by IGMS
Issue 21 - February 2011
http://www.InterGalacticMedicineShow.com
Copyright © 2011 Hatrack River Enterprises
Table of Contents - Issue 21 - February 2011
* * *
Brutal Interlude
by Wayne Wightman
The Devil's Rematch
by Spencer Ellsworth
Go Home, And Be With Your Families
by Steven R. Stewart
Ratoncito's Last Tooth
by Mike Hill
A Frame of Mother-of-Pearl
by Cat Rambo
Breakout
by Edmund R. Schubert
InterGalactic Interview With Patricia McKillip
by Darrell Schweitzer
Letter From The Editor
by Edmund R. Schubert
Brutal Interlude
by Wayne Wightman
Artwork by Nick Greenwood
* * *
Walter Roscoe
was a little bit taken with Noreen Brown, the woman in the tea shop across the street from his pet store, Walter's Used Pets. Both in their aimless thirties, Noreen, he'd learned, had divorced herself from a lawyer husband who had promised her lifelong poverty, and on this he had delivered. Walter had never had the marriage experience, he suspected, because of the purple birthmark on his left cheek, the size and approximate shape of a small hand. People assumed he was psychologically strange. Thus, he thrived in the company of cast-off animals. He knew this made him vulnerable.
Walter developed an every-other-day tea habit in her shop where he could say hello to Ms. Brown and, perhaps today, say something else. Now, sitting at a little table, he tried not to squirm. Perhaps he'd ask her how she was doing, a question he heard people ask each other a lot, but whose purpose eluded him, since the answer was never meaningful. Out of desperation, he asked her how she was doing.
For a moment she looked like she didn't know the answer to a hard question. Then she said with a happy-sad face, "Another day, another dolor," and placed the cup of Assam before him.
That was when he realized he was a little taken by Noreen Brown.
The next day, through his front window, a no-tea day for him, he saw her delicately bustle out of her shop, holding a tray with a teapot under a cloth thing.
Noreen came through his door backside first, to keep the tea tray clear. "I have to get right back," she said as she set it on his counter, "but I thought perhaps you could return these this evening, about when I close?"
He froze -- she actually stood in his shop, Noreen Brown, in front of him, talking. He unfroze just enough to say, "Yes, I will." Walter, for the rest of his life, remembered her faintly sly smile and wide-eyed expectation. She smelled of flour and her final words, ". . . this evening, about when I close?" -- the saddest and most hopeful words he had ever heard. Garith Glone
looked at the datapage one last time, said, "Take her," and broke connection. There was some je ne sais quoi about this woman, something about her face. In his spacious office, he darkened the lights, watched, and awaited the unfolding events he had just triggered.
ICU!
(the clever logo-name for I See You!) was the latest incarnation of invasion entertainment. Hosted by Lance Graff, dragged from obscurity in Barstow, big grin, big bravado, to become everybody's friend with a constant stream of self-evident observations. ("You are who you are!" "We got weather today!" Etc.) He wasn't quick, but he looked good and hadn't become offensive. Lance was this afternoon fully geared, aglow with sweat and excitement, accompanied by security and crew, in the back of the hot-oil-and-electronics-smelling ICU! van, just minutes from inducting their next contestant. Around the world 1.2 billion watched this special high-density trivid broadcast. New Contestant = Big News = Big Revenue.
All America held its breath, and a lot of the rest of the world.
ICU! selected one or two contestants a week, allegedly at random, though it was widely believed each was actually picked by Garith Glone, himself, since so many of his severest critics or their children ended up as discredited, raving, or suicidal contestants.
It was a simple concept: As a contestant, one's entire life was broadcast to the world -- every second, from various angles -- eating, snoring, bathroom habits, any sexual practices, everything and all of it, as in all of it from all angles in the highest of definitions. And not only was it broadcast as it happened, most stations provided extended evening highlights of the most popular five or six contestants -- embarrassing moments, surreal moments, contestants blowing all reality -- and cursory coverage of the other twenty-some. Perversely, those few who didn't mind the intrusion dropped off the charts in days. Being a contestant was a cakewalk for the densely stupid, the arrogant, and the sociopathic; most others had trouble, and there was the fun of it.
Since it was quasi-governmentally-run and provided immense revenue, everyone between sixteen and sixty was considered subject to it, in return for lower taxes, with no exceptions for the wealthy, the imbecilic, the delicate, or the dying. Contestants were paid one million dollars for each day their ratings stayed in the top five of the twenty-five contestants; the others got a lot of merchandise. One remained a fully monitored contestant, even against one's will, depending entirely on the ratings. Slots below fifteen had a fast turnover. But the most interesting were the ones driven mad or near mad, which assured higher ratings, in proportion to their affliction. People loved it.
Noreen Brown
took a smooth deep breath when the little bell on the tea shop door jingled. It would be Walter, arriving a little early. She hurried toward the front.
It wasn't Walter.
"Hi! I'm Lance Graff from I See You! And guess what, Miss Nor-een Brown?!" He was all excitement and vacuous charm. It was one of those five-second moments when a life becomes a catastrophe.
Walter Roscoe
thought things moved pretty fast after that.
He witnessed the commotion in the street, the dozens of vehicles, the armed crowd-management team ready to game, the helicopter blapping overhead, and by the time he had planned to walk across the street to return her tea set with the cloth thing, she was a celebrity.
From his shop, Walter had seen Lance Graff give his famous "Big Signal" for loosing the swarmers, those airborne cameras no bigger than peas that would follow her everywhere, anticipate her movements, and meet her wherever she arrived. They would swarm around her in the dark, and in obscure wavelengths they would see everything from every angle, translated into visible light.
The world waited.
Walter turned his trivid to the ICU! channel, and there she was, Noreen, sprawled on the floor of her tea shop across the street, weeping and weeping. The multiple views of the swarmers coordinated so that her trivid image was fully dimensional. The commentators discussed Lance Graff's apparent special concern for her -- but she had been unresponsive. Walter knew that if he went to comfort her, the world would stare and talk about him and the left side of his face. Strangers would act like they knew him.
Across the street, ICU! Security monitored her door. The neighborhood had been swept for non-residents, and from now on, she would be protected from strangers who would want to touch or kiss or kill her. She could go anywhere or do anything except not be a contestant -- as long as it wasn't illegal, insofar as they could stop her. What she wanted, she had only to ask for. The budget for the show was fabulous but was only a tiny percentage of what ICU! brought in.
Walter politely explained who he was to the armed person in the black mask. A quick ID check, and yes, he was cleared to go in. In front of his chest, Walter carried the tea set with the cloth thing over the pot. He had no idea what he felt about what he was doing.
He bumped backwards through the door and put the tray o
n the counter. And there she was, just like on the trivid, on the floor hiding her face, the swarmer cameras circling lazily, like flies.
On him in an instant, Lance Graff whispered loudly into Walter's face, "Hello, I'm Lance Graff. She's having a rough time of it, isn't she? She's attractive. You're across the street, am I right? Big day. What do you think?" Swarmers circled them.
"I thought I should come over," he said around the knot in his throat. "Maybe I can help."
He was thinking that all over the world people were muttering, "Splotch-face! Creep!" at their trivids, at him, and wondering if he was a pervert and would try to molest her, what with the birthmark.
Walter crossed the room to her and knelt beside her. Her hands were wet with crying. As if it might give them privacy, Walter shielded their faces with his hands. He spoke quietly to her for a minute, then another, and soon they sat at one of the customer tables. She quivered. Her face moved from one rigid expression of fear to another.
"We should have tea every day," he said helplessly. And he wasn't sure either one of them understood anything. "Noreen?"
Her focus shifted to him precisely. "What."
"We can still have tea every day."
Her focus sharpened. "This is really happening to me, isn't it?"
"Yes."
"Everyone's going to see everything I do . . . aren't they."
"Yes."
A middle aged gentleman, rumpled black suit, thinning black hair, opened the shop door tentatively, grinned, and gently knocked on the door frame. "Hello?" He pushed the door further, making the little bell brightly jingle. "Hello? I'm Ms. Brown's ICU! physician, Dr. Leonardi," he said to Walter. He sat down with them. He spoke slowly and evenly, just above a whisper: "Ms. Brown. I am so pleased to meet you. I'm entirely at your beck and call, anytime, anywhere. Any way you think I could be useful, just say the word. But for right now . . ."
He pulled several plastic bottles of pills out of his pockets and put them on the table before her. She forced her eyes toward the bottles.
"This is routine, Ms. Brown. Now, these receive my highest recommendation: This one -- For Sleep, like it says on the bottle, with the dosage. This one, For Calmness. This, For Quiet Thoughts." He leaned toward her and said, "We understand there may be issues of modesty involved. Quiet Thoughts helps with that. Would you like any of these to help you along?"
"I want all of them."
He pushed them toward her and laid one of his hands over hers. "Now, you note the dosages." He leaned closer and the world listened to his intimate whisper: "I won't say you can't go over it a little, but if you take a bunch of them, you'll have to be, you know, pumped out." His face slowly went from serious to sad. "I'm very sorry this has happened to you, Ms. Brown, truly. You have lovely hands." He stood and nodded at Walter. "I'll do my best for you," he said to her. "Ask for me. I'm near." He twitched a smile at Walter and left without sound.
Walter didn't know what to say.
Noreen forced her eyes from the bottles of pills to Walter's face. "How long do you think it will take me to not want to die?"
As though anyone could know that. "Four days," he said out of nowhere.
"Then, Walter," she said, forcing the words through her tightened throat, "beginning now, I want you to excuse me for four days. Then please come for tea?"
"I shouldn't leave you."
"Everyone's going to see me." She tilted her head a little to the side and said, as a question, "Walter, please don't watch me?" She looked horribly weak.
"No, I won't and I won't listen to people talk about it. I shouldn't leave you."
She nodded with glacial slowness. She mouthed the word Go.
He left her, not knowing the meaning of her sending him away, not knowing what was going to happen in either of their lives. He felt like he had left the earth behind.
Noreen Brown
survived the first two days only by drugging herself into insensibility. She was surprised how many pills she could take without getting pumped out, or maybe they pumped her and she hadn't noticed. Whatever. Her rating bobbled around nineteenth.
Much later, when those hours were played back for her, she saw that Lance Graff had repeatedly had his hands all over her, outside her clothes, under the pretense of making her more comfortable. The mousy doctor, Leonardi, had shown up morning and evening to check her over, and aside from always holding one of her hands, he touched her delicately, only as necessary, often with Lance Graff standing over him.
Morning of the third day, moderately clear-headed, she lay in her twisted sheets, and tried to put the few pieces together.
Though they still watched her, the swarmers were silent and unmoving for the moment, perched on furniture and shelves, and Noreen wanted them to stay that way.
She had been trying to think in rational steps about what she knew for sure:
One: I am Noreen Brown and I would prefer to live.
Two: Noreen Brown can't live this way; she will find a way to die.
Three: I will die unless I am not Noreen Brown.
Then, so easily one might think she was born for it, she thought, Goodnight, Noreen Brown. Maybe we'll meet again. Goodnight. She listened for a while to her breath. I am a person who is not Noreen Brown. I am now not that tea shop person. She let Noreen slip away as another face entered her mind's mirror, the face of the person she would become -- someone she had been for a moment here, a moment there . . . someone who had been robbed of being Noreen Brown, someone with a high degree of resentment.
She rolled slowly over to her back and let the sheet fall open.
The world gasped.
Aside from her nudity, she didn't precisely look like Noreen Brown. It was something about the narrowed eyes and her lips, a look of bitterest contempt.
Copies of the moment proliferated geometrically.
The world sat mesmerized.
Day three, her rating went to sixth. She moved into the penthouse of the Santa Miranda Hidalgo. She had her hair cut and lightened to the lightest blond. She selected different clothes and spoke in single-syllable commands. "Here." "Stop." "Out." Her ratings climbed; she showed promise: sponsors lined up.
At one point during her shopping, she saw one of the background technicians smirking at her. She spoke languidly in his direction. "If I ever see him again, I'll have his house burned." He was instantly transferred to a pitiful job out of state to save him from willing arsonists, who were never in short supply. This early incident rang a few alarms in the mid levels of ICU! but they were drowned out by the rain of increased revenue.
Millions loved the incident -- victim turns on victimizer, Miss Nobody strikes at Goliath -- with few recognizing the irony of their cruel affection or identifying with Goliath, which they should have done.
Garith Glone
owned PulseCorp, which owned ICU!, among many other things. In the darkness of his office, Glone sat and gazed at Noreen Brown as she moved around her bedroom, preparing for sleep. The frail light caught the planes of her face. Her fingers unfolded like delicate sea animals and combed through her hair. Garith Glone had adored a face like hers, long ago, back at the edge of memory. While she slept, he looked on her in fascination.
Walter Roscoe
heard the convoy arrive outside Walter's Used Pets at 1:30 p.m., on the fourth day. A driver gestured the disbelieving Walter into the waiting limousine and took him with his own garden's five-rose bouquet to Noreen's hotel suite. The driver answered no questions. Ignorant of everything that had happened, this luxury, this production, made him suspect he had been mistaken for someone else. The driver sequentially opened and closed all doors and pressed all buttons for Walter, who now stood in a grand but empty penthouse entryway, eighth floor.
The woman who had been Noreen Brown came around the corner, accompanied by the soft rushing sound of the swarmers. At six or seven feet away, Walter could see a good bit of Noreen in her, but there was also someone else. This woman had bobbed blond hair, wore
shorts and a half-opened white shirt. Her eyes looked bigger and her lips softer -- a kind of thin, tightly-wrapped Marilyn Monroe look.
"Noreen couldn't be here, most literally," she said softly. "When she comes back, Walter, you'll be the first to know. I'm Sylvia."
"I might need a minute to understand this." He held out the flowers. "Here."
They were served tea, on the expansive deck, in deck chairs, overlooking the tree-shrouded city. The swarmers settled in places high and low, still as long as she was still.
She said, "Noreen couldn't live in this disaster. I gave her what she wanted."
"I'll do anything to help." He wanted to say more but couldn't think of anything.
"I'll tell you when I need you. Walter, you can watch me on the trivid now, if you want. I'm not Noreen."
He nodded, but he didn't know about intruding on her like everyone else -- he actually knew her. "I'd like to see you in person sometimes."
Before he could think, she stood, leaned toward him, and kissed his lips -- not quickly, not slowly -- and said, "You will."
Sylvia Romilar
noted that after Lance Graff brought her a message or admirers' flowers, he would silhouette himself against a window in some pseudo-heroic pose, or appear conspicuously suffering from crippling sadness, cornball even to pre-teens, and he would wear those tight, skimpy, expensive clothes he got paid to wear. She gave him pleasant smiles and kind words, once going so far as to briefly hold his hand, thus making him more willing to be used, if the need arose.
On day five, Garith Glone, Mr. PulseCorp himself, stopped by for a set-check, which meant that on random whims he nosed into whatever he felt like. Fiftyish, trim and elegant, he focused on her and displayed the radiant grin that $40,000 of famous dental work provided. Liquidly rolling his words in anapests, he lingered over vowels: "I'm so glad to finally meet you now face-to-face, Ms. Romilar. Of all contestants, you are one of the very most fascinating." He held both her hands in his, lingering longer than the world expected.