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InterText Vol 03 No 01
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InterText Vol. 3, No. 1 / January-February 1993
===============================================
Contents
FirstText: 1993 -- For a Limited Time Only........Jason Snell
Short Fiction
Slime_.............................................Mark Smith_
Doing Lunch_.......................................Mark Smith_
Timespooks (and bit parts)_................Stan Kulikowski II_
Sweet Peppers_....................................Aviott John_
Dogbreath_.....................................Robert Hurvitz_
....................................................................
Editor Assistant Editor
Jason Snell Geoff Duncan
jsnell@etext.org gaduncan@halcyon.com
....................................................................
Send subscription requests, story submissions,
and correspondence to intertext@etext.org
....................................................................
InterText Vol. 3, No. 1. InterText (ISSN 1071-7676) is published
electronically on a bi-monthly basis. Reproduction of this
magazine is permitted as long as the magazine is not sold
(either by itself or as part of a collection) and the entire
text of the issue remains intact. Copyright 1993, 1994 Jason
Snell. Individual stories Copyright 1993 by their original
authors.
....................................................................
FirstText: 1993 -- for a Limited Time Only by Jason Snell
============================================================
Welcome to 1993, and this year's first issue of InterText. The
time between our last issue of 1992 and this one has been filled
with lots of excitement for the people who bring you this
magazine.
For my part, I've spent the obscene amount of vacation time
given to students at UC Berkeley (six weeks) to meet up with old
friends, spending a good deal of time in Southern California --
lots of it in my old stomping grounds of San Diego. In fact,
almost none of this issue was put together in Berkeley. The bulk
of the work was done at my parents' house (and lots of that,
including the redesign of the PostScript edition, on Christmas
Eve) and in San Diego, where I've put together many an issue in
the past.
Among the people I've seen in the past two months is Philip
Michaels, author of "Your Guide to High School Hate," the lead
story of the May-June issue of _InterText_. I saw Philip twice,
once in December (in his hometown of Danville) and once in
January (in San Diego).
Danville, the northern California town from whence Philip came,
is an interesting place. It's a somewhat insular city that
values its near-rural identity even though more people probably
live within its city limits than lived in the entire county I
grew up in. When entering Danville, you're greeted with a sign
announcing you've crossed the "town limit," not the city limits
you see everywhere else.
I remembered an article about Danville that Philip had written
about his home in an issue of the _UCSD Guardian_ newspaper
while I was still the paper's editor in chief. In it, he
explained how the town elders had refused to allow a McDonald's
to be built because it might bring "the wrong element" into the
town.
As we drove through Danville and the surrounding (increasingly
high-priced) countryside, Philip and I spotted something on the
right side of the road. Could it be? Indeed, as Michaels let out
a whoop, I saw the sign: "Here We Grow Again!" and a pair of
familiar golden arches. McDonald's and its hideous double-whammy
(the presence of both "the wrong element" and McRib for a
limited time only) had come to Danville.
From there we took a tour through more of Philip's past --
namely, his high school, the very high school which spawned
Philip's hateful and appropriately-titled "High School Hate"
piece. It was fascinating to actually see the edifice that had
spawned such loathing, and an _InterText_ story.
Anyway, it was a fun trip through a friend's life while at the
same time being a trip through old issues of both the _Guardian_
and _InterText_.
Also in the past couple of months, I was one of four students at
UC Berkeley's School of Journalism to be awarded a _Reader's
Digest_ Excellence in Journalism award. For this, I got a nice
chunk of free money and a trip in the spring to Pleasantville,
New York, home of _Reader's Digest_. When I go, which will be in
March or April, I'll be sure to give them your best.
This has also been a busy period for Geoff Duncan, _InterText_'s
assistant editor. Geoff, now relocated to Seattle from his
previous hang-out in Ohio, just got a job with Microsoft as a
software tester. So now he delights me with stories of just how
many bugs there actually are in all my favorite pieces of
software. But I keep on using them...
Geoff and his fiancee also finally moved into a new apartment in
Bellvue, Washington, a short walk (on Geoff's injured toe) from
Microsoft itself. Because his fiancee was visiting family in
Boston when the apartment opened, Geoff (and his toe) got to
move all of their stuff into the new apartment by himself.
And yet, with all of this excitement, Geoff has continued to
contribute greatly to the production of _InterText_. He took my
Christmas Eve redesign of the PostScript edition and amplified
it, and also worked with me on redesigning the look of the ASCII
version of _InterText_.
All the while, Geoff is also working on creating a viable reader
program that would make on-screen reading of _InterText_ a lot
easier for those with Apple Macintoshes (since Geoff and I use
Macs, that seems a good place to start.) More word on all that
in issues to come.
And, finally, in the shower at home in December, I had yet
another idea for the special "theme issue" of _InterText_ that I
mentioned briefly a couple of issues ago. Though not off the
drawing board yet, I have high hopes that we'll be able to bring
you that issue by the end of the year. We shall see. It will
depend on the cooperation of lots of _InterText_ writers out
there.
Well, enough from me. This issue rounds out our second year of
publication, and I think it contains some fine material. We have
two more stories from Mark Smith, a published writer from Texas
who has appeared in the past two issues. This issue's lead
story, "Slime," really struck me as an amusing story about
mid-life crises, the changing roles we play as we get older, and
rock and roll.
We're also printing "Timespooks" by Stan Kulikowski II, a new
writer. Stan's story came to me on Christmas Eve (right before
my redesign frenzy), and I really enjoyed reading it. It's one
of the oddest stories I've ever read, and Stan helped explain
why when he wrote me that it was almost entirely based on a
dream he had on the night of Oct. 27, 1992. Stan's been
recording his dreams after waking up for some time, and it's a
good thing too -- without those records, we wouldn't have
"Timespooks."
Enjoy the stories. See you back here in 60 days.
Slime by Mark Smith
======================
Slime's gaining on me. I know he'll catch up in a minute or two.
I can hear his heels clicking on the sidewalk behind me. In a
few seconds I'll hear his wheezing, labored breathing. Then
he'll be here, begging me to go back and finish the set so he
can get paid. Maybe then I can do what I should have done when
he first proposed this fool's errand. Maybe for once I can tell
Slime no.
I stop walking and turn around to watch him run toward me down
the sidewalk beside the VFW hall. He's dressed the same as me:
faded jeans frayed and torn at the knees, black boots, zippered
leather motorcycle jacket, studded leather wristband, the whole
punk rock wardrobe. The only difference between Slime's clothes
and mine are that he's been wearing his ever since we had our
last gig, at least ten years ago.
On his skinny, weathered face, he's grinning his usual winning,
boyish grin. He flashed the very same smile when he showed up at
my house last week, clutching the handle of his old bass guitar
case, proposing that we revive the band.
I was glad to see Slime; it had been a while. I led him through
my house out into the den, passing Sandy in the kitchen on our
way. I could tell she wasn't pleased. She barely mustered a nod
to answer Slime's "Hey, howsit goin'?" Slime, of course, didn't
notice the dark, sideways glance she threw me.
She could've talked me out of agreeing to Slime's scheme. She's
much more sensible than me. She remembered the last time Slime
came around. It was around Christmas about two years back. I
don't remember the hour, but it was well after the kids were in
bed. Slime called from a truck stop phone booth.
He was on his way from Houston to L.A., where his folks live. I
talked to him quietly, hoping Sandy wouldn't hear. But when I
hung up, all she said was, "How much does he want?"
I told her and she frowned. It wasn't the sum. We could easily
afford it. I knew that she was justifiably troubled at how
easily I gave in to Slime.
I had no stomach to pretend we'd ever see the money again and
Sandy didn't say another word. She understood that helping Slime
was neither an act of generosity nor of compromise. It was
friendship and mutual history pure and simple, a natural order
of things no more subject to question than gravity.
Slime showed up, got the money and stayed long enough not to
seem rude -- which was too long for Sandy's taste -- and split.
He promised he'd stop by on his way back to Houston after the
holidays and meet my kids. I said I'd like that. That was the
last I had heard from him.
I could understand Sandy's reaction to seeing Slime stroll back
into our lives, but I had spent a particularly gladiatorial day
in the bowels of the legal profession. I needed the antidote of
an old friend.
Slime was wearing his usual collection of leathers and zippers
and his hair still arched over his head in a jet-black crest
like the outlandish topknot of a bizarre tropical bird. As he
sat tapping his knee and bouncing his heel on the carpet, I
could see that he hadn't lost any of the excited nervous energy
that oscillated between creativity and a bad hustle. Whatever
the case, Slime's humming energy level attracted people and
tended to make them do things that they didn't mean to.
"Hey, man," I said. "Here you are."
"Yeah," he said, grinning, bobbing his head. "Good to see you."
"You look good. You ever eat?"
"No," said Slime, "as a matter of fact, I get my calories in
beer."
"I get the hint," I said, and went to get us two bottles of beer
out of the mini-fridge we keep in the den for Super Bowl parties
and the like.
"Stylin'," said Slime, looking around appreciatively at the
room. The den is cedar-paneled and opens through French doors
out to the hot tub bubbling on the deck. I could tell he thought
it looked pretty good. Probably compared to his one-room
efficiency digs, I live the high life. The way I figure it, I
deserve it, the shit I have to put up with.
"I try," I said.
"I remember this house," he said. "Doin' all right. Big-time
lawyer."
"Not so big, Slime. I just do my job well. Actually, I have to
put up with a lot of crap."
Slime winced. "Ooh, no. I couldn't do it, man. No way. I don't
do real well in the, like, office scene. I was doin' temp stuff
for a while. I thought, whoa, get some, like, income, man. You
know, cash flow. But it was not cool at all. The first thing
they made me do was cut my hair and get some new clothes. You
wouldn't have known me, Phil. Anyway, I couldn't hack it. I went
back to driving a delivery truck. That's more my type of deal."
We sat on the leather sofa, sipped our beer and talked about the
frat parties we'd played where the sons and daughters of Texas
oil millionaires puked out their brains in the shrubbery while
we ripped through our ten-thousandth cover of "Louie Louie."
About our one abortive "tour" when we went on the road in
Slime's old VW van playing bars in Dallas, Fort Worth, Tulsa and
then back down to Houston. When it was all over, we had made
about $50 each and felt lucky at that.
"So tell me about this gig," I said.
Slime's face lit up. "Aw, it's golden, man. Really golden. Rich
guy's throwing a birthday bash for his son this coming Saturday.
He's rented the friggin' VFW hall, man. Bandstand and
everything. Found out about it from a friend of mine. I said,
hey, great, I'm gonna get the old band back together. I been
wantin' to see you guys anyway."
"What about Damon?" I asked. Damon had been our drummer, the
third member of the group. I had completely lost track of Damon
and didn't even know if he was in town anymore.
"He's in, man. Definitely. I talked to him today."
Well, that was something. I thought I'd like to see Damon again
and I found the thought of the old band doing a gig together
appealing. I missed the exhilaration I used to feel when I
jumped onto even the meanest stage and started yelling the words
to our favorite songs. I felt office work progressively
weakening me, making me soft, sleepy. I looked at Slime, who
hadn't changed a hair in ten years. I stared down at the shiny
red, black and silver band stickers that covered the case of his
instrument which lay like a hip coffin on the deep pile of my
den.
"So we just run through the old lineup?" I said. "Is that it?"
"Yeah, the stuff the kids will like. Some Stones, Elvis. They'll
even go for some New Wave tunes: Heads, B-52s. And some of the
hot soul stuff."
"Right," I said, starting to remember our old repertoire: "Land
of a 1,000 Dances," "Nobody," "96 Tears." We may have been pot-
smoking meatheads, but we knew how to control a crowd. We could
move them through escalating layers of excitement from Doors to
Stones to hard-rocking classics like "Party Doll," "Devil with a
Blue Dress On," and "C.C. Rider." We'd slow down for "Sweet
Jane" to give the crowd time to catch their breath and then we'd
power through a finale of "Paint it Black," "Gloria," and "Good
Golly Miss Molly."
Now I wondered if I could even find the chords on the guitar
anymore, much less manage to make my fingers do those old
contortions.
"So, are we on?" said Slime with a kind of halfway smirk.
I hesitated. Sandy was right. I had no business doing the gig. I
had a wife and kids who depended on me. I had a job and
responsibilities. I didn't know if I could play the songs or if
I still had my voice. Add to that my old certainty that any
venture with Slime was doomed from the outset. I had every
reason in the world to say no.
"We're on," I said.
When Slime had gone, my kids, who had been spying on us from a
safe distance, came into the living room. Jenny, the oldest, who
is seven, said, "Daddy, who was that man?"
"His name is Slime," I said blandly.
Jenny cocked her head to one side, letting her long hair fall to
her left shoulder. She smiled a wide, toothless grin at me.
"Slime?" she squeaked in a falsetto of disbelief. "That's really
his name?"
"He's an old friend of mine."
Joshua, the two-year-old, decked out in Osh Kosh overalls and
socks with gumball machines on them, mimicked his big sister:
"'lime?"
"How much did you give him?" said my wife, still standing by the
front door.
"Nothing," I said, jamming my hands deep into my pockets and
hunching my shoulders. "He wants to get the band together."
Sandy's fine blue eyes got wide, then narrowed. Jenny said,
"What band, Daddy?"
"We used to be in a band together."
"I don't believe this," said Sandy, cocking a fist against her
hip.
"Really? A real band?" chirped Jenny. "Like New Kids On The
Block?"
"Well, not exactly," I said.
"Band, band, band," said Joshua, rolling over to grab my leg.
Instinctively, Sandy reached down and scooped him up in her
arms.
"What was your band called, Daddy?"
"That's enough," interrupted Sandy. She set Joshua back down on
the floor. "Take Joshua and go and wash your hands for dinner."
"O-o-kay," sighed Jenny as she led her brother out of the room.
When they had gone, I said, "What was that all about?"
"I can just see Jenny at school: 'My daddy was in a cool band
called the Sex Offenders!'"
"I see your point," I said.
I promised Slime I would come to his place to practice during
the week before our date, but things got crazy at work. One of
the senior partners, a pompous asshole named Cramer who thinks
he's important because he worked with Edward Bennett Williams in
New York when he was in his twenties, dumped a load on me. Smack
in the middle of a twelve-million dollar lawsuit that he had
been preparing for two years, he decided to skip off to Florida
for three days and go marlin fishing with some cohort who owned
a yacht. He told the client he was ill and turned the case over
to his assistant who, in turn, needed a second chair. Cramer
recommended me. For this I was supposed to be grateful except
that it meant staying at the office until after ten o'clock for
three nights straight planning the redirect of a hostile
witness.
I didn't see my kids from Wednesday morning until Saturday.
Of course, that did little to soften Sandy up to the idea of my
playing with the band. I cared about her anger, but there wasn't
much I could do. I had given Slime my word.
On Friday evening when I finally got home, I ate a cold supper
and headed up to the attic where I dug my guitar case out from
under a pile of toys my kids had outgrown. I schlepped the thing
down into the den, cracked a beer and sat down on the sofa,
laying the case on the floor at my feet. I snicked open the
silver clips and lifted the lid. There, nestled in its crushed
red velvet couch, lay my old Fender Stratocaster, as sleek as a
'55 T-bird, as modern as the Chrysler Building. Looking at the
guitar, I felt the old times wash around me like a tide.
I remembered buying the thing when I was still in high school
and spending hours learning songs off my records. I learned to
play songs by the Velvet Underground and a lot of stuff by Iggy
and the Stooges. I liked the old fifties and sixties stuff too,
garage band stuff like Sam the Sham and the Pharaohs, ? and the
Mysterians, Mitch Ryder, Chuck Berry, and, of course, lots of
Elvis. I liked songs with an edge. I liked the mean Stones
songs: "Stupid Girl" and "Under My Thumb" and "Get Offa My
Cloud."
I met Slime after I had started college and we immediately
wanted to start a band. We needed a drummer and put a card up in
the Laundromats around campus that said "drummer wanted for rock
band" or some such and had my phone number on little pre-cut,
pull-off pieces on the bottom. After about a week, Damon called.
He was quiet, the odd man out, but he could play the drums like
the devil himself: loud and fast and he never missed a beat.
I put my hand around the neck, lifted it out of the case and set
it on my knee. The guitar felt natural in my hands. Before I
knew it, I was finding the chords to "Sweet Little Sixteen."
Without amplification, the metal strings sounded tinny and
distant, but my fingering was surprisingly good.
Just then I happened to glance down in the case and noticed a
something I hadn't before . It was a Sex Offenders sticker that
I had completely forgotten about over the years. Damon, the
artist in the group, had done a black and white drawing of a
hunchbacked old coot in an overcoat leering over his shoulder.
The text was done in lettering that seemed to be bleeding or
melting. I reached down and picked up the sticker. We must have
had thousands of these at one time. We gave them away to
friends, people who came to the concerts, bartenders, whoever.
They ended up all over town on lamp posts, car bumpers, backs of
traffic signs. At the time, the sticker represented to us the
reality of the group. To run across one by accident around town
was a rush. It meant someone out there was paying attention.
They were proof that we were having an effect. It occurred to me
that I hadn't had that sort of proof in years.
I became aware of someone behind me and I turned to see Sandy
leaning in the doorway, smiling at me in spite of herself.
"You with your guitar," she said. "I haven't seen that for
awhile."
I blushed like I'd been caught with a love letter from an old
flame in my hands. I wanted to say something, but I didn't know
what.
Sandy came and sat on the sofa next to me. She put an arm around
my back and said, "I didn't think I'd have to worry about a
mid-life crisis for a while."
"Is that what it seems like to you?"
"A little," she said.
"Well, I don't know," I said. "If that means I'm afraid of
getting old, well, I've been afraid of that for years. I guess
that's part of it, but it's more." Sandy furrowed her brow at
me. I could tell she didn't understand or didn't believe me.
"When we had the band, I felt like I was doing something that
people appreciated in their own twisted, anti-appreciative way.
People would actually pay us to play. Bartenders gave us free
drinks. Girls thought we were cool. And when we played, that was
something you can't understand if you haven't done it. It sounds
weird to say it, but it was the closest I've ever come to real
power. We could get people worked up. Make them dance. I lost
something when I stopped being in the band and I've never gotten
it back."
Sandy grinned a little and said, "Well, then, I guess you have
to do it."
I grinned back. I thought, maybe this thing might go all right
after all.
It didn't.
First off, neither Slime nor Damon were anywhere around when I
arrived at the VFW hall. I found the place on the near east side
of town just beyond the interstate in a warehouse district that
had lately become gentrified. A greasy near-rain had been
falling all day and the sparsely filled parking lot glistened
menacingly in the failing light of dusk. Inside, the hall had
been decorated with crepe paper and balloons and at one end
there was a bandstand set up. I set my guitar on the stage and
walked back toward the door where some caterers who looked
Vietnamese or Korean dressed in white chefs' outfits complete
with puffy hats were setting out trays of food on a long table
covered with gleaming white linen. I asked one of the men if
they had seen a guy with long hair and a leather jacket. He
scowled at me like I had tasted the crab dip with my finger and
shook his head. I wandered away.
I sat on the edge of the stage and waited for Slime. After about
half an hour, a raunchy looking dude with sunglasses and a beard
and mustache walked in the door. He took off his shades and
squinted around the room like the dim light hurt his eyes. He
headed straight for the bandstand.
"Are you Slime?" he said without a smile or a prologue.
"No, I'm Phil."
"Glad to meet you, Phil," he said. "My name is Mike. I'm the
drummer."
The drummer? But where was Damon? Then my brain engaged. Slime
had used a reunion to get me in. No doubt he had tried the same
trick with Damon with less success. After all, Damon had always
shown a little better sense dealing with Slime than I had.
"Give me a hand with my gear?" he said.
"Right," I said and followed him out into the rain. Mike's
vehicle turned out to be a late model Ford van with a dazzling
purple, metal-flake paint job.
I thought, this guy is doing all right for himself.
We made two trips out to bring in the drums. Once we were back
inside, Mike went to work arranging his equipment on the stage
with the precision and confidence of a professional. He paused
at one point and said, "You got a cigarette on you?"
I gave him one and took one for myself. I struck a match and lit
his and then mine. He said, "So you were in that band with
Slime?"
"Yeah. It was a long time ago."
"The Sex somethings?"
"The Sex Offenders," I said.
"Punk shit, right?"
"Well, mainly covers," I said defensively. "But we did a few
originals when we could."
"I hated that punk new wave shit," he said with an end-of-
discussion tone of voice. "I'm glad that shit's dead."
"So what do you play?" I asked.
"Jazz," Mike sniffed with the smug air of the first chair viola
at the Philharmonic.
"Great," I said flatly.
By the time Slime arrived, the stage was set up and Mike had
smoked all my cigarettes. I was in a sour mood.
"Great!" clucked Slime when he saw that we were set up. He put
his bass on the edge of the bandstand and started taking it out
of the case.
"Right," I said. "Great." I was annoyed and I wanted Slime to
know it, though I wasn't sure what I hoped to gain from him
knowing.
"So what happened to Damon?" I asked.
"Aw, Damon couldn't make it, man. He, like, he canceled out."
I stifled a snarl. "Was he ever in?" I said.
Slime stopped mid-motion in the act of plugging his bass into
the amplifier. "What's that supposed to mean, Philly?" he said.
"Nothing," I said. "Forget it."
"No, man. Say it. You think I lied to you about Damon to get you
to play."
I glanced at Mike, who stood to the side of the stage, smoking.
He wasn't looking at us, but I could tell he was listening. I
said, "No. Forget it. I'm just tired out. It's been a long week.
I don't really care if Damon plays or not."
Slime grinned. Happy as usual to seize on the merest of excuses
to be upbeat.
"That's cool," he said. "And, hey. Mike's a bitchin' drummer."
"I'm sure he is," I said dryly.
Slime's bass hung from his neck by a broad, rainbow-colored
macrame strap.
"Hey, guys, the joint's filling up," he said, fiddling with the
volume button on the red body of his bass.
I looked around. Sure enough, the hall was starting to fill up
with teenagers in hard shoes and brand new dress clothes: boys
laughing nervously and girls standing very still. I felt my
colon tighten. For the first time, it hit me that I had no idea
what kind of music these kids liked. I hadn't listened to the
radio in years. I couldn't name three bands on any top ten
chart.
"Hey, Slime," I said. "What are we going to play anyway?"
"Only the best stuff," he grinned with his hands out, palms up
in a what else? kind of gesture. "Only our very best
repper-twar."
We started playing at nine o'clock sharp. The place was pretty
much filled up and none of the kids were paying the slightest
attention to us. I couldn't tell which one was the guest of
honor nor were there any adults around to speak of other than
the caterers.
We started with a shaky version of the old Human Beinz song
"Nobody" which drew about the same reaction as a two degree
change in the thermostat. We followed that by kicking into a
version of "Sweet Jane," which started out all right except that
I forgot the words and had to sing the second verse twice. No
one was paying attention. The hum of crowd talk had increased
just enough to drown us out. My only indication that we were
making any sound at all was that I could see the needles on the
amplifier bounce every time Mike pounded on his drums. The crowd
huddled around the edge of the gaping dance floor like a
poolside party in January.
Slime said, "_Jailhouse Rock_," but I said "No, _Heartbreak
Hotel_." I was encouraged to see a few heads nod in the crowd.
They had heard about Elvis, at least. In my frame of mind, I
found it easy to put some effort into the spectral, vaguely
suicidal lyrics. I even managed to balance on my toes while
kicking my knees out into a wobbling hula-hoop dance step worthy
of the King himself. Slime said, "Whoa, dude," but the only
reaction I could see in the crowd were a few smirks.
A pretty girl wearing a low-cut green party gown with eyes to
match came to the edge of the stage and said, "Do you know any
Guns 'n' Roses songs?"
I looked at her and said, "Sorry," and believe me, I was. She
shrugged her shoulders and went away.
We played two or three more songs to similar responses. The kids
were getting bored. Knots of kids stood around the edge of the
vacant dance floor successfully ignoring my first cover of "96
Tears" in 10 years. When I said we were going to take a five
minute break, no one looked too disappointed.
I went outside and stood by myself looking at the cars in the
parking lot.
I took out my last cigarette. The door opened and Slime and Mike
came out.
"Got another smoke?" said Mike.
"No," I barked.
"How're we doin'?" said Slime.
"We suck," I said.
"Huh?" said Slime. "You're not into this? I'm thinkin' this is
cool, us jammin' together again. Runnin' through the old tunes."
"It's not like old times, Slime," I said. "It's new times and
these kids are into a whole different bunch of songs by bands we
never heard of."
"Phil's right," said Mike. "This gig's not happening."
Slime looked confused. I allowed him a scant moment of
compassion.
"Well, then. What do we do?" he said.
"Do you guys know any Jane's Addiction songs or Jesus Jones or
Guns 'n' Roses? Because this golden oldie shit is not working."
Slime shook his head. Mike looked bored.
"Here's what we do," I said. "We try some of our originals."
Slime perked up. "You mean the Sex Offenders stuff?" he said.
"Why not?"
Mike groaned, but Slime nodded his head and said, "Wicked!"
"Let's go," I said.
We went back inside, got settled on the stage and crashed into a
screaming version of "Kill the Rich." What happened next was
like one of those old Alan Freed movies where the band at the
prom finally gets sick of playing Strauss waltzes and starts
rocking and the kids go wild and the parents get nervous at
first and then they start twisting too. The atmosphere in the
room suddenly snapped into place. The kids looked up from their
punch and stopped talking. A couple jigged onto the dance floor
and then another and a third and before I knew it, there were a
good number of dancers. I felt myself start to relax for the
first time in days. Maybe we could salvage this thing after all.
We finished "Kill the Rich" and launched into "I Hate This
Town." I could feel the old energy returning along with my
confidence. More kids went onto the dance floor and gyrated to
the pounding beat. I ripped harder into the lyrics and started
pacing the stage and shouting into the microphone like James
Brown.
I caught a glimpse of the caterers who were suddenly standing
beside deserted chafing dishes, arms folded, shaking their
heads.
We jumped into "I Want To Sleep With You" without so much as a
sixteenth note's pause between songs. I glanced at Slime who had
a big, shit-eating grin on his face, but Mike looked like he was
struggling to keep up. We were cooking. I felt the last ten
years of office burden detach itself and float away from me like
a dandelion fluff.
Just then, I heard someone calling my name, yelling in fact:
"Phil! Phil!" I thought it must be Slime and I turned to look at
him, but he only grinned back.
That's when I looked down and saw, of all people, the most
unlikely and unexpected face in the world: Cramer, the senior
partner in my law firm. He glared up at me with a mixture of
disbelief and embarrassment. His sunburned face strained out of
his starched collar.
"Phil," he said. "What the fuck are you doing up there?" He
seemed as confused as I was. I had stopped playing and Slime and
Mike petered out behind me.
"What am I doing?" I said. "What are you doing here?" Though I
thought I already knew.
"This is my daughter's 16th birthday party. She's the one with
the green dress on." I looked over at the girl he motioned to,
the same one who had asked for Guns 'n' Roses.
"Pretty," I said.
"Do you mean to say that you play in this band?" said Cramer,
still unclear of the situation or what it meant about me one way
or the other.
"Yes sir," I said. "Slime and I used to play together in a band
called--" I paused. "Well, never mind."
"I'll be damned. My second chair is a punk rocker."
"Substitute second chair," I said. "Well, do you like it? The
music?"
"No. It stinks," said Cramer. He glanced around at the teens on
the dance floor and added, "but the kids seem to like it."
"Okay," I said, forcing a grin, though Cramer wasn't smiling. I
didn't like that. I wished he would crack a smile. I could tell
he didn't know what to say, what to make of my being there. I
figured by Monday morning he'd have made up his mind. I would
spend a nervous weekend until then.
Cramer nodded curtly and disappeared. I managed to croak out two
or three more songs, but the energy had left me and where I had
felt the old power again, now I only felt a tightening in my
gut.
I turned back toward Slime who was grinning like Joshua when I
take him for ice cream. "I'm through," I said.
Slime yelped something at me I didn't hear and I was out of the
building by the time he got his strap unhooked.
Slime's gaining on me.
I lean against the brick wall of the VFW hall. I tap my pockets
for another cigarette but they're all gone. I wait for him to
catch up to me. When he does, he's panting hard from running so
fast.
"Philly, what're you doin'?" he says after he gets his breath
back.
"I'm leaving, Slime. I'm out of here."
"But why?" he says. "We were kickin' ass, man."
"What?" I say indignantly. "Do I have to spell this out for you?
This thing was a bad idea from the beginning. I've been lied to,
laughed at, and humiliated. I've alienated my family and pissed
off my boss. I've been reminded of my weakness, my lack of
talent and my lost hopes. What else do you want from me, Slime?"
"But--"
"But what?" I fire back at him.
"But, I mean, wouldn't all of that stuff have happened anyway?"
I stare at him for a minute, then close my eyes against the
weariness. I feel myself losing the need to blame Slime for any
of this.
"Hey, man," he says, "You have it all. I'm, like, in awe of you,
Philly."
"In awe of me?" I say. "Why the hell would you be in awe of me?
I have a stressed-out job chasing bones for assholes like
Cramer. I'm mortgaged up to my eyeballs. I have two kids and a
wife I never get to see. I haven't gone out dancing or drinking
or even to a movie in five years. I eat badly and I drink too
much and I don't ever exercise. I'm probably going to croak from
a heart attack taking out the garbage one of these days and it's
going to deprive the world of absolutely nothing. In awe of me,
Slime? You've got to be kidding."
"No, I mean it," says Slime and, for once, he isn't wearing his
silly grin. "Great job, beautiful wife, cute kids, cool house.
You got it all. You ought to relax and enjoy it. See, there's
the difference between us, Phil. I'm too relaxed to go out and
get that stuff you have and you're too uptight to enjoy it."
"Well," I say, beginning to grin in spite of myself. "You want
to trade?"
"Huh?"
"Trade, Slime. I mean, Monday morning you put on a suit and tie
and go sit at my desk at the firm of Cramer, Dillahunt and
Dillahunt and I'll go odd-jobbing around the southwest for
awhile sleeping late and playing in clubs. You can yell at my
kids until you're blue in the face, sit and drink scotch in the
hot tub and do the dinner dishes to your heart's content. What
do you say?"
Slime looks like he might actually go for it. Then his grin
comes back and fills his face like a sunny window. At last he
says, "No, no. I guess not" and starts to back away down the
sidewalk.
"Hey man," he says. "I'll call you soon."
"Okay," I say and watch him as he turns and starts back toward
the door of the VFW. No doubt he's going to track down Cramer
and get paid for the gig. I stand in the cold drizzle and watch
him walk away. Long after he's gone, I say again, "Okay, buddy.
You do that."
But I know he won't.
Doing Lunch by Mark Smith
============================
Donna, my boss, leaned against my desk and said, "God, am I the
only sane one around here?"
I swiveled in my chair and looked up at her. She didn't look
great. The fluorescent lights did not flatter her features.
Fluorescent lights don't flatter anyone's features.
"What do you mean, sane?" I said. It wasn't an insightful
comment. I didn't mean it to be. I only wanted her to go away so
I could make some progress on the pile of work she had given me.
My in basket was literally broken under a leaning tower of
papers.
"I just had a cigarette out on the front step with that guy
Bosco in Development."
"Bosco?" I said.
"Yeah. I'm sure you've seen him. He's bald and always wears a
bow tie?"
"Okay..."
"Anyway, it turns out he's a raving Republican racist pig. All
he talked about for ten minutes was how those people want a
hand- out and those people are lazy and those people don't take
the time to raise their kids."
"Just don't talk to him anymore," I said, eyeing the paper on my
desk.
She went on, ignoring me. "I mean, he actually buys breakfast
cereal for his kids with candy in it."
"Huh?" I said. None of this was getting any clearer.
"Yeah. He told me this. How his kids eat this stuff that's like
Cheerios except that it has candy in the middle. Can you believe
that?"
"What do you expect from a guy named Bosco?" I said.
"I mean, here we are trying to change the world and there are
people out there using vast creative talents to make a cereal
with candy in it."
"They're just hustling a buck same as the next guy," I said.
Donna looked at me coldly and pushed her glasses up on her nose.
"Speak for yourself," she said. "It's not a perfect world. When
I see something wrong, I have to fix it right now." She put her
hands to either side of her head and hunched her shoulders. "Oh,
it just makes me crazy," she said.
I picked up a sheet of paper from the top of the stack in my
in-basket and tried to look busy.
"Oh, I guess you're actually trying to get something done," said
Donna.
"Oh, well..." I said. She sighed wearily and drifted out of my
office back into hers. I looked at the mountain of paperwork
ahead of me and decided to go to lunch. When I passed through
Donna's office, she was playing a game on her computer.
I passed the guard's desk in the lobby. It was equipped with an
impressive panel of video monitors each showing a half-tone
still- life of some remote corner of the building: stairwell,
fire door, hallway. Occasionally, a human being, distorted by
the fish-eye lens of the camera, would pass elliptically across
one of the monitors. The guard, busy trying to work the _Times_
daily crossword in ink, wasn't paying any attention whatsoever
to the monitors. He grunted as I passed.
The glass and chrome doors of our building delivered me into the
lunchtime crowds on Broadway. The sidewalks were crowded with
the motley assortment of humanity typical downtown: men and
women in business suits, NYU students in their uniforms of black
spandex and leathers, tattered homeless, hitch-stepping
hustlers, junkies, deadbeats and drunks.
I headed downtown. I had vague thoughts of going into Tower
Records, maybe a bookstore, then catch a sandwich on the way
back. At Astor Place, I passed a woman sitting on a heating
grate in the sidewalk. She leaned against the building and
across her knees lay a sign lettered on a scrap of corrugated
cardboard. It said, "my BaBy diEd, Im TRyinG To gEt EnouGH To
BuRy Him And Go Back HomE To NoRTH caRoLiNa. PLEASE HELP ME!"
I'd walked by her on that corner for weeks, always with the same
sign, watching the crowds walk by ignoring her. I put fifty
cents in her blue and white Acropolis cup.
"God bless you, sir," she says to me. I nodded and went on. I
wondered where she'd keep it if she really did have a dead baby.
I thought of weird possibilities: a locker at the Port
Authority, the coat check at the Met. I started laughing to
myself.
In the next block a black man with a gray stubble of beard
stepped into my path, his hand out. He wore a hound's tooth
sports jacket that might actually have once been a fine piece of
clothing, taken off a rack in a men's store on the upper East
side, now stiff with grime, lining ripped and dangling.
"Spare quatta, spare quatta, spare some cha-a-a-a-i-i-i-nge!"
growled the wino in my face.
I had just donated my last pocket change to the dead baby cause.
"Sorry," I mumbled.
"Aii, go to hell, college boy," he said with a wave of his hand,
and stumbled away after another victim.
As I approached Fourth Street, the red and orange sign over
Tower loomed in front of me. People buzzed in and out of the
revolving doors like worker bees around a hive. At the last
minute, I decided to pass up the temptation of idle consumerism
and turned instead toward the park.
I wandered down Fourth and meandered in a zig-zag north and west
through quieter streets past NYU campus buildings and dorms.
Halfway down one block, a delivery van was parked with two
wheels on the sidewalk, the roll-top back end up and two guys
hauling out boxes. As I stepped into the street to walk around
it, a deafening shriek filled my ears, echoing down the tight,
gray street. A courier on a bike whizzed past me. The whistle in
his mouth dropped to the end of its string as the guy yelled at
me, "Watch out where you're going, jerk!"
I crossed the street and entered the east side of Washington
Square park. The usual crowd was there: roller skaters weaving
in and out of the mob, knots of guys around boom boxes, kids in
Ocean Pacific sportswear from head-to-toe balancing on the tips
of neon green and pink skateboards, fat cops walking around
tapping their legs with their nightsticks, old folks on benches
throwing popcorn to the leprous pigeons, small children swarming
the fenced-in playground.
A skinny guy with polyester pants and sandals, his dreadlocks
tucked up under a massive, rainbow-colored macrame cap, stepped
in front of me and said quietly, "Weed? Dime bag? Nickel bag?"
I slowed down. I usually had enough sense to tell these guys to
beat it.
I hadn't smoked much pot since college, mainly because all my
friends had dried up. But I felt loose and a little detached.
Without saying a word to the guy, I pulled a five dollar bill
from my pocket. Like a rasta leprechaun, the guy made the bill
disappear, replaced by a tiny zip-lock plastic bag like the
Hasidim use to carry rings back and forth across 47th Street or
Canal. Inside the bag was enough pot to roll a very skinny
joint. When I looked up, the rastaman had vanished.
I stuck the bag in my pocket and went and sat on a park bench.
Close by, a crowd had gathered around a guy who was furiously
assaulting a guitar and shouting a manic version of "Friend of
the Devil."
A dark, attractive woman with short hair and high cheek bones
sat down on the bench next to me. She was nicely built and wore
black jeans, black T-shirt, black boots and black leather jacket
with plenty of zippers and studs. She wore lace gloves with the
fingers cut out. Her fingernails were painted black. She took
out a cigarette and said to me, "Got a light?"
I fished out my Bic handed it to her. She lit her cigarette,
releasing a big cloud of blue and gray smoke. I lit one too and
said, "You like it?"
"Like what?" she said.
"The music," I said.
"No," she said. "It sucks."
I nodded. She was right. They guy continued to bang away on his
guitar like he wanted to rip out the strings.
"You want to smoke a joint?" I said.
She looked sharply at me and said, "Are you a cop?"
I laughed. "No," I said.
"Well, then. Okay."
"Hold on," I said and went over to where my Jamaican friend was
standing with a group of his compatriots grooving to some dub
masterpiece rattling out of a boom box the size of a Fotomat. I
asked him for a rolling paper. He gave it to me without so much
as a glance. I went back to the bench, took out the tiny bag and
rolled a joint on my thigh. I lit it from my cigarette and
passed it to the woman who took it between the tips of her black
fingernails.
"You work around here?" she said.
"Yep."
"What do you do?" she said.
"As little as possible," I said.
She didn't grin. I didn't grin either. She passed the joint back
to me and said, "Well, what is it you're supposed to do?"
"I'm not quite sure," I said. I still didn't smile. This was a
serious conversation.
"Quite a talker aren't you?"
"Actually, I am," I said. We passed the joint back and forth a
few more times until it was gone. I was suddenly high. The
guitar player kept pounding away. The park and all its surreal
cast of characters seemed to grow small and recede.
"Do you want to walk?" she said.
I nodded and we stood and started off toward Fifth. I couldn't
tell which of us was following the other. I wondered how much of
my lunch hour was left and whether I could go back at all.
"What's your name?" I said.
"Heidi," she said.
I laughed out loud. I was sure she was putting me on, this
dungeon angel in nightcrawler black. But she still hadn't
cracked a smile.
"Really?" I said.
"Really," said Heidi.
"I'm sorry I laughed."
"That's okay," she said. "Everyone does."
We walked past the arch and up Waverly toward the West Village.
We wandered down side streets past serene brownstones, unchanged
for a hundred years, window boxes full of geraniums. I felt very
odd and only part of it was because of the pot. I glanced at
Heidi walking beside me and wondered if any of this meant
anything.
The corner at Sixth Avenue was swarming with activity.
Passengers were rushing in and out of the subway and the lunch
crowd came and went from the diner up the block.
We turned the corner toward the basketball court.
"These guys are serious," I said. Heidi peered soberly through
the chain link fence where ten huge men were playing a noisy,
full-court game. Spectators leaned and hung on the fence and
kids that should have been in school watched from their bike
seats.
"Oh, Jesus, one of those deals," said Heidi. I looked around to
see that a crowd had started to gather around a three-card monte
game on a flimsy folding table.
The card man laid three bent and worn playing cards face up,
flipped them over, mixed them up and put a twenty-dollar bill on
the table. "Four of diamonds," he said. "Four of diamonds."
Some guy in the crowd laid a twenty beside the first and turned
over the four of diamonds. "All right!" he said, taking both of
the twenties. The hustler rearranged the cards and staked a ten.
"Four of diamonds," he said to the winner.
"I'll bite," he said and dropped a ten next to the first and
pointed to a card: four of diamonds. "Well, goddammit," said the
operator. "You doing good." The winner picked up the tens and
the house shuffled the cards. This time a fifty appeared:
Grant's whiskered, alcoholic face looked up fiercely at this
spectacle. Two twenties and a ten met the wager and the crowd
was quiet for the brief moment it took to turn over the ace of
spades.
"Aw, Christ," said the winner, as he backed away, looking at the
ten dollar bill he had in his hand. The hustler swept the bills
into his hand and rearranged the cards.
I watched carefully. I was sure it was the card in the middle.
Without thinking twice, I pulled a twenty from my jacket pocket,
tossed it on the table and picked a card: king of spades. I was
dazed. I could ill-afford to lose twenty dollars. Along with the
ten left in my pocket, that was all the money I had until
payday.
I glanced at Heidi, who looked at me with a bored expression. I
didn't care what she thought; I had to get my twenty back. The
guy rearranged the cards and put out a ten. I matched it and
picked up a card: four of diamonds.
"Yes!" I said. I felt my heart pound as I scooped up the bills.
I thought I heard Heidi say "stop now" as I concentrated on the
movement of the cards.
Without so much as a pause, I matched the house twenty with my
two tens. I was so sure of the cards that I had started to reach
for the bills before I realized I was staring at the ace of
spades. The hustler's hand snaked out and reeled in my last
dime. As I backed out of the crowd, another loser stepped into
my place.
I looked at Heidi, who stood with her arms crossed. I could see
her trying to decide where to place me on a range of
possibilities between kind of interesting and dangerously
unbalanced.
I figured she was calculating the risk of involvement by
estimating the ratio of interest to misery: a woman's standard
measure of a man.
"I have to go back," I said.
We had walked half a block when she said, "Is this, like, a
normal lunch break for you?"
"Well, no," I said. "I guess not. In fact, it's pretty weird."
"Hmmm," she said. "I'm not sure if I'm glad to hear that or
not."
When we got back to the park, she said, "I have to go this way."
She waved her hand northward up Fifth.
"Okay," I said. "Can I call you?"
"No. Give me your number. If I decide to, I'll call you."
I took out a scrap of paper and a ball-point pen, scribbled my
home and work numbers and handed her the paper. We stood looking
at each other. Her hands were folded in front of her. I leaned
toward her.
"No," she said. "Don't do that. There might be a time for that
later on, but not now."
Then, with an odd, backward glance, she turned, bounded across
Fifth, and disappeared into the crowd. At that moment, high
above the honking, screaming, grinding sounds of the city, came
the peal of a tower clock; a clear, resounding _bong_ that rang
out over the chaos of the city and spoke to me through my
confusion.
I began walking briskly toward Broadway. The fogginess of the
pot was wearing off. I thought about the oddness of the last
hour and tried to puzzle meaning from it. I wondered if I would
see Heidi again or if that even mattered. Whatever she decided,
in a lonely city full of self-made prisoners of paranoia, an
attractive, apparently sensible woman had spoken to me out of
the blue without fear or condition or motive. So why, then, had
I responded by playing the role of an immature, self-destructive
lout, or was that the real me after all?
I dashed though the doors of my building, past the guard who
barely glanced at me. As I passed my boss, she was still playing
Tetris, the blocks falling like geometric snowflakes on her
computer screen. Without looking up, she said, "Where have you
been?"
"Oh, just doing lunch," I said.
"Slow service?" she said.
I suddenly remembered that for all that had happened, I hadn't
eaten at all. Nor would I for days if I couldn't find some money
somewhere. I chuckled cryptically.
Back in my office, I picked up my phone to check my voice mail.
The computer voice told me I had a message, so I punched in my
password.
"Hi, this is Heidi. I just want to know if you're as weird as
you seem? I mean, it's okay one way or the other. I just have to
know. I guess, if you want to meet in the park for lunch
tomorrow, that'd be all right. We'll see how it goes, okay?
Bye."
I hung up the phone and sat in my office under the unforgiving
fluorescent glare.
"Hey, Donna," I yelled into the next office without bothering to
get up from where I sat, grinning like a madman. "Can you lend
me thirty bucks till payday?"
Mark Smith (mlsmith@tenet.edu)
---------------------------------
Mark Smith (mlsmith@tenet.edu) Has been writing fiction and non-
fiction for over ten years. His fiction has appeared or is
forthcoming in _Window_, _Spectrum_, _Malcontent_, _Epiphany_,
the _Lone Star Literary Quarterly_, and _Elements_. Mark is also
the author of a collection of short stories titled _Riddle_
(Argo Press, Austin, Texas, 1992).
Timespooks (and bit parts) by Stan Kulikowski II
===================================================
Starring: Jack Nicholson, a Mobile. Jeff Goldblum, a Sessile.
And a supporting cast of thousands of other small parts.
He was sitting in the car waiting for the bullet he knew would
come. When it did, he heard a small tinkling of broken glass,
and wondered if the window would crinkle in that sparkling
pattern in which a small break would propagate another small
crack and another and another until the entire surface became an
opaque fractal prism, falling into a zillion separate tiny stars
on the slightest touch.
It didn't. That was odd, he thought.
Another thing that was odd was that it really didn't hurt much.
The small-caliber projectile had entered on the right front hip,
striking the pelvic horn and ricocheting upward through
endlessly convoluted turns of intestines, nicking the liver and
the hepatic vein, and finally coming to rest lodged in the
interior wall of the diaphragm. The point of the tiny
Teflon-coated bullet, called a Needlehead, was just sharp enough
to grate a little against a rib when he breathed in.
He expected more pain. As it was, the small scritchscritch when
he inspired was about it. The bullet's brief flight through his
organs and membranes had been like an instant of thin, brilliant
ruby laser light. An almost static image of a single spider's
thread through his body, so he could note its passage and the
resultant damage but hardly more. He kept his face winced and
his gut sucked in for a long time expecting an onslaught of
agony which never came. Eventually he had to relax and admit
that being shot was not as bad as he had thought it would be.
The problem was the nick on the hepatic vein. The entry wound
itself was slight. There was hardly a dribble of blood, and that
was quickly stanched when he placed his hand over it. All the
myriad punctures of the twistings of small intestine were so
minor that most of them would seal and heal without much
surgical assistance. A little liver tissue would regenerate with
just a scar. The slight mass of the bullet itself was just an
annoyance, easily removed.
It was the sharp incision across the venous wall that would
occasionally gape open, then closed, like a curious mouth
speaking large quantities of the dark venous blood into his
visceral cavity. Episodic internal hemorrhage. He would
eventually bleed to death without losing more than a teaspoon of
blood.
If he sat there very still, he figured he might have a few hours
left before the circulating volume of his blood lowered enough
for him to black out of consciousness for the last time. His
belly would bloat outward when receiving the expanding embolism.
The internal visceral pressure might eventually equilibrate with
the lowering venous pressure so further loss might be minimal,
but by then it would be too late to do any good. His brain
needed a constant fresh supply of prime, Grade-A, oxygenated
corpuscles to survive and a dead-end reservoir that was far too
large was being created south of the rib cage.
Of course, the end could come much quicker than that. The sharp,
clean tear of the hepatic vessel wall could rupture at any
moment and he would see life's vibrant colors drain away to
black in a sudden rushing swoosh into the hidden internal sea
below.
Just sit here for a while and wait. Yep, thinks Nicholson, live
life to its longest if I just take it easy here for a while.
But after a bit, Jack gets bored of sitting hunched over in the
Mercedes. When he gets restless, he decides that he may as well
get up and go back into the studio wardroom. Getting out the
front seat gingerly, holding his side (uselessly), Jack walks
hunched over like a crab. He crosses the parking lot and makes
it up the three steps to the wardroom vestibule. If he's going
to die anyway, he may as well seek out the company of friends.
If he dies on the way, at least he'll see himself doing a great
heroic act -- something he always found possible but just
missing in his real life.
He passes the nurse's station, with a sneer on his lips and
dragging one leg, his hand clutching over his liver tightly. It
looks so much like Lon Chaney Sr.'s _Hunchback of Notre Dame_
that they just wave him through security and check-in. He had
just left, after all, and if this is the way 'an artist' like
him wants to work up a part, so be it.
A few doors down the corridor, the rich, deep pungency of the
wardrooms takes over. An odor so strong and so human that it
puts a stitch in your breathing when you first hit it like a
wall. The smells of sweat and exhaled air and a little vomit and
silent-but- deadlies. Nothing else like it on Earth, and nobody
except perhaps primeval Neanderthals might recognize it: a
crowded cave, poor sanitation, after a long hard winter just
after an attack by ax- wielding cannibals, who gutted many and
ate several members of the tribe, spilling their sour gastric
juices with their guts. That kind of smell.
Nicholson feels buoyed by the throat-choking stench. Actors took
to the wardrooms like they responded to the smell of greasepaint
backstage on opening night. It took a while to get used to it at
first, but the whole arrangement made so much sense. Theater,
movies, then the wards forever.
There was, increasingly nowadays, an underlying tincture to the
wardrooms. An occasional waft of sterile alcohol or ammonia and
the antiseptic tang of the medical support units. The old-timers
say you get used to these otherwise distracting gustatory
conflicts. You cannot do without the doctors and their skills,
so you've gotta put up with the sharp stink of their trade.
The naive think that one day the medical interventions would cut
through the basic odor of concentrated living. But that didn't
seem to be the case. The same old guys (with their wisdom of age
and experience) would say that you could always tell the smell
of someone getting too rich in the biotics. These outbreaks,
nasally distinct, would soon be followed by sharp smells of the
antiseptic. Those medical kids would step in and ferret out the
corruption and putrefaction, leaving instead their own
non-living traces. A good healthy wardroom had its own
supporting olfaction.
Jack, as he shambles down his corridor, knows that he won't
collapse before he makes it across the dayroom, right next to
where Jeff Goldblum is almost always typing away at a VT-220.
It's truly ancient equipment -- the color monitor and keyboard
are almost certifiable antiques.
_Peck, peck, peck._ Goldblum punched at the keys in his own
unique fingering. Sometimes hunting, a complicated dance of
finger motions and wrist snappings. His keyboarding was like a
showboat performance artist: lots of dramatic pauses punctuated
by incredibly complicated twistings of fingernails and tips.
Just the right pressures for maximum speed of output. Hands
suddenly thrown into the air as if expecting instant applause
for some piece of brilliance.
Light shines down in a beam from a nearby window. Somehow Jeff
always gets a position next to a real window. Most in the
biomass of actors equity just get sunlamps at the right wattage
to produce healthy Vitamin D in the surface skin. Goldblum
always thinks that natural sunlight gives his skin a special
sheen which made a perceptible difference in those forty-foot
projections on the silver screen. It didn't matter that much for
television work, but the true cinema deserved his best... and
that always came when he was given a window seat.
Actually, the location teams just got tired of hearing his
bitching when he got transplanted into a normal room. Everyone
knew that the constant, controlled frequency of the halogen
lamps were better than the erratic variability of the sun. So it
was not really difficult for him to pre-empt a place near a
window.
Natural sunlight gives his skin a special sheen... _Sure_, he
shrugs. 'His skin' could be any color of the rainbow whenever he
went Mobile. The surgical crew could see to that. Not to mention
what the makeup crew could do when they took over. remember his
_Othello_? Nobody ever thought that a skinny, Jewish Goldblum
could replace Olivier by becoming darker than Portier. It has
become a standard joke in the industry. Still, he likes the feel
of the true sun coming in over his shoulder. Perhaps that
feeling of self-contentment is what made all the difference in
his next adventure before the celluloid. Perhaps it was just the
old De Mille-style star system: cater to their quirks between
roles if you want the best output from name actors.
Jeff finally notices Nicholson as he sidles into a day chair,
sharing the beam of daylight. Jack has been one of his best
friends, especially since Geena decided not to have anything to
do with him. It had been touch-and-go on the set of
_Mutiny on the Bounty_, as Nicholson always managed to upstage
your spotlight somehow. His Bligh to Jeff's Christian had that
spark of greatness. True, the film wasn't exactly a financial
hit, but the critics had understood that producing it as a 3-D
space opera had some risks. _Bounty_ was guaranteed classic
status anyway: the last first-run 3-D with the red and green
lens before they solved the close-up problem with the holos.
"So what's happening, Jack?" says Jeff with his cool halfway
grin. "You look like you just passed a concrete turd the size of
a melon."
"Yeah, it feels kinda like it," Nicholson says as he sinks into
the overstuffed naugahide day chair. The sound of a whoopee
cushion erupts as his exposed skin rubs against the dry, sun hot
surface. "I been shot pretty good."
"So tell me what you been up to these last ten minutes since you
left,' asked Jeff, not really listening for an answer. On his
terminal he has displayed the last of a treatise on the benefits
of species-wide immune responses through direct sharing of
antibody defenses in a common blood pool.
It had been the first and biggest surprise of the human genome
project. While mapping out the location of all genetic variants,
the mechanism of self/nonself recognition was discovered on the
molecular level. Of course, the AIDS researchers and the cancer
crew all claimed prior superiority, but the Nobel went to a
computer operator, a CAD/CAM geek. She got the published data
from genetic probes and started playing with the balls and knobs
in virtual data extrapolations. A little eye of frog and toe of
newt, and presto-chango: the degree of biochemical
self-recognition could be precisely tuned.
No more tissue rejection ever. The immune system could be taught
to recognize anything human as good stuff to be maintained.
Viruses and bacteria did not have a chance to get through the
new human immune system. Indeed, mixing human organs and tissues
was found to be self-actuating-- the conglomerate having a finer
collective degree of antibody response. Each originally separate
immune system had slightly different capacities to produce the
antibodies needed for leukocytic scrubbing of the tissues and
bloodstream. The recognition mechanism of the antibodies could
be adjusted to whatever level of acceptance or rejection was
desired.
At first the eugenic purists tried to use it for racial purposes
and found it quickly thinned pure blood lines to incipience.
With the immune system self-containing a model of what a
complete human genome looks like, the antigen recognition system
could be improved by orders of magnitude through mixing
maximally different tissue expressions of the genome.
The more dissimilar the tissues mixed, the stronger the
resultant response. In a bizarre feat of experimental logic, it
was shown that if the entire human species were surgically
melded into a common blood circulation system, the superultimate
maximum of immune recognition would occur.
This was theory, of course, but in practice it encouraged the
largest wardrooms. The more people who would have their healthy
parts joined, the more stable would be the whole. Societies and
companies promoted these as retirement plans at first. It gave
new meaning to the term "union meeting." If enough union members
would join together, they could conceivably live forever, or at
least a very long time -- 500 years by one conservative
estimate.
Once aging effects were identified with sufficient precision,
only young healthy cells would be able to pass the common immune
filter. And so the Sessiles came to be, the wardrooms their
home.
"And so you don't know how much this pisses me off, do you?"
insists Nicholson, pulling Goldblum from his reverie over the
treatise.
"So, why don't you just have the location teams patch you in
somewhere and have done with it? you're equity as much as anyone
else here."
"You don't understand. I think I've been Mobile all along, since
the start. Sure, everybody thinks, "Oh, there goes Jack-
fucking-Nicholson, always working on something or the other." I
got this and that replaced many times, but I've always been
Mobile. I don't think I can take being stuck down in one place
even for a little while."
"Well, you're about to die a Mobile if you don't let the surgery
kids do their jobs on you. I mean, what a waste, Jack. To die,
to be gone just because everything lower than your diaphragm has
been trashed. Just look at me."
Goldblum stretches his torso out like he's a body builder. He's
attached to equity from the waist up. 'Sure, when they took the
original pelvic structure away, I thought, 'Oh, shit!,' but the
funny thing was that I really couldn't shit anymore. All that
baggage around my balls and my dick being gone. It really is
better to live for periods without the testosterone poisoning
the blood, you know.'
He stopped and looked at Jack with his famous intensity. "But a
casting call can put them back anytime. At least ones just as
good, or even better." (It depends on what the director needs
for the shots scheduled.)
"Nah, it ain't removing the private parts. I had mine rebuilt
several times." (So, the tabloid claims were true. They had been
speculating on the nature of Nicholson's cosmetic surgery long
before the human genome breakthrough.) "I just cannot take being
pinned down on some equity hump somewhere."
"Well, have it your own way then," Jeff sighs. "I'll miss having
you around except in the reruns." He turned back to his
terminal, preparing for another onslaught of lashing
hypertextual lexia in his celebrated quirky manner. "If you
change your mind, I can have triage here in minutes."
This leaves Jack alone with his thoughts for a few seconds. Not
long enough, though.
He sits up with a start, jarring his blood vessel into another
crimson aria. He sees himself walking across the ward. His face
is a gray color and his belly is grossly distended and sloshing.
There's an ill-defined lack of depth to this appearance of
himself, like perspective is somehow being violated.
"Whoa, what goes on here?" he says, and the apparition turns
toward him.
"Didn't you always want to play Ebeneezer and Marley both? This
is your chance," it says.
"But I ain't dead yet," he protests. "At least I think I would
have known if I was to expire.'
"Oh yes, I know. So it's safe to say that you will too."
"Now wait a minute. You're not one of them union scabs the
producers keep threatening to patch together when our agents are
pushing too hard?"
"No, no," muttered the shade. "I am truly your mortal coil after
you have shuffled it off. You will in a few minutes, you know."
"Then how come you are here now, talking to me?"
"Oh come now," chided the specter. "What makes you think the
ethereal is bound by any foolish notion of linear time? If our
measure is not properly taken with that Judeo-Christian
nonsense, why should we keep to strict timetables just for the
convenience of your schedules?"
"So I'm haunting myself before I'm dead?"
"Precisely. Narcissism unbounded. You are, after all, dying
unnecessarily because of an ego malfunction."
"The hell, you say," Jack says, slapping his knee.
"I would be careful about making such statements if I were you.
Indeed, I was and I did too, so I guess any warning I might make
is a pretty pointless recursion." The spirit turns to depart.
"And speaking of preordination in this deterministic universe, I
wonder why I'm inclined to go back and reincarnate in my own
fetus?" And he disappears.
Nicholson's senses are becoming acute, hypersensitive. Why is it
that you become most clearly aware when it's not possible to do
anything with it? Like the brilliant insights of drunkenness,
the certainty of faith, and the promises of politicians. The
background swells slowly to foreground.
Bob Dylan in the corner sings to anyone who will listen.
Songwriters like to attach themselves to actor's equity when
they can.
Dylan's few film appearances were mediocre to say the least, but
his name recognition couldn't be slighted. So his right to throw
his lot in with the mostly Hollywood crowd was never doubted.
Songwriters usually hate to hang with the musicians and singers.
Too much melodic talent who can't make good songs on their own
but think they have a say in how fine art gets created. They
practice good craft and call it art.
Anyway, Mr. Zimmerman is over in the corner talking and singing
his life away, with a soft banjo backup from somewhere. Since he
has no hands in the immediate vicinity, it is unlikely that he
is doing the strumming directly. James Caan is probably
providing the backup, as he needs his hands for his parts. So
Bob's a singing and a crooning:
"Like, the original song went like this:
'And she waaalks juuust like a woman,
and she taaalks juuust like a woman,
but she fuuucks juuust like a little girl'
"And man, all the censors at the record company just turns all
frown faces. You know what I mean. So before they would cut the
record I had to change the lyrics to
'And she taaalks juuust like a woman,
but she fucks uuup just like a little girl'
"And then all the man censors, they turn to smiles and say,
'Like, yeah, it ain't about doing the deed no more, so it's
cool.' But all the lady censors still stay with frown faces, and
they say, 'It still has the F-word in it. Think about all the
children who'd be hearing it.' So I sits and writes some more
until I get to
'And she taaalks juuust like a woman,
but she breaks uuup just like a little girl'
"It screwed up the rhythm a little but then all the censors they
turn to sunshine and that's how the song got the way you heard
it. The children are supposed to be so fragile that some
fucking's gonna pervert them all to bisexuals or something. They
be screwin' anything that smiles, if they even hear me sing the
F-word."
With these pearls of wisdom floating around in the background,
who could not be creative to the max? Like listening to
Springsteen tell about forming up the E Street Band on the
_Great White Boss_ album.
From over his shoulder:
"We got Madonna's twat around here someplace, if you would
rather try that."
"No. no, thank you."
"That was always the best part of her," smiles Warren Beatty's
head, attached somewhere over by a further window. "The only
part we saved, anyway. I can still smell it once a month or so."
And Jack, he just keeps sitting there, trying to absorb all the
sensation he can. Trying desperately to hold onto to all of it.
To cherish it. To take it with him forever. Not just a memory, a
hollow husk of abstraction, but the raw, pure instant of
sensation itself.
But he knows it is slipping through his fingers like
quicksilver. And knowing what will come thereafter, Jack he just
keeps sitting there, waiting for the tunnel of light.
Stan Kulikowski II (stankuli@UWF.BITNET)
-------------------------------------------
Stan Kulikowski II is a research scholar in the College of
Education at the University of West Florida. He is a specialist
in educational technology and is currently developing projects
for K-12 use of the Internet. He says this story is taken almost
verbatim from a dream he had in the fall of 1992.
Sweet Peppers by Aviott John
===============================
The flight was late. Somewhere over the Atlantic Rose's body
began to rebel. The local time was three in the afternoon but
her body was in another time zone, arguing with the clock,
disputing her work schedule.
"The fellow in 35C wants another vodka and orange. Should I
serve him?" Shalini interrupted her misery. Shalini was Anglo-
Indian and looked more Indian than English, with her air of
Oriental calm and placid ways. The unflappability was
superficial, Rose knew, because she had seen the bottle of
antacid Shalini carried in her overnight case.
"Give it to him. We've another four hours to New York. Maybe
he'll sleep after that."
"No such luck. They've got a game of poker going there, 35A, B
and C, wide awake and having a great time."
"Are they travelling together?"
"No. I'm positive not. They have a language problem, struggling
to speak English, each of them with a different accent, but they
understand each other somehow."
"Boozers usually do," said Rose dryly, shifting her weight from
one aching leg to another. Rose was proud of her legs, but
lately they ached after every shift and faint bluish venous
bumps were beginning to show after hours of standing. God, it
was time for a change of profession. Her mother had varicose
veins: great, ugly, big, knotted rivers whose very sight
repelled Rose. Imagine the fate! What good the prettiest face in
a swimsuit (or without) on the Riviera when you had legs like
that?
"Rose, you look awful," said Shalini conversationally as she
bent down to get a tiny bottle of vodka from a cupboard. "Is
anything the matter?"
"Thanks. Tired, that's all."
"Problems? Can I help?
"I'm fine. Don't worry about me." _Piss off, you bitch._
_Go deliver your vodka and leave me alone_. Rose regretted the
thought an instant later as Shalini sighed and set the vodka and
orange juice on a small tray. She wasn't too bad, old Shalu
wasn't. A very nice girl and pretty in a mousy, self-effacing
kind of way. But she did get on Rose's nerves sometimes with her
maternal solicitude and eternal calm. Rose never knew half the
time what Shalu was thinking. That was the real problem with
her. God, she wanted to move out of this cramped galley, just
had to. On an impulse she took the tray from Shalini's
unresisting hands.
"Here, let me. I need a walk. I'll give it to him. 35C, did you
say?"
"Thank you." Shalu sounded absurdly grateful. The poor kid was
tired too. "And don't forget to collect three dollars from him.
He's one of those who forgets to pay, you know."
The lighting was dim and exhausted passengers sprawled in their
narrow seats, trying to find a position that eased the cramps in
their legs. These long flights were a bugger, Rose thought. She
and the rest of the crew had boarded in London, but by then some
of these people had already been in the plane for fifteen hours.
She walked down the aisle. It was good to walk and she carried
her slim body erect, suddenly proud. The airline had long ago
discovered the secret of really captivating hostesses; not
elaborate uniforms, but healthy bodies and happy faces.
Shalini was right: the fellows in row 35 were not about to go to
sleep. Their reading lights were on and the man in the middle
had his dining tray folded down as a card table. A real mixed
trio.
"Your vodka and orange."
Rose had been working at this job for seven years and out of
habit automatically appraised and categorized her passengers.
35A, by the window, was a muscular young fellow with
close-cropped hair and prominent, twitching jaw muscles which
indicated a hair- trigger temper and an inclination to physical
violence when frustrated. He unsmilingly clutched his cards
close to his face. 35B was plump, the edge of the dining tray
pressing into his belly. He was voluble, waving his arms
animatedly, speaking with a thick Russian accent and smiling.
She noted though that the smile never reached his eyes.
35C was a surprise, the man who'd ordered his third vodka. She
expected an unshaven wino, but instead met a pair of steady
brown eyes. In contrast to 35B, the mouth did not smile at all,
but the eyes were warm and friendly with a humorous glint to
them, so that he looked as though he were smiling at her.
"Thank you." He was lean and his distinguished features carried
the slightly bored expression that sometimes went with
refinement, but he seemed to be on the best of terms with the
other two. He was dressed in a plain gray business suit;
expensive, very expensive, Rose decided at a glance. However,
she remembered Shalu's warning.
"Three dollars, please."
The man smiled faintly and held out a hundred dollar bill.
"Don't you have something smaller?"
"Sorry."
Rose bit her lip in annoyance. "I'll see if my colleague has
change. Back in a minute."
"I'll come with you. I need to stretch my legs." He put down his
cards and excused himself for a minute with words and gestures.
35B waved a hand and began to deal the next round for two. Rose
was aware of his eyes on her back as she walked down the aisle
to the kitchen area. She pushed aside the curtain but Shalu was
not there, probably gone to take a cup of coffee into the
cockpit. Rose was sure Shalu had a wee bit of a crush on the
copilot although she never talked about such things.
"My colleague's not here at the moment. I'll bring you the
change in a few minutes."
"I'd like to stand for a while. I'll wait." He leaned an elbow
against the small working surface in an attitude of settling
down.
"Win much?" She was instantly angry with herself for asking. She
didn't want to start a conversation with this man, but his
self-assured manner prompted the question.
"Three vodkas." He rolled his eyes. "And they insisted on paying
right away."
"You could have said no."
"That would have been very bad form. You don't gamble, do you?"
"No," after a slight pause, "don't play cards," she qualified.
He smiled at her, looking her up and down.
"I thought as much."
"Why?"
"Can't explain it. Simply a strong hunch."
"But why? There has to be a reason. You look like the sort of
person who has a reason for everything?"
"Do I?"
"Yes, and don't duck my question."
"I felt your disapproval in the small of my back when you walked
up that aisle bringing me that vodka and orange. The other girl
warned you, didn't she, said this was my third?"
Rose did not reply.
"Didn't she?" he repeated.
"Something like that," she admitted, annoyed that she had been
so transparent to him.
"And do you know why I didn't pay? Because the other two don't
have a cent on them and they're too proud to admit it. I tried
desperately to let them win, but the harder I tried, the more
they lost." The man took a deep breath and looked back down the
aisle. "Will you tell me how I'm going to get out of this jam?"
"That's not my problem."
"Tell you what. Why don't you come and say to me in front of
those two that you made a mistake. Vodka and orange is free on
transatlantic flights, something like that."
"I couldn't do that. What if the other passengers heard?"
"All right. I'll tell them it's free and you don't contradict
me. Bring them whatever they want and I'll come back here to pay
for it. Okay?"
"I suppose I could do that," she said doubtfully.
"Good." He slapped the hundred dollar bill in her palm before
she could refuse and went back to his poker game.
Rose clued Shalu in on her deal with the man in the gray suit.
Shalu was surprised.
"Who is he?"
"I don't know."
"You agreed to his harebrained scheme without knowing anything
about him? What's the matter with you, Rose? This is not like
you."
"What's wrong? I'll return his change before the plane comes in
to land."
The man did not come back to the galley for the rest of the
flight. Rose tried to return the ninety-one dollars change just
before the plane began its descent to land at Kennedy airport.
He looked dismayed and imploringly motioned her not to give him
money in front of his two poker companions. She backed away and
had so much to do after the plane landed that she forgot about
the man and his money.
Shalu and Rose were talking and laughing together as they made
their way to main entrance of the terminal building. There was
the usual crush of cabs, buses and private cars trying to ease
along the front and pick up people and they kept an eye open for
the van with the airline's logo on its side. Rose suddenly came
to a dead stop.
"Oh my God, I forgot to give the man his change."
"What? Oh, the ninety-one dollars. Serves him right for being
careless."
"I can't do that, Shalu. I have to give him his money. Besides,
he might complain."
"What will you do?"
"Find out his name first."
She zipped away and found a ground hostess with a clipboard in
her hand. The passenger list! Rose unceremoniously snatched the
clipboard and checked the name of the man in 35C. Dr. Laszlo
Nemeth. So he was a doctor! "Well, Dr. Nemeth, you're going to
get your money back," she said.
"What?" asked the ground hostess, totally mystified by Rose's
behavior.
"Nothing," said Rose as she hurried off to the public address
system next to the information desk.
Half an hour later, paged and repaid, Dr. Nemeth offered Rose a
taxi ride into the city, a ride she accepted because she had
missed the airline's shuttle.
"Will you go out with me for dinner tomorrow evening?" he asked
directly when they were seated in the taxi. "Good food and
conversation."
"I don't know," she began doubtfully.
"No hanky-panky," he promised.
"Well, yes then," she laughed.
He called for her at her Fifth Avenue hotel at six the next
evening and they went to an off-Broadway show called _Slippers_
which she would never have thought of going to see, but it was
great fun and she laughed so much during some of the scenes that
she cried. When they came out it was raining heavily, a
miserable night for man or beast to be out of doors, remarked
Rose.
"Let's go to my place," Laszlo suggested. "I'll cook something
for us."
"Do you like to cook?"
"No," he admitted.
Laszlo's apartment was large by New York standards, with split
levels, two bedrooms, fully automated kitchen and a
well-appointed living room.
"Ah, let's see what we have," said Laszlo, peering reluctantly
into the freezer compartment of the refrigerator. Rose took pity
on him then and thrust him aside.
"I love to cook. Let's see what you've got." She nodded in
satisfaction. "Who does your shopping?"
"My housekeeper. She comes in three times a week."
"Now you go away." She shooed him out of the kitchen. "Come back
here in an hour and help me with the table."
Nemeth looked at her with gratitude and tiptoed out of the
kitchen as she commanded.
The crisper compartment was filled with enormous green sweet
peppers so Rose had no problem deciding what to cook. She
rummaged quickly through the cupboards until she found the
ingredients she wanted, then set to work. While the green
peppers steamed lightly, she cooked some rice and minced beef,
opened a can of peeled tomatoes and finely chopped a mound of
fresh mushrooms. Laszlo diffidently entered the kitchen an hour
later and she set him to work opening a bottle of wine and
laying the table. She did not allow him to see what was cooking.
"You'll see when it's served," she said and shooed him away
again.
He had prepared the table very nicely and she set down the
covered dish in the middle of the table.
Laszlo gingerly raised the lid and feasted on the vision that
met his sight. Peppers stuffed to bursting with a mixture of
cooked rice, minced beef and mushrooms, their green contrasting
beautifully with the simmering pale red of the spicy tomato
sauce.
Laszlo Nemeth's eyes filled with tears. They looked up to meet
hers. "This is a recipe from my old country you know."
"Yes, I know."
"My mother was from Budapest. She died last month in Austria.
I've just come back from the funeral."
"Let's eat before it gets cold," said Rose, who didn't like the
melancholy turn the conversation was taking.
Laszlo Nemeth ate well and spoke entertainingly throughout the
meal. Rose laughed at his jokes and together they drank two
bottles of wine. Rose was feeling slightly tipsy after the meal
but sobered in a second when Laszlo suddenly turned solemn and
proposed marriage to her.
Bells tinkled faintly at the back of Rose's head; whether
wedding chords or warning chimes was not clear. She lowered her
head and the stuffed peppers swam before her eyes, melted and
reformed with knotted blue veins on their surface. She
determinedly thrust aside the image and all concomitant
forebodings of doom, raising her eyes and her glass to his.
"Yes," she said. "Yes."
Aviott John (avjohn@iiasa.ac.at)
-----------------------------------
Aviott John is a science writer and science reference librarian
at an international research institute in Austria. He has
written over fifty short stories and nine novel- length
manuscripts, one of which won a Sinclair Fiction Award (London,
1982). He has published articles in science journals as well as
fiction magazines in Austria, England and the U.S.
Dogbreath by Robert Hurvitz
==============================
I slammed down the phone and paced back and forth in my little
dorm room, teeth clenched. "Fuck you, mom!" I shouted at the
telephone. "You just don't understand!" I kicked the flimsy
metal bedframe and it struck the wall noisily, chipping the
plaster. Shit, I thought, I'm probably going to have to pay for
that. I flopped down on the bed and gingerly poked at the
damage. At my touch, specks of plaster flaked off and drifted
down between the wall and the bed.
The door opened, and my roommate Jed walked in.
I looked up from the wall and said, "Hi, Jed."
He stopped and considered this, shifting from foot to foot,
absent-mindedly pulling at hair that was almost as dirty as his
tie-dyed T-shirt. His hand dropped to his side, and he said,
"Brian, why were you staring at the wall?"
I sighed and sat up on the bed. "I just talked to my mom."
Jed nodded quickly. "I see. Didn't go well?"
"No. Not at all. She said she was sick and tired of paying for
all of my CDs, and anyway, what was I doing spending all my time
listening to music when I should be studying? She said if I
wanted to buy CDs, I should get a job and pay for them myself."
Jed winced. "Oh man. That's rough." He collapsed on his bed. "I
had a job once. Did I ever tell you about that?"
"Yeah, three or four times."
"Oh." He shifted suddenly and wound up staring at me intently.
"You sound like you're in really bad shape, Brian."
"Well, yeah, I guess so."
"I understand." He glanced nervously around the room. "Don't
tell this to anyone, OK? Promise?"
"Sure."
"OK. Basement of the biochem building, across from the men's
faculty restroom, there's a bulletin board where they post
'subjects needed' fliers for experimental drugs. They pay a
couple hundred bucks a pop, and you get a really weird trip,
too." He rolled over and was silent.
After a few moments, I said, "Uh, Jed?"
Jed started snoring.
I shrugged and lay back on the bed, thinking: A couple hundred
bucks, huh? What the hell.
I was on my way to the biochem building early the next morning.
I hadn't wanted it to be that way, but Jed had set his alarm for
5:30 a.m. and didn't wake up until after I'd thrown my shoes at
him. He'd then stumbled around the room, apologizing for each
noise he made and explaining that he had to get ready for a
protest.
I suppose it wouldn't have been so bad if I'd gone to bed at a
reasonable hour, but instead I'd stayed up thinking about what
CDs I would buy with two hundred dollars. As a result my mind
was feeling spongy. It was as if my body was marching
involuntarily to the biochem building and my mind was struggling
vainly to keep up.
When I reached the top of the brick stairs near the building's
main entrance I saw a big, brown dog with matted fur sprawled on
the ground motionless. As I walked by, it lifted up its head,
looked at me, yawned.
I wiggled my fingers at the dog and said, "Woof." It blinked and
rested its head back upon the ground.
Inside and down, I wandered the basement hallways, searching for
the bulletin board of experimental delights. Five minutes later,
at the end of one of the more dimly lit corridors, I came across
the men's faculty restroom, its door slightly ajar. Sure enough,
on the opposite wall were the postings.
Before I could read any of them, I heard a toilet flush and the
men's faculty restroom door opened.
"Oh! Excuse me!" said the man who stopped himself suddenly,
apparently surprised at seeing me standing outside the bathroom.
He had a large mass of graying black hair, glasses, a dark green
corduroy jacket, an old leather briefcase, baggy gray pants, and
tennis shoes. I assumed he was a professor. "But maybe," he
continued, "this is a serendipitous moment. Were you, by any
chance, perusing the experimental subject fliers?" He arched his
eyebrows to indicate the colored postings on the bulletin board.
"Uh, yeah," I replied. I don't know why, but I felt embarrassed.
"Yeah, but I don't normally do things like this, you know. My
roommate told me about them. This is -- Yeah, this is my, uh,
first time doing this."
"Of course, of course," the professor reassured me. He reached
down and opened his briefcase, fished out a bright red sheet of
paper. "But, you see, I was just about to post my own flier.
Perhaps you'd be interested...?" He offered me the sheet of
paper, smiling widely.
"Oh, thanks," I said, accepting the flier. It read: "Subject
needed for human-animal neural relationship experiment. $500.
Please call Professor Billow at 642-0070 if interested." There
were many cuts at the bottom of the paper to make stubs that one
could rip off and take and that bore the words "Prof Billow,
642-0070, $500."
My eyes grew wide, and I whispered reverently, "Five hundred
dollars."
"Yes. Five hundred," said the professor proudly. He tilted his
head in modest boastfulness. "I have a very large grant, you
see, and that is why I offer so much more than they do." He
indicated the bulletin board again with his eyebrows.
I looked around, bewildered. Five hundred dollars! "Professor
Billow," I said, "you have yourself a subject." I held out my
hand, and he shook it.
"Come, then," he said, clapping me on the shoulder. "My lab is
on the other side of campus, in the Northwest Animal Facility."
On the way out of the biochem building, Professor Billow stared
at the lazy brown dog and said distractedly, "Just a moment." He
fumbled through his jacket pockets, finally mumbled, "Aha!" and
pulled out a little biscuit which he then tossed to the dog. The
dog looked blankly at the biscuit and yawned. With a sigh, the
professor started walking away muttering to himself and I
hastened to catch up.
I sat facing Professor Billow, his desk between us. He said
while rummaging through his drawers, "This is just a
technicality, Brian. You see, the importance of this research
requires that you sign a form assuring the government that you
won't disclose any information about the experiment to anyone.
Here we go." He brought out a white sheet of paper filled with
fine print and pushed it across the desk. "Just sign at the
bottom."
I looked at the text-crammed sheet. "What if I don't sign?"
Professor Billow spread open his hands. "No experiment. No five
hundred dollars."
I signed.
"Good!" The professor snatched the sheet back and filed it away.
"Now, to the lab." He led me through a side door and into a
large room littered with electronic equipment and in the center
of which were two padded tables, one large and one small. Off to
the side a grad student tapped away at the keyboard of a
computer workstation. He glanced briefly at us when we walked
in.
"Mark!" called out the professor. "I'd like you to meet our
subject, Brian."
"Just a second," Mark said. He moved the computer's mouse
around, clicked something, then stood up and came over. He was
tall and thin with short blond hair. "Hi," he said. "My name's
Mark." He motioned to the large table. "If you'll just step over
there and lie down, we can get started."
As soon as I did so, Mark threw a strap over my chest, and
Professor Billow, on the other side, secured it.
"Hey!" I said.
"Don't worry, Brian," Mark reassured me. "It's for you own
protection, really. You wouldn't want your arms flailing around
and damaging equipment, now would you?" He shook his head no for
me. "Besides, this was all written down on that paper you
signed, remember?"
"Oh. Hmmm."
Three straps later, I was securely fastened to the table. There
was no way I'd be able to damage anything. Mark slipped some
kind of support device beneath my head and wrapped yet another
strap across my forehead. "So you don't accidentally move your
head and pull off any of the EEG leads," he explained. He smiled
and left the room.
Professor Billow lifted up a syringe and gave it a slight
squirt, clearing the needle of air. "Merely a sedative, Brian.
When you wake up, the experiment will be over."
"Uh, professor..." I started to say, but he hushed me. I felt
something cold wiped on my arm, and then a sharp pain as the
hypodermic hit home.
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Mark reenter the room
carrying an unconscious cocker spaniel. He placed it carefully
on the smaller table, scratched its head, and strapped it just
as securely down. Then he turned around and waved goodbye to me
as everything went black.
I felt awful. All of my senses seemed warped and alien. There
was a constant whine in my ears, I couldn't open my eyes, and my
breath was shallow. I suddenly realized that I was now lying on
my stomach and had no clothes on. I wanted to panic but the
sedative hadn't fully worn off.
Slowly, I was able to pick out voices from the ringing. They
sounded like Professor Billow's and Mark's voices but they were
too harsh and metallic.
"...small amount of neural trauma, but nowhere near as much as
before," said the pseudo-Mark voice. "My feedback circuit
worked, dammit!"
"I'm not saying it didn't work," responded the professor's
distorted voice, "I'm saying there's still too much trauma to
risk a retransfer. Perhaps with this lesser amount, though,
it'll be able to sufficiently reduce itself to a safer level
over a reasonable period of time. In the meanwhile I suggest
that you further refine your clever feedback circuit."
I tried to say something, but all that came out was a growl.
The professor's harsh voice continued, "Well, Brian's coming to.
Who's going to explain this time? Perhaps you should, Mark. You
could then also tell him how well your feedback circuit worked."
I managed to force my eyes open and was shocked to see that
everything was black and white.
And there were muffled shouts and poundings and kickings on the
door. I heard Mark say, "What the hell?" just as the door
crashed open. People rushing into the lab shouted triumphantly,
"Free the animals! Free the animals!"
Mark ran out the back door. Professor Billow held his arms out
in front of himself and shouted futilely, "Wait! Wait! You don't
understand!" before being forced out of the lab by the mob of
protesters chanting, "Animal killer! Animal killer!"
A woman came over, gently pulled off electrodes that were still
taped to me, and released the straps. "Don't worry, puppy,
you're safe now," she said as she patted my head. Her voice was
even more distorted than Mark's and the professor's had been.
I concentrated hard on saying that I was not a puppy, that my
name was Brian, and I would appreciate it if she would not pat
me on the head, but all that came out were a few high-pitched,
pathetic barks. I tried to sigh but, instead, panted.
She lifted me up to her face and stared concernedly at my jaw. I
started to whimper. "It's OK," she said in a tone that was
trying to be soothing but actually sounded demonic. "Is
something wrong with your mouth? Were they experimenting on
you?" Then she pinched up her face and looked away. "Whew. With
breath like that, they must have done something." She put me
down on the floor and said, "Sit."
I was too stunned to run away. Everything was very tall. I was
very short. Lots of very tall people were rushing back and forth
breaking equipment. The jagged crunches of destruction were
agonizing to listen to, but after the pillaging was over, I
noticed that almost all of the background whining was gone.
Protesters came by and patted me on the head, smiling and saying
silly things in that now universal harsh tone of voice. Then
they started up the "Free the Animals!" chant again and left the
lab, presumably in search of another.
With growing dread I looked at my own body and saw that I was a
cocker spaniel. I jerked my head up and stared at the other
table.
I was able to see my arm, tensed and straining against the
straps with which Mark and the professor had so carefully bound
me.
One of the protesters had stayed behind and he was leaning
heavily against the large table, his face in his hands. It took
me a moment to realize it was Jed. He was wearing the same
clothes as the previous day but, in black and white, the tie-dye
was a lot harder to recognize.
"Oh God, Brian," Jed was saying. "I'm sorry. I'm so sorry."
There was one last whine still audible in the lab. It was a
periodic whine, not constant like all the others had been, and
it just then dawned on me that it was coming from my body up
there on the table. The whine would last a few seconds, be
broken by a sharp intake of breath, and then continue.
"I'm sorry," Jed repeated.
The woman who had freed me came back into the lab and said,
"Hey."
Jed's head snapped up, startled. "Huh? Oh. Hi, Wendy. How ya
doin'?" His metallic voice was strained and his face showed
pain.
"Come on, Jed," she said. "You're missing out on all the fun."
She gave him a tentative smile but he just stared at the floor.
"Hey, Jed, don't worry about this guy. He's probably just having
a really bad trip. Anyway, the police'll know what to do with
him."
"No, no, that's not... It's..." Jed looked back up at her. "He's
my roommate. His name is Brian."
They stared at each other for a few seconds.
"This is all my fault," Jed finally said.
"Oh, Jed, no, don't say that. It's not your fault. It's tragic
and awful, but it's not your fault."
Jed was silent.
Wendy touched his arm. "Let's go outside, Jed. We can sit down
on some grass and you can tell me about Brian."
I ran out of the lab.
The next few hours were a blur. I ran madly through campus,
through various buildings, dodging between students, making
bicycles screech to stops. I finally collapsed on the brick
steps of the biochem building, panting heavily.
After a few minutes I heard some peculiar barkings. It wasn't
normal barking; it was barking out of which I could decipher
English words.
"Hi," the bark said. "My name's Chuck. What's yours?"
I looked up and saw the dog that had been napping at the top of
these steps this morning. With a bit of concentration I barked,
"My name's Brian."
"Well, Brian, in case you were wondering: No, dogs don't
communicate like this. I was also one of Professor Billow's
subjects. You're the sixth."
"The sixth?"
"Yup. And now with the lab destroyed it looks like you'll be the
last. Unfortunately, that also means we won't be able to be
retransfered. Billow was keeping our bodies in another room in
the lab. I suppose the police will find them, and Billow will be
brought up on criminal charges or something."
I stared at Chuck.
"Hey, Brian, don't worry too much about it. It's not such a bad
life. You get to lie around and nap a lot. Food isn't very
scarce, really, you just have to know where to look. It can
actually be a fun life, but it takes some getting used to."
I continued to stare at Chuck.
"Come on, Brian. Follow me and I'll introduce you to the
others."
I nervously stood up.
"There you go, Brian. You'll see; it's not so bad. You've even
got one good thing going for you already."
"Oh?" I barked. "And what's that?"
"You've got great smelling breath."
Robert Hurvitz (hurvitz@cory.berkeley.edu)
--------------------------------------------
Robert Hurvitz is a graduate of UC Berkeley's Computer Science
department, and is currently working in San Francisco. He is a
frequent contributor to InterText.
FYI
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