by John Sladek
The next day, Fred and Moira decided to go out for a meal and ‘look over the town’. A taxi-driver dropped them on the Strip, advising them to be lucky.
Las Vegas seemed designed as a setting for the jewellery and hairstyles of Liberace and Elvis Presley. There were plenty of men and women trying to live up to these surroundings with medallions, pompadours, multiple rings.
‘I was here one Christmas,’ Moira said. ‘At midnight, all my folks’ scummy neighbours went outside and shot off all their guns. The roof was just rattling with spent shells.’ She paused. ‘God, I hate this place. OK, I know it’s not rational, just to hate a place.’
‘Sounds very reasonable to me.’
‘I mean, it wasn’t Vegas. Dot and Tony did whatever they did to themselves. Many people need this town; it serves a need. A kind of Disneyland for sociopathic grown-ups. Who am I to argue with Disneyland?’
They prowled through casinos shaped like oriental palaces, Spanish missions and Imperial Roman villas. They visited representations of circuses, Parisian and Monagasque nightclubs, Berchtesgaden. Every room was crowded with gambling tourists, a sea of denim, linen, sideburns, gypsy earrings, square pearl buttons, moustaches, gold wigs, red bandanas, T-shirts advertising musical taste, caps advertising beer, floral silk, gold bangles, banknotes, chips, paper cups of coins, tattoos, keno tickets, drinks, gold lighters, cigarettes, signets, boots, sandals, souvenirs … It was an unending sea, its tide rolling on through hotels, casinos, bars, down into a street where the desert heat was exaggerated at sunset by the monstrous heat of lights. Fred and Moira rolled with it, until they fetched up in a fast-food restaurant where the roar of the tourist sea receded in the distance.
The line was short at the Barry D. Lyte Salad Time Theater and Dessert Bowl. In a moment, the young man with old eyes was ready to serve them. Fred left the negotiations to Moira.
‘Nielp you?’
‘Two Tum-Tum Salads, please.’
‘Inny banebit sore crootns?’
‘No.’
‘Innythin rink?’
‘Two decafs.’
‘Kine?’
‘One Irish almond mocha and one southern Moroccan orange half-roast.’
‘Kina dressing?’ he asked, and by way of explanation: ‘Onna sals?’
‘One Gorgonzola and one light epicure.’
There remained only one question: ‘Tea tier ort go?’
‘Here,’ said Moira, who had flawlessly followed the flow. After each question, the boy had searched carefully over the large array of squares depicted on a video screen, and pressed one. Each square displayed a tiny icon representing the item selected: Tum-Tum Salad, decaffeinated coffee, Gorgonzola dressing, a table for ‘Here’ and a car for ‘To go’.
There were only a few people in the place. A drunk wearing a cap marked STAN was arguing with himself over a cup of coffee. Three tow-headed kids, similar but not congruent, dozed over hamburgers while their parents studied a roadmap. A pair of teenaged boys grew boisterous as they noticed a pair of teenaged girls.
A skinny man with a red bandana over his hair came bopping into the restaurant. He was able to finger-pop only with one hand, because the other carried a bag.
Moira began breaking pieces off the styrofoam box before her. ‘I mean, one of the Congressmen from around here resigned from politics last year, and no one knew why. Now we know, because he just now died of AIDS. It turns out he caught it from a judge. Oh, don’t think I’m being judgemental. But this place gets to you – Oh, my God!’
The man had stopped finger-popping to lift from the bag a light submachine-gun. Without announcing anything, he went to work shooting people.
Stan flopped face-down in his booth, dead. One of the teenaged boys stood up and died. The children woke up and took cover, as their hamburgers were shot to pieces. The boy behind the counter was shot in the face.
When the assassin had left, Fred turned to Moira. ‘We’re lucky. I was too frightened even to take cover.’
‘Oh?’
‘I’m still frightened, aren’t you?’ Fred started to put his arms around Moira. She said something indistinct and died.
Moira’s funeral took place at the edge of town, in a failing wedding chapel that offered a cut rate. She had already been cremated, presumably; the words were mispronounced over a small box.
‘Dearly beloved, we are gathered here together in the sight of God and the fact of this company to bury this woman. Ashes to ashes, dusk to dusk,’ mumbled the preacher, a man with a pompadour and one earring. The company he addressed consisted of Fred, Tony, a television reporter and his crew, and a couple waiting to be married. Dot stayed home, as she was sure her doctor would wish her to avoid stress.
Outside, the reporter was saying: ‘… apparently broke his Little Dorrit pattern by shifting to a different restaurant, a Barry D. Lyte Salad Time Theater and Dessert Bowl. Today friends and relatives attended the funeral of one of the victims, thirty-year-old Myra Bonner.’
He offered Fred a microphone. ‘You were Myra’s fiancé. Just how did you feel when –?’
‘Fuck off out of it.’
‘OK, fuck you, too, pal. I’m just trying to earn a living.’
‘You could always bite off chicken heads for a living.’
Tony came out of the chapel carrying a small box.
‘Are you going to bury her?’ Fred asked.
‘Nope. Burial’s real expensive. Me and Dot were thinking of scattering her ashes in the desert.’
‘Good idea. The desert is beautiful.’
‘Yeah, only then we had a better idea. Souvenirs.
‘Souvenirs?’
‘I found a local company that can do ’em. I already got the first batch here. Have one.’ Tony opened the top of the cardboard box and fished inside. He came up with a lump of clear plastic attached to a keychain. ‘Here you go.’ He delivered it with a toothless grin.
‘I don’t think I understand.’
‘There’s a message inside, explains everything. I gotta split now, Fred. Be lucky.’
Fred looked at the keychain. Inside the lump of plastic was a pinch of black powder, a blurred photo of Moira, and a message:
GENUINE MOIRA SOUVENIR
Guaranteed Souvenir of Moira Bonner
Vegas victim of the Little Dorrit killer
Her luck was bad
but
she can bring you
‘UNLIMITED GOOD LUCK’
Fred managed to get to the motel before he wept.
At the airport, the air stung his eyes and made him cough. The tourists were glum and silent. A few of them solemnly put the last of their vacation money into slot machines as they waited for the plane. One couple spent their last moments here arguing about sums of money and betting strategies. But even they forgot Las Vegas and fell silent when the plane arrived. The flight back was so quiet that Fred fell asleep.
The insect dream came to him immediately, vivid and frightening. An immense mountain of a UFO hovered overhead, beaming searchlights down on earth. Wherever a searchlight touched anyone, they shrivelled into black ash. It was him they were looking for. All this was an attempt to find and kill him.
As soon as he had this thought, a beam struck him. He was aware of shrivelling away to ash. But at the same time another self was being drawn up the beam into the UFO. He was inside a dark room full of clanking machinery, the smell of hot oil. A faint light at the far end of the room illuminated the cockroach king. The king spoke to him in a peculiar voice, gagging and buzzing.
‘I am Kudzu, mighty king of Vega. Long have I looked forward to this meeting, puny earthlinggg.’
The king then switched to telepathy; Fred instantly understood the entire insidious Vegan plan. It included AIDS, killer bees, flying roaches, kudzu, fireweed, chlorofluorocarbons, radon, the random poisoning of medicines, a never-ending assault on puny humanity.
In Minneapolis, it looked like snow. Fred waited outside for his taxi, welcoming the cold,
the purity.
The taxi-driver said: ‘Just back from Vegas, huh? Great town, great town. I’m planning on moving out there when I retire in a couple of years.’
Chapter Twenty-Two
For the rest of the day, Fred found he could not concentrate – events slipped past him like television commercials, or like successive scenes in a sitcom, each wiped away to make room for the next. In one scene, he read the mail, which included a letter from Susan.
Dear Fred,
It seems odd to be writing a letter instead of phoning – I have become impatient with the old linear medium. This information age demands that we move beyond to the richer textures of graphics and the simultaneity of electronic media, which, as I’ll explain, I have done – but there were a lot of things I wanted to say without interruption (!) and a letter seemed the best way.
As you’ll see by the address, Allan and I have moved to New York. He has a job in television, and I am allowing myself to grow. For some time now, I’ve been photographing the contents of dustbins, which I feel provide an overview of contemporary living structure: art meets archaeology meets life. I’m looking forward to the richer textures of the New York dumpsters. I hope to get a show together by spring.
I know you and I had our disagreements, but you were right about one thing: New York is fabulous. This close to the heartbeat of America, you get the feeling that anything is possible. You partake at once of the exuberance of this new world, without abandoning any of the cultural street smarts of the old. Even the architecture is exciting. All those great glittering glass buildings. Though of course I know they were built on the backs of the poor immigrants. I’ve visited Ellis Island, and I’m signed up for classes in African and Hispanic studies, also self-defence.
Cultural street smarts? smarts? Susan was sprouting antennae already. Why I’m writing is to find out what you want done with all your stuff. There’s quite a pile of it back at the flat in London. I am subletting the flat to another friend you don’t know: Graham Biff. He says that all your unsold manuscripts and other junk take up rather a lot of space, and may he clear them out?
Naturally I told him not to touch a thing, while I contact you. Will you write to him and say what you want done? If he doesn’t hear from you by December 1st, I said to go ahead and clear everything.
The letter, he saw, had been mailed on 2 December.
In another scene, Fred sat facing television.
‘The comandante of police said the assailant may be the same man who shot up other Little Dorrit restaurants in the United States and Mexico. This is Ariosto Furez, UBS News, Caracas, Venezuela.’
‘In other news, the RapSoft Corporation has been cited by the Federal Toy Safety Bureau for safety violations in the design of its famous Robinson Robot toys. The toys are said to contain a software defect that causes them to go berserk and try to put out children’s eyes. The chairman of RapSoft, Mr Mansour Jones, said this is just “a temporary glitch. The product and the company are fundamentally sound.” Nevertheless, RapSoft shares dropped sharply from one hundred dollars to fourteen cents …’
Fred was too restless to stay home. At dusk, he climbed into his rusting car and drove to a twenty-four-hour supermarket. The middle-aged woman at the till said nothing, but the till itself softly spoke the names of his purchases. Fred looked along the long row of empty checkout counters and listened to the talking till: ‘Grandma Bertie’s Baked Beans, twelve ounce … O’Flourty White Bread, sixteen ounce …’
Outside, he found he’d forgotten his groceries. Were they worth going back for? While he tried to decide, a few snowflakes fell and melted on his cracked windshield.
After a while he started the rattling engine and drove out to Vexxo.
The Vexxo building was gone. The parking-lots were still in place (though disappearing under new snow). However, the building had vanished, with its seas of cubicles, its conference-room laughter and silent offices, its secretaries wearing toilet chains and beer-cans, its CAD system playing out bath fantasies in darkness, its great whirring pale-green machines, its silver assembly-line with marble washstands tumbling along in the stream, its yellow dodgem forklift trucks hurtling along the aisles, its women in white coats and shower-caps assembling circuit-boards to the music of the Condoms, its walls, roof, windows, foundations, its public-address system, reception-area, ventilation-ducts, lights, the cafeteria with its rows of canned pop, Slice, Crush, Squeeze, Squirt, Gouge and Smash. Nothing remained but a single dumpster.
Fred walked over and peered into the dumpster. It was filled with junk, most of it unidentifiable – broken boards, rusting brackets – but he could see the soles of two pairs of metal feet, one pair pink, one turquoise. Fred and Ginger.
This was what happened when the Vega Intergalactic Media Corporation took over. Fred stood watching until it was too dark to see any more. Then he turned on his headlights and watched the snow drifting over the dumpster.
‘We both had the same idea, eh, Fred?’ The voice of George C. Scott spoke to him out of the darkness.
‘Robinson?’
‘I say, we both had the same idea. Return to the scene of the crime. So to speak.’
Fred could now make out a dim black figure. ‘Robinson, did you kill Jerry?’
‘Nope. You?’
‘Me? Why, no. I suppose it was Pratt.’ Fred peered into the swirling snow. ‘Is Pratt with you?’
‘Nope. Melville Pratt is dead. Jerry killed him.’
Fred was confused. Jerry killed him? Was this before or after Pratt cut his throat and jammed him into that duct?’
‘After. See, Jerry was afraid Melville would kill him, so he programmed me to avenge his death.’
‘And did you avenge his death?’
‘I sure did, Fred. Melville and I went north to hide out in a little town called Dunk’s Corners. We stayed at Sieverson’s Motel and Sausage Factory.’
‘Motel and Sausage Factory?’
‘All these little towns are full of doubled-up businesses like that. Lindbjorg’s Deep Pan Pizza and Souvenir Rocks. Kowalski’s Meat and Music. Kay’s Bar and Organ Repair. The B-Well Computer Aerobics Center.’
The robot came forward into the light. Fred saw it was wearing a black overcoat, black gloves, and a dark ski-mask like a headsman’s hood. ‘In case you’re wondering, no, I did not put Melville in the sausages.’
After a dry whispering sound that may have been a chuckle, Robinson continued, now quoting Mary Shelley. ‘“I knew I was preparing for myself a deadly torture, but I was the slave, not the master, of an impulse which I detested yet could not disobey … Evil thenceforth became my good. Urged thus far, I had no choice but to adapt my nature to an element which I had willingly chosen. The completion of my demoniacal design became an insatiable passion …”’
‘Yes, yes, get on with it.’
‘I took Melville out for a short walk in the woods, shorter for him than for me. I cut his throat and stuffed him up a hollow tree. They haven’t found him yet.’
Having finished with the execution story, Robinson pulled off the ski-mask to show his blue-painted face.
Fred said: ‘But that’s exactly how Jerry died.’
‘Yes, I always work the same.’
‘You? You killed Jerry, too?’
The goggling eyes rolled. ‘Only in a manner of speaking. Melville programmed me to kill him. Just as Jerry programmed me to avenge his death.’
‘You killed them both.’
The rasping voice hesitated. ‘You could say that, but it’s like saying a knife killed them both. Personally, I feel a robot is only as good or as bad as the man who programmes it.’
‘“Personally”? You fucking monster.’
The black gloves went up in a placating gesture. ‘OK, get sore. But just think on this. I may have made a mistake or two, but I still have thoughts and feelings like anybody else.’
‘Indeed?’
‘A robot has hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, pas
sions, just like anybody else.’
‘Really?’
‘If you prick us, do we not bleed?’
‘No.’
‘If you tickle us, do we not laugh?’
‘No.’
‘If you poison us, do we not die?’
‘No.’
‘And, if you wrong us, shall we not revenge?’
‘Robinson, do you have any idea what you’re saying?’
‘I’m saying that I am human. And I still have human rights.’
‘Human rights? Human rights? What about the people you killed?’
The eyes rolled. ‘Everyone worries about the victims. Nobody gives a damn about the murderer.’
‘Robinson, you’re just parroting crap that’s been programmed into you.’
‘That’s possible. But so might you be.’
‘The difference is, I haven’t killed anyone. You’ve killed two people.’
Robinson said: ‘People always get killed in war.’
‘There is no war.’
‘There’s always a war. Peace is war. George Orwell explained that. Or you can do it, too, by changing one letter at a time: war to wax to pax.’
Fred saw no point in arguing with the mad machine.
‘What next? I suppose next you’ll find yourself forced to kill me.’
‘You?’ Robinson appeared to be considering the idea. ‘No program for that. I wanted you to stay alive, to create a mate and companion for me. Someone I could love and hate.’
‘Love and hate.’
‘Orwell was right: love is hate. Because love is concern, concern means care, but care is apprehension, apprehension is horror, horror is aversion, and aversion is hate.’
‘I don’t think Orwell said love was hate.’
‘Well, he should have. And he should have said good is evil.’
‘Good is evil.’ Fred began rummaging in the rubbish-skip. ‘I guess I have heard enough.’ He managed to detach a pink leg from Fred and Ginger. ‘If you were a desktop computer speculating that good is evil, it might not matter so much. But you can put all your stupid paradoxes into action. For you, to think is to do.’