Kilroy was Here

by Jeff South

  My friend starts blubbering and I can no longer fight back my own tears.

  “I love you, man,” I tell him.

  “Same,” he says. “Get over here, asshole.”

  We hug for a few seconds and I feel the sensation brought on by the empathizer wearing off. A slight tingling pricks my fingers. Jeff and I break our hug and I look at Simon Tybalt.

  “What did you do to us?” I ask him.

  He holds up the metallic syringe he plunged into our necks. “The Empathizer is one of my different behavioral alteration weapons I’ve developed over the years. I developed the entire arsenal because, as a pacifist, I abhor violence. These are defensive weapons that alter your opponents behavior long enough for you to make an escape.”

  “Why did you do that to us? That was manipulative.”

  He places his hand on my shoulder and peers through my eyes.

  “Empathy is an equalizer,” he says. “When we allow ourselves a moment to walk in another’s shoes, we appreciate their perspective. It’s a tremendous gift we humans have been given, but we all too often fail to exercise it. Pride prevents us. So, I gave you two a much-needed nudge.”

  “Still,” I protest. “You forced me to empathize. I didn’t have a choice.”

  “If I had left the choice to you, you guys would still be arguing about classic rock.”

  I look at my friend who is staring at the floor once again.

  “I’m sorry for injecting a nanotech in you,” he mumbles. “That was a shitty thing to do.”

  “I’m sorry for insulting Styx. Kilroy Was Here is a fine album.”

  Simon Tybalt walks to the tarp next to the Volkswagen Bus and whips it onto the floor to reveal a cylindrical device about the size of a car engine. It looks like a giant garbage disposal. It’s casing is clear and tubes and circuits intertwine around it. The sight of it snaps me from my issues with Jeff and Simon’s manipulations and into that place where I’m floating through a virtual library. I know where everything is and where to find it. I know every inch of the device Simon revealed and how to access all the information about it.

  “That’s a quintonium drive,” I say. “Intended to be the most powerful piece of machinery known in the galaxy.”

  I snap back to reality from this out-of-body experience and gasp.

  “Now are you ready to get in touch with the nano inside you, Tony? Or do you wanna keep whining about your life?”

  *

  Jeff sits on the hood of Miss America and smokes a Mongalisonian cigarette. A scowl covers his face and he stares off somewhere only he can see. “Too Much Time on My Hands” is blaring from inside the car and I fear at any moment he is going to break into his angry dance.

  “Are we good?” I ask.

  “It’s all good.”

  “I want to apologize for being a dick earlier. I shouldn’t have said that stuff.”

  “Seriously. We’re cool.” He hops off the car and heads to a display of weapons on the table. “I’m ready to get on with this. I want Leigh Ann back.”

  Simon Tybalt claps his hands and bounces over to console. “You need to know what you’re up against.” He taps on the console keyboard and the face of Grandor the Malevolent fills the giant monitor on the wall. “You need to know what you’re dealing with.”

  “Grandor’s a dick,” Jeff says. “What more do we need to know?”

  “There’s a lot I wanna know,” I say. “Why is all of this so important to Grandor? Taking over planets in the name of high end real estate? Is that really what’s going on here?”

  Simon Tybalt turns to me, a wide grin on his face. “You tell me, Tony.”

  “What do you mean? I don’t know anything.”

  “But you do.” He walks to me and puts his hands on my shoulders, like a coach trying to give his new athlete a pep talk. “You have access to an entire file on Grandor. It’s in you. Search for it.”

  I sigh because I really don’t know how this is supposed to work. I close my eyes and picture Grandor’s goofy oversized oval of a head. His big eyes and purple skin. His brilliant white teeth. At first, all I sense is revulsion at the thought of this awful being. Then, a rush of recognition tingles my brain not unlike the sensation of my first sip of gin and Fresca. I float through the virtual library in my psyche and find all I need to know. It’s as if I’ve been researching Grandor’s life for years in preparation for writing his biography. I blurt out the first piece of information I can think of.

  “Grandor the Malevolent is a highly advanced artificial intelligence created years ago by two intoxicated scientists in a lab during a convention on Gamma Centauri VII. His true form is that of a computer program which is downloaded into the consciousness of a host. He is not even a biological creature.”

  “What a freak,” Jeff mumbles.

  “Excellent!” Simon circles me, encouraging me to keep going. His voice is muffled, as if coming from another room, even though I sense his presence. I admit the ease with which I’m spouting this information is giving me a buzz.

  “Grandor’s creators attempted to develop a form of intelligence that could be transferred into other beings. Its intelligence would spread itself to whatever or whoever connected to it. The body you see Grandor inhabiting is that of a merchant he attached himself to several years ago.”

  “If he’s not human, why does he act so goofy?” Jeff asks me.

  “When Grandor attaches himself to a being, he can access all parts of the brain and download its contents, including emotions and sensual experiences. This has produced some rather volatile side effects that Grandor’s creators did not anticipate when they wrote his code. He feels what they feel. Taps into their memories and experiences.”

  “You’re doing very well, Tony.” Simon keeps circling me.

  “Grandor has had access to heartbreak, euphoria, trauma, jubilation, and excessive amounts of pornography. Astonishing as it sounds, he has a damaged psyche and he overcompensates by attempting world domination. He is a textbook narcissist and is prone to unpredictable bouts of sociopathy.”

  I stop and look at Simon.

  “What’s wrong?” he asks.

  “I admit this is kinda cool,” I tell him, “but I still don’t like the idea of having a spider-looking nanobug in my brain. I want it out.”

  “Help me get Leigh Ann and the plans for the quintonium drive,” Jeff says. “Then we’ll take it out. I promise, man.”

  “Wait.” Simon holds up a hand and his brow furrows. “What spider-looking nanobug is in your brain?”

  “That’s what’s inside me, right? A little nanobug that looks like a spider. The Araneae.”

  Simon Tybalt covers his mouth and his eyes widen in horror. He paces back and forth in front of the display of weapons and mumbles over and over.

  “No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.”

  “What?” I ask.

  “Yeah,” Jeff says. “What’s up with you?”

  Simon leans against the table on which all the weapons rest. He rubs his face and blows out a weary sigh.

  “The nanotech in you doesn’t look like a spider. I hate spiders. I would never design a nano to look like one of those monsters.” He fishes the thumb drive Jeff gave him at breakfast out of his pocket and runs to the computer console. He plugs the drive into a port and taps on the keyboard. A small robotic device resembling a crayfish appears onscreen.

  “This is the nano in you. Not a spider.” He taps on the keyboard again and a new image appears onscreen of a spider-shaped micro robot.

  “This,” he says, “is Araneae.”

  “That’s it.” I point at the image onscreen. “Randi and Max showed me that at Corporate. They seem to think that’s what Grandor has developed.”

  “Oh, this is bad.” Simon paces once more as he frets. “This is really bad. This is Steve Carrel leaving The Office bad.”

  “Wow,” Jeff whispers. “That is bad.”

  “I’ve never seen that show,” I admit.

 
; Jeff shakes his head at me. “Did I know that about you?”

  “Araneae is a form of artificial intelligence created on the dark market on the planet Lloyd,” Simon tells us. “Legend has it a restaurant owner wanted a wait staff that would be compliant with him and his customers. He purchased the Araneae off that planet’s version of the internet. What he didn’t realize is they are a kind of hybrid of an A.I. and a carbon-based life form.”

  “They’re alive?” I ask.

  “In a sense.” Simon looks only at the Araneae onscreen. “And powerful. Once they infiltrate your cerebral cortex, they take you over. You become a kind of robot who does only the bidding of a master.”

  “Like Mr. Roboto,” gasps Jeff.

  “So what do we do now?” I ask.

  “We stick to the plan.” Simon clicks off the Araneae image and starts gathering a few weapons from the table. “But, we have to act with more urgency. Grandor wants to turn the Earth into a giant resort and he wants to use my company to do it. We must stop him. I took the first big step by downloading that nano into you, Tony.”

  “How does that help you save your company?”

  Simon prowls around the garage like a man relaying the single most important thing any human has ever uttered, like the cure for cancer or the reason so many people watch The Big Bang Theory.

  “One night I got really drunk on a rare visit to Dangabah. They were having a convention on artificial intelligence and I was curious. Also, I did a lot of shrooms. Don’t do shrooms. You’re too young.”

  “I’ll remember that,” I say.

  “Anyway, I knew I needed a way to protect Corporate, but couldn’t figure out why. Then, while at the convention, it hit me. What if I could deposit the entire Corporate knowledge base into a human being? What if I could communicate to all Corporate employees via nanotechnology? These were the questions that plagued me. I also asked myself if I could make shape-shifting leopard dragons that spoke fluent Finnish like the ones in my mushroom-induced trips, but I had to put that on the back burner.

  “So, I developed the little bugger inside you. The entire knowledge base of Corporate is in that son of a bitch. I just needed a human to accept it.”

  “Why not use a jump drive?” I ask.

  “Why Rube Goldberg Protocols, of course.” The founder of Corporate stands and walks to me, an impish grin across his face. “You see, if anyone wants the training database, they’ll be looking for a jump drive or an external hard drive or servers. No one will be looking for you.”

  “You mean?”

  “Tony Pershing, my dear boy,” he says with his grin widening. “You are a living, breathing Rube Goldberg Protocol.”

  I stand for a moment and ponder that statement. I think about The Prom Night of Which We Shall Not Speak and the ever-growing complexity of my relationship with Marlene. I ruminate about my lack of decisiveness and my need to understand everything before taking action.

  “My god,” I say. “That makes so much more sense than I ever thought it could. It’s unethical and I hate you both with the white hot intensity of an exploding supernova for subjecting me to it, but it makes sense.”

  “Don’t worry,” Simon tells me. “When the mission is done, we’ll get it out of you. This is only temporary.”

  “Let’s talk about the good stuff,” Jeff says. “Guns and shit.”

  *

  I’m facing my best friend as we prepare to spar. A tray of weapons of various shapes, sizes, and forms sits next to me on a rolling cart. Some resemble rifles, others, pistols. I spot a short-nosed double-barrel pistol, and a few other revolver types. They all look like Nerf guns painted for science fiction cosplay.

  “This is your weapons training,” Simon Tybalt announces. “While I’m a pacifist at heart, I recognize the need for some kind of arsenal, but abhor violence. Thus, I created behavioral weaponry. A shot from one of these bad boys will alter the behavior of your assailant, temporarily impairing them so that you may escape.”

  “I’ve seen a couple of those in action,” I tell him.

  “Groovy.” He picks up the double-barreled pistol and hands it to me. It’s light and easy to maneuver.

  “What’s this?” I ask.

  “Take it in your hand and tell me,” he says. “Let the nanotech speak to you.”

  I close my eyes and squeeze the weapon’s handle. The chrome plating is cool in my grip, but a warm wave spreads through my body. I sense a voice somewhere speaking directly to me on behalf of the gun and telling me everything I need to know about it.

  “This is the Passive Aggressive Aggravator,” I announce. “One shot from this temporarily renders your assailant incapacitated with passive aggressive behavior. They’re unable to attack you physically because they are too self-absorbed in how you make them feel.”

  “I want you to shoot Jeff with it.”

  “I don’t feel comfortable shooting my friend,” I say.

  “Remember,” Simon tells me. “He knowingly injected you with a nanotech against your will.”

  I nod and fire the Passive Aggressive Aggravator at Jeff. Two yellow balls of energy hit him in the chest and spread across his body before dissipating.

  “Well, that’s a cool gun,” Jeff says, looking away. “I didn’t get a gun like that, but, it’s no big deal really. I thought we’re going to have a fair fight. It’s cool. I’m not even mad.”

  “I’m so sorry,” I tell him.

  “No. You obviously needed that gun more than me. I’m happy for you.”

  He rambles on for about 30 more seconds about how life isn’t fair but whatever because who cares. The effects wear off and he shakes his head.

  “So, I can pick up a weapon and know instinctively what it does? What’s the point of that?”

  “That’s only a test.” Simon replaces the Passive Aggressive Agitator on the table. “The nano gives you the ability to assess situations. Understand your surroundings. Analyze data. You can spot something in the Corporate database and know what it is. In addition, you’ll be an expert navigator on your journey to meet with Grandor the Malevolent.”

  I pick up a flashlight on the table to inspect it, but Simon gently pulls it away.

  “That’s the Existential Crisis Inducer,” he says. “Let’s not play with that yet.”

  *

  I lie on the floor of the observatory that sits atop Simon Tybalt’s lair and stare at the expanse of space overhead. Simon Tybalt lies to my left and Jeff to my right. I feel very small and insignificant. The prospect of saving the world from planetary real estate development should inflate my ego, but, instead, I feel unworthy. I scan the view overhead and think about where Earth might be. What are my parents doing? They must be worried sick about me. I wonder what they’ll say to me when I see them again. I’m sure The Look and The Reassurance will be replaced with The Screaming and The Banishment. I think, too, about Marlene. What is she doing? Does she miss me? Is she hunting Clint? I miss my parents. I miss Marlene. I scan the heavens for a binary star, but I don’t see one. I try not to take that as an omen.

  An area of the glass ceiling lights up around a cluster of celestial bodies.

  “What is this?” Simon asks.

  “The Jaqrillion Quadrant,” I say. “Here is located the planet Klandar, which is home to race of people who have hermetically sealed themselves in anticipation of the arrival of their god.” My voice is flat and monotone. We’ve been at this for hours.

  “Been there,” Jeff says. “Creepy place.”

  “Tony, you seem pensive,” Simon says. “Are you alright?”

  “Meh. Thinking about stuff.”

  “He’s thinking about Marlene,” Jeff says. “Just like I’m thinking about Leigh Ann.”

  “Ah, yes. It is the plight of all men to be consumed with thoughts of their true love on the eve of a grand adventure.”

  “Have you ever been in love?” I ask him.

  “We’ve all been in love,” he says. “My love was a former employe
e. She worked for me almost twenty years ago. A receptionist in accounting. My god, she was beautiful. I first noticed her legs. I nicknamed her Infinity Jones because those legs went on forever.”

  “What happened between you?” Jeff asks.

  “We were ships in the night. We were not meant to be. I wanted more, but she left without really saying goodbye.”

  “That’s sad,” I say. “Is that why you left Corporate?”

  “Not entirely,” he replies. His voice is distant as if he’s talking to one of the stars overhead and not me and Jeff. “I did get very depressed, though. So, I went off to find myself. I turned the company over to Max Gentry on an interim basis and I traveled the cosmos. I discovered I liked it better here. So, I built this moon base and stayed.”

  “Why not retire?” I ask. “Why fake your own death?”

  “People would leave me alone if they thought I was dead,” he says. “You two have a long trip to the planet Lloyd tomorrow. Don’t stay up late. I’ll see you first thing in the morning.”

  “Mr. Tybalt.” I stand and face him. “I have a question. Will this nanotech take over my consciousness like the Araneae? Is that a possibility?”

  “Oh, you don’t need to worry about that,” he says with a dismissive wave of his hand. “I’ve discovered an herbal medication that mutes its growth and gives you more control over it.”

  “Herbal medication?” I ask.

  “Yeah.” Jeff lights up one of Mongalisonian cigarettes. “Works like a charm.”

  *

  Jeff and I lie on the roof of Miss America. The vast expanse of the universe stretches above us. The stars feel so close I could grab one and put it in my pocket. Jeff draws a deep drag from his cigarette and holds it out to me as he exhales.

  “You’re going to need this, you know.”

  He’s right, of course, but I still feel weird smoking this stuff. “It’s like I’m doing something illegal,” I tell him.

  “Well, it’s not illegal out here,” he says. “And no one on Earth knows it exists, so how can it be illegal there?”

  I sigh in resignation and take the cigarette from him and, after some coaching on proper inhaling technique, draw a deep drag. The dry burn of a thousand California wildfires scorches my throat and lungs. I curl into the fetal position as a violent cough starts somewhere in my testicles and rushes through my abdomen. I cry out for the sweet sleep of death.