by Andrew Fox
“I soon reached the point where I could assist Dr. Weiss with his work. I tried erasing from my memory all thoughts of my inhumane genesis and the brutality that followed. I pretended that Theodore Weiss was my father, that my life had started the night of my exodus from the research center. Dr. Weiss made the transition from treating me like a student to a junior colleague, and then to his respected equal. During the eighteen months leading to his death, he came to view me with a measure of awe. The more I applied myself to his projects, the higher his star rose within MannaSantos. His increasing penchant for privacy was viewed as an acceptable eccentricity, given the profits his researches were adding to the corporate coffers.
“The final project we worked on together was the Metaboloft gene.”
Now I’m standing in a simple bedroom, staring down at the husk of Theodore Weiss. “He was diagnosed with spinal cancer. The tumors were inoperable. Radiation was ineffective, and chemotherapy drained too much of his strength. He eschewed further treatment, hiding his impending death from the company, eager to complete with me what he considered his life’s crowning achievement.”
The distant sun of winter looks smaller than the faded, midday moon. I have a shovel in my hands. The blade, with my weight pressing it, penetrates the dry earth easily. I’m burying Theodore Weiss, straight into the red, sandy soil.
“I had to hide my existence. No one could know that Theodore Weiss had died. It was simple for me to assume his identity and responsibilities as the project’s lead geneticist. I already knew his clearance codes, and much of what he’d passed off as his own work had actually been mine. Utilizing old lecture disks, digitally altered, I was able to participate as my deceased mentor in video conferences. His work had been his life; no friends or relations would come seeking him.
“And then I decided to use those clearance codes to learn more about my adoptive father, the man who had been Buddha and Moses and Jesus to me. My savior. My god.”
The desert gravesite shimmers and fades. I’m back in the theater, back in my own body. The skeletal Joseph stands before me. The muscles and tendons of his face harden, a topographical map of grief and betrayal. “Foolishly desperate to regain a sense of intimacy with him, I accessed his journal and private correspondence. What I found…” His voice goes soft as a sleepy child’s, but volatile as nitroglycerin. “What I found were lies. He hadn’t been a junior scientist reassigned to the Walterson Project. He was the project’s director, the initiator, the man who’d commanded that my brothers and I be created from frozen cell scrapings. Just as he later commanded that all evidence of his work be destroyed. And his saintly wife, the woman whose death had inspired him to uplift me? She hadn’t died. She’d divorced him three years before I met him. She remained very much alive, still working at MannaSantos as director of public relations.”
Oh my God… Harri? She was married to Weiss?
“Human kindness is an illusion. Man is the cruelest of all beasts, because he adds the power to deceive to the power to kill.”
His green eyes have become pools of darkness. “America wanted to grow thin? They paid men like Theodore Weiss to mutilate children — to mutilate me — so they could fit into smaller and smaller pairs of bluejeans? I would give them what they wanted, and more, and more, until they choked on their own vanity. Until ambulating flesh was a bad memory the grass and trees had forgotten. Metaboloft was the scourge Fate placed in my hands.
“Acting as the infallible Dr. Weiss, it was easy to convince the development team that the protein shield I’d designed was foolproof. But I knew the combination of environmental inputs which would unshackle the gene. I’d tracked the development of seasonal ozone holes over the Midwest. Metaboloft was a bomb on a precisely calibrated timer. And now it’s a bomb inside each one of us, accelerating our basal metabolisms, becoming more voracious with each meal we ingest.”
Have any of the security guards been hearing this? I doubt I could make an appeal to them — Joseph could easily make me mute.
The only person I can be reasonably sure will hear me is Joseph himself. He wouldn’t have shown me all this unless he wants a response. Could he be subliminally begging me to convince him not to kill every human being on earth?
“Joseph… maybe the kindness Dr. Weiss showed you wasn’t entirely venal. Maybe it was his attempt to atone. Didn’t he bring you here to share with you the best experiences of his life? Would he have done that if he hadn’t come to love you as a son? I know something about having done a great evil, and how hard it can be to make amends.”
His fleshless death mask hasn’t changed its expression. Maybe what reached Benjamin will reach him, too? “Your original brother, Hud Walterson, suffered just as you suffered. He was robbed of his potential, humiliated, forced to be a test subject for experimental science and quackery. He lashed out, just like you’re lashing out. But even at his most destructive, he never harmed another soul. Even when he was burning factories, his goal was to lift people up —”
My mouth moves, but no sound comes out. Joseph doesn’t want a debate.
“You are… an interesting man, Dr. Shmalzberg. It might be worth some of my time to see what is inside your head. If you reach the morning with an unbroken mind — a slender chance, but this is Las Vegas, land of gamblers and daunting odds — I will keep you alive until Metaboloft takes you. I might like to see my progenitor’s face through your eyes. Come morning, if you’re more than a husk, I’ll teach you to project your memories using the RM —”
“Hell no, you won’t!”
I jerk my head around. Trotmann, still Elvis but frothing mad, looks primed for a fatal embolism. “Shmalzberg’s getting on that goddamned roller coaster! That was the deal! You’d screw with his mind some, then I’d take the Elvis fat and strap him into the big bang!” He stares wildly around at his handful of Ann-Margrets. “Isn’t that right, girls?”
Joseph laughs. “Trotty-Trot, be careful you don’t use up your value as light entertainment.” His voice drips with condescension, sugar-coating a promise of violence. “You gave my brother a home, and a reason for existing. But you also treated him little better than a stray dog. Get on my bad side, and I’ll show you what it feels like to plunge twenty stories.”
“Shove your threats up your fat ass!” Trotmann, shaking with fury, wheels closer to his women. The acolytes stare at each other uneasily. “I don’t have to take this from you! What do you care what happens to Shmalzberg, just so long as that fat doesn’t end up in the hands of the government? We’re taking the fat, and Shmalzberg’s going on the goddamn ride!”
Joseph shakes his head. “No. You’re the one going on a ride.” He turns to the four MannaSantos security men. They’re outnumbered by Trotmann’s women, and only equally armed, yet their far greater intimidation factor seems to skew the scales in their favor. “Tie him to the seat next to Dr. Shmalzberg. Then put an RM helmet on his head.”
Will the women fight? One reaches for her weapon. The other five look as frozen as the statues in the courtyard. If only I could get my hands loose —
A voice booms from the theater’s sound system, a voice that isn’t Joseph’s:
“Trespassers, drop your weapons on the ground.”
CHAPTER 18
The voice echoing through the theater isn’t Joseph’s — but it is piercingly familiar. Joseph’s projection flickers. He’s as startled as any of the guards or acolytes.
“You are trespassing on property and abusing equipment which belongs to the Graceland Corporation. You are surroundedby Graceland security and Las Vegas police. Set your weapons on the ground, step away from the Elvis remains, and vacate the premises. Do this, and no charges will be filed.”
That voice — of course I know it! It’s Swaggart’s. He and his Elvis-impersonating goons have been tailing me all the way since Memphis; he must’ve been the one who sent them after me in Orlando. I don’t know how they found me, but I’m grateful as hell.
“You have ten secon
ds to put your weapons aside.”
Only a few of my captors look cowed; the rest scan the theater for defensible positions. “You’d better do what they say,” I shout, improvising furiously. “These are serious people — they control the whole city of Memphis like a Mafia syndicate, and they’ll do whatever they have to to get what they want —”
“NO! Nobody gets the Elvis fat but me!” Trotmann grabs a pistol from the belt of one of his startled followers. He rolls toward me faster than I would’ve thought possible, then slams into my chair and paws my torso, reaching for the Elvis. Rolling away from me, it’s like he’s torn off one of my limbs.
The Elvis perched precariously on his lap (Hold onto it, at least!), he waves the gun uselessly with his bad right hand while propelling himself toward an exit. “You spineless fuckers!” he shouts at the ceiling. “You don’t have the balls to shoot a helpless old man in a wheelchair! Ha! I DARE you!”
Someone takes his dare. Before the shot finishes echoing, Trotmann slumps over the Elvis. His wheelchair coasts to a halt ten feet from the door.
“You MORON!” Swaggart screams. “You might’ve damaged the artifact!”
The acolytes who were unnerved before, now sprint for the exits. The others either duck beneath tables or overturn them to use as shields. More shots shake the theater. Two MannaSantos guards fire back from behind upturned tables, aiming at the ceiling, where the gunfire seems to be coming from. There could be technical crawl spaces up there; Swaggart would have access to the schemata of this whole facility.
Suddenly the theater becomes the surface of Lake Mead, surrounded by distant canyon walls. I’m hovering just above the surface of the water; Elvis and Ann-Margret whiz past me on water skis, soaking me with their spray. Swaggart’s doing? Or has Joseph’s panic left the system without a hand on the tiller?
Even above the roar of twin speedboats, I hear the intensifying exchange of gunfire. I could catch a bullet any second, although the RM might make it taste like a rum and Coke and feel like a showgirl’s caress. I’ve got to get to the floor. I start rocking back and forth. Can’t tell if I’m making any progress — I can’t feel the damn chair beneath my ass, can’t tell if my balance is shifting, can’t see anything but sunlight shimmering off the lake and Elvis’s perfect hair and Ann-Margret’s smile —
Whoa! I plunge through the surface of the water. Now I’m under the waves, swimming past a Technicolor reef with the ease of a manta ray (There aren’t any reefs in Lake Mead — could this be a scenario from Blue Hawaii?). The sudden change in altitude must’ve been me tumbling over and hitting the floor. But the RM helmet wasn’t dislodged; I’m still getting the complete, if rudderless, effect.
Now I’m back in the theater again, but it’s a different theater, larger, with a conventional stage. I’m in the midst of an audience, in the front row, near the orchestra. I recognize all this: it’s the Flamingo Casino employee talent competition from Viva Las Vegas, with Elvis battling Ann-Margret for the prize money so he can buy an engine for his race car. But the scenario is all wrong — Elvis and his dancers are dressed in zoot suits, dancing with tommy guns, as if they’re performing a number from Guys and Dolls. Or The Trouble with Girls…
The dancers pivot and spin, holding their machine guns above their heads like batons. Trap doors open in the ceiling; gun muzzles flash, spraying the dancers with lead. Two of the dancers fall out of the line, clutching their breasts while they twirl to the floor. The remaining dancers leap and kick, then duck low as they fire their weapons in unison at the ceiling. Twin figures plummet from the trap doors, dangling from ropes like broken marionettes. As they twitch, their bodies gush fountains of bright red blood from dozens of wounds.
Two more trap doors spring open. Rope ladders drop to the floor. Two men scurry down them like fleeing spiders as the orchestra vamps toward a climax. One of the men has a bandage covering his nose. The two fleeing men run left, then right, blocked at each turn by menacing dancers. A trio surrounds one of the men. They all place the muzzles of their guns against his head and pull the triggers, and his head disappears with a resounding pop, like a soap bubble.
Elvis himself halts the second fleeing man, the one with the bandaged nose. He grasps his Tommy gun by the muzzle, winds up into a batter’s stance, and swings. His opponent’s struck head flies for the rafters. When it hits the ceiling, the whole theater flashes as dazzlingly as a pinball machine, the orchestra resounding with clangs and honks and blings…
And then I’m back in the real theater — I think — lying on my side on the floor, still tied to the chair. My ears are ringing. The air stinks of burnt gunpowder and blood.
Christ… they managed to massacre each other. Cries of pain push through my tinnitus. Ten feet away, a MannaSantos guard writhes on the floor, clutching a bloody knee, screaming an unending loop of profanities. Above me, a man dressed as an Elvis impersonator dangles from an access panel in the ceiling, his slack torso and arms forming a macabre chandelier. I think it’s one of the men who almost pitched me out of the Swiss Family Robinson Treehouse.
“I’m glad to sense that you’re alive and unharmed, Dr. Shmalzberg. I’d miss you terribly if you were already gone.”
Joseph’s voice in my head — shit…
“I’m sorry to disappoint you, but this bungled intervention won’t be your salvation. I’m not certain these men are friends of yours, although one seems to know you. Shall we find out more?”
I try freeing my hands. The ropes are a little looser than before, but not loose enough for me to slip free. “Joseph,” I shout. “Free me so I can help the people who are hurt. That man over there by the table will bleed to death from that knee wound. I can keep him alive until an ambulance comes. He’s one of your own men —”
“That’s an inventive ploy, Doctor. But I don’t think I’ll be setting you loose just yet. We’ve got lots of other things on our agenda, you and I. Mr. McNaley, go pick Dr. Shmalzberg off the floor please. Mr. Kelvin, place our new prisoner into the RM unit next to Dr. Shmalzberg.”
I’m lifted from the floor and shoved roughly against the table. I spot Swaggart, his thin arms pulled behind him by a man bleeding from his temple. Swaggart’s bleeding, too, more seriously. The right half of his pink velvet vest is stained crimson. His face has gone the color of plaster, even whiter than the mound of bandages crowning his nose job.
Kelvin pauses when he’s a few feet from the man with the knee wound. His hard face grows indecisive; his eyes flit between his comrade and me. “If — if he’s a doctor, and he can help Buckner, maybe we should —”
“Mr. Kelvin, what did I just say?” Joseph’s voice booms.
“But there’s still a chance to do something for him —”
“Mr. Kelvin, do you need to be reminded that I have complete access to your family’s files? Would you care to know what my other employees will do to your elderly mother and father if you persist in being contrary?”
Kelvin shuts up. He ties Swaggart to the chair next to me and secures an RM helmet to his head.
The Graceland curator rouses himself from a nearly catatonic daze when he sees me. “Swaggart,” I say, “why didn’t you actually go to the police? Why did you try to force things yourself?”
He licks his lips, now coated with blood. “Wasn’t… an official Graceland operation… going after you. I did it… on my own. If I’d gone to the cops… I couldn’t have been sure I’d walk away with the Elvis remains.” He smiles, his mouth twitching involuntarily. “Besides… I was tired of always being… supporting player. Wanted to be… the star. That’s why I got… the nose fixed.”
Joseph materializes on the far side of the table. This time, his image combines the standard, thick-jowled Walterson head with a Charles Atlas body, rippling with comic-book muscles. “So you actually are connected with the Graceland Corporation?” he asks.
Swaggart’s face doesn’t register shock or amazement, just agony. “I’m their… head curator of Elvis artifacts.
”
“A junk collector who plays with guns. What do you know about the Metaboloft gene?”
Swaggart shakes his head. “Never… never heard of it. Just wanted the fat. Like those other men chasing Shmalzberg. Like you…”
Not like me. I’m not an obsessive, like Trotmann, or a dreamy fool like my brother.” He dismisses Swaggart with a scowl. “I don’t find you very interesting, Mr. Swaggart. But you’re a historian of sorts, so you should find what I have to share fascinating — a personalized preview of the future history of mankind.”
Swaggart’s eyes roll upward in their sockets. He’s been sucked into the RM world. Joseph’s not letting me see what Swaggart is seeing. But the palpable pressure against the edges of my consciousness is his way of letting me know he can open the floodgates at any time.
Swaggart’s shoulders twitch. His hands struggle against their bonds. He tries to roll himself into a ball, as if his stomach is on fire and he wants to smother the inferno. His face tightens until I hear his teeth crack. Then he screams. A high-pitched sound that obliterates the moanings of the other dying men. It makes me sick to my stomach.
After his vocal cords have been shredded to a pulp, Swaggart’s head falls to the table. He’s still shallowly breathing, but otherwise, he’s a cinder.
“That little preview was also meant for your benefit, Doctor.” Joseph’s voice is omnipresent, coming at me from every direction. “Your Mr. Swaggart didn’t have much in the way of reserves. No fat on him, either physically or spiritually. I didn’t make him experience anything I haven’t already personally endured. I’ve been eating Metaboloft foods since a year before the gene escaped into the wild. I’ll still be vanishing months after the last of my ‘countrymen’ have disappointed the worms with the paucity of flesh on their dead bones. And the last part of me to vanish, as I look out upon the empty cities, will be my grin, like the Cheshire Cat’s.”