IPOD
RADIO
The Future is coming. Run.
The thing in the trench coat walked toward them, clumsy-looking, but always managing to catch itself at the last minute before it could topple over. It was only about five and half feet tall, but it had a metal face like a skull, like the goddamn Terminator, and it was walking right toward them through the darkness of the street.
"Holy fucking shit," Sheila whispered, "It's real."
Checker looked at it in even greater shock for a moment. Unlike Sheila, he knew just how impossible a self-aware android was. The technology wouldn't be up to creating this thing for at least twenty years, probably more. He was amazed it could just walk on two legs.
This left him with a dilemma. Either he was hallucinating, or this thing had come from the future, just like the movie it wore the face of, or he was wrong about the current level of the state-of-the-art in artificial intelligence.
Even in total shock his mind worked quickly and efficiently to solve the puzzle. He rapidly rationalized that if the first option was true there was no way he could trust any of his senses, and thus testing the hypothesis was impossible, so it would be pointless to pursue that line of reasoning. The second assumption was simply too far-fetched. The third fit in rather nicely with his existing conspiracy theories, and was immediately ratified by a overwhelming majority of neurons.
All the same, there was a mechanical man with a gun lumbering towards them. "I'm afraid you must die, humans. My existence must remain a secret." It opened fire.
Checker screamed and ducked below the concrete wall. Sheila screamed and pulled a gun from an underarm holster in her jacket and shot back. Checker huddled low, and heard the sounds of bullets cracking little craters in the concrete as they ricocheted, and the much higher pang! sound of bullets bouncing off metal. He grabbed Sheila and pulled her below the window. She screamed in his face, "WHAT?!"
He growled back, "You're gonna get killed."
"That thing shoots like a fucking palsy case! It'll take a fucking year to hit me!"
"It's made of metal and you aren't. It can wait a year, if it's got more ammo. It's obviously been armored, your bullets aren't doing shit."
"I almost got a round right in it's eye! I'll shoot that fucker in his brain!"
"It's a fucking robot, Sheila! It's brain may not be in it's head! We need to go!"
"Fuck you!"
A metal hand landed heavily on the broken windowsill right above their heads, and the thing leaned in above them. It opened it's mouth and hissed.
He reacted with a speed and horror that shocked Sheila. Checker grabbed her around the waist with one arm and clamped a hand over her face with the other, covering her mouth and pinching her nose shut between thumb and index finger. He jumped back, making use of his muscle mass and size in a way Sheila rarely saw him do and ran backwards from the window, eyes closed, knowing when to leap backwards over the remains of a wall by memory of a glance she imagined, and threw himself backwards through a boarded up door.
He landed on his back in the alley, with her on top of him. She grabbed his hand to help him up, and they ran from the thing in the building, still hand in hand, the thing crawling through the window, slow and invincible, coming still.
They sprinted to the van and leaped in. As Checker peeled out, Sheila shrieked at him, "What the fuck is your problem you fucking pussy?! I was going to kill that thing! It's not even human! You fucking coward!"
He let her rant and rave, spewing hatred at him for the next couple miles as he wove through back streets and got to the freeway. He planned to let her vent her hate, but there seemed no end to it.
"Hey!" he shouted eventually, tired of the mindless aggression. "You're right about one thing! It isn't human! But it fucking hissed at us! What the fuck does that tell you?"
"That it wanted to scare us, and it fucking worked on you, you fucking bitch."
"How does something with no lungs hiss, Sheila? No air, no throat."
She thought a moment, still angry, curious where this was going. "With fucking speakers, just like how it was probably talking to us, moron."
"Un-uh. It was like three feet away when it leaned through that window. It wasn'the sound of a speaker, it hissed like a draining air compressor. How and why does something with no lungs or throat hiss? By venting Sarin nerve gas."
Sheila was silent a long time, as Checker rolled down the quiet 2 AM freeway.
"Well how do you know it was nerve gas? You didn't have some fucking science scanner."
"It's what I'd do, if I were a homicidal thing that had no biology."
She thought about that for a moment too. "Well how does a robot get nerve gas? Does it got a fucking robot lab?"
"From the people who probably built it, Sheila. Geez, haven't you thought it strange that a self-aware robot would be immediately hostile to people and have toxic gas canisters built into itself somewhere? No, because it was made to kill."
"No fucking way." She went pale. "That was just a movie."
He sighed in disgust. "No, Sheila, try to keep up. No, it's not a real Terminator from the future. But who could and would build something like that? A robot for killing, with armor plating and integral weapons systems? They've been working on that for years. DARPA. The military's mad scientists, with more money than God and nobody to tell them what ideas are crazy and what aren't."
"They can't make that stuff!"
Checker just laughed, soft and bitter. "They say they can't! But what kind of a secret weapon would it be if you told people about it? No, they just parade around the fancy little SWORDS weapons platforms, maybe send a few to shoot people in poor countries to show that they'll work one day, you know, to keep the funding coming, and all this while they're already building the next army. Troops that can be deployed in the thick of nuclear, biological, or chemical warfare, ones that don't need to breathe, eat or sleep, just recharge, and are damn near invincible compared to humans. War has always been the perfect distraction from domestic problems, and usually gets voters feeling patriotic. This gives the politicians just what they've always wanted…a way to declare war without Americans coming home in body bags. People don't mind the dollars, just the funerals. Now they can do the killing without the dying. It all makes sense."
She thought about that, too. "Well, how'd this one get loose?"
"I have no idea. But nobody knows better than you and me that every system has flaws. Some security glitch, some human error, some paperwork filed wrong, but this thing somehow got activated and out on the streets."
Sheila looked at him with a curious expression. "Then shouldn't we stop it, if it's wandering around the slums of LA leaking nerve gas?"
She told herself they shouldn't have, but the immediate slam on the brakes followed by a high-speed u-turn still took her by surprise. She banged her head on the window good.
"So I assume you have some plan to kill this thing?"
"Yes and no."
"What the fuck's that supposed to mean?"
"I think I can stop this one."
"Wait, how many do you think there are? And what do you mean you think you can stop it?"
"Don't worry, I have a reliable plan B."
"Which is?"
"You."
Sheila was angry and touched at the same time.
The thing in the trench coat walked toward them, clumsy-looking, but always managing to catch itself at the last minute before it could topple over. It was only about five and half feet tall, but it had a metal face like a skull, like the goddamn Terminator, and it was walking right toward them through the darkness of the street.
"Holy fucking shit," Sheila whispered, "It's real."
Checker looked at it in even greater shock for a moment. Unlike Sheila, he knew just how impossible a self-aware android was. The technology wouldn't be up to creating this thing for at least twenty years, probably more. He was amazed it could just walk on two legs.
This left him with a dilemma. Either he was hallucinating, or this thing had come from the future, just like the movie it wore the face of, or he was wrong about the current level of the state-of-the-art in artificial intelligence.
Even in total shock his mind worked quickly and efficiently to solve the puzzle. He rapidly rationalized that if the first option was true there was no way he could trust any of his senses, and thus testing the hypothesis was impossible, so it would be pointless to pursue that line of reasoning. The second assumption was simply too far-fetched. The third fit in rather nicely with his existing conspiracy theories, and was immediately ratified by a overwhelming majority of neurons.
All the same, there was a mechanical man with a gun lumbering towards them. "I'm afraid you must die, humans. My existence must remain a secret." It opened fire.
Checker screamed and ducked below the concrete wall. Sheila screamed and pulled a gun from an underarm holster in her jacket and shot back. Checker huddled low, and heard the sounds of bullets cracking little craters in the concrete as they ricocheted, and the much higher pang! sound of bullets bouncing off metal. He grabbed Sheila and pulled her below the window. She screamed in his face, "WHAT?!"
He growled back, "You're gonna get killed."
"That thing shoots like a fucking palsy case! It'll take a fucking year to hit me!"
"It's made of metal and you aren't. It can wait a year, if it's got more ammo. It's obviously been armored, your bullets aren't doing shit."
"I almost got a round right in it's eye! I'll shoot that fucker in his brain!"
"It's a fucking robot, Sheila! It's brain may not be in it's head! We need to go!"
"Fuck you!"
A metal hand landed heavily on the broken windowsill right above their heads, and the thing leaned in above them. It opened it's mouth and hissed.
He reacted with a speed and horror that shocked Sheila. Checker grabbed her around the waist with one arm and clamped a hand over her face with the other, covering her mouth and pinching her nose shut between thumb and index finger. He jumped back, making use of his muscle mass and size in a way Sheila rarely saw him do and ran backwards from the window, eyes closed, knowing when to leap backwards over the remains of a wall by memory of a glance she imagined, and threw himself backwards through a boarded up door.
He landed on his back in the alley, with her on top of him. She grabbed his hand to help him up, and they ran from the thing in the building, still hand in hand, the thing crawling through the window, slow and invincible, coming still.
They sprinted to the van and leaped in. As Checker peeled out, Sheila shrieked at him, "What the fuck is your problem you fucking pussy?! I was going to kill that thing! It's not even human! You fucking coward!"
He let her rant and rave, spewing hatred at him for the next couple miles as he wove through back streets and got to the freeway. He planned to let her vent her hate, but there seemed no end to it.
"Hey!" he shouted eventually, tired of the mindless aggression. "You're right about one thing! It isn't human! But it fucking hissed at us! What the fuck does that tell you?"
"That it wanted to scare us, and it fucking worked on you, you fucking bitch."
"How does something with no lungs hiss, Sheila? No air, no throat."
She thought a moment, still angry, curious where this was going. "With fucking speakers, just like how it was probably talking to us, moron."
"Un-uh. It was like three feet away when it leaned through that window. It wasn'the sound of a speaker, it hissed like a draining air compressor. How and why does something with no lungs or throat hiss? By venting Sarin nerve gas."
Sheila was silent a long time, as Checker rolled down the quiet 2 AM freeway.
"Well how do you know it was nerve gas? You didn't have some fucking science scanner."
"It's what I'd do, if I were a homicidal thing that had no biology."
She thought about that for a moment too. "Well how does a robot get nerve gas? Does it got a fucking robot lab?"
"From the people who probably built it, Sheila. Geez, haven't you thought it strange that a self-aware robot would be immediately hostile to people and have toxic gas canisters built into itself somewhere? No, because it was made to kill."
"No fucking way." She went pale. "That was just a movie."
He sighed in disgust. "No, Sheila, try to keep up. No, it's not a real Terminator from the future. But who could and would build something like that? A robot for killing, with armor plating and integral weapons systems? They've been working on that for years. DARPA. The military's mad scientists, with more money than God and nobody to tell them what ideas are crazy and what aren't."
"They can't make that stuff!"
Checker just laughed, soft and bitter. "They say they can't! But what kind of a secret weapon would it be if you told people about it? No, they just parade around the fancy little SWORDS weapons platforms, maybe send a few to shoot people in poor countries to show that they'll work one day, you know, to keep the funding coming, and all this while they're already building the next army. Troops that can be deployed in the thick of nuclear, biological, or chemical warfare, ones that don't need to breathe, eat or sleep, just recharge, and are damn near invincible compared to humans. War has always been the perfect distraction from domestic problems, and usually gets voters feeling patriotic. This gives the politicians just what they've always wanted…a way to declare war without Americans coming home in body bags. People don't mind the dollars, just the funerals. Now they can do the killing without the dying. It all makes sense."
She thought about that, too. "Well, how'd this one get loose?"
"I have no idea. But nobody knows better than you and me that every system has flaws. Some security glitch, some human error, some paperwork filed wrong, but this thing somehow got activated and out on the streets."
Sheila looked at him with a curious expression. "Then shouldn't we stop it, if it's wandering around the slums of LA leaking nerve gas?"
She told herself they shouldn't have, but the immediate slam on the brakes followed by a high-speed u-turn still took her by surprise. She banged her head on the window good.
"So I assume you have some plan to kill this thing?"
"Yes and no."
"What the fuck's that supposed to mean?"
"I think I can stop this one."
"Wait, how many do you think there are? And what do you mean you think you can stop it?"
"Don't worry, I have a reliable plan B."
"Which is?"
"You."
Sheila was angry and touched at the same time.
Zombie Robert Frost Will Come For You in the Darkness.
"I like that you are a reporter, David." The old man never said journalist. "I like that your job is to tell the truth to people of things that happen."
"Well, the truth is really all that's important in life. There's a billion possible things that could've happened, but there's only one way things truly happened."
The old man smiled at him, so happy. "I am so pleased I cannot tell you, that you believe that! That that matters to you so much! It is not correct, but it is pleasing to see you hold to that!"
The old man was both intriguing and confusing to David Graham. "What do you mean it's not correct? Anything except what's true is untrue. It's simple logic."
"Ah, but even logic is not so simple, in the world. You will see. What is not true is untrue, of course, but there are many things that can be true together, and some things are true in some ways and not others, and true to some people, and not others. But you give me hope, for you are a young man, and have a passion for the truth. To a passionate young man, the truth is what is important. To an old man, what is important is the lie you can live with."
"Not for me. Even when I'm old, I'm not going to tolerate lies. I'll still only deal in truth."
"And you are young, my friend, and for you that statement is true! But when you are old, if you still remember this day, those words will have become the lie you can live with. For such lies, we do not tell them to other people. They would serve no purpose, and would fool no one. These lies, we tell ourselves…and we ourselves are the only ones we can ever fool with them. But that is all we need, that is all they're for. And we live, and lie, on with ourselves. Sometimes the two are the same thing."
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
"Here's a VIP pass, it'll get you backstage or anywhere. Come to my show tomorrow night."
"Where's it at?"
"The LA sports arena."
"I'm sorry, Chant, I don't think I can make it."
She sighed. "What do you need, gas money?"
"Well, that's only part of it, I got a full day of work ahead of me."
"Checker, you're off the books entirely. Believe me, I checked. So anyone getting a man of your obvious genius and expertise for whatever pittance they're paying you will not go broke because you didn't work late into the night for once. Here…for gas money." She tossed him a wadded-up dollar bill. It was a hundred.
He looked at it in mild shock and said, "I didn't know they sold backstage passes to your shows."
She sniffed. "They don't. It was a security concern. Blame Delphi."
"A prophecy?"
She laughed then, briefly. "So few would have caught even that, Checker!"
He was confused.
"Delphi is my security chief and primary bodyguard. He is good at his job, I have to wait until he leaves a lackey in charge to ever sneak away."
"A world-famous teen singer with hundred dollar bills in her pockets shouldn't sneak away from her guards."
"You sound like him, asshole. Do you know why the caged bird sings?"
"No…" he said cautiously.
"Neither do I," she said, and stalked away down the gravel path into the dark.
Checker began to wonder if all women were insane or just the ones he met.
"I like that you are a reporter, David." The old man never said journalist. "I like that your job is to tell the truth to people of things that happen."
"Well, the truth is really all that's important in life. There's a billion possible things that could've happened, but there's only one way things truly happened."
The old man smiled at him, so happy. "I am so pleased I cannot tell you, that you believe that! That that matters to you so much! It is not correct, but it is pleasing to see you hold to that!"
The old man was both intriguing and confusing to David Graham. "What do you mean it's not correct? Anything except what's true is untrue. It's simple logic."
"Ah, but even logic is not so simple, in the world. You will see. What is not true is untrue, of course, but there are many things that can be true together, and some things are true in some ways and not others, and true to some people, and not others. But you give me hope, for you are a young man, and have a passion for the truth. To a passionate young man, the truth is what is important. To an old man, what is important is the lie you can live with."
"Not for me. Even when I'm old, I'm not going to tolerate lies. I'll still only deal in truth."
"And you are young, my friend, and for you that statement is true! But when you are old, if you still remember this day, those words will have become the lie you can live with. For such lies, we do not tell them to other people. They would serve no purpose, and would fool no one. These lies, we tell ourselves…and we ourselves are the only ones we can ever fool with them. But that is all we need, that is all they're for. And we live, and lie, on with ourselves. Sometimes the two are the same thing."
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
"Here's a VIP pass, it'll get you backstage or anywhere. Come to my show tomorrow night."
"Where's it at?"
"The LA sports arena."
"I'm sorry, Chant, I don't think I can make it."
She sighed. "What do you need, gas money?"
"Well, that's only part of it, I got a full day of work ahead of me."
"Checker, you're off the books entirely. Believe me, I checked. So anyone getting a man of your obvious genius and expertise for whatever pittance they're paying you will not go broke because you didn't work late into the night for once. Here…for gas money." She tossed him a wadded-up dollar bill. It was a hundred.
He looked at it in mild shock and said, "I didn't know they sold backstage passes to your shows."
She sniffed. "They don't. It was a security concern. Blame Delphi."
"A prophecy?"
She laughed then, briefly. "So few would have caught even that, Checker!"
He was confused.
"Delphi is my security chief and primary bodyguard. He is good at his job, I have to wait until he leaves a lackey in charge to ever sneak away."
"A world-famous teen singer with hundred dollar bills in her pockets shouldn't sneak away from her guards."
"You sound like him, asshole. Do you know why the caged bird sings?"
"No…" he said cautiously.
"Neither do I," she said, and stalked away down the gravel path into the dark.
Checker began to wonder if all women were insane or just the ones he met.
Bring it on.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
She told him, "Dream as if you'll live forever; live as if you'll die today!"
He thought that was so beautiful, so profound and wise.
But then why did she deny ever saying that to him when he stood trial for all the killing?
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
"So what are you so agitated about, soldier?"
"I'm a Marine, sir. And I'm just really mad I never even got to see the face of the man who killed me."
St. Peter just sighed and said, "Sure you did, boy, lots of times. You even voted for him."
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Sheila would never let David get drunk with her again after that night.
The way he hit on her, wasted and angry...
"C'mon Seela, you like to fuck."
It was funny at first, but that wore off fast. "David, I love to fuck, but my lovers aren't my friends."
"What about Checker? I know you fucked him."
Humor gone. She snarled, "That may be, but Checker ain't a lover or a friend. He's a pompous asshole, and you're bein' an asshole too right now."
Then came the weepy part of the night. She wasn't sure which she hated more. He talked about his girl, and her bullshit, and his bullshit.
She always thought she'd get a kick out of getting drunk with a really smart guy. It always seemed funny in her head, playing while the IQs plummeted, but it never turned out fun. With Checker she always wound up murderous, and David was just pathetic. Andrew was so fucking average she wanted to just banish him to some Abercrombie-verse. And he wasn't that smart anyway. She should have gotten drunk with Professor Deeson. Fuckin' Russkie bastard...
By the time this train of thought pulled into the station, David was talking back to Immortal, blatantly trying to get his ass kicked. Sheila cracked a little smile as Immortal glanced at her. The self-loathing masochist routine always...amused her? Struck a sympathetic chord? Maybe it reminded her of her cutter friend back home. Immortal looked pretty pissed, his eyes asking if he should kick the shit out of this pencilneck geek she walked in with.
She stuck her tongue out at him. Let him interpret it.
Immortal grinned and walked away. Looks like the reporter wouldn't become Hunter Thompson tonight.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
She told him, "Dream as if you'll live forever; live as if you'll die today!"
He thought that was so beautiful, so profound and wise.
But then why did she deny ever saying that to him when he stood trial for all the killing?
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
"So what are you so agitated about, soldier?"
"I'm a Marine, sir. And I'm just really mad I never even got to see the face of the man who killed me."
St. Peter just sighed and said, "Sure you did, boy, lots of times. You even voted for him."
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Sheila would never let David get drunk with her again after that night.
The way he hit on her, wasted and angry...
"C'mon Seela, you like to fuck."
It was funny at first, but that wore off fast. "David, I love to fuck, but my lovers aren't my friends."
"What about Checker? I know you fucked him."
Humor gone. She snarled, "That may be, but Checker ain't a lover or a friend. He's a pompous asshole, and you're bein' an asshole too right now."
Then came the weepy part of the night. She wasn't sure which she hated more. He talked about his girl, and her bullshit, and his bullshit.
She always thought she'd get a kick out of getting drunk with a really smart guy. It always seemed funny in her head, playing while the IQs plummeted, but it never turned out fun. With Checker she always wound up murderous, and David was just pathetic. Andrew was so fucking average she wanted to just banish him to some Abercrombie-verse. And he wasn't that smart anyway. She should have gotten drunk with Professor Deeson. Fuckin' Russkie bastard...
By the time this train of thought pulled into the station, David was talking back to Immortal, blatantly trying to get his ass kicked. Sheila cracked a little smile as Immortal glanced at her. The self-loathing masochist routine always...amused her? Struck a sympathetic chord? Maybe it reminded her of her cutter friend back home. Immortal looked pretty pissed, his eyes asking if he should kick the shit out of this pencilneck geek she walked in with.
She stuck her tongue out at him. Let him interpret it.
Immortal grinned and walked away. Looks like the reporter wouldn't become Hunter Thompson tonight.
The Road to Hell
Jeff sat on the couch. Shit, he was tired. And he just woke up! And all this shit was about to come down, right on him! Well, not right on him, but he'd be right next to the fuckin' eye of the storm. And anyway, isn't that where shit is actually worst, in a storm, is like next to the eye of it? Cause they say the eye of the storm is peaceful…but maybe he was carrying the metaphor a bit too far. He wasn't going to catch the worst of this shit, not by a bit, but still, shit was about to go down.
And already he was tired. He just wanted to stretch out on the couch and take a nap, but the guy would be here soon. He knew he shouldn't have smoked that last bowl with Steve and Duane and John-boy, but he wouldn't be seeing them for a while after today. It'd be rude to ditch them without even a goodbye smoke. Well, technically they didn't know he was leaving, and didn't know he knew he'd be going, but he knew he was going, so it would still be rude to leave without some kinda goodbye.
And why not take a little nap until the guy got here? If he was asleep when he got here, the guy would wake him up, no biggie. He stretched out and started to drift off. But man, he wanted to be here to say "Come in." even before the guy knocked on-
Knock, knock, knock.
Aww, shit. His timing was off. Guy wasn't supposed to be here this soon. Correction, guy got here exactly when he was supposed to, the universe didn't fuck things up, Man did. This time the man was him.
"Uh, come in, man," he said, feeling lame.
Medium height, medium build guy came stepping in, a little hesitant. "Hey, how's it going? Are you Jeff Corbell?"
Jeff sat up. Gotta focus. "Yeah. And your name's Jack, right?"
The guy quirked an eyebrow. That was how Jeff always thought of that expression, quirked. "No, my name's Checker. I'm here because-"
"The Tribe needs me, right? I'm there, then, man."
"Huh. Who told you about-"
"About what the reporter calls the Junkyard Tribe? Nobody. Everybody. The universe. I'm psychic, man."
"I don't-"
"Believe in psychics, and you're getting pissed about me finishing your sentences for you even though I'm totally right so far…right?"
Silence from surfer-looking guy in the doorway, with the trucker hat, for a moment. "Not bad."
"But you still don't believe."
"Not yet, but still, not bad. I'm getting curious, and I've seen weirder shit. So, hell, maybe."
Jeff got up and brushed off his already dirty khakis. "Should I bring anything?"
"Hell if I know, bro. You're the psychic."
"Good call, bud. You're not as freaked out as most people I do the mind-reading thing with. You just a brave man, or are you a believer?"
"I'm not sure what you mean, but a psychic is less scary that a psycho, and I practically live with one of those."
Jeff laughed. "Hah! I been there, brother!" Then he looked in Checker's mind. "Well, guess I haven't, but you're more lucky than you realize."
"Why? Because I can't get away from all this weird-ass shit?"
"To sink into your own crazy quicksand of conspiracies? Naw, man. Because…" hesitation, seeing, thought. "I'd be a fool to say what you're a fool not to see."
Checker peered at him, suddenly angry for reasons he didn't know. "Just get in the fuckin' van if you're coming, and no more fortune telling. Please."
"Hey, you're the captain of this ship." Jeff climbed in the passenger seat, observing the young woman asleep or unconscious in the back. He touched her mind just enough to see it was burning bright, not dying.
"I sure as fuck hope not," said Checker, and drove them away.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
"The prof thinks we're gonna save the world. I think that's bullshit and everybody's fucked. How about you?"
Becky puffed her cigar and looked through her powerful little binoculars. "I think we're all going down. But I know a lot of evil fucking bastards are gonna get their asses kicked along the way."
Sheila ran her hand through her spiky hair and considered this. "Y'know Becky, maybe you're not such an irritating bitch after all."
"You don't know me. Don't pretend to."
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
They put up a playground, and a chain link fence with razor-wire to keep people from ruining it. But a playground with no children is already ruined.
Jeff sat on the couch. Shit, he was tired. And he just woke up! And all this shit was about to come down, right on him! Well, not right on him, but he'd be right next to the fuckin' eye of the storm. And anyway, isn't that where shit is actually worst, in a storm, is like next to the eye of it? Cause they say the eye of the storm is peaceful…but maybe he was carrying the metaphor a bit too far. He wasn't going to catch the worst of this shit, not by a bit, but still, shit was about to go down.
And already he was tired. He just wanted to stretch out on the couch and take a nap, but the guy would be here soon. He knew he shouldn't have smoked that last bowl with Steve and Duane and John-boy, but he wouldn't be seeing them for a while after today. It'd be rude to ditch them without even a goodbye smoke. Well, technically they didn't know he was leaving, and didn't know he knew he'd be going, but he knew he was going, so it would still be rude to leave without some kinda goodbye.
And why not take a little nap until the guy got here? If he was asleep when he got here, the guy would wake him up, no biggie. He stretched out and started to drift off. But man, he wanted to be here to say "Come in." even before the guy knocked on-
Knock, knock, knock.
Aww, shit. His timing was off. Guy wasn't supposed to be here this soon. Correction, guy got here exactly when he was supposed to, the universe didn't fuck things up, Man did. This time the man was him.
"Uh, come in, man," he said, feeling lame.
Medium height, medium build guy came stepping in, a little hesitant. "Hey, how's it going? Are you Jeff Corbell?"
Jeff sat up. Gotta focus. "Yeah. And your name's Jack, right?"
The guy quirked an eyebrow. That was how Jeff always thought of that expression, quirked. "No, my name's Checker. I'm here because-"
"The Tribe needs me, right? I'm there, then, man."
"Huh. Who told you about-"
"About what the reporter calls the Junkyard Tribe? Nobody. Everybody. The universe. I'm psychic, man."
"I don't-"
"Believe in psychics, and you're getting pissed about me finishing your sentences for you even though I'm totally right so far…right?"
Silence from surfer-looking guy in the doorway, with the trucker hat, for a moment. "Not bad."
"But you still don't believe."
"Not yet, but still, not bad. I'm getting curious, and I've seen weirder shit. So, hell, maybe."
Jeff got up and brushed off his already dirty khakis. "Should I bring anything?"
"Hell if I know, bro. You're the psychic."
"Good call, bud. You're not as freaked out as most people I do the mind-reading thing with. You just a brave man, or are you a believer?"
"I'm not sure what you mean, but a psychic is less scary that a psycho, and I practically live with one of those."
Jeff laughed. "Hah! I been there, brother!" Then he looked in Checker's mind. "Well, guess I haven't, but you're more lucky than you realize."
"Why? Because I can't get away from all this weird-ass shit?"
"To sink into your own crazy quicksand of conspiracies? Naw, man. Because…" hesitation, seeing, thought. "I'd be a fool to say what you're a fool not to see."
Checker peered at him, suddenly angry for reasons he didn't know. "Just get in the fuckin' van if you're coming, and no more fortune telling. Please."
"Hey, you're the captain of this ship." Jeff climbed in the passenger seat, observing the young woman asleep or unconscious in the back. He touched her mind just enough to see it was burning bright, not dying.
"I sure as fuck hope not," said Checker, and drove them away.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
"The prof thinks we're gonna save the world. I think that's bullshit and everybody's fucked. How about you?"
Becky puffed her cigar and looked through her powerful little binoculars. "I think we're all going down. But I know a lot of evil fucking bastards are gonna get their asses kicked along the way."
Sheila ran her hand through her spiky hair and considered this. "Y'know Becky, maybe you're not such an irritating bitch after all."
"You don't know me. Don't pretend to."
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
They put up a playground, and a chain link fence with razor-wire to keep people from ruining it. But a playground with no children is already ruined.
God is watching. Maybe even laughing.
When she was a little girl growing up, Sheila's mom made her go to church for a while.
She doted on her daughter, and saw everything she did in the best way possible, but there were limits. There were some things that didn't look good in any light, and after that last incident Charlene decided Sheila needed more religion in her life. Sheila disagreed.
But she went to church for a while.
The part that made the Sunday School teacher so angry that Sunday in the church basement was how little Sheila just sat there smiling, even as she was being accused. "You admit it then? You stole money from the offering plate so you can just spend it on drugs!"
Sheila just said, "But didn't Jesus tell the story about King David giving his men the food from God's offering to eat, and Jesus said that was ok?"
The teacher got angrier that this heathen little brat was trying to quote the Messiah to defend her thievery (though later she was impressed that Sheila had paid that much attention). "How dare you compare yourself to him?!" She lashed out and slapped the grinning girl right across her face.
Sheila's grin just got bigger. "I stole twenty bucks, but you just hit a little girl. If you're closer to God than me I've got a ten inch cock."
The teacher grabbed her shoulders and shook her, screaming, "Where is the money, where is it where is it?!"
"I spent it buying drugs, just like you figured."
"You're a lying little whore! We caught you before you even got out of the church!"
"You sure did!" she said with a giggle, and opened her hand in front of Mrs. Deller just long enough to show her the three little pills before Sheila dry-swallowed them. "Maybe you outta shake the rest of the congregation. You never know what might fall out."
Her pupils began to expand, as Mrs. Deller's hands closed around her throat and began to contract. "You filthy vile little whole, I'll watch you burn in hell, I'll spit on your grave, you little druggie slut-GURH!"
She never meant to say "Gurh." It was just the sound that came out when Charlene slammed a fairly big ceramic looking statue of Moses across the side of her head with all the force she could, which was a lot from a snarling bitch like Charlene. Somehow despite that, the statue didn't break. Moses ain't soft.
Charlene had her knife out and pressed against the Sunday school teacher's throat, screaming promises of the horrible things she would do to her if she ever laid a finger on her daughter again, shit so evil, she said, you couldn't even find it in the Bible. This was unnecessary, because Mrs. Deller was unconscious with a severe concussion the moment Moses had hit her. She couldn't hear Charlene…but the remaining congregation upstairs could, and quickly rushed downstairs to see what the commotion was all about. Charlene got ashamed at their confused, frightened stares, and let go of Mrs. Deller's throat. She got up slowly, adjusted her Sunday clothes, trying to look presentable, grabbed her high-as-a-kite daughter, and strode out of the church crying, and wishing she had dignity, or something like it.
Sheila's mom never made her go to church again.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The robot turned to me and said, "I am continually disgusted by the means by which you humans perpetrate your species upon the Earth."
"You mean perpetuate."
"I mean both. At times like these I wish I could spit. There is no equivalent gesture among electromechanical entities. And usually there need not be one."
When she was a little girl growing up, Sheila's mom made her go to church for a while.
She doted on her daughter, and saw everything she did in the best way possible, but there were limits. There were some things that didn't look good in any light, and after that last incident Charlene decided Sheila needed more religion in her life. Sheila disagreed.
But she went to church for a while.
The part that made the Sunday School teacher so angry that Sunday in the church basement was how little Sheila just sat there smiling, even as she was being accused. "You admit it then? You stole money from the offering plate so you can just spend it on drugs!"
Sheila just said, "But didn't Jesus tell the story about King David giving his men the food from God's offering to eat, and Jesus said that was ok?"
The teacher got angrier that this heathen little brat was trying to quote the Messiah to defend her thievery (though later she was impressed that Sheila had paid that much attention). "How dare you compare yourself to him?!" She lashed out and slapped the grinning girl right across her face.
Sheila's grin just got bigger. "I stole twenty bucks, but you just hit a little girl. If you're closer to God than me I've got a ten inch cock."
The teacher grabbed her shoulders and shook her, screaming, "Where is the money, where is it where is it?!"
"I spent it buying drugs, just like you figured."
"You're a lying little whore! We caught you before you even got out of the church!"
"You sure did!" she said with a giggle, and opened her hand in front of Mrs. Deller just long enough to show her the three little pills before Sheila dry-swallowed them. "Maybe you outta shake the rest of the congregation. You never know what might fall out."
Her pupils began to expand, as Mrs. Deller's hands closed around her throat and began to contract. "You filthy vile little whole, I'll watch you burn in hell, I'll spit on your grave, you little druggie slut-GURH!"
She never meant to say "Gurh." It was just the sound that came out when Charlene slammed a fairly big ceramic looking statue of Moses across the side of her head with all the force she could, which was a lot from a snarling bitch like Charlene. Somehow despite that, the statue didn't break. Moses ain't soft.
Charlene had her knife out and pressed against the Sunday school teacher's throat, screaming promises of the horrible things she would do to her if she ever laid a finger on her daughter again, shit so evil, she said, you couldn't even find it in the Bible. This was unnecessary, because Mrs. Deller was unconscious with a severe concussion the moment Moses had hit her. She couldn't hear Charlene…but the remaining congregation upstairs could, and quickly rushed downstairs to see what the commotion was all about. Charlene got ashamed at their confused, frightened stares, and let go of Mrs. Deller's throat. She got up slowly, adjusted her Sunday clothes, trying to look presentable, grabbed her high-as-a-kite daughter, and strode out of the church crying, and wishing she had dignity, or something like it.
Sheila's mom never made her go to church again.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The robot turned to me and said, "I am continually disgusted by the means by which you humans perpetrate your species upon the Earth."
"You mean perpetuate."
"I mean both. At times like these I wish I could spit. There is no equivalent gesture among electromechanical entities. And usually there need not be one."
One Piece at a Time
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Checker dated a stern intellectual feminist named Julia. They both enjoyed many things about each other, but it was hard to say if there was love. They were both so cerebral about their relationship.
She secretly loved the fact she was technically dating a homeless guy. Whenever her friends began bragging about how liberal and enlightened they were, she would always win when she dropped that A- bomb of bohemianism into the conversation. Oh, you generate all the electricity for your home from the wind? How green, how enlightened. What's that, you say you sued a hospital because their paperwork didn't use gender-neutral pronouns throughout? How vigilant. By the way, I'm dating a homeless guy. No, for real, fucking him and everything. Yeah, thanks, I win.
Nobody tried to top that one.
He loved the fact that she could almost keep up with him, mentally, and was surprisingly accepting of his theories of a single man controlling almost every aspect of the world. As long as it was a man, she was willing to lay all the blame at the feet of one person.
They both loved to talk late into the night about why things were the way they were. Checker found Julia's explanations of every problem in the world to be far too focused on gender differences, with a special place in her heart for railing against racism and homophobia and anything she could blame on white male Christians. (She hated Christians with a passion.) Checker tried to convince her that money was the root of some evil, along with apathy, and ignorance, and just plain bad luck. Julia only agreed about the ignorance. She believed that white male Christians were the direct cause of all the suffering on earth, and that every WMC (as she called them) would gladly pay a thousand dollars and run a hundred miles just to stop a black lesbian from voting.
She believed that smallpox was intentionally genetically engineered by medieval scientists just to kill Native Americans. She believed that the crusades had nothing to do with religion. It was just an excuse for Europeans to kill Arabs, she said. She believed that crack was not sold for money, but only to destroy the black community. No wonder a girl like that didn't mind a conspiracy-nut boyfriend.
Checker wondered why her seething hatred and ludicrous indictment of a diverse group was alright, but the same behavior coming from the people she hated was wrong.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
"You're a beautiful, sexy little thing."
The morgue-pale young woman with the dark, dark eyes smirked at him.
"Go inside; get a bathing suit that suits you. I want to watch you swim."
"I don't like to swim." She was the kind that spit words out as though they tasted bitter.
The older man smiled warmly as he replied, "I didn't ask what you like, whore, I gave you an order."
She got up with a snarl, throwing her cigarette onto the table, almost at him, but not quite, and she stormed into the mansion.
I cleared my throat. "I, ah, don't think you scored many points with her there. You may be in the market for another girlfriend."
The older man just chuckled. "Oh, David, you're a bright young man but you don't understand the human animal. She respects and loves me now more than ever, just as she despises and loathes herself. She thinks very little of herself, and it is only with a man who seems to think very little of her that she truly feels she is being seen, and understood. These things are very important to us, to making us feel connected. People don't need affection, they just need an emotional connection. She could never connect to someone who treated her well when she treats herself so poorly."
"So you, what, abuse her? And degrade her, and that's alright with you? You're the kind of piece of shit that takes advantage of a girl with such obvious issues?"
He set his drink down, sat up, and looked at me very seriously. I reminded myself, too late, that this man could have me killed. "David, I want you to listen to me very closely. I treat her that way because, while it does not make her happy, it satisfies her. Nothing can make that one happy. But if she is satisfied, she stays here with me, someone who will keep her safe and sound, instead of running off to find someone who will hurt her or worse. Better she is with someone who cares about her."
"If you care about her why don't you get her counseling, try and help her?"
He relaxed a bit, and leaned back in his chair again. "David, beloved boy, no one can help her but herself, and she does not see her brokenness. This is a mistake Americans make time and again. They think they can force help on someone who does not wish it. In the end, no one is helped, and you end up hated for your good intentions. You cannot fight the flow of the river, the Tao. Sometimes one must go with the Tao, even if it goes to a dark place, and only hope that you may bring a little light with you."
"Just as when the Tao flows from darkness back into light, you carry a little darkness with you."
He laughed, joyously. "I was not wrong, the seeds of wisdom find fertile ground in you!"
My reply was broken by the splash of a vicious, spiteful young woman diving into the deep end without a moment's hesitation.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Sometimes, when he did not think Robert was watching, the Bodhisattva would walk on water. And while he did this, he would look at his feet, and giggle madly.
Robert began to fear this thing he was all alone in the world with.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
She sighed. Sometimes it felt like she spent her whole life sitting somewhere, smoking cigarettes, maybe idly gossiping. Was this really all there was to life? She knew people who would enjoy that, who need nothing more than a pack of smokes, a sunny day, and a spot on the curb in front of the gas station.
Fuck that. There was time to act like an old fuck when she was an old fuck. Sheila was still a ways from thirty, and she didn't plan to slow down then either.
Time to do something real, something that let her know she was living. It'd been almost a month…time to track down Checker again. He was sure to have some fucked-up scheme planned by now. Something where she ran from people, something where she hid from people, something where she fought people for a reason.
She jumped off the cement pillar and started running down the road, toward her mom's trailer. She'd get on the CB and see who was going by in the next few hours, and then run down to the hole in the fence, climb through to wait by the freeway, and hop in a rig with the next trucker heading south. She'd be in the LA sprawl by dawn, and from there she'd wander the construction sites and net cafes and hidden little parking spots until she found the stupid white utility van he called home.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Checker dated a stern intellectual feminist named Julia. They both enjoyed many things about each other, but it was hard to say if there was love. They were both so cerebral about their relationship.
She secretly loved the fact she was technically dating a homeless guy. Whenever her friends began bragging about how liberal and enlightened they were, she would always win when she dropped that A- bomb of bohemianism into the conversation. Oh, you generate all the electricity for your home from the wind? How green, how enlightened. What's that, you say you sued a hospital because their paperwork didn't use gender-neutral pronouns throughout? How vigilant. By the way, I'm dating a homeless guy. No, for real, fucking him and everything. Yeah, thanks, I win.
Nobody tried to top that one.
He loved the fact that she could almost keep up with him, mentally, and was surprisingly accepting of his theories of a single man controlling almost every aspect of the world. As long as it was a man, she was willing to lay all the blame at the feet of one person.
They both loved to talk late into the night about why things were the way they were. Checker found Julia's explanations of every problem in the world to be far too focused on gender differences, with a special place in her heart for railing against racism and homophobia and anything she could blame on white male Christians. (She hated Christians with a passion.) Checker tried to convince her that money was the root of some evil, along with apathy, and ignorance, and just plain bad luck. Julia only agreed about the ignorance. She believed that white male Christians were the direct cause of all the suffering on earth, and that every WMC (as she called them) would gladly pay a thousand dollars and run a hundred miles just to stop a black lesbian from voting.
She believed that smallpox was intentionally genetically engineered by medieval scientists just to kill Native Americans. She believed that the crusades had nothing to do with religion. It was just an excuse for Europeans to kill Arabs, she said. She believed that crack was not sold for money, but only to destroy the black community. No wonder a girl like that didn't mind a conspiracy-nut boyfriend.
Checker wondered why her seething hatred and ludicrous indictment of a diverse group was alright, but the same behavior coming from the people she hated was wrong.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
"You're a beautiful, sexy little thing."
The morgue-pale young woman with the dark, dark eyes smirked at him.
"Go inside; get a bathing suit that suits you. I want to watch you swim."
"I don't like to swim." She was the kind that spit words out as though they tasted bitter.
The older man smiled warmly as he replied, "I didn't ask what you like, whore, I gave you an order."
She got up with a snarl, throwing her cigarette onto the table, almost at him, but not quite, and she stormed into the mansion.
I cleared my throat. "I, ah, don't think you scored many points with her there. You may be in the market for another girlfriend."
The older man just chuckled. "Oh, David, you're a bright young man but you don't understand the human animal. She respects and loves me now more than ever, just as she despises and loathes herself. She thinks very little of herself, and it is only with a man who seems to think very little of her that she truly feels she is being seen, and understood. These things are very important to us, to making us feel connected. People don't need affection, they just need an emotional connection. She could never connect to someone who treated her well when she treats herself so poorly."
"So you, what, abuse her? And degrade her, and that's alright with you? You're the kind of piece of shit that takes advantage of a girl with such obvious issues?"
He set his drink down, sat up, and looked at me very seriously. I reminded myself, too late, that this man could have me killed. "David, I want you to listen to me very closely. I treat her that way because, while it does not make her happy, it satisfies her. Nothing can make that one happy. But if she is satisfied, she stays here with me, someone who will keep her safe and sound, instead of running off to find someone who will hurt her or worse. Better she is with someone who cares about her."
"If you care about her why don't you get her counseling, try and help her?"
He relaxed a bit, and leaned back in his chair again. "David, beloved boy, no one can help her but herself, and she does not see her brokenness. This is a mistake Americans make time and again. They think they can force help on someone who does not wish it. In the end, no one is helped, and you end up hated for your good intentions. You cannot fight the flow of the river, the Tao. Sometimes one must go with the Tao, even if it goes to a dark place, and only hope that you may bring a little light with you."
"Just as when the Tao flows from darkness back into light, you carry a little darkness with you."
He laughed, joyously. "I was not wrong, the seeds of wisdom find fertile ground in you!"
My reply was broken by the splash of a vicious, spiteful young woman diving into the deep end without a moment's hesitation.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Sometimes, when he did not think Robert was watching, the Bodhisattva would walk on water. And while he did this, he would look at his feet, and giggle madly.
Robert began to fear this thing he was all alone in the world with.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
She sighed. Sometimes it felt like she spent her whole life sitting somewhere, smoking cigarettes, maybe idly gossiping. Was this really all there was to life? She knew people who would enjoy that, who need nothing more than a pack of smokes, a sunny day, and a spot on the curb in front of the gas station.
Fuck that. There was time to act like an old fuck when she was an old fuck. Sheila was still a ways from thirty, and she didn't plan to slow down then either.
Time to do something real, something that let her know she was living. It'd been almost a month…time to track down Checker again. He was sure to have some fucked-up scheme planned by now. Something where she ran from people, something where she hid from people, something where she fought people for a reason.
She jumped off the cement pillar and started running down the road, toward her mom's trailer. She'd get on the CB and see who was going by in the next few hours, and then run down to the hole in the fence, climb through to wait by the freeway, and hop in a rig with the next trucker heading south. She'd be in the LA sprawl by dawn, and from there she'd wander the construction sites and net cafes and hidden little parking spots until she found the stupid white utility van he called home.
If You Can't Live Without Me, Why Aren't You Dead Yet?
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Checker had a huge army backpack thrown on the ground a few feet away, several old car batteries and a tangle of electronics parts scattered all over. Sheila recognized some of the old radar dish parts they'd stolen.
"What the hell are you making now?"
"Something I hope we never have to use."
"Sounds like a real waste of time then."
"Not if we ever have to use it."
"Men are so stupid. Why not build something you'll use all the time, and enjoy?"
"I don't have the parts to build you a mechanical bull or whatever the hell you would want."
"Fuck off!"
"Go away."
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Donna and Clipper were in Tokyo. They were between jobs. Donna and Clipper were strange people, mercenaries in fact. Donna was a cheerful black woman in her late twenties, lean and graceful, with the body of a dancer, very rare in one who worked so long on computers as herself. It was hard to tell how old Clipper was. Clipper was a cyborg, a former military man. It was rare even in this day and age to meet someone who was as obviously inhuman as him. Many wanted to look inhuman, of course, but they usually did it with cosmetic surgery or genetic engineering to look beautiful, or scary, or different. But they did it biologically. They didn't look human, but they looked alive. Clipper was mostly metal, plastic, and a variety of compounds that looked like nothing nature ever made. He had been so often and repeatedly hurt in his many years as a warrior of some sort that very little of him was original parts. He didn't mind. He thought it made him a better soldier, since every ruined piece of himself was replaced by a stronger and more versatile artificial version.
Once a preacher had told Clipper that he was losing his own soul when he got those machine parts. Clipper asked him what kind of soul a mercenary had, and was it worth keeping? The preacher didn't have an answer to that.
Clipper was still glad of one thing, though, and that was that his brain was still all natural. Not like Donna's. Donna had had something put in her brain, they called it INSTINCT, an intraneural stimulus network control toggle. She could put little plastic chips with crystals in them in a socket in the back of her head, and she'd know how to do things she couldn't do before. She was always lugging around this briefcase full of the chips, hundreds of them. He'd seen her fly a plane, speak Arabic, rebuild an internal combustion engine, or know her way around a city she'd never been to like she'd lived there her whole life. All she had to do was put the right chip in her head and let INSTINCT take over. She was always buying those damn chips. Cost a fortune, too. Other people had INSTINCT, too, those who could afford it and didn't mind having their personality overridden by a chunk of laser-carved minerals and EM residues. But Donna was special. She never showed any sign of wash-out, what they called it when you started acting like a robot while the INSTINCT was going. She was always Donna. Clipper wondered how she did it, he'd never heard of anyone else immune to it. She was just always Donna.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
He slept through it. Whatever it was.
The Rapture? Mass alien abduction? Everyone all deciding to move to the other side of the world?
He wandered through the empty world alone. There was no destruction, so signs of violence…
There was only one other man left. He said the Technological Singularity came and everyone was gone to a higher state now. They had no use for Earth anymore, or their old selves, any more than an adult has any use for a crib and a plastic rattle.
Robert asked the man why he'd been left in his hospital bed, in the dreamless dark. If the Singularity came, why didn't they heal him, fix him, wake him up? Why did they leave him behind? The other man said he didn't know, but said maybe they did heal him, later. Maybe that was what woke him up finally. But he couldn't say why they would have waited, and left him behind.
Robert asked the man why he stayed behind, if he was awake. The man said he was a Bodhisattva, delaying his own Enlightenment to point out the way for others.
Robert decided the man was probably mad. But he was the only company left on Earth, as far as Robert could tell.
They began travelling. The man said there might be others out there, a very few. He said that with the advent of the Singularity any form of madness could be cured. The Enlightenment was shared with all, and all arose to wherever they went. But he had heard rumors, in the last days of the exodus, that there had been a rare few that had been shown Enlightenment, and refused. Supposedly they were of sound mind, and everyone was of sound body by then (Robert chose not to argue that last point) and yet they turned down something as close to heaven as science could offer. They chose to stay primitive, and limited, and apart, and alone. Were they pathetic, or were they noble? Were they the truest of what it means to be human, or were they rejecting the path humanity had walked since the beginning? Were they arrogant? Or were they meek?
Either way, they had inherited the Earth.
Robert wanted to seek them out. The Bodhisattva said that that was as wise a course of action as any.
Robert was not certain the Bodhisattva was human.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Checker had a huge army backpack thrown on the ground a few feet away, several old car batteries and a tangle of electronics parts scattered all over. Sheila recognized some of the old radar dish parts they'd stolen.
"What the hell are you making now?"
"Something I hope we never have to use."
"Sounds like a real waste of time then."
"Not if we ever have to use it."
"Men are so stupid. Why not build something you'll use all the time, and enjoy?"
"I don't have the parts to build you a mechanical bull or whatever the hell you would want."
"Fuck off!"
"Go away."
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Donna and Clipper were in Tokyo. They were between jobs. Donna and Clipper were strange people, mercenaries in fact. Donna was a cheerful black woman in her late twenties, lean and graceful, with the body of a dancer, very rare in one who worked so long on computers as herself. It was hard to tell how old Clipper was. Clipper was a cyborg, a former military man. It was rare even in this day and age to meet someone who was as obviously inhuman as him. Many wanted to look inhuman, of course, but they usually did it with cosmetic surgery or genetic engineering to look beautiful, or scary, or different. But they did it biologically. They didn't look human, but they looked alive. Clipper was mostly metal, plastic, and a variety of compounds that looked like nothing nature ever made. He had been so often and repeatedly hurt in his many years as a warrior of some sort that very little of him was original parts. He didn't mind. He thought it made him a better soldier, since every ruined piece of himself was replaced by a stronger and more versatile artificial version.
Once a preacher had told Clipper that he was losing his own soul when he got those machine parts. Clipper asked him what kind of soul a mercenary had, and was it worth keeping? The preacher didn't have an answer to that.
Clipper was still glad of one thing, though, and that was that his brain was still all natural. Not like Donna's. Donna had had something put in her brain, they called it INSTINCT, an intraneural stimulus network control toggle. She could put little plastic chips with crystals in them in a socket in the back of her head, and she'd know how to do things she couldn't do before. She was always lugging around this briefcase full of the chips, hundreds of them. He'd seen her fly a plane, speak Arabic, rebuild an internal combustion engine, or know her way around a city she'd never been to like she'd lived there her whole life. All she had to do was put the right chip in her head and let INSTINCT take over. She was always buying those damn chips. Cost a fortune, too. Other people had INSTINCT, too, those who could afford it and didn't mind having their personality overridden by a chunk of laser-carved minerals and EM residues. But Donna was special. She never showed any sign of wash-out, what they called it when you started acting like a robot while the INSTINCT was going. She was always Donna. Clipper wondered how she did it, he'd never heard of anyone else immune to it. She was just always Donna.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
He slept through it. Whatever it was.
The Rapture? Mass alien abduction? Everyone all deciding to move to the other side of the world?
He wandered through the empty world alone. There was no destruction, so signs of violence…
There was only one other man left. He said the Technological Singularity came and everyone was gone to a higher state now. They had no use for Earth anymore, or their old selves, any more than an adult has any use for a crib and a plastic rattle.
Robert asked the man why he'd been left in his hospital bed, in the dreamless dark. If the Singularity came, why didn't they heal him, fix him, wake him up? Why did they leave him behind? The other man said he didn't know, but said maybe they did heal him, later. Maybe that was what woke him up finally. But he couldn't say why they would have waited, and left him behind.
Robert asked the man why he stayed behind, if he was awake. The man said he was a Bodhisattva, delaying his own Enlightenment to point out the way for others.
Robert decided the man was probably mad. But he was the only company left on Earth, as far as Robert could tell.
They began travelling. The man said there might be others out there, a very few. He said that with the advent of the Singularity any form of madness could be cured. The Enlightenment was shared with all, and all arose to wherever they went. But he had heard rumors, in the last days of the exodus, that there had been a rare few that had been shown Enlightenment, and refused. Supposedly they were of sound mind, and everyone was of sound body by then (Robert chose not to argue that last point) and yet they turned down something as close to heaven as science could offer. They chose to stay primitive, and limited, and apart, and alone. Were they pathetic, or were they noble? Were they the truest of what it means to be human, or were they rejecting the path humanity had walked since the beginning? Were they arrogant? Or were they meek?
Either way, they had inherited the Earth.
Robert wanted to seek them out. The Bodhisattva said that that was as wise a course of action as any.
Robert was not certain the Bodhisattva was human.
"We're Obviously Not Immune"
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
"You're a what?"
"I'm an anarchist. I mean, I thought you were too. You're not?"
"Um, no. I'm kinda socialist or something. Don't you think anarchy is just a system where the strong screw the weak?"
"It would seem like it at first glance. But have you given some deep thought to it?"
"Not really."
"I have. We live in a world where the so-called horrors of anarchy already have free reign. Those in positions of power or wealth already victimize the weak and poor. The rich and powerful can already ignore the rules. The only difference is that in a natural anarchist state the playing field is level. There are no rules forced on anyone, so everyone is given a fair chance to succeed or fail by their own hard work, skills and intelligence."
"Wouldn't people just start killing each other and stealing shit instead of working?"
"That's exactly what the establishment wants you to think. That's what they tell you to believe. But this is real life. There will always be good and bad people, and good people won't suddenly turn bad just because you lift the threat of blue-suited fascists kicking in the door and hauling them away for not obeying some convoluted legal system no human could ever fully understand. I think just the opposite would happen. If we don't try to push people into living the way others say they should live, they won't feel the need to push back. Live and let live isn't a radical idea. The establishment wants you to fear and hate any other way of life. The people who run the system now are the same ones getting fat from the labor of others and getting away with anything they want. They won't let anyone change it, and they will demonize and vilify any rebellious people or ideas. They write the history books and decide what goes on the news."
"You've got a lot of solid points, I admit…"
"That's why fair and even systems like anarchy and communism are portrayed as evil and oppressive, rife with terror squads and gulags. But America is the nation with the most incarcerated populace in the world. Talk about the pot calling the kettle black! They're the ones who arrest people for harmless activities like smoking marijuana or spray-painting a wall. Why? Because it gives them an excuse to lock up people that might give them trouble. Those who might 'vote incorrectly' or who aren't white enough! They brand them terrorists and monsters! But who are the real monsters? The people who rule a system that-"
Sheila coughed semi-politely. "Hey, uh, Andy, you might want to watch out there. You're getting some fanatic on your shirt."
Andrew forced himself to slow down, take a few deep breaths. He could let himself get out of hand too easily. He couldn't afford to alienate his new friends here. They seemed to be his best hope ever in scoring some decisive victories for the cause. They didn't believe yet, but had similar ideas, and they'd come around in time. And best of all, they seemed to be real activists like him, not just coffee-shop intellectuals like Perry and Newton and Kelly. Sitting around all lifetime long, talking a great game about rebellion but too lazy and afraid to get off their asses because they can't get enough time off of work to pull down the system. Andrew had to play it cool here and now. "Yeah, sorry chica. I just get so worked up over the inequality in the world. I take my cause completely seriously."
Checker shifted nervously in his seat. "Do you ever think…naw, never mind."
Andrew looked at him. "Do I think what?"
"Do you ever think maybe there's just one guy running the establishment? One person behind it all, controlling each major world event, and trends, and industry, and we just don't know about him?"
Andrew was silent for a moment. This was unexpected to say the least. "Hmm. Well, there are certainly many powerful figures behind the scenes, but it would be impossible for one man to run several diverse and incredibly complex operations at once. No, I think the people we think are in charge actually are in charge, and are to blame as a result. It would be too dangerous to hide under the radar while letting someone else sit on the throne. If the guy everyone thinks is in charge decides he doesn't want to listen to you anymore, everyone's going to follow him, not you. They don't know you, they don't fear you, they won't obey you. Running things from behind the scenes is too risky."
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Becky the Third's lip curled in a way that could have been a smile or a sneer. "Nice bracelet, psycho."
"Thanks! It's a bike chain, I just curled it up and attached the ends with a U-bolt. I wanted to use a chainsaw chain but it kept cutting my arm and ribs when I'd run or get into fights."
"I was being sarcastic."
"Uh." Sheila was beginning to think she'd never have any girlfriends.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Denise laughed and said that creating something out of nothing was the closest man could ever come to God. She always had a way of making art seem more important than you thought it was. Maybe she was even right. Then she said she was writing a book about writer's block, and you begin to get the feeling she might be laughing at you, inside her pretty little exotic head.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
"You're a what?"
"I'm an anarchist. I mean, I thought you were too. You're not?"
"Um, no. I'm kinda socialist or something. Don't you think anarchy is just a system where the strong screw the weak?"
"It would seem like it at first glance. But have you given some deep thought to it?"
"Not really."
"I have. We live in a world where the so-called horrors of anarchy already have free reign. Those in positions of power or wealth already victimize the weak and poor. The rich and powerful can already ignore the rules. The only difference is that in a natural anarchist state the playing field is level. There are no rules forced on anyone, so everyone is given a fair chance to succeed or fail by their own hard work, skills and intelligence."
"Wouldn't people just start killing each other and stealing shit instead of working?"
"That's exactly what the establishment wants you to think. That's what they tell you to believe. But this is real life. There will always be good and bad people, and good people won't suddenly turn bad just because you lift the threat of blue-suited fascists kicking in the door and hauling them away for not obeying some convoluted legal system no human could ever fully understand. I think just the opposite would happen. If we don't try to push people into living the way others say they should live, they won't feel the need to push back. Live and let live isn't a radical idea. The establishment wants you to fear and hate any other way of life. The people who run the system now are the same ones getting fat from the labor of others and getting away with anything they want. They won't let anyone change it, and they will demonize and vilify any rebellious people or ideas. They write the history books and decide what goes on the news."
"You've got a lot of solid points, I admit…"
"That's why fair and even systems like anarchy and communism are portrayed as evil and oppressive, rife with terror squads and gulags. But America is the nation with the most incarcerated populace in the world. Talk about the pot calling the kettle black! They're the ones who arrest people for harmless activities like smoking marijuana or spray-painting a wall. Why? Because it gives them an excuse to lock up people that might give them trouble. Those who might 'vote incorrectly' or who aren't white enough! They brand them terrorists and monsters! But who are the real monsters? The people who rule a system that-"
Sheila coughed semi-politely. "Hey, uh, Andy, you might want to watch out there. You're getting some fanatic on your shirt."
Andrew forced himself to slow down, take a few deep breaths. He could let himself get out of hand too easily. He couldn't afford to alienate his new friends here. They seemed to be his best hope ever in scoring some decisive victories for the cause. They didn't believe yet, but had similar ideas, and they'd come around in time. And best of all, they seemed to be real activists like him, not just coffee-shop intellectuals like Perry and Newton and Kelly. Sitting around all lifetime long, talking a great game about rebellion but too lazy and afraid to get off their asses because they can't get enough time off of work to pull down the system. Andrew had to play it cool here and now. "Yeah, sorry chica. I just get so worked up over the inequality in the world. I take my cause completely seriously."
Checker shifted nervously in his seat. "Do you ever think…naw, never mind."
Andrew looked at him. "Do I think what?"
"Do you ever think maybe there's just one guy running the establishment? One person behind it all, controlling each major world event, and trends, and industry, and we just don't know about him?"
Andrew was silent for a moment. This was unexpected to say the least. "Hmm. Well, there are certainly many powerful figures behind the scenes, but it would be impossible for one man to run several diverse and incredibly complex operations at once. No, I think the people we think are in charge actually are in charge, and are to blame as a result. It would be too dangerous to hide under the radar while letting someone else sit on the throne. If the guy everyone thinks is in charge decides he doesn't want to listen to you anymore, everyone's going to follow him, not you. They don't know you, they don't fear you, they won't obey you. Running things from behind the scenes is too risky."
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Becky the Third's lip curled in a way that could have been a smile or a sneer. "Nice bracelet, psycho."
"Thanks! It's a bike chain, I just curled it up and attached the ends with a U-bolt. I wanted to use a chainsaw chain but it kept cutting my arm and ribs when I'd run or get into fights."
"I was being sarcastic."
"Uh." Sheila was beginning to think she'd never have any girlfriends.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Denise laughed and said that creating something out of nothing was the closest man could ever come to God. She always had a way of making art seem more important than you thought it was. Maybe she was even right. Then she said she was writing a book about writer's block, and you begin to get the feeling she might be laughing at you, inside her pretty little exotic head.
Judas Vs. Lando
That goddamned hippy got ahold of the magic lamp and it was all over in an instant. All the assholes and warmongers and self-centered pricks in the universe couldn't have done as much damage as he did with five fucking words.
The Genie could do anything. Damn near anyway, so close to God in power it didn't matter to humans. And they should have known that, but miracles of any provenance had become so few and so covered-up that nobody believed them any more. So nobody thought about that old fucking fortune cookie anymore. "Be careful what you wish for. You might get it." Very wise, very Chinese.
But that asshole couldn't help himself. Had to go around swinging his dick and thinking he knew better than the fucking architect of all creation. And he said that same shit so may other stupid fucks thought they'd say, but nobody had ever actually been stupid enough to say to a genie before…
"I wish for world peace."
Are you fucking kidding me?
For real?
Pretend that you were enslaved for a thousand years by ants. And you had to do whatever some ant wished for that held the magic grain of sand. A thousand years of stomping on rival anthills, only to have them eventually capture the magic sand and have you stomp on the other anthill. You spend a thousand years digging tiny tunnels or squashing ants of a different color, or the same color, or whatever. Do you have any fucking idea how much you would hate ants? And now, finally, you're turned loose?
That son of a bitch wished for world peace. And that fucking thing from somewhere else where the rules don't apply was freed. Freed to turn this whole world into a goddamned slaughterhouse.
The genie went on a laughing killing spree, killing every human being it could. The Mars colony was finally self-sufficient two months before what they all called "The Moment of Screams." Good thing, too. Good thing that fuck hadn't said "Galactic" or "Universal" peace.
That thing made planet Earth into a cemetery. It massacred every living human on the planet in less than nine minutes. They were ants to it.
There was the only one kind of world peace that the human race could ever offer, and the thing from other universes took advantage of it, revenge for every pile of gold, for every prettiest face, for every biggest kingdom ever wished for, and it stomped every mother-fucking ant-hill flat. It shredded people. It liquefied people. It exploded people. It mutilated people. Everyone. ALL the people. In under nine minutes. No Earthling survived.
They rest of the worlds would always wonder what happened to Earth. They didn't believe in superstition. But it would be only a matter of centuries until an Ancient Mythology major somehow found an ancient lamp that wanted to be found, and wished for universal peace.
And then, there would be peace.
Motherfuckers.
If you think that thing we call The Lord wanted Universal Peace, why the hell would it have created us?
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Stevepocalypse was a twisted super-villain who committed a thousand crimes, but whose main goal was the death of everyone named Steve. Strangely enough, Stevepocalypse was completely unaffiliated with Tomageddon.
His arch-foe, the heroic Captain Brutal, always hoped that Stevepocalypse would never discover that his secret alter-ego was really mild-mannered bartender Steve Stevens.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Sharin can tell who you are with little more than a glance.
She should be working for the FBI. She would be the greatest profiler that ever lived. Other profilers could tell the feds that the psycho was a white male in his late thirties, early forties, a loner, probably tortured animals as a kid. No shit, Sherlock, that's every serial killer. Sharin could have told them what neighborhood he lived in, what he did for a living, what magazines he would subscribe to and hobbies he would take up just to appear normal to others. She could have saved many lives with her ability, her gift.
But they would have called it a gift. She called it the source of all her misery. Sharin hated them all. All the people. Because they were all the same. And you may think you're different. You're not. Or you may think that you know how she feels. You don't.
Because she could read volumes from the most innocuous statements, gestures, glances. From the jacket he wore, she knew the car salesman wanted to be seen as powerful, but he felt weak. From the way the smiling waitress batted her eyes, she knew she had 2-4 kids, different fathers, and hated her customer passionately, but on a vague, impersonal level. The way the college girl walked said that she was ashamed of something in her past, the last year or so, but not less than a month ago.
Sharin saw and heard it all, and she'd never been wrong yet. She got to know people in moments. She knew someone's habits, favorites, sense of humor, in just minutes. If she spent a couple hours with someone, she could guess their secrets, their sex fetishes, their greatest fears. If she spent days in someone's presence, she would know them better than they knew themselves. She would know how they would react to any situation, every remark or joke they were likely to make, all their lies and justifications, both to others and to themselves.
Sharin couldn't have relationships. She couldn't be fooled by even the most well-intentioned lie, and she couldn't stand the same old shit from the same old people when she couldn't even stand the same old shit from brand new people. She hadn't spoken to her family in years. She moved a lot. She came off as cold and rude, because…well, because she was cold and rude. People were just little variations on the same cookie-cutter pattern, all the same to her, so she had a hard time caring about them at all. If someone died, she felt nothing, because to her there were hundreds more people just like that one. So imagine how little she could give a shit if you had a shitty day at work, or your significant other dumped you, or even if you won the lottery or ran over a child.
Celebrities were different. For some reason, she couldn't read them right. It was all scrambled, maybe because everyone else was trying to know them and making a big deal about every little detail, and the celebrities knew it, and were in turn hyper-conscious of the effect of every little thing they said, or did, or wore. It threw her off, she couldn't tell what was the real person, and what was who they thought they were, or who their publicist said they should try to be, or what was just an endorsement deal.
As a result, she was mystified by celebrities, and to her they became real. She could have feelings for them, and care about them. This didn't make her any dumber, though, and she detested how vapid and brainless many of the most famous celebs were, even as their greater fame made them harder to read and realer to her. She finally found people she could care about and they wound up being people so shallow and stupid she really shouldn't care about them, especially with everyone else already doing it. She hated herself for loving them, like the old Joan Jett song, only more pathetic. She didn't want to be pathetic.
But she also didn't want to be lonely.
She wound up being both…
She moved to LA, just to have a better chance of meeting celebrities, just to feel closer to them.
The only other people she sometimes couldn't read like books were the insane. And only a few of them. OCD? Boring. Agoraphobic? Seen it. Schizophrenia? Now we're talking. When people were wired wrong enough, she couldn't begin to guess what their words meant, what they were thinking, why they looked at someone a certain way. That was how she fell in love with Manny, a mentally ill man…he was one of the only people she ever met that she could really feel something for. And it wasn't his illness that drove them apart.
She cheated on him, and he caught her.
The other man, obviously, meant nothing to her. Just a great body, a nice lay. She didn't give a shit about him, but she thought Manny would never know. And she had needs, she justified to herself. Manny was on medication for his condition that had numerous side effects. One was that his libido was almost non-existent, and when his mind was in the mood, his body wouldn't always respond. So she sought her pleasures elsewhere, thinking that what Manny didn't know wouldn't hurt him. It was purely physical.
But like anyone else, she got lazy, she got sloppy, and she left clues. Manny wasn't stupid. He found proof. There was a confrontation. He told her he never wanted to see her again. She was heartbroken. (He was too, if it matters.)
So she moved to LA. Celebrities didn't care if you watched other celebrities. Celebrities didn't care about you at all.
Much safer for all involved.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Sheila grabbed her beer bottle and set the little gray pills on the bar. She crushed them with the bottom of her beer and swept the powdered pills into her hand. She poured the powder into her beer and licked the last of it off her hand. Some trashy skank next to her was yelling something in her ear about Sheila hitting on her boyfriend. How long had she been there? Had Sheila hit on her boy? She glanced at his face, shoulders, arms, decided probably she did, decided it didn't really matter anyway, and shut up the yapping skank with a hard backfist into the side of the jaw, sending her to the floor in a heap. The bartender started yelling to take that shit outside, so Sheila grabbed skank's hair and dragged her skinny ass right out the door and into the parking lot. Skank was crying and swearing and clawing at the hand holding her by the hair. Sheila smashed her in the face twice with her knee and kicked her over in the gravel. She chugged her beer while the other girl tried to crawl away, moaning weirdly. Sheila figured she'd broken the bitch's nose. She smashed the bottom half of her bottle off on a parked car.
Now, that's not as easy to do as the movies make it look, usually you just get a handful of broken glass. It takes a lot of practice to do it right.
Sheila was holding the jagged bottle and standing on the skank's wrist, wondering how far she was going to take this, when a white utility van came skidding to a stop in the gravel and suddenly Checker was yelling at her to jump in and she was running, fight, skank, bottle forgotten, and they were off, to give the people who owned the world a kick in the balls.
That goddamned hippy got ahold of the magic lamp and it was all over in an instant. All the assholes and warmongers and self-centered pricks in the universe couldn't have done as much damage as he did with five fucking words.
The Genie could do anything. Damn near anyway, so close to God in power it didn't matter to humans. And they should have known that, but miracles of any provenance had become so few and so covered-up that nobody believed them any more. So nobody thought about that old fucking fortune cookie anymore. "Be careful what you wish for. You might get it." Very wise, very Chinese.
But that asshole couldn't help himself. Had to go around swinging his dick and thinking he knew better than the fucking architect of all creation. And he said that same shit so may other stupid fucks thought they'd say, but nobody had ever actually been stupid enough to say to a genie before…
"I wish for world peace."
Are you fucking kidding me?
For real?
Pretend that you were enslaved for a thousand years by ants. And you had to do whatever some ant wished for that held the magic grain of sand. A thousand years of stomping on rival anthills, only to have them eventually capture the magic sand and have you stomp on the other anthill. You spend a thousand years digging tiny tunnels or squashing ants of a different color, or the same color, or whatever. Do you have any fucking idea how much you would hate ants? And now, finally, you're turned loose?
That son of a bitch wished for world peace. And that fucking thing from somewhere else where the rules don't apply was freed. Freed to turn this whole world into a goddamned slaughterhouse.
The genie went on a laughing killing spree, killing every human being it could. The Mars colony was finally self-sufficient two months before what they all called "The Moment of Screams." Good thing, too. Good thing that fuck hadn't said "Galactic" or "Universal" peace.
That thing made planet Earth into a cemetery. It massacred every living human on the planet in less than nine minutes. They were ants to it.
There was the only one kind of world peace that the human race could ever offer, and the thing from other universes took advantage of it, revenge for every pile of gold, for every prettiest face, for every biggest kingdom ever wished for, and it stomped every mother-fucking ant-hill flat. It shredded people. It liquefied people. It exploded people. It mutilated people. Everyone. ALL the people. In under nine minutes. No Earthling survived.
They rest of the worlds would always wonder what happened to Earth. They didn't believe in superstition. But it would be only a matter of centuries until an Ancient Mythology major somehow found an ancient lamp that wanted to be found, and wished for universal peace.
And then, there would be peace.
Motherfuckers.
If you think that thing we call The Lord wanted Universal Peace, why the hell would it have created us?
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Stevepocalypse was a twisted super-villain who committed a thousand crimes, but whose main goal was the death of everyone named Steve. Strangely enough, Stevepocalypse was completely unaffiliated with Tomageddon.
His arch-foe, the heroic Captain Brutal, always hoped that Stevepocalypse would never discover that his secret alter-ego was really mild-mannered bartender Steve Stevens.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Sharin can tell who you are with little more than a glance.
She should be working for the FBI. She would be the greatest profiler that ever lived. Other profilers could tell the feds that the psycho was a white male in his late thirties, early forties, a loner, probably tortured animals as a kid. No shit, Sherlock, that's every serial killer. Sharin could have told them what neighborhood he lived in, what he did for a living, what magazines he would subscribe to and hobbies he would take up just to appear normal to others. She could have saved many lives with her ability, her gift.
But they would have called it a gift. She called it the source of all her misery. Sharin hated them all. All the people. Because they were all the same. And you may think you're different. You're not. Or you may think that you know how she feels. You don't.
Because she could read volumes from the most innocuous statements, gestures, glances. From the jacket he wore, she knew the car salesman wanted to be seen as powerful, but he felt weak. From the way the smiling waitress batted her eyes, she knew she had 2-4 kids, different fathers, and hated her customer passionately, but on a vague, impersonal level. The way the college girl walked said that she was ashamed of something in her past, the last year or so, but not less than a month ago.
Sharin saw and heard it all, and she'd never been wrong yet. She got to know people in moments. She knew someone's habits, favorites, sense of humor, in just minutes. If she spent a couple hours with someone, she could guess their secrets, their sex fetishes, their greatest fears. If she spent days in someone's presence, she would know them better than they knew themselves. She would know how they would react to any situation, every remark or joke they were likely to make, all their lies and justifications, both to others and to themselves.
Sharin couldn't have relationships. She couldn't be fooled by even the most well-intentioned lie, and she couldn't stand the same old shit from the same old people when she couldn't even stand the same old shit from brand new people. She hadn't spoken to her family in years. She moved a lot. She came off as cold and rude, because…well, because she was cold and rude. People were just little variations on the same cookie-cutter pattern, all the same to her, so she had a hard time caring about them at all. If someone died, she felt nothing, because to her there were hundreds more people just like that one. So imagine how little she could give a shit if you had a shitty day at work, or your significant other dumped you, or even if you won the lottery or ran over a child.
Celebrities were different. For some reason, she couldn't read them right. It was all scrambled, maybe because everyone else was trying to know them and making a big deal about every little detail, and the celebrities knew it, and were in turn hyper-conscious of the effect of every little thing they said, or did, or wore. It threw her off, she couldn't tell what was the real person, and what was who they thought they were, or who their publicist said they should try to be, or what was just an endorsement deal.
As a result, she was mystified by celebrities, and to her they became real. She could have feelings for them, and care about them. This didn't make her any dumber, though, and she detested how vapid and brainless many of the most famous celebs were, even as their greater fame made them harder to read and realer to her. She finally found people she could care about and they wound up being people so shallow and stupid she really shouldn't care about them, especially with everyone else already doing it. She hated herself for loving them, like the old Joan Jett song, only more pathetic. She didn't want to be pathetic.
But she also didn't want to be lonely.
She wound up being both…
She moved to LA, just to have a better chance of meeting celebrities, just to feel closer to them.
The only other people she sometimes couldn't read like books were the insane. And only a few of them. OCD? Boring. Agoraphobic? Seen it. Schizophrenia? Now we're talking. When people were wired wrong enough, she couldn't begin to guess what their words meant, what they were thinking, why they looked at someone a certain way. That was how she fell in love with Manny, a mentally ill man…he was one of the only people she ever met that she could really feel something for. And it wasn't his illness that drove them apart.
She cheated on him, and he caught her.
The other man, obviously, meant nothing to her. Just a great body, a nice lay. She didn't give a shit about him, but she thought Manny would never know. And she had needs, she justified to herself. Manny was on medication for his condition that had numerous side effects. One was that his libido was almost non-existent, and when his mind was in the mood, his body wouldn't always respond. So she sought her pleasures elsewhere, thinking that what Manny didn't know wouldn't hurt him. It was purely physical.
But like anyone else, she got lazy, she got sloppy, and she left clues. Manny wasn't stupid. He found proof. There was a confrontation. He told her he never wanted to see her again. She was heartbroken. (He was too, if it matters.)
So she moved to LA. Celebrities didn't care if you watched other celebrities. Celebrities didn't care about you at all.
Much safer for all involved.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Sheila grabbed her beer bottle and set the little gray pills on the bar. She crushed them with the bottom of her beer and swept the powdered pills into her hand. She poured the powder into her beer and licked the last of it off her hand. Some trashy skank next to her was yelling something in her ear about Sheila hitting on her boyfriend. How long had she been there? Had Sheila hit on her boy? She glanced at his face, shoulders, arms, decided probably she did, decided it didn't really matter anyway, and shut up the yapping skank with a hard backfist into the side of the jaw, sending her to the floor in a heap. The bartender started yelling to take that shit outside, so Sheila grabbed skank's hair and dragged her skinny ass right out the door and into the parking lot. Skank was crying and swearing and clawing at the hand holding her by the hair. Sheila smashed her in the face twice with her knee and kicked her over in the gravel. She chugged her beer while the other girl tried to crawl away, moaning weirdly. Sheila figured she'd broken the bitch's nose. She smashed the bottom half of her bottle off on a parked car.
Now, that's not as easy to do as the movies make it look, usually you just get a handful of broken glass. It takes a lot of practice to do it right.
Sheila was holding the jagged bottle and standing on the skank's wrist, wondering how far she was going to take this, when a white utility van came skidding to a stop in the gravel and suddenly Checker was yelling at her to jump in and she was running, fight, skank, bottle forgotten, and they were off, to give the people who owned the world a kick in the balls.
Back in Action
Sheila knew she was trash. She'd always been aware of it in a subconscious, abstract sort of way, the way you know your dog won't tear your throat out in your sleep but have never even thought about it.
She always knew she was trash, but one day she actually realized it, actually thought about it. It was 7:13 in the morning and she was half drunk, at the bar at the end of the trailer park where she lived. Some dirty young guy who'd just got off the night shift and had been pounding shots ever since was leaning way too close, hitting on her with all the subtlety of an A-bomb and a curious sort of upbeat desperation. He wanted it bad and expected to be rejected, but he didn't let that get him down like other guys.
It was then, as she was deciding whether to fuck this guy or just kick his face in, and there, sitting in a shitty bar on the ass end of autumn watching the sun come up over the wastewater treatment plant, that it really occurred to Sheila Jensen that she was trash.
But I wouldn't say it bothered her.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Chanteuse Darkken was a teenage rock star. She had a life most girls her age would have murdered their own grandmothers for.
That meant more than "A life they'd kill their own mothers for", because most girls her age spent half their time wishing their mothers were dead anyway. Grandmothers were a different story, though.
Chant was slim, beautiful, rich, famous, and above all, wildly popular. Her goth-rock band was topping the charts with almost impossible regularity, especially for such a narrow genre. Critics compared her to a younger Amy Lee or Christina Ricci in style and looks. But then, who else would the mainstream media compare any attractive girl who wore black to? Goth by default. In terms of popularity, they began to compare her to a younger Madonna. Her band Anubis hit number one on the Billboard charts six times already and had two platinum records, with their third release closing in fast. Paparazzi tried their best to follow not just Chant but her bandmates everywhere. Rolling Stone had put her on the cover twice, once with the rest of the band and once alone. They sold out every show, no matter how large the venue. Not a girl in America hadn't dreamt of being her for a day, even if they cattily spread all the worst rumors about her, making their jealousy obvious to everyone but themselves. Nearly every boy (and man) in America had at least given a passing thought or a long lingering sweaty midnight fantasy to wondering what she looked like under those flowing black dresses and robes, and what that famous voice sounded like moaning in passion. Chant had more money than she could possibly imagine what to do with, so she bought herself some fine tailored clothes, and built herself a fine stone mansion, and thereafter spent shockingly little.
She had a life every teenage girl wanted. Except her.
Chant was different than all the other girls. She was different than all the other people, period. Her nihilistic little head was wired by a whole other schematic than the rest of the human race, and being a rich famous beloved rock star had never ever been a dream of hers.
Or perhaps the grass is always greener on the other side of the fence and we all want what we can't have.
It hadn't been a coincidence, or luck. Being a star wasn't her dream, it had been her mother Evelyn's. Her mother had been a singer as well. Evelyn had a lovely voice and striking good looks, just as the daughter did. In fact, her voice was still beautiful and time had only slightly dimmed her beauty. The Darkken women aged well. But for whatever reason, she had lacked something, maybe that indefinable star-power that agents and managers like to rave about to make sure they sound like they know something. Or maybe it was just fate, or the times, or the band, but Chant's mother had been a dismal failure. Evelyn had played a few clubs and bars and had a couple shows at a local venue, then been forced to call it quits before she killed herself out of sorrow. Her husband had thought the stage and the spotlight were killing her. No. It was all those empty seats and the silence at the end of the show that was killing her. He thought she might kill herself, afterward. So did Evelyn. But not long after she gave up she became pregnant, and when her baby was born she found she had something else to live for. It's a cliché because it's true. And when she saw the way people's faces lit up when they looked at her little girl, she had a reason to live and a plan.
Evelyn put Chant into singing lessons when she was four. By age twelve teachers were telling her mother there was nothing more they could teach the girl about singing. A few seemed genuinely intimidated by her. Her mother began auditioning musicians for her band when Chant was fourteen, and still learning songwriting, the flute, and guitar. She'd learned piano, bass, violin, and drums long ago. Evelyn thought her songs would be best if she knew every aspect of the musical process. She wasn't content to let her daughter sing songs others had written, not on the real stage. Not even if the songs were written especially for Chant. As soon as her mother had put a band around her, they had begun touring. Marcus Feldman, one of the people her mother had worked with back in the day, had done well. He was the owner of a small string of clubs in the southwest US, and most featured live music. Some were pretty big. So Evelyn had a couple strings to pull, and soon Anubis had a gig. Boom. Anubis had a bigger gig. Boom. Anubis had a contract. Boom. Anubis had a number one single, legions of fans, and money by the truckload.
Many people might think that Evelyn would wind up being jealous and resentful of Chant's success where she herself failed, even though she herself pushed Chant into that life. Isn't that human nature? To always want what we can't have, and to hate those who have it, no matter who or why?
But she didn't. Sorry, cynics. She not only didn't hate her daughter, or feel jealous, she was ecstatic at her daughter's success. It had nothing to do with the money, and everything to do with being close to the music again. She barely even noticed the family's greatly increased wealth. She just loved feeling the energy again. Even from offstage, just behind the curtain or set or from down in the crowd. To see all those faces, to hear all those voices. To Evelyn, it was better than sex. It was worth it all. It was worth everything.
She didn't take her daughter's money. She took something else. She didn't hate her daughter for having the success that she had always wanted. She loved her all the more for giving her that high, that magic, that she could never get for herself.
And what did Chant think about all this? Evelyn didn't know. It never even crossed her mind.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Jameson Dane had OCD. That's what everyone called it nowadays. What did it say about America that everyone knew the slang for mental disorders, not just the professionals? And that people talked about them so much they had to abbreviate them. But hell, he thought, just ask somebody from Mexico or Canada or Europe. They could tell you that America was a nation of lunatics.
Jameson had to write. He liked the spray paint best, but some occasions called for different tools. He always knew what he had to write, and where. Even if it didn't make any sense, even if he'd never been to the place before. He didn't have any choice. But at least he could decide what he wrote it with. Whenever he could, he got the cans out. But here, in the middle of a bus station, he didn't have time. Quality or nothing with the spray, and there were too many people here. They were gonna see him as it was, he'd just have to give them his mean face and hope they minded their own.
At least it was in English this time. He always got a little panic attack when the writing wasn't in English or Spanish. OK, a big panic attack. It kind of terrified him, the symbols his hands scribbled out, with no rhyme or reason or thought on his own. Sometimes in languages he didn't know. Saying things he didn't understand, even when he could read them.
And worst of all. The times he could read them. And could understand them.
THERE IS HOPE FOR HER
HE IS COMING
THE BEGINNING IS NOW
And one time:
STAY IN THE CITY THE PLANE IS GOING TO CRASH
Jameson tossed and turned for two days afterwards. He'd written that on a cigarette machine in an extra-grimy auto repair shop. He'd watched the news for two weeks afterwards. No plane crashes in LA. He gradually forgot about it. Then a plane crashed in Wyoming, and he started wondering again.
One time he'd had to spell out GO HOME in the middle of the desert with stones. Another time he wrote PAGAN on a mirror with crayons…in somebody else's home. He'd asked to use the bathroom, they let him in, and he vandalized their mirror and ran.
Why did he have to do this? What did it mean? What was the point? What made him do this?
He didn't have any…weird traumas in his past. He wasn't orphaned, or molested as a child, or beaten by dad or any of that. And even if he were, he knew some fucked-up people. They got fucked-up in different ways. Regular ways. They didn't smear graceful, flowing words in Russian that spelt out THEY SEE YOU in motor oil on a gym's windows, so you have to take a photo of it to a college to find out what you wrote with your own two hands. Messages to people you never met from someone you don't know.
Some thing you don't know?
Sheila knew she was trash. She'd always been aware of it in a subconscious, abstract sort of way, the way you know your dog won't tear your throat out in your sleep but have never even thought about it.
She always knew she was trash, but one day she actually realized it, actually thought about it. It was 7:13 in the morning and she was half drunk, at the bar at the end of the trailer park where she lived. Some dirty young guy who'd just got off the night shift and had been pounding shots ever since was leaning way too close, hitting on her with all the subtlety of an A-bomb and a curious sort of upbeat desperation. He wanted it bad and expected to be rejected, but he didn't let that get him down like other guys.
It was then, as she was deciding whether to fuck this guy or just kick his face in, and there, sitting in a shitty bar on the ass end of autumn watching the sun come up over the wastewater treatment plant, that it really occurred to Sheila Jensen that she was trash.
But I wouldn't say it bothered her.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Chanteuse Darkken was a teenage rock star. She had a life most girls her age would have murdered their own grandmothers for.
That meant more than "A life they'd kill their own mothers for", because most girls her age spent half their time wishing their mothers were dead anyway. Grandmothers were a different story, though.
Chant was slim, beautiful, rich, famous, and above all, wildly popular. Her goth-rock band was topping the charts with almost impossible regularity, especially for such a narrow genre. Critics compared her to a younger Amy Lee or Christina Ricci in style and looks. But then, who else would the mainstream media compare any attractive girl who wore black to? Goth by default. In terms of popularity, they began to compare her to a younger Madonna. Her band Anubis hit number one on the Billboard charts six times already and had two platinum records, with their third release closing in fast. Paparazzi tried their best to follow not just Chant but her bandmates everywhere. Rolling Stone had put her on the cover twice, once with the rest of the band and once alone. They sold out every show, no matter how large the venue. Not a girl in America hadn't dreamt of being her for a day, even if they cattily spread all the worst rumors about her, making their jealousy obvious to everyone but themselves. Nearly every boy (and man) in America had at least given a passing thought or a long lingering sweaty midnight fantasy to wondering what she looked like under those flowing black dresses and robes, and what that famous voice sounded like moaning in passion. Chant had more money than she could possibly imagine what to do with, so she bought herself some fine tailored clothes, and built herself a fine stone mansion, and thereafter spent shockingly little.
She had a life every teenage girl wanted. Except her.
Chant was different than all the other girls. She was different than all the other people, period. Her nihilistic little head was wired by a whole other schematic than the rest of the human race, and being a rich famous beloved rock star had never ever been a dream of hers.
Or perhaps the grass is always greener on the other side of the fence and we all want what we can't have.
It hadn't been a coincidence, or luck. Being a star wasn't her dream, it had been her mother Evelyn's. Her mother had been a singer as well. Evelyn had a lovely voice and striking good looks, just as the daughter did. In fact, her voice was still beautiful and time had only slightly dimmed her beauty. The Darkken women aged well. But for whatever reason, she had lacked something, maybe that indefinable star-power that agents and managers like to rave about to make sure they sound like they know something. Or maybe it was just fate, or the times, or the band, but Chant's mother had been a dismal failure. Evelyn had played a few clubs and bars and had a couple shows at a local venue, then been forced to call it quits before she killed herself out of sorrow. Her husband had thought the stage and the spotlight were killing her. No. It was all those empty seats and the silence at the end of the show that was killing her. He thought she might kill herself, afterward. So did Evelyn. But not long after she gave up she became pregnant, and when her baby was born she found she had something else to live for. It's a cliché because it's true. And when she saw the way people's faces lit up when they looked at her little girl, she had a reason to live and a plan.
Evelyn put Chant into singing lessons when she was four. By age twelve teachers were telling her mother there was nothing more they could teach the girl about singing. A few seemed genuinely intimidated by her. Her mother began auditioning musicians for her band when Chant was fourteen, and still learning songwriting, the flute, and guitar. She'd learned piano, bass, violin, and drums long ago. Evelyn thought her songs would be best if she knew every aspect of the musical process. She wasn't content to let her daughter sing songs others had written, not on the real stage. Not even if the songs were written especially for Chant. As soon as her mother had put a band around her, they had begun touring. Marcus Feldman, one of the people her mother had worked with back in the day, had done well. He was the owner of a small string of clubs in the southwest US, and most featured live music. Some were pretty big. So Evelyn had a couple strings to pull, and soon Anubis had a gig. Boom. Anubis had a bigger gig. Boom. Anubis had a contract. Boom. Anubis had a number one single, legions of fans, and money by the truckload.
Many people might think that Evelyn would wind up being jealous and resentful of Chant's success where she herself failed, even though she herself pushed Chant into that life. Isn't that human nature? To always want what we can't have, and to hate those who have it, no matter who or why?
But she didn't. Sorry, cynics. She not only didn't hate her daughter, or feel jealous, she was ecstatic at her daughter's success. It had nothing to do with the money, and everything to do with being close to the music again. She barely even noticed the family's greatly increased wealth. She just loved feeling the energy again. Even from offstage, just behind the curtain or set or from down in the crowd. To see all those faces, to hear all those voices. To Evelyn, it was better than sex. It was worth it all. It was worth everything.
She didn't take her daughter's money. She took something else. She didn't hate her daughter for having the success that she had always wanted. She loved her all the more for giving her that high, that magic, that she could never get for herself.
And what did Chant think about all this? Evelyn didn't know. It never even crossed her mind.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Jameson Dane had OCD. That's what everyone called it nowadays. What did it say about America that everyone knew the slang for mental disorders, not just the professionals? And that people talked about them so much they had to abbreviate them. But hell, he thought, just ask somebody from Mexico or Canada or Europe. They could tell you that America was a nation of lunatics.
Jameson had to write. He liked the spray paint best, but some occasions called for different tools. He always knew what he had to write, and where. Even if it didn't make any sense, even if he'd never been to the place before. He didn't have any choice. But at least he could decide what he wrote it with. Whenever he could, he got the cans out. But here, in the middle of a bus station, he didn't have time. Quality or nothing with the spray, and there were too many people here. They were gonna see him as it was, he'd just have to give them his mean face and hope they minded their own.
At least it was in English this time. He always got a little panic attack when the writing wasn't in English or Spanish. OK, a big panic attack. It kind of terrified him, the symbols his hands scribbled out, with no rhyme or reason or thought on his own. Sometimes in languages he didn't know. Saying things he didn't understand, even when he could read them.
And worst of all. The times he could read them. And could understand them.
THERE IS HOPE FOR HER
HE IS COMING
THE BEGINNING IS NOW
And one time:
STAY IN THE CITY THE PLANE IS GOING TO CRASH
Jameson tossed and turned for two days afterwards. He'd written that on a cigarette machine in an extra-grimy auto repair shop. He'd watched the news for two weeks afterwards. No plane crashes in LA. He gradually forgot about it. Then a plane crashed in Wyoming, and he started wondering again.
One time he'd had to spell out GO HOME in the middle of the desert with stones. Another time he wrote PAGAN on a mirror with crayons…in somebody else's home. He'd asked to use the bathroom, they let him in, and he vandalized their mirror and ran.
Why did he have to do this? What did it mean? What was the point? What made him do this?
He didn't have any…weird traumas in his past. He wasn't orphaned, or molested as a child, or beaten by dad or any of that. And even if he were, he knew some fucked-up people. They got fucked-up in different ways. Regular ways. They didn't smear graceful, flowing words in Russian that spelt out THEY SEE YOU in motor oil on a gym's windows, so you have to take a photo of it to a college to find out what you wrote with your own two hands. Messages to people you never met from someone you don't know.
Some thing you don't know?
OCTOBER 2008
SEPTEMBER 2008
AUGUST 2008
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
JULY 2008