“Catnap. What’s going on? Oh, I see.…”
A cop began to yell threats through a bullhorn. He sounded less than sanguine.
Now enormous weed-wrapped wheels, big as those on a monster-truck, showed beneath the boat. Apparently the undercarriage of some large vehicle had been melded to the yacht and the drive-train integrated with its big engines.
The nose of the ship reared up as its treads bit into the sloping shore. Gripping the wheel, Tracey kept her feet; Jay Dee and Catalina were thrown against the walls of the bridge. Mister Boots—Gene, rather, and still in ribbons—slid back along the deck to thump solidly against the stern.
The monster wheels crushed the guardrail first, then the hood of a cop car. Tracey throttled up to climb the junk. The rear wheels bit solidly. Then they were onto the road.
The land-yacht began to trundle off at approximately twenty-five miles per hour.
Bullets were pinging off the ship’s superstructure.
“Shall I give our craft a more conventional appearance?”
“Fuck that! They got me mad now, shooting at us like that, ruining our good times. I want everyone who comes after us stopped permanently. But without hurting them.”
“May I recommend a glueball? I use only the highest quality gluons.…”
“Sure, if it’ll do the trick.”
Inside the Master Remote, a golden sphere materialized, just as the letters on its case once had, a short twenty-four hours ago. But when the sphere reached the surface, it kept on coming, emerging somehow through the intact remote.
Jay Dee held the marble-sized glueball.
“This is gonna stop people from bothering us?”
“Once it is activated, yes, certainly.”
“What should I do?”
“Throw it at your pursuers.”
Jay Dee leaned cautiously out the bridge and tossed it.
The glueball landed atop a police car.
The car was gone. Or rather, it was plastered flat onto the surface of the glueball, which had swelled to accommodate it. The flat policemen inside the car banged their hands on their windows. One opened his door and emerged to slide around on the surface of the sphere.
The next car to touch the sphere vanished faster than the eye could follow, flattened likewise to the face of the glueball. The ball was bigger than before.
Lacking brakes, Tracey throttled down to nothing. The yacht coasted to a stop.
The glueball occupied the whole road. There were no cars left outside it. They all rolled around its surface like rainbows on a soap bubble.
Now the glueball began to move.
It rolled away from the yacht, toward the city.
Everything it touched—including the road, down to a depth of ten inches—was sucked into it. Trees, guardrail, grass, birds. The sphere swelled and swelled, like a snowball rolling down an alpine slope, leaving a cleanly sheared path of destruction.
“Holy shit.…Stop it!”
“That is beyond my capacities.”
“Beyond your— You stupid machine! Why did you let it loose then?”
“I am Turing Degree Three. Humans are Turing Degree Ten.”
“Oh, Jesus. Will it ever get full, like, and stop?”
“How big is this planet?”
The glueball was now six stories tall. It seemed to be moving faster.
Catalina was sobbing. “Jay Dee—” began Tracey. But the anguished expression on his face made her stop.
Something appeared in the darkening air above the sphere.
Jay Dee swung the ship’s searchlight on it.
It was the man they had run over, the owner of the Master Remote.
Suddenly there were a dozen of him. They formed a ring around the glueball. It stopped. It began to shrink, but did not disgorge what it had eaten.
When it was marble-sized again, all the floating men coalesced into a single individual. He landed on the ground, picked up the glueball and pocketed it.
Then he was on the yacht.
“Uh, sorry we killed you once, Mister Spaceman.”
The man brushed some dust off his rubberoid lapels. “I am as human as you, Mister McGhee. I am a resident of your future.”
Catalina had ceased crying. “Juh-gee, you must come from pretty far in the future.”
“Fifty years,” said the man. “But they’re going to be wild ones. Now, may I have back my unit?”
Jay Dee surrendered the Master Remote.
Tracey asked, “How come you didn’t arrive one second after you were killed to claim it, and prevent all this mess?”
“The unit disturbs the Fredkin continuum in a chaotic manner. I had a hard time zeroing in on it.”
“What’s going to happen to us?” said Jay Dee.
“Oh, nothing much. Say, did you ever see a tie like this?”
They all stared at the time-traveler’s paisley tie. The border of each paisley was made of little paisleys, and those were made of littler paisleys, and those were made of even littler paisleys, on and on and on, forever—
That night the Li’l Bear Inn was as crowded as the last copter out of Saigon.
But the atmosphere was a little more pleasant.
Above the sounds of clicking pool balls, thwocking darts, ringing bells, exploding aliens, kazoo, farts, Hank Junior, and the bug-zapper hung outside the screen-door that gave onto the gravel parking lot, the calls for drinks were continuous.
“Tracey, two shots!”
“Tracey, another pitcher!”
“Tracey, six rum ’n’ cokes!”
The woman behind the bar smiled at the deluge of orders. It meant more profits in her till.
A man with two tattoos emerged from the back office. “Catalina just called, Trace. She’s stopping by soon as Gene gets off work at the exterminator’s.”
Tracey said, “It’ll be good to see her. I’ll have a frozen daiquiri and a saucer of cream ready.”
The man looked around. “Lord, it’s jumping tonight. We should be able to pay off the mortgage next month.”
A large neutered tomcat stepped fastidiously among the pools of spilled beer. A patron reached down to pet it. It hissed and scratched the offered hand.
“Jay Dee, you should get rid of that mean animal!”
Jay Dee just smiled.
There was a muffled noise from the moosehead mounted on the wall behind the bar. The moosehead had a rope tied around its snout. Its eyes tracked furiously.
Jay Dee gave Tracey a kiss. “I’ll relieve you in a minute, hon. But I got to do something first.”
He went back into the private office on the far side of the bar, picked up a board—
—and gave Larry another whack on the ass.
When I first read an excerpt from William Kotzwinkle’s The Fan Man circa 1972 in Esquire (“Horse Badorties Must Go Out!”) I fell in love with that voice. Nearly twenty years later, I stole it for this story, a theft only Stan Robinson was perceptive enough to comment on. As for my prophetic Disneyfication of New York, one has only to visit 42nd Street to witness the plague in full bloom. Chalk up another valuable prediction for SF!
Do You Believe in Magic?
This is, like, the worst day of my life, man.
It is 7:00 AM and I am soundly and peacefully asleep, having been up most of the night writing a review for the prestigious music ’zine, Magnetic Moment, of some piece of digitially mastered Pop-Marketplace shit—I don’t remember what now; all this modern stuff sounds alike. When I went to sleep I had no intention of getting up before noon. But my blissful dreams of other days are shattered by this loud scraping noise, followed by a sharp slam.
Well. As soon as I extricate myself from the Komfy Koverlets, which my thrashing limbs have wrapped around my neck in a stranglehold, I realize it is the day of the week that my groceries are delivered. The kid from the market has just pushed a box thru the specially constructed Doggie Door, which has slammed down heavily, since its pneumatic catch is shot.
Having been thus summarily roused, I cannot go back to sleep. I decide to get up. Suddenly I am interested in what the market has sent me, and figure I might as well put it away.
I rise from my old stained mattress on the floor. I put on clean jeans and sweatshirt, which I handwashed early yesterday and which have been drying on the line overnight. They are still damp and clammy, and feel like seaweed. This is the pits. I check the Porthole for weather conditions, altho, as per usual, I shall not be going out. (All my windows are painted black. The Porthole is an area high up on one where the paint has flaked irregularly off. The vista thus revealed is a slice of sky and a few square feet of wall.) Conditions are partly cloudy, with patches of brick. Much like every day.
Barefoot, I shuffle over to the box of groceries. Wow, this sucker is heavy! I cannot believe the market has found all these canned goods for me. Shipments lately have been getting sparse. (I refuse to eat any food packed in these new plastic cans. I will take my nourishment from aluminum and tin, or from nothing at all. Plastic cans, man! That’s crazy.… Unfortunately, there are no Native Goods packed in tin anymore. Thus, I am constrained to subsist on imports from the more traditional and/or backward countries: Portuguese and Norwegian sardines, Welsh meat pies, Spanish octopus, Italian scungilli, North Korean puffer fish, Nigerian hyena parts, Burmese lizard legs, Chinese bamboo shoots—man, it gets kinda depressing.)
I am anxious to investigate this week’s offerings. In the patchy dark, I walk with the box over to my old wooden kitchen table and set it down heavily.
There is a heartbreaking CRACK! Too late, I realize what I have done. I lift the box up off the table and set it on a chair. A mournful little whimper escapes from my lips:
“EEEE-YAAAAAAAGH!”
I yank on the pull chain leading to the naked bulb above the table, hoping that I am mistaken. Maybe it is only some piece-o’-crap like Lionel Ritchie’s fifty-first album that I have just turned into vinyl splinters.
But, natch, it’s not. I knew it couldn’t be.
It is a thirty-five-year-old masterpiece, an original pressing, the first album I ever bought, the keystone of a vanished decade, the touchstone of my life, now fragmented into irreparable shards, sharp as my sorrow:
Do You Believe in Magic?, by the Lovin Spoonful.
I was listening to the prized album last night, in order to cleanse my ears of the horrid modern stuff I had been forced to review. I removed it from the turntable and, in a moment of bladder-type weakness, forgot to resleeve it. When I got done taking a leak, I had fallen straight into bed. The record lay unprotected all night on the table, forlornly awaiting its fate.…
I collapse into a chair. I just cannot believe this. To exist and give pleasure for three-and-a-half decades, only to be shattered by a load of scungilli.… At that moment I hate my stomach. Perhaps I should have switched to plastic cans after all.…
Numbly, I stare at the pieces of black plastic. Even the paper circle has been ripped by the jagged shards. Its the Kama Sutra label (distributed by MGM): yellow background, red sunburst, green Indian deity with three faces and four arms. Man, there wasn’t a scratch or fingerprint on that whole record. It felt so good to handle, substantial and thick, not like latter-day, end-of-an-era, cheap flimsy platters.… It coulda lasted another century!
I look across the room, where sit the unadorned yellowed inner paper (not plastic) sleeve and the outer cardboard jacket. The grinning faces of John, Zal, Joe, and Steve mock me from the jacket, beneath the title in its retro typeface. (Funny, once we woulda called that style modern. But thus it is decreed: yesterday’s modern is tomorrow’s retro.…) John’s look is particularly poignant, as he grips the stem of his round wire-rims with two fingers.…
I am suddenly having some kind of fit. I cannot breathe, and my chest is tight. I stand up and stumble to the stained porcelain sink. I stick my head under the faucet and run cold water over it. That helps a little. Goddamn it! THAT ALBUM WAS THE CENTER OF MY LIFE! I WAS SIXTEEN WHEN I BOUGHT IT! IT WAS GREAT MUSIC! I WILL NOT LIVE WITHOUT IT!
I realize I have been shouting. Luckily, my neighbors—whoever they may be—have grown used to my noise. At least, I think they have. Anyway, there have been no complaints in ages. Doubtless, if anyone heard my ranting just now, they thought it was merely another record.
I am possessed by a sudden knowledge: it is time for desperate measures. I must leave my apartment to secure another copy of this record, a duplicate original pressing. I really cannot live without it. My life is a precarious assemblage of tactile tokens and sonic symbols. To remove one is to disfigure the whole musical mosaic.
The Big Picture must be restored!
I am filled with energy now. I have a Kozmic Kwest.
I grab my sneakers from beneath a pile of clothing, put them on my bare feet, and lace them up. Now the conditions beyond the Porthole develop increased significance. I look again. Hmm, better have a jacket. I snatch some bills out of the tin where I keep my money and uncashed royalty checks, and stuff them in my jacket pocket. I advance to the door. I stop.
I have not been out of my apartment in twenty years. I believe the last time was around ’81. That was when things seemed to turn really sour, and I beat my retreat. I have not had any visitors in half that time. My dealings with the world are thru the media of mail, telephone lines, and data coaxials. I am not sure the world even exists anymore, in any incarnation other than the shit I receive for review.
I am shivering. I DON’T WANT TO GO OUT THERE! I look around my place for some shred of comfort. There are jumbled piles of books, mostly about music. There is a broken television, which has not worked since Dick Clark died. There are banks of audio equipment: receivers, speakers, amps, equalizers, turntables, CD Players, DAT and DVD drives, regular cassette players, various remote controls. There is an old word-processing setup whereby I file my articles with Magnetic Moment and other publishers. And then, natch, there’s my record collection: approximately six thousand LP’s and as many 45s. They are lovingly filed on shelves and in stacks, the oldest protected by plastic. Among them is the last LP ever pressed by a major firm, the Springsteen five-record set, Live ‘85-’95, which failed to move even ten thousand units in this format. (I do not keep the CD’s and DATs that I receive for review, unless they are reissues of old stuff that I absolutely lack. Otherwise, they go out the bathroom window, down the air shaft. I believe the pile has almost reached the second floor.)
The sight of all my possessions reassures me. I must be strong and survive this mission, if only to take care of them. I cannot stand the thought of strangers coming in after my death and breaking up my collection.
I turn back to the door. It has five locks on it, and a bar wedged under the handle and against the floor. I attempt to work the mechanisms, but they are all rusted shut. The bar has sunk immovably into the soft wooden floorboards. I am forced to crawl ignominiously thru the Doggie Door in order to exit my lair.
Man, this hallway is gruesome! Fulla dust ’n’ cobwebs ’n’ used syringes, rags ’n’ cinders ’n’ windblown trash. There is a trail thru all this junk, which the boy from the market has obviously worn. The path comes as far as my door and no further. Is this what I am paying my rent-stabilized $125 per month for? I angrily ask myself. While I’m out, I will go see Mr. Gummidge, the landlord, and demand better treatment. What does he think this place is, an abandoned building, fer chrissakes?
That is exactly what it is, I soon discover.
I am living in a bombed-out hulk! All the glass and doors except mine are gone. There are no other tenants, except some rats and wild dogs and perhaps, from evidence, an occasional squatter. Well, that explains the lack of complaints about my loud music.… Lord knows why I still got electricity. There was that blackout five years ago; power didn’t come back on for a week—could it have been hotwired…? Hey, if there’s no super, who’s been taking my trash away? Bums, I guess. Suprised the copper plumbing hasn’t been gutted. Oh, that’s right:
it was replaced with some new plastic stuff back in ’75. I lodged a futile protest, hated to have my water flowing thru PVC, finally gave in and learned to subsist on YOO-HOO CHOCOLATE DRINK, the only beverage that still comes in a real can.…
Now I am out on the street. Wow, this neighborhood was never much to look at, but it’s really gone downhill!
I am staring at about forty acres of rubble-strewn urban terrain. My building sits in the center of the wasteland, the only halfway-intact structure. The wall I have unwittingly inspected each morning out the Porthole turns out to be merely a freestanding fragment. Man, what happened? This used to be Amsterdam Avenue, man!
I trudge across the desolate, bricky wastes, beneath the sky of gray. Man, this is like waking up in a T. S. Eliot poem!
On the outskirts of my private Twilight Zone, I encounter civilization, in the form of inhabited buildings, uptown, downtown and crosstown streets, traffic, commerce, humans.… Man, Harlem never looked so good! I thought it was post-WWIII, man! Instead, it appears that only my immediate surroundings have suffered these outrageous ravages.
I approach some soul brothers hanging out in front of a check-cashing joint.
“Hey, bloods, what happened with the war zone?”
They eye me warily. One finally speaks.
“The mayor and the po-leece drop a firebomb.”
“What the flick for?”
“Trying to stop the crack sales.”
Wow, so that was what that really hot day had been! I thought it was just a regular New York August day cranked up to eleven. My building must have been protected in some eddy of the flames.…
While I have been cogitating, these young black guys have surrounded me menacingly.
“Is you the spook what lives in the haunted tenament?”
“I guess so.…”
“You spoze to be real rich. How about handing over some money?”
“Yeah,” says another. He produces a gun made of … PLASTIC! “Or we gonna grease your ass.”
I slap the gun out of his hand, and it goes skidding down the street like a cheap toy. The JD s stare at me unbelievingly. “Man, that was major uncool. Whatcha pointing some plastic gun at me for? Dontcha know you’re looking at a dude who marched with King?”
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