Chapter Nineteen
This is your 5 o'clock update. There has been a rip in the fabric of the sky. There is no cause for alarm—two astronomers and a seamstress have been deployed to the site and are hard at work. Please continue your usual routine.
I dialed West-to-East Generik, trying to contact Mari without any luck. I hoped to whatever primeval forces were at work in our abysmal universe that she wasn't down at Hypocrite Wedding, that place stank with the decay of desperation—"under new management" was what I'd heard, which of course was code for something having gone down the proverbial tube. The girl certainly had more class than that—I tried to remember her as she was, but paranoia kept getting in the way.
The redscreen clock told me it was five minutes to the new Soundless Laser Light Symphony live broadcast I'd been looking forward to, so I drank some Pleasure Maximizer Tonic and settled in for a good listen. The music came to my waiting, confused senses from the dolby embedded in the walls, and for a moment, I saw everything as it should be. I was not an average man—I was a gallant Knight of the Rhombus Table. I sank into a crystal-laden ship of joy, spontaneity and gratitude, and no one watched me.
The result of mixing Generik Pleasure Maximizer Tonic and Vapor Ice Candy is that it is extremely potent but ridiculously short-lived. To prevent against this unfortunate shortcoming, I had taken 8x the recommended dose. Eight hours passed and I was sure the Syntonic Sisters had stiffed me, but it was only eight minutes more before I felt that placid euphoria. I visited ancient civilizations and read countless books, discovered new planets and composed songs for angels. I was flying over Baghdad on a magic carpet when Ernest's bearded head appeared, floating disembodied in front of my face.
"Told you so. Told you so," it said.
"I know, I know. But the crystals are too tasty, and there's nothing else." The head shook in disapproval, then vanished.
Ernest Emeritus was the only saint I had ever known. He was king amongst thieves, and honesty among all the lying, cheating, sniveling, pathetic little bastards of eWall Road. Girls I knew said he'd been devastating 20,000 years ago—Zeus in form, Alexander in strategy, and Shakespeare in contemplation. Without him, I doubt the colony would hold together—inside Ernest was an enormous magnet that kept the whole place from repelling apart in countless directions—opposing forces kept at bay by his charm and sheer will. Against the grey surfaces of security buildings he shone, a beacon upon the dark waters. I had learned countless invaluable things from him in the thousand years we'd known each other, yet retained none of it. He was my father, my mother, and my god. Without him, I might as well have regressed into the spineless, limbless, soulless worm I had once been—when I was only a vague concept in primordial ooze.
#
Although the original Hypocrite Wedding NightChapel was on the East side, the West side quickly sprung up with its sister establishment, Narcotic Nocturnal Nuptials. Five days after the candy binge, and it was impossible to tell where the NightChapel ended or where it began. All girls dressed up like cellophane, with perfect skin and purple eyes. The theme was "Sexy New York Subway—The Third Reich." I was in love and on a high—my midnight maiden had gifted me with Everlasting Joy and I used it routinely throughout the night. Terra cotta electrodes and thrumming bass kept me upright during times I might have passed out all for the love of bells and whiskey. Light dawned far up above, illuminating the ice like mirrors and thawing cows that had been frozen a thousand years, but none of us saw it. The steady beat and frosted mint air kept us euphoric and at bay.
"I've only got three years to live," a girl of about fifteen with fire in her eyes and crystal sugar water in her nose told me.
"I'm sorry to hear that. I heard on the redscreen today that they're working on a new cure though," I said.
Vicodin Victoria had been diagnosed with Alzheimer's and had forgotten her way back to the only Doctor who could heal her. She spent her nights in the brightly lit basement and her days in the dimly lit shadows of her Generik glasshouse. She wore no clothes, yet no one could see her goodies. For someone with a death sentence she looked entirely too vital. I offered her my coat, as it were, and a shot from my tank.
"That's good news. But it will come too late for me," she said.
"It usually does."
"Well, let's make the best of it while we can." A tried and true line learned from the redscreen.
Victoria had undergone a skin transplant involving a plastic coating so that she would always be clean and never have to wash. Convenient, but slippery. We danced, and at times I was able to grab a hold of her, grasping at her in the dark until the red laser lights came on—a warning that the chapel would close in three hours—it usually takes the crowd that long to clear out.
Two shiny new green pearlescent Infatuate pills were produced from a leather satchel. Our vows that evening were solemn. If I touched her the wrong way, she would break even sooner than her near expiry date. But I was always wrong—too selfish, too nervous, too automatic—she had to guide me through every inch of the Ceremony. At last we were consecrated, but then the lights came on in the NightChapel, and everyone had to return home to their respective greenhouses. I scrawled my address on her back with a dry erase pen, and went scampering off into the phony daylight as the dawn bell chimed and the white lights flashed.
I burst from the dark into fluorescent daylight and headed in the general direction of my greenhouse block. I had just reached the black alley behind Triple-N when I ran into Benjamin, the teenage science professor from Berlin. I usually have a rule about Repeats, but I've always thought BB was sort of special, and after all, there were only so many people in WestGen now. He hooked me into his tank and flipped on the switch. The air turned charlie green and the walls of the alleyway touched me in places only intestinal probes had gone before. In 40 seconds he had me prostrate, stripped, and electrocuted by Ben Franklin's kite. There was no one else around so we could do whatever we wanted, but after we'd exhausted all the vents and ate up all the High-lo candies we realized we had nothing in common except for consumerism. Since we had just bought and sold everything from one another, there was nothing left to do except go our separate but equal ways.
Back home in my square of space, it was days or hours before I felt normal again. Homeostasis homeopathy homoeroticism and everything was calm, calm and content. Placebo or 1000 mg of opioid bliss, not much difference once enough time has passed. When you've got the low-down blues, you'll take just about anything that promises a change in color.
#
I dreamed I professed my love to Mari last night, via a long-range tank2tank app while I was high on the pills, the vapors, the smokes, the liquor, the gummies, the cheap sex. She'd doubted that I knew or even had a vague recollection of the concept of love from when it was all the rage in 2960, but she was wrong. I had been in love once, and not just the kind you have injected into you. There was a youth who grew up in the cube next to mine—EmerGenShe. She had long, brown hair and chocolate-burgundy eyes and he killed me. He was smarter and stronger than any of the other kids in my section. She and I used to play a game called "hide the money". He always won and I always got in trouble. That's the way love goes.
I had made a promise to Mari, before she left for her retreat and before the split. I said I would limit myself to four surgeries per year, and save up the excess money to buy D.E.F. an automoto on his 9th birthday. Every resident of Generik was essentially a trust-fund baby. G.P.B. were our daddies and doled out to each one of us a very fine allowance, provided that we fulfill our citizen's duties adequately. It really didn't matter—they could add or subtract as many credits to or from our individ credit cache as they wanted—it wasn't real, just a made-up number in a computer somewhere that corresponded with the chip in your acu-tank. We were so lazy that none of us except for Ernest remembered what real work meant. If left to our own devices, we would surely die out as a species.
G.P.B. allowed us all to be dreamers for a living—the only thing anyone with a brain ever wants to be anyway. In dreams, reality is recreated by the second, drugs make colors, colors make shapes and patterns on the walls, and you forget that you're living underground. Lies are told and instantly retracted before they become truth. Negatives become positives, women become men as we all know they want to be. One sex, one species, one mind, one desire. To not have to think for ourselves, the choice God gave us in the beginning, and the false assumption by millions that those who follow him are the ones who believe they have everything mapped out for them. The only thing mapped out for you is the steady rise and fall of credit value, in and out like the tide, and G.P.B. is the moon.
Chapter Twenty
"Baby, baby, won't you come and find me. I'm so lonely down here in this coal mine. The soot in my lungs will kill me by the time I'm 29."
Dear Jonah,
By now you've probably forgotten me, but I loved you fourscore times before the split. I know it's hard to believe, but Generik used to be twice as big. I live in a place called EastGen—we're the experimental half—your half lives by the old way. Right now they are trying a new partnering technique—did you know that during the split they found a way to make sure the EastGen population had exactly the same number of males and females? Wonder how they did that. Your side has more males I believe. I know how you get along with them.
There have been many rumors over here—people have gone missing, more of them than usual—some say that they've been reconstituted and the parts are being used in these new 5D flatscreens that just appeared on the market. I'm sure that's not true, but sometimes I don't know what to think.
Do try to reach D.E.F. if at all possible. I can't get through to him, every time I call, a G.P.B. officer tells me he's in class.
I miss you. Cross over.
Don't give up on yourself like everyone else.
- Mari
Everyone has a luscious scapegoat wearing an emerald green gauze gown who they keep in a tin can. However, I, like every other law-abiding citizen, knew there was only one way to gain access to any government-controlled facility: create a false threat while faking an illness.
#
I entered the Mystical Magical Musical Momentary Museum at a third past eleven. Ernest was balancing a potted plant on one foot while calculating the speed of sound in a compacted room after a nuclear explosion. He winked at me twice and I hovered silently.
"Professor Emeritus, I need a cure."
"Yes, I've known that for quite some time now. Known for quite some time." He studied me briefly, peering over large plastic-rimmed glasses with no lenses in them.
"A cure for what?" he said.
"For EastGen," I said. "They're sick. Mari's there. I need to get in."
"Hmm...that won't be easy," he said, smoothing the top of his hair-beard. "You'll need a doctor. Need a doctor."
"I know. I called Doctor Marc's office, but his secretary said he was on sabbatical for the next forty-six months."
"Not that kind of doctor," Ernest said. "Not that kind." He handed me a business card—I was surprised that anyone still used them. This one had a name and a delicate network of vines carved into a thin square of cherry-colored wood—Ichiban Marie Clairevoyant – Unlicensed Fortune Teller and Surgeon.
"You recommend this person?"
"I do, I do. We float in different circles now," he said as he demonstrated, "but Madame Clairevoyant does fine work."
"So she'll alter me for entrance to EastGen, great. Is there anything else I need?"
"Ah yes, I almost forgot. Here, here." A silver globat delivered a clear glass box with two capsules inside—one purple, one green.
"These are the Biochemical Brothers," Ernest said. They should be all you need to wage a proper war."
One was marked WW, and the other, "4".
"The purple one gets you in. The green one gets you out. Gets you out." He accepted a stack of papers from a large blue guinea pig, his legal assistant.
"Just one thing. Don't take them during the day," he warned, petting my head affectionately. "Not during the day."
Chapter Twenty One
Albanian Were-rat discovered amongst the proletariat populous. Drink lots of water, wear ski masks and rob your neighbor as yourself.
My shutter-stop is on the wrong setting. The window stays open for too long, and the image burns bright white—it's intensity, but really it's no image at all. Specks of grey and monster blobs, unusable pictures all for nothing even after a nice, long, chemical bath. That was how I remembered my father. A faint after-effect, a barely lingering image behind my retina—he had blond hair and large brown eyes, strong hands—no, that's not right—he was short and pale and grey. My mother hated him and he never did anything, maybe that was why. But I figured he must have taught me something—I can't remember a word he said or a thing we did together, but I know that whatever we did, he must have been right. He was my old man.
#
That stellar nightclub was the only place I felt truly at home. Lights pulsing and faces indistinct in the darkness, I finally found relief in the NightChapel's Achilles' Heel night. It was the dawn of a new era—everyone wore their sins on the outside like badges of pride or name tags bearing their net worth. A woman who had 'Shopaholic / Neglect' written on her chest in glowing eyeliner script, with fake red hair, fake green eyes and perfect porcelain skin that was probably painted on, gave me a small lavender pill. Its specks of clear crystal made it sparkle in the dark, everything else was dull and desaturated by comparison. I slipped it into an available slot on my acu-tank—it was a perfect fit. The music beat like strings and tympani inside a steel barrel, and the people trapped inside the drum made holes in the ceiling like pinhole lasers in a planetarium. The lower half of my body soared, but my head fought me at every turn and my heart sank into my crocodile-covered army boots. It was time to find someone to partake in Ceremony with and quick. A young man with wispy, unwashed hair and an ironic t-shirt caught my wandering eye across the room, mostly because he wore a glowing-green headband and was easy to make a beeline for in the darkness. I pegged him right away as a deadbeat candyhead whose only redeeming quality was decent taste in rock n' roll music. I was correct, but at least his Ceremony skills were adequate.
# #
I found the nearest InfoHover and searched by location: Ichiban-Marie Clairevoyant—she conducted business in SouthWestRightSideGen. I rode that information highway all the way to her commode.
Ichiban-Marie Clairevoyant had gotten sick from everything she had ever put in her body. Horseshoes, bananas, nunchucks, motorcycles, eucalyptus leaves, lizard hearts and iron lungs. She had built up an exoskeleton of armor that was so thick it was impenetrable but its weak point was Everywhere—it melted into smoke-fire at a moment's notice for no good reason. She was rose tea and ore—skin, hairs, teeth, and nails as young and fresh as a prepubescent peach, but eyes that showed the knowledge of resurrection and connection string syntax. She practiced tarot without a deck and medicine without a license and had removed all her own organs herself—the pleasurable ones, the uncomfortable ones, and the necessary ones. Said that was what kept her skin looking so good. Her credentials hung from her neck, and from a porcelain-framed plaque stapled to one blood-red wall. The rest of the walls were black, with thick, magenta vines in puff paint—they seemed to move off the walls and grab at you when you walked by.
"Those are my assistants." She indicated the vines with a waspish gesture. A pair of them came out and snatched me, strapping me down to the wooden Veneer of Morality table in the center of the room. A knife gleamed. The sizzle of sweet electricity buzzed in my ears.
An hour later I had all the necessary repairs. I could now go wherever I wanted in Generik and no one would try and stop me.
Chapter Twenty Two
Has your teenager been climbing the walls lately? What he needs is our new, improved "Serenity" Gummy Tummies. Also, you may want to suggest that he stop spending so much time in the water room with the door closed.
The repairs that Madame Clairevoyant had installed felt like long, sharp nails scraping softly across my heart and lungs—nails-on-a-chalkboard in my ears and nails scratching love welts down my back. My aluminum heart sang like never before. Passing through scanners and sliding through security-locked doors like the handsome hero in a crime-spy-chase-chase-bang-bang thriller. Don't know how I found my way from West to East—all tunnels looked the same, all greenhouses the same, all stranger sex and high-lo candies the same I suppose. All there is. Just a fly in the ice, at the bottom of a boot, covered in mud. Loving every second of it.
I was empty, rattling around like a tin can on acid crack crack let me go and die in peace and in pieces. Monday was just around the corner. Thuesday came twice a week. The weekend lasted four days and five nights, and the nights grew progressively longer until they bled into Monday again. I placed one foot in front of the other without knowing where I was headed. The square tunnels led further underground, where the oxygen was even thinner. My tank told me I was just .03 kilometers away from the divide. Up in the distance, a neon sign with a red martini on either side flashed off and on. "EastGen."
The sign hung on a wall and there was no door. Metallic twang voices like lazily drugged robots echoed off aluminum surfaces and bled through to where I stood on the other side.
"...001100010. So, Doctor, how are the experiments coming along?" The first speaker's inflection was mechanical, emotionless.
"So far, so good. Those tested have shown remarkable progress. The BioRenu-otics—that's my new name for them, trademark it—seem to be working wonders. However...there is still a margin—the slightest margin—for error. The method is not yet foolproof." The second voice I thought I recognized, but couldn't quite pinpoint.
"That's what those Eastern lab rats are for."
"Yeah yeah, I know the score. Just remember what we agreed on. I am, after all, a plastic surgeon by trade."
I swallowed the lump in my throat, retied my designer sneakers and started to head back the way I came, but now the tunnel was blocked by a thick column of pulsing air. Probably a leak, Generik repairs department ought to be on this in a matter of minutes. Nothing to do but wait. I slid down against the nearest slick black wall, feeling groggy and tired. I wondered if Mari and D.E.F. even remembered me. I also wondered how long it had been since my last hit. I checked the time on my acu-tank—4:05 p.m. Definitely time for a dose of something. I checked on the Biochemical Brothers tucked safely in my breast pocket, took them out and examined them a little more closely—the purple Brother was bright and shiny pearlescent, but the green Brother had gone a bit dull, and pulsated like a pregnant worm. I returned him to his place in my pocket and swallowed his more attractive Brother. Mid-afternoon—still daytime and not yet night. But the night starts sooner and sooner, and it was dark in the tunnels. Footsteps approaching—the repairs department to fix the leak, mostly likely. Or else G.P.B., to bring on the night.
Chapter Twenty Three
Generik Times: "67-year-old cat found alive in the cabin of a submarine. Tickets go on sale at midnight."
Forty-thousand ticks of the clock later and I felt like a mercurial madman with a secret that only he knew, but had forgotten long ago, somewhere in the deceitful maze of adolescence. My back ached from lying on a hard surface, and my eyes burned from floods of cold fluorescent light, nearly blinding the superior sensibilities of my underground accustomed vision. I felt I was back in one of Generik's operating rooms, everything glowing silver-white while a fresh moss-green bile soup grew in my stomach. I tried to move, but was either tied down or paralyzed. It doesn't matter if the source of restriction is inside or out. It feels the same.
# #
"What should we do with him, sir?"
"Put him under again. I don't want to see his face." Blank emerald green eyes stared down at me dismissively. Pale hands tucked the covers up to my chin. Tattooed on the inside of his wrist were the letters "D.E.F. G.P.B. A.B.C.".
# #
"Computer, Where am I?"
"You are above ground. In G.P.B. Research Facility 2XIPH. Don't forget your mittens."
"Why am I here?"
"Because you are a model citizen."
"Computer, when can I see how I once saw as a child?
"When you have completed your term in Generik Colony, West Division."
# #
An indiscernible amount of time passed, then Dr. Marc entered through the steel door at the far end of the overly-illuminated little room. He wore a white tennis outfit and his lab coat.
"Doctor, just what is going on here?" I tried to sit up, but fell back on the examination table, dizzy.
He furrowed his eyebrows, scribbling something on his plastic writing pad. "I'm not supposed to tell you much, Jonah. But, being as you've been a regular patient of mine throughout the last five times my license was renewed, I wouldn't want you to be alarmed. You're going to be part of an experiment."
"What sort of experiment?"
"We want to see how Model Citizens like yourself fare outside of the colony."
"We're above ground?"
"Yes."
"What about D.E.F.? What's he doing here?"
"Generik Lieutenant D.E.F. runs this branch of Peace Bureau."
"Goodness, Doc. I didn't know that much time had passed since I last saw him. How long have I been sleeping?"
The doctor grinned, eyebrow raised. "Months. Years. Hours."
"Hey, do you think you could check my acu-tank while you're here? It's been making this rattley clinking noise." I was glad I managed to get the request out; I was minutes away from falling back asleep.
"Of course, I'll tune you up real good. You'll need it for the next leg of your journey."