"Wooden, stiff," his face was blurred and his voice was electronically altered to protect his anonymity. "That's how the critic described the characters in Drone Wars Version XXI. I mean do I look wooden and stiff? I ask you: do I look like I'm all surface?"
A man behind the camera introduced him as an underemployed engineer.
"My first thought was: the idiotic critic is out to lunch. I mean he clearly doesn't get it. Whether we like it or not we are all in on the game. Then I started thinking... about a lot of things. Like, did you ever wonder about the stock market -- why it goes up and why it goes down? Famously it went up last century the day Saint John F. Kennedy was assassinated even though one might have expected after a national tragedy like that it would have gone down. No one can really explain the fluctuations of the market. A sane person might start to wonder if a bunch of retarded monkeys are really running the show. The question is: where are these crazy chimps? And if they don't exist in our version of reality, then what version of reality do they exist in?"
He poured some water into his glass.
"As a scientifically minded person I began to wonder if, for example, market prognostications didn't emanate from another reality altogether -- one in which they actually made sense," he sipped from his glass. "Maybe there was a world outside of Drone Wars in which all the people were not wooden and stiff and there was some kind of rhyme and reason for this otherwise apocalyptic nightmare? My curiosity nagged at me. I began to doubt the things I was told about our fate in this world. I looked for a door through which I could pass to the other side.
"For years I tried every door handle I could find, swung every door I came upon wide open with the hope of gaining entrance into the other world, the one that made sense, because the one I'm in obviously doesn't make any sense at all."
He adjusted himself in his chair.
"Well I found it," he said. "But I can't tell you where it is. That was the one and only condition of my return."
"You walked out to the middle of a field," the interviewer said. "But you can't tell us where that field is. There was an abandoned farmhouse. But you can't tell us where it was either. You walked through many doors before this one, explored many abandoned lots, and mineshafts, and any other place you could think of where there might be a portal to another world. Hardly a side-alley or wooded area escaped your curiosity. What was it about this particular ruin that caught your attention?"
"Nothing special," the underemployed engineer said.
"So, you weren't expecting to find anything out of the ordinary."
"No, not really. By that time I seriously started to doubt my own premise."
"So you walk into this dilapidated house in the middle of a field that you can't tell us where it is. Then what?"
"Nothing at first. I nosed around a while like I usually did. Looked through cupboards and such. Turned some furniture over. It was pretty clear no one had lived there for a while. Nature was reclaiming the place. Rodents had nested in most every nook-and-cranny. Rot had set in. It seemed like another dead end, but for some reason I pulled the carpet back. I knew from some murder investigations I'd followed closely some of these places had hidden cellars. And, sure enough, there was the trapdoor. I felt around for the latch and pulled it up. You got to understand this was about ten years after I started out looking for 'the magic door'. I was pretty hardened by that time. Not nearly the excitable kid I once was."
"So you pulled back the hinged floor-panel and descended the creaky steps. What did you expect to find?"
"Maybe some old pickle jars and musty old boxes. For all I knew," he laughed, " I could have found a torture chamber down there."
"Then what? Take us through it."
"Nothing much. I pointed my flashlight around. No chained skeletons. No bizarre collection of surgical instruments. Just some cobwebs and an abandoned possum nest. I ran the beam of light across the floor in case the color of the concrete didn't match. Wouldn't have been the first time a body was buried in a basement. But everything checked out."
"You were headed back up the stairs."
"Yeh."
"Then what happened?"
"Nothing much really.
"Let's put a marker here," the intelligence man instructed the video operator. "The subject seemed to squirm or twitch at the question. It's unclear if he saw something insane in the face of his interviewer or the interviewer was caught off-guard by something dark and haunting in the subject's demeanor."
"You said earlier in the pre-interview you heard the squeal of a field mouse?" the interviewer prodded.
"That's almost right," he answered. "I was about halfway up the stairs when a sharp squeak sounded in the dark. Might have been a field mouse. At least that's what I thought it was at the time. I went back down to take a second look not expecting to find much other than a couple of mouse pellets. Wasn't like I had anything better to do, so I went back down."
"Well, you didn't find any pellets did you?"
"No. But there was something weird about the wall. I can't quite put my finger on it. What was strange was how palatable the feeling was. Yet, I'm unable to put words to it. Like something about it didn't quite fit. Like it was somehow too real or something."
"So what did you do?"
"This is the part where it gets truly bizarre," the underemployed engineer said. "I put my hand up to the wall to feel it, but I only caught air. My hand and half my forearm were swallowed up by the brick facade."
"What did you do next?"
"I pulled my arm back as fast as possible. That's what I did. The whole scene was so creepy. But you have to remember I was looking for something like this. So I pushed my arm through the virtual wall and retracted it a couple of more times just to make sure I wasn't hallucinating. Believe me I sat there for some time trying to make head-or-tail out of it. My first impulse was definitely not to jump through the wall right away. Must have smoked half-a-pack of cigarettes down in that basement. Finally, I don't know, I must have been out of smokes or something."
"You walked through the wall."
"Man, I wish I hadn't. It was horrible. You think Drone Wars is bad, I never saw anything close to it before. First off the spectrum of color was wild, unnaturally bright. Compared to our world's muted and grayed range, the color spectrum was nearly blinding. I stepped into a field of blooming flowers. Birds sang. I never heard so many birds sing in my life. The sweet fecund smell of nature was fairly overpowering -- nothing but rolling hills of grass, multi-colored flowers and great big shaggy trees all around me. The place was pregnant with life.
"I managed to make my way across the glade. What I saw next was horrible. In full view before me stood a satyr and a nymph. I had apparently walked in on a Dionysian Bacchanal. They drank wine and made love with an unselfconscious abandon I could in no way mentally process. The vulgar dancing was what really got to me. Nothing before in my life allowed me to fathom that anything like that kind of behavior was possible. The video game I walked into was so incongruous with anything I knew, I honestly turned to find my way back as quickly as I could. I'm embarrassed to say I was discovered desperately digging in the tall grass where I thought the door back home was by the most beautiful woodland creature. I have never seen a woman that beautiful in my whole entire life."
"You're out of your mind at about this time?"
"Totally desperate."
"How did you get back?"
"Believe me, I'm not proud. I begged, I pleaded, I cried at the sandaled-foot of that golden-haired goddess to let me return to my own videogame. I kissed the ground she walked on, I admit it -- I grabbed her thin ankle and kissed her shapely foot like there was no tomorrow. It wasn't pretty, I prostrated myself before a power that was greater than me, but I guess it worked."
"Put another marker here," the intelligence man sternly told the video operator. "This is the schizophrenic who predicted the coordinated drone attack on the House of Representatives?" he asked in disbelief.
"He's the one," the operator responded.
"I want this man put through some more tests," the intelligence man indicated. "We need to know what he is really capable of. We need to separate fact from fiction. I need to know. The government needs to know. How are these schizophrenics able to react to national security issues so much better than our own supposed 'experts'. Pack the video interview up nice and tight," he ordered the video operator.
"...And thanks, again," the cold intelligence man forced a complement against his reserved nature, "I mean for the heads up on this character. We definitely appreciate the inter-office level of cooperation -- believe me we do. And we're not the only ones. The higher-ups do too.
"There are still some very curious aspects of the interview I can't quite square with the facts," he said by way of a rational. "No one can know that much ahead of time, can they? Our office is going to have to study the taped footage of the psychotic much more closely in order to puzzle out this mess."
--Daniel Mendel-Black, copyright 2010
As per usual his wife woke up before he did. He could smell the percolating coffee when he stepped out of the shower. Handsomely attired in one of his nicest pinstriped suites he sat down at the kitchen table to the glass of orange juice and bowl of cereal she had waiting for him.
Together they watched the morning show, Good Day United States of Money, like they always did during breakfast, silently noting the stories of suicide bombings, drone attacks, and the government response -- always firm but fair. Despite the dire news accounts of skyrocketing crime, a country in near-total disarray after economic collapse, and ever more brazen attacks by Rebel dissidents, they lived a nearly picture perfect middle-class suburban life.
On the way out the door his wife told him how handsome she thought he looked in his new double-breasted suit and tastefully conservative necktie. In a ritual they had repeated a million times before she kissed him at the door and, as he strapped himself into his sporty hybrid electric Nissan, Vulva, she waved one last time and wished him a good day at the office.
Traffic was worse than usual. He tried not to think of it as a bad omen for the day ahead, but he couldn't help himself. By nature he was a fatalist. He was constantly on the alert for little signs -- "tells" they called them in poker. A string of green lights, for instance, meant his luck was good. By the same token, any hold-up, or other annoyance, was seen as a sure harbinger of bad things to come. A flipped over vehicle that blocked the right lane of the freeway, and caused traffic to slow to a trickle just before his exit sinched it. "Today," he decided dryly, "is going to be a rough day."
And, sure enough, as he pulled into work, there was another man standing on his corner.
"What's the big idea?" he demanded of the other fellow and put down his briefcase in a huff. "I've been working this side of the street for years." He was practically livid, but his tone softened somewhat when he realized the interloper was just a kid. After closer inspection he saw the young man's suit was poorly fitted and lacked any distinction. He had survived hostile takeover attempts before, attempts by competing pharmaceutical companies to force an unwanted merger or leveraged buy-out, but this wasn't anything like that. The boy stood stock-still, clearly frightened. After further assessment he asked the young man if he was lost. "You got to move along, son," he explained it to the kid, "this here corner is mine. Go on," he waved, "scoot."
After drugs were legalized legitimate businessmen took the place of dealers. It was inevitable it would happen. Faced with the certitude of bankruptcy states were desperate for any taxable income they could lay claim to. He was among the first legitimate drug salesmen, and from the start there was a lot of pressure to bring a certain amount of respectability to the trade.
His peers all had their specialty. His was methamphetamines. Directly across the street the man in the snappy bow-tie sold weed. On the two other adjacent corners stood an opiate salesman and a rather twitchy character he found somewhat objectionable.
There was something about the fellow's attire he disliked. Sure enough the man wore a well-tailored suit like the rest of them. By any reasonable assessment the other salesman's appearance was utterly professional and beyond reproach. Nevertheless, he found the man's color choices garish and untoward. "What the hell," he resignedly thought to himself, "do I know about how to run a psychedelics business," and steadied himself for his own growing line of customers.
There was no way to make one's way down any of the major streets in downtown Kansas City without fighting off the drug merchants. They were on every corner of every street. Whichever way one turned any number of these otherwise respectable well-heeled citizens closed in fast with a pitch for their "cure-whatever-ails-you" product. The same was true for every metropolitan area in the country. Gray-suited salespersons in thin-brimmed fedoras and briefcases accosted every sidewalk passerby in every major city touting the virtues of their various pharmaceutical wares.
And he was definitely no exception. "Now there's a sad case," he could spot a perspective customer a mile away. With a forced smile he filled the last crystal-meth prescription before his lunch-break.
Among the pharmaceutical sales-people there was a distinct pecking order. For whatever reason the opiate and methamphetamine merchant were shunned by the rest of the sales-force. The others made it abundantly clear they didn't want to have anything to do with them. No surprise then that they spent much of their lunch-hours badmouthing their fellow businesspersons. After a while, however, their conversation inevitably turned to more serious topics like politics.
"There must be something more important in life," he sighed, "than selling drugs to a bunch of addicts. Mustn't there?"
"A forty-four in brainpan," the heroin salesman flatly said over drinks at the bar. They were talking about the doctor at the local abortion clinic. "That's my prescription for the bastard, anyway."
Both looked up at the 3DTV above the bar. It was a pornographic re-enactment of the news. A renowned professor of archeology was getting head in his trailer at an unspecified dig-site. "Work the shaft, squeeze the balls," he kept yelling. Animal groans followed as the leading academic built to his climax. His favorite student closed her eyes and tilted her face up to receive the load. In the heat of passion he had boasted a facial she would never forget, but at the moment of truth all she felt was a single hot spatter on her skin. Unimpressed she opened one eye to see if he was really done.
As she flicked the single pearly droplet off her chin with her pinky the intercom crackled to life. "We broke through to the other side of the barrier rock," the foreman of the drill-crew yelled. "Come quick. It's unbelievable. You've got to see this."
Three miles down, at the base of the pit, the foreman held out a ratty Teddy Bear for the archeology professor to inspect. "We found it just under the black rock-line Doc, what do you make of it?"
"What else did you find?" the professor asked.
"A mess of plastic garbage and junk just like you might find in your average landfill on the planet's surface."
"Impossible," the professor exclaimed in total disbelief. "We are talking about hundreds of millions of years ago: Before Lucy-kind man, before even dinosaurs." He was clearly puzzled. No one had ever penetrated the black shale layer before him. For years he had argued for the great discovery that lay below the layer of impenetrable rock, and now all he had to show for it was a tattered Teddy Bear and a bunch of modern-day trash. Unless... The more he thought about it the more it made sense.
News anchor Michael Michaels ripped off his fake professorial beard and unceremoniously cut off the archeology student and drill-crew orgy that followed their breakthrough discovery with a news bulletin. "New evidence has surfaced," the anchorman bellowed into the microphone, "that a civilization much like our own existed millions of years ago. In fact, it was almost exactly like our own. Scientists believe it achieved a parallel level of development to our civilization then inexplicably and mysteriously caused its own extinction. Are we doomed to relive its fate? Is, as a prominent physicist has theorized based on this new and astounding evidence, our civilization caught in some kind of time warp where we are destined to relive our own demise over and over again? Answers to these and many other questions at six..."
The methamphetamine salesman knew full well the heroin salesman was right. There was more to life than pushing drugs. And he knew exactly what he had to do...
Michael Michaels sat up straight in his anchor's chair as if to give the next story more credence. "In version XX of Drone Wars," he reported, "The Supreme Court, in a five-to-four decision, ruled that the jury-pool should in some cases be expanded to include all interested parties." He shuffled some papers on the narrow shelf of the news set countertop. "...And," he picked right up again, "in the first test case, the Kansas City methamphetamine salesman accused of the cold-blooded murder of a local abortion clinic doctor was, after only thirty minutes of deliberation, easily acquitted of the crime by a jury of unborn children."
--Daniel Mendel-Black, copyright 2010
Alone in the attic the boy looked through old boxes in search of his original issue childhood Pray Station. He remembered how magical it was when he first opened the Operating Manual. "To start push 'Start' button," the first line read. Version XIX Pray Stations were far more sophisticated than the old model, but he liked the arcane user-interface of his boyhood toy. He brushed off the dust and opened the box. All around him electric candles lit up. The bright and shiny face of Jesus Christ welcomed him on the alter screen with a beaming smile.
"Revelations level 21:15" blinked on and off. The boy read the passage: "The angel who talked with me had a measuring rod of gold to measure the city, its gates and its walls. The city was laid out like a square, as long as it was wide. He measured the city with the rod and found it to be 12,000 stadia in length, and as wide and high as it is long."
"When he pulled out his old joystick his heart launched itself against his ribs with such a jolt he felt the need to place his free hand over his breast as if some extra effort were required to hold the organ in place.
"The Suicide Party?" the boy scoffed, remembering what his old man had said. On the news the story was abstract, funny because it made no sense. In his father's study he realized it was no joking matter, his old man was dead serious.
"We are willing to die for our beliefs," the man's frail voice rose to meet his son's disapproval.
After it finally sunk in that his old man felt as strongly about his position as he did, his son recoiled in horror. "You're kidding me, right?" he almost pleaded.
"We would rather put a gun to our head," the righteous earnestness in his father's manner sent a shiver through the boy, "Than contribute our blood and sweat to such a criminal government."
"You're drunk," the unmoored teenager had stuttered. "How do you expect to form a political party if your members drink the proverbial 'Cool-Aide' every time they disagree with something?" He was utterly perplexed, overwhelmed by a sinking feeling he had never experienced before, and as he kneeled at the console of his Pray Station, he hoped beyond hope that the video game could somehow bring his father back to his senses.
His old man's words rang in his ears. "If that's what it takes," he had waved a half-empty whiskey bottle over his head and declared his party's position in a purposeful voice his son didn't recognize, "Then that's what it takes."
It seemed to the teenager as if reality had sprung a leak, and as the water table lowered on his Pray Station monitor, a whole new universe revealed itself before his eyes. All along under the waterline of the game's 3D world there had existed a vast necropolis he had never imagined possible.
What materialized on the screen was, however, not a heavenly diamond-studded golden city but something far more sinister. What took shape was a satanic vision of monolithic slime-covered architecture that dripped as it emerged from the depths of the dark sea to reveal itself to the light of day for the first time in millennia. Slowly, as the water drained from the sea, the lifeless metropolis came into view. Titanic arches and domes oozed algae as they rose into the air. To him his father's newly acquired belief system was as impossible as the terrible geometry that now climbed up all around him.
Almost the entire necropolis was made visible -- all except for one last temple at the end of the city, still partially submerged under the placid surface of the black pool; goop, he realized with fright, was for centuries all that separated his world from this hellish edifice.
Cryptic symbols, lurid hieroglyphs, and skull-like faces leered at him through the sloppy film of muck that covered the moldering walls. He chocked back the smell of rot and decay. Swarms of bats harassed him at every turn. They rushed passed him in blind flight. Rats, so many rats. The vermin scrambled between his virtual 3D legs. Slowly and painstakingly his avatar felt its way along the crumbling, damp corridor.
On screen, bony spires reflected up at him from glassy puddles. He saw himself slipping and sliding down gigantic, slick wet slabs of stone. "Sonora," he pronounced his dead mother's name softly. Her murder was devastating, but he had never missed her so much as he did now.
"Washed in the blood of a lamb," was the phrase his father repeated. The son mouthed it in disbelief, and held up a photograph of his dead mother he had placed beside the keyboard. " Washed in the blood of a lamb?" he made it a question and put it to the picture.
Without warning the giant steel rings of the chain that held up the drawbridge upon which he stood snapped with an ugly sound and clattered along the cobblestones of a great wall as they dropped into the abyss bellow him.
The game was on.
He was plunged into a lightless netherworld filled with predatory phantasms he had never known existed before. Amidst the shadows of cyclopic columns were creatures so far beyond description they could not possibly have been born from human imagination. Giant white-haired Sasquatch-like robots and even more frightening apparitions lurked menacingly among the shadows.
With a final thrust into his consciousness, the frightful edifice of the temple at the end of the city was fully laid bare before him. A number of mammoth laser-cut stone blocks from the highest reaches of the dead city narrowly missed him as they crashed to the ground. There wasn't much time. He replaced his mother's photograph beside the electric candles of his Pray Station and squeezed the handle of the joystick tightly. Alien Abominable Snowman robots or not, all he knew for sure was that horrible hostile demons were closing in fast.
In a flash he realized the freakish phantasms had not come for him. They had come for his father. The old man was the one who had summoned the eons-old wrath of these alien space creatures with his idiotic, nihilistic selfishness. Instinct took over. His avatar edged its way through the dead city and loped up the oversized mud-smeared granite blocks that led to his dad's study.
Despite protests from his 3D old man -- who, true to life, simply couldn't understand what had come over his son -- the boy pulled him out of the chamber.
His son kept referring to some temple. "We have to get there as fast as possible," the image of his boy kept saying.
"What temple?" his virtual old man asked peevishly. This was new, this talk of a civilization of alien death-worshipers.
"Right ahead," his son answered. "Almost there," he tried to reassure his drunk father who was dragging his feet the whole way. "Can't you see it? Right up ahead. Only a couple of more steps that's all," the boy pleaded.
"Hear the gong?" his son asked his old man. "Hurry now," he dragged his father behind him. "Any hope of salvation, any at all" he tried to explain, "Means we have to get to the alter before the third and final gong."
With every step forward the terrible temple loomed larger until it all but blotted out the sky. The two of them looked no bigger than miniature toy figurines at the base of the enormous steel doors. Once inside it took a while for their eyes to adjust to the dark. Arched ceilings seemed to rise forever into infinity. Each hall they entered was larger than the last.
"Faster," the boy yelled at his old man. "We have to go faster if we are ever going to get there."
"Get where?" his 3D dad was losing his patience.
"There," the kid pointed to a staggered pyramid in the middle of the great chamber.
In order to get to the next level of the game they had to first scale two sizable walls. It was not easy. His old man was in pretty bad shape, but they finally made it to the base of the pyramid. All they had to do afterward was climb the twenty thousand steps to the top. An array of incredible creatures harassed them. The boy fought them off one at a time with a slew of primitive weapons. Once safe they paused momentarily to catch their breath. The floor was far beneath them yet the ceiling looked no closer than before.
In the middle of the pyramid's flat capstone a block of granite stood before an altarpiece of devilish design. It was on this stone before this altarpiece the boy wanted his virtual 3D father to lie down and bare his chest.
--Daniel Mendel-Black, copyright 2010
A beautiful fairy princess from another planet stood above Stirner Tittler III. He lay on the metal floor of the spaceship and squinted his eyes up at her. She trailed colors like an erratic rainbow, as if she were dissolving in the warm sun. The girlish phantom had on a golden plastic tiara, and poked him with a juicy looking cherry flavored lollypop that matched the color of her lips, clearly trying to tell him something.
But when she opened her mouth the princess spoke a strange language he had never heard before. In fact, her gestures were utterly foreign to him, her vocabulary inscrutable, her tone filled with dread and animal brutality one moment, and singsong kindness the next. Sometimes her voice was low and deep as if slowed way down. At other times it sped up suddenly and without warning to a loud screech, as if someone had just kicked a cat down an alleyway.
Garbled sounds radiated out of her mouth in thick gushing torrents, but not in any particular order and with no rational end he could make out. He rolled onto his stomach to try and crawl away, but she easily outmaneuvered him and blocked his escape with a remarkably nimble step considering her strawberry colored high heeled shoes were a couple of sizes too big.
"Our ship must have already landed on Neptune X," Stirner Tittler III thought to himself. "Funny. The trip didn't take nearly as long as I guessed it would," he tried to puzzle it out, and quickly concluded: "the girlish apparition I see before me is no doubt my welcoming committee."
The two of them exited the rocket ship hand-in-hand. He looked back over his shoulder one last time at the huge silver ship lying on its side, and remarked at the purple and pink sunset; how beautiful it was, "like an Earth sunset," but far more "haunting," and "strange," was the best he could describe it.
Neptune X was silent. Except for the occasional Chinese security patrol, streets were empty. The princess from another planet pulled him by the arm into a big-box electronics store. No one was around but a pimple-faced Asian kid. 3-D flat-screen televisions lined the walls. Stirner Tittler III noticed that every single one of them had a foreign brand name he couldn't read. "What a bizarre parallel universe," he said. "Apparently the Chinese already have a forward base set up here."
Eventually, the beautiful princess' strange tongue began to make more sense to him. He ascribed it to some kind of advanced form of mental telepathy known only to the alien race of the planet. Words like "cool", "gosh-darn", and "nifty" floated out from the otherwise incomprehensible hisses, gurgles, and barks that had issued from her pretty throat up to that point. But when she pointed to the array of monitors and announced, "I want one," he was elated. It was the first entire thought he comprehended from this new and wonderful alien species.
"To paraphrase the old song," the snarled voice of Top-Cop Stalker Flogum interrupted Stirner Tittler III's reverie, "You don't count the dead when God is on your side..." His war-scarred face appeared in virtual 3-D on all the flat screens. "And," the five-star general thrust his chest out, "You damn well don't ask questions when God is on your side."
Up on the podium Stalker Flogum reminded him of an Earth-type he had once known. The kind of irreconcilable bully that always challenged your manhood. One of those knuckle-dragger types who could say something like: "You're not a real man 'till you've cleaned the shit out of your own underpants."
Apparently the press conference was called to announce the capture of a well-known dissident. For Drone Wars Version XVIII a pre-recorded videotaped confession was released to the network.
"This is the kind of egregious over-reaching by the government that's gradually making our lives unlivable," the hangdog man on the tape said. "First of all, if you think the government is going to roll back the program after economic times improve, that's never going to happen. The whole idea that we are going to be monitored to this extent... why don't they just have Predators flying over the entire country recording everything we do all day long, and then they can sit down at night and write tickets for people who spit on the sidewalk..."
Stirner Tittler III wondered what his wife was doing back on Earth: probably having another drink and screaming at the poor nannybot.
"Is this the kind of society we want to live in?" the hangdog man on the 3DTV continued. "Where we are photographed and monitored every single thing we do just because all the morons in the government building have wasted all the revenue they have taxed us in the first place?"
Stirner Tittler III felt like the impervious stumble-bum Mr. Magoo, like he was in some heretofore undiscovered episode called "Mr. Magoo Goes to Outer-Space".
"I don't support the government at all," the former motorcycle officer recently gone rogue didn't mince his words. "I spent forty-one years with the Baltimore Police Department, I did thirty-three years active duty, I was a motorcycle supervisor, I supervised motor officers for eighteen years. It's exactly because the government of Maryland has turned to this kind of activity to bail out a budget, to generate money, that I finally said to hell with them and their corrupt thinking. Hey I got an idea for the maniacs in Annapolis: Why not just eliminate law enforcement officers altogether, eliminate the cost altogether, and just put up 'Big-Daddy' cameras everywhere?"
The family joke was if Stirner Tittler III was in an airplane with his wife and it went down over a jungle rainforest it was only a matter of time after the plane crashed before she emerged from the forest fully in charge of the situation, whereas, if not for her, he might never emerge. After a while, so the joke went, out of sheer impatience his wife would go back into the jungle only to find her husband sitting against a tree and staring with great intensity at a bright orange autumn leaf.
His wife could obviously survive and thrive under any circumstance. She was an "indestructible child" like Charlie Chaplin's "Little Tramp" figure. Stirner Tittler III, on the other hand, wasn't. He couldn't live for one second without the comforts of home. "How am I going to get along on Neptune X," he wondered, suddenly quite disconsolate, "Without all my precious stuff?" Momentarily his enthusiasm flagged.
"Top-Cop Stalker Flogum didn't just use the expression 'silver-bullet' did he?" Stirner Tittler III regained his poise. "God knows how I hate that expression," he griped, and began to feel more like his old self again. "Back on Earth they go for it all the time, as if every problem is lunar, and the only solution is to kill a werewolf, or some other demonic hell-spawn. Why, for the life of me, they also feel the need to use the expression here on Neptune X, I'll never understand."
"Silly-Billy," the fairy princess said in a magical musical voice, and added, "I'm hungry!" She wanted to go to the food-court. "Don't french-fries sound really, really good right about now?" she asked. "And a quarter-pounder with cheese!"
"I'll be darned if they haven't. They've created a near perfect facsimile of Earth, by golly I believe they have," Stirner Tittler III thought as they walked through the empty mall. "Everything down to the smallest detail reminds me of home." He looked around round-eyed. "All my favorite stores -- and right here on Neptune X! It's really quite remarkable what the Chinese have been able to pull off so many hundreds-of-millions of miles away in such a short period of time. There's no way they could have done all this on their own. The Neptune Xers -- if that's the correct term for these fabulous creatures at the outer edge of the Milky-Way galaxy -- must have been in on the deal. They must have helped," there was no doubt about it in his mind. "Clearly they possess technology far superior to our own Earth technology."
He looked at the little alien princess beside him with not a little awe. "If french-fries and a quarter-pounder with cheese are what she wants, french-fries and a quarter-pounder with cheese are what she gets," he said to himself. "Probably made from some exotic potato-like plant found only here on Neptune X." He could barely contain his enthusiasm.
--Daniel Mendel-Black, copyright 2010
"The real world never looked that 3-D," Alice Springs gasped as she took her turn in the training module. Of course, it wasn't her real name. She had to leave her old one at the door when she donned the mirrored specs for the final exam. Brightly colored artificial looking figures surrounded her. They were boarding a plane for San Francisco. She needed to stay alert.
Back in the day her uncle had the same job. Eventually he rose in the ranks of the Transportation Security Agency. He pulled himself up from a job in the mailroom to become a section boss. To Alice Springs he was a constant reminder of the diligence required by the job.
All she knew was that she was on the lookout for a nefarious figure called "The Crotch Bomber". John Dillinger's silhouette was still on the targets the Federal Bureau of Investigation used for shooting practice. For the TSA Public Enemy #1 was still "The Crotch Bomber". Training exercise or not it didn't matter. Her future career was on the line. "Find him, or else..."
At one point when the idea popped into her head that she might consider national security as a possible career path she sheepishly asked her uncle if when he wore the mirrored specs he privately got off on the people he screened. "Underwear," he answered. "Not many people know it, but you can change the setting on the glasses a little. Sexy underwear is what really gets me going."
Behind her glasses her eyes were peeled. Halfway around the world in someplace called Quail Haven, Tennessee a simulation of the "Crotch Bomber", much like the original young man, only more intense in virtual 3-D, was about to board a plane with the intent of blowing it up. Alice Springs was on the sharp lookout for a pair of naughty underwear.
"Oh, I should probably mention," anchorman Michael Michaels said. "Alice Springs is schizophrenic. In reality she lives on Skid Row. It's all part of a new experiment that follows on the heels of the highly touted success of last year's nation-wide handout of Blue Tooth earpiece devices to the homeless. The growing population of chemically imbalanced street people that walk around talking to themselves, so the thinking of civic-minded leaders went, might become more socially integrated and generally palatable if it appeared to the public at large that they were actually talking on the phone like everyone else. Today we have with us the criminal psychology professor who spearheaded the drive..."
"Broadly seen as a paradigm shift in the way we think about our insane population," the criminal psychologist was irrepressible in his zeal for the new program, "many people out there want to expand the mandate even further. They believe the mentally challenged lunatics in our country are an underused resource, and in these times of trouble everyone available needs to get recruited for the sake of the cause. We have a huge schizophrenic population, but it's idle," he said. "What we need more than anything else are more security forces on the front lines. Our military is almost entirely reliant on young children to man its drones. No one I admire has ever questioned the policy. It's a major moneymaker, a huge source of revenue for the government and the entertainment industry. The science is there. The economics are sound. It works. A short mental skip-and-jump to integrate the mentally retarded, depressed people, and psychotics into the nation's campaign against terror is all that's required."
"Please turn around and salute the flag," Alice Springs asked the hologram behind her mirrored 3-D lenses. "Like you mean it," she added. She got a thrill from watching the man's butt-cheeks tighten when he made the patriotic gesture.
"Donating a bunch of Blue Tooth earphones to schizophrenics to make them look less conspicuous is one thing," Michael Michaels tried to understand the criminal psychologist. "Putting them to work on the front line of national security is quite another, isn't it?"
"Not now!" Alice Springs yelled out-of-the-blue. She was sitting on a bench in a park under a leafless black Oak. Presumably she was talking to someone or something she saw behind her mirrored glasses. "Not now!" she yelled again and pulled her shoulder back as if to shrug some invisible person's hand off.
"Our nation's enemies are crazy." The criminal psychology professor tried to make it sound simple so Michael Michaels could understand better. "They must be, mustn't they?" he asked. "Because we simply don't understand their motivation. I mean why do the Rebels do the things they do? Who knows? Not me. Why is that? Because I'm sane, that's how come. Ipso facto, so it follows, who better than crazies to pick one of their own out of a line-up?"
"Nothing's as silly as young white girls dancing," Alice Springs responded to an instant message from her friend Goodnight Goodblood. Anyone looking would have thought the homeless bag lady with the oversized mirrored glasses was talking to the pigeons at her feet.
"Except maybe young white boys dancing," her friend texted back.
"Dance me to your lonely violin," the schizophrenic woman in turn sent the lyrics of one of their favorite songs.
On the inside lens of Alice Springs' mirrored 3-D specs Goodnight Goodblood completed the refrain. The words "Dance me with your naked hand, dance me with your glove," scrolled across the bottom of her high-tech glasses.
"In the past the mirrored glasses worn by police were meant to convey the all-seeing eye and concurrent omnipotence of law enforcement," the criminal psychologist tried to explain for Michael Michaels and the television audience the new eyewear handed out to schizophrenics. "The high-way patrolman's psychological interiority was hidden behind the lenses. It was as if he didn't have any interiority at all. Like he was a pure exteriority, a pure reflection of the landscape that surrounded him. In those silver lenses his psychology was an uncontaminated reflection of the outside world. But what today's law enforcement officer sees behind his mirrored lenses is not just the outside world as we see it. He sees a make-believe universe, a virtual world that includes the real world enhanced by a fully realized digital world."
"The Crotch-Bomber," Alice Springs screamed from her perch upon the park bench. Tears streamed from her eyes. "The Crotch Bomber!" She yelled her ass off. She had to alert her proctor before the suspect got aboard the airplane. She was sure it was him. It had to be him. The fellow's underwear she saw through her reflective glasses was provocative, patterned with hearts, and Alice Springs liked hearts.
The first snowflakes fell on her head. "The Crotch Bomber," she yelled again a little less emphatically than she had done the time before and turned her mirrored specs off. The test was over. The virtual terrorist was apprehended by airport security. Snow started to come down more quickly. "Snowmageddon," her voice trailed off to a quiet mumble. "It's a snowmageddon."
"We're losing her," the TSA proctor yelled to his assistant. "Quick. Turn the training module off! She's having some kind of fantasy delusion response to the 3-D lenses. She's talking nonsense -- says she's a bag lady -- keeps repeating the phrase 'Goodnight Goodblood' -- thinks it's snowing something awful in there."
The test grader stood in the frame of the door and scratched his head. "You won't believe this," he said and held out a computer printout to the proctor.
"I'll be darned," the man said. "A perfect score."
"Early results with schizophrenic-test participants are very good," the criminal psychology professor told Michael Michaels. "Much better than expected. If they hold up the way they look like they will there is already talk of a Federal Government Drone War Idol tie-in for Version XVII. Administration officials and game show and video game executives are calling it "Connect The Dots". The thinking is to test it on mental patients and psychotics first, who, like I said before, might very well turn out are the ideal users given their unique state-of-mind. But once the kinks are out it could very well get released to the general consumer audience. Think of the potential profits!" he panted. "It would be the live-action interactive version of 'Find Elmo', only the object of the game would be to find the Crotch Bomber..."
--Daniel Mendel-Black, copyright 2010
"Nothing is as scary as living through a bad idea," Michael Michaels got the editorial meeting underway. "When it's happening anyone who is halfway sane thinks the whole world is on a free-fall slide to hell. Afterwards you can joke about it. Afterwards the immediate danger of the old bad idea is gone. So many worse ideas have filled the gap in the meantime the whole thing is funny like a bad joke. Everyone can look back on the old bad joke with twenty-twenty hindsight and shrug it off."
"What's on tap today?" the news editor cut the dim-witted anchor off.
"I'm not sure if it's actually such a bad idea," the political desk started the ball rolling. "It's a little complicated, but here goes. How about the Puppy Dog Channel? New Mexico Senator Loudan Rich is way out in front of it. His latest anti-Rebel strategy. Can't figure out if it's a bad idea or genius. What he wants is to have a channel that plays nothing but images of cute puppy dogs frolicking twenty-four seven at every major government checkpoint. Here's the quote: 'No need for metal detectors, pat downs, interviews,' so the senator's argument goes. We could make it a question: Superfluous police theater?"
"Everyone likes puppy dogs," Michael Michaels said in his best anchorman voice.
"In fact, the Senator believes anyone who doesn't like puppy dogs is against the American way of life, a villainous enemy of the State. So, the best way to weed out insurgents hell-bent on bringing down the US government, according to the senator, is to make them watch puppy dogs at play," the political desk continued.
The news editor turned it over in his head. "I like it," he finally said. "The story's got legs. But what's the gimmick?"
"Most everyone would think the Puppy Dog Channel was the cutest thing they ever saw, right?" the political desk fleshed it out a bit more. "Anyone caught reacting in a negative way or looking away as they pass the monitors is immediately separated from the rest of the crowd and directed into a special line. There are some tactical problems, but Senator Rich is already at work on a fix. Curmudgeons, it was pointed out to him, would likely get swept up in the dragnet. Among patriotic citizens there are undoubtedly a few bitter old coots that hate small children, kittens, and puppy dogs, a small number of ill-tempered geriatrics so forth and so on."
"I saw the senator speak on Meet The Press," Michael Michaels said. "He was really putting the meat into the microphone. He suggested the line get divided. 'Two lines,' he said. 'One for the firing squad, the other for the restroom.' The civilization-hating anarchist saboteurs will go down the main path to their certain death and the old fogies will go to the restroom which is where they probably were headed anyhow."
"Bladder control," the news editor scoffed.
"The Puppy Dog Channel?" Michael Michaels mused.
"Let's go with it," his editor smiled. "What else?"
"The Smart Mattress?" the business desk perked up. "It's the latest black market craze to hit the nation."
"I don't know," Michael Michaels answered. He hated the idea of a mattress that was smarter than him.
"Maybe we should put our weight behind it?" the news editor nudged.
"Maybe," Michael Michaels conceded. He knew full well there was more to the story. Some of the mattresses had gone haywire in the past and the Federal Trade Commission considered them so dangerous they were outlawed for public consumption.
"You know those dreams you have about how you didn't graduate from high school?" the business desk offered a possible lead in.
"I never did graduate from high school," Michael Michaels joked.
"Maybe you could have used a Smart Mattress? Ever since Private Joe Shmuck got his nothing's been the same," the business desk offered. "Something along those lines. Private Joe Shmuck could say something like: 'In my old reoccurring dream I never graduated from high school. Now that I have my Smart Mattress I've graduated from college. I still have the old anxiety, but I'm not anxious anymore. Before I got the Smart Mattress I never even went to class in my dream. Now I do even though it's bizarre because I am so much older than the other kids. In my old dream I used to skip all my classes because the premise was so ridiculous. Now I actually attend my classes. And even though I am still sometimes really late I don't sweat it as much with the Smart Mattress.' What do you think?" the business desk turned to the news editor.
"Needs more drama," he shot back. "A hook."
"What if someone in Private Joe Shmuck's dream breaks into his locker and steels his class schedule?" Michael Michaels gave it some thought. "At first Private Joe Shmuck is upset, but then he realizes he doesn't give a shit. I mean he's already graduated from college in his dream. What does he care about high school? Zip. Nada. Nothing. It is like an anxiety nightmare, but because he has a Smart Mattress he doesn't care one iota one way or the other!"
"Okay," the news editor said. He clearly had some reservations, but he let them go. "What's going on over at the science desk?" he asked.
"Professor Ivar Zimbolist over at Fort College has an interesting theory about human migration patterns and how they could pertain to the Civil War here in the States," the science desk answered. "According to the professor, people who lived in the warmer climates were loud. They loved the sand, the sun, and the surf. The loud people were philistines. They liked eating, fucking, and fighting, not necessarily in that order. They liked all the things loud people like. Most of their time was spent on the beach. 'Loud and lazy' is how the professor describes them in his book. They ruled the world. They still do. There were lots of seashells all around them, the professor has discovered, so they made seashells their currency. It was the simplest and laziest thing to do so that's what they did."
"What's the pitch?" the news editor wanted to know.
"Well," the science desk continued, "The loud people were so obnoxious anyone who liked peace and quiet was forced to move to the outskirts of town. But before they knew it the loud people began to overpopulate the warm tropical shore they inhabited and they started to impinge on the outer-lying hamlet the quiet people had settled. So the quiet people moved even further away. 'That's how they got to the polar ice caps,' the professor writes on page 123. They figured it was so inhospitable and uninhabitable up there the tropical loud mouths would never follow them. They were wrong. For a while they were free from all the mindless chitchat of the loud people. It was a kind of golden era for them up there on the North Pole. They read and did all the creative things people can do when they are not crowded out of their own minds."
"A golden era of silence, however short lived," Michael Michaels ended the meeting. The show was about to go on air. He took his seat on the news set and smiled his million-dollar smile. Under the harsh klieg lights in the broadcast booth the anchorman looked positively alien, like a Venusian talking head.
"It's not what you sell, it's how you tell them the price," Michael Michaels briskly launched into the first story of the newscast. "Drone War Idol has just announced they will donate Pray Station laptop game-boxes to every underprivileged schoolchild in Uruguay. A top executive was quoted as saying: 'This isn't just a media stunt designed to boost our ratings. Think of the children. Every kid in the world deserves a chance at fifteen minutes of fame. And not only that, these kids are heroes. Think of them out there protecting us from the evil-doers here in our own front yard.'
"Later in Drone Wars news, we will take an insider look into the version XVI recall. We will also look at New Mexico Senator Loudan Rich's latest security proposal -- The Puppy Dog Channel; Smart Mattresses in the military; and a new study out of Fort College that could shed some light on the Rebel psychology.
"But first: the Federal Government closure of its embassy in Atlanta, Georgia. After six military trucks with weapons and explosives went missing the compound was temporarily shuttered as a precaution. Officials believe local insurgents hijacked the trucks. A State Department spokesperson would not deny or confirm concerns about instability in the region. 'It's premature to call Georgia a failed state,' the spokesperson said. 'But we definitely don't want it to turn into another North Dakota or Idaho,' the spokesperson added. The government of Georgia faces a secessionist uprising in the south and a rebellion in the north..."
--Daniel Mendel-Black, copyright 2010
Computer monitors buzzed, snapped and flickered across the globe. One minute Version XV Drone Wars gamers were watching a live-feed. The next there was a writhing mound of indistinct pink flesh on their screens. Male parts eventually differentiated themselves from female parts. Most of the unmanned aerial vehicle operators were too young to think of the images as anything but a sublime gross-out. Surveillance footage of a liquor store hold-up followed the pornographic snippet. No one knew what was happening. After watching the robbery-in-progress for a while the kids got spooked, but then what everyone thought was a live-feed came back on line.
Only later did they learn they had been "spoofed". Official coordinates and flight paths they took for real had been swapped out with dummy footage by rebel hackers who apparently had little trouble compromising the Pentagon security feeds. Drone War Idol carried the whole disaster live on their Jumbotron. No one at the network could figure out how to shut the thing off, or go to a commercial break in time to avoid broadcasting the ensuing catastrophe.
In Europe Big Ben, the Eiffel Tower, the Brandenburg Gate, and the Roman Coliseum were pulverized before the eyes of a shocked audience of millions. In the US, for some reason, national monuments were spared in favor of Christmas trees. Every state, local, municipal, federal, and mall Christmas tree was blown to bits.
"President 'Marshal Law' obviously got his Health Care Bill passed while I was KO'd," was the first thing that came to Action Jackson's mind when he awoke in a hospital bed, a wad of white cotton taped to his thigh. He leered at the staff gathered around him in solemn prayer with unbridled disdain. "I'm just trying to get through it -- persevere -- dig," he tried to wave away the orderly at his side. "Go on. Get, fool!" But their prayers just got louder. "Motherfucker," his leg hurt. "If this bitch gets infected I'm gonna sue your sorry ass state-sponsored bible hospital back to the stone-age where it belongs."
On the ward television the White House Christmas tree was zapped.
Gingerly Action Jackson lowered himself out of bed. "Forget this," he brushed the prayer circle aside and made his way through the sliding doors out into the cold night air. "Can you believe this shit?" he got into the car his bodyguard had parked and running outside the emergency room. "I swear when that punk-ass president gets off the pot first thing in the morning he announces it as a 'meaningful and unprecedented' act. That joker is so transparent you can see clear through the lame-ass motherfucker to the other side."
"Feds are looking for you," his bodyguard's voice rumbled as he jerked the steering wheel and floored the gas. "Took some extra heat along for the ride," he indicated the two men in the backseat. "FBI thinks you double-crossed them by not giving them a heads-up on this mess."
The man took a hard right onto an unlit street. The car fishtailed and swerved in the loose gravel as they rounded the corner. An LAPD drone was hot on their tail.
"Government pigs want to know what happened," one of the men in the back passed forward a handheld flip-top device.
"Skygrabber," Action Jackson yelled into the receiver. "Russian Federation made. That's right. Only $30. Anyone can download it from the Internet."
The car s-ed around another sharp curve and roared down the boulevard.
Action Jackson swallowed a painkiller, pulled his Glock out of the glove compartment, and cocked it. "You suckers blew my cover when you started handing out big dollar pay-offs to every hustler in the neighborhood. 'Counter-insurgency.' Suck my big black dick!" He was pissed at the FBI agent on the other end. "You knew what was gonna happen when you started throwing cash around to every small-time scumbag outfit in the hood. Total fuckin' mayhem, that's what. The minute you put the colors on the payroll, you lit this town on fire. You sold me down the line -- and you know it," he snapped the device shut with as much poise and composure as he could muster under the circumstances. In case the Feds had hidden a GPS tracking bug inside his men had somehow missed when they scanned it, he tossed the little black box out the window the first chance he got.
"No matter what the Feds do it always turns into a major fuck-up," Action Jackson turned to look out the rear window. "Besides making a mess the only thing they excel at is mop-up. Most of the time all they do is clean up their own mess. Now they've gone in with the street gangs, I guess they figure I'm nothing but a potential embarrassment, a black-eye for the department, an unwanted loose-end they need to eliminate."
Action Jackson couldn't be sure the FBI put the drone on his ass, but under the circumstances it was near impossible to know who was friend or foe. More than likely the milk-toast guy he just teleconferenced with was the guy who called in his assassination.
His bodyguard blew a red light. The Cadillac skidded, swerved to avoid the coup in front, barely missed another oncoming car, and sped up again just before the first drone missile slid out of its chute, swept through the air, and detonated in the middle of the intersection. Action Jackson adjusted the vanity mirror in time to see the cars behind him go airborne in a plume of yellow and orange flame.
A laptop was pulled out of a black duffle bag. "Give it here," Action Jackson reached behind him. He grabbed the thing and tapped out some commands with the nose of his blue steel pistol.
Behind them the unmanned robotic remote-control craft almost instantly stuttered in mid-flight, lost air, and performed a couple of indescribably odd maneuvers to keep from wrecking. His driver jammed on the brakes just as the belly of the low-flying robotic plane passed them overhead. Tires squealed and everyone in the car lurched forward. Only a few yards in front of them the LAPD drone slammed into the street nose first. They ducked down under the dashboard just before the remaining munitions went off. Even with their heads hidden bellow the hood of the car Action Jackson and his men could see the horrific fireball ignite in front of them.
"What did you do?" his bodyguard was impressed.
"LAPD drones have lousy 'information assurance.' I switched out the live feed with footage of this nasty bitch going all Sapphic on this fat nigger's anorexic old lady while he beat off. So nasty I figured it would even turn a kid gamers' stomach."
Action Jackson slid back up in the passenger-side Corinthian leather seat. "After this the FBI can kiss my sweet black ghetto ass goodbye. If the government bastards call again," he looked over at his bodyguard, "Tell them I slipped out the little door in the side. Maybe no one else will, but those crazy paranoid motherfuckers in the Hoover Building will know exactly what I'm talking about."
His driver nodded, turned the sedan around and made for the Hollywood Freeway.
Once safely away from the downed drone, Action Jackson flipped his laptop back open. He was pleasantly surprised to find that the bedlam created by the "spoofed" unmanned remote-control planes continued unabated. Drone War Idol still hadn't figured out how to cut the live-stream and despite all their best efforts to the contrary they were broadcasting a beautiful shot of the Congressional Christmas tree going up in flame.
Some young cad had obviously figured out how to usurp the show's soundtrack. A pop music hit based on an old patriotic song by Toby Keith played over the burning tree, cut in half moments earlier by a Hellfire rocket. Some Arab Sheik's kid in Saudi Arabia had shot at it under the impression he was firing at a Rebel gun-nest in Arlington, VA. The music was basically the same as it was in the old hit with a couple of minor rearrangements that included newly added eastern influenced instrumentation, including the incongruous use of a sitar. Only the lyrics were significantly changed to conform to the present mood of the country. For sure it wasn't Action Jackson's choice for music, but after giving it some thought he decided he dug it on principal even though it was nothing but lousy Country-and-Western inspired schmaltz:
"And D.W.I will be sorry that you messed with
The people of the U.S. of A.
'Cause we'll put our boot right up your ass
It's the American way..."
--Daniel Mendel-Black, copyright 2009
"Bourbon or Scotch?"
"Bourbon!"
"Sometimes I forget I'm talking to a rabbit."
"Hooey."
"No really. I never met a talking rabbit who liked bourbon before."
"Hello," Roman Forester yelled from the front porch. Snow was coming down hard in the Upper Peninsula. He stamped his feet to get the slush off his boots.
Dr. Tulsa Phoenix put the rabbit back in its cage, grabbed the open bottle of Maker's Mark, and ran upstairs to answer the door.
Between nips from the bottle they undressed each other. Her skin was so beautiful Roman Forester was overwhelmed by an idea. There was something he always wanted to, but never had done before. With a swift motion he grabbed the waistband of her underwear and tore them off her. Dr. Tulsa Phoenix's first thought was confused, a little angry even. They were her nicest lace underwear and she had saved them especially for such an occasion. Her dismay didn't last long, however. She quickly realized it was a romantic first for her. No man had ever ripped her underwear off before. Both of them practically busted their sides, they thought it was so funny. Roman Forester wanted to say "We interrupt Drone Wars to bring you this special moment," but he couldn't quite catch his breath.
Emergency alert sirens went off. Drones were coming in again. The young man wanted to get back to his equipment at the refugee camp, but she pointed out that they were both still a little drunk from the night before. "Besides it's too dangerous. There isn't enough time. My neighbor has a bomb shelter." She ran downstairs to grab her rabbit. "It's right over the hill," she yelled up from the basement. "If we're lucky we might just about make it to the farm before they seal the hatch."
Half-hidden faces winced in the dark bunker with every new thump and quake overhead. About thirty people had made their way to the bomb-shelter. A nearby impact, quite a bit louder than the rest, made them all flinch. Roman Forester had his arm around Dr. Tulsa Phoenix who nervously cradled her fluffy white rabbit. He knew the drones were targeting the outer-lying camps because that was where all the Drone War Version XIV points were, but he also knew adolescent and teenage remote-control operators halfway around the world could care less what they blew up. As long as it was in the designated mission grid they got some points.
"Who was it you were talking to in the basement when I came over last night?" he figured she would tell him about a roommate he didn't know she had.
"The rabbit."
"I thought I heard another voice."
She tickled the rabbit under the chin.
"He talks?"
"She sure does, don't you," Dr. Tulsa Phoenix corrected him and set the fur-ball on her lap so it could nibble on the snacks she had cupped in her palm.
Air in the bunker was getting thin. Everyone was breathing heavily and wiped the perspiration from their wet brows. "Damn this old death-trap all to hell," the old farmer stood up and pounded the air vent with his hand to try and get the rusted out fan to start working again, but it was frozen. A whiff of smoke from singed electrical wiring was a sure sign the motor had burned out.
"Last year at this time we were down here for two days before the carpet bombing let up," a middle-aged woman across from them pulled out a songbook to try and raise everyone's spirits. "To pass the time we all sang Christmas carols."
"Last year at this time we all thought if we only embraced Jesus Christ as our savior and lord everything would turn out fine and all the wrongs in the world would miraculously get righted," her husband sardonically cut her off. "And the year before that, and the year before that going all the way back as far as I can remember. Well, where's it got us, mother? Huddled down here while the whole town up above us gets blown to kingdom come!"
"Hard hearted stick-in-the-mud," she gently reprimanded and flipped through her book for the right song. "Don't pay him any mind," she said to everyone else in the shelter. "Hard in the heart and soft in the brain like all those right-winger nuts he's always crooning over."
"You're a fine one to talk," another bearded man accused the farmer's wife.
Sooner or later someone was going to notice Roman Forester was not a local. Tulsa Phoenix would defend him, but he was already self-conscious enough about the fact that were it not for him and all the other folks like him camped out on the outskirts of their town these people -- otherwise forgotten on the northern boarder -- would enjoy a peaceful and placid existence far away from the chaos of the civil war that raged in the rest of the country.
Roman Forester felt so sure the second bearded man was about to turn on him he tried to change the subject back to the talking rabbit. The tension in the fall-out-shelter was unbearable. To the young man it seemed like all hell could break loose with the next impact.
"So," the rabbit asked: "Did you ever hear the one about the comedian Vagina von Lesbian? I'll tell you right up front the guy was a wet rag, down on his luck. He was desperate -- at the end of his rope," the rabbit held one paw over her head, cocked paw and head to the side, and stuck her tongue out to indicate an invisible noose. "Living in a one-room cold-water flat in New York with a view out his only window of an air-duct.'
"One day Ruth Buzzi walks in on his lounge act. After the gig is over Vagina von Lesbian comes over to her table. 'Ms. Buzzi,' he says, 'I'm one of your biggest fans. Do you have any advice for a young aspiring comedian? I'm putting my best material out there but it all flames out like the Hindenburg. No one ever laughs at any of my material. You're the greatest of the great. What do you think I should do?' She narrows her bleary eyes, clearly unhappy with the intrusion. 'Whah? Who the hell are you?' she whines and knocks her drink over reaching for her cigarettes. 'Vagina von Lesbian,' he says with as much pride and self-confidence as he can muster. 'Vagina von who?' Ruth Buzzi practically spits up her olive. 'Are you kidding me with a name like that?' she gags. 'I mean that's awful. Maybe you should start by changing your crummy name.'
"A year later she stumbled into a Vegas lounge. The room is in stitches, the comedian is killing, but the minute he sees her walk in he runs down to greet her. 'Thank you, thank you, thank you,' he says. 'For what?' Ruth Buzzi asks somewhat annoyed. She doesn't recognize him from Adam. 'Last year I was down-and-out and it's all thanks to you my career was resuscitated,' he tells her. 'You saved it when you told me to change my name. And you were right!' She squints up at this lanky character: 'What did you say your new name is?' He stands back for dramatic effect. 'Dick van Dyke,' he says proudly."
No one was conscious enough to get the joke. Far from it, a number of folks clutched their throats and coughed uncontrollably like they were about to throw up.
Not much oxygen was left in the shelter when the firemen finally cracked the metal hatch open with their jaws-of-life contraption. "Bless you baby Jesus," the middle-aged farmer's wife wept at the sight of daylight. The drone raid was over. The bombing had stopped. Everyone, young and old alike, poured out of the bunker and gasped for fresh air. A shaky Roman Forester helped the physician and her talking rabbit up the stairs. Most everyone recovered after a gust of icy cold wind.
Dr. Tulsa Phoenix had her work cut out for her at the hospital tent. Victims of the drone attack numbered in the hundreds.
Back at the VW Van Roman Forester's friend ribbed him about the doctor: "No way that's her real skin," he said. "She bought that skin."
"Not even the Pentagon can make skin that perfect," Roman Forester wistfully brushed the comment aside and got back to work wiring a stack of hardware that he believed could cut down their response time to the Drone War Idol gamers by half -- maybe even give them the edge. He didn't mention anything about a talking rabbit.
--Daniel Mendel-Black, copyright 2009
Panicked crowds pressed up against the sides of buildings. Drones hung over Park Avenue. Some people prayed. Others turned their shoulders at the hiss of the first rockets let loose on the civilian population. "Operation Rapture Day" was underway. Missiles ripped through the pavement. They tore into storefronts. Large chunks of asphalt and concrete flew through the air. Taxis and other vehicles were sitting pigeons in the congested traffic. Drivers jumped out of cars. It all came back to Smalls Hawkins with a rush of cold sweat. He was sitting in the back of a cab when the first bombs hit. There was a gust of hot air. The taxi was momentarily airborne. It hit the ground upside down with the sick crunch of broken glass and crushed metal.
At the time he couldn't have known it, but the same scene was repeated all over town. Manhattan was under attack.
"We wanted the game to get off with a bang," one of the Drone Wars creators reminisced about the initial launch.
"It had to be big," his partner explained the pressure they felt from their financial backers. "Really big and very loud."
Mystery surrounded the inventors. Neither had ever agreed to an interview before.
"Every square inch of every surface of life made esthetic," the video game entrepreneur described his fantasy world.
"But it quickly became evident to us that only a few chosen people could participate in the design revolution," his partner explained the shortfall of their dream of a world in which everything was completely art-directed.
"Our first mistake was to think about it in terms of a single ideal esthetic for everyone. We had to step back and look at the whole picture."
"Popular art was as good a place to start as any. And, if you think about it, many of the most popular forms of entertainment are very dark. People are scared. Fear is real. But they can't stand the uncertainty. They want their worst fears to come true as fast as possible so they can get on with their lives. Drone Wars is nothing but a perfectly designed version of the nightmare world they want to get out of their minds."
"All we are actually doing, in a sense, is frontloading everything bad and terrible. Maybe it's a false premise, but if everyone wants to believe the world will be a much better place after Drone Wars is over, who are we to tell them any different?" the co-creator went off on a tangent.
"But there are still some severe limitations to the game," his partner tried to get the interview back on track. "Lamentably, private moments between people are still so elusive to machine logic. Our interactive vision requires that everyone is an equal participant in the video game (whether they like it or not). We are currently working on tools that will hopefully make it more possible in future upgrades to..."
"Did you say your name was Plastic?" Smalls Hawkins pulled out one of his earphones so he could hear her better. "Are you a hostess?"
"Shasta," she repeated from behind the foldout table at the Pleasant Valley Nuclear Association booth and pointed to her nametag. "As in Mount Shasta... The sex booths are on the other side of the park."
"I'm looking for electronics," Smalls Hawkins looked up from under the brim of his fedora as if to convey how foolish he felt for his mistake.
Her perfect teeth glinted when she smiled. It was the previously agreed-upon password. "By the zoo," she winked and quickly handed him a promotional brochure she had set aside from the others.
Central Park looked almost medieval, transformed into an extended modern-day frontier outpost town -- like Woodstock with Power Point presentations. Chickens and other domestic animals ran wild. Muddy thoroughfares connected the various districts. Anything and everything was available for the right price; sex, gambling, drugs, you name it. The place had an electric bazaar-like feel. Folks came in from New Jersey, Connecticut and Delaware to purchase what was outlawed in their own neo-Puritanical Christian-ruled states. Pirated drones circled overhead. Every so often an NYPD drone broke through and managed to let loose a missile, but most of the time they were shot down before they got anywhere near the various booths and stalls in which business was done. Rebel officials bragged it was safer in the park than in the nation's capitol.
"Heard what the young president said the other day about the massive explosions that practically leveled several federal buildings, including the Department of Justice," the Electronics District contact chatted up Smalls Hawkins. "He said: 'There are a few assassinations, bombs go of every once in a while, but besides these major attacks, it's not a bad place for the country to be.' Can you believe it? The Feds are crazy out of their skulls with the crap that comes out of their mouths. What phony-baloney. His own mother wouldn't believe him."
To anyone else it looked like a chance encounter. But to Detective Alejandro Chomsky's well-trained eye the exchange between the two men took on sinister proportions. He observed the whole scene from a dark corner of the park. Nothing about the seemingly casual rendezvous escaped him. Smalls Hawkins clearly shoved something into the other man's pocket -- probably the brochure he picked up at the Pleasant Valley Nuclear Association booth. Detective Chomsky wanted some answers. It was time to bring his former partner into custody for questioning.
An old grifter's con was employed. A man steps out in front of you at the last minute holding out his bifocals like a toreador holds his red cape in front of a charging bull. Inevitably the glasses are knocked to the ground by the supposedly incidental contact. In case the impact of the eyewear on the asphalt does not smash the lenses they have already been cracked ahead of time. The scam-artist raises heck about his broken eyewear. In full throat he demands as loudly as possible so everyone nearby can hear him that the victim of the swindle compensate him for the accident. Nine-out-of-ten times even the most seasoned cynical New Yorkers will fall for the trick.
Before Smalls Hawkins knew what had happened he found himself surrounded by a crush of irate witnesses all of which insisted he do the right thing and compensate the poor nearsighted man for his broken glasses. All Detective Chomsky had to do was make sure there were enough undercover officers in the crowd to block the suspect's escape and apprehend him. When it works it's a thing of beauty. Before anyone knew what had happened Chomsky's men were walking him away in handcuffs. None of the Central Park bystanders had any idea what had just happened.
"HitList writers might do well to take some notes on how to detain a suspect," thought Smalls Hawkins dryly as he was shoved into an unmarked NYPD cruiser.
"Allan Arkin," Detective Alejandro Chomsky paced the interrogation cell, "once said 'There's two people in this world who can talk without making sense. That's John Wayne and Fred Willard.' I'm thinking of adding your name to the list Hawkins." The pressure was on. NYPD brass wanted answers and they wanted them fast. "You might recall Version XIII of Drone Wars overturned the US Constitution. We don't have to call it 'extraordinary rendition' anymore. We don't have to farm it out to contractors. We don't have to send you to black sights halfway across the planet. We don't have to lie to the American people about what we are doing behind closed doors anymore. Call it torture if you want to. Call it any damn thing you please.
"If we have to harm you to get the information we want we can do it, easy as that. NYPD can hurt you so you can never walk again, or hold a spoon. We can drug you so you piss blood and shit your pants," he knocked Smalls Hawkins hat off his head. "Don't you get it, man? You are on your own. Can't you see that there's no one to stop us? Don't test my patience. I don't care if you once wore the uniform. You better start talking and start talking fast. I saw you make the exchange in the park. I got it on tape. We got your Ms. Shasta in the holding room across the hall and I'm in a rush. She won't hold up as long as you. Are you going to tell me what was in that pamphlet or do I have to order my goons to ruin that perfect smile of hers?"
--Daniel Mendel-Black, copyright 2009
Cast iron sculptures of gagged figures strapped and bound on monolithic horizontal slabs lay face-up. In a moment of excessive exuberance the expatriate Greek artist had them electrically wired so they gave off a mild shock when you touched one. "Ants!" his son Tardif Disconesia yelled. He yelled it over and over again. The boy couldn't stop himself he got such a charge out of it. Every time he ran into one of the sculptures the jolt tickled like a million ants were crawling all over his body.
Rebel TV was filming the second episode of HitList from the Canary Islands.
"A plate of awful with a side of trouble," was the fat man's assessment of the waitress.
"Give her a coat of paint and maybe a little touch-up like a Hollywood movie star," his partner contradicted the fat man and smiled at her as she came over with their coffee.
Makeup and wardrobe decided on a trench coat for the skinny man and a velour sweat-suite and visor combo for his overweight partner. They both had on dark sunglasses the crew picked up at the local tourist trap.
Next the ex-Navy Seal entered the seaside cafe'. He inquired on queue from the assistant director about the two men. The Spanish waitress pinched her little nose to indicate that the men smelled bad and pointed to the rear booth.
"We didn't know who to call when our car broke down," the skinny man apologized.
"Goddamn Ford Clitoris," the fat one gurgled.
The retired soldier sat down: "Dangerous neighborhood to get stranded in. Roving gangs of boys everywhere. Up to no good as far as I can tell. I'm sure I saw one of them out there brandishing a bottle of suntan lotion."
He was given a manila envelope that he promptly emptied on the table. Some grainy photographs of Tardif Disconesia fell out along with a sheath of typed up notes. It was all for effect, of course. The cameras were rolling.
"Don't be too concerned with the letter of the law," the skinny man winked. "It's the spirit of the law that counts."
Quiet settled over the otherwise boisterous Montana Rogue Army mess hall. Yet another week running, Tardif Disconesia was the Drone War Idol board leader and that kept him at the top of the HitList "Most Wanted" list. The ex-Green Beret and Navy Seal had spotted him at a street-side kiosk flipping through a pornographic magazine he had secretly sandwiched in a comic book. Porter Hightower sat at the edge of his seat along with all the other militiamen in the hall. Everyone took a collective breath, but it was different for him. Tardif Disconesia was the gamer who supposedly pulled the trigger of his joystick to launch the Hellfire rocket that killed his mother and sister. Porter Hightower wanted nothing better than to see the little runt squirm.
At the exact moment the ex-Green Beret yelled "Move In!" on his walky-talky Tardif Disconesia's mother's Mercedes Benz showed up and the kid hopped onto the passenger side seat and closed the door behind him.
Everyone in the Rebel Cafeteria stared slack-jawed at the big-screen.
HitList followed the mother's car to a house at the edge of town. Balloons and brightly colored streamers covered the front door. "Somebody's birthday," the retired Green Beret whispered. The decision was made to surround the house and go in after the boy. "We're going to try and take him out right here," the former soldier intoned furtively into the camera and cocked his twelve-gage with the well-practiced motion of a professional killer. But it wasn't exactly like Keith Richards parachuting into a Sweet Sixteen party. There were screams and cries, food flew through the air, adolescents, parents and chaperons scattered. The scene was one of general chaos. When the confetti finally settled the ex-Navy Seal and Green Beret stood amid flipped over picnic tables in the backyard of the house alone with the camera crew and covered in birthday cake. None of them had the foggiest notion which direction the kid and his mother had run.
"Draw down," the ex-Green Beret barked with resignation.
Conversations in the Rebel Army mess hall slowly picked up where they had left off. "You wouldn't know it by lookin' at him," the man sitting on Porter Hightower's right had trouble getting his head around such a young criminal. "But that kid is a stone-cold killer." The codger looked like he was sent straight from central casting to play an old pirate or gold prospector down on his luck. Yukon Jack. That was the nickname the other Rebel soldiers gave him. "Just look at the scallywag. Already a mass murderer at his tender age."
Strange emotions Porter Hightower didn't understand swelled up inside him, so much so he felt like his eyes would well up. He closed them tight and stabbed his plastic fork into the shit-on-a-shingle scooped on his paper plate with so much force the flimsy utensil snapped in two.
After a commercial break that basically consisted of Rogue Army recruitment footage of Predator Drones firing at unarmed townsfolk in the heartland and the President shaking hands with various notorious war criminals there was telephoto surveillance-footage of Tardif Disconesia and an unknown girl from his grade school. The two stood in a quiet secluded corner of the playground with their unzipped pants and underwear pulled down to their knees. HitList's high-powered microphone picked up the exchange: "Yours looks funny," the boy seemed uncertain about his attraction. "So does yours," the girl nervously stared back and tried to cover her open mouth with the back of her hand.
At the head of the briefing-room regular Army Sergeant Killroy Townsend cursed: "Disgusting, vile shit." New boot-camp recruits were watching The Rebel Army Network as a training exercise. Slurs flew from the Sergeant's grim mouth. Some of them Private Kenmore Westell had never heard before. "This is the Drone Wars Version XII cow pile of dung your enemy is propagating," the old soldier growled with obvious disdain. Kenmore Westell felt the cold gray eyes of the Sergeant pause suspiciously on him as if the man instinctively new that he was thinking of Porter Hightower's family and how they got blown to smithereens by a drone missile fired by the kid on the screen. "No momma's boy crybabies allowed in my army, son!" the old soldier flicked his thumb in the direction of the door. The Private locked his jaw to show his resolve, but inside he tried to picture his friend. No doubt Porter Hightower was in a Rebel Camp by now, out there somewhere watching the same show. Kenmore Westell tried to imagine what his friend was feeling, but knew he couldn't come close to understanding that level of emotional trauma.
Somehow HitList had acquired some home video Christmas footage of a slightly younger and positively beaming Tardif Disconesia opening his presents on the rug in the living room of a sunny bungalow in some blue-water Aegean paradise. The boy tore into the candy-cane wrapper of his first Pentagon issued Pray Station III, the game-box he would later use to remotely guide the drones. It was an eerie segment of the show played up in slow motion. Behind the kid there was a plastic tree decorated with crystal balls, store bought gingerbread cookies, and plenty of tinsel. You could see Pine Trees through a side window. Tardif Disconesia ripped the paper from the box and threw it at whoever it was behind the camera awkwardly the way you would expect a child of his age to. HitList ran the footage of the boy's laugh as he danced and waved his arms even slower to make him look maniacal.
Part of Kenmore Westell was too serious. He knew he had to learn to shake it off, or he wasn't going to last long in this world. But it didn't stop the newly conscripted Private from feeling like the Christmas footage dragged on much longer than was necessary. To him it seemed hokey, a lame gimmick. But he also knew wherever his friend was at that moment Porter Hightower was hurting something bad inside. And he felt sure deep down to the marrow of his bones these images of Tardif Disconesia so happy and unaware of what it was all going to lead to in only a few months time, these images stretched out so interminably by HitList probably did his friend much more harm than good.
--Daniel Mendel-Black, copyright 2009
Virtual Predator penguins gently arced across the screen. For Version XI Drone War Idol introduced a new animated feature on the show. Manchild Elkhart watched in disbelief as the penguins fired cartoon lightning bolts on various targets displayed on a world map. He turned the sound down so as not to bother the sleeping Harlot Martin, but she rolled over under the heavy blanket and opened one eye. Without thinking the boy slid down under the sheets next to her.
"Why do you always slip your hand between my legs?" she sniffed.
"Because when you part your legs I know you want to make love. And when you say 'why do you always slip your hand between my legs?' I know you don't." He sat back up in bed, slightly embarrassed, and increased the volume.
"Tempered idealists say don't make Perfection the enemy of Good," the young President gave his weekly Saturday message from the Drone War Idol stage. "Well, the bleeding-hearts can have their fantasy world. Our enemies, on the other side of the isle, say don't make Mediocrity the enemy of Bad. Well I've said it all along and I'll say it again. We can beat them because what my Pragmatic Centrist Administration believes is: don't make Goodness the enemy of Mediocrity!"
Both of them laughed and dove back under the covers.
"Rise 'Angry Brother' and shine," Johdpur Elkhart's unwelcome voice came from the other side of the wooden cabin door. It was the nickname the Chinese had for the North American resistance fighters. Manchild instinctively jumped out of bed and shoved his penis into his cotton Long Johns. Harlot Martin rolled on her side and gave him a withering look. She propped herself up on an elbow and burned her hot eyes into his. The disappointment on her face came through loud and clear. She obviously thought he made the wrong decision by getting out of bed, but there wasn't anything he could do. Wolverine patrols were scheduled well in advance, and this morning it was his turn to take the drug delivery run. After all, they had to keep the local Marines happy didn't they?
At the top of the cliff the government forces resembled a clan of cavemen. Small units were stationed in the Rockies to keep rogue forces in check and jam the satellite signals the local's used to hijack drones. Manchild Elkhart thought the soldier's milling about their forward position at the mouth of a cave high atop the bluff probably struck him much like the first Neanderthals struck the original homo-sapiens as they made their way up through Europe. The men sat around a fire with big bushy beards, their tattered uniforms crudely stitched together, and roasted a small bird they had impaled on a branch they fashioned into a crewed spit.
A couple of months had passed since the 112th Dog Company was last issued razors. Platoon Leader Sergeant Margay Holster was third-generation Marines. His grandfather had fought in Vietnam, and his father had done five tours of duty in Afghanistan. This war wasn't anything like those. It wasn't even a war. They were an occupation force in their own back yard. In Vietnam his grandfather had all the ammunition he could dream of. They spent days, the old man used to brag, firing their shells at the face of a mountain just for the hell of it, just to kill the boredom. Afghanistan was high-tech. The Sergeant kicked a small rock. In this mission he was liable to have to order his men to shoot at a troop of Cub Scouts. And that was only if they could scrounge up the spare rounds. Their high-tech communications consisted of a couple of military issue PDAs. Heck, he ran his fingers through his black facial hair, he couldn't remember the last time he had a bath.
"I heard the administration was gonna reinstitute the burning of witches," Sergeant Margay Holster joked. Manchild Elkhart stood in the center of the circling men. There was a lot of menacing small-arms gunplay. Everyone in the company knew the boy was sweet on Harlot Martin. "That girl of yours is headed for the stake if she don't watch her ways," the Sergeant laid it on thicker. The rest of the men all nodded in agreement and stuck their pistols back in their belts. "She cuts a pretty nice figure," one of the other soldiers piled it on. "But it's them fiery eyes of hers that puts men under her spell."
All the way up to the Rocky Mountain crag Manchild Elkhart felt like he was on Cloud Nine. His pillows and sheets would still smell like Harlot Martin when he got back to the base-camp and it was a beautiful sunny warm wintry day. In the company of these Neanderthals it was like he had been basking in the glory of his heavenly perch when a bunch of trash fell on his head, and he looked up to see these hairy cavemen standing above him sweeping their empty cans and spent cigarette butts off Cloud Ten.
"I got three different kinds of antidepressant, including Paxil," the boy unzipped his backpack and displayed his wares. "And plenty more. Nembutal. Addirall. Whatever you want. But this time it's going to cost ya."
"Like hell," one of the Marines pulled out a long shiny knife.
What the simple-minded boy wanted to do was quote the Rolling Stones' lyrics from "Get Off My Cloud." But he knew they wouldn't get his meaning. What Manchild Elkhart did instead, after he stared every member of the company down, was simply to say: "Don't be stupid."
Even though the Marines were just ribbing him about the government burning Harlot Martin alive, he descended from the crag full of awful premonitions. He wanted to get back as fast as he could and make sure she was still safe and sound. It didn't help his fragile state of mind that the sun was going down and the moon was already visible over the mountain peak behind him. The boy knew once he got to the camp his brother, Johdpur, would calm him down and set him straight again. Maybe the older Elkhart would conclude it wasn't such a good idea after all to send him alone on these dangerous drug runs. But in the meantime he ran down the mountain as fast as he could afraid of every little sound.
"In the news today, a rocket hit the Denver Marriot," Pirate Radio 1 reported. "The night was dark and cold. Regardless of the fact the hotel was walled up like a fortress the rocket smashed into its side with enough force to dig up a massive crater the size of a baseball infield. We tried to interview the concierge, one of the few ground-level survivors who emerged from the wreckage after the explosion. The man was covered in other people's blood and he was an incoherent mess who obviously suffered from the traumatic shock of his experience so our correspondent instead led him directly to the medics...
"In other news," Pirate Radio 1 paused over the feed as if she couldn't believe what she was about to read, "The present Administration is, no kidding, actually considering in all seriousness reinstating the ancient New England Puritan laws that denounced those legally condemned for witchcraft to death by burning or drowning. As we like to say here on Pirate Radio: if you think things are bad now, just wait five minutes! The House votes on the bill early next week. Pirate Radio expects a close vote. If approved, we predict a tighter vote still in the Senate."
--Daniel Mendel-Black, copyright 2009
Sinfry Tittler cried loudly in her crib. The nannybot processed the tone of the baby's scream through its database and concluded she needed her diaper changed. But when the machine checked the child was dry. Sinfry Tittler's screams got louder and the robot once again ran the sound against its databank. This time all indications were that she was hungry. But when it tried to spoon some food into the kid's mouth she spit it right back in the domestic robot's face.
Not knowing nearly drove Udal Tittler insane. She picked up the phone. A man on the other end said great harm would come to her husband if she didn't do exactly as she was told.
Orlando was in lock-down mode. The Chinese Space Center of Florida's inauguration was in a few hours. Premier China Brightstar, herself, was in Cape Canaveral along with a star-studded cast of dignitaries and investors from Dragon States, the United Emirates, Africa, South America, and the Russian Federation.
Udal Tittler stood on her balcony with her telephone pressed up against her ear and desperately looked out over the city. Snipers crouched on every rooftop. Roads were closed. "Even if I try," she spoke into the phone, "I can't get into a car. I can't even walk, or bicycle to the proposed rendezvous."
All the major metropolitan areas surrounding the space center were under siege by Chinese security troops. Newly erected bunkers and roadblocks choked every street. It was impossible to move around. Almost overnight sandbagged armaments and barbed wire fence had sprung up everywhere she looked. A plague of nanodrones patrolled the skies. "Orders are for the entire population to remain indoors until the curfew is lifted," she tried to reason with the kidnapper. "We are all prisoners in our own homes!"
Video cameras and lights were hastily set up. Stirner Tittler III had no choice but to read from his prepared script. Rebel Army soldiers stood behind him brandishing their M-16 automatic rifles. "Our corrupt government is unconstitutional," were the first words he gleaned from his copy of the statement. "The current administration's victory is the product of a tainted election. Ballot boxes were stuffed. Results were fixed. The entire process was mired in fraud."
"Please," Udal Tittler begged the man on the phone. "Even if I could somehow get it to you, we don't have that kind of money. When Wall Street moved NYSE and NASDAQ to off-shore tax-havens in the Cayman Islands and Bahamas we were ruined right along with all the other US investors."
Screams from a baby on the other end of the phone drowned out the mother's voice. "If you don't pay up Mrs. Tittler," the rebel kidnapper tried to talk over the crying child, "We will be forced to take drastic measures, and you know what that means for your husband, Mrs. Tittler, don't you? If you don't come through, he's as good as dead." The kidnapper wasn't sure if she had heard his warning over the noisy baby. "Do you understand me, Mrs. Tittler?"
"It's not like a bomb went off," the young President waved a golden shovel in front of the new Chinese Space Center. The ceremony had begun. Digital cameras 'clicked' in rapid-fire succession. "It's not like an explosion and you can look around afterwards and see all the dead bodies. It's much different than that," he told the press. "Progress happens in excruciating slow-motion."
Stirner Tittler III had trouble reading the next line of the text the Florida Rouge Army Militia cell supplied him. "Free-floating anger, hatred, which has spilled over to..." He struggled to make out the scrawled handwriting. "On the topic... the rise of populism... I'm sorry," he handed the piece of paper back to his nearest captor. "I simply can't make out the last bit."
The blindfolded Stirner Tittler III was packed into a commercial van by his captors. Both of his arms were bound to his midsection with duct tape. At the first stop he heard the kidnappers in the cab up front talk to the Chinese guards in broken Mandarin. He wasn't sure exactly what had transpired, but he figured it must have been a checkpoint somewhere outside of the city. The van was waved through. There was more Chinese banter at the second stop. He heard his name mentioned and the men outside the truck seemed to understand. The kidnappers slid the side-door of the van open and he was walked to another truck. "This is where we get off, Mr. Tittler," was all he was told by the men who had nabbed him outside his Korean franchise the day before.
"You wouldn't dare!" Udal Tittler slammed the receiver down and immediately regretted it. She couldn't do much but pace around the apartment nervously and watch the inauguration ceremony on TV. All the many rows of bleachers almost gave the whole spectacle a stadium-like feel. And as a capper to the event the Chinese were going to launch their first rocket at sundown that evening.
"A great deal of controversy overshadows the festivities," Pirate Radio 1 quipped. "Not only does the day mark the final demise of NASA -- our nation is basically handing over the keys to the new owners -- but what is more, the Chinese Space Program advocates very different ideas about extraterrestrial exploration than does the US. Most significantly, they believe it is far too expensive and inefficient to bring their astronauts back alive. These folks tonight are all scheduled for the deep-space variety of a one-way trip!"
"Will that be all, Mrs.?" The nannybot stood in front of her with baby food smeared all over the plastic visor of its faceplate, but Udal Tittler was too frantic to notice. Instead she stared at the inert phone as if she could will it to ring. She hoped if they just called back maybe she could stall them long enough to think up some plan or other to save her husband.
On television the hundred and fifty astronauts scheduled for the first flight were marched to the Cape Canaveral launch pad, dressed in bright orange jumpsuits.
Something about one of them caught Udal Tittler's attention. She leaned closer to the screen. Something about the way he carried himself struck her as familiar, as if she might have known him, something about the boyish shock of hair that curled over his eyes. She tried to dismiss the idea, but couldn't help but look more closely. The man was hunched forward as he glumly made his way past the camera, but just as he came up to the lens he raised his head. It was her husband! Even though she had only got a passing glimpse of him, she was sure of it. The kidnapper-rat-bastards, it suddenly hit her like a fist square to her stomach, had already sold her husband to the Space Program! She could hardly breath.
"The official news out of Beijing makes it out like the space explorers are all a bunch of happy-go-lucky volunteers and they were forced to turn away droves of American citizens who applied for the first rocket mission," Pirate Radio 1 did her best to temper her scorn. "But we here at Pirate Radio believe that as this story unfolds it will become painfully clear the 'one-way ticket' Space Program is politically motivated. It is now known that almost every single one of the astronauts listed on the final mission roster -- made public only this afternoon -- were previously deemed enemies of one state or another, including, oddly enough, the Territorial Authority of the Rebel Army the US has repeatedly labeled a terrorist stronghold. Frankly, we here at Pirate Radio believe what is going on is that the rogues-list of parties involved are using the maiden voyage to launch unwanted dissidents into outer space."
Udal Tittler couldn't believe her ears. "Murderers! Criminals! All of them, every one, a bunch of cutthroats!" She had never felt so alone in the world. Now it was just her and Sinfry. "Pour me a stiff drink!" she looked around for the nannybot.
Version X of Drone Wars made it abundantly clear any unauthorized intrusion into Cape Canaveral airspace during the rocket launch was illegal. Nevertheless, several suspicious drones were reported in the no-fly zone only moments before the scheduled lift-off. They were on an intercept trajectory with the Space Center. Corporal Ruby Spaulding sat up in his chair. He knew the drill. "Semper Kill!" he saluted the portrait of the young President that hung in his cubicle and quickly punched in the green light scramble alert for Drone War Idol contestants.
"What a mell of a hess," the Corporal thought as he monitored the remote control robot air-war from his desk in an undisclosed warehouse in Nevada. If the Chinese rocket didn't make it off the pad he was going to catch a world of trouble.
--Daniel Mendel-Black, copyright 2009
Daniel Mendel-Black, Painting #137, 2009, oil and acrylic on canvas, 52" x 58"
Daniel Mendel-Black, Wall-Sculpture #6, 2009, acrylic on wood, 22" x 25"
Daniel Mendel-Black, Painting #136, 2009, oil and acrylic on canvas, 38" x 45"
"Our kids don't have clean drinking water! What are you going to do about the sky-rocketing child mortality rate?" Sonora Philemon yelled from the back of a town hall meeting in Albuquerque, New Mexico.
"It's not like blah-blah-blah, the Fed's totally broke, and that's the joke," Senatorial candidate Loudan Rich was thrown off his Republican talking points by the unexpected outburst.
Her stars-and-stripes flag was ripped from her hands by secret service agents who knocked Sonora Philemon to the ground, hogtied her, and led her out of the building.
Despite efforts by local police to beat them down, protesters closed in on the windowless, bunker-like, black angular edifice of the newly erected government sponsored church. Banners and painted cardboard signs read "Down With The Supreme Christian Council of the United States!" and "No To The Death Lottery!" A dark cloud of swarming nanodrones (reportedly subcontracted to Russian Federation prison inmates) menaced the marchers.
Sonora Philemon was arrested and booked along with the tens-of-thousands of others who had protested outside the building. They were all temporarily rendered to a provisional corral set up outside of town.
To an otherwise cheering audience Senatorial candidate Loudan Rich vowed to challenge the young Center-Right President's "Death Lottery". His rallying cry was that the administration's "sweeping historical" legislation was far too liberal. "Social Security, Welfare and Medicare is what got us into this mess!" he pronounced. "Well that's all ancient history. Now the pragmatists have substituted those old entitlement programs with raffle tickets. To win the lottery ya gotta die first and just maybe your number will come up. 'It's better than nothing,' the President says. But we say even after they're dead there ain't no free lunch for dissidents!"
Strip-searches were mandatory for all Federal detainees. Sonora Philemon was ordered to undress, hosed down, and rudely probed by a latex-covered finger. As far as she could make out the only reason was to humiliate her.
"The young administration can relocate their 'New Federal Government' to the Dominican Republic for all we care," Senatorial candidate Loudan Rich sang out before the highly screened audience. "The traitors can run, but they can't hide. The Supreme Council knows where they are!"
Specs for Drone-Wars IX were posted all over the prison camp. It clearly stated that hits on Federal detainees were worth Drone-War Idol "Bonus Points". Arrested protesters sat outside their tents and tried as best they could to make light conversation, weary of the constant buzz of the circling drones.
"Not now, not ever!" Senatorial candidate Loudan Rich proclaimed to the cheering town hall crowd. "The Far-Christian-Right position is: 'No Death Lottery for illegals and insurgents!' I will fight it all the way to Capitol Hill!"
"Everyone dies sooner or later don't they?" a slight man who introduced himself as Charlie Frost tried to rationalize the policy. He sat next to Sonora Philemon outside the prison tent. "That's just a plain fact ain't it? Now the country's gone bust, we can't expect the government to keep folks alive for living longer than they are productive members of the economy, can we?" He lit a cigarette. "My great aunt was one of the first lottery winners. The government buried her in style in a huge mausoleum. Her family is set for life!"
Some effort was required on her part, but Senora Philemon bit her tongue. It seemed to her that mainstream, corporate media's "either/or" version of reportage was some kind of weird enabler for crackpots like Charlie Frost. "I put my numbers in at the local convenience store on my way to the town-hall-meeting," she offered the gaunt man blankly. "I heard no one had won for the last three weeks going and the prize was up to twelve billion dollars."
In the prison pen nanodrones were worse than horseflies. "Worse than skeeters," the skeletal Charlie Frost complained. The remote control bugs took pictures of everyone in the dissident holding area and transmitted the information back to National Intelligence Agency servers. The information was in turn coded, filed, and published on the Internet so that Predator Drone gamers could easily isolate those deemed preferential high-value targets by the government from the rest of the rabble. Senora Philemon swatted at one particular electronic insect to no avail. No matter how often she waved the metal bug away, it came back and hovered within inches of her face.
To everyone 's dismay Charlie Frost took a hard drag from his cigarette and coughed: "I think Loudan Rich is going to be our next Senator. For one he's got the money. Besides he ain't got no truck with illigels. He says they shouldn't get a dime from the Death Lottery and I sure gotta agree with that reasoning. I think he's gonna bring the current administration down on account of their soft position on insurgents."
"Radical-Right-Wingers were the ones who lobbied for the Death Lottery in the first place!" another much younger man in the circle blurted out. "You make it sound like a Center-Right bill, but the Right-Wingers were the ones who pushed it through. Now you want to blame the Administration for the holes in your own maniac legislation! "
You would never have thought by looking at her that the delicate looking homely woman who sat next to the young man had it in her, but she twisted her mouth up and blared out: "It sickens me we gotta do everything by the lottery. The Right says it's Christian, but this ain't no Christian way to go about saving folks. 'Landmark Health Legislation', what a lark, the Center-Right and the Far Right can take a swim. It's usury, gambling, and money worship pure and simple!"
"Now I wouldn't mind a solid gold headstone, " the young man played it like he was reasonable, "but them death worshippers on Capitol Hill," he about faced and angrily pounded the dust out of his hat, "just want to make everything good in this old world illegal -- including and especially life itself!"
Everyone knew it was just a matter of time before the drones swooped in. And eventually they did wipe out the camp -- for most Drone-War Idol contestants the extra points were simply too tempting and easy to pass up. But before the Hellfire missiles were let loose on the tent city, Charlie Frost raised himself up on the two wobbly pins he had for legs, pulled out a silver pistol as long as his lower arm and heavy enough so he had to hold it with both hands to keep it steady, and fired directly into the group of folks huddled around the tent. Bodies flew backwards like so many rag dolls. He later turned the gun on himself and, with one single shot, blew off the entire right side of his head. Senora Philemon was among the dead. She left behind a husband and child.
"Eyewitnesses claimed the man yelled out, 'Praise the Lord' just before he opened fire on his fellow inmates," Pirate Radio 1 railed. "Afterwards it was officially revealed the gunman was a well-known psychotic religious fundamentalist. The government purposely planted him in the prison camp. Military brass and FBI -- clearly evidenced by internal memoranda -- were well aware of Charlie Frost's zealous beliefs and his fragile state of mental health. They knew he was a suicidal, ticking bomb. It was simply a matter of time before he went off the rails and did something crazy. To them the lunatic was a potential weapon, and the decision was made that the man could best serve the government if he was separated from the population at large and placed among dissident inmates to stir up trouble. Maybe, officials glibly figured, he would take out some enemy insurgents before he killed himself. Unfortunately, they were right.
"On a side-note," Pirate Radio 1 added. "Loudan Rich narrowly won his bid for a Senatorial seat in New Mexico, but has since been implicated in the prison scandal."
--Daniel Mendel-Black, copyright 2009
Burned out vehicles were piled up on the freeway like so much metal carnage. Rain drizzled lightly. The blackened wreckage ahead of them glinted in the car's headlights. Iris d'Mint told the girls to look away as they passed what was left of a Dodge Minivan. The charred remains of a family of five sat exactly as they had at the moment of the drone attack.
But Rainbow d'Mint peeked out the window just as they passed the next car. The dead driver's face was pressed up against the window, disfigured by flame like the most terrifying fright-mask imaginable. She screamed at the top of her lungs and buried her head in her lap.
"These people were just trying to get out of 'Dodge' after the missile attacks," Wilson d'Mint told his wife. "They were just trying to get out of town, and escape north to Mississippi, just like us." The family was headed to Snake's Head where Iris had relatives. Wilson d'Mint slowly drove their old Buick along the shoulder of the interstate. It took them more than an hour to get past the massacred exodus.
"Last week's Drone-War Idol winner is a Canary Island youth who lives just off Generalissimo Franco Blvd.," Pirate Radio 1 dejectedly confirmed. The signal was weak. Iris d'Mint tried to tune her in better. "He was awarded extra points for his ambush of what officials are calling the single most successful strike against illegals in this country's history. According to Top Cop Stalker Flogum this could be the 'turning point' in our nation's war on terror."
"Try telling that to the surviving family members," Iris d'Mint cried out. "I dare you!"
"All we know about Tardif Disconesia is he is the youngest son of an infamous expatriate Greek painter who apparently had to leave the country on account of his outspoken Fascist political views," Pirate Radio 1's spirits seemed to pick up a bit.
"Version VIII brags that other countries around the globe have adopted the same drone policy as the US. Combined with the Snake's Tail Massacre on I-30 in Arkansas, Tardif Disconesia was also credited for a major takedown of anti-government farmers protesting in Lisbon, Portugal and an entire wedding party of striking Unionists in Manchester, England. The last two targets effectively put him 'over the top' in last week's round. According to Drone-War Idol Cable Network post-game analysis, he is 'well ahead' of his nearest rival in the competition."
"Them Drone-War Idol contestants should all be made to come here to the good ol' US-of-A," Iris d'Mint hissed and rolled down her window to let the cool breeze in. "The crowd would tear them apart. There ain't no form of punishment too harsh for them!"
A Stuckey's Pecan Log Roll they picked up back in Arkadelphia was unwrapped and passed back to the girls in the backseat who reached out for it with happy smiles. The highway death-scene several dozen miles back seemed forgotten. Both girls tore off chunks of sweet bread and chewed with abandon like nothing had ever happened. Wilson and his wife looked at each other and let out a sigh of relief.
Something about "how the last administration were 'war criminals' in foreign policy and the young administration are 'war criminals' on the domestic front" was the last thing he heard Pirate Radio 1 say before Wilson d'Mint leaned forward and turned off the radio.
The girls had a little portable electronic media player in the backseat. Rainbow was older by almost three years. Her baby sister liked to watch whatever she liked.
They knew better than to linger on Drone-War Idol. Rainbow flipped past it and paused on HitList. Tonight was the Rebel Network premier. Ever since Drone-War Idol was hacked the rogue army vowed to go after the leading contestants and "bring them back for justice". It was the show's catchphrase. The program consisted of an ex-Navy Seal, and a retired Special Forces Green Beret who had become disillusioned with the government's policies. The camera crew followed them to secret meetings and stakeouts. A different top Drone-War Idol contestant was targeted every week. They traveled all over the world. So far, for the show's big opener, they managed to locate last week's big winner.
The drizzle finally let up as Wilson d'Mint passed through the bombed out husk of Little Rock and got on the I-40 Northbound.
"Tardif Disconesia can't make a move without HitList 's knowledge. They have his apartment staked out 24/7," Rainbow shouted from the back of the car. She bounced up and down on her seat. "They got him trapped in his parent's apartment."
"When we 'clean' the target all the evidence gets wiped out," Hunter Beafheart warned the ex-Navy Seal during the trailer: the two were seated on a bench by the harbor, seagulls circled overhead. It was sage advice from a hardened operative and the language was cryptic enough to suggest that the information was key to the success of the mission.
In the next scene agents were staked out in front of Tardif Disconesia's apartment. "Somebody just opened a window," Rainbow yelled out. "Subject is home," the crackle of a disembodied voice confirmed. Another agent in the surveillance van parked across the street from the apartment building declared he had the subject's "vehicle "in site. It was a bicycle. A camera zoomed in on the shiny spokes of the front wheel.
"Target is on the move," another excited voice announced through a walky-talky.
Both sisters watched the boy exit the building and jump into a waiting taxicab. "He doesn't look like much," Rainbow frowned. "Just a dumb boy, like all the other dumb boys I've ever seen."
As soon as Tardif Disconesia was inside the cab it took off down the narrow street at a high rate of speed. The stakeout vehicle followed in hot pursuit. But the van was no match for the cab. It shot the gap of a side street, darted into an alleyway, and merged into the traffic of the busy boulevard at the other end. Eventually the HitList cameras lost site of it. The show was over. Tardif Disconesia was still on the loose. "Darn it!" Rainbow pouted. She was frustrated. Her little sister and her would have to wait a whole other week to find out what happened.
Maybe it was irrational, but Iris d'Mint felt a little more relaxed once they crossed over to Mississippi. She told the girls to try and get some sleep. Her brother's place was still a few hours away.
--Daniel Mendel-Black, copyright 2009
