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BLACK
HELICOPTERS EPISODE 35 SATURDAY the EIGHTH - The
ruins of dinner strewn about their table like bones in a wolverine's lair,
Andy sat back, feeling his stomach settle after a rare, somewhat frightening
hour. Table talk still buzzed in his ear like gnats. Glenn. Whining,
boasting... one or the other. Always! "...so,
you see, you'll always be that prophet without honor because
you don't know how to do deals, compromise. So you... I'm talking in the
general sense about the protest people, that is... retain your integrity but,
while you do, real people suffer
and some die. And it’s your
fault," he pointed. |
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Andy
replied without conviction... unfamiliar food and drink having muddled his
stomach and head. "So what's that prove? We did let Ratso’s
people register voters at the Sanctuary. I'm not against registration... hell,
if you're not registered then not voting is simply laziness instead of an act
of conscience."
"Glenn,"
Anne needled, "I don't see you
volunteering to join the New Lincoln Brigade and get your head shot off in Moldavia
with the partisans. Or in the jungle..."
"I'd
hope I'm not that stupid. Besides,
"Yeah,"
Andy continued slowly, "that Washington situation’s too weird for me but
still boils down to guys all fighting over who gets to be in charge, no real
difference between left and right anymore.
All about the money! Heat, but no light.
Spooks staking out turf, dogs pissing on hydrants... you'd have to be a
doctor of spookocracy to figure out what's really
going on. Or let some Russian hackers
explain it for you. Or
the President’s family and the Ukrainians. Or Chinese.
I'm not a doctor or a spook, don’t have a computer, and I just hope I’ll
never be one of your useful idiots..."
"You're
too pigheaded to be useful..." Anne assured him. “You’re eminently qualified to serve in
Congress!”
"No
way!" Andy picked up one of the bones... the lamb was gone but there was a
little skein of gristle to strip off and worry between what remained of his
teeth. "Zealots I know would kill
me for eating flesh here, and those others... they'd do it for eating bacon in
a pig restaurant with a couple of pigs... some of 'em would kill each other
because they can't agree what would be the more important reason for killing
me. I mean... welcome to the century of the sensitive people, the
violently sensitive! And it ain’t just Pakistan or Poland… they called Pinhead's health
inspectors down on the Chinese market, not because of the plague, you see, but
claiming that the vendors oppress their chickens, ducks, frogs, turtles, crabs
and clams. They grok the psychology of clams! Set fire to the Psi
Variant and Zika virus research lab at the U. because
either they were saving mice or... some of 'em, even, the uber-sensitives...
say that mosquitoes deserve self-determination.
Waiting on the Virus Liberation Front to go... well... viral, I
guess." He burped, looked away.
“My… this girl, woman called me a cisgender fossil; I don’t even know
what she was talking about. Only cis- I
ever heard of was what they called the Soviet Union while it was breaking up,
before it went back to just plain old Russia again, so am I some sort of
Russian? Is that bad?”
"Catfish
says that people who narrow their political focus down to single issue
obsessions," Anne changed the subject, "suffer from information
overload."
"Naah," Andy snapped back, "they’re just tuned in
to the loudest frequency. March off to wherever on their own wavelengths like
ghouls from one of those zombie n’ werewolf movies following the voice of
Wolverine Jack on the Nazi punk station, but with crummier music. I have to deal with them all! Pro-choicers,
dirt-eaters, lost Obamaniacs, Make America Greaters, Build Back Betterer,
MAGA… people who protest electric bills, tree-spikers, gun nuts, anti-gun nuts,
missing children – anything to prove to themselves and somebody out there,
probably on the social media, that they matter
... all that concerns me for the
next few days is whether the ones coming here’ll have their plot of God’s green
earth to sleep by night after ranting by day… maybe a slab of cardboard, too,
if they’re lucky…"
"Well,
that's what Anne meant," Glenn stressed, "...you either specialize or
fall into whatever parade's passing through and wind up in a Disneyland of lost
causes. Do you think the Coalition's above all those distractions? Not so!
We’re winning, but we still need help…"
"Not
innarested! Wanna know what
the demo’s about, what I got tossed in jail for? Coupla
months ago, before this permit thing blew up, people we knew were gonna rent
the Embassy for these forums people wanted on everything under the sun... just
the logistics, sublease out the politics to anybody who wanted and came up with
cold, hard cash and no firearms permitted in the building. OK, first to get
this application in is some gay group... and part of their workshop is the role
of sadism and masochism in our society. Shoulda
invited Pinhead's police n' a certain bureaucrat but, anyway... part of the
committee says no, can't do it, it's degrading to women. So you got lesbians on
one side, free-speech feminists on the other... probably angling to get closer
to Elon Musk or, at least, his money... then the
animal-righters step in and say we gotta kick the
workshop out because they kill animals to make their leather whips and
motorcycle gear. Shoulda been easy, right, but
different people banning workshops for different reasons each want their position
on top on the letters of rejection... out of the three factions, which two do
you think get into actual physical bloodletting?"
"The
humane communities?" Anne guessed.
"And
this goes on and on... Feminists for Fair Play for the Taliban gets into the
act, endorsing their fatwa on that little girl they decapitated in Pakistan,
over there, and, finally, nobody wants any responsibility for setting up the
workshops; everybody else is too busy trying to find some PC way of shutting
everybody else down. It’s like the great
Occupy Wall Street protests that fizzled soon as it turned cold, just like
everybody knew it would. Nothing gets
done! Ever!"
"I
draw the line at civil rights for fish," Glenn said hesitantly, "they
may have feelings but God made them healthy to eat. If he'd meant for them to
pick up the gun, he'd have given them fingers."
"And
that's another element of the problem," Andy said, "the whole health
nut kick. They’d have banned donuts on
campus but, then the police… you know?"
"Jack
goes along with that. He says the only reason governments get away with
imposing fascism is that they're promising the big "I",
Immortality," Anne explained. “And
that cost us a pile of Bloomberg money...”
"I
think he's on unsteady ground," Glenn clucked, "it's provocative, but
ultimately detrimental, to argue against safety. Look at those Republicans who refused to wear
masks and vaxx up, they’re going extinct. Some of them..."
"But
proudly so!" Andy responded, taking out his GodMartTM
pack. "Before I have to go outside for another... don't want to sound like
a broken record, but I thought all we used to go through in order to force some
kind of breakthrough, for liberation! OK... there was the war and the
assassinations, Nixon and Reagan and Trump... and then what? Terrorism! Now
what? Concentration camps in the desert for melanomically-incorrect
kids caught holding a bag of kat, or just plain
flaked under all those state and local drug decrim recrim statutes while the beautiful people caught with one
of those Federal raps on weed get lawyers and community service and a month in
ritzy rehab when the right cash crosses the right palms? Thank you very much, Kid Kennedy. A National I.D.? Palm swipes for Whole Foods? Microchips in the necks of felons… which your
Catfish person supports, by the way?
Savings tax? Dictatorship of the Insurocrats? Pill
grannies smuggling in cancer drugs, tracked by the cellphone companies and
jailed for twenty years? UN observers in the black helicopters, drones snooping
everywhere... how many terrorists have they captured recently? If you
can find a job, you still have to drop your drawers and piss in a bottle
whenever the boss feels like jacking you off because the Supremes said private
corporations aren’t subject to public laws. If you can't, they make you go
through psychological testing from eighty thousand a year government shrinks or
that yacht racing guy to get forty dollars’ worth of rent stamps that they tax
the people who do have jobs for. And
only the Party of Trump POTheads still talk about freedom, and their freedom is to refuse the vaccines against
Covid Six and infect all their grandparents to
death? Makes me glad I
can't afford a car... not just the gas prices, but... what with all those
tattletale computers inside and cheerful gestapo roadblocks every fifteen miles
looking for Mexicans so they have to stop everybody because it’s against policy
to profile Mexicans? Then they
bring in the drug dogs, and, if they want your car, shit manifests. That or having it get ripped off be sold for
scrap cause no one cares how many alarms you put
in..."
“That’s
cynicism,” Glen demurred. “People like
you are what’s wrong with the left…”
“So
does that make you what’s right with the right?” Andy plucked the last handroll from its bed.
"What the fuckin' liberal idiots in Washington are after is the extinction
of humanity... in the sense of souls, if not bodies… absolute elimination of
every difference in thought, mind, size or character that differentiates one
individual from another.
Robo-world! They’re the Souljackers. Just like the Taliban. Or Chinese social credit. Or Nanny-state Communism... but without the
free healthcare and cheap rent. Vote for
Shmoomberg or Bloombump and
they’ll save you from those diabolical Cokes and slap you into jail for child
abuse if your kid goes outside without a helmet. Live forever, feel nothing and spend your last
three decades in a bed full of piss and shit, hooked up to IV 'n TV... that way
murder and genocide isn't any worse than turning the light off when you leave
the room. For chrissakes, the numero
uno movement at the U. is the pedophiles against
circumcision, circulating their petitions against cutting babies' weenies off.
Not that I disagree, it sorta makes sense... but with
all these wars on, millions of people sleeping in the streets, vandalizing
synagogues on behalf of outlawing the bris?"
"I
always wondered," Anne mused, swishing wine around in her mouth, "if
the guests at these Jewish ceremonies ate brisket afterwards..."
"That’s
racist, Anne. If you're not doing
anything wrong," Glenn pointed back, "you should have
nothing to fear. Suicide and liberation are mutually exclusive in Christian
societies. Unless you're Jim Jones or Abbie Hoffman. Or some of Tillerman's
crazier militia people, slinging terroristic threats..."
"Mark
Cobb?" Anne taunted him.
"That's
not fair!"
"Well,
when the Coalition was in an earlier phase... Tillerman used to be much more
powerful... it had a rather, how shall I say, patriarchal flavor..."
"Like
Kirill, over in Moscow? Oh yeah, that Rocky
Mountain Mafia!" Glenn shot Andy a conspiratorial smirk.
"Funny thing... now Anne's supposed to keep, what is it... lines of
communication? Open? With Tillerman and his survivalists you read
about in the papers..."
"Who
is Tillerman anyway?" Andy
inquired. "Most of those who want to come here and protest don't know what
to make of the Catfish, some of them even sort of like him... but they all say
Austin Tillerman is Hitler reincarnated but with a full set of junk and a
penchant for hugging trees as well as for advocating a nuclear war to wipe out
all the people and let the cockroaches and crocuses take over. Or Trump, if he believed in global
warming. Quoting from that manifesto…
narcissists don’t write policy papers, they write manifestos… from that militia
guy who killed all those migrants in New Mexico? Endorsed by that Q-Anon Shaman with the
horns who he’s probably cut a dealt for a pardon? Except a few way-out Earth First types who've
stopped coming round... says in the Urinal he likes to have the Marlboro Man
theme play when he gets introduced. Wasn't that like Gary Hart… I mean, if he
was some sort of swinger, he couldn't have been that bad..."
"Fascist
accusations have been slung around so often, they're worth less than the air
that it takes to breathe them," Anne replied, and somewhat angrily.
"Yes, Tillerman is rich and he gets high marks from Hannity and Glenn Beck
and that crowd and used to be a regular on O’Reilly before that Green New Deal
flameout, even gets grudging respect on Drudge… yes, he's concerned about the
environment, but without sounding all preachy and Al Gorey. And if you dig deep
enough, I've no doubt someone will pull skeletons from his closet. But he and
some others... not all from the burnt out boonies in Colorado... they did start
the CNC and the Catfish, well he just sort of moseyed into town after he had to
quit Congress, liked what he saw, and took over."
"And
thank the heavens and all little fishes that he did!" Glenn said.
"Want to know what Tillerman's really like? Ever watch Dynasty - Next
Generation on the cable? That mean old white-haired billionaire? That's
Tillerman! Send the troops into
Moldavia. Flat taxes are too liberal,
let’s bring back Maggie Thatcher’s poll tax and debtors’ prisons… Jack proposed
it as a joke, Tillerman’s serious. Wants
to seed the Arizona border and its failed wall with landmines... even got
Senator Joe Arpaio hollerin’ ‘hold on, there’! Some friend of the Earth!"
"What
an awful comparison!" Anne shuddered.
"Debates
don’t matter to me; don't have cable," Andy shrugged. "Don't even
have TV at the shelter anymore... except for the sound... and when the FCC cuts
off the U’s low-power feeds we won’t even have that. Don't have time to watch, anyway, always
somebody around to tell you what to think, some crisis to make you do what you
have to do and a comedian to make jokes about how impotent we all are. What
does Ratso think... whoever he's for, I'm
against."
Glenn
sidestepped as best he could, coughing lightly. "Uh well... as you know,
you don't always get to choose all your allies. Look, Tillerman's bunch all
have that fresh-scrubbed, pink cheeked John Denver look... brains all full of
snow and Kaopectate and eagles' wings, flapping around
in nature's boundless void. Atheist Teavangelicals!
They’re nothing but reincarnated alt-Trump Youth with a side of Mormon
missionaries and Paris climate accord junkiess;
rather be right than be, or support, the President… sorta
like your bunch, come to think of it.
Henri… he's always on the side that's winning.”
"Hey,
I'm no expert, but I know that! Ratso teamed up with
Pinhead's Health Department to close down a lot of the old hotels here,
downtown, where poor people lived, a lot of elderly? Said they were bringing them up to code, then
slapped on a paint job and sold them off as grad student condos. The supposed public senior housing never got
off the ground, so we get those throwoffs all the
time at the Sanctuary, the ones that nursing homes won’t take with all those
new neO-bamacare rules. He's a piece of shit... and
anyone who collaborates with him… they’re shit, too."
"OK...
OK!" Glenn answered. "This shit's for dessert... anyone else? Piece
of pie?"
"I'll
order if you do." Anne gathered her purse. "Have to pay a visit to
the little girl's room..."
She
left as Glenn gestured the waitress over to clear their plates and bring
dessert.
"Try
the blackberry. It's great. Trust me! Three..." Glenn decided for them all
before Andy could reply, "and three coffees..."
He
shook his head. "When you have something valuable to protect, maybe you
overreact, sometimes. You remember how Anne behaves around men."
"More
or less..." said Andy, poker-faced.
Glenn
shot an incriminating glance at the table of Turks, chewing their sensible
meals thoughtfully and conversing in low, glottal Baltic Sea tongues, brought
his hands up to the table, rested them there while his fingers performed
imaginary machinations, as if they were part of an assembly line. "She's supposed to be doing confidential work
with one of Tillerman's lieutenants - Rinker, this communications slick. Dick! Nothing dishonest.
Just keeping them happy and on the team when they lose... which they
will. But I don't know,
I just hope she's keeping personal and political separate..."
"Sort
of like undercover work?" Andy volunteered.
"That's
an unfortunate analogy..."
Andy
raised his hands. "Sorry!"
Glenn
raised an eyebrow to indicate Anne's imminent return. "What you do and
what I do isn't so different, except that what I do matters... and
I get paid for it. And, by
the way, don’t knock Bloomberg. He’da been a terrible President, but he’s part of the
strategy…"
“What
strategy?” Andy scowled.
“Rayna’s
strategy. It’s all in the Catfish books
and Don Jones Index lessons… flood the election with minor parties, single
issue candidates, favorite sons… it dilutes the field, shakes people out of
their mindset that they’ll always have to choose between Republicans and
Democrats. And then…”
"Hello...
you look terrible!" Anne said, kissing Glenn on the forehead. "Was
the fish that bad?"
"I
did want to thank both of you for the permits," Andy
struggled. "From what I hear, you went to a lot of trouble with that
Congressman. I hope it didn't hurt you in other ways..."
Glenn's
eyes flickered coldly. "That... no, we'll get by..."
The
pie arrived, a welcome respite.
"I
didn't think we'd agree," Andy said, digging in, "but you wouldn't be
where you are without people in the streets. I'm certainly not as smart as you,
I don't have connections... hey, I'm just stating facts. You don't get reform
without the specter of revolution hovering in the background!"
Glenn
spat out his forkful of pie. "A seed!
This sucks." He raised his voice for the benefit of the waitress,
who'd moved on to another table. "Sucks! You and people like you, you
don't solve anything," he turned back. "All you do is obstruct and
get hauled away to prison."
"Without
Malcolm X threatening revolution and the Panthers cleaning their nails with
switchblades," Andy reminded him, "Martin Luther King would've been
just another preacher in a slum congregation, worrying about how to raise money
to fix the church roof."
"Andy,
you've never known what you're talking about," Glenn said, shifting his
glare to stare Anne into putting down her fork, "...and I think that you
are going to have to face the fact you are probably never going
to have any influence about what happens, anyway."
"Maybe
it's that I'm just too busy dealing with the shit your influenza people keep
throwing at us to sit around and plan the big plans. Like this guy... killed
himself at the Hall of Justice this morning? Paulie,
from the Sanctuary... head case, nobody that you'd be proud to admit knowing.
Just a half-pint junkie thief who hated being locked up... wouldn't have made
it in one of the Catfish concentration camps either. System's fault, or just
his own?"
"His
own!" Glenn responded, cold as liquid helium, swirling around in vapors on
anniversary news footage from the
"Fascism
didn't march in with flags, bugles and parades... it crept in overnight, on
little cat feet. Americans make less real money than they did in 1952, blacks
and women less than back in 1928. Top dogs used to make more than workers...per
capita... than anywhere in the developed world except Brazil, if you call
what's down there with the burning the Amazon development, then those labor
guys overthrew the government, again, took over and pulled them past us so
we're dead last. Forty-fourth of forty-four.
And like your Catfish says in that Don Jones crap… hey, they still got
public computers in the library, I keep up… bottom of the barrel in
healthcare. All that food stamps and
rent stamps do, while they last, is keep the poor alive to sell fentanyl-poisoned dope, do their robberies and shit and
keep what's left of the middle class hating the poor instead of uniting against
the rich... I didn't cause any of that shit, I
protested every step of the way, even with that black fellow’s senile sidekick
who replaced the vacant-smiling prick in the White House..."
“That’s
racist!” Glenn stood up, throwing his
fork into the pie and spattering dark, grainy sauce over the tablecloth. “I mean, if you’re talking about Obama,” he
backpedaled…
"While
you were protesting, we worked. And I still have
appointments!" He leveled a finger at Anne. "You'd better be back
upstairs before ten, making those calls. I'm going to be checking on you!"
He gave her an eye/finger threat wielded, a few years ago, by DeNiro against
Ben Affleck - Andy tried to remember - or was it Ben Stiller? Ben Folds?
Fumbling with his wallet as he rose, Glenn extracted two folded
dollar-bills and tossed them towards the table. "That's our tip... don't
throw the cunt a penny more. Doesn't matter whether or not you sell out,"
he told Andy, already halfway through the door, "only whether the check
clears."
“Incel!” Andy snorted.
"Shit!"
Anne exclaimed, contemplating the filthy money now draped across her gooey
plate.
"Sorry..."
Andy began apologizing.
"Oh,
not that... he has the credit cards!"
"Uh
huh..." Andy said, spotting the same guard lingering by the entrance.
Finally he sighed, took the paper bag of cash from the City settlement out of
the corduroy jacket and motioned the waitress over to bring them their check.
"A
man of substance!" Anne whistled. "Listen, I have to get some details
out of the way and hit the ATM, but we should get together. Later. Can you meet me around tennish?"
"I
guess so. Where?"
"I,
I don't know..." Anne realized. "Everything's changed around here.
Aren't there any places open we'd remember?"
Andy
thought. "There's Santo's. But it's changed... sort of. It's an oldies
bar, now."
"Well,
so are we! At any rate... Santo's in an hour. I love a man with a fat bankroll
in his pocket..."
They
clinked coffee cups. Andy paid the waitress, leaving a generous tip as the
unsmiling security guard poked his watermelon-sized head into the Oak Room,
scrutinized the cash in Andy’s fist and coughed.
"Shouldn't
we do something about that?" Anne said, gesturing to the
blackberry goo-covered money still on her plate. "I mean... if we left it
she might think it some kind of an insult."
"You're
right," Andy said. He picked up the bills by a corner where they were
still somewhat clean. Outside a wizened little bum, an old Charlie Manson
lookalike in a thin green shirt and shit-stained trousers, sat, rocking back
and forth, against the mass of the Ivona like a mad
mullah contemplating the destruction of America. A styrofoam
cup sat before him, anchored by pennies, dimes and nickels and a scribbly
cardboard sign. "It's Homiless, Hungrey And Alone Jesus, Lovs You!"
"Buy
yourself a bottle," he said.
The
little hobo stared and shook his head. "Can you spare more, it's three
dollars now for a shortie. Wine tax; From the fires in California..."
"Mmmm," was all Andy could say.
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