Just a Couple of Days

by Tony Vigorito

  But I didn’t. Instead I said to him, as if he owed me an explanation, “Got the last piece, eh?”

  “Oh I’m sorry, Professor, were you going for this?” he said, taking a bite that pulled the cheese off half the slice. I shrugged nonchalantly. “Well, it’s like my father used to say,” he continued talking as he chewed. “The first one to reach across the table gets the most.”

  86 Captain Down is the kind of man who, like most politicians, has never in his life let more than two days go by without shaving. He is meticulous about his appearance, and he has perfected the ingratiating personality. He aspires to flatter his way into the Hotel Humbug of high political office, and is only now, in his present occupation, laying the solid groundwork for an unequivocal tough-on-crime platform to be preached from later. He’s sharp enough to comprehend the underlying rules of the game, but not wise enough to realize that he’s playing a game.

  “Sorry to hear about your friend,” he said between bites, but I scarcely heard him. I was obsessively wishing I’d had a second bagel this morning, for then, I reasoned, I would be that much less hungry. “Kiljoy drives a hard bargain, you know?” He took the last bite with any cheese or sauce on it, and I had a starvation-induced vision of myself standing on a cliff in the desert, arms outstretched to the heavens, bellowing, “Nooo!” into the night sky. “You want the crust, Professor?” came the voice of Captain Down on the tail of a shooting star. He held it out to me, like an angel bearing manna. Mercy me, for a moment I didn’t know whether to be insulted or eternally grateful, but such higher mental questions were quickly overridden by physiology as I devoured the pizza rind like a gorilla eating contraband popcorn at a zoo. I grunted with satisfaction and looked to him hungrily for more.

  “Your friend, Professor Korterly. He’s a real nice guy.”

  “Yeah?” I answered, clearing my throat. “Do you know if there’s a soda machine or snack machine around?” I fingered through the change in my trouser pocket, reminding myself of General Kiljoy.

  He shook his head, and with a nervous glance toward Tynee’s office, replied in a subdued tone, “The General, Professor, he won’t let us leave this area. There are guards in the halls.”

  Us? I thought. Who did this stooge think he was kidding? Was I to confide in my fellow comrade now? “Can’t we send someone else?”

  He shrugged. “I suppose we could send the bodyguards when they get here. Anyway, I have an extra soda.” He picked up an unopened can off the chair in front of him and handed it to me like so much pork barrel to a constituency. Make no mistake, this man was slicker than oily dishwater on an icy sidewalk. Like any politician worth his weight in campaign contributions, he had a disarming knack for telling you exactly what you wanted to hear. Why, I almost cheered when he pulled that can of soda out. If there had been a flag with his name on it handy, I would have been waving it like it was the Fourth of July, 1776.

  “Professor Korterly, you know, he taught a course I took in college.”

  “Mm?”

  “He graded tough, but he knew what he was talking about, most of the time. Cynical, but charming, you know?”

  “How do you mean?”

  “I’m sure you know how he is. Always insisting that nothing is as it should be, and that he’d studied modern society enough to know that he didn’t want to have a thing to do with it.” Captain Down laughed. “It sounded good, and he was entertaining, but I’m not sure the world is all that bad, you know?”

  “Hmm.”

  “He delighted in ironies like that. The first day of class, when he was introducing himself, he said society paid him to teach people what was wrong with society.”

  “May I ask what your role is here?” I cut him off.

  “My role? At this time, I’m in charge of supervising the experimental environment and other miscellaneous tasks. It’s fully automated, but I review records to be sure everything is operating smoothly, which it always is. I also manipulate paperwork on the subjects, hiding our tracks, dealing with the families, public relations sorts of things. You probably also heard me on the intercom, speaking to prisoners.” He held his fist up to his mouth in imitation of a microphone and spoke in the flat but pleasant hospital ward tone. “Inmate 104, return to the primary observation area, Inmate 104.” He flashed a masterful grin. “I do that, too.”

  87 We returned to Tynee’s office in time to see another beer can bounce off the window General Kiljoy was standing in front of. He didn’t even flinch, and he announced his fortitude to all present. He was watching the revelry from the window farthest to the right, while Tynee was farthest to the left, and Miss Mary was at the window next to him. Captain Down took the window next to General Kiljoy, and I (the pickle?) took up residence in the middle. The windows were no longer buzzing, apparently having fallen out of sync with the party.

  There we stood, in accidental rank order by height, conspirators gazing upon the rebellious masses. When a can of beer glanced off my window, it caused me to involuntarily jump back and shield my face. General Kiljoy guffawed. “Like a stone wall, Fountain.”

  “What’s the estimated time of arrival for the National Guard?” Tynee asked, a bit apprehensively. “This is beginning to become a real security issue.”

  “They were already on alert from the local police,” Captain Down spoke up. “Shouldn’t be more than a couple of minutes.”

  Conversation sagged, for there were far too many curiosities to view below. The flood of people was doing the wave, and those trusting souls who had been crowd surfing were now having the ride of their lives as surge after surge of collective motion tossed them about like drunken swell-junkies at high tide. Quite suddenly, a different sort of ripple began building toward the front, expanding rapidly and resisting the waves like a concrete breakwater as people’s attention was drawn from one another and toward the sky. A whine that sounded like a swarm of militant mosquitoes announced the appearance of two helicopters. The National Guard had arrived.

  They descended swiftly upon the crowd, tracing broad figure eight patterns above their heads. This served as a massive buzz kill for most, replacing the buzz in their heads with a buzz above their heads, and soon the majority of revelers were, hands in pockets and shoulders hunched, slowly milling apart, with occasional indignant glances toward the dark heavens. One defiant youth fired a series of bottle rockets at the choppers, which caused the helicopters to throw on their spotlights and illuminate the twilit and melancholy faces below. Simultaneously, at various points along the periphery of the Green, armored personnel carriers were pulling up, and National Guardsmen were storming out in full riot gear.

  “We should get to where it’s safe,” Tynee suggested.

  Captain Down chided him. “Relax and enjoy the show, Tibor.”

  “I don’t want some sort of Kent State fiasco,” Tynee insisted.

  “Rubber bullets and tear gas, President Tynee,” Captain Down reassured him. “Humane weaponry.”

  “Where are the bodyguards, anyway?” Miss Mary complained. “I’m getting hungry.” She pulled out a cigarette, perhaps to suppress her appetite. I considered bumming one from her for that reason, but I just didn’t want that sort of camaraderie with her.

  “DISPERSE IMMEDIATELY.” The voice of technocracy spoke at last, with all the spiritless authority of a hungover lifeguard. “DISPERSE IMMEDIATELY OR YOU WILL BE GASSED.” Some insurgents responded to the threat with another volley of bottle rockets, which merely popped like Rice Krispies far below the helicopters. It was, nevertheless, a symbolic gesture, and its meaning was not lost on the authoritarian humans operating these particular tentacles of the state. They responded by dropping little turds of tear gas canisters directly along the center line of the crowd, attempting to bisect the throngs below, to divide and conquer, as it were. It worked. The masses of humans parted like the Red Sea, and the crush of people trying to get away from the noxious gas propelled a massive shove whose shock wave was still elbowing and jostling people t
wo hundred feet away. “DISPERSE IMMEDIATELY.” They need not have repeated themselves, for thousands of drunk and stoned and who-knows-what-else college students were suddenly very frightened, and pockets of panic were popping up like pimples during puberty. People were freaking out like cats running from a vacuum cleaner, and would have stampeded if there had been anywhere to go.

  “I’ll be damned,” Tynee spoke up. “Those boys really know how to handle a crowd.”

  “Beautiful,” General Kiljoy answered in reverent wonder, diddling with his piddler all the while.

  “Like a machine,” Captain Down contributed. “Now watch this.”

  The helicopters made another pass along the median of the frenzied crowd, scattering another round of gassy droppings.

  “More?” I asked incredulously.

  “Antidote, Professor,” Captain Down answered. “Recently developed. It reacts with the tear gas and renders it inert.”

  “Wow,” Miss Mary exhaled. I wondered if there was an antidote to her toxic fumes.

  “REMAIN CALM AND DISPERSE PEACEFULLY.” The helicopters broke formation and began larger loops, repeating their statement over and over. People calmed from their paroxysms of panic to a mere agitated anxiety, nervously bumping into one another like cattle at a slaughterhouse, but having no other choice than to obey the steely voice of technological hardware hovering above them. Despite their indignant cooperation, outward movement was slower than an injured turtle in line at the post office during December.

  “See that, Fountain?” General Kiljoy reproached. “A swift kick in the ass is all most people need to get their attention.”

  “Who’s gonna give that man a swift kick?” Miss Mary asked, pointing. She was referring to a man, a naked man, actually, with long white hair billowing behind him like a banner as he streaked through the opening in the center of the crowd. His grinning teeth could be seen from across the Green, as confident as the emperor in his new clothes. As he sprinted through the crowd he pulled a wave of laughing faces and cheers with him. We stared at the display in amusement, but as he drew closer, the details of his face came into sharper focus. It was Tynee who first recognized him.

  “Jee-zus Chrrist!” thundered Tynee.

  “Holy Moses!” echoed Miss Mary, falling into a mephitic fit of coughing.

  “Oop,” I managed, for it was not Jesus Christ or even Holy Moses streaking through the parted sea before us. It was none other than Dr. Blip Korterly.

  88 If, upon discovering that a virus you have helped to create has somehow been released upon a crowd of one hundred thousand college students, if the proper reaction to this scenario is meditative contemplation, then we underreacted. We underreacted like a man who continues to hum the last random song he heard while a baseball bat is being swung at his head. We underreacted like a woman who giggles in amused confusion after stubbing her big toe. In short, we didn’t know what had hit us, where it had come from, or what it implied. We continued to stand in front of the windows as the sky darkened, watching the fidgety crowd twiddle its thumbs impatiently and the helicopters buzz around the sky like belligerent fireflies. There was no moon, except for Blip’s, and we watched as he reached the end of his route and disappeared into the crowd. We continued to stand dumbfounded.

  “Was that,” Captain Down hesitated, as if he were about to ask us all out on some sick date, “was that Subject 104?”

  “We should get to where it’s safe,” Tynee suggested again. Miss Mary was pulling out her cigarettes, and he gestured to her that he would like one as well.

  General Kiljoy, who all this time had been standing with his hands in his pockets, motionless for once, vaguely grinning like a shell-shocked Mona Lisa, suddenly snapped to attention like a vampire at sundown. “We have a situation.” He began pacing, hands now flirting with his fiddle like the devil down in Georgia. “We must take steps. Question one: Is each one of us positive that was,” he paused, “one of our subjects?” We all nodded, and he continued. “Our first priority is a massive quarantine of this area and evacuation of surrounding areas. Captain Down, radio your men and instruct them that no one is to leave this campus.”

  “You want to contain over a hundred thousand people?”

  “Do it!”

  “Yes sir.” Captain Down pulled out his cellular phone and moved to the sofa to make his calls.

  “What good is that going to do?” Tynee protested, allowing Miss Mary to light his cigarette. “You know this virus. This entire crowd has been exposed already, including the National Guardsmen. In less than an hour, nothing will contain these people. Jesus, it’s probably already made its way out of this area. That’s how it was designed.” This pronouncement gave General Kiljoy and his frenetic fingers pause once again. He stood considering, delicately cradling his cojónes. Another stray beer can ricocheted off one of the windows, this time giving him a start. Tynee continued: “We should get to where it’s safe. These windows are thick, and it’s airtight in here, but in less than an hour . . .”

  “What the hell are our options, then?” General Kiljoy raised his voice. “Down! Get over here!” Captain Down obeyed, clicked off his phone, and trotted over to where we were standing, near the still-bubbling hot tub. “Okay, let’s think. Would you turn this goddamn tub off?” Tynee flicked it off with his remote. “Our priority, it seems, is getting ourselves to a safe place.”

  “Can’t we just go back underground?” Miss Mary asked.

  “Negative,” Captain Down answered. “Professor Korterly has obviously been outside of the observation tank, and thereby contaminated unknown areas of the compound.”

  “Shit,” Miss Mary cussed and took a deep drag, holding it as if it were a hit off a joint. “Where are those bodyguards with the limo anyway?” she asked. Smoke drifted out of her mouth and nose as she spoke, which, combined with her raspy voice, made her positively dragonlike.

  “That’s not an option,” General Kiljoy answered. “The limousine may already be contaminated.” He turned to Tynee. “Get Volt on the phone and find out where he is. Captain Down, do we have any access at all to our underground facilities?”

  He hesitated. “We could terminate the experiment.”

  A few moments of silence ensued, as if his statement had been an unexpected twig snapping in the wilderness at night. Bold Miss Mary was the first to address the darkness beyond the light of the campfire. “No one is terminating this experiment.” She spoke with the finality of the Supreme Court on Judgment Day.

  “This is an extreme situation,” Captain Down countered like some brash young Harvard Law School hothead. “Have we prepared for this contingency?”

  “Not as such,” General Kiljoy responded, wearing a face of pensive jurisprudence. “This actual situation has never been contemplated. But we’re not wholly unprepared.”

  “We have to convene the committee,” Miss Mary asserted, as have countless other worshippers of the demon god Bureaucracy, for whom “convene the committee” is as holy a phrase as the Sh’ma. (If you listen carefully, you can hear it chanted over the cubicle walls.)

  “There’s no time for that,” came General Kiljoy, dictatorial tendencies emerging as they will in times of crisis. “Captain Down is right, we have to terminate, and the sooner the better. It’ll be nearly two hours after we disinfect before we can return to the compound.”

  “May I remind you, Veechy,” Miss Mary addressed General Kiljoy by his first name, “that I am the greatest benefactor on the committee? I’ve contributed far too much money to this project to stand by as it’s terminated.”

  I snorted at this remark, startling everyone, for I had been silent ever since Blip was sighted. “Money is a symbol,” I explained my outburst. “What good is money if people have no symbolic capacity?”

  THE BOOK O’ BILLETS-DOUX

  Rosehips: We really must hand it to ourselves. We quibble and we quoth, and quack as much as quick, but quiver do we niver a cold and lonesome shiver.

  Sweetlick: F
e fi fo fum, enough of this enterprising ho hum. Yo ho ho and a bottle of pennies. Money is our shortage, loans, bills, and mortgage.

  Rosehips: Oh me oh my oh my oh me, will you ever see you’re free? Won’t you come and dance and sing, say the hell with everything? Won’t you come and laugh and play, in the trees and grass all day? You think we need some dough, a deer, a female deer? Then hunt her like you do, tame her like a shrew. Mother Earth is docile, it’s really quite facile.

  Sweetlick: Ray, a drop of golden sun may fill your life with fun, but a wad of greenish bills will give you all the frills. Ask anyone but me, a name I call myself, for the end is not fa, a long, long place to run it is not.

  Rosehips: So, a needle pulling thread is lost in the haystack, like trying to find air in a smokestack. Hopelessness abounds, but ’tis the season to be jolly fa la la la la. . . . A note which follows so sad a threnody will fall on ears deaf to most anybody but the maddest of the hatters whose words will never flatter.

  Sweetlick: Yes, and a wanderer looking for wonder will find only plunder. But please sit for tea, a drink with jam and bread, before we’re six feet under and the heavens split asunder. Oh what a terrible blunder! We need some coinage to take our last voyage, which will bring us back to dough, dough, dough, dough.

  89 Disinfection, it turned out, involved the same process that occurred before General Kiljoy and I entered holy hell: ultraviolet radiation, combined with electrocution and ozonization of the atmosphere, and a dose of cryogenic helium for good measure. It would take roughly two hours to completely sterilize and ventilate the entire compound. When the air was clear and it had warmed up, they said, there would not be a single biologically active presence down there, not a human subject, not a dust mite in the carpet, not a stray strand of DNA.