Zanesville: A Novel

by Kris Saknussemm

  “How’d jew do that?” she asked, but Clearfather didn’t respond.

  Motherfuckin’ hallucination, she thought. But the approaching cycle was real. On it was Tinkerbell, with an impact-expanding blowgun dart embedded in her helmet and the blood rose of a .32 wound blossoming under a pressure pack smashed tight to her leg.

  “Where’d they all go? Ain’t none of those sonsabitches back there!”

  Clearfather clambered out of the shell and collapsed.

  “Damn!” Tink spat. “He ain’t gonna make it solo. You take him up. Put on these shades. People will think he’s doped.”

  They came up in an alley off Eighth Avenue. Go-Go, who hadn’t been aboveground outside Fort Thoreau since being taken in by the Satyagrahi, led Clearfather staggering past the dai pai dongs into the Port Authority, her eyes bugging out behind Tinkerbell’s malachite-tinted shades.

  “Gate Six,” she said, looking at the screen. “Leaving in two minutes.” She found his pass and gave it to the Ticketrix for scanning, then stuffed it back in his pocket.

  Clearfather turned away into the confusion among the sanghyang trance dancers and the flattened chickens. An eidolon of Trinidad Slade, the six-foot-six black hypermodel, strutted naked with an ocelot, advertising Debauchery perfume. He stepped through her into the cold and climbed on the bus, a nostalgized Scenicruiser. He made his way toward the back and found the last empty seat.

  “Welcome to Greyhound America!” the bus announced. “Tonight we’ll be traveling along the Greyhound Northern Automated Navigation Corridor. Please note that for your safety secure-cam units may be monitoring activity in the main cabin area and a Beagle sensor is installed in the restroom. Now sit back, relax, and away we go Greyhound!”

  Clearfather felt the vibration of the engine as the remote-piloted vehicle lumbered out of the loading bay. Then he saw the figure—a young black boy with a ghost-pale face and hair. The boy held up his hand as the Scenicruiser rumbled by, the colossal eidolons of Times Square behind him, snowing static and the dense disorienting prisms of short-term information known as “chrome noise.”

  Madness is something rare in individuals—but in groups, parties, peoples, ages, it is the rule.

  —FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE

  CHAPTER 1

  A Quaker State of Mind

  A city trembling like a mirage . . . each of the skyscrapers a cyclone . . . ceaselessly whirling but perfectly stationary . . . and in the center of the helices . . . luminous elevators flashing at the speed of thought.

  He woke alone in a seat on a Greyhound without a driver in the dark of an early morning. His head felt as if it had been recently shaved. He heard someone mention Bethlehem. Then a woman spoke of Pittsburgh.

  He checked his pockets and found an American Safari pass in the name of Elijah Clearfather, a blank piece of paper, a small ivory ball, and a fistful of blond hair. No money—but a pack containing food supplies and a bottle of liquid. The hair matched the down on his arms—but he couldn’t figure out why he’d have some in his pockets. The little ivory ball he didn’t have any idea about, and the paper was as blank as his memory. He scrunched the paper up and stuck it between the seats. Except for the city of cyclones in his dream all he could think of was a silver spoon from the Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo in 1901. I must’ve been drugged, he concluded. He looked at the bus pass again. There was a map on the back with a large chunk of California missing and the words AMERICA—WHAT A GREAT DESTI-NATION! Someone had starred PITTSBURGH, a point near Amarillo with a handwritten name above it that read DUSTDEVIL, TX . . . and some screwball place called LOSVEGAS, which was on what appeared to be the new West Coast. He didn’t think the writing was his. He tried to recall any connections he might have with these places, but none came. The one thing that came to mind beyond the cyclones and the spoon was the image of a young boy bent over a toilet. The boy was naked and there were candles lit. Then he saw a flashlight beam stabbing and probing through metal cots. The images gave him a choking sense of fear and shame. Have I committed a terrible crime? he wondered. And how could I have gone my whole life with a name like Elijah Clearfather and not remember it? He stared out through the safety glass, trying to make sense of what was happening.

  Giant eidolons loomed above the interstate—holograms the size of buildings that were dimensionally rich and yet transparent. This is insane, he thought, as a towering Scotsman threatened to lift up his kilt and then waved at the bus with a lewd leer. How can people deal with things like that? But from the behavior of his fellow passengers these characters were an expected albeit annoying part of the mediascape, and indeed there was something so absurd about them, they seemed to blend into the passing scene despite their behemoth proportions. The voices and visions in his head were not so easily accommodated. Fragments of music, pain . . . things out of dreams. From out of the haze there would appear some incredibly complex image, like an entire wall of mathematical formulae distilled to a single hieroglyph . . . then poof.

  He turned his attention outward trying to pick out anything familiar, but all he could make out was an intermittent radiance promoting something called WigWam Jackpots and a strobing sign announcing that the largest Howard Johnson’s on earth was two minutes away. Where once had been steel mills, coal mines, and before that miles of forests, there was now a smear of icicle-like buildings—refreshment stations, casinos, refugee camps, gated communities, and Time Havens, where people banded together to live in accordance with the technology and morality of earlier periods.

  Once past the HoJo driving rain set in, slowing progress. Two razor-scalped girls with clock-face tattoos jabbered and pointed to him. He got the impression they’d been listening to him when he’d been asleep. I wish I knew what I’d been saying, he thought. There was a long delay at the Harrisburg checkpoint (when had checkpoints come about?). Outside the window, quasar screens advertised a local firing range and the opening of a new ChildRite Nurturing Center, alongside an old-fashioned peeling billboard that was blank except for the words . . .

  EVERYTHING YOU HOPE TO KEEP FOR THE JOURNEY YOU MUST LOSE ALONG THE WAY.

  —Stinky Wiggler

  A blast of static filled his head—and he heard the words Welcome to Hermetic Canyon, Self Dakota. He blinked and the billboard was gone, as if it had never been there. What did that mean? Stinky Wiggler was an even more remarkable name than Elijah Clearfather. And what was Hermetic Canyon? Where was Self Dakota? His back started to burn. When we get to Pittsburgh, I’ll see a doctor, he said to himself. I have to see a doctor.

  Out on the interstate, a suicide truck bomb slowed progress further. The sun came up but the sky stayed a dead-fish gray. They passed another of the fossilized billboards.

  THERE’S NOTHING LIKE THE GENTLE, REASSURING SOUND OF A CIVILIZATION FALLING DOWN AROUND YOU.

  —Stinky Wiggler

  This time Clearfather heard singing in Latin—then a blues guitar. He saw images of cliffs and crags as if on another planet. Once again the billboard seemed to melt away into the warped rainbow of signs and fuel stations. He felt as if he were in the wrong body or tuned in to someone else’s broadcast. But after the rush of sound and light, clarity came. And hunger. He pawed through his pack. He found a tin full of perfect little rainbow trout. A vial contained a murky liquid that tasted like celery.

  The bus came in via an automated guard station on the Penn Lincoln Parkway. Soweto bars and karaoke clubs swept past as the tired spires of Steel Plaza rose in the shadows of the regional Vitessalith, the Chung Center, and the Bank of Bahrain. Down on the river floated a ragged fleet of dhows and a graffiti-covered gunboat flying Hyundai colors. The bus wished them all a “Happy Pennsylvania Morning” and started giving instructions about Quaker State connections. Clearfather headed tentatively into the station, wondering if someone was there to meet him—or capture him.

  CHAPTER 2

  Addicted to Strangers

  Inside the depot, everything smelled of curry and bleach. He gl
anced around expectantly but no one caught his eye. Except for a Harijan buffing the floor—a base-level sanitation and observation robot. He was surprised by the exoskeletal creature, or rather machine, but he knew intuitively that it wasn’t unusual or out of place. There was something about the way it seemed to fade into the linoleum and molded plastic of its surroundings. Even the clapped-out Nicaraguan mopping up in front of the Chinese menu screen for Starbucks didn’t meld as completely.

  To one side there was a cordoned-off area reserved for WOMEN & CHILDREN sponsored by ChildRite Nurturing Centers, a name he remembered from the interstate. The area was guarded by two brilliantly colored eidolons whose heads would’ve brushed the acoustic panels in the ceiling had they been solid. One was a voluptuous female orangutan as orange as cream of tomato soup. She was decked out in a tiara of wildflowers and a skirt of tropical green leaves, and haloed by repeating bursts of hypertext like talking rain. Clearfather couldn’t tell if other people could see these words or not. They said things like QUEEN UBBA DUBBA and offered advice or made pronouncements such as BE KIND TO OTHER CREATURES and NATURE IS ONLY NATURAL.

  Her equally overstated colleague was a drake, as in a male duck, between ten and twelve feet tall depending on how he moved or craned his neck, which he seemed to do with compulsive frequency. He was dressed in a prim sweater vest under the type of beige corduroy jacket that elementary schoolteachers once wore back when men were allowed near children. But his overall coloration was the deep shade of blue that a leaky pen leaves in a pocket—with a beak that was such an extreme yellow it shone like gold bullion. Hypertext flickered about him, too, in time with his irritating neck spasms. These messages said things like DOOLEY and BE NICE, PLEASE!

  Clearfather couldn’t recall any characters called Ubba Dubba or Dooley Duck but, judging from the reactions of the other people, they were known and even loved celebrities who appeared to be on the ChildRite payroll, so to speak. There was something distressing about seeing such large cartoonish things interacting with people and furniture so casually, particularly when the characters blurred together or the asthmatic boy with the face mask would run through them and they’d giggle or wince, the electric intensity of their hues fading out for a moment before they regained full resolution.

  No one seemed to be waiting for him or watching him. As anxious as he felt, he waited and still no one made any move, so he decided to go to the restroom and check out his back. But he didn’t see any signs for the restrooms, so he went over to the robot cleaner to ask for directions. “Excuse me,” he said to the Harijan.

  The sanitation unit regarded him with what was at first trepidation and then a dawning alarm tinged with enthusiasm. Then it spoke with a voice that made him think of a praying mantis. But he couldn’t understand because a heavyset Securitor packed into riot pads blustered over and snarled, “Get away from that thing! Don’t you know the rules?”

  “I’m sorry,” said Clearfather. “I want to know where the restrooms are.”

  “Listen,” continued the Securitor, brandishing a stun gun. “What have you done?”

  “I don’t know what you mean,” Clearfather answered, turning to see that the Harijan’s pneumatic limbs had bent so that it appeared to be performing some sort of obeisance.

  “All right!” the Securitor demanded, deactivating it. “Let’s see some ID!”

  Clearfather showed him his bus pass.

  “What about your implant, smart-ass?”

  “Implant?” Clearfather asked, looking blank.

  “Your Resident ID system,” the Securitor sneered.

  The confusion was resolved when, in one continuous motion, the Securitor holstered his weapon, grabbed Clearfather’s right hand, and tugged it toward him—then ripped up a Velcro patch in his vest to reveal a small plasma screen against which he laid Clearfather’s hand with practiced accuracy. Clearfather heard a hum and the Securitor stopped. A moment later the guard seemed to find himself again—embarrassed—apologetic.

  “I’m very sorry . . . sir,” he said, snapping off every awkward word. “I’m so very . . . sorry to have . . . inconvenienced you . . . ,” he mumbled. “There aren’t enough signs. I’ll make a full report. We’ll action it. I can’t tell you how sorry I am about this—misunderstanding.”

  “But where’s the john?”

  “Oh! Right . . . this way. You see?” The Securitor pointed. He reactivated the Harijan, which straightened up and resumed buffing, and then drifted over to the cordoned-off area and plopped down beside Queen Ubba Dubba.

  Clearfather went to the men’s room, which was crowded given the rest of the station. The security cameras had been plastered over with wet paper towels. There were two men in one stall and a man and a woman in another. Under the sinks a man who would’ve weighed less than a hundred pounds lay asleep or blacked out. Clearfather stepped up to one of the urinals. He was surprised at the size of his penis. My memory really is in trouble if I forgot about this, he realized. Then he turned and noticed that he’d attracted attention.

  It was a teenage white boy. He had the telltale mark of the surgical brain implant that Clearfather had seen on some of the other people. His clothes were expensive but filthy. His face was effeminate—his lips injected with collagen. He had a fashion blue picture lens showing a Madonna and Child and the unmistakable signs of drug abuse in his other bloodshot hazel eye.

  “That’s the biggest dick I’ve ever seen, mister . . .”

  Clearfather felt a powerful sense of loathing. It angered him to be looked at like that—and yet it brought to mind again the scene of the boy in the bathroom.

  “What’s wrong with you?” he demanded. “Don’t you know better than to talk to strangers that way?”

  “He’s addicted to strangers,” the man under the sinks groaned, and rolled out from underneath the plumbing.

  Clearfather was surprised to see that the floorsleeper was so infested with head lice, the invaders were visible. “What do you mean?” he asked.

  “God, fuck me harder!” Clearfather heard the woman shout.

  “He’s a Pandora addict,” the licer coughed, bringing up an oyster slick of mucus that slithered down the drain.

  “I don’t know what you’re saying,” Clearfather said as the woman orgasmed.

  “He needs sex like a junkie. They gotta get it or they’ll blow their brains.”

  “C’mon, mister,” the boy wheedled.

  A woman emerged from the stall, panties around her wrist, with a face that resembled a warthog. A disheveled deaf-mute shuffled out of the stall after her. He looked at Clearfather and pressed his keypad.

  C Ar E TO M aK E . . . A D O nA TiON . . . ????

  Clearfather touched the blurry cathode screen, and the man’s face spasmed.

  “He didn’t get that excited with me,” the woman smirked. “You the one with the big dick? Give us a look.”

  Clearfather was getting upset. All he wanted to do was to inspect his back in privacy. “Listen,” he said. “All of you get out of here.”

  The lice head snickered. The kid continued whining while the facially disadvantaged woman sniffed her panties and then slipped them back on. “Oh, Mr. Big Dick wants us out, huh? Well, who are you?”

  “I’m not a pheasant plucker, I’m the Pheasant Plucker’s son, but I’ll keep on plucking pheasants till the Pheasant Plucker comes,” Clearfather replied—and was taken aback at the vehemence of his assertion, without understanding what it meant or why he’d said it. The effect on the occupants of the restroom, however, was instantaneous. They all left.

  Perplexed, he stripped off his peacoat and shirt and tried to examine his back in the mirror. He saw primitive letters cut into his skin with a box cutter and a soldering iron, or maybe acid. FATHER FORGIVE THEM F.

  He put his clothes back on.

  “All right,” he said, to the bald stranger who stared back at him. “Let’s try to find out why in hell we’re here.”

  CHAPTER 3

 
Big Duck Demands Dick

  He crossed the depot waiting for someone to make a move. No one did. The thought of hauling himself off to a hospital frightened him, so he leaned on a railing watching images on a series of liquidplex cubes that rotated like a dissolving and re-forming compound eye and kept referring to something called TWIN. There was something that called itself a Voyancy Terminal beside the system, which he supposed allowed a more personal hook-up to the images, although the service obviously wasn’t free because there was a screen that blinked LOG ON CREDIT DETAILS and a glowing hand, which judging from his experience with the Securitor he guessed was designed to validate security or credit status.

  There’d been another explosion . . . in Washington. An eidolon of a media personality called Vinata Nidhu appeared in the viewing area. In an anglicized subcontinent accent, she announced, “. . . Yet another Tactical Despair explosion has rocked the nation this morning, demolishing the Aeronautics wing of the Smithsonian Institution . . .”

  In the air around her, silvery hypertext invited him to CHOOSE THE WARDROBE AND PRESENTER STYLE YOU PREFER . . . These offers were followed by a flurry of Chinese ideograms. Then the woman looked at Clearfather and said “Hablo español . . . Falo portugues . . . Je parle français . . .” Other kinds of characters flowed around her. Indonesian, Korean—the movement was disorienting. Then she vanished. It made him reconsider the hallucinations he’d been having. But it got him curious. He didn’t have the physical portal that he saw on some people or the more common little boxes that linked into the headsets and glasses, so he didn’t know what would happen, but he went over to the terminal, placed his hand on the glowing outline, and waited. Vinata Nidhu reappeared but not at full clarity as she had before. Hypertext streamed in—watery and radiant. “How do you want to see me?” the woman asked.