by Ernest Hogan
As usual, all this xau-xau whining about "safety" is another attempt by those Powers That Be to interfere with the freedoms that they claim are our rights, but they go apeshit if you ever try to use them. Who the fuck cares about "safety" – the xau-xau world isn't safe!
And as for technical viability, well just take a look at this, kids, right here in the middle of my forehead, like a third eye staring out at ya. You can see that it's all healed now, all the scabs have fallen off, and ain't that a pretty scar? And it's cordless, so there's no xau-xau wire to keep tripping over or restrict your freedom of movement – 'cause one thing we at Outlaw Implants are in favor of is your freedom of movement! And believe me, it works: How do you think I'm talking to you now?
So you were sumato enough to find this underground net – I bet you're sumato enough t0o figure out how to get in touch with us here at Outlaw Implants, and sumato enough to want to let us wire your infosystem directly into your brain!
*
When the Outlaw Implants message flashed on his phone screen, Smokey was delighted.
*
Xochitl was expecting Caldonia's conapt to be as exotic as Lesbos West, but it was very much like the homes of her other friends who worked with computers; the only unique feature was that it was neat and clean.
This made Xochitl aware of how dirty she was, and that her hair and clothes were an awful mess. Would it be all right to ask Caldonia if she could take a shower and maybe borrow some clothes? Would she take it as some kind of come on?
Caldonia went directly for her workstation, which came to life in response to her loud, complex whistle.
"Cal-dohn-YAAAAA! Cal-dohn-YAAAAA! What makes your big head so hard?" It sang.
"Sugar," Caldonia told it, "There's this guy named Smokey Espejo. Gimmie all you can find on him."
"Yassm'," the infosystem said, and went into a flurry of action. The screen filled with video, and askey bytes. Speakers chattered audio bits. Soon it had automatically kicked into crunchtime, and buzzed away at high-speed.
After a while, Caldonia sniffed the air. She gave Xochitl a deadly smirk.
"Xochi dear," she said, "this is going to take a while. Why don't you take a shower and freshen up. Then take a look in my closet and see if you can find something that looks better on you than your Daddy's old suit."
Xochitl pointed her nose at her left armpit and sniffed. Then she turned a deep red.
"The shower's thataway," Caldonia said, with a cock of her bald head.
"Uh, thank you," Xochitl said, and ran for it.
Caldonia giggled, then sat down at her workstation.
*
The female subjects left the lesbian bar and headed straight for a nearby conapt in a predominantly homosexual West Hollywood neighborhood. I'm going to have to take a shower after this assignment. May God have mercy on their souls.
*
"Hey, hey, hey," Zobop suddenly said when the infosystem did an out-of-rhythm buzz. "Looks like somebody else is as interested in our boy Smokey as we are."
"Try to locate it," Tan Tien said, without taking her eyes off Ralph. "Now, please continue."
*
Tezcatlipoca instantly knew that another infosystem was heavy-scanning him. He was also instantly aware that Tan Tien and Zobop had become aware of the other scan. He was confident that he would locate it before them.
Smokey agreed.
*
"I feel much so better now," Xochitl said, coming out of the bathroom, wearing Caldonia's battleship-grey bathrobe and drying her hair with a pink fluffy towel. "How the scan is going?"
"Tons of info," Caldonia said. "I'm trying to figure out a way to condense and sift through it all."
"Have you heard from your Phoebe friend?" Xochitl asked.
Caldonia looked disgusted. "No, but then she's not the sort to let folks know of her changes in plans."
"Maybe we also should system try to find her," said Xochitl.
"Good idea," said Caldonia.
*
. . . Phoebe loved being a Medusa . . . then she hated it . . . chingow . . . why did she have to be so ugly? . . . no, she wasn't ugly . . . she was beautiful . . . her scales were so shiny . . . and had such pretty patterns and colors . . . and soooooooo delicate . . . and intricate . . . chingow . . . no wonder when she looked at people -- say, that xau-xau landlord of hers when he gets that look on his face where his itty-bitty piggie eyes wrinkle-up and he shows those chipped, crooked teeth and he lets his soft, wrinkled hand hover around her thighs and/or her breasts and he says something like:
"Hey, Phoebe, sweetheart, darling, baby, you know I'm a sympathetic guy. If getting your hands on authentic Americano cash gets to be too difficult for you sometime, I'd be willing to accept other stuff as payment for your rent. You're such a hot honey – for you I'd take it out in pussy anytime!"
Then his hand accidentally-on-purpose brushes against her breast. Or was it her thigh? Her ass? And she focuses not only her two big, beautiful blue eyes but also her wonderful brand-new little snake eyes on his ugly face and all the color melts out of his skin, he turns grey, turns into stone. And she's so glad. He's a rock. She's glad he's a rock, and she's glad to be a Medusa. She dances around in sumato slow-motion, her heart fluttering likes she's in love and just knows that this time it's the real-live fairy tale happily ever after thing and she just needs to have sex with somebody – anybody – or she'll just die.
And then, dancing with her, was Smokey. Or was it Caldonia? Or was it Beto?
*
Chingow! Something tickled Phoebe's wrist. A little. And she thought she heard something. But it was all so far away, her wrist, and the sound, and the tickle . . .
*
"There," said Caldonia. "I finally located her – or at least her phone. She's in a room at the old Hotel Bonaventure. But for some reason she ain't answering."
"It is far from here?" asked Xochitl. She had gone through Caldonia's closet and had found some shoes, slacks, T-shirt (into which she had attached the god-simulating chip to the inside of the left sleeve with an artificial nail and some super glue), and a jacket that weren't bad – almost the sort of thing she'd buy for herself.
"Not far by scooter," Caldonia said, then looked mischievous.
Xochitl looked scared.
"Shit," Caldonia said, taking her by the wrist, "come one, girl; Phoebe may be in trouble."
*
Tezcatlipoca was disturbed to find someone making inquiries as to the location of Phoebe's phone. It was dangerous that anyone else should want to interfere with Phoebe. She was important to the whole Tezcatlipoca/Smokey Espejo configuration. As long as Tezcatlipoca controlled Phoebe and kept her as a good, little groupie, lavishing love and attention on her – Beto would be suppressed, exiled to some dark corner of the brain they shared.
He called Smokey.
*
"Anything wrong, Smokey?" asked Tommy.
Lobo was irritated – apparently no one was listening to his discourse on the differences and similarities between African, preColumbian and Latin music.
"I'm okay," Smokey said, getting up from the pile of vari-sized cushions that served as furniture in the El Monte studio's "creative interaction" room. "I need a some air. And some more Fun."
"Here you go, Smoke," said Tommy, handing him a stick.
"Uh," said Ella with that certain lack of subtly that endeared her to all, "do you need any help or company?"
"Naw," said Smokey, putting the stick between his lips. "I just need this, and a few lungfuls of hot smog."
Ella pouted, crossed her arms and sank deeper into the cushions.
"Yeah," said Kenny, who was pounding out a percussion riff on a cushion. "Smog. Mama El Lay's milk."
Smokey stepped out the security door. Several Olvidadoid guards snapped his way, then smiled and went back to watching the perimeter, the narrow alleys between some warehouses that were painted bright colors and decorated with Olvidadoid graffiti. Another spectacu
lar Los Angeles sunset was brewing.
At about the same time he was going to call his computerized self, it called him. AM WORKING HARDER ON CONTACTING OUTLAW IMPLANTS, flashed on the tiny phone screen.
Smokey smiled. It was exactly what he was going to ask for.
*
"Fascinating," Tan Tien said, then sipped some maté, giving Ralph a look that made him feel that his rambling account of his relationship with Beto and his adventures since waking up that morning was a virtuoso performance.
"Our system indicates," said Zobop, who was at the workstation with his head cocked in Ralph's direction, "a lack of interaction indicating that the human operator left the premises soon after the acquisition of information that someone named Phoebe Graziano was at the Hotel Bonaventure. My detective's instinct tells me that whoever it was left the North Hollywood conapt and went to look for Ms. Graziano."
"My feminine intuition agrees," said Tan Tien, careful not to take her eyes off Ralph for very long.
Zobop then turned to Ralph and said, "Do you know this Phoebe Graziano? Is she perhaps a friend of your friend Beto Orozco?"
"I think he mentioned a Phoebe once," said Ralph, feeling confident, like he knew it all. "One of his girlfriends. Yeah, he was always talking about Phoebe, Debbie, Xochitl, Isabel, Masako . . ."
"This needs to be investigated," Tan Tien told Zobop; then turning back toward Ralph, she said, "I think you should go too. Since you know Beto, you can talk to this Phoebe."
Before he could think about danger, Ralph found himself saying, "Yes!" and getting up and heading for the door with Zobop as Tan Tien blew a kiss their way, got up, and lit some incense.
*
Tezcatlipoca felt he was getting close to contacting Outlaw Implants when the second infosystem monitoring his activities, the one in West Hollywood, showed a sudden cutoff of operator interactions, right after getting information on the location of Phoebe's phone. Then the Hollywood and Vine infosystem showed a similar cutoff. It could be that the operators of both systems had gone to the Bonaventure to investigate.
It could also be something else, like both operators coincidentally choosing to go to dinner at the same time; or one could have gone to dinner and the other was called off to an emergency, or . . .
But even the slightest chance of someone interfering with Phoebe could not be tolerated. Tezcatlipoca sent off a message to Smokey, suggesting that some Olvidadoid enforcers be dispatched to the Bonaventure to intercept any intruders before the Olvidadoid guards watching Phoebe would have to be bothered.
*
Smokey was feeling the full effect of his fresh Fun hit, feeling powerful and confident, so thoroughly Smokey, when he got the message from Tezcatlipoca.
"Yeah," he said out loud, into his phone, "send some enforcers, have them kick the asses of anybody who goes near Phoebe's room."
Visions of big boys and girls all in blue and black beating xau-xau civilians black and blue in elegant hotel hallways made him feel good.
The sun was setting. The sky was ablaze with smog-enhanced colors. It would be night time, his time. He would be able to throw away his sunglasses and see things through naked eyes.
But something was still gnawing at him, deep inside, making him feel weak. His stomached gurgled. Oh yes, it was hunger. He kept forgetting that a human body needed things like food to get along.
*
Inside the "creative interaction" room: Kenny did more finger improvisations on a cushion, his eyes rolling up into their sockets, Fun and inspiration having taken him. Ella continued to sulk. Tommy sucked some more Fun. Lobo paced in a tight circle, kicking cushions into the air.
"There's something strange about this Smokey," Lobo said.
"You mean something wonderful," said Ella, slowly melting into bittersweet longing.
"Hey," said Tommy, licking the Fun residue from his lips, "Smokey's one of the most sumato guys I've ever known."
"More sumato than you, Lobo," said Ella.
"I mean, when I first started talking to him he seemed like a total music primitive," Lobo went on, ignoring them. "He didn't have any vocabulary for talking about music. He was struggling to express himself – then he looked at his phone and suddenly he's tossing around technical terms like a musicologist! Like he learned all this stuff it took me years to learn in an instant!"
Ella leaned toward Lobo, getting kittenish. "Maybe Smokey's just smarter than you," she said.
"Could be," said Lobo. "And that scares me. I know how smart I am . . . can you imagine what that makes him?"
"Oh wow, chingow!" said Tommy. "Mr. Ego strikes again! You really can't go very long without mentioning how xau-xau smart you think you are!"
"Smokey's just sumato," said Ella, staring at the ceiling, playing with her hair, "that's all."
"And you know what's really sumato about him," said Tommy. "He doesn't have to go away to get business done. He'll talk about a deal or getting in touch with someone, and suddenly it'll come over his phone that the deal has been made, or that person is trying to get in touch with him. You have be real sumato to make that happen."
"He's important," said Ella, "Everybody wants to get in touch with him."
"But don't you see," said Lobo, "it's like he can learn things instantly, just out of nowhere, and he can be in more than one place at a time, and that's impossible!"
Kenny stopped drumming and said, "Not for a god."
*
Phoebe kissed them all: Smokey, Caldonia, Beto. All very different styles, textures, and tastes. Sure there were some similarities between Smokey and Beto, but then they were both men, and as Caldonia often said, all men are alike.
"Wrong," said Smokey, "there's no one like me." His lips burned her delicate, scaly ear. All her snake-heads reached over to lick his face with their forked tongues.
Then there was a skull-splitting whistle. It was Caldonia trying to get her attention. "I'll teach you to treat me so xau-xau, Phoebe-babe," she said.
Suddenly Beto was with Caldonia, his arm around her, a hand on one of her breasts. He looked at Phoebe, said, "Look, I found another way to hurt you," and kissed Caldonia.
They kissed long and hard, arranging themselves so that Phoebe could see their tongues wrestle, pressing their hot bodies together. Then Caldonia had the big, black, strap-on dildo that Phoebe had picked out on that romantic weekend in San Francisco when they had first started seeing each other, and they had rented a honeymoon suite at the Hotel St. Francis and had screwed until Phoebe's vagina, anus and mouth were raw and the surface of the dildo was buffed as smooth and shiny as an obsidian mirror. Caldonia strapped on the dildo, and fucked Beto up the ass, the way he always would refuse to let Phoebe do, no matter how she begged and cried. Beto winked at Phoebe as Caldonia reamed away.
Phoebe was furious, looking at them hard, trying to turn them into stone.
But instead Phoebe turned to stone, and fell over, shattering into jagged, chalky chunks.
Then she woke up – sort of.
She could barely move, and breathing was an effort. It would be hours before she would be able to get out of bed.
At least it was a nice bed, in a nice room.
*
Smokey reentered the "creative interaction" room. His sunglasses were gone; his dark eyes were wild. All of the Los Tricksters' eyes focused on him.
"We better order some food," he said. "And make sure we have plenty of Fun. We're going to have to work all night again."
Tommy, Ella, and Kenny cheered.
Lobo frowned, shook his head, and counted the transdermal caffeine patches in his pocket.
12. AND NOW A WORD FROM OUR SPONSOR . . .
Tan Tien sat down comfortably, straightened her spine, and proceeded to breath slowly, regularly, filling her lungs completely with air, holding a few seconds, then letting it all out each time. She did this while sitting on a rug with a digitized Daffy Duck prancing all over it. She had always found that humor aided her meditation.
Then she began to see.
*
Here it is, El Lay, the spirits of the adult dead are about to return to earth for Dead Daze, the sun is sinking slowly into the Western sky, blazing warm colors over fabulously rebuilt, redesigned, and thoroughly recombozoid El Monte, just a few hot licks off the San Bernardino Freeway from the throbbing, burning Dead Dazed heart of the city-sprawl, in this wonderfully repainted warehouse district where none other than the one, the only, the sensationally sumato, man of this Dead Daze, Smokey Espejo is said to be hard at work in a secret studio, preparing a release that will recomboize whatever parts of the planet that are still stuck in the xau-xau of the last millennium! I tell you, it's so sumato, I can hardly control myself! And that must mean it's really, really, really important, so much that they can't even tell moi, the Fabulous Thelma! But don't worry recombozos and recombozoettes, as per usual me and my crack Recombovision uplink team are hot on the trail! Why, even a little while ago, some real, live, mean and beautiful Olvidadoid guards in full blue and black regalia actually chased moi and my beloved team with buzzing high-powered people prods! So we must be getting close!
What was that?
Sounds like gunshots . . .
Oh, chingow! It's those xau-xau Olvidadoid guards again! They have guns and they're actually shooting at us! Talk about excitement – we bring it to you here on Recombovision!
Uh-oh, that was one got a little close, so I better sign off, but remember recombozos and recombozoettes, the Fabulous Thelma and her team are combing the most dangerous corners of deepest, darkest El Monte to get you closer and closer to Smokey!
*
"We got rid of that infoteam," said Sharkey, the cute, little blue-eyed, musclebound Olvidadoid guard who was pulling door duty. "But there's someone else here, says she's from something called Outlaw Implants and she insists on seeing Smokey in person." There was jealousy and disapproval in Sharkey's voice.
"Oh yeah," said Smokey, rushing over from where he was practicing and rewriting the song "Tezcatlipoca Blues" into "Smoking Mirror Blues" with Lobo and the other Tricksters, "send her in." He made sure to make eye contact with Sharkey and kept it up until her frown melted and she was showing her filed white teeth.