by Kelso, Chris
—We’re doing this. I can’t go through my whole life looking like Thomas Gale! I definitely can’t have a serious techno-sexual relationship with a droid in his image either!
Dr. Van Klee lit a cigar and observed the android spat curiously. No.215 advanced on the doctor, startling Van Klee into fumbling his lighter.
—I’ll go first.
—No— No.3115 stood up sharply— I’ll do it.
Van Klee retrieved his lighter, picked up a pair of latex surgical gloves and began lubricating them with squirts of motor oil.
—Very well…
~
No.215 stood outside in the alleyway of Van Klee’s surgery. He could hear the electrical gnawing of the drill through the red brick walls. It sent a tendril of dread along his spinal column.
The alleyway was a narrow lane of shadows and overflowing garbage dumpsters. Arms and limbs hung over the edge of the bulging receptacles. No.215 experienced the first pangs of doubt, which soon grew to overwhelm his system.
Did he really love no.3115 or was it just a techno-sexual aching to find union of some kind? He’d know for sure when all the Thomas Gale had been physically removed from his partner.
The Immitant noticed something out the corner of his eye— a figure standing at the end of the alley looking directly at him.
It was Thomas Gale’s wife. She seemed to be in the latter stages of The Black Dog disease.
~
Van Klee stopped for a clean breath. He reached behind no.3115’s head and flipped the switch that powered him on.
—Welcome back— Van Klee said washing away the dark oil from his gloves.
—You’re done?
—Yes. I gave you the complete make-over.
The Immitant was filled with nervous excitement.
—Do you have a mirror?
—Certainly.
Van Klee forwarded a make-up mirror smudged with beige. No.3115 observed the doctor’s handy work with dazed horror.
—What have you done???
—I’ve changed your image like you asked…
—But… I look like you!
The doctor shook two spray-cans of flesh coloured paint.
—Yes. I figured you wouldn’t mind.
No.3115 looked down at the narrowing dimensions of Thomas Gale’s body and realised he was secured to the operating table by metal binders.
—Where is 215? What’s going on?
—I wouldn’t worry about that. I took the liberty of informing his old lady about his whereabouts.
—You’ve done what?
—That was the agreement we came to, she and I. She’ll get him home and put him right— though I wouldn’t at all be surprised if she turns him into the junkyard. She was mighty steamed about the whole deception. Can’t be an easy thing to take finding out your husband is a no-good stinking android.
—You bastard…
—Hardly, I could’ve turned you in. Same sex droids are executed on sight you know? You’ll be staying here with me.
—But, why do you need me?
—You think I can afford my own Immitant on a backstreet doctor’s wage? Ha! I hand in the stray Immitant of Thomas Gale and keep the other one for myself, that’s you. I have a rather high profile malpractice suite coming up against me. I’ll be getting 30 years, or should I say, you’ll be getting 30 years. The operation only requires one more crucial procedure— the re-programming.
—No matter how much you scramble my mainframe, I will always love no.215…
—That’s all love is, just programming, well, self-sabotage really. Humans don’t fall in love anymore old boy. We know better. But you droids are all a self-absorbed bunch. You’re like flies crawling over each other.
Van Klee looked at No.3155 and sighed. He knew the feeling of heart-break and betrayal well.
—If you can help it, I suggest that one simply avoid love, especially if you’re a man. Woman can hurt a man so much more than the reverse. Woman possess allure and grace and genuine beauty and when a man is allowed to taste these things and come to know them, and demand some kind of ownership over them, a fate worse than death awaits when they are inevitably taken away.
—Uh…
—Rejection is something that becomes less sharp through time, but never loses its penetration. In my life, believe it or not, even I have suffered much rejection but find that it’s only how I behave around other people that has changed.
No.3155 tried not to won over by the insane doctor’s speech.
—Rather than inflict a mood one learns to put a mask on such things. I became afraid to venture outside my own house for fear that I would see something in the outside world that would bring the F-ing B to mind. I have suffered from the symptoms of this love germ.
The Immitant grunted then regretted being so dismissive and unfeeling.
—Oh yes, I’ve been subjected to intense anomy, sadness/depressive urges every four hours, (which I fear may have left me impotent) irregular bowel movements, hallucinations and an acute neuralgia.
A loud crash came from the alley. A trashcan toppled over and rolled. Dr. Van Klee grinned as if he knew what all the commotion was about.
—Don’t ever try to fuck the system, I hope you’ve learned a lesson from all this? You may have managed to usurp some of man’s traits, but it was downright retarded of you to ever think you could get away with this. I mean really! No one is immune from The Black Dog once it’s off its leash.
No.3115 stared at the damp ceiling and just wanted it over with. He prayed that 215 would survive Gale’s terrible wife.
—I’ve got the skills to turn you into a first-class pleasure-droid. Maybe I’ll separate your torso and mould each end into something different. Of course I’ll have to get some scrap metal to fill in the gaps, but when I’m done with you, you’ll finally be beautiful.
—Just be quick about it.
—I’d make some decent cash selling you to the little businesses in Wire, you know, maybe the waste disposal industry? I know they’re keen to downsize human staff.
—I hope something unspeakable happens to you Dr. Van Klee.
—If it’s any consolation, I can promise you, you won’t ever have to experience the burden of love again. There will be no residual memory of anything…
He hated to admit it, but there was a strange relief in that promise. No.3115 felt his chest cavity being drilled open and meddled with.
He kept both eyes fixed on the damp ceiling…
Scrimshaw
The van petered along the tarmac artery. Kricfalusi and Baby Guts were sitting silently up front. Lester had been bundled into the back seat along with the clunking jars of Blossom’s teeth. He wondered who they used to belong to and what happened to the owner.
Everyone on board “Hollow Earth” was allowed a few hours a day to work their physical body before returning to the digital warehouse. In haste Fairfax disposed of the highly nutritional victual left outside his door. A large enough supply of space flora had been amassed to keep humans sustained, if rationed, for up to ten thousand years. It contained all the necessary amino acids, vitamins and minerals for a human to function but tasted unsavoury and flavourless. Fairfax took one final look into the porthole, this time gazing through himself, finally admitting the limitless void beyond. Then, tightening his fingers around the router he allowed a weighty sigh to escape before shoving the plug into its access point in the side of his skull. The socket clicked into place and he could feel himself collapsing silently onto his mattress as his mind was drawn through the gateway, back into storage.
There was the sound of raised voices. Kricfalusi and Baby Guts were having a heated argument.
—WHAT THE FUGG IS YOU TALKIN ABOUT???
—I’M TELLIN YOU THAT YOU KILLED HER! MY BLOSSOM, YOU KILLED HER YOU SONOFABITCH!
Lester stood up with the intention of diffusing the situation but the van unexpectedly lost control and skidded all over the road. The jarred teeth smashed to the flo
or sending little jagged rectangles everywhere like beads from a broken necklace. Lester fell hard against the side of the van. The blaring voices were audible even above the screeching rubber of the wheels. There was a gunshot, then the vehicle steadied off and regained control. The passenger door clicked opened and something heavy tumbled out onto the road, getting sucked under the rear wheel— the BUMP was enough to make your bones itch. Lester got up and could only see the back of Kricfalusi’s head.
—Everythin’ okay up there?
—YEAH, IT’S FINE! JUST SETTLE DOWN AND RELAX.
Lester sat on the pile of pallets. Blossom’s teeth had scattered to every corner of the van. Upon closer inspection, Lester noticed they resembled fangs, more canine than human being. He wondered why Baby Guts wasn’t sitting beside the driver.
Kricfalusi had been experiencing an attack of conscience. The Black Dog worked in mysterious ways— some folks it sapped of all their goodness and turned them into cruel, spiteful automatons, others it drained all the negative energy that fuelled human wickedness. Kricfalusi looked sincerely drained of his desire to be wicked.
—You sure you’re okay mister?— Lester tried again.
—Yeah…
Kricfalusi sounded calmer, more in control of his emotions.
—You sure? Where’s your buddy?
—He, um… got off early, I don’t know…
—Well what do you mean you don’t know?
—I don’t know what I am anymore. I dunno what I’m meant to be doin’…
Lester knew this crisis of mortality wasn’t a coincidence. He believed that he himself was the carrier of The Black Dog plague. Everyone around him seemed to have succumbed to it at one point or another.
—Listen mister, you better get off here soon okay. I got things I gotta… do, yano?
Lester didn’t want to argue. The van pulled over at a side street and he climbed out the back. Kricfalusi steamed off without saying anything. He was back to square one. Lester watched the van cross lanes through the traffic and approach the suspension bridge that went from Ersatz to Shell County. The van picked up pace the closer it got to the toll-booth. Lester knew what was coming.
Kricfalusi bulldozed through the barrier and charged past the suicide railing. The big white van disappeared over the cliff-edge and all Lester heard was an almighty splash as it struck the water.
~
Lester felt hopeless. He felt the Black Dog afflict him, distorting his thoughts, pressing hard against the inside of his belly.
The only language spoken in Ersatz is insult.
The noises coming from the old army-base on the city’s outskirts were born of menace and hate. Dreams of crossing the bridge to Shell County kept every denizen cozy in a membrane of their own procrastination. Kids kept well clear of the commotion from the army-base, leaning on fenders, watching cars roll by. An acrid stink of sweat will worm up each nostril. Ersatz— where diners were lit up all night, a place where rotten bastard murderers went for a hamburger and to listen to terrible music on the jukebox— where sharp dressed wise guys, sodomy-fighters, wailing shit-kickers and sixth grader rape gangs patrolled the sidewalks and skipped over cracks in the pavement. Slow hands, switch blades in pockets. Mussed hair and a thousand yard stare…
Lester saw the half-dead gibbering on the streets. He saw women carrying blowtorches for protection, ready to detonate a blaze of fire in the direction of advancing male genitalia. The night air seemed to murmur the same thing over and over again in a deranged mantra— You just can’t win. You just can’t win. You just can’t win. You just can’t win. You just can’t win. You just can’t win. You just can’t win. You just can’t win. You just can’t win. You just can’t win. You just can’t win. You just can’t win. You just can’t win. You just can’t win. You just can’t win. You just can’t win. You just can’t win. You just can’t win. You just can’t win. You just can’t win. You just can’t win. You just can’t win. You just can’t win. You just can’t win. You just can’t win. You just can’t win. You just can’t win. You just can’t win. You just can’t win. You just can’t win…
…and if you ever do try to win, you better be prepared to fall a LOOOOONNNGGG way down. There’s a pit waiting for you, for us that only gets deeper. You think you’ve hit the bottom tier, the underpinning of all this misery, but the truth is that it’s just the first layer.
Black versus white, red versus blue, bad versus worse/ trespassers get strung up under the railroad bridge by the city-folks.
All the druggists might’ve lived in Shell County but that wasn’t the only reason worth passing through. He began muttering to himself.
—My wife… how could I have treated her that way? What? Huh? She and I hadn’t had sex in over a year. I’m so fucking inadequate, I mean I must be, right? I should’ve taken her away from the 14th ward like she always wanted to instead of forcing her to settle. What kind of a selfish… huh, what? – Lester wandered around the sidewalk, repeatedly slapping himself in the forehead.
—Well, my children couldn’t relate to me, never could. What does that say about me as a father? The Black Dog would never have gotten to them if I had been better, if I’d tried harder. I let them all down…
—There are markings on the bone that reveal the way— came a gruff voice from an alley.
Lester peered into the darkness and saw the same old hobo he’d spoken to before. He had an old grey Labrador quivering next to him.
—You been goin’ in a circle son. That’s been the problem. When you infected you can only ever go in circles.
—What?
—On the bone there. Usually the rod of the fore-arm or at the wrist. Maps on all of us, your map is scrawled on there too, beneath that layer of skin and fat. Here— He passed Lester a razorblade— take a look. Just scrape away real gentle-like…
Lester brought the razor-edge to his hairy wrist and started scratching at the surface until a globule of blood bubbled through.
The old wino looked unimpressed with his efforts.
—No, no! You gotta slice it just a little…
—Slice it?
—Well yeah! There’s a lot of blood and tissue to get through till the markings become visible. Here, look at my scrimshaw— the hobo held up his forearms that’s been whittled away to a skinny dowel of bone.
Lester saw the map.
—See! And my map tells me that my place is here, right here in this alley, waiting out the shit-storm. If you think you’re the saviour of mankind then the scrimshaw will tell you. It’s the only way you’ll ever know for sure, your destiny awaits…
Lester took a deep breath and ran the cutting edge of the razor along his wrist until blood started to flow.
—There ya go… keep goin, keep goin.
Lester dragged the razor back and forth with more fervour. He found a perverse pleasure in the act.
The Labrador resting by the hobo’s side was black as a blind-man’s gaze now. Its glowing eyes leered beneath the camouflage of nightfall.
—You see it yet? Your very own scrimshaw…
Lester could see the alabaster tones of his own marrow. Sure enough an image was forming. He kept scraping away at his wrist, determined to find the right road to take.
Dick
Not bad enough my unadorned member
To not make the grade in size
As tumescent as a leadless pencil
I’ll hide it beneath my disguise
But my lacks cannot draw a veil
When I probe inside the diamond womb
This girl I do surely love
No doubt send me to a wooden tomb
Impotent, flaccid four second wonder
Birthing me a man— natures blue printed blunder
Am I to burden the catacombs of my condition
Relentless till I perish?
Then comes the day it gets too much, even for her
The silence I do relish
“Is it me?” she digs the hole
>
(The first recorded case inside Hollow Earth)
Iam about to die of a terminal unpronounceable. The Black Shuck strikes again. The Cure won’t work. It only seems to make things worse. They do more damage than the Black Dog ever could. I believe in life after death so I’m remaining optimistic, or trying to.
I’m a Wire City boy originally, but Paris has been my mistress for 16 years— what’s left of it at least. I’d been writing mercifully brief articles on commission for an underground literary zine called Le magazine Prétentieux et Fiers (Roughly translated that’s ‘Pretentious and Proud Magazine’) — specifically: fictionalised interpretations of various paintings by Hieronymus Bosch. I was actually trying to write a companion to “Adoration of the Magi” when a young woman, should I say girl, showed up at my St Germaine loft apartment.