42) Saturday
the Twenty Second (9:00 to 10:00 PM) – “Like
the Peasants with the Pitchforks After Frankenstein… !”
Summoned forth by
Tenison’s bullhorn to pay homage to their overlord, staff, security and even
customers with no idea who Big Sonny was crowded ‘round Giga-Plex’s henge of televisions…
portraying a flashing montage of fashions, abs and ass in lieu of Presidential
declarations… while Big Sonny, mounted upon a stepladder so as to confirm his
Bigness to the slavering crowd, declared…
“Welcome! Welcome to Gigaplex. My name is Leland Buford Sonnenschein,
but folks hereabouts just call me Big Sonny.
Not necessarily because I am so tall as Shaq, nor massive as your own
Skins’ front four… but because I create the Big Deals. Look around!
We have the latest digital imaging technology out there in Cameraland,” and he pointed, moving his finger northwards
across the center of the store, “smart clothing and the latest in surveillance
and security from the Double-o-Seven Club, smart washer/dryer combos there in Appliantology… even the latest Moondreams
smart beds. And here, behind me, the
best that Sony, Panasonic, Haier, Tungwa and many, many
others... some even made here in the U.S.A!... have developed to take advantage
of the latest high definition, multi-pixel technology…”
In the stockroom,
Craig Synch whistled to Tom Eppert, up in the crane…
“You plan on
taking your break before close, take it now!’ Craig hollered. “Big Sonny’s about to turn on the Dominator…”
“Roger!” Tom
answered, from the cab, and started climbing down.
Ray Wilson was on
his way towards the 007 Club when Craig, Tom and Pablo emerged from the
stockroom…
“Hey Candyman…”
the seventeen-year old interim stockroom manager hailed.
“Craig? You look kinda used up, man, need some
refreshment?”
Ray dug into his
pocket – handing over a little square of wax paper.
“On the house,
bro’. Maybe you share a little taste
with my man… Tom, is it? He looks
used-up, too… gotta fly, places to go, shit to
shovel…
Tom looked over his
teenage superior’s shoulder. “That
crank?”
Craig nodded, placed
a pinch of the stuff up to his nostril and inhaled. “Uh huh!
Keep you awake… since we’ll probably be around here until two.” He extended the rest of the envelope’s
contents to
Tom Eppert was not unfamiliar with dope, in its various guises,
but… since taking his job at FREECOCK (with its relentless rigmarole of
scheduled and surprise urine testing)… he’d cut back his vice intake to
alcohol…plenty of that!… and an occasional, risky
painkiller. This was good meth! Tom’s vision sharpened, his outlook improved…
and the sight of the four Giga-Grrrlz posing and
gyrating around the big boss didn’t hurt, either.
“Feel like a new
man! That Big Sonny?” He knew it had to be… they’d been waiting on
the little fuck for hours, but he felt he had to say something…
“Yeah, don’t say it…
like he’s not so big? Wow…” Craig added
as the jealous Sabra, still intent on proving that she deserved the accolades
heaped on vapid Effie Lou, slipped into an audacious bump and grind…
Business
transacted, Ray slipped back into the spy shop, catching the attention of the
heavily-muscled but ever-polite Jurgen Jenssen as he
pointed to the glass box in which an array of tasers reposed.
“Think I’ll need
one of those. Maybe more than one… you
hear those wolves howling outside?” He
gestured to the window, beyond which the angry queue of shoppers just being
allowed to exit the CD store were studying their watches and complaining…
“Is store
property…” Jurgen smiled.
Ray smiled
back. “Well, I understand, but if we don’t have possession of these
things, and those guys outside get in, well, there ain’t
gonna be a store anymore, and there ain’t gonna be an us
anymore either, you catch my drift?”
“This logic is
formidable,” Jenssen frowned. “I find necessity superior to my duty. Of course, you shall sign a receipt for
temporary usage of company property…”
“Of course!” With that, Jurgen unlocked the glass, letting
Ray select a fully-charged taser, then boosted one for himself… meanwhile,
across Giga-Plex, the giant Dominator television flickered on at a click of Big
Sonny’s remote; 8192 pixels @ resolving into the image of a nearly-naked supermodel sashaying
down the runway as the boss coaxed Tennison’s bullhorn away, lifted it and
crowed…
“…and so, from
Voivode Technologies, I present… the
Dominator!”
Tom blinked. That was really
good crank! “Sheesh, I can see her
fuckin’…”
“Pixels?” Craig
suggested. “Modulated high definition! Ain’t it wonderful?”
¾ ¾ ¾
Reverend Godwin had
been on edge since the start of the post-rally rally in
Not present... the
Screaming Eagles.
“You have my
word, Reverend, no man under my command will injure, harass nor impede any person
in this demonstration so long as you peacefully
proceed to the FCC offices in an orderly
fashion, present your documents, and depart within a half an hour. Will these people comply?” asked the Colonel.
“Will the local
police and Guard also comply?” the minister answered back.
Knox exhaled a
burst of steam, nodding… but not in a favourable
way. “Well, it seems we may be at a sort
of impasse then…” and the Colonel glanced out over the marchers, another nod
drawing Godwin’s attention. There was a
common purpose – resolution in the air – even the Nation and Tribe were
marching together, talking together, some of the shadier characters from Dempstertown and Purley also on
hand, sporting an air of… anticipation?
Senator Werbele eased off, drawing his golfcart
level with the Colonel and the clergyman with a disturbing twinkle in his
eye. “Ever tell you folks about this
fella I knew, back in the swamps out back o’ Charleston, where we’d go a frog-giggin’?”
“Why no,
Senator,” replied the ever-polite Colonel, “I do not believe you have.”
“Like fishin’, sort of, except with only a few inches of line, a
stick and a big, sharp hook. Take a sack
and a flashlight out onto the waters… best time’s an hour or so before dawn
when the critters are lazy and tired, full of all those bugs as they’ve been eatin’; shine a light into a bullfrog’s eyes, it freezes up
and Whomp!
Hind legs ain’t so bad… it’s a French thing,
mostly, but to each gigger his own…”
“All God’s
creatures gotta eat,” Godwin said, after wincing at “gigger”,
to keep the mood light and positive.
A white girl in dreadlocks in a hoodie inscribed with the
name and motto of an exclusive (and expensive) private university crawled
behind the Reverend’s entourage, shook her head and interrupted. “He meant nigger, sir. A gigger, well that rhymes with nigger and
that’s how the white bosses communicate their microaggressions…”
“Sho’ nuff,” Godwin shushed her as
Knox pointed to security and the politician rambled on…
“One night, Jody
shines his light over the swamp and sees this big ol’ eye, blinkin’
back at him and he thinks, well… mus’ be ol’ One-Eye
Ted - biggest, meanest bullfrog in the swamp.
Now the big ol’ frogs… a’tween you boys an’
me… well, they run sorta tough and sour, but if you
let one stew couple hours in the pot with salt an’ pepper, maybe some of them
Eye-talian spices, well, damn things taste just like
a coupla turkey legs, so Jody gets excited. Throws his gaff, but it ain’t
bullfrog that he gigs, see, it’s just some big ol’ gator with the other eye off
lookin’ out over the swamp for dinner. So, instead of findin’
a meal, Jody becomes the meal…” and
then, before the Colonel or clergyman could talk back, Werbele
gunned the golfcart up to ten miles an hour, scooting
up towards a phalanx of large ladies of the church, all in their Sunday best,
to whom he tipped his hat and smiled…
As Knox smiled to
the troubled Godwin: “Of course, if things do
go south,” the Colonel advised, “well… America’s sort of like the Boy
Scouts. We’re always on hand to help any
ol’ lady cross the street, but if trouble arises, we’re prepared.”
And the
Reverend’s stomach lurched again. He
found himself wishing he’d thought to secrete a small carton of milk in the
great big coat that his father had passed down to him… milk, milk of magnesia,
better yet, or something even stronger and damn the ulcers…
¾ ¾ ¾
Tom Eppert, stretching and yawning and feeling damn good now,
followed Craig towards the media center as the Grrrlz
danced with customers amidst the gigantic 2-D models, posing and swaying at the
base of the Dominator like some god-damned harlots in a Cecil B. DeMille
epic. His intent, however, was General
Westmoreland Soames, whom he’d clocked staring at a cleared space on the floor,
formerly occupied by the lowest-priced fifteen and nineteen-inch sets. Passing Cyberia, he removed a handkerchief
from his pocket and lifted a small ink cartridge off its rack before
confronting his co-worker…
“Westy, my man…”
Soames fairly
leaped back, startled. “Oh… Tom? Hey, they told me you got something to hold
you over, I didn’t think…”
“Yeah, funny
world,” Tom cut him off. “Small world.
So where’s my money? You owe me a
hundred bucks, thirty-five for the fuckin’ converter, the rest for my set that
you and your fuckin’ putz of an uncle blew up… I’m a nice guy, otherwise I’d be
wanting something extra for the pain and sufferin’…”
“Pain and
suffering?
“Just the hundred
does it,” Tom snapped his fingers, repetitively, “…I know you have it, ‘cause I know why you’re here…”
Westy tensed for a fight.
“Tol’ you, man. That was Raoul’s
business. He’s a grown man, I don’t have
to answer for him…”
“Really? Then let’s shake on it…”
Before Westy could draw back, Tom had thrust out his right hand
with the cartridge still embedded in his handkerchief, grasping the other…
“What’s…” and
only now did Soames look down, “…you cut yourself, or something? Burn your ass on… never mind. What’s this?”
Tom jerked his
hand back, stuffing the handkerchief in his pocket and shouting out…
“Cappy? Captain
Capps… over here!”
Capps, taking
time off to watch the Giga-Grrrlz’ gyrations, waddled
up… red-faced and out-of-breath…”
“Dammit man,
don’t call me Cappy…”
“Sorry,” Tom apologized. “I was just looking for Mark to ask him
about… about inventory stuff… I seen this, this gentleman slip something in his
pocket. He denied it, of course…”
“Bull-sheeeit!” Westy cried out,
stepping back.
Tom grinned. “But it’s still right in his hand, there,
see? Caught him right… er, red-handed…”
Capps pried the
cartridge from Westy’s fingers, shoved him around and
patted him down…
“You carrying any
weapons?”
“Weapons? I ain’t even
carrying what this fuck… what was I
carrying?”
Capps placed a
meaty fist on Westy’s shoulder. “Over this way, sir…” he said, marching
Soames towards the tech and credit tent, cuffing him to the detention pole… one
more of those suspected (if not charged or convicted) criminal fettered to five
of its six corners, now.
“You’re makin’ a big mistake,” Westy
complained. “This man…”
“Shut up. You’re on the verge of resisting arrest, an’
that’s a compound felony, you know.
Might even fall under the Revised Patriot Act,” Capps declared.
“Patriot Act, you
crazy… you gonna send me to Gitmo on the say-so of that down-low?” He pointed to Tom Eppert,
shaking with rage. “Well, then I want a
lawyer. You ain’t
even read me my rights…”
“Don’t have
to. You’re not being arrested, only
detained.” And the Captain smiled,
hitching up his belt and leering at Giga-Grrrl
Crystal’s buttocks, shaking like jelly not more than six feet away. “Hey, lookat that
view… and, if you came in and pulled this shit tomorrow night, you’d have been
able to watch the game on a Dominator!
Who says crime doesn’t pay!”
“I didn’t steal nothin’…”
Ignoring him,
Capps turned back to the giant set and dancing Grrrlz. A kid in a long overcoat, six sizes too big
for him and a dead-ender with broken, ratlike teeth
and the yellow complexion of a terminal hepatitis victim commiserated as a
smartly-dressed customer, stuck in an impenetrable discussion of bandwidths
with the impossible “Billy Obvious”, threw up his hands and marched off…
“I’m innocent, too…” sneered
the kid, a great loop of snot running down from his nose.
“We’re all innocent…” agreed the yellow man.
And that brought
Billy out of his virtual fugue.
“Innocent?”
But, while Tom
had been settling his score with Westy and Craig…
deserting his post to powder his nose and marvel at the Dominator’s many
thousands of pixels, showing far more supermodel anatomy than the Bravo
producers probably planned (sending Pablo back to take charge of the loading
dock)… another cheap bastard with a receipt for a Tungwa
’27 appealed to Marko….
“I paid for that set, see…”
“All out. You go back, put receipt towards better
model. Or come back Tuesday. No refund!”
“I can’t come
back Tuesday, the fuckin’ game’s tomorrow.
Look around again, I don’t believe they’d sell people inventory that
they don’t have… ah shit, I’ll make it worth your while…”
Marko was about
to tell the guy to go to hell, or call one of the pissed-off, increasingly
aggressive security people, when he spied a Tungwa
half-hidden under a moldy blanket. It
had a sold/hold note, handwritten, but Mark was not around, Craig had wandered
off… he swaggered back to the dock, tugging the set.
“Maybe can
help. How bad you want to see that
game…”
Greed and outrage
warred for supremacy across the customer’s face, greed winning out…
“Alright, you got
a ten-dollar tip…”
“Fifty!” Marko
countered. “Fifty more!”
The customer
hesitated but, after all, tomorrow was Super Sunday. He forked over a trio of Jacksons and took the
set, ripping off the hold note and tossing it in the direction of the
“Screaming Beagles” van…
“I ain’t comin’ back here, you
know…” he protested, once the Mongolian crap was safely in his grasp. This bothered Marko not at all…
“Is free
country,” he acknowledged.
¾ ¾ ¾
On the Ninth Floor,
Mick Updegraff took a call from Mandy who… alone on a
Saturday night… had opted for shelter from the elements and the consolations of
the admittedly lucid charms of normal digital TV over a risky venture into town
in search of revenge sex. Of course, not
only the weather but the mounting civil insurrection had kept her inside,
watching the horror unfold on the liberal independent station that had
suspended its rerun of “SVU-Memphis” to cover the fallout from the Presidential
speech.
“Mick,” she
stuttered, “did you know that there… there’s a mob of people on the way? A man on TV said they were going to burn your
building down…”
“They said that?”
“They did. I’m scared…” Mandy added.
And it wasn’t
even as if her ass was on the line.
“We’ve got security. But I’ll
check it out… call you back. Luvya…”
“Luvya…”
Then as Mick had
ambled to the window, stretching and yawning under the gun of mandatory
overtime, looking south towards the District… David snuck up behind him.
“See anything?”
“Mandy
called. Said there was this mob marching
here to burn us out… I sort of figured that they’d be coming like the peasants
in Frankenstein, you know, torches you could see from miles off…” Mick
answered, somewhat disappointed…
“Wrong weather
for torches…”
Still, David
opened his cellphone, activated the TV function to a nonpartisan cable news
channel and a tiny pixel panel popped up on the two-inch screen… Ted Fraser,
Evan Augsberg, FCC Chair Yunis and a young woman… soon
identified, only, as Jill… who sounded as if she represented some poverty
lobby.
“Commissioner,
what do you make of the President’s address to the nation?” Fraser said.
“Well, needless
to say we opposed the decision to turn the clock back. We all realize that some people are going to
be inconvenienced… technical change always provokes resistance. If we’d caved in to the buggy whip lobby a
century ago we’d never have developed the automobile. Of course that’s something Jill, here, would
probably say is a good thing…”
Jill Whomever had
that sour, offended expression peculiar to Washington liberals. “That’s a deliberate slur, an unfair and
typically stereotypical masculine remark, consistent with everything that the
FCC now stands for…”
“OK, if we can get
back on track, save the personal stuff for Sunday morning,” Fraser waved his
smooth, white hands, “…Evan, you’ve been paying a lot of attention to this
issue as it arose… seemingly from nowhere… to, as it were, hijack the attention
of an administration in flux and in chaos - much as President Bush had to
contend with Nine-Eleven at the start of his term, or Bill Clinton with gays in
the military…
“There is an obvious
difference, that…”
Fraser, showing an
uncharacteristic resolve, cut Jill off cold.
“Evan?”
“Well,” Augsberg mused, “I thought it was an expedient and long
overdue capitulation to reality. I do
not believe any of the auction winners are going to be able to utilize the
capacities of the multi-megaherz frequency blocs for
months, if not years, so the question of harm becomes moot. Whether the President’s change of heart is
going to put an end to civil unrest… well, that is more problematical. Unfortunately, the very persons that the
Chief Executive was trying to appeal to probably never even heard about the
rescinding of the order because they had no way of knowing that the analog and
unmodulated broadcast signals have been temporarily restored. Many have even tossed their TV sets in the
trash… we hear stories of dozens, even hundreds of old, but perfectly good sets
being dumped at intersections, even set on fire. So, the President’s speech calls to mind the
old saying that, if a tree falls in the forest without any human beings around
to see or hear it, has it really fallen at all?
The police and Federal forces…”
And it was there
that a very disgruntled Kristi Chaine ambushed them
from behind…
“Are you slacking
off watching television on the job, or just looking out the window at the
scenery?”
“We’re here to
research a situation,” was Mick’s snide reply, “I would say that finding out
about a mob coming up from the ghetto to burn us out qualifies as research…”
“The District, Maryland and Virginia are Quentin’s special
project… you have your own areas of interest, and I’d suggest that you return
to them. No mob is going to burn us
out…”
“How do you
know?” Mick persisted
“Because…” and
Kristi begin stamping her foot, pointing out the window, “…because it’s raining again…”
David wasn’t
caring much about protocol either, by now.
“May we presume that Vern is as much in the dark as you are?”
“Vern knows what
he knows, he has sources that I…” and, enraged, she pointed to the tiny face of
Harley Yunis on David’s cell, “…turn that off!”
Instead, David
punched the Manager’s extension and handed his phone to Ms. Chaine…
“Just tell him
yourself… something you picked up in the course of research, you don’t have to
say where. Credit Quentin if you like…
he’s probably downloading hardbodies or something weirder… we just want to know
that he knows…”
And then Vern himself
was on the line, mad as a hornet…
“Vern,” Kristi
began, “I’ve been getting info… multiple
sources… that there’s some sort of march against the FCC, people coming this
way? Uh huh…”
And David watched
as she listened, offering only an occasional grunt, except for one explanation…
“No, sir, I
haven’t heard anything from him… these reports came from the District, with
backup… it’s on television now, I understand, but…”
Eventually she
hung up, turning on the two researchers.
“He knows. He’s known all along,” Kristi said, “and he
wants to see me, now. Which means he’ll
wants to see you, too!”
“Us?” worried
Mick…
“Just David. You are Trent’s nominal supervisor, of
course… for all the supervision that you’ve managed to give that,” Kristi
fairly spat, “…that traitor!”
Vern Cooth looked like shit.
The view from his eleventh floor was grander than that from the ninth,
but David couldn’t see much appreciation in the Manager’s eyes, nor, at least,
any approaching arsonists. Nevertheless…
“Kristi tells me
that you knew people were coming up here?” Vern inquired.
“Of course not,”
David replied, but the Manager wasn’t listening.
“What about
Lockett? You hired him,” he pointed, as if his finger were a rapier. “You were his supervisor all that time
that Pete Myers ran the show, him and that idiot Gobelman…
what’s your role in this?”
“I don’t have a
role,” David demurred. “And, by the way,
I didn’t…”
“When he gets
here, were you supposed to open up one of the side doors and let ‘em in to
trash the place?” Vern cut him off. “Or,
when my security people went out to stop ‘em, would you be in the lobby with a
gun, shooting ‘em in the back? Do you
even have a weapon?”
Instinctively,
David tugged at his ear. Something about
this place that attracted lunatics… as the clouds parted, momentarily, he could
see the moon, only three-quarters full.
“You’re nuttier than Goblin!”
“I… Hugh?” the
Manger stammered. “Hugh!”
The Screaming
Eagle outside, protecting Vern’s door and his person, flung the door open,
discovering his employer cowering against a window pointing at the two people
from downstairs whom Hugh had seen around, but didn’t know… the woman more
often than the man. Now, the Manager was
pointing, and frothing at the lips and sputtering…
“Him! Him!
He has a gun, I think he means to kill me…”
Hugh drew his own
sidearm. “Sir,” he requested, “place
your hands in the air and turn around.
Slowly. You too, ma’am…”
Unarmed, choosing
deference in this hotbed of three-quarter lunacy, David nonetheless continued
speaking to Cooth over his shoulder while on the
receiving end of an aggressive body search.
“What I was going to tell you is that I didn’t hire
“He’s clean,
sir. Shall I search the woman?” Hugh
asked.
Kristi stared
directly at Vern. “You order that and
not only do I sue for harassment tonight, I’ll Weinstein you… bring up all
those other instances, too, starting with your wife…”
“No, just wait
outside, Hugh,” said Cooth, wild-eyed and
panting. “Wait… what do you know about a
mob, supposed to be headed this way? Is
there an FCC employ… a man, probably at or near the head of it, Trent
Lockett? Colored guy, medium height,
probably dressed in a suit and tie, trying to look like something that he
isn’t…”
“We have received
intelligence,” said the Eagle, wondering why Cooth
needed to be asking him, seeing as he, Vern, was in charge of the whole
outfit. Maybe he was just sloppy – or
drunk, that might be it. “They came up
out of the city, an illegal march… but tolerated, and strictly monitored…
anyway, it seems to be breaking up since they reached Giga-Plex. I know a fellow there… it’s getting hairy,
but they’re probably just getting with reality and going shopping. As for Lockett, I can check with surveillance
in Waco, even send a couple of people out to take a look, if you authorize it…”
“Yes, do that. Thank
you. Wait outside, I’m going to be
needing you…”
Hugh closed the
door with an indulgent smile.
“Certainly, sir.”
“He won’t get
away,” Vern promised. “You won’t get away… the Eagles have
satellites, they have data banks – big data
– and operatives overseas… even in fuckin’ Africa. They can look down from space and tell what
kind of rum Pete Myers is sipping on his fuckin’ island. We’re gonna nail that bastard to the cross…”
“Pete? Trent?” David wondered aloud. “In any case, a bad analogy, Vern. Do you want to tell Rommel there to order his
spies to tell
“I decide what this is about,” Vern
puffed up like one of those aggressive lizards that David sometimes saw behind
the mailboxes in his apartment building… little green creatures that swelled up
when menaced, frightening old ladies and postmen. “Anyway, who gives a fuck? Well,” he straightened, “there isn’t anybody
who’ll claim that I don’t know how to stand up in a crisis. You get your wish, lazyboy…
I’m evacuating the building. Or… no, the
sheeple can go home but you… you, too, Kristi!… you are both going with me down to Giga-Plex in person and explain to Fred
exactly what your purpose is in
supporting this insurrection…”
“Fred? Do you mean Fred Faubourg?” Kristi flinched, as if smelling something that had
crawled into the woodwork and died.
“Well he’s Lee Sonnenschein’s mouthpiece, isn’t he? Who do you think you’ve been fuckin’ with all
the while… politicians? Not only
Giga-Plex but the other retailers, not to mention the phone companies and manufacturers…”
“The Chinese?”
David taunted. “Russian hackers?”
Vern
glowered. “Get your coat and an extra
umbrella… looks like it’s getting unpleasant
out there, again…”
¾ ¾ ¾ ¾ ¾ ¾ ¾ ¾ ¾ ¾ ¾
VISIT THESE OTHER
GENERISIS SERIAL ABOMINATIONS…
THE GOLDEN DAWN BLACK HELICOPTERS