Doomsday Warrior 18 - American Dream Machine

by Ryder Stacy

  Ezlin stood up, shouting, “You can’t do that!”

  “Watch me!” Nothing else was left of Rock’s planned speech on decency and morality—only those two grim words.

  As he stepped on the pieces of the visi-screen, satisfying crunches came to Rock’s ears, more like old-fashioned wood splintering than any glassov. He was standing on the fading picture of the frightened man, grinding it to pieces under him. The scream continued. It took longer to trample the wirecord for sound.

  All the Esmereldan councilmen were standing in silent outrage. Only Ezlin, briefly on his feet, returned to his seat and was staring in a disconcerting way at Rock.

  “I felt sure you would take the arena job,” the bearded scientist said. “After all, you’ve had direct experience of the games and have expressed some interest about the things that give pleasure to others.”

  “Pleasure?” He drew a deep breath. “Pain for others isn’t pleasure! Is that really so hard for you all to understand?”

  “You will be taken back to your room,” Ezlin sighed. “I think we’ve all seen enough of you. There is obviously no hope for you. I wash my hands now. Heavens, how I tried!”

  And at that moment Rock was reminded of how he had felt the first time he’d seen the Zrano on a visi-screen. A flick of fear coursed through his body, he would have run, but the very thought started the pain bracelet to punishing him with bolts of pain. Somehow, he would face the pain.

  Run where?

  Where does a man in a box run?

  Twenty-Three

  The sentence was execution. Tomorrow. Back in his guarded room, Rock found the answer to his dilemma on his bureau—the inspiration was the ten-credit cash-note from Ronette!!

  When the guards came to lead him to the execution chamber, Rock said, “Tell the council I will accept a job!”

  They looked disconcerted but went away, locking him back in.

  A short time later, Rock faced Ezlin in Ezlin’s study.

  “Are you jerking me around?” a tired Ezlin asked.

  “No.”

  “What job would you like to perform? This I’ve gotta hear!”

  Rock replied, “It occurs to me that if the women of Esmerelda were more pleased with their bed partners, it could bring on a state of general happiness that would increase their production.”

  “Yes, I’m sure.” Ezlin looked suspicious. “Tell me, then, what work you would seriously suggest for yourself? There’s not much time before we execute—”

  “It occurred to me late last night that I’d like to show on a visi-screen how it is possible for a man and a woman to be happy making love,” Rock said. “I can record my—er—encounters with the prosti-women. Show other men how to—er—do it! Sex is as natural as sleeping and eating, and you wouldn’t, I’m sure, hesitate to show those other functions on a visi-screen.” Rockson really didn’t intend to make sex tapes. He had a plan.

  “I see . . . interesting, but the visi-screens are hardly watched, except during the Zrano games. And there are five games this week . . .”

  “Then knock the games off the air!”

  “No, we can’t do that.” Ezlin looked down at his folded hands. “The games cause universal pleasure, and to halt them is to invite a rebellion, or at least hurt production.”

  “Postpone the games, and increase production! You need more production don’t you? Everyone here is on a bare sustenance diet, aren’t they? Even you!”

  The weary man said softly, “I think you have an idea, but the video is O-U-T! The next best thing would be to use audi-writing. Do a manual on lovemaking, Rockson. That’ll be your new job! You will be a writer! No correction of your mind necessary—OK?”

  “No! There are already manuals on the mechanics of making love. I remember reading one in my room. And manuals, obviously,” Rockson went on, “don’t seem to work, as far as your women are concerned!” Rock was picking his words carefully. “The girls think that sex is unpleasant or just a work duty they’ve got to be paid for! It shouldn’t be like that. There can be joy in it for each, warmth and pleasure. And happiness increases work! Let me do the videos!”

  “And who’d pay attention to advice on making sex from a young man whose only claim to fame here is that he survived an encounter with the Zrano?”

  “There would certainly be some interest if you publicized my crime. Remember, I’m the greatest playboy in the galaxy!”

  “It might work.” The Esmereldan’s generous lips quirked at the corners. “You have a fresh idea; go tell Panxux.”

  Soon Rockson presented his case to Panxux, the council leader: “Sir, allow me to work at the job I’m best at!” Rock had him there. It was against the laws of Klossam to deny a man work that he was good at!

  “I think you’d have to understand that my schedule is an imposing one,” the man, trying not to agree, said. “These few minutes spent on the matter of your future is the first free time I’ve had in many a long month, and now I must go!”

  “You didn’t answer me. I demand the job! And I need to do it with Kimetta. She’s the best!”

  “Despite how randy you may be, Rockson, I can assure you that this asteroid doesn’t need an official pornographer!” He glared. “A royal pornographer so to speak!”

  “Not even if the point is that the porno increases production? The great philosopher stated, ‘The good is what—’ ”

  “Improves production,” the council leader sighed. “You win! You have your job. To my dying day, I will never believe that I took part in any conversation like this! But we’ve been without wars, thanks to Klossam. A program of unceasing work is the answer for preventing mass slaughter.”

  Rock snapped, “Or it might be that the slaughter of a few people in an arena makes others stop thinking about—”

  “Fuck! Go make your damned pictures, Rockson! That will be all! I’ll advise the council the execution is off.” Showing Rock out, the leader of Esmerelda opened the door on a surprise.

  A man stood in that door, lights glinting off the tip of a grav-knife he was carrying tightly in his right hand, which was raised. The leader backed off, so that he was alongside Rockson.

  For a moment Rock felt sure that the knife was intended for him, and he stepped to one side. The intruder shouted and ran past him, moving at top speed in the direction of the ruler!

  Rock turned swiftly and silently on his heels, realizing that, if he wanted, he could reach the knife arm from behind, and vigorously twist it. But why should he help Panxux? Oh, hell . . .

  An angry, defiant shout from the intruder’s throat changed to screams. His knife hand was forced downward until the weapon clattered to the polywood floor and Rock kicked it away. Only then did he push the man from him, and recognize with whom he had been dealing.

  “You!”

  It was Broomak, the liberal. Now a mad assassin.

  Panxux asked quietly, “Why did you want to do this, Kitra?” He used Broomak’s first name.

  The knife wielder said in his high, piping voice, “I have come around to Rockson’s way of thinking. He’s right! Life here is all work and no fun!”

  The leader said, “You need to be corrected! More waste, Kitra, of good manpower thanks to this man from Earth’s evil influence!”

  “You’ve been wasting every man and woman on this asteroid,” Broomak shouted. “You’ve been a disaster for Esmerelda, you and your cronies. Every year production decreases!”

  Panxux spoke to Rock, eyes unwavering: “Stay with him; I’ll go to find the guards; they will come take him away. Thanks, I owe you one . . .”

  “Good,” Rock said, “we’ll sit here and talk meanwhile!”

  Kitra Broomak stared at the desk where the leader had been sitting. Not a word passed between the failed murderer and the younger man who had doomed him. Soon a guard snapped a pain-bracelet set on “maximum obedience” on the failed killer, and led him away. Rock held the door open and was going to follow the two when the leader’s voice called on h
im to wait.

  “Only one more point, Rockson,” the man he had saved said, seating himself behind the desk. “I’m aware that I owe you a debt and will find a way to discharge it.”

  “Just let me have Kimetta to make the instructional videos with.”

  “I’ll see. You realize she’s a free woman? She might refuse. I can’t order her . . . she’s the warden’s daughter.”

  “I know. But she’ll come to me.” But would she?

  Twenty-Four

  He had the 3-D video cameras all set up and ready, and Rock expected Kimetta to show up by midnight. But no go! Just as Rock was shucking his one-piece suit, figuring something had gone wrong, he heard a soft voice calling from the slightly open door. “Hi honey.”

  He nearly fell back in astonishment upon opening it. Not only was he looking at Kimetta, but she was naked except for some sparkle highlights on random spots—or was it Kimetta’s clone, Ronette, without the mask? In any case, she was standing in front of him. She said she really was Kimetta, the girl who had helped shanghai him and then had saved him by giving him the Zrano’s mother’s picture-medallion. He asked her in; she came in.

  “It’s good to see you,” he said, “But you’re Ronette.”

  She blinked twice and sagged, “How did you know?”

  “The real Kimetta, well . . . I’ll explain to her when she gets here—now go get her. Go on! Get out, honey, and send Kimetta here!”

  “I’ll leave, but—”

  He kissed her. “Maybe some other time.” He patted her bare fanny hard and sent her off—not without some regrets.

  A short time later a fully clothed, angry Kimetta was at the door when he opened it. “Well, Mr. Perfect, Mr. Privilege,” Kimetta said, her blue eyes glaring, “I came here only to tell you off! You sent for me, did you? You want me to make your damned porn movie huh!! Well, I’m not—”

  He smiled. “You’re acting just like your old self—the real Kim, not Kimetta—Kim is a woman who I dream about—I hoped you would act that way. Now come in! I have something to discuss.”

  He pulled the perplexed-looking Kimetta in and shut the door. This idea of his was going to be hard to explain!

  “Huh?” she said. “What?”

  “Come inside, that’s why I asked for you; not for sex—I need some explanations. You brought me here, now help me, please.

  She did come in, saying, “OK, I owe you that.”

  “What the hell did you do it for, all of it! Why hurt me, then help me?”

  She was thoughtful and calm after he asked that. She sat on the bed and stared into space a while. He almost expected her to take out a square of audi-writing and flick on music. But all she said was “I don’t know.”

  “I think I do know, honey,” Rock said. “I think all reality changed! I think you were compelled to do it all! Yes—don’t tell me you don’t feel like that happened. Don’t you have weird dreams? Dreams of being someone else?”

  “No . . . wait! Yes.” She smiled. “I dream I’m the president’s daughter in a place called America! That I really do love you. Yes Rock, I do dream! Those dreams are why I helped you, even if in this reality I’m supposed to hurt you!”

  “That’s crazy, but I know you’re right. I’m dreaming, now.”

  She nodded. “Yes. In any case,” she said, “Panxux informed me that he was desirous of sparing your life and wouldn’t consider otherwise unless you violated some other rules or were guilty of treason by not working well on your video-sex tape plan. He favorably mentioned your plan to make the videos to teach your ways of sex pleasure, to increase work productivity. So I’m to be your co-star! Please, all this talk about dreams and reality hurts my head!”

  Rock declined her invitation to begin filming sex instructions. Instead, he sat next to her and said, “I think you’re right, like I am, about reality being wrong. I had dreams—that I was someone called the Doomsday Warrior. That I was—trapped in a box, suffocating, dreaming about this place, this world. Kimetta, Esmerelda isn’t real! Do you believe me, Kimetta?” His mismatched eyes held her. “Say you do!”

  “I do.”

  “Then we’ve got to escape!”

  “How can one escape a dream? Let’s just have fun dreaming!” She started to strip off her clothes. “Please, let’s have sex! I’m—I’m scared of this talk! What can we do about wrong realities?”

  “I don’t know! Put—put on your clothes. Let’s get going. Can you use your pull to have the guard remove my pain bracelet—to get us at least on the way to the spaceport?”

  “Yes . . . I am A-1, and a citizen. I am trusted. I am the warden’s daughter. But, how will that—”

  “I have the crazy idea,” Rockson said, buckling his belt, “that if we escape this asteroid, we escape the dream! And we—I—wake up!”

  “I know I was part of this conversation,” Kimetta said, “but now, none of this makes the slightest sense to me!”

  “It will. Let’s go!”

  Twenty-Five

  They left the arena area in a rocket-car. Rock sighed in relief as his pain-bracelet was taken off by a guard. In a short while Rockson heard sirens, saw police vehicles swooping down. “The radio; put on the police scanner,” Rock said.

  In a moment they learned that the police weren’t after them—there was a rebellion going on. It had started as a general strike, and spread on the news of Kitra Broomak’s “attempted correction.” Broomak had been rescued by rebels. The radio report blamed “the antiphilosophy of the Earthman, Niles Rockson” lot starting the trouble. He was called an “evil dreamer.”

  Rock said, “Shit is hitting the fan!”

  “Yes, everybody suddenly wants to be a rebel, like you,” Kimetta smiled, kissing his cheek. “It was bound to happen.”

  “I can’t believe that,” Rock said. “Esmerelda was in existence for a long time before I came along, and nobody ever acted up before, I’m told. At least not en masse! There’s got to be more to it than reaction to what I did.”

  “There is!” Kimetta said. “Don’t you see? We know it’s just a dream, so the dream is falling apart! We’re doing it!”

  Rock nodded. “Not everybody has flipped out because of my philosophy! I’m sure of that!”

  Just then their car automatically braked as a mob ran across their path, shouting that they were free! Shouting: “Rock, Rockson, Rock, Rockson! Rock, Rockson!” A light pole vanished, a building rocked and faded away into nothingness.

  “This asteroid is finished,” Kimetta said, “I think it will fade away soon! It’s not real. It’s—my dream, or your dream, but it’s just the stuff dreams are made of—let’s get away before we fade too! Unless what’s happening is put under control very quickly, somehow. You wanted to escape, and now it’s time to do so. Please, I don’t want to—to evaporate.”

  Once the crowd passed they roared on toward the spaceport. Half a dozen men in one-piece gladiator outfits were running toward them almost as soon as Rock opened a door of the car, which he halted near the ten-story-tall, gleaming rocket ship called Earth-Mother.

  “We’re free, we’re on our own,” they shouted. “No more games.”

  The men crowded around him, recognizing the Earthman.

  “We owe it all to you, Rockson,” one man said enthusiastically. “You’re the one who got us free, aren’t you, Rock Rockson!”

  “Yes, that’s right, I guess. Now if you’d let me and Kimetta pass . . .”

  The men didn’t. They were a solid wall of glee.

  “The rebel guards told us that there will be a celebration on account of you, that we’re going to be free from now on, and first we’ll have fun!”

  One man, who’d been holding himself away from the others, said grimly, “As soon as the celebration is over, they’ll catch us again, I’m afraid. Then—” he drew a finger across his throat, “no more freedom.”

  “At least we damn well are going to get what fun we can, for as long as we can,” one of the other men retorted.
He was shaking Rock’s hand. “What’s with you? You are our hero, but you look like you just bit into a sour lemna melon. Why?”

  “Because,” Rock said to the man, “You aren’t real! I’m Ted Rockson, and this is Kim, President Langford’s daughter. We are real, and you’re not!” He pushed a hand through the fading man. “Quick, Kim, up the rocket’s staircase,” he shouted.

  But Kimetta was fading too. Her voice, faint and echoing, said, “Good-bye my love, good luck. I’m a dream too!”

  Rock reached for her, and his hands clutched just air. She was gone. With a lump in his throat and adrenaline in his heart, he turned and started climbing up into the planetary patrol, high-boost, single-seater fighter rocket. It seemed real enough! He slammed the airlock, and pressed the emergency boost button.

  Twenty-Six

  The twin-seat rocket took off in the emergency takeoff mode, with all engines firing. Almost immediately, Rockson was crushed back into the brown leatherette cushioning. The G-force was like being hit in the stomach with a baseball bat. And as the super-powerful rocket ship kept rising from the surface, the weight of his body quadrupled and then quadrupled again. Rock was soon near to blacking out, almost unable to draw a breath. He watched the meters before his blurred vision spin around like pinwheels. Klaxons and buzzers were sounding, denoting the strain on the rocket’s life-support systems. Soon, the craft would disintegrate!

  “Have . . . to . . . cut engines,” he thought, and reached for the cut-off lever—or at least what he thought was that lever.

  His hand barely cleared the couch, and then fell back. The acceleration was too great to move even an inch. He’d just have to hope he’d run out of fuel before he died.

  In the rear-mirror viewer above the shaking, smoking control panel, he watched Esmerelda become a marble and then a dot, and then wink out. Nothing but stars, unfamiliar patterns of stars, were out there. The meter, the one that counted off millions of miles traveled (the other meters changed too fast to read) indicated that he was already ten million miles out from the prison-world. The fuel meter read half gone. And so was he.