The Radioactive Redhead with The Peach-Blonde Bomber

by John Zakour

  All that said, I personally don’t like her music, but you gotta admire the guts of someone who can mess so thoroughly with the system.

  Okay, so where was I? Oh yeah.

  “Hey,” I said, bending toward her as she threw up on the floor, “aren’t you Sexy Sprockets?”

  “Yes,” she said through the last of her retches. “But don’t tell anyone I threw up in your hover.”

  “You went through a death-defying ordeal,” I said, handing her a handkerchief. “People won’t think less of you.”

  She took it gratefully and wiped her mouth.

  “That’s not what I mean,” she said. “If my fans find out that I spewed in your hover, they’re likely to steal it. Right now you could probably get half a million credits for it on Pit-E-Bay.”

  “I’ll keep that in mind.” I held out my hand and helped her into the backseat. “I’m Zachary Nixon Johnson.”

  “I know,” she said with a smile. “I’ve followed your adventures.”

  “You’re a fan?”

  “Not of you. Just of the women you fight.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “You know, like Foraa Thompson. She was the nth. And Nova Powers, I heard she really spanked your carcass. And rumor has it you had a dustup with BB Star? Gates, dude, you’ve been b-slapped by all the greats.”

  Needless to say, Sexy Sprockets’ appeal was fast on the wane.

  “Oh, the stories I could tell you, my dear,” HARV said with a smile.

  “Yeah, too bad we can’t stay,” I said with a growl. “HARV, those droids had anti-grav capabilities and they were following us. We have to get out of here.”

  “As I said, Zach, I’m quite certain the danger has passed.”

  HARV seemed to ignore the puzzled look on my face (although I’m pretty certain he savored it silently) as he brought the hover gently to ground in the restaurant’s parking lot, which by then was almost entirely empty. We all climbed out, happy to be setting foot on firm ground again, and looked skyward. The remaining two dozen Kabuki droids filled the sky above us like a swarm of Bushido butterflies as they descended toward us.

  I pushed Sexy behind me and popped my gun back into hand as the droids touched down and raised their glowing samurai blades in unison.

  “I told you they were still after us.”

  “And I told you, Zach,” HARV replied, “that the danger has passed.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Because of that,” he said, pointing directly above us.

  I looked up and saw a small metal sphere floating gently a few meters above us. Two more floated over the crowd of Kabuki droids and a few others hovered in between us.

  “Are those cameras?” I asked.

  HARV nodded. “I noticed them as I was bringing up the hover. I spotted a number of them in the restaurant as well. I assumed at first that they were security cameras but there were far too many and they were of too good a quality for that.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “I think because you were busy fighting droids.”

  “Someone was recording us?”

  “They still are,” HARV said, pointing toward the droids. “Now hush, this is the good part.”

  As one, the droids held their flaming blades out toward us. I gripped my gun a little more tightly and gave it the big bang command, ready for action. But then the droids bowed their heads and sank to their knees.

  “What are they doing?” I asked.

  “This is the end of Chushingura,” HARV replied. “After avenging their master and completing their mission, the loyal retainers …”

  The droids spun their swords in unison, like a Kurosawa honor guard, leveling the blades at their own bellies.

  “… commit seppuku.”

  They plunged their swords into their midsections and sent a cascade of red and blue sparks into the air as their circuitry fried from the inside. They fell forward onto their swords, motionless, and continued to sizzle and spark in the wet night air. The smell of burning silk and plastic wafted over us.

  Then a voice came from the far end of the lot.

  “Audio down, fade to black. Aaaaannnnnd we’re out.”

  And then scattered applause.

  3

  A hover platform floated down from overhead and landed between us and the smoldering Kabuki droids. Three men stepped off as it touched down. Two of them were thin, angular, and wore dark tailored suits. The other was a paunchy guy wearing a pair of khaki Bermuda shorts and a shirt that looked like a lava lamp had exploded onto it. HARV gave me a silent cue that all three were unarmed but I kept my gun in hand nonetheless because I knew from the fine cut of the two suits, the dark tone of their evening-wear sunglasses, and the amount of styling mousse in their hair that the two suits in front represented an entirely different form of trouble.

  “They’re entertainment attorneys, aren’t they?” I asked.

  HARV nodded.

  “They’re from Anus and Quagmire,” Sexy said from behind me. “I recognize their hair gel. They represent the Faux network.”

  “I’m suddenly nostalgic for the Kabuki droids,” I whispered. “The guy behind them, is that who I think it is?”

  HARV and Sexy rolled their eyes in unison and harrumphed in my ears in stereo.

  “Yes, if you think it’s Rupert Roundtree.”

  “Zachy, baby,” the man said, approaching me with arms wide. “That was stellar. Fabsolutely, A-positively interstellar majeure.”

  Rupert Roundtree is the head of the entertainment conglom currently known as Faux. It’s one of the big three entertainment congloms in the current market, along with EnterCorp and MicroFun. It varies from nano to nano as to which conglom is actually the largest (it all depends on what companies they’re currently buying).

  EnterCorp is officially owned by Ona Thompson, with whom I have had some near-Armageddon type dealings but she’s relatively hands-off and leaves the day to day business to the faceless board of directors. MicroFun is owned by HTech, who utilize a probability theory management style where a group of one hundred monkeys use yes/no pads, an abacus, and the spinner from an old game of Twister to make all programming, production, and scheduling decisions. MicroFun’s growth in market share over the past few years, by the way, has led Entertainment This Nano to include the room full of monkeys on their annual “most powerful” list.

  And then there’s Rupert Roundtree, whose hands-on approach to running his conglom is well known in the industry and with the general public, and whose lowest-common-denominator philosophy of salacious and gratuitous programming has been known to make even the monkeys cringe.

  Roundtree threw his arms around me in a weak armed, fleshy bear hug. His paunch pressed up against my midsection like a vat full of jelly and his aura of sweat and cologne was so strong that I suspected he was scent-marking me as part of his territory.

  “High-con effex, classic pitter-patter repartee, short and sweet exposition, bada-bing, bada-boom. It’s like it writes itself. Spectacle-acular showcaselosity!”

  “What language is he speaking?”

  “Hollywood,” HARV replied. “It has no real rules of syntax.”

  Roundtree released me from the hug and turned toward Sexy who was standing beside me. She stopped his approach with a quick raise of her hand.

  “And Sexy, you were dripping with fabuliciousness as always.” He turned back to the suits, who were still at the platform. “Didn’t I tell you this would be stratospherical? Didn’t I say that?”

  “Yes, Rupert,” they said in unison.

  “Okay, I’m going to need a few things explained to me,” I said. “Preferably in English. And let’s remember that I’m the only one here who has a gun.”

  Roundtree turned back to me; his smile still wide, arms still spread, and moved to hug me (again!). Luckily he saw the gun in my hand and stayed where he was.

  “You’re a jewel, Zachster,” he said. “Gates, I wish we were still recording. Thi
s would make great behind-the-scenes stuff for the 4D-DVD. Can we restart the recorder-droids?”

  “You do,” I said, “and I’ll restart my gun.”

  “You’re right,” Roundtree shrugged, “we don’t want to break the fourth wall too soon. It will ruin the stupendation of unbelief.”

  “Wow,” HARV said. “This is starting to hurt.”

  “Here’s the coverage, Zachinator. The droids were ours. State of the art tech, too, from AMP Labs. As you can tell we’re going big budget all the way on this project.”

  “Project?” I asked.

  “Righteous Omnibus, baby. Take a look in the mirror, my man and you will see the face of the next great star of reality entertainment!”

  “What?”

  “A new series, Zachmeister. One man fighting against all odds every day of his life, just to survive.”

  “It does sound like you,” HARV whispered.

  “One man, in a world bent on destruction, a man whose life is no longer his own, forced to become a hero. One man running for his life!”

  “Why does that not appeal to me?”

  “We call it Let’s Kill Zach,” Roundtree said, smile widening, eyes growing beadier. “Pithiousity is key this year. Every week we send a group of killers after you, machines mostly, droids and bots. But we’ll need to use human assassins on occasion to keep the show’s connection to humanastasy. We’ll just have to get around the snuff-film laws. Long story short, we record your heroics and net them to the masses.”

  “It’s a surefire hit!” one of the suits said. “As long as you continue to live,” the other added.

  “You want to try to kill me on a weekly basis for entertainment?”

  “It’s not about entertainment, Zacharoo,” Roundtree said. “It’s about the business of entertainment. Danger is entertaining. You on the other hand, welcome danger.”

  “No, I don’t.”

  “You thrive on danger.”

  “I hate danger.”

  “Danger is your middle name!”

  “My middle name is Nixon!”

  “Nixon? That won’t work. Our legal people will get it changed for you.”

  “What?”

  The lawyers at his side began scribbling furiously on their computer pads.

  “Listen, Zachapalooza, people are always trying to kill you anyway. Everyone knows that. Why not turn that mortally dangerous lemon into some revenue-generating lemonade?”

  “It does make sense on a certain level,” HARV whispered.

  “This is weird, even by HV standards.”

  “That’s what makes it so brilliant,” Roundtree exclaimed. “And with Sexy as the guest star for the pilot, this becomes mega-max-event-like.”

  “No way, Rupert,” Sexy spat.

  “Sexy, you looked fabulous.”

  “You show one pixel of my image on your pond-scum network and I’ll put dark-shark litigation so far up your assets you’ll have my initials imprinted on your private resources.”

  “Your turn of phrase is as tight as your sensuosity, Sexy,” Roundtree said with a smile. “We’ll hyperveil your face.”

  “Not one pixel, Rupert!”

  Rupert laughed and held up his hands in supplication.

  “Fine. We’ll replace you with a CGI replica for netcast.”

  “Voice, too.”

  “Of course.”

  “The CGI replica can’t have red hair.”

  “You got it.”

  “And its ass better not be as nice as mine.”

  “Like that’s possible.”

  “Have your shark call my shark.”

  “Done.”

  “Excuse me,” I said.

  “Don’t worry; you’re still the star, Zach-baby. Can I call you Zach-baby?”

  “You can if you can say it with my fist in your mouth.”

  “Gates, I wish we were still recording,” Roundtree said through snickers. “Remember to use that quip next episode.”

  “There isn’t going to be another episode!” I said.

  “Zach-a-tack, we’ve already booked the series for the fall season.”

  “You what?”

  “That’s why the shooting schedule’s so tight. Hah, that’s a good one. This shooting schedule’s a real killer. Get it?”

  “Roundtree,” I said, “if you … if you show one pixel of my image on your network, I will sue your pants off so quickly I’ll be running them up a flagpole before your cellulite hits the floor!”

  Roundtree and his attorneys stared at me impassively for a long, long nano.

  Then they let loose with a round of head-back, mouth-open hearty guffaws. And Roundtree hugged me again.

  “You’re gonna be a star, Zach-a-lacka. A fully fledgered, pop-cult, maxotastical reality entertainment star!”

  He kissed me on the cheek and, still chuckling, stepped back onto the hover platform with his attorneys and floated off into the night air like a cabbage fart on the breeze.

  “But the legal threat worked when you used it,” I said to Sexy, a little dumbfounded.

  “That’s because I’m rich, Zach. Everyone knows that you’re not wealthy enough to buy justice.”

  “Perfect,” I said, gently rubbing my temples.

  “So what’s the plan?” HARV asked.

  “Same as always, HARV,” I replied. “We keep our head down and watch out for Network Executives.”

  4

  A hover limo the size of a city block came to take Sexy home. As she climbed into the vehicle, she gave me a mischievous wink that sent a shudder along my spine. I was too tired to dwell on it so I climbed back into my own vehicle and had HARV take me home.

  I slept late the next morning, well deserving of the extra sleep. Electra, my fiancée, sometime roommate, and all around better half, was away at a medical conference focusing on carpal tunnel syndrome, so I had the bed to myself. It was just as well because Electra tends to steal the covers and snores a bit (which she denies). Also, with her not around, I didn’t have to explain what I’d been through, which saved me about half an hour of gory details.

  When I finally rolled out of bed of my own volition, I noticed that the house was exceptionally quiet.

  “HARV,” I said, still rubbing the sleep from my eyes, “throw last night’s scores and highlights on the wall screen.”

  There was no reply.

  “HARV?”

  The message: “One nano please. System updating,” flashed across my eyes and a sickening feeling began in my stomach.

  “DOS, HARV. We don’t need an update!”

  The message, “Change is good,” scrolled across my eyes.

  “Things are fine the way they are,” I said. “Please don’t mess it up.”

  “Don’t be a big baby,” scrolled the reply.

  Every so often HARV and Randy make improvements (and I use the term loosely) to HARV’s system; boosting his power, streamlining his systems, or giving him new capabilities. Most often, the upgrades are useful. Like when they gave HARV remote Deep-C-phishing capabilities, allowing him to hack into all but the most secure computer systems. That upgrade’s highly illegal, of course, and officially I have to deny having said anything about it. So if anyone comes around asking questions, clearly you must have misunderstood what I said.

  But sometimes the upgrades are—how shall I put this?—less than successful. Probability-based precognitive generation of needs and desires (pp-gonad for short), as an example, was particularly troublesome. The intent was for HARV to use my personality profile and current situation as a forward-thinking springboard to calculate the services I’d need in the immediate future and make them available to me before I asked. It was a grand idea in theory. In reality though, the nuances of reality were too much for even HARV’s computational abilities to accurately predict. As a result, he kept going back to the preset default and offering me junk food or pornography. Electra had to ban me from the Children’s Clinic until the software was uninstalled.

 
; My point is that upgrades to HARV are very hit-and-miss and I’m never open to it, especially first thing in the morning. Unfortunately, my opinions on most technology-related subjects never count for anything. So all I could do in this case was to muddle through the update process and wait to see what cutting-edge bell or space-age whistle would adorn HARV when he reappeared.

  But before I could get too deeply into the morning routine, the com-tone sounded, indicating that I had an incoming call.

  “Whoever it is, take a message,” I said as I checked myself in the mirror for bruises.

  Again the words “One nano, please. System updating,” scrolled across my eyes.

  “HARV!”

  “I’m off-line,” scrolled the reply. “What do you want me to do?”

  I grabbed my robe and stumbled out of the bedroom.

  “This is why you’re supposed to do all updates while I’m sleeping.”

  “Then go back to bed.”

  “Don’t tempt me.”

  The tone sounded twice more by the time I made it to the house computer control in the main hall.

  “Which button is it?” I said, scanning the hundreds of options on the console.”

  “Gates, you’d be lost without me,” HARV scrolled. “The red one, third row, on the left.”