by Gene Wolfe
Gifford could sense his cautious friend wavering toward abstinence. “C’mon, Mutt! We’re gonna hit Slamdunk’s first, then Black Rainbow. And we’ll finish up at Captains Curvaceous.”
Mention of the last-named club, a strip joint where Mutt had once managed to drop over five hundred dollars of his tiny Christmas bonus while simultaneously acquiring a black eye and a chipped tooth, caused a shiver to surf his spine.
“Uh, thanks, guys, for thinking of me. But I just can’t swing it. If I don’t get this special ad section squared away by tonight, we’ll miss the printer’s deadlines.”
Cody pocketed her flask and grabbed Gifford’s arm. “Oh, leave the little drudge alone, Giff. It’s obvious he’s so in love with his job. Haven’t you seen his lip-prints on the screen?”
Mutt was hurt and insulted. Was it his fault that he had been promoted to assistant editor over Cody? He wanted to say something in his defense, but couldn’t think of a comeback that wouldn’t sound whiny. And then the window closed on any possible repartee.
Gifford unselfconsciously scratched his butt with his foam finger. “Okay, pal, maybe next time. Let’s shake a tail, ladies.”
Melba winked at Mutt as she walked away. “Gonna miss you, loverboy.”
Then the trio was gone.
Mutt hung his head in his hands. Why had he ever slept with Melba? Sleeping with co-workers was insane. Yet he had done it. The affair was over now, but the awkward repercussions lingered. Another black mark on his karma.
Refocusing on the screen, Mutt tried hard to proof the text floating before him. “Epigenetix-brand sequencers guarantee faster throughput…” The words and pictures blurred into a jittery multicolored fog like a mosh pit full of amoebas. Was he crying? For Christ’s sake, why the hell was he crying? Just because he had to hold down a suck-ass job he hated just to pay his grad-school loans, had no steady woman, hadn’t been snow-boarding in two years, had put on five pounds since the summer, and experienced an undeniable yet shameful thrill when contemplating the purchase of a new necktie?
Mutt knuckled the moisture from his eyes and mentally kicked his own ass for being a big baby. This wasn’t a bad life, and plenty of people had it worse. Time to pull up his socks and buckle down and all that other self-improvement shit.
But not right now. Right now, Mutt needed a break. He hadn’t lied to Gifford and the others, he had to finish this job tonight. But he could take fifteen minutes to websurf his way to some amusing site that would lift his spirits.
And that was how Mutt discovered Gondwanaland.
In retrospect, after the passage of time had erased his computer’s logs, the exact chain of links leading to Gondwanaland was hard to reconfigure. He had started looking for new recordings by his favorite group, Dead End Universe. That had led somehow to a history of pirate radio stations. And from there it was a short jump to micronations.
Fascinated, Mutt lost all track of time as he read about this concept that was totally new to him.
Micronations—also known as cybernations, fantasy countries or ephemeral states—were odd blends of real-world rebellious politics, virtual artsy-fartsy projects and elaborate spoofs. Essentially, a micronation was any assemblage of persons regarding themselves as a sovereign country, yet not recognized by international entities such as the United Nations. Sometimes micronations were associated with real physical territory. The Cocos Islands had once been ruled as a fiefdom by the Clunies-Ross family. Sarawak was once the province of the White Rajas, as the Brooke clan had styled themselves.
With the advent of the internet, the number of micronations had exploded. There were now dozens of imaginary online countries predicated on different philosophies, exemplifying scores of different governmental systems, each of them more or less seriously arguing that they were totally within their rights to issue passports, currency and stamps, and to designate ministers, nobility and bureaucratic minions.
Mutt had always enjoyed fantasy sports in college. Imaginary leagues, imaginary rosters, imaginary games—Something about being totally in charge of a small universe had appealed to him, as an antidote to his lack of control over the important factors and forces that batted his own life around. He had spent a lot of time playing Sims too. The concept of cybernations seemed like a logical extension of those pursuits, an appealing refuge from the harsh realities of career and relationships.
The site Mutt had ended up on was a gateway to a whole host of online countries. The Aerican Empire, the Kingdom of Talossa, the Global State of Waveland, the Kingdom of Redonda, Lizbekistan—
And Gondwanaland.
Memories of an introductory geoscience course came back to Mutt. Gondwanaland was the super-continent that had existed hundreds of millions of years ago, before splitting and drifting apart into the configuration of separate continental landforms familiar today.
Mutt clicked on the Gondwanaland button.
The page built itself rapidly on his screen. The animated image of a spinning globe dominated. Sure enough, the globe featured only a single huge continent, marked with interior divisions into states and featuring the weird names of cities.
Mutt was about to scan some of the text on the page when his eye fell on the blinking time readout in the corner of the screen.
Holy shit! Nine-thirty! He’d be here till midnight unless he busted his ass.
Reluctantly abandoning the Gondwanaland page and its impossible globe, Mutt returned to his work.
Which still sucked.
Maybe worse.
* * * *
The next day Mutt was almost as tired as if he had gone out with Gifford and the gang. But at least his head wasn’t throbbing and his mouth didn’t taste as if he had french-kissed a hyena. Proofing the advertorial section had taken until eleven-forty-five, and by the time he had ridden the subway home, eaten some leftover General Gao’s chicken, watched Letterman’s Top Ten and fallen asleep, it had been well into the small hours of the morning. When his alarm went off at seven-thirty, he had thrashed about in confusion like a drowning man, dragged from some engrossing dream that instantly evaporated out of memory.
Once in the office, Mutt booted up his machine. He had been doing something interesting last evening, hadn’t he? Oh, yeah, that Gondwanaland thing—
Before his butt hit the chair, someone was IMing him. Oh, shit, Kicklighter wanted to see him in his office. Mutt got up to visit his boss.
He ran into Gifford in the hall. Unrepentant yet visibly hurting, Gifford managed a sickly grin. “Missed a swinging time last night, my friend. After her fifth jello shot, Cody got up on stage at Captains. Took two bouncers to get her down, but not before she managed to earn over a hundred bucks.”
Mutt winced. This was more information than he needed about the extracurricular activities of his jealous co-worker. How would it be possible now to work on projects side-by-side with her, without conjuring up visions of her drunkenly shedding her clothing?
Suddenly this hip young urban wastrel shtick, the whole life- is-fucked-so-let’s-get-fucked-up playacting that Mutt and his friends had been indulging in for so long looked incredibly boring and tedious and counterproductive, possibly even the greased chute delivering one’s ass to eternal damnation. Mutt knew with absurd certainty that he could no longer indulge in such a wasteful lifestyle. Something inside him had shifted irrevocably, some emotional tipping point had been reached.
But what was he going to do with his life instead?
Making a half-hearted neutral comment to Gifford—no point in turning into some kind of zealous lecturing missionary asshole Gifford would tune out anyway—Mutt continued through the cube- farm.
Dan Kicklighter, the middle-aged editor of PharmaNotes, resembled the captain of a lobster trawler, bearded, burly and generally disheveled, as if continually battling some invisible Perfect Storm. He had worked at a dozen magazines in his career, everything from Atlantic Monthly to Screw. A gambling habit that oscillated from moderate—a dozen scratch-tic
ket purchases a day—to severe—funding an Atlantic City spree with money the bank rightly regarded as a year’s worth of mortgage payments—had determined the jagged progression of his resumé. Right now, after some serious rehab, he occupied one of the higher posts of his career.
“Matthew, come in. I just want you to know that I’m going to be away for the next four days. Big industry conference in Boston. With a little detour to Foxwoods Casino on either side. But that’s just between you and me.”
Kicklighter was upfront about his addiction, at least with his subordinates, and claimed that he was now cured to the point where he could indulge himself recreationally, like any casual bettor.
“I’m putting you in charge while I’m gone. I know it’s a lot of responsibility, but I think you’re up to it. This is a crucial week, and I’m counting on you to produce an issue we can all be proud of.”
There were three assistant editors at PharmaNotes, so this advancement was not insignificant. But Mutt cringed at the temporary promotion. He just wanted to stay in his little miserable niche and not have anybody notice him. Yet what could he do? Deny the assignment? Wasn’t such an honor the kind of thing he was supposed to be shooting for, next step up the ladder and all that shit? Cody would’ve killed for such a nomination.
“Uh, fine, Dan. Thank you. I’ll do my best.”
“That’s what I’m counting on. Here, take this list of targets you need to hit before Monday. It’s broken down into ten-minute activity blocks. Say, have you heard the odds on the Knicks game this weekend?”
Back in his cube, Mutt threw down the heavy sheaf of paper with disgust. He just knew he’d have to work through the weekend.
Before he had gotten through the tasks associated with the first ten-minute block, Cody appeared.
“So, all your ass-kissing finally paid off. Well, I want you to know that you haven’t fooled everyone here. Not by a long shot.”
Before Mutt could protest his lack of ambition, Cody was gone. Her angry strut conjured up images of pole-dancing in Mutt’s traitorous imagination.
A short time later, Melba sauntered in and poised one haunch on the corner of Mutt’s desk.
“Hey, big guy, got any plans for Friday night?”
“Yeah. Thanks to Kicklighter, I’ll be ruining my eyesight right here at my desk.”
Melba did not seem put off by Mutt’s sour brusqueness. “Well, that’s too bad. But I’m sure there’ll be some other night we can, ah, hook up.”
Once Melba left, Mutt tried to resume work. But he just couldn’t focus.
So he brought up the Gondwanaland page.
Who was going to tell him he couldn’t? Kicklighter was probably already out the office and halfway to the roulette wheels.
Below the spinning foreign globe was a block of text followed by some hot-button links: IMPERIAL LINEAGE, CUSTOMS, NATURAL HISTORY, POLITICAL HISTORY, ART, FORUMS, and so forth. Mutt began to read the main text.
For the past ten thousand years of recorded history, Gondwanaland’s imperial plurocracy has insured the material well-being as well as the physical, spiritual and intellectual freedom of its citizens. Since the immemorial era of Fergasse I, when the walled communities of the Only Land—prominently, Lyskander, Port Shallow, Vybergum and Turnbuckle—emerged from the state of siege imposed by the roving packs of scalewargs and amphidonts, banding together into a network of trade and discourse, right up until the current reign of Golusty IV, the ascent of the united peoples of Gondwanaland has been unimpeded by war or dissent, despite a profusion of beliefs, creeds, philosophical paradigms and social arrangements. A steady accumulation of scientific knowledge from the perspicacious and diligent researchers at our many technotoria, combined with the practical entrepreneurship of the ingeniator class, has led to a mastery of the forces of nature, resulting in such now-essential inventions as the strato-carriage, storm-dispeller, object-box and meta-palp.
The grateful citizens of Gondwanaland can assume—with a surety they feel when they contemplate the regular rising of the Innermost Moon—that the future will only continue this happy progression…
Fascinated, Mutt continued to scan the introductory text on the main page, before beginning to bop around the site. What he discovered on these dependent pages were numerous intriguing photos of exotic scenes—cities, people, buildings, landscapes, artworks—and many more descriptive and explanatory passages that amounted to a self-consistent and utterly convincing portrait of an alien world.
The Defeat of the Last ’Warg; a recipe for bluebunny with groundnut sauce; The Adventures of Calinok Cannikin, by Ahleucha Mamarosa; Jibril III’s tornado-struck coronation; the deadly glacier apes; the first landing on the Outermost Moon; the Immaculate Epidemic; the Street of Lanternmoths in Scordatura; the voices of children singing the songs of Mourners Day; the Teetering Needle in the Broken Desert; sunlight on the slate roofs of Saurelle; the latest fashion photographs of Yardley Legg—
Mutt’s head was spinning and the clock icon on his screen read noon. Man, people thought Tolkien was an obsessive perfectionist dreamer! Whoever had put this site together was a goddamn fantasy genius! The backstory to Gondwanaland possessed the kind of organic cohesiveness that admitted of the random and contradictory. Why hadn’t the citizens of Balamuth ever realized that they were sitting on a vein of pure allurium until a sheepherder named Thunn Pumpelly fell into that sinkhole? They just hadn’t! A hundred other circumstantial incidents and anecdotes contributed to the warp and woof of Gondwanaland, until in Mutt’s mind the whole invention assumed the heft and sheen of a length of richly embroidered silk.
Mutt wondered momentarily if the whole elaborate hoax was the work of a single creator, or a group effort. Perhaps the name or names of the perps was hidden in some kind of Easter Egg—
The one link Mutt hadn’t yet explored led to the FORUMS. Now he went there.
He faced a choice of dozens of boards on different topics, all listing thousands of archived posts. He arbitrarily chose one—IMPERIAL NEWS—and read a few recent posts in chronological order.
-o-
Anybody heard any reports since Restday from the Liminal Palace on G4’s health? —IceApe113
-o-
The last update from the Remediator General said G4 was still in serious condition. Something about not responding to the infusion of nurse-hemomites. —LenaFromBamford
-o-
Looks like we could be having an Imperial Search soon then. I hope the Cabal of Assessors has their equipment in good working order. When was the last IS? 9950, right? —Gillyflower87
-o-
Aren’t we all being a little premature? Golusty IV isn’t dead yet! —IlonaG
-o-
Mutt was baffled, even somehow a little pissed off, by the intensity of the roleplaying on display here. These people—assuming the posts indeed originated from disparate individuals—were really into this micronation game, more like Renaissance Faire headcases and Civil War reenactors than the art-student goofballs Mutt had envisioned as the people responsible for the Gondwanaland site. Still, their fervent loyalty to their fantasy world offered Mutt a wistful, appealing alternative to his own anomie.
Impulsively, Mutt launched his own post.
-o-
From everything I’ve seen, Golusty IV seems like a very fine Emperor and a good person. I hope he gets better. —MuttsterPrime
-o-
He quit his browser and brought up his word-processor.
Then he resumed trying to fit his life into ten-minute boxes.
* * * *
Kicklighter returned from the Boston trip looking as if he had spent the entire time wrestling rabid tigers. Evidently, his cure had not been totally effective. His vaunted invulnerability to the seductions of Native-American-sponsored games of chance plainly featured chinks. An office pool was immediately begun centered on his probable date of firing by the publisher, Henry Huntsman. Ironically, Kicklighter himself placed a wager.
But
all these waves of office scandal washed over Mutt without leaving any impression at all. Likewise, his dealings with his former friends and rivals had no impact on his abstracted equilbrium. Gifford’s unceasing invitations to get wasted, Cody’s sneers and jibes, Melba’s purring attempts at seduction—None of these registered. Oh, Mutt continued to perform his job in a semi-competent, off-handed way. But most of the time his head was in Gondwanaland.
With his new best IM buddy, Ilona Grobes.
Ilona Grobes—IlonaG—had posted the well-mannered, respectful comment about not hastening Golusty IV into his grave. Upon reading Mutt’s similarly themed post, she had contacted him directly.
-o-
MuttsterPrime, that was a sensitive and compassionate sentiment. I’m glad you’re not so thrilled by the prospect of an IS like most of these vark-heads that you forget the human dimension of this drama. I don’t recognize your name from any of the boards. What clade do you belong to? —Ilona G
-o-
That question left Mutt scratching his head. He debated telling Ilona to cut the fantasy crap and just talk straight to him. But in the end he decided to go along with the play-acting.
-o-
Ilona, is my clade really so important? I’d like to think that we can relate to each other on an interpersonal level without such official designations coming between us. —MuttsterPrime
-o-
When Ilona’s reply came, Mutt was relieved to see that his strategy of conforming to her game-playing had paid off.