The city spread across the walls, the ceiling. He tried not to look at it. To close his eyes . . . But they wouldn’t close, and the city expanded, spires and irimoyas and pagodas reaching for him, eating space like freezerfrost.
Shadows ran down Mr. Ishmael’s body as the flickering city gained momentum. “I saw a television show when I was a child that changed my life,” he remarked. The tone of his voice had changed. He spoke in a vague trance. “A husband and wife and child entered a store that sold planets. A salesman ushered them down a long aisle, underscoring the positive aspects of each piece of merchandise. Eventually the child got bored and wandered off. There was a small black box on a low shelf. The child picked it up and studied it, turning it over and over with tiny hands. The salesman realized what was happening and he and the husband and wife shouted for the child not to open the box. But the child opened the box. It contained a black hole, and the black hole sucked the television show into it, and the screen went black, and it stayed black. The television never worked again. This was the moment I became conscious of death. Part of me died in this moment. One day the rest of me will die. I’m waiting.”
Plissken’s throat closed. Veins inflated on his neck.
Mnemonic strobes. Unspeakable pain. Nightclash of ignorant armies . . .
The city’s fingers closed into a gunmetal fist.
Explosion of sound and light. Existential screech. Then: a Zero Degree of Meaning . . . Image of a mushroom cloud over Hiroshima. It rose into the sky in slow motion, in fasttime, in realtime. In monochrome . . .
. . . and the city pixilated, imploding into beige vapor . . .
With a powerful gasp of air, Plissken’s eyes sprung open. Froze open . . .
Adrenalized, he climbed into a chair, heartbeat thumping in his ears.
His vision wavered. He made obscene faces as he struggled to focus . . .
Eternity dissolved into clarity.
There was no picture on the wall. It had disappeared.
He vomited again. It was soil.
“Mr. Plissken,” said Mr. Ishmael . . .
“I’m sorry,” he croaked. “I didn’t mean to do it. Nobody means to throw up.”
“What about bulimics? Their throwup is purposeful and deliberate. One often makes oneself throw up in the grasp of a hangover as well. One often feels better that way.”
“I . . . I . . . I can’t . . .”
“What is that?”
“. . . I . . .”
“That bruise on your arm. There.” Mr. Ishmael gesticulated. “It’s getting bigger. Do you see it?”
Plissken lifted his arm and stared at it in horror. A shade of sick, alien purple oozed across the skin.
“Where’s the telephone?” said Mr. Ishmael, making no effort to look for a telephone.
“It hurts,” said Plissken matter-of-factly.
Seconds later, the bruise had spread across his entire body. His skin hardened, darkened, cracked . . . He withered like a stick of vellum on fire, shoulders coming together, fracturing into infinite shards . . .
. . . I . . .
A tower burst from Plissken’s chest—the keen Japanese observer might recognize it as the Kyoto Tower, the tallest structure in the city, with its long white spire, orange observation deck and black antenna—and impaled L. Ron Ishmael. Dazzling flames of gore spewed from his eyes, nose, ears and mouth. As the tower forged a tumescent path, it tore him apart like a bag of oilpaint . . .
It was the first time he turned into Kyoto.
BEFORE THE 1ST TIME I TURNED INTO KYOTO
CRITERION PROSE
Infodump, or, Thy Piles
When the “I” was five, they plagiarized an alien invasion from Isaak Asimov’s novel To Unearth the Bruises Underground, trying to pass it off as the Genuine Article. The aliens resembled Asimov insofar as they possessed fins on their cheeks that, looked at askance, might be mistaken for the memorable science fiction author’s egregious sideburns. Hence the meta-element of the invasion, realpolitik critics later brought to the attention of the eager and hungry public.
“Isaak Asimov is attacking us.” According to an amateur mockumentary of the event shot in Technicolor with a 16mm spring-wound camera, several onlookers uttered these words as they witnessed the étrangers qui sont faux fall from the Texas sky, propelled downward by the fibrous pterodactylic wings of souped-up fangliders.
Wielding glitzy pulp scifi ectoblasters, they destroyed millions of humans and ravaged the social, physical, and telefissional landscape. Bodies spasmed into impossible poultice, disintegrated into superfine dust. Houses and stripmalls and skyscrapers collapsed. Trees were stripped of their bark and hung out to dry. Mindscreens shot up in price, becoming hopelessly unaffordable to the mass of manchildren . . . It would have gone on and on until nothing but covergirls and vintage auteurs remained, but as with all alien invasions, authentic or staged, eventually a virus whitewashed the aberration. In this instance, the virus resulted from overexposure to WD-40, which the aliens used to grease their intricate joints, but the hydrocarbon spray possessed an inert ingredient that maligned synthetic intestines, giving the aliens accelerated cases of colon cancer. They shriveled and died as quickly and whimsically as their attack had been plagiarized.
The authors of what came to be known as “War of the Worlds IV: The Irreality Show” were not apprehended until twenty years later, on the twenty-sixth birthday of “I,” which “I” spent alone, with a bottle of illegal Russian vodka and enough low-grade hemp to knit an afghan, watching reruns of The Jeffersons on Nick at Nite. They interrupted the show to inform viewers about the bust. George Jefferson morphed into the President of the United States of Amerika, who explained that the perpetrators of “The Irreality Show”—[shotgun imaginarium of two half-naked teenagers in a red room screaming as grizzled men in blowtorch masks persecute them]—had no real impetus for siccing a “rock brigade” [ref. Def Leppard’s On through the Night] of Asimovian extraterrestrial simulacra on the human race with the arachnoid mercilessness of Wellsian Martian terrorists. They were simply young, uninformed and naive. [Repeat torture image. Repeat again. Insert outtake of Ronald Reagan in Bedtime for Bonzo, then a State of the Union address.] “We can’t blame young people for their actions,” concluded the President. “But we can certainly hold the honkies accountable and punish them for their actions. Ducks pathologize their ducklings—end of story. Goodnight.”
Abrupt cut back to The Jeffersons in which George, the treacherously bitter patriarch, dishes out a racist invective to his son Lionel for fraternizing with a white girl . . .
He turned off the mindscreen, opened amniotic curtains, and looked out the window.
Crooked highrises climbed into the vermillion sky like scoliotic antiquarians. Even the smokestacks and antennas were kinked.
Infodump, or, Thy Piles
In the wake of the “The Irreality Show,” people forgot how to make things. The aliens destroyed most major cities, all of which were refurbished, to varying degrees, and yet almost every new city contained sectors that appeared to have been constructed by the Uncoordinated, the Disabled, the Inchoate and the Incompetent. At the same time, an unidentifiable aura of purpose, orderliness and design marked the deformed cityscapes, especially when observed from afar, like crop circles.
He blinked. He fingered his eye.
Infodump, or, Thy Piles
To reclaim the last twenty years of “I” . . . A mediatized blur. Too much screentime had infringed on subjective reality. After “I”’s parents died in the Crash, orphanages staged a brief comeback, foster care being outlawed as too broad and encouraging a forum for couples to unleash libidinal aggression. Municipal Urchin’s Annex was a fully technologized outfit that combined medieval and postfuturist aesthetics, with an emphasis on the latter, and except for the Patriarch-in-Chief, who nobody ever saw, the place was entirely run by outmoded, over-the-hill robosapiens that constantly broke down and had to be replaced, sometimes by altogether non-sentie
nt organisms.
Nonetheless “I” didn’t remember anything outrageously traumatic, even when “I” reviewed/revised footage shot from geostationary orbit. This was not the domain of Oliver Twist. Porridge flowed in abundance, for instance, dished out freely even if an orphan didn’t ask for it in a polite monotone. Furthermore, orphans were permitted and even encouraged to watch television in extremis, and the Annex enjoyed government-subsidized mindscreens in every room, including toilets and select walk-in closets, the government justifying such endowments for reasons of sheer pity—“They’re goddamn orphans, for Chrissakes!” the city commissioner squealed whenever the matter surfaced in roundtable discussions—which nobody could argue with for more than a few seconds at risk of being lethally branded for antiempathic conduct.
A Smaug Turbo GT landed on a nearby rooftop. Wings folding back with a hydraulic whistle, the vehicle crouched on its hind legs, and a staircase opened and descended from the abdomen . . . Steam hissed from eyes, jaw, ears. At least twenty Asian men in black business suits and hibiscus tribal masks filed down the staircase, strode to the edge of the rooftop, and stepped off.
The Smaug’s stomach swallowed the staircase and its eyes flared back to life. As it opened its wings and prepared for liftoff, the rooftop gave, and it vanished in a soft geyser of rubble and dust.
He waited for the building to collapse with bated breath. It didn’t happen. Depressed, he closed the curtains and returned to the mindscreen.
Infodump, or, Thy Piles
Ultimately the poor reconstruction of cities didn’t matter. By the time “I” accomplished the age of thirty, the Stick Figure War was well underway. And then came the timecrashes, and the zoneshifts, and the ominous volatility of reality and spacetime. Chaos became the rule, schizophrenia a normative condition, pathology the Middle C on the keyboard of existence. Life as a shithouse Rottweiler. The riptide of the human condition and its natural and constructed landscapes and noospheres slipped backwards and forwards in time with weird and relentless rigor. History fell into oblivion.
THE 2ND TIME I TURNED INTO KYOTO
CRITERION PROSE
“Good morning, ‘Sam.’ Nice to see you again.” Arm extended, Dr. Grindhaüß strode across the stained, spring-loaded mat.
“Sam” shook his hand. “Is that my name? ‘Sam’? I forgot. What’s my last name?”
Dr. Grindhaüß adjusted the collar of his gee. “Beats me. But surnames are superfluous. Überflüssig. As you know.”
“Actually they’re quite useful,” said “Sam.” “How else can we tell one ‘Sam’ from another?”
Pitiable smile. “By creases in the palms,” replied the doktor. “Nobody’s creases are the same.” He admired his palms, noting the deep lifelines curled around the thumbplates, then slowly drew hands into fists. He took three paces backwards, said, “Bow,” and snapped into position.
“Sam” followed suit.
“Hajime!”
The routine: spar for twenty minutes, give or take, all of which “Sam” is billed for, of course, but Dr. Grindhaüß insists that a good, prolonged fight before a session “aids and abets” “Sam”’s treatment and will eventually lead to a much speedier recovery from the various neuroses and pathologies that harrow him. If nothing else, it produces healthy endorphin “windsprints” that allow “Sam” to articulate himself with greater precision and enthusiasm during the session. Additionally, in the doktor’s words, “Physical confrontation will help to assuage the verbal and psychological confrontation that I will forthwith exert and mediate.”
“Sam” didn’t mind. He liked to fight, and he had consistently improved since he began taking lessons three years ago at the doktor’s behest. It used to be that Dr. Grindhaüß kicked his ass up and down the mat. Now he only kicked it one way or the other.
The spar always ended with a knockout effekted by way of some elaborate, technologized blow. Today the doktor employed an old-fashioned ozuki kick.
To revive the patient, he punched him in the heel with maximum leverage.
A powerfully built man, the doktor looked awry and unnatural, mainly as a result of unremitting cosmetic surgeries to negate wrinkles and enhance musculature, but the primary catalyst was his lack of hair, anywhere, face, arms, chest, legs, groin—he had shown “Sam” on multiple occasions—which Dr. Grindhaüß claimed to be a perfectly natural phenomenon, something he had been born with, or rather without, a prenatal affair in any event. Consequently his skin exhibited a rubbery texture, as if he had been shrinkwrapped in latex, with the exception of his scalp, the only fertile ground on his body. His slicked-back onyx hair appeared painted onto the head, but he insisted on its veracity, and he had even encouraged “Sam” to yank on it during moments of grave doubt. On one occasion he allowed “Sam” to administer a lie detector test to determine the authenticity of the hair once and for all. The doktor passed without incident, the needles of the polygraph inking virtual flatlines across an unraveling roll of papyrus. “Sam” continued to be skeptical. But he appreciated his therapist’s efforts to make him feel comfortable and worthy of an opinion.
“Domo arigato.” Dr. Grindhaüß helped “Sam” to his feet.
“Domo arigato,” “Sam” repeated, massaging his heel. Dr. Grindhaüß hoisted him over a shoulder, carried him into a small locker room, and laid him out on a massage table. He applied a diluted liniment to the heel, rubbing it in with care.
They removed their gees. They showered. There was only one stall and they had to trade off standing in front of the nozzle. They shared a bar of soap. They shared a towel. Finally they put their normal clothes on—blue Nehru suit and bolo tie for the doktor, brown leisure suit and plain necktie for “Sam”—and took their respective positions in an armchair and chaise lounge.
“Can I sit in the Big Chair today?” asked “Sam.”
“Certainly.”
They switched.
The doktor closed his eyes and fell asleep.
“Sam” implored him to wake up. He didn’t. “Sam” shook him. Dr. Grindhaüß hugged his knees, eyeballs like metronomes behind the lids. “Sam” got frantic.
The doktor’s eyes popped open. “I forgot—I can’t sit on this damned thing. Damned thing is too comfortable. God damn this comfy chair.”
They switched again.
Beeswax from a burning votive candle dribbled onto a cherrywood mantle. The flame was small and loud.
“Sam” said, “I turned into a city yesterday.”
“Go on.”
“It might have been a dream. It was probably a dream. I know this.”
“That’s impossible,” Dr. Grindhaüß rebuked. “Human beings no longer have dreams. Fallout. Sinnesfäule. The last documented dream was decades ago. It doesn’t happen. It can’t happen. You know this.”
“Right . . . Right. I know this . . . Are you real?”
“As real as you want me to be. Tell me more about the city. Your metamorphosis. It stinks of the abject.”
“Sam” told him the story, beginning with his arrest. He talked at length about the minutia of the city. Repeatedly he used the word “sharp” in reference to rooftops and dark places. Dr. Grindhaüß didn’t interrupt him. He observed him indolently, nodding and cocking his head during moments of swollen exposition.
“You were arrested?” he asked, exercising his fingers.
“I don’t know,” said “Sam.” “Maybe. Like I said, it’s all kind of fuzzy. Picture perfect, too. I remember it like it was yesterday.”
“Didn’t this happen yesterday?”
“Yes. Hence my sharp memory of the incident. And yet the incident remains murky. Inscrutable.”
“You mentioned the word ‘sharp’ again?”
“What?”
“Sharp. You’ve said that word at least fifty times today.” He removed his spectacles and began to clean them with a silk handkerchief.
“I have? Does that mean something?”
He removed his coat and rolled up his
sleeve to the armpit and began to flex his bicep. “Look at this fucker,” said the doktor. “Astonishing vascularity. I’m a fiftysomething-year-old man, by God.” It was true. Veins encrusted the hard ball of flesh that burst from his arm like ripe fruit. As he cranked his forearm up and down, up and down, the veins pulsed in a wriggling symphony.
“If I was a heroin addict I’d be set for life.” He rolled down the shirtsleeve and buttoned it. “All right. Time’s up. See you next week.”
“I just got here.”
“Yes. You were saying something about . . . sharpnesses? Yes. The word ‘sharp.’ You keep reiterating it. This is because you have a small penis and it’s all you can think about. Nothing shines more light across the hills and vales of your consciousness like the galactic signpost of your diminutive inadequacy. ‘Sharp’ denotes something that is pointed, like a pencil, or a harpoon, or a flagpole. Some flagpoles have bulbous tips. Nevertheless. A pointed thing is a long thing, or in any case an extended thing, unlike that thing between your legs. You want to be ‘sharp,’ in other words, which is to say, you want a bigger cock.”
“I don’t have a small penis,” “Sam” admitted. “Actually it’s rather large. Formidable, I’d argue. You just saw it in the shower. You were staring right at it. Your eyes were wide. You looked like a manga character. You looked scared.”
Dr. Grindhaüß frowned at his patient’s crotch. “Ah yes. I remember now.” He stood and stepped behind his chair, monitoring the votive. “Tell me more about your transformation.”
“I’ve told you everything.”
“Tell me more.”
“Do you want me to make something up?”
“No need to bite my head off. I’m trying to help you.”
“Sam” blinked at the ceiling. Dr. Grindhaüß sat back down in the chair and inspected the paisley swirls on his tie.
The Kyoto Man (The SciKungFi Trilogy) Page 3