“Have you been getting enough sleep?” Dextrus inquired, frowning at the swordsman’s blurred and bloodshot eyes.
“At times your naivete amazes me.”
“Well, to work then. We can’t have much time. First these.”
The son of Abish peered at the two white objects being offered on the sorcerer’s wrinkled palm.
“Silk worm cocoons?”
“Nose plugs. Insert them now. When the dragon roars at you, you must remember to keep your mouth shut. Its breath contains a poisonous vapor that will instantly turn you into a gibbering ninny. That is what happened to Glutius. Do not inhale its breath!”
Ahdogon seemed to understand and looked interested. “For that advice I thank you.”
“And now give me your sword. I shall coat it with this venom, which is utterly deadly to dragons.”
“But its scales—”
“Forget its scales, you muscle-bound moron! When it roars at you, you must throw your sword into its mouth.”
“Throw . . .?”
It took a few repetitions, but eventually Ahdogon got it. “Then I won’t die?”
“Of course not. You’re going to be emperor and founder of a dynasty!”
“A large one. Well, this is exciting news. Coat the blade by all means. I really came to tell you that I have just signed your death warrant, postdated until midnight. But if your plan works, I shall hasten back and grant you an imperial pardon, I promise.”
“You are gracious, lord,” the sorcerer murmured, confident that swordsmen were as impervious to irony as dragons to steel. So much brawn, so little brain!
The son of Abish departed, and the door to the tower was locked behind him, leaving Dextrus to watch the proceedings through a small, barred window. Although it did provide an excellent view over intervening rooftops, it was so far removed from the centre of action that he would be unable to participate in the excitement. That might not be altogether bad, he reflected. It would be a shame if his century-old heart were to give out before the climax.
All happened as it should. The dark dragon shape passed in front of the rising moon; the tiny figure of the challenger was just visible, although not audible. The dragon landed, baleful as ever. It extended its neck and, one must assume, roared. But Ahdogon son of Abish did not flee as all the others had. Instead he ran forward, closing with the worm. The dragon was seriously nonplused: prey should not behave like that! Its eyes could not bulge any more than they normally did without falling right out, but it forgot to close its jaw as it watched the swordsman approach, and thus he was able to give the coup de grace by hurling his poisoned broadsword right into its gaping maw.
You could see that the dragon didn’t like it. It chomped, reared, writhed, and roared so loud that even Dextrus, far away in the magi’s tower, could hear its agony. Every effort it made to eject the blade now lodged in its palate only sliced up its mouth and tongue even more. Raising its head to Heaven, it ejected a mighty jet of fire and pink steam, and then slowly collapsed into a heap.
The Forbidding City exploded in a triumph of drums, cymbals, fireworks, and trumpets. So Dextrus’s interpretation of the ancient texts had been correct. He had been quite confident, but never certain. He sat down in the middle of his laboratory to wait and see if the swordsman would keep his word and waive the planned execution.
Time passed very slowly for him that night as the rest of the city—with the obvious exception of Chief Eunuch—celebrated the dawn of the thirty-second dynasty. Indeed, it was only minutes before midnight when he heard voices outside, and the lock being turned.
The new emperor strode in alone and carefully shut the door behind himself.
The sorcerer rose and bowed. “Well done, Your Imperial Majesty. You were magnificent!”
“I was, wasn’t I?” Ahdogon preened in his new robe of golden silk. “I am grateful for your advice, old man of Speel, but I have decided to let the death sentence stand. You might—purely by accident, I mean, for I do not doubt your loyalty in any way—might let slip some embarrassing remark not in accordance with my noble, but heart-rending, life story, which I am currently planning for the biographers. At your age you have so little to lose, that I am sure you will understand.”
“Absolutely, Great Son of the Sun, Lord of the High and the Low, et cetera. My whole otherwise insignificant existence has been justified by this opportunity to serve your greatness . . .”
“That’s all right, then.” The emperor started to turn, then paused. “What are you staring at?”
“The transformation, sire! Oh, not the robe. Any barbarian bandit could be decked up in that. But already your brow is ennobled by the aura of majesty and historical significance.”
“It is?” the former swordsman asked suspiciously.
“Oh, indeed! Here, sire, see for yourself!” The sorcerer handed the emperor a mirror.
It was a large mirror in a golden frame, and Ahdogon took it in both hands. He turned so the moonlight illuminated him, then gazed in satisfaction at that handsome, ruthless, youthful face under its coronet. For a moment. And then, before his horrified gaze, the flesh melted into sags and folds, the skin wrinkled, the russet mane shrank to wisps of white, the teeth grew long, yellow, and loose.
“What is happening to me?” he cried in a timorous wail.
“Justice,” retorted a bass voice on the other side of the mirror.
With a shrill croak of despair, the ancient dropped the glass. He was hardly aware of the golden robe being lifted from his spindly shoulders or the circlet from his hairless brow
The glorious son of Abish strode out of the laboratory and again closed the door carefully behind him. This time he even turned the key. Guards and courtiers bowed.
“Quite hopeless!” he announced. “The old man in there has completely lost his head. Cut it off right away.”
“We hear and obey,” declaimed the head of his bodyguard.
“Now, sire,” Chief Eunuch said, “the coronation—”
“Can wait until tomorrow. Everything can wait until tomorrow. I am weary after the battle and wish to retire. Um . . . Remind me: which way to the harem?”
Sorcerers usually get what they want in the end.
opt-in
J.W. SCHNARR
There’s a dirty wad of spit on the glass inside a bus stop. It’s green and yellow in places, and it curls your stomach to look at it. Maybe there’s a bit of brown in there because it was left by a smoker. Maybe there’s blood. It has a stink to it too, doesn’t it? Everything does. You’re holding your breath hoping not to puke and waiting for the bus and for some reason you just don’t have the will to turn around and look at something else. You don’t dare take your eye off it because it’s going to do something terrible the second you look away. Only when that bus comes, it’s you that does the terrible thing.
An old Chinese woman struggles to get by you with her perfectly waxed hair and her fold-down walker that she uses to get around because she can’t afford new legs on her pension. You pretend like you lose your footing and bump her. It was an accident. Your feet slipped on another gob of slime, one you didn’t notice under your feet coming at you like a green hunting snail. Maybe the snot crunches under your feet and you lurch out of that old bus stop, bumping the woman into the glass. She takes the wad of snot with her as she struggles by, oblivious to the corruption you’ve caused. She clucks like a chicken. And you taste bile in the back of your throat.
The joke’s on you though. When she sits down near the spot you’ve staked out for yourself on the bus, you have to look at that goddamned thing for the next half hour until some kind soul leans down and whispers in her ear. She looks around, shocked, like she just woke up and doesn’t know where she is.
Then she pulls out a rag and clucks again. Says something Chinese. Maybe she looks at you and knows you did it on purpose. Maybe she sees something on your face she doesn’t
like and doesn’t push the subject. Maybe she sees the black eye of a moss auto-pump shotgun peeking out from under your coat. But maybe not.
Later you’ll remember that look on the old Chinese and wonder if you made a similar face the first time the phone rang.
Let’s say you’re sitting in your apartment and it’s 42 degrees and you’re sweating your balls off. You’re still wearing the suit Ajax lent you the money to rent, refusing no for an answer and insisting. Shoving fistfuls of dirty paper money into your hand.
“You’re not going to her funeral dressed like that, he says, his face twitching from a bad implant. He’s got a silver eye that was supposed to let him see in the dark but he’s allergic to the metal and it gives him seizures sometimes because there’s an optic pin rubbing against something important in the frontal lobe of his brain. He cries out in gibberish sometimes, but you think it’s funny. He doesn’t. “Don’t be an asshole.”
So you dressed up nice because Angela’s parents were going to be there and they hate you anyway, only now they hate you more. You see her father’s ugly glare across the hall the entire time the J.P. is going on about what a sweet girl Angela was and how the Gods have taken her somewhere better. They never found Angela’s body so in place of a casket they have a little wooden box and the latest photo taken of her. She’s smiling and waving at the camera, and her left arm is out of the picture.
Only it isn’t, really, because you have this photo at home and you’re in it. Her arm is around your face, and you’re both smiling.
Afterward you walk up to her parents and say you’re sorry it happened and her father has to be held back by two of his brothers trying to knock your head off and the whole time he’s screaming IT HAPPENED ON YOUR WATCH, and IT SHOULD HAVE BEEN YOU and you can’t say you blame them and you can’t say you disagree with them.
Sitting on your couch in that suit holding the same photo from her funeral you put your hand over your smiling face and think how your happiness would have been a small price to pay for her life if you’d ever been given a chance to give it.
You should take that suit off before your ball sweat costs you an extra hundred bucks in cleaning fees but all you can think about is how you wish you could hear her voice one last time and that’s when the phone rings and you pick it up and you hear her breathy voice on the other end of the line.
“Hey Patrick Terran, it’s Angela. I wanted to talk to you about the weight you’ve put on. I know a couple ways to slim that figure down just in time for beach season. . . .”
Maybe you stopped dreaming then, because your dreams all went black and turned into nightmares.
It’s called behavioural targeting, and while it may be as old as advertising itself it really got its wheels turning in the post dot-com social media boom at the dawn of the techno age. The goal is simple: by mining your life for information about you as a person, marketing firms can hook you up with advertising you are most likely to be interested in. They call it a service to both consumers and corporate. You don’t even think about your shopping habits anymore. Like Coke? Love New Diet Coke Light. Love blue? Check out aquamarine. Targeted advertising works not because they give you what you want, but because Corporate knows what makes you feel bad about yourself and are perfectly happy reminding you how much you suck and how they have a cure to make you the talk of cyber-town.
You’ll have 7 million Facebook friends in no time if you just lose twenty pounds. Or change your eye colour. Or get rid of your natural teeth in favour of something with lights. Re-grow lost hair and lost limbs. Stop shitting and farting like a monkey and use subtle liquid waste removal like a civilized person. Design your baby’s DNA so they’ll grow up smarter, faster, and stronger than you ever could. Buy mechanical pets or household replicants to help with the chores because you’re a filthy pig who can’t keep house. And why should you? Put your card in the slot and we’ll take care of everything.
The new craze in targeted advertising is for simulations of your actual friends and family members to call your line and talk you into losing weight or fixing your acne or getting rid of gross body hair, smells, needs. It’s been incredibly effective. Daughters that hear their moms tell them to buy douche are 48 percent more likely to do so. Sons who hear about how their extra body fat is a shame on the family are 55 percent more likely to buy workout pills and diet aids. Corporate is scrambling to cover all the action on this, and they’re making enough money to drown any cries that it’s immoral to use people’s loved ones against them. After all, they’ve been doing it for hundreds of years.
Angela knew you better than anyone. At some point, she must have told them everything.
You’re standing outside the coffee shop where you first met and the rain is lashing your face. Just like that day you met. You might have worked in that place once, covering the bills but not much else. Maybe you had enough money for some drug of choice on the weekend. It wasn’t a life, but it was living. And then your job was gone. Shit-canned because you showed up at work one night high off your skull with puke on your shirt and made inappropriate comments to your co-workers on duty about how they were slaves to the Corporate teat and they were all gonna get theirs in the end. Thing is, you didn’t even remember doing it until Corporate pulled you into the office and showed you the video screens. You threw a sucra-sweet bowl at an old lady and then ran around trying to kiss the customers’ asses.
Maybe you laughed when Corporate said ass-kissing was figurative, and not meant to be taken as a literal action. It left them open to sexual harassment lawsuits. Yeah, you laughed. Corporate didn’t laugh though. They handed you your paycheque and told you to get off the premises in the next five minutes or you’d be charged with trespassing.
And don’t come back or you’d be charged with trespassing.
And don’t call us, or you’d be charged with harassment.
And don’t blog about us on your site or you’d be charged with libel.
And don’t mention us in passing to anyone or you’d be charged with slander.
And if you’re not off the property in 4 minutes and 18 seconds, you’d be charged with trespassing.
So you left. And maybe you stewed on how they treated you after working there for eight years, and maybe you were a little sorry but felt you could hardly be blamed for something that was obviously done under the influence of drugs. You couldn’t even remember doing it, for Christ’s sake. Maybe the bills were due and you were getting tossed out on your ass and then Corporate sent you a V-mail explaining that they had decided to sue you for damages from that night in the coffee house and don’t worry about sliding your card in the phone, because they’d already emptied your bank account and you still owed them another thirty-five hundred bucks and you needed to have that to them by the end of the month to prevent further action.
So you skipped the bus and went for a walk instead, and then there you were in the rain, across the street from your former place of employment fantasizing about going in there and really kicking up some shit, ready to pump your quarters and start the game of your life, when a breathy blonde with a Hello Kitty umbrella kicks water at you and your sour face and then laughs. She leans in close and you smell mangoes and wax lipstick and flowers and other entrancing girl-smells and she whispers, Come on, this place sucks. I know somewhere. You ask her where she came from, thinking Heaven, thinking Miami, and she points to a dirty old city bus winding away from you. The #1, a cross-town bus that literally goes everywhere. The sign on the back says VISIT R’LYEH, and there’s a happy family having the time of their lives in some distant tropical paradise. The emerald water is black, but you think it’s just grime from driving the city streets. Later, you’ll realize you were mistaken.
Sometimes your life changes in predictable ways. You see the change coming and there are lots of signs pointing like a curve in the road. Warning you the path to take is changing ahead and if you don’t change with it you’ll soo
n find yourself sailing off a cliff into black space. But sometimes the biggest changes in your life come on little, spur-of-the-moment decisions you wouldn’t think would affect you in a million years. This was both. You turned your head away from your former place of employment because you wanted to smell that girl again, and she was already dancing down the street. It was a small choice. The curve came when your body moved with your head and took that first step toward her. You never saw it coming.
She was right, the place was better. The coffee sucked, the service was terrible, and they were playing some early century industrial to suit the mood. Nouveau post-something or other she called it. You took it to mean they could forgo expensive light tables and wall aquariums in favour of cinder blocks and rust panelling. Warehouse incandescent bulbs spit dirty yellow light on everything and it hurts your eyes. Everyone wears black and you can’t tell the girls from the boys.
But Angela is there, and it makes this place paradise.
She talks about how great the world must have been before simfarming and climate change. She talks about the goldfish they sell in a vending machine on campus that glow in the dark, and how everyone has them for pets and how someone has been putting them in the toilets in the girls’ bathrooms. You counter with corruption and greed, your same old shtick. She talks about flowers that smell like candy and simpuppies that always stay small and cute. You hit her with your big guns, you vent about Corporate and how they’ve turned the world into cancer. She asks if you know cancers are immortal growth and if we can tame them we can live forever. That doesn’t sound so bad.
She’s an art student and she knows your friend Celina and she saw you a couple weeks ago when you were strobing on a weekend high and ranting about Corporate. You looked so crazy. She found out where you work from Celina and had already been by there a few times but hadn’t seen you. She asks if it’s stalking and you say yes but you aren’t creeped out. You’re flattered. Your heart is hammering in your chest and it stutters when she smiles and helps you put sugar in your coffee and your hands touch.
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