble, anyway, a presumption that I often use to my advantage.

  "Who's in charge here!"

  Our assistant manager, Becky, was a sandy-haired darling who failed a new diet every other week but always summoned the courage to try another. I don't know why. She was perfect, stout and healthy.

  I'd sampled her the day I was hired.

  She left her customer to confront the Watch, speaking slowly. "Sir, can I help you?"

  "You'd certainly better!" A shout seemed to be his normal tone of voice. He tossed his head to flip his mane back and reveal the pin-point behind his left ear.

  In Dante's Hell, the geeks responsible for this technology will only be able to see up their own rectums. I admire the work of a few directors who've seeded concert crowds or busy downtown areas with Watches and, from many perspectives, made an intriguing kaleidoscope — but most of the video-driven sites are crap, twitchy and neurotic, bouncing from camera to camera for no reason except that many channel surfers grow lazy or mesmerized enough to remain on the same channel if it appears to be surfing for them. That's great for ad revenue but awful for the world's children, who only learn what they are taught.

  Literacy scores erode each year as sensation crimes are copy-catted from sea to shining sea, idiots and hooligans competing for the headlines. Possibly worse was that otherwise unemployable morons now found themselves in positions of imagined power. The cameras needed legs, after all.

  Some of those legs belonged to genuine celebrities — I followed Alfonzo myself — but most were just blustering clowns or sneaks and snoops, given that popular sites like FootMouth.com and iImpact paid bonuses for embarrassing or shocking foota
ge.

  I wondered why this dude, with his unfashionable mop-top, had come into The Upper Cut. There were basically only two categories of Watches, revealed and concealed, and he definitely belonged to the latter group. A sneak. A hairy sweat-foul sneak with the smirk of a stunted ego now swollen with importance.

  He thrust identification into Becky's face. The lettering was purple, all caps, hard to miss. No Sparrow Shall Fall, Inc.

  I groaned.

  The NSSF believed that through the ever-vigilant eyes of His disciples, God would now expose and expunge all muggers, cheats, speeders, shop-lifters... and perverts.

  "This disgusting wacko right here was eating that woman's hair!" he said. "Disgusting!"

  Some folks need to believe in that sort of authority. More enjoy seeing freaks get their come-uppance. Others still get off debating witch-hunts and civil liberty. Everyone likes to keep busy. I have hobbies of my own.

  "That's ridiculous," I said.

  "You were eating my hair?" My plump little blonde thing leaned away in her seat, pressing one hand down on her head.

  The eyes of a dozen people lanced into me as the thumping hip-hop on the radio became the only sound. Becky frowned at me, at the Watch, then me again. She's a good woman, protective of her crew, but we were hardly old friends. I'd been in town only four weeks and had worked at The Upper Cut a few days less than that, and never socialized after hours with the girls.

  They probably thought I was gay. Male hair-dressers are always gay, right? Especially those with funny accents and customized Italian shoes.

  I didn't care what they thought as long as I was left alone in my work.

  I enjoy using my hands. I enjoy touching people and talking. Most of it's just chit-chat but I've learned enough to earn a Ph.D in anthropology. Every city is different. I feel in tune with today's America and its mundane concerns of family, finances, fun and food, which to my thinking are more the essence of life than global economy or politics.

  "It's here! I have it all in here!" The Watch banged a finger on one of his pin-points, practically bouncing. Maybe he was trying to be taller. I'm a big guy with a big chest and he obviously felt threatened.

  I said, "Are you live on-line?"

  "Ha! You're worried! You did do it!"

  "I'm just thinking about our customer base and reputation." I turned to Becky. "And maybe a libel suit."

  She nodded. "Turn it off."

  "I'm protected by the Amended First Amendment!" His stiff posture would have made Superman proud. Evil doers, beware!

  "Sir, turn it off."

  "I'm only on storage up-link," he confessed, the one time I heard him use a regular speaking voice, and I relaxed without letting it show. Realistically I had at least an hour before he could get to his office, download, edit, then post his footage or come back with a tape.

  He boomed again, using Moses-at-the-Red-Sea gestures. "Why would I make this up! He's some sort of disgusting wacko!"

  "Becky, come on." I laughed.

  But I must not have been entirely convincing. My little blonde was going to fall out of her chair if she kept leaning away, and Becky's brow knotted to match her pursed lips.

  She had been glad to hire me. Turn-over was high, and my license was current, but I guess drifters are always suspect.

  Their wariness made me sad and heavy. I've never hurt anyone. Never. I want to be friends with the special ladies whose hair I collect, since I can never truly have them. Where's the harm? I've even sent flowers and candy anonymously to my absolute favorites.

  So I stretched my mouth open like a camel and snaked my tongue around, making an ahhhh noise.

  My little blonde giggled and I said, "Who eats hair?"

  "I can prove it!" The Watch kept bouncing like a boy with a bloated bladder.

  What could he really have? Footage of me seeming to rub my mouth would be inconclusive. It had only been a single strand, after all, and pin-points were not high definition.

  "I'm sorry," I said. "I just think it's homophobic."

  "Homo!" He froze.

  "You know some folks are like that, Becky. Men especially. And he was next in line for me."

  Actually plenty of people are strange about having their hair cut. Back in the Dark Ages, Europeans meticulously burned their clippings to prevent witches from using these articles to cast hexes on them. It makes you wonder who was walking around back then that everyone was so badly scared.

  We simply toss unidentifiably jumbled haystacks of the stuff into a dumpster out back. Every third customer asked. Could there be something in the hindbrain, some ancient survival paranoia that warns against leaving behind genetic samples? I think it's simpler than that. I think people's awkwardness with stylists stems from something far more mundane.

  Lots of people fear being touched.

  I find that fascinating, being so sensitive and eager myself. It's as if they'd prefer to have fewer senses, or at least duller ones. The voyeurism and passivity that made the convergence of television and the Internet so incredibly profitable seems ample proof of a widespread desire to become more insulated from the world. Maybe it's a failing of human evolution. Anything that's colorful and in motion tends to engage the eye and mind, the great irony being that most audiences are themselves immobile lumps.

  I let my wrist flutter girlishly as I waved toward the lobby and said, "It's okay, I'll just take the next customer."

  "You can't let this wacko keep working here!"

  Becky had had enough. "Sir, you'll have to leave."

  "I'll post the footage tonight!"

  Tonight. That gave me more time than I'd hoped.

  "Sir, get out."

  He stomped through the open door and tried to slam it shut, but there was a wedge at its base and he nearly hurled himself to the ground. "Have a nice day," I called, and my little blonde giggled again.

  Becky's decision to believe me instead of the Watch was likely based in part on her belief that I was gay, and so would snack on men rather than women if I was eating hair at all.

  Actually I'm no more sexual than a mushroom, having been born without a complete set of genitals. Had my co-workers known, I'm sure they would have been empathetic and extra nice, at least at first — but I've always avoided undue attention.

  I finished my blonde's styling with extra care, both to reward her and to savor the moment. She kept flashing me smiles in the mirror, which I loved.

  Today would be my last day at The Upper Cut.

  The damnable Watch would be back with his footage, whether he had anything conclusive or not, and I couldn't chance being exposed. I felt melancholy but excited. It would have been nice to settle in for a while. I'm so far away from home. But I do enjoy traveling and sampling different regions. That's what gives me distinction and purpose, after all.

  My family, the reptile hive of a star system called Tau Ceti by human astronomers, created me in much the same way that they grow mindless clones from the DNA that I collect inside my throat pouch — and they prefer females, whose body fat content is far higher than that of males.

  Good snack food needs that luxurious flavor.

  END

  Afterword

  I hate getting my hair cut. First of all, it feels like a waste of time. You gotta drive to Super Cuts. You gotta sit and wait. Then there's the chitchat with a stranger who's got her hands in your hair, hey, how it's going, what a nice day, blah blah blah. There are too many other things I could be doing!

  "Snack Food" is one of those ideas that came to me whole while I sat in the chair watching someone sweep up these amazing drifts of different people's hair. Black hair. Blond hair. Long hair. Curly hair.

  It was all going in bags to their dumpster — off to the landfill again — and I realized there were vast piles of DNA being gathered every day all over the world.

  Who would want it? And why? Witches and psychopaths and aliens, oh my.

  INTERRUPT

  Whatever happened to the sun seems to
be intensifying. This time I blacked out for at least five days — I haven't grown so much beard since I was seventeen. Jan would have been shocked. It's shaved now. I managed a quick sponge bath, too. Jan ridiculed me for being "an anal robot" but keeping clean might be the only way to mark the length of each interrupt. I can't trust myself not to lose this journal, or start a fire with its pages. I think we're still smart enough to use tools.

  These notes can't be my first attempt to document the phenomenon, but none of the laptops will even boot up. Electromagnetic pulses strong enough to affect our brains might have fried every computer chip on the planet. Wolsinger's mini-D was on my desk with a fresh disc in it, half recorded, but the playback is badly garbled.

  Have I already tried to build a shield? That was my first thought now. It was probably my first thought before. How else to explain the trash heap of metal in the cafeteria? Pots, pans, garbage cans, the hoods of the truck and the jeep.

  How many times have I already failed? With only a limited ability to form short-term memories, I could waste my lucid periods attempting the same thing over and over and over.

  #

  Not much to do now except write to stay awake. I don't know if I could sleep anyway, give up my conscious mind voluntarily. I’m dizzy, though. Blisters on my thumb. I'd like to wash again, get off the stink of hard labor and, yes, the reek of fear, but I'm still dehydrated from tramping around in the heat all day and the cafeteria tanks are nearly empty. The pumps aren't working, of course. And I have to conserve in case I'm trapped.

  In a while I'll patrol the front again but I think they went away. It’s a good thing the building's concrete or they might have tried to burn me out. The locals must think we're doing this to them, all those antennas and the dish array. No need to speak Spanish to understand. I've never seen such hatred, not even in Jan after our court battles. The people here were always suspicious, I guess, no matter if we paid well in hard American dollars or gave away our medical supplies. Most of them have tried all their lives to get out of here, tried for generations, yet in comes a pack of gringo Dr. Frankensteins like the jungle was a petting zoo, blabbering about new laser spectrometers and listening for people in the stars. And I am a gringo here, no matter that my skin is darker than theirs.