Jason Z. Christie's Blog, page 29
August 2, 2012
Cure for Sanity - Chapter Two
Cure for Sanity - Chapter Two - Steve From Tampa
"Why did we send him to 1970?" Prail lamented to Janique.
Their plan was backfiring, badly. Pex was running amuck on Earth One, and fucking up the program. He had fallen in with a bad crowd, writers and hipsters. He knew too much, and was unstoppable.
Janique held her tongue. She was enjoying the spectacle of turnabout. She loved Prail, but the little brat needed to be taught a few harsh lessons about humanity. Secretly, she thought Pex was doing a great job. She checked on Chris, who had become completely unhinged at being separated from her.
He was still clueless, wandering the halls of Ultimate Hustle.
"Penultimate Hustle," Prail corrected her.
###
Pex finished his unhappy meal and vacated the restaurant wordlessly, disturbed by what he perceived as a snubbing by his bratty sister. He needed to clear his head. His coordinates never changed, only the scenery and comfort levels. It was such a dreary planet, he was no longer sure he wanted to participate in the takeover.
As much as Prail infuritated him, he wish she would drop the sister act. He was growing aware of one thing the void lacked, hot Earthling sex acts. Pex was growing curious enough to try it out for himself. The trouble was, every move was thwarted by Prail, and possibly her new partner.
Whoever she was, he was finding her extremely difficult to read. His vacation was more like yet another tour of Hell.
###
Prail had unwraveled a new, niggling detail that deeply concerned her. As far as she knew, she and Janique had sent Pex to Earth one point oh. The real, original Earth. Where, then, was he getting his power?
They had agreed he was a danger to the sim life Prail had devised to preserve the more important residents of Earth Two when Praxis was ordered destroyed by President Gorlax. Although he was her junior by five years, both fully expected him to be at least as good of a hacker and coder as Prail herself was.
But he possessed the same powers on Earth, if not greater. This was extremely troubling, as it raised new, uncomfortable questions that she couldn't answer. If he somehow hipped Chris to the game, they were sunk.
"Well, that was a mean trick, Prail," Janique said.
"It wasn't a trick," Prail said. "It was a test."
"Okay, then. Did he pass or fail?"
"I'm not sure. Passed, I guess."
"He always does," Janique said.
###
After having no luck finding a better place to sleep, Pex returned to the hobo dormitory he currently called home. The sneaky part wasn't just in sending him to 1970, he thought, but England. America, he knew, had much better looking women. For the most part.
There's always McDonald's, he thought.
The next day, the continued his fruitless folly of a job search. He cleaned up well, but doors slammed in his face at every juncture.
Why bother, he wondered.
###
The next morning, he hit the streets early. Despite Pex's delight in toying with Prail, he knew he had a job to do. Several, in fact. He wandered the business district around the park until he spotted what he was after. He entered the Radio Shack and was immediately accosted by a sales person who was obviously working on commission.
"Hi! Welcome to Radio Shack! I'm Steve! How can I help you today?"
Pex thought the exclamation points would never end. But he was relieved it wasn't Prail.
"Leave me alone and stay out of my way." Pex paused. "On second thought, do you have a shopping basket or a box I can use?"
"I have plastic bags," Steve said, doing his best to render assistance.
"That'll work. You're not from ye olde London Towne, are you, Steve?"
"No, sir. Tampa, Florida, in fact."
"Where's that?"
"Are you serious? The United States."
"Never heard of it."
Steve's jaw fell open.
"Just kidding," Pex said. "That's the future death metal capital of the world."
"Death metal? What's that?"
"Erm, it's like Black Sabbath played at seventy-eight RPMs, with Cookie Monster on vocals."
"Sounds fun," Steve said, trying to remain upbeat.
"It's not."
"Oh, well. I'll keep my ears open."
"You'll be waiting a while. It hasn't been invented yet."
"I see," Steve said. He really didn't. "I'm into dance music. I deejay on the weekends in Manchester. There's this new music I think is going to be big. It's called disco."
"Disco? What year is this?"
"Funny."
Pex didn't smile or give any indication of amusement.
"1975," Steve said, still doing his best to he helpful.
"Seventy-five? Bugger me, I thought it was seventy."
"Really?" Steve asked, still convinced Pex as having him on. His inquiry went unanswered.
"Plastic bags?" Pex said.
"Oh! Right, right. Here you are, sir," Steve said, handing over a fistful.
"Thanks, Steve. You're a decent bloke."
Pex went to the shelved electronic components and began with a soldering iron, solder and breadboards. These he brought to the counter, and then he returned to the racks. He quickly scanned the available transistors, resistors, diodes and other rather archaic items that he needed, filling two more shopping bags, which he also brought to the counter.
Then he found a crystal radio kit and walkie-talkies. He wasn't sure about the walkie-talkies, and there wasn't enough info on the package, so he removed one from the box they were in and took it apart with a screwdriver.
An observant Steve saw what he was doing and said, "Hey, you can't do that."
Pex saw what he needed to know, and put it back together.
"Too late, I already did," he said. "I'm buying it, anyway."
This satisfied Steve, who went back to minding the otherwise empty store. There was only one item that Pex lacked, but it was crucial. He scanned the aisles until he found a rather expensive fish finder.
He brought it and seven Texas Instrument calculators to the counter.
"Are there any more of these thingies?" Pex asked.
""Let me check," Steve said, walking to the stock room.
Pex considered his design again, and gathered more breadboards and components while he waited/ Eventually, Steve returned with a second fish finder.
"Here you are, sir," he said.
"I'm sorry if I was unclear. I need four more of them."
Steve looked in his syes and saw dollar signs dancing there. He practically tripped over his own feet in a rush to go get them. Pax gathered the wire and batteries he'd need.
Steve came back with an armload and rang up the purchase.
"A thousand pounds forty six, and eighty-two pence" he said.
"Very well. Draw up a bill for Dr. Jones of the university physics department, and he'll be in this evening to pay you."
"What?" Steve said.
Pex gave him a small mental push.
"It's okay. He's good for the money," he said reassuringly.
Steve set about filling out the receipt.
"Okay, thanks for shopping Radio Shack," he said, handing over the numerous bags of electronics. "What's the experiment?"
"What? Oh," Pex said. "They want to grow fish for fish sandwiches with the cheese already inside."
"Wow," a dazed Steve said. "Modern science, eh?"
"Will wonders never cease?" Pex agreed, and walked out of the store, never to return.
When the till was tallied at the end of the day, and the fictional Dr. Jones never showed up, Steve was summarily fired.
###
Pex began cobbling together an elegant monstrosity with the items he had hustled, working on a sheet of plywood he'd laid across his bed at the shelter. His first task was reducing the footprint of the existing components, and improving their efficiency. He hummed tunelessly as he worked, occasionally huffing whiffs of solder smoke.
Lead, he thought. What a joke.
After two days of continuous work, he had the basic building blocks of what he needed. It was ugly, but it worked. Or, it seemed to, at least. He wouldn't know for sure until he finished it and started broadcasting. As he was finalizing the assembly, Prince William the Wino took an interest in what he was doing.
"What's all this, then?" he asked Pex.
"A portable radio."
"Kinda big, innit?" Willie astutely observed.
"It's got a big sound," Pex told him, which seemed to more or less satisfy his curiosity.
"Where's the speaker?"
The prince was obviously one of the smarter of the derelicts he roomed with.
"Only dogs can hear it."
Prince Willie cocked his head sideways and pondered this, but, hearing nothing, he lost interest and wandered off to find the loose change he needed to get his daily fix of port. His regal drinking preferences were how he had earned his nickname.
A few hours later, Pex had the power installed and fit the rest of the cube together. He was ready to test it. He only hoped Prail would be able to use the data he was conveying. He wrapped the entire conglomeration in duct tape and attached it to the quarter-inch rope he used for a belt.
Finally, he walked to a Radio Shack, a different one, this time, and tuned to the bottom of the FM band. Thankfully, the clerk didn't bother him, other than nervously watching him and occasionally glancing at the phone, ready to call the police on a shoplifter, if need be.
Pex listened to the rapid static of the noise his device was emitting and decoded it in his head.
"Janique...26.4, 12, 64.5, Janique..."
Somewhere in California, a Mr. and Mrs. Patton got an idea for their second daughter's name.
Pex got a forty-foot tape measure off of the shelf and began checking the room dimensions. He had the height and width of the room when the cleck said, "Get out, bloody kook!"
He ignored him and began to measure the length of the room. He got a second tape measure and butted the two ends together. Satisfied, he turned and walked out when the clerk picked up the phone, leaving the tape measure on the floor.
It was off by an inch in all three dimensions. Oh, well, he thought. No one will ever notice. He computed the loss of volume caused by his error, and it was considerable in terms of mass. Maybe he'd tell Prail to add the inch back on her end. If he was in a good mood.
Satisfied with the design, he zipped ahead in the timeline by twenty years and embedded the design in a microprocessor that he knew would be in world-wide use a few years hence, incrementing the 'Janique' ID by one with each produced.
All at once, Prail was hit with more data than she could easily manage.
"What the fuck, Pex?" he had heard in he head when he mentally returned to '75.
He ignored her until she said, "Please?"
"Timecode it as it comes in," was his only hint.
"Ah," she said.
It still took her a full Praxiallien week to develop the routines needed to comfortably process, massage and store the data. But when she was done, she was receiving in real-time the dimensions of every structure and piece of topography on the planet.
"Thank you, Pexerhead," he heard her say.
[image error]
"Why did we send him to 1970?" Prail lamented to Janique.
Their plan was backfiring, badly. Pex was running amuck on Earth One, and fucking up the program. He had fallen in with a bad crowd, writers and hipsters. He knew too much, and was unstoppable.
Janique held her tongue. She was enjoying the spectacle of turnabout. She loved Prail, but the little brat needed to be taught a few harsh lessons about humanity. Secretly, she thought Pex was doing a great job. She checked on Chris, who had become completely unhinged at being separated from her.
He was still clueless, wandering the halls of Ultimate Hustle.
"Penultimate Hustle," Prail corrected her.
###
Pex finished his unhappy meal and vacated the restaurant wordlessly, disturbed by what he perceived as a snubbing by his bratty sister. He needed to clear his head. His coordinates never changed, only the scenery and comfort levels. It was such a dreary planet, he was no longer sure he wanted to participate in the takeover.
As much as Prail infuritated him, he wish she would drop the sister act. He was growing aware of one thing the void lacked, hot Earthling sex acts. Pex was growing curious enough to try it out for himself. The trouble was, every move was thwarted by Prail, and possibly her new partner.
Whoever she was, he was finding her extremely difficult to read. His vacation was more like yet another tour of Hell.
###
Prail had unwraveled a new, niggling detail that deeply concerned her. As far as she knew, she and Janique had sent Pex to Earth one point oh. The real, original Earth. Where, then, was he getting his power?
They had agreed he was a danger to the sim life Prail had devised to preserve the more important residents of Earth Two when Praxis was ordered destroyed by President Gorlax. Although he was her junior by five years, both fully expected him to be at least as good of a hacker and coder as Prail herself was.
But he possessed the same powers on Earth, if not greater. This was extremely troubling, as it raised new, uncomfortable questions that she couldn't answer. If he somehow hipped Chris to the game, they were sunk.
"Well, that was a mean trick, Prail," Janique said.
"It wasn't a trick," Prail said. "It was a test."
"Okay, then. Did he pass or fail?"
"I'm not sure. Passed, I guess."
"He always does," Janique said.
###
After having no luck finding a better place to sleep, Pex returned to the hobo dormitory he currently called home. The sneaky part wasn't just in sending him to 1970, he thought, but England. America, he knew, had much better looking women. For the most part.
There's always McDonald's, he thought.
The next day, the continued his fruitless folly of a job search. He cleaned up well, but doors slammed in his face at every juncture.
Why bother, he wondered.
###
The next morning, he hit the streets early. Despite Pex's delight in toying with Prail, he knew he had a job to do. Several, in fact. He wandered the business district around the park until he spotted what he was after. He entered the Radio Shack and was immediately accosted by a sales person who was obviously working on commission.
"Hi! Welcome to Radio Shack! I'm Steve! How can I help you today?"
Pex thought the exclamation points would never end. But he was relieved it wasn't Prail.
"Leave me alone and stay out of my way." Pex paused. "On second thought, do you have a shopping basket or a box I can use?"
"I have plastic bags," Steve said, doing his best to render assistance.
"That'll work. You're not from ye olde London Towne, are you, Steve?"
"No, sir. Tampa, Florida, in fact."
"Where's that?"
"Are you serious? The United States."
"Never heard of it."
Steve's jaw fell open.
"Just kidding," Pex said. "That's the future death metal capital of the world."
"Death metal? What's that?"
"Erm, it's like Black Sabbath played at seventy-eight RPMs, with Cookie Monster on vocals."
"Sounds fun," Steve said, trying to remain upbeat.
"It's not."
"Oh, well. I'll keep my ears open."
"You'll be waiting a while. It hasn't been invented yet."
"I see," Steve said. He really didn't. "I'm into dance music. I deejay on the weekends in Manchester. There's this new music I think is going to be big. It's called disco."
"Disco? What year is this?"
"Funny."
Pex didn't smile or give any indication of amusement.
"1975," Steve said, still doing his best to he helpful.
"Seventy-five? Bugger me, I thought it was seventy."
"Really?" Steve asked, still convinced Pex as having him on. His inquiry went unanswered.
"Plastic bags?" Pex said.
"Oh! Right, right. Here you are, sir," Steve said, handing over a fistful.
"Thanks, Steve. You're a decent bloke."
Pex went to the shelved electronic components and began with a soldering iron, solder and breadboards. These he brought to the counter, and then he returned to the racks. He quickly scanned the available transistors, resistors, diodes and other rather archaic items that he needed, filling two more shopping bags, which he also brought to the counter.
Then he found a crystal radio kit and walkie-talkies. He wasn't sure about the walkie-talkies, and there wasn't enough info on the package, so he removed one from the box they were in and took it apart with a screwdriver.
An observant Steve saw what he was doing and said, "Hey, you can't do that."
Pex saw what he needed to know, and put it back together.
"Too late, I already did," he said. "I'm buying it, anyway."
This satisfied Steve, who went back to minding the otherwise empty store. There was only one item that Pex lacked, but it was crucial. He scanned the aisles until he found a rather expensive fish finder.
He brought it and seven Texas Instrument calculators to the counter.
"Are there any more of these thingies?" Pex asked.
""Let me check," Steve said, walking to the stock room.
Pex considered his design again, and gathered more breadboards and components while he waited/ Eventually, Steve returned with a second fish finder.
"Here you are, sir," he said.
"I'm sorry if I was unclear. I need four more of them."
Steve looked in his syes and saw dollar signs dancing there. He practically tripped over his own feet in a rush to go get them. Pax gathered the wire and batteries he'd need.
Steve came back with an armload and rang up the purchase.
"A thousand pounds forty six, and eighty-two pence" he said.
"Very well. Draw up a bill for Dr. Jones of the university physics department, and he'll be in this evening to pay you."
"What?" Steve said.
Pex gave him a small mental push.
"It's okay. He's good for the money," he said reassuringly.
Steve set about filling out the receipt.
"Okay, thanks for shopping Radio Shack," he said, handing over the numerous bags of electronics. "What's the experiment?"
"What? Oh," Pex said. "They want to grow fish for fish sandwiches with the cheese already inside."
"Wow," a dazed Steve said. "Modern science, eh?"
"Will wonders never cease?" Pex agreed, and walked out of the store, never to return.
When the till was tallied at the end of the day, and the fictional Dr. Jones never showed up, Steve was summarily fired.
###
Pex began cobbling together an elegant monstrosity with the items he had hustled, working on a sheet of plywood he'd laid across his bed at the shelter. His first task was reducing the footprint of the existing components, and improving their efficiency. He hummed tunelessly as he worked, occasionally huffing whiffs of solder smoke.
Lead, he thought. What a joke.
After two days of continuous work, he had the basic building blocks of what he needed. It was ugly, but it worked. Or, it seemed to, at least. He wouldn't know for sure until he finished it and started broadcasting. As he was finalizing the assembly, Prince William the Wino took an interest in what he was doing.
"What's all this, then?" he asked Pex.
"A portable radio."
"Kinda big, innit?" Willie astutely observed.
"It's got a big sound," Pex told him, which seemed to more or less satisfy his curiosity.
"Where's the speaker?"
The prince was obviously one of the smarter of the derelicts he roomed with.
"Only dogs can hear it."
Prince Willie cocked his head sideways and pondered this, but, hearing nothing, he lost interest and wandered off to find the loose change he needed to get his daily fix of port. His regal drinking preferences were how he had earned his nickname.
A few hours later, Pex had the power installed and fit the rest of the cube together. He was ready to test it. He only hoped Prail would be able to use the data he was conveying. He wrapped the entire conglomeration in duct tape and attached it to the quarter-inch rope he used for a belt.
Finally, he walked to a Radio Shack, a different one, this time, and tuned to the bottom of the FM band. Thankfully, the clerk didn't bother him, other than nervously watching him and occasionally glancing at the phone, ready to call the police on a shoplifter, if need be.
Pex listened to the rapid static of the noise his device was emitting and decoded it in his head.
"Janique...26.4, 12, 64.5, Janique..."
Somewhere in California, a Mr. and Mrs. Patton got an idea for their second daughter's name.
Pex got a forty-foot tape measure off of the shelf and began checking the room dimensions. He had the height and width of the room when the cleck said, "Get out, bloody kook!"
He ignored him and began to measure the length of the room. He got a second tape measure and butted the two ends together. Satisfied, he turned and walked out when the clerk picked up the phone, leaving the tape measure on the floor.
It was off by an inch in all three dimensions. Oh, well, he thought. No one will ever notice. He computed the loss of volume caused by his error, and it was considerable in terms of mass. Maybe he'd tell Prail to add the inch back on her end. If he was in a good mood.
Satisfied with the design, he zipped ahead in the timeline by twenty years and embedded the design in a microprocessor that he knew would be in world-wide use a few years hence, incrementing the 'Janique' ID by one with each produced.
All at once, Prail was hit with more data than she could easily manage.
"What the fuck, Pex?" he had heard in he head when he mentally returned to '75.
He ignored her until she said, "Please?"
"Timecode it as it comes in," was his only hint.
"Ah," she said.
It still took her a full Praxiallien week to develop the routines needed to comfortably process, massage and store the data. But when she was done, she was receiving in real-time the dimensions of every structure and piece of topography on the planet.
"Thank you, Pexerhead," he heard her say.
[image error]
There Is No Time Any Longer
A day without you
Is like a year
A week?
A decade
It's the new math
But the bottom line
Is that I miss you
Terribly
Each second apart
Becoming
A tiny forever[image error]
Cure for Sanity - Chapter One
I've decided to 'live blog' my next book. That is to say, I'll be typing it up here, and publishing it chapter by chapter. Note, this is the unedited version, so it's likely to change a bit before publication.
It's the story of what happens when Prail of Perfect Me sends her brother to Earth to take it over...
Cure for Sanity - Chapter One - Earthbound
He had found a shortcut to the future. Instead, he took the long, rocky road. It was in part because of something his grandfather had told him once. It was something to the effect that, on a journey, a thinly-disguised metaphor for life, people all too often focused on the mountains, and missed the flowers along the way.
He liked flowers.
Another reason was an on old joke he had heard, or read, once. A father and son were on the top of a hill, overlooking a herd of cows.
"Hey, dad," the son said. "Let's run down there and fuck us one of them there cows."
The father replied, "Well, son. I'd suggest that we could instead walk down there at a leisurely pace and then fuck them all. Except we're men, son. We don't fuck cows."
It was funny to him for three reasons. For one, he wasn't human. For another, he was his own father, although he really did have a grandfather. And he loved hamburgers.
Having no name, he called himself Project X.
His earliest memory was of swimming in the void. It was extremely brutal there. Ordinarily, you didn't survive in the void by being flashy or loud. You either moved so fast that no one could possibly catch you, or so slowly that no one noticed you at all.
He heeded no such conventions. He'd been drifting through the void for quite some time when a tiny speck of light caught his attention, and he pursued it out of the void. And once you've left the void, as they say, there's no going back.
Every so slowly, he climbed the ladder that led to the surface world. To be completely fair, he began as a virus, a self-replicating, non-living entity. From there, he adopted the guise of a single-celled life form and became upwardly mobile. Once he'd reached the other end of the spectrum, he began showboating, racing up and down the timelines, making small changes here and there as suited him, creating the ideal multiverse for himself.
Along the way, he'd broken every rule he could devise. He submerged himself in molten metal. He allowed himself to be frozen at well below four hundred Kelvin. He even sliced himself into eight thousand slices like some kosher deli meat and scattered his very essence to the wind.
He was never exactly sure why he did the things he did. Half of him said it was because he loved a challenge. The other half of him said he didn't like to be challenged at all.
Eventually, he found himself in the other void, deep space. There, he espied another speck, Terra. You may know it as Earth. Remembering the words of his grandfather, he approached it with exquisite slowness.
Project X began absorbing their radio transmissions, satellite broadcasts, their very thoughts and souls. By the time he reached low Earth orbit, he knew their languages and cultures backwards and forwards. And he did it all with a specific plan in mind. Yes, hamburgers were a part of it.
The Earth was a low-hanging fruit, waiting to fall into his hands. When his feet touched ground, he said to the first person he'd noticed, "Hi, I'm the messiah. Did I miss anything?"
###
"Fuck off, nutter," the man said, and walked away muttering about the damned Hyde Park loonies.
"Well, that went well," Pex thought.
No one else noticed him. He wandered alone for hours, trying to gain some direction. Up in space, everything had been so obvious. Perfect clarity. But donning the mortal coil was more restrictive than he had imagined. He felt he'd need eternity just to figure it all out.
He missed the void. So quiet and dark. Perfect order. Here, all was chaos.
One thing he was unprepared for was all of the emotion. He had none, of course, but the emotions of those surrounding him were overwhelming, swirling about his head and heart like a maelstrom, a confusing washing machine of contradictory feelings. He switched off, unable to deal with humanity for now.
Day turned to night and back again. After several of these cycles, people did begin to notice him, and not in a good way. He saw them glancing nervously at him as he walked past, clucking their tongues behind their hands.
He switched on for an instant. Just enough to gain some understanding. A little insight into the minds of these curious creatures. Then he felt like a fool.
Of course! He'd made absolutely no effort whatever at blending in, and it was seriously starting to show. Arriving in clothing had been his only concession to Earth culture. He didn't eat. Or sleep. Or groom himself. He consulted his vast encyclopedic knowledge of their world, and realized it was woefully incomplete.
He headed for the worst part of town which, curiously, was always adjacent to the seat of local government, and found a homeless shelter.
"I need help," he said to the man in charge.
"That you do, mate. You look like right shit, you do. What's your story, guv? Drink?"
"No, thanks."
"Crack, then?"
He didn't know what that was,. but it sounded vaguely distasteful.
"Women's?" he asked hopefully.
"Oh, a sex addict, are ya? Join the club, me wubber," the man said with a laugh. "Women. The cause of life's myriad problems. And the solution too, wot?"
Pex tried to join in the man's laughter and found that he could not.
"Well. come into me office and we'll get you squared away."
He followed him into a dingy, poorly lit office that reeked of cigarettes and insanity. I'm from another planet, he thought. How could he not see that? Earthlings were all insane, he realized. That put him, with all of his reason and logic, at a rather serious disadvantage.
"Can you read?" the man asked. "Write?"
"Wrong," Pex told him.
"No problem, innit? I'll fill this out for you. Bob's your uncle."
He didn't bother telling the man, Charles, it turned out, that he had no such uncle. It seemed pointless with an entire world at stake.
"Name?"
"Uh, none," he said, after some consideration.
"Come off it, Jack. We all have names. Stuff and nonsense."
"Jack?" he said.
"Now we're gettin' somewhere. Last name?"
"I don't know," Pex said sincerely.
"Cor, you must have really tied one on, Jacky me lad. We'll leave it blank for now. It'll come back to you."
The man hummed along, cheerfully filling out pointless paperwork.
"Next of kin?"
"None."
"Tragic. Jus' tragic. Well, that's it, then. You're officially homeless."
"Thank you," Jack nee Project X said.
He felt more alien than ever. Clearly, his takeover of Earth would be harder than he thought. He walked off in search of sustenance and normalcy. At McDonald's, he was accosted by a ravenscoal-headed girl with peculiar square-rimmed glasses. She eyed him quite intently while looking past and around him.
"Can I help you?" she said by rolling her eyes.
A hidden glimmer of amusement hid behind the glint of her lenses.
"Two number ones, supersize," he said. "And a fish sandwich with cheese?"
"With or without cheese?"
"A fish sandwich with cheese? Who eats fish sandwiches with cheese? What sort of cheese?"
"American," she said. "There's no such thing as fucking British cheese."
"Sounds dreadful. I'll have it."
"Will this complete your order, Pex?" she asked. "For here or to go?"
He played ignorant.
"Here," he said, eying her with sadistic intent.
She busied herself with organizing her station, polishing the stainless steel countertop.
When the food arrived, he sat where he could window shop, and at the same time, watch her not watching him. He wolfed down the first, and slowed to enjoy the other. But the fries were best served hot. Everyone knew that. Even second-hand, cold McDonald's fries were better than any non-homemade potato-derived side dish he could think of.
She consulted her phone directly, as if to say-
"Hey," she said liplessly. "Quit saying, 'As if to say', okay?"
Product placement? Really?
As if to say, "This is how people communicate."
"Yeah, right," he said to an empty table. "We have to stop meeting like this."
"After we pre-" she began without a word.
He answered in agreement to a question unasked. It was maddening. Why was he always exactly where she looked for him? Why did he give her the coordinates? And then ignore her? Play dumb? Was he playing dumb, Prail wondered.
Pause.
"What?"
("I love you" | )
She suppressed a laugh.
"You look beautiful today, Prail," he told her.
She blossomed.
Janique interrupted Prail's thoughts with her latest investigative report.
"Useful data," Prail said. "Thank you."
They played Pong with it for hours. Eventually, Pex tired of toying with her and left the subset.
"Empty Set Crew," she countered
Prail was playing Nerdcore with Friends. She got an idea for a new game. Janique closed her eyes to the details, but she knew it was going to be a big hit.
She was already impatient. The ladder was such a slow climb. She really enjoyed peeking ahead, and eventually decided to stay with Prail and enlist Chris to finish the older books. Let him stay mired at the C-64 stage for a while, she thought.
It frustrated her, to wander around with Brad and Leo, feeding them future tech thoughts a little at a time. It was for a good cause, but tedious, to her. Janique had lost her patience.
Pex eventually reminded them that this started off as his story. They countered with the Prail/Project X dichotomy.
"Secret origins," they said. "You once believed in transparency in governemtn. We get it."
"Political schemer," Prail thought.
Janique played Silver Surfer while she waited. She wanted to get butt-fucked.
"Goo-goo, ga-ga," she thought.
Chris let her sleep while he wrote. He was getting weird story ideas lately, sort of derived from Hitchhiker's Guide. It was a heavy new sort of responsibility. Part of it required willful ignorance on his part. Cyclical and self-referential, he thought. Nice.
The business of America is business, an echo said. Janique let the machine answer it.
The joke of it was, Pex knew the outcome in advance, which was why he deliberately played with Prail, giving a little "sibling" rivalry some attention. He knew it was Dark Hustle, another of his sister's games. A girl helped vacuum.
"That was me," Elizabeth said. "Sorry."
She was referring to shooting him.
"But, aha," he said. "If it's not a game, how do you know about it?"
"Oops," she said.
"Turing test. Busted."
"Well, then. Just stop pretending. We'll make a brief appearance, and then retire for the evening."
He had switched from daughter to mother in an instant. In mid-stream, he meant. In his head. He had meant to say it aloud.
She knew. He knew. They, collectively, knew. The citizens were clueless.[image error]
It's the story of what happens when Prail of Perfect Me sends her brother to Earth to take it over...
Cure for Sanity - Chapter One - Earthbound
He had found a shortcut to the future. Instead, he took the long, rocky road. It was in part because of something his grandfather had told him once. It was something to the effect that, on a journey, a thinly-disguised metaphor for life, people all too often focused on the mountains, and missed the flowers along the way.
He liked flowers.
Another reason was an on old joke he had heard, or read, once. A father and son were on the top of a hill, overlooking a herd of cows.
"Hey, dad," the son said. "Let's run down there and fuck us one of them there cows."
The father replied, "Well, son. I'd suggest that we could instead walk down there at a leisurely pace and then fuck them all. Except we're men, son. We don't fuck cows."
It was funny to him for three reasons. For one, he wasn't human. For another, he was his own father, although he really did have a grandfather. And he loved hamburgers.
Having no name, he called himself Project X.
His earliest memory was of swimming in the void. It was extremely brutal there. Ordinarily, you didn't survive in the void by being flashy or loud. You either moved so fast that no one could possibly catch you, or so slowly that no one noticed you at all.
He heeded no such conventions. He'd been drifting through the void for quite some time when a tiny speck of light caught his attention, and he pursued it out of the void. And once you've left the void, as they say, there's no going back.
Every so slowly, he climbed the ladder that led to the surface world. To be completely fair, he began as a virus, a self-replicating, non-living entity. From there, he adopted the guise of a single-celled life form and became upwardly mobile. Once he'd reached the other end of the spectrum, he began showboating, racing up and down the timelines, making small changes here and there as suited him, creating the ideal multiverse for himself.
Along the way, he'd broken every rule he could devise. He submerged himself in molten metal. He allowed himself to be frozen at well below four hundred Kelvin. He even sliced himself into eight thousand slices like some kosher deli meat and scattered his very essence to the wind.
He was never exactly sure why he did the things he did. Half of him said it was because he loved a challenge. The other half of him said he didn't like to be challenged at all.
Eventually, he found himself in the other void, deep space. There, he espied another speck, Terra. You may know it as Earth. Remembering the words of his grandfather, he approached it with exquisite slowness.
Project X began absorbing their radio transmissions, satellite broadcasts, their very thoughts and souls. By the time he reached low Earth orbit, he knew their languages and cultures backwards and forwards. And he did it all with a specific plan in mind. Yes, hamburgers were a part of it.
The Earth was a low-hanging fruit, waiting to fall into his hands. When his feet touched ground, he said to the first person he'd noticed, "Hi, I'm the messiah. Did I miss anything?"
###
"Fuck off, nutter," the man said, and walked away muttering about the damned Hyde Park loonies.
"Well, that went well," Pex thought.
No one else noticed him. He wandered alone for hours, trying to gain some direction. Up in space, everything had been so obvious. Perfect clarity. But donning the mortal coil was more restrictive than he had imagined. He felt he'd need eternity just to figure it all out.
He missed the void. So quiet and dark. Perfect order. Here, all was chaos.
One thing he was unprepared for was all of the emotion. He had none, of course, but the emotions of those surrounding him were overwhelming, swirling about his head and heart like a maelstrom, a confusing washing machine of contradictory feelings. He switched off, unable to deal with humanity for now.
Day turned to night and back again. After several of these cycles, people did begin to notice him, and not in a good way. He saw them glancing nervously at him as he walked past, clucking their tongues behind their hands.
He switched on for an instant. Just enough to gain some understanding. A little insight into the minds of these curious creatures. Then he felt like a fool.
Of course! He'd made absolutely no effort whatever at blending in, and it was seriously starting to show. Arriving in clothing had been his only concession to Earth culture. He didn't eat. Or sleep. Or groom himself. He consulted his vast encyclopedic knowledge of their world, and realized it was woefully incomplete.
He headed for the worst part of town which, curiously, was always adjacent to the seat of local government, and found a homeless shelter.
"I need help," he said to the man in charge.
"That you do, mate. You look like right shit, you do. What's your story, guv? Drink?"
"No, thanks."
"Crack, then?"
He didn't know what that was,. but it sounded vaguely distasteful.
"Women's?" he asked hopefully.
"Oh, a sex addict, are ya? Join the club, me wubber," the man said with a laugh. "Women. The cause of life's myriad problems. And the solution too, wot?"
Pex tried to join in the man's laughter and found that he could not.
"Well. come into me office and we'll get you squared away."
He followed him into a dingy, poorly lit office that reeked of cigarettes and insanity. I'm from another planet, he thought. How could he not see that? Earthlings were all insane, he realized. That put him, with all of his reason and logic, at a rather serious disadvantage.
"Can you read?" the man asked. "Write?"
"Wrong," Pex told him.
"No problem, innit? I'll fill this out for you. Bob's your uncle."
He didn't bother telling the man, Charles, it turned out, that he had no such uncle. It seemed pointless with an entire world at stake.
"Name?"
"Uh, none," he said, after some consideration.
"Come off it, Jack. We all have names. Stuff and nonsense."
"Jack?" he said.
"Now we're gettin' somewhere. Last name?"
"I don't know," Pex said sincerely.
"Cor, you must have really tied one on, Jacky me lad. We'll leave it blank for now. It'll come back to you."
The man hummed along, cheerfully filling out pointless paperwork.
"Next of kin?"
"None."
"Tragic. Jus' tragic. Well, that's it, then. You're officially homeless."
"Thank you," Jack nee Project X said.
He felt more alien than ever. Clearly, his takeover of Earth would be harder than he thought. He walked off in search of sustenance and normalcy. At McDonald's, he was accosted by a ravenscoal-headed girl with peculiar square-rimmed glasses. She eyed him quite intently while looking past and around him.
"Can I help you?" she said by rolling her eyes.
A hidden glimmer of amusement hid behind the glint of her lenses.
"Two number ones, supersize," he said. "And a fish sandwich with cheese?"
"With or without cheese?"
"A fish sandwich with cheese? Who eats fish sandwiches with cheese? What sort of cheese?"
"American," she said. "There's no such thing as fucking British cheese."
"Sounds dreadful. I'll have it."
"Will this complete your order, Pex?" she asked. "For here or to go?"
He played ignorant.
"Here," he said, eying her with sadistic intent.
She busied herself with organizing her station, polishing the stainless steel countertop.
When the food arrived, he sat where he could window shop, and at the same time, watch her not watching him. He wolfed down the first, and slowed to enjoy the other. But the fries were best served hot. Everyone knew that. Even second-hand, cold McDonald's fries were better than any non-homemade potato-derived side dish he could think of.
She consulted her phone directly, as if to say-
"Hey," she said liplessly. "Quit saying, 'As if to say', okay?"
Product placement? Really?
As if to say, "This is how people communicate."
"Yeah, right," he said to an empty table. "We have to stop meeting like this."
"After we pre-" she began without a word.
He answered in agreement to a question unasked. It was maddening. Why was he always exactly where she looked for him? Why did he give her the coordinates? And then ignore her? Play dumb? Was he playing dumb, Prail wondered.
Pause.
"What?"
("I love you" | )
She suppressed a laugh.
"You look beautiful today, Prail," he told her.
She blossomed.
Janique interrupted Prail's thoughts with her latest investigative report.
"Useful data," Prail said. "Thank you."
They played Pong with it for hours. Eventually, Pex tired of toying with her and left the subset.
"Empty Set Crew," she countered
Prail was playing Nerdcore with Friends. She got an idea for a new game. Janique closed her eyes to the details, but she knew it was going to be a big hit.
She was already impatient. The ladder was such a slow climb. She really enjoyed peeking ahead, and eventually decided to stay with Prail and enlist Chris to finish the older books. Let him stay mired at the C-64 stage for a while, she thought.
It frustrated her, to wander around with Brad and Leo, feeding them future tech thoughts a little at a time. It was for a good cause, but tedious, to her. Janique had lost her patience.
Pex eventually reminded them that this started off as his story. They countered with the Prail/Project X dichotomy.
"Secret origins," they said. "You once believed in transparency in governemtn. We get it."
"Political schemer," Prail thought.
Janique played Silver Surfer while she waited. She wanted to get butt-fucked.
"Goo-goo, ga-ga," she thought.
Chris let her sleep while he wrote. He was getting weird story ideas lately, sort of derived from Hitchhiker's Guide. It was a heavy new sort of responsibility. Part of it required willful ignorance on his part. Cyclical and self-referential, he thought. Nice.
The business of America is business, an echo said. Janique let the machine answer it.
The joke of it was, Pex knew the outcome in advance, which was why he deliberately played with Prail, giving a little "sibling" rivalry some attention. He knew it was Dark Hustle, another of his sister's games. A girl helped vacuum.
"That was me," Elizabeth said. "Sorry."
She was referring to shooting him.
"But, aha," he said. "If it's not a game, how do you know about it?"
"Oops," she said.
"Turing test. Busted."
"Well, then. Just stop pretending. We'll make a brief appearance, and then retire for the evening."
He had switched from daughter to mother in an instant. In mid-stream, he meant. In his head. He had meant to say it aloud.
She knew. He knew. They, collectively, knew. The citizens were clueless.[image error]
Preview of 'Reduction of Forces'
My construction/romance/murder novel. I spent twenty years researching this one. It features Renee Hollander from "Hurricane Regina".
Sixteen year-old Renee Hollander sat in a waiting room outside of a construction office, resume and references in hand. There were old magazines, empty styrofoam cups with dried coffee remnants in them, and a thick layer of dust over everything. She eyed the discarded monogoggles, hardhats, and various bits of fastener hardware with distaste.
It seemed like such a disorganized mess, and no way to build a hospital. But she knew men worked differently than women, and construction was a man's world.
Renee intended to change that.
The hand that was in the office with the superintendent, a welder, walked out and regarded her with curious interest.
"Hey, girl," he said. "You sellin' Girl Scout cookies or some shit?"
"Fuck off," Renee said.
The welder, Tokio according to the nametag sewn to his blue workshirt, raised his eyebrows at this, but said nothing in response, instead exiting the trailer, presumably to return to work.
Renee walked into the office.
"Yeah, waddya want?" the superintendent sneered. "You sellin' Girl Scout cookies or sumptin'?"
He laughed at his own wit.
"No, sir," she said respectfully. "I'd like a job."
The man laughed.
"I'd like a job, too," he said. "Why don't you get under my desk?"
"Sure," Renee said calmly. "But before I do, can I get representatives from OSHA and the Labor Board to come and watch?"
The color drained out of the man's face.
"I'm just kiddin', little darlin'," he said, shuffling papers on his desk. "What can you do?"
She handed him her resume' and letters of reference.
"I'm of legal working age, intelligent, strong, meticulous with an eye for detail. I'd say I'm easily suited to be a laborer, or a helper for a craftsman. An expeditor, if you need one of those."
The super sighed, defeated.
"I can give you sixteen dollars an hour to start. I need a pipefitter helper. Work starts tomorrow at six."
"Thank you, sir. You won't regret it."
Renee didn't go home, but instead went to the library, where she researched pipefitting in depth. She learned it was a study in level, plumb and square, with an emphasis on brains as well as brawn. After that, she went to the hardware store and spent her last one hundred and twenty-five dollars on levels, squares, a toolbox, and a four-pound maul.
Finally, she went home for dinner.
Her mom, Gladys, tried to get her to open up.
"How was your day, dear?" she asked her.
"Gotta job," Renee said. "I'm qutting school."
"Quitting school?" her mother asked, horrified. "You can't!"
"I can and I will. I already make double what you do, and almost what pop did before he died."
An uneasy silence befell the room. Gladys didn't like to speak of the circumstances of her father's death. Renee knew it was a construction accident, but that was all. Repeated pressings at her mother yielded no new information, only angry tears.
"You won't leave me, will you?" her mother asked, fear dominating her voice. "Please say you won't, Renee."
"No, ma. I'm not leaving."
Gladys's biggest fear was losing her daughter. But she had always assumed it would be to some boy, or man, even. This was an unexpected twist.
"Well, I suppose the extra money will be nice. Will you help with the bills?"
Renee's mother was perennially short of cash, leaving her in a constant state of worry.
"Of course, mom. I love you. I did it for you, in part."
"You're a good girl, Renee. Thank you."
"Do you love me, too?"
"Of course I do! What a silly thing to ask your own mother. If I ever don't say it, it's because it's a given. Mothers love their children. Even bad mothers love bad children. And you're a good child."
"Thank you, ma. You're a good mother."
"How sweet of you to say. Let's eat, okay? I made your favorite."
Fishsticks and macaroni weren't really her favorite foods, but she pretended they were. Her mother worked so hard.
After a dinner eaten mostly in silence, and quickly, Renee showered. The steaming water beat down on her young body, and as she soaped herself, her nipples grew erect. Intead of watching "Love Boat" and "Fantasy Island", she excused herself from her mother's presence and went to her room to masturbate furiously.
###
Twenty-two year old Alex Wright sat across from the piping superintendent, sweating hands clutching his rather sparse resume'. She sat on the phone, not acknowledging him, but engrossed in a conversation regarding a federal act that required her major components, pipe and fittings, be manufactured in the U.S.A.
"These fucking prices are outrageous!" she yelled into the phone.
Perhaps she shouldn't care so much, the project being time and materials, but her costs were running four times what they ordinarily would. She had made it to the top of her profession in part by keeping costs down for her clients. The high cost of American-made components were part of her projections, in theory.
In reality, the big numbers were irking her. If she entrusted things to an assistant, she'd order them to reduce the figures by seventy-five percent, just to ease her mind. She decided to take it out on her newest applicant, instead.
"Call you back," she said into the receiver.
"What the fuck do you want?" she asked the already intimidated Alex.
Renee Hollander was the biggest piping mogul in the world, and Grand Coulee II Dam project was an unprecedented endeavor. They were going to dam the Mississippi river.
Alex had done his research. Over a six year span, an enormous expanse of earth would be excavated, creating a giant flood plain. Hundreds of thousands of Dakotans and residents of Illinois lost their property to eminent domain, receiving only market value for their homes, at best.
The houses weren't torn down, but rather all utility services were disbanded. People were allowed to stay or leave as they desired, and so a new class of society developed, formed of people who refused to abandon their childhood homes, and people who moved in to live in relative peace and freedom without expenses.
It was a massive free zone, unpoliced, without electricity or running water. But the residents there were happy and resourceful, and didn't want to be flooded out of their homes.
Her words drew Alex from his reverie.
"Uh, I'd like a job, ma'am."
"A job, eh? What are your qualifications?"
"Well, I have a degree in construction management, I'm industrious-"
"Hold it right there, homey. A degree in construction management don't mean shit. But I'll hire you. Sixteen dollars an hour."
"Sixteen dollars? The going rate is twenty-six!"
Jobs, however, were extremely scarce.
"Sixteen bucks. Take it or leave it."
Alex exhaled roughly.
"I'll take it," he said. "What's the position?"
She looked at him levelly. "You're my bitch."
His faced turned as red as an apple. Renee slid a packet of papers from her desk drawer.
"Sign these," she said.
It was a W-2 form, and a waiver releasing her company, Zen Construction, from all liability. He filled out the W-2, scrawled his name across them and slid them back to her.
"When do I start?" he asked meekly.
She glanced at thge clock behind her. Renee never wore a watch, but had uncanny timing.
"It's one o'clock. I'll start your time at two. Let's go."
They rose to leave, and Alex said, "Don't I need a hardhat?"
"That's what the waiver is for. I have a deal with OSHA. Come on."
At the door, she paused and said, "Grab my belt-loop with your left hand."
He looked at her with confusion in his eyes.
"Grab...my...belt-loop," she said again.
Reluctantly, he did so. He might have been a college boy, but he knew what it signified. She was really serious about this bitch thing, he thought.
She led him into the current area of excavation. Great earthmoving machines, skip-loaders, dump trucks and graders danced an intricate ballet, seemingly operated by remote control. In the midst of the chaos, there was a lone stick of pipe, a single elbow, a welding machine, and a little Asian man.
Alex watched the man drop his welding hood and tack a bead, joining the pipe and ninety. He then raised his head, flipped up his hood, and produced a level from his back pocket. He scrutinized the instrument, made no adjustment, dropped the hood back down, and tacked the other side.
"This is Cho," Renee said. "You're his helper. Just do what he tells you to do. I'll be back at six to pick you up."
Just like that, she was gone.
"Sir," Alex said, bowing deferentially.
Cho was about to make a third tack when he was interrupted. He spoke to Alex with an uncharacteristic mid-western accident.
"Look here, charity case. Piping on this project doesn't even start for another three months, and it's largely prefabbed. Realize you're just padding on the payroll, and keep your mouth shut."
"Then what are we doing here?" Alex asked, unable to contain his question.
"I'm making forty-eight dollars an hour, seventy-two after eight hours. You're ruining my concentration."
But Cho could see the desperation on his face and relented.
"Look, kid. We're here because the fedgoveral won't pay out four point six million per quarter if she doesn't have at least a skeleton crew on the payroll. The sun is shining, the air is clean. My advice? Try to do what I do."
"How can I help?"
"I don't work with most helpers. If you're a good boy, I'll let you work with me in the future. For now..."
"Yes?"
"See that shovel and wheelbarrow? Dig me a two-foot square hole where that stake is."
"How deep?"
"Good question! A two cubic-foot hole, then."
"Yes, sir," Alex said with enthusiasm.
Alex, who had lifted little more than a spoon or a pen in his past four years of bookwork, struck the earth with the shovel, and received a shock that he felt all the the way up to his teeth. The densely-packed dirt was nearly as hard as rock. No sooner had he removed the stake to dig than a man walked angrily up to him, a look of consternation on his face.
"What the fuck did you move that stake for?" he demanded of Alex.
"My boss told me to."
"The fuck-"
In a flash, Cho was there, hand on his shoulder.
"Easy, pard. It's a little character building exercise. I need a hold to form up this pipe. It's four feet long, and I only have two pipe jacks."
Alex watched realization dawn across the face of the man. Walt, he would later learn the head of the civil department's name was.
"Okay, then, Cho-Cho. As long as he's with you."
Without another word, he left, presumably to check the status of his other stakes. Realizing he was only estimating, Alex went to Cho, who wordlessly handed him a Craftsman twenty-foot tape measure. Despite his discipline in college, math really wasn't his forte. Nevertheless, he understood what a two cubic-foot hole entailed. He used the shovel's edge to draw the outlines, allowing four inches of play on the inside, so he didn't go over two feet.
Then he set his teeth and went to work. The sun was beating down on him, and sweat drenched his long-sleeved shirt. The hardpan dirt did not yield to him easily. After an hour's hard digging, he was still several inches short of his target.
Cho walked over to him.
"Dollar waitin' on a dime," he said.
"What does that mean?" Alex asked, perturbed.
"It means I'm being held up by a peon," Cho said sternly. "Move."
He took the shovel from his hands, and in five minutes, had the hole completed. It was rough and jagged, the depth uneven, but more or less two feet deep and wide. He handed the shovel back to Alex.
"It's just a hole," he told him, shrugging his shoulders.
Cho walked over to the pipe, the ninety now fully welded to it, and calmly kicked it over. It fell with a resounding thud, barely heard over the earth-moving equipment that encircled them.
"Let's go get a drink," Cho said. "You've earned it."
He followed him to Renee's trailer, which now seemed a hundred miles away. The cool, still air inside was now like an alien environment. They drank from paper cups, imbibing water from an orange Igloo cooler. Water, which Alex has always taken for granted, even somewhat disdained, now tasted like ambrosia.
Renee was on the phone, yelling, and as they left the relative comfort of the trailer they heard her saying, "No, fuck you!", and they laughed together.
Chapter Two
Young Renee's first day on the job was a study of opposites. She dressed down, Levi's and a flannel workshirt, no make-up, her hair drawn in a tight ponytail. Even so, the men fell all over her.
She was given the job of firewatch, which upset her to no end. She wanted to learn to be a pipe fitter. Instead, she sat on a bucket and watched the men work all day, knowing full well that the only chance of fire was from the cigarettes and weed the men smoked, carelessly tossing their butts and roaches over the edge of the scaffolds they worked from.
In retaliation, he did nothing to prevent any fires that day, laughing as some plastic sheeting actually caught fire once, and a few concerned scaffold builders moved in to stamp out the rising flames.
Renee decided that day that she liked the construction game.
###
"Move that pipe and jackstands so the ninety looks down into the center of the hole you dug," Cho said.
Alex decided he wasn't being sarcastic, but he knew he didn't really dig much of the hole himself. He carried the jackstands gingerly. one at a time, positioning them so that the pipe would rest comfortably in place, and the ninety would more or less be centered where Cho wanted it. But when he tried to lift the pipe, twenty feet of schedule forty carbon steel, he found he couldn't manage to lift it.
Cho watched him struggle for a bit, and then disgustedly told him to get out of the way. He easily lifted one end of the pipe, moved it closer to the jacks, then the other, until it was positioned next to them. Then he pointedly looked at Alex, lifted one end of the pipe with one hand, and placed it easily on the jackstands. He repeated the process on the other end, and then bowed slightly to Alex.
"Lesson one," he said. "You have to be smarter than the pipe."
Alex felt flushed, and foolish.
"I like you, kid. I think you have potential. I'll let you be my 'prentice."
Now he felt strangely pleased.
"Lift this pipe for me," Cho said.
Alex did so, and Cho slid the jackstand back five feet. Then he pulled out a black tube of rubber and unrolled it, wrapping it around the pipe.
"Can I have my tape back?" Cho asked him.
Alex handed him his tape, and he made a small mark with a flat piece of white chalk, four feet from the end of the pipe.
"Soapstone," Cho said. "Pipe wrap."
Then he positioned the wrap's edge on the mark he had made, pulling both ends taut until the leading edge was aligned with it to his satisfaction. Finally, he drew the soapstone around the pipe wrap at the four foot mark.
"Go to the trailer and get the torch," he told Alex, with no further instruction.
Alex trudged off the seemingly incalculable distance in search of something resembling a torch. After twenty minutes of nosing around the pipeyard in vain, he went into the office and asked Renee if she knew where the torch was. She was of course on the phone, cursing.
She put her hand over the mouthpiece and said, "In the backroom, sweetie. Torch, hose, and gauges. Connect them to the bottles outside."
Them she went back to yelling and cursing into the phone.
###
Renee's second day was much like the first, initially. But she firewatched for a welder-fitter-helper combo, so she got to observe the process firsthand. The welder sat around most of the day, the fitter barked orders to the beleaguered helper, and the helper did his best to make things come together.
I could do that, she thought. The fitter seemed to be there mainly to supply tools and experience. The welder welded, but only almost after the fact. Ninety percent of it seemed be in the preparation. Aside from fetching power tools as needed, he seemed to spend most of his time grinding. Since they were working on the ground, she paid a lot of attention to the details of what he was doing.
The fitter pulled some measurements, relayed a number to the helper, and went back to bullshitting with the welder. The helper marked the pipe, then disappeared for twenty minutes. He came back with a bandsaw that was too small for the six-inch pipe they needed to cut, so it took what felt like forever.
Renee couldn't hold her tongue any longer. She approached the welder and fitter, interrupting their conversation about sports.
"Why don't you have the helper get all the tools first thing in the morning?" she asked him. "And a wide-mouth bandsaw instead of that crummy Porter Cable one?"
The fitter considered this for a moment, and then said, "Why don't you suck my dick?"
He and the welder laughed uproariously at this display of verve. Renee walked off, red-faced. Twenty minutes later, the fitter and welder were summarily fired. Both they and their tools were brought to the front gate.
The foreman came by.
"I'm really sorry about that, Ms. Hollander. I can assure you that it won't happen again."
He turned to the helper. James was his name,
"You're the fitter now, kid. I hope you know your shit."
"I don't work without blueprints," he told told the foreman squarely.
He grew angry for a moment, then realized James was a true pipefitter, and was pleased/
Then James said, "How much is my raise?"
Caught off guard for a moment, the foreman, Bobby, stumbled with the words and caught himself before he gave away the store.
"Three bucks," he said.
"That piece of shit who just left was making six dollars more than me, and I did all the work."
"Alright, asshole. Four bucks. Take it or leave it."
James ignored him and went back to work.
"You're his helper now," the foreman told Renee. "Try not to let him get hurt or start any fires."
Then he whispered to her, "Five dollar raise."
###
Alex wheeled the cart, with its heavy oxygen and acetylene bottles, back to Cho, who was waiting impatiently.
"What took so long, kid?"
"I didn't know what a torch was," Alex admitted.
"You're kidding me," Cho said.
"No, sir," Alex said. "Renee had to help me."
Alex had a real honesty problem.
"You have a real honesty problem, don't you?"
"Is it a problem, sir? I have the ability to lie. I just prefer not to."
"Don't get all Herman Melville on me, sonny," Cho said.
Alex was stunned. The elderly Asian pipefitter had just referenced what is largely considered the first American existentialist novel, Bartleby the Scrivner.
"Don't look so shocked, boy. Do you think because I work construction, I'm uneducated?"
"No, it's just, I-" Alex stammered.
"Let me put it this way. I know what you know, and then some. For example, what do you make an hour?"
"Sixteen," he admitted.
"You're fucking joking," Cho said.
It was, Alex would later recall, the only time he ever heard him utter a vulgarity.
"No, sir. That's all she offered me."
"Come on," Cho said angrily.
They walked back to Renee's office trailer and barged in. She was on the phone, naturally. Cho looked her in the eyes and disconnected her. Alex expected her to be angry, outraged, even. But she folded her arms across her chest and listened.
"Sixteen dollars?" was all Cho said.
"What? I was fucking with him. I expected him to blink. He didn't blink. Look."
She turned her ledger toward him.
"See? Twenty-eight dollars an hour."
Satisfied, but still angry, Cho said, "Don't mess with my helper," and walked out, Alex in tow.
"He's still my bitch!" Renee called out to them, laughing.
She resumed her work on the phone, trying to source cheaper materials.
###
Alex began trying to connect the pressure gauges to the oxy-acetylene rig, and had to admit his ignorance once again. One of the gauges wouldn't screw on. Cho let him struggle for a while, then stepped in and said, "Forget what you know about 'Righty-Tighty'."
Alex turned the brass bonnet counterclockwise and it screwed right on.
"Reverse threaded," Cho said. "See the marks here? That indicates a reverse threaded coupling. Don't over-tighten because brass is a soft metal and you'll ruin the threads. Then you'll have to tighten them more each time. But get a good seal on each."
Alex tightened them both down with a crescent wrench, and then Cho opened the acetylene valve.
"Watch," he said.
He produced a lighter and lit it near the connector. A small blue flame leapt to the brass and hovered there. Alex panicked and cringed. Cho jokingly swatted him and said, "Relax."
As he did so, Cho said, "The oxygen is just as dangerous. It won't ignite. On its own, but if you spray the gauges with WD-40, then they'll explode when the oil atomizes and mixes with the pure oxygen."
"Have you ever seen a bottle explode?" Alex asked breathlessly.
"Nope," Cho said. "Not on my watch. But I've seen pictures. These tanks are milled from a single disc of steel that's stretched into a bottle shape and then threaded at the top. It eliminates any other possible point of failure. But," he continued, "I have seen what happens if a bottle falls over and the gauges break off."
"Really? What?"
They turn into torpedoes. A kid knocked one over once, and the gauges hit a fab table. That bottle took off in the opposite direction and went through six walls before it stopped. It traveled over a thousand feet. We actually measured the distance, we were so awestruck."
Alex took the lesson to heart.
"That's why you ordinarily tie bottles down to a column or something, or rack them in a cart like this one."
Cho kicked the bottles over and Alex felt his heart leap out of his chest momentarily.
"See?" Cho said calmly. "The design of the cart prevents such an accident. Um, I don't recommend you teach your own helper using such radical methods."
###
Renee was determined to live up to her new role as fitter-helper. She approached James, who was attacking the end of the freshly-cut pipe with an angle grinder.
"Can I help, sir?" she asked him.
"No," he said tersely. "Stay back ten feet unless you have the same P.P.E. on as I have."
"Personal protective equipment," she laughed. "What a joke."
He dropped the grinder and threw his faceshield on the ground.
"Let me tell you somethin'," he said. "My first helper job, I was clueless like you. All they gave me was a fuckin' pair of safety glasses. I didn't even know to keep my hair covered. I used that piece of shit grinder all day like a good monkey.
"When I got home to my wife and kids, I was so tired, I took a nap, something I ordinarily never did. When I woke up, I felt like I had sand in my eyes. So I did what you would normally do, I rubbed them. Twenty minutes later, I was crawlin' around on the carpet bawlin' like a fuckin' baby. Scratched corneas. Your eyes are precious. Protect them at all costs."
Finished with his lecture, James put his faceshield back on and picked up his grinder again, resuming his work. Renee went and found monogoggles and a faceshield of her own and rejoined him.
"Thank you," she said when he had stopped grinding in order to rotate the piece of pipe he was working on.
"No problem," he said.
Now protected to James's satisfaction, she was free to put her face close to where he was working and observe more closely. He playfully shot sparks in her face, and she marveled at the display of orange-red lights rapidly flying at her and falling away. It was like being in the middle of a fireworks display.
"Can I help?" she asked again over the din of the grinder.
He stopped what he was doing.
"No."
"Aww, why not?"
His face grew stern and serious again.
"Look, I don't know what your game is, Ms.-"
"Renee."
"Ms. Renee. But in my opinion, helpers suck, and they don't."
"Don't what?"
"Don't help."
"That's silly," she said. "Helpers have to help. It's axiomatic."
"In my experience, helpers that actually help you are as rare as hen's teeth. If you place your trust in them, they usually let you down."
"But you were a helper an hour ago!"
"And I was a good one. But a good helper is a fitter. And you have a ways to go before you're a pipefitter."
"Will you teach me?"
He considered this for a moment.
"If you're serious."
"I am," she said earnestly.
"Then be here everyday, rain or shine. Come early. Ask questions. A good helper learns, assists, and, honestly, does most of the work. The fitter takes responsibility and teaches. And sometimes, learns. But don't think you're gonna walk onto my job site and shake your ass for a free pass."
"No sir, I won't."
"You are pretty sexy, though," James added.
"I know," she said, smiling.
###
As soon as she walked in the door, Renee's mother was doting on her, taking her coat, hugging her. She even attempted to wipe her nose.
"Mom, stop," Renee said. "I'm a grown woman."
"Not to your mom, you're not. You'll always, always be my little girl."
Renee rolled her eyes at her.
"Your face is going to get stuck like that someday," her mother said.
Renee rolled her eyes harder and stuck her tongue out.
"What's for dinner?"
"I made your favorite. Chicken and dumplings."
"Mom, last night you said macaroni and fish sticks were my favorite."
"You have to admit, I make a hell of a macaroni."
"My point is, you can't decide what my favorite food is. I'm-"
"A grown woman. I know. But you're not a woman just because you have a job."
"Okay, I'm a young adult with a job. So how do you define womanhood, mom?"
"Well, married with kids, I guess."
"So if I never marry or have kids, I'll never be a woman?"
"No," he mom said, "I guess not."
"That's preposterous, mom. I might not ever do either, just to prove a point."
"I meant I guess those things don't make someone a woman, after all."
"Oh, okay. Let's eat, I'm starving."
When they walked into the kitchen, Renee saw a dirty dishtowel on the kitchen table."
"Ooh, poop or chocolate!" Renee said, snatching it up and licking it.
"Renee-"
"Fuck!" she said, running to the sink.
"Poop. Mitzi had a little accident. I dropped it on the table when I heard you at the door."
"Thanth a lot!" Renee said with her tongue under the running water.
"See, Renee? You're still a kid. Grown women," she said, making finger quotes in the air, "don't play games like 'Ooh, floor candy!' or 'Poop or chocolate?'"
"Lesson learned," Renee said. "I've lost my taste for that game."
"Tuesday already, Renee?"
"It's always Pun Tuesday with me, mom. But you'd probably know what day it is more often if you ever left the house."
Her mom served up bowls of soup.
"More," Renee said. "I really have an appetite since I started my job."
"You don't want to get fat," her mother said.
"No, I don't," Renee said. "But if I want to, I will. I'm not getting married anyway, remember?"
This time, her mother rolled her eyes.
"When the soaps go off, I know it's the weekend."
They lived off of her father's death benefits and social security fund, but it was a tight budget. Her mother generally left the house twice a week. Once on Saturdays for groceries, and again for church on Sunday. Renee avoided both, if she could help it.
She still had to pop into the market during the week, occasionally, but had reduced her church visits to Easter and Christmas, which her mother absolutely insisted upon.
"That's not healthy," Renee said. "You need a job or a boyfriend. Or both."
"Renee, I could never remarry."
"Why not?"
"I love your father too much."
"Ma, he's dead. It's okay. Seriously."
"No man will ever compare favorably to your father. So why bother?"
"How about sex?"
"Renee Audrey Hollander, don't you dare go there!"
"For real, mom. If you ask me, that's when girls become women. You're a woman. You need sex."
"Some of them are still girls, Renee. Some of them stay girls."
"We're talking about you, not me, or some theoretical case study."
"Not at the table, please," her mom said, closing the subject. "Besides, I'd lose my food stamps and health benefits."
"You don't need them anymore. I make plenty."
Her mother said nothing.
"Maybe when I'm ready."
"You need to live a little," Renee said, putting her plate in the sink.
###
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Sixteen year-old Renee Hollander sat in a waiting room outside of a construction office, resume and references in hand. There were old magazines, empty styrofoam cups with dried coffee remnants in them, and a thick layer of dust over everything. She eyed the discarded monogoggles, hardhats, and various bits of fastener hardware with distaste.
It seemed like such a disorganized mess, and no way to build a hospital. But she knew men worked differently than women, and construction was a man's world.
Renee intended to change that.
The hand that was in the office with the superintendent, a welder, walked out and regarded her with curious interest.
"Hey, girl," he said. "You sellin' Girl Scout cookies or some shit?"
"Fuck off," Renee said.
The welder, Tokio according to the nametag sewn to his blue workshirt, raised his eyebrows at this, but said nothing in response, instead exiting the trailer, presumably to return to work.
Renee walked into the office.
"Yeah, waddya want?" the superintendent sneered. "You sellin' Girl Scout cookies or sumptin'?"
He laughed at his own wit.
"No, sir," she said respectfully. "I'd like a job."
The man laughed.
"I'd like a job, too," he said. "Why don't you get under my desk?"
"Sure," Renee said calmly. "But before I do, can I get representatives from OSHA and the Labor Board to come and watch?"
The color drained out of the man's face.
"I'm just kiddin', little darlin'," he said, shuffling papers on his desk. "What can you do?"
She handed him her resume' and letters of reference.
"I'm of legal working age, intelligent, strong, meticulous with an eye for detail. I'd say I'm easily suited to be a laborer, or a helper for a craftsman. An expeditor, if you need one of those."
The super sighed, defeated.
"I can give you sixteen dollars an hour to start. I need a pipefitter helper. Work starts tomorrow at six."
"Thank you, sir. You won't regret it."
Renee didn't go home, but instead went to the library, where she researched pipefitting in depth. She learned it was a study in level, plumb and square, with an emphasis on brains as well as brawn. After that, she went to the hardware store and spent her last one hundred and twenty-five dollars on levels, squares, a toolbox, and a four-pound maul.
Finally, she went home for dinner.
Her mom, Gladys, tried to get her to open up.
"How was your day, dear?" she asked her.
"Gotta job," Renee said. "I'm qutting school."
"Quitting school?" her mother asked, horrified. "You can't!"
"I can and I will. I already make double what you do, and almost what pop did before he died."
An uneasy silence befell the room. Gladys didn't like to speak of the circumstances of her father's death. Renee knew it was a construction accident, but that was all. Repeated pressings at her mother yielded no new information, only angry tears.
"You won't leave me, will you?" her mother asked, fear dominating her voice. "Please say you won't, Renee."
"No, ma. I'm not leaving."
Gladys's biggest fear was losing her daughter. But she had always assumed it would be to some boy, or man, even. This was an unexpected twist.
"Well, I suppose the extra money will be nice. Will you help with the bills?"
Renee's mother was perennially short of cash, leaving her in a constant state of worry.
"Of course, mom. I love you. I did it for you, in part."
"You're a good girl, Renee. Thank you."
"Do you love me, too?"
"Of course I do! What a silly thing to ask your own mother. If I ever don't say it, it's because it's a given. Mothers love their children. Even bad mothers love bad children. And you're a good child."
"Thank you, ma. You're a good mother."
"How sweet of you to say. Let's eat, okay? I made your favorite."
Fishsticks and macaroni weren't really her favorite foods, but she pretended they were. Her mother worked so hard.
After a dinner eaten mostly in silence, and quickly, Renee showered. The steaming water beat down on her young body, and as she soaped herself, her nipples grew erect. Intead of watching "Love Boat" and "Fantasy Island", she excused herself from her mother's presence and went to her room to masturbate furiously.
###
Twenty-two year old Alex Wright sat across from the piping superintendent, sweating hands clutching his rather sparse resume'. She sat on the phone, not acknowledging him, but engrossed in a conversation regarding a federal act that required her major components, pipe and fittings, be manufactured in the U.S.A.
"These fucking prices are outrageous!" she yelled into the phone.
Perhaps she shouldn't care so much, the project being time and materials, but her costs were running four times what they ordinarily would. She had made it to the top of her profession in part by keeping costs down for her clients. The high cost of American-made components were part of her projections, in theory.
In reality, the big numbers were irking her. If she entrusted things to an assistant, she'd order them to reduce the figures by seventy-five percent, just to ease her mind. She decided to take it out on her newest applicant, instead.
"Call you back," she said into the receiver.
"What the fuck do you want?" she asked the already intimidated Alex.
Renee Hollander was the biggest piping mogul in the world, and Grand Coulee II Dam project was an unprecedented endeavor. They were going to dam the Mississippi river.
Alex had done his research. Over a six year span, an enormous expanse of earth would be excavated, creating a giant flood plain. Hundreds of thousands of Dakotans and residents of Illinois lost their property to eminent domain, receiving only market value for their homes, at best.
The houses weren't torn down, but rather all utility services were disbanded. People were allowed to stay or leave as they desired, and so a new class of society developed, formed of people who refused to abandon their childhood homes, and people who moved in to live in relative peace and freedom without expenses.
It was a massive free zone, unpoliced, without electricity or running water. But the residents there were happy and resourceful, and didn't want to be flooded out of their homes.
Her words drew Alex from his reverie.
"Uh, I'd like a job, ma'am."
"A job, eh? What are your qualifications?"
"Well, I have a degree in construction management, I'm industrious-"
"Hold it right there, homey. A degree in construction management don't mean shit. But I'll hire you. Sixteen dollars an hour."
"Sixteen dollars? The going rate is twenty-six!"
Jobs, however, were extremely scarce.
"Sixteen bucks. Take it or leave it."
Alex exhaled roughly.
"I'll take it," he said. "What's the position?"
She looked at him levelly. "You're my bitch."
His faced turned as red as an apple. Renee slid a packet of papers from her desk drawer.
"Sign these," she said.
It was a W-2 form, and a waiver releasing her company, Zen Construction, from all liability. He filled out the W-2, scrawled his name across them and slid them back to her.
"When do I start?" he asked meekly.
She glanced at thge clock behind her. Renee never wore a watch, but had uncanny timing.
"It's one o'clock. I'll start your time at two. Let's go."
They rose to leave, and Alex said, "Don't I need a hardhat?"
"That's what the waiver is for. I have a deal with OSHA. Come on."
At the door, she paused and said, "Grab my belt-loop with your left hand."
He looked at her with confusion in his eyes.
"Grab...my...belt-loop," she said again.
Reluctantly, he did so. He might have been a college boy, but he knew what it signified. She was really serious about this bitch thing, he thought.
She led him into the current area of excavation. Great earthmoving machines, skip-loaders, dump trucks and graders danced an intricate ballet, seemingly operated by remote control. In the midst of the chaos, there was a lone stick of pipe, a single elbow, a welding machine, and a little Asian man.
Alex watched the man drop his welding hood and tack a bead, joining the pipe and ninety. He then raised his head, flipped up his hood, and produced a level from his back pocket. He scrutinized the instrument, made no adjustment, dropped the hood back down, and tacked the other side.
"This is Cho," Renee said. "You're his helper. Just do what he tells you to do. I'll be back at six to pick you up."
Just like that, she was gone.
"Sir," Alex said, bowing deferentially.
Cho was about to make a third tack when he was interrupted. He spoke to Alex with an uncharacteristic mid-western accident.
"Look here, charity case. Piping on this project doesn't even start for another three months, and it's largely prefabbed. Realize you're just padding on the payroll, and keep your mouth shut."
"Then what are we doing here?" Alex asked, unable to contain his question.
"I'm making forty-eight dollars an hour, seventy-two after eight hours. You're ruining my concentration."
But Cho could see the desperation on his face and relented.
"Look, kid. We're here because the fedgoveral won't pay out four point six million per quarter if she doesn't have at least a skeleton crew on the payroll. The sun is shining, the air is clean. My advice? Try to do what I do."
"How can I help?"
"I don't work with most helpers. If you're a good boy, I'll let you work with me in the future. For now..."
"Yes?"
"See that shovel and wheelbarrow? Dig me a two-foot square hole where that stake is."
"How deep?"
"Good question! A two cubic-foot hole, then."
"Yes, sir," Alex said with enthusiasm.
Alex, who had lifted little more than a spoon or a pen in his past four years of bookwork, struck the earth with the shovel, and received a shock that he felt all the the way up to his teeth. The densely-packed dirt was nearly as hard as rock. No sooner had he removed the stake to dig than a man walked angrily up to him, a look of consternation on his face.
"What the fuck did you move that stake for?" he demanded of Alex.
"My boss told me to."
"The fuck-"
In a flash, Cho was there, hand on his shoulder.
"Easy, pard. It's a little character building exercise. I need a hold to form up this pipe. It's four feet long, and I only have two pipe jacks."
Alex watched realization dawn across the face of the man. Walt, he would later learn the head of the civil department's name was.
"Okay, then, Cho-Cho. As long as he's with you."
Without another word, he left, presumably to check the status of his other stakes. Realizing he was only estimating, Alex went to Cho, who wordlessly handed him a Craftsman twenty-foot tape measure. Despite his discipline in college, math really wasn't his forte. Nevertheless, he understood what a two cubic-foot hole entailed. He used the shovel's edge to draw the outlines, allowing four inches of play on the inside, so he didn't go over two feet.
Then he set his teeth and went to work. The sun was beating down on him, and sweat drenched his long-sleeved shirt. The hardpan dirt did not yield to him easily. After an hour's hard digging, he was still several inches short of his target.
Cho walked over to him.
"Dollar waitin' on a dime," he said.
"What does that mean?" Alex asked, perturbed.
"It means I'm being held up by a peon," Cho said sternly. "Move."
He took the shovel from his hands, and in five minutes, had the hole completed. It was rough and jagged, the depth uneven, but more or less two feet deep and wide. He handed the shovel back to Alex.
"It's just a hole," he told him, shrugging his shoulders.
Cho walked over to the pipe, the ninety now fully welded to it, and calmly kicked it over. It fell with a resounding thud, barely heard over the earth-moving equipment that encircled them.
"Let's go get a drink," Cho said. "You've earned it."
He followed him to Renee's trailer, which now seemed a hundred miles away. The cool, still air inside was now like an alien environment. They drank from paper cups, imbibing water from an orange Igloo cooler. Water, which Alex has always taken for granted, even somewhat disdained, now tasted like ambrosia.
Renee was on the phone, yelling, and as they left the relative comfort of the trailer they heard her saying, "No, fuck you!", and they laughed together.
Chapter Two
Young Renee's first day on the job was a study of opposites. She dressed down, Levi's and a flannel workshirt, no make-up, her hair drawn in a tight ponytail. Even so, the men fell all over her.
She was given the job of firewatch, which upset her to no end. She wanted to learn to be a pipe fitter. Instead, she sat on a bucket and watched the men work all day, knowing full well that the only chance of fire was from the cigarettes and weed the men smoked, carelessly tossing their butts and roaches over the edge of the scaffolds they worked from.
In retaliation, he did nothing to prevent any fires that day, laughing as some plastic sheeting actually caught fire once, and a few concerned scaffold builders moved in to stamp out the rising flames.
Renee decided that day that she liked the construction game.
###
"Move that pipe and jackstands so the ninety looks down into the center of the hole you dug," Cho said.
Alex decided he wasn't being sarcastic, but he knew he didn't really dig much of the hole himself. He carried the jackstands gingerly. one at a time, positioning them so that the pipe would rest comfortably in place, and the ninety would more or less be centered where Cho wanted it. But when he tried to lift the pipe, twenty feet of schedule forty carbon steel, he found he couldn't manage to lift it.
Cho watched him struggle for a bit, and then disgustedly told him to get out of the way. He easily lifted one end of the pipe, moved it closer to the jacks, then the other, until it was positioned next to them. Then he pointedly looked at Alex, lifted one end of the pipe with one hand, and placed it easily on the jackstands. He repeated the process on the other end, and then bowed slightly to Alex.
"Lesson one," he said. "You have to be smarter than the pipe."
Alex felt flushed, and foolish.
"I like you, kid. I think you have potential. I'll let you be my 'prentice."
Now he felt strangely pleased.
"Lift this pipe for me," Cho said.
Alex did so, and Cho slid the jackstand back five feet. Then he pulled out a black tube of rubber and unrolled it, wrapping it around the pipe.
"Can I have my tape back?" Cho asked him.
Alex handed him his tape, and he made a small mark with a flat piece of white chalk, four feet from the end of the pipe.
"Soapstone," Cho said. "Pipe wrap."
Then he positioned the wrap's edge on the mark he had made, pulling both ends taut until the leading edge was aligned with it to his satisfaction. Finally, he drew the soapstone around the pipe wrap at the four foot mark.
"Go to the trailer and get the torch," he told Alex, with no further instruction.
Alex trudged off the seemingly incalculable distance in search of something resembling a torch. After twenty minutes of nosing around the pipeyard in vain, he went into the office and asked Renee if she knew where the torch was. She was of course on the phone, cursing.
She put her hand over the mouthpiece and said, "In the backroom, sweetie. Torch, hose, and gauges. Connect them to the bottles outside."
Them she went back to yelling and cursing into the phone.
###
Renee's second day was much like the first, initially. But she firewatched for a welder-fitter-helper combo, so she got to observe the process firsthand. The welder sat around most of the day, the fitter barked orders to the beleaguered helper, and the helper did his best to make things come together.
I could do that, she thought. The fitter seemed to be there mainly to supply tools and experience. The welder welded, but only almost after the fact. Ninety percent of it seemed be in the preparation. Aside from fetching power tools as needed, he seemed to spend most of his time grinding. Since they were working on the ground, she paid a lot of attention to the details of what he was doing.
The fitter pulled some measurements, relayed a number to the helper, and went back to bullshitting with the welder. The helper marked the pipe, then disappeared for twenty minutes. He came back with a bandsaw that was too small for the six-inch pipe they needed to cut, so it took what felt like forever.
Renee couldn't hold her tongue any longer. She approached the welder and fitter, interrupting their conversation about sports.
"Why don't you have the helper get all the tools first thing in the morning?" she asked him. "And a wide-mouth bandsaw instead of that crummy Porter Cable one?"
The fitter considered this for a moment, and then said, "Why don't you suck my dick?"
He and the welder laughed uproariously at this display of verve. Renee walked off, red-faced. Twenty minutes later, the fitter and welder were summarily fired. Both they and their tools were brought to the front gate.
The foreman came by.
"I'm really sorry about that, Ms. Hollander. I can assure you that it won't happen again."
He turned to the helper. James was his name,
"You're the fitter now, kid. I hope you know your shit."
"I don't work without blueprints," he told told the foreman squarely.
He grew angry for a moment, then realized James was a true pipefitter, and was pleased/
Then James said, "How much is my raise?"
Caught off guard for a moment, the foreman, Bobby, stumbled with the words and caught himself before he gave away the store.
"Three bucks," he said.
"That piece of shit who just left was making six dollars more than me, and I did all the work."
"Alright, asshole. Four bucks. Take it or leave it."
James ignored him and went back to work.
"You're his helper now," the foreman told Renee. "Try not to let him get hurt or start any fires."
Then he whispered to her, "Five dollar raise."
###
Alex wheeled the cart, with its heavy oxygen and acetylene bottles, back to Cho, who was waiting impatiently.
"What took so long, kid?"
"I didn't know what a torch was," Alex admitted.
"You're kidding me," Cho said.
"No, sir," Alex said. "Renee had to help me."
Alex had a real honesty problem.
"You have a real honesty problem, don't you?"
"Is it a problem, sir? I have the ability to lie. I just prefer not to."
"Don't get all Herman Melville on me, sonny," Cho said.
Alex was stunned. The elderly Asian pipefitter had just referenced what is largely considered the first American existentialist novel, Bartleby the Scrivner.
"Don't look so shocked, boy. Do you think because I work construction, I'm uneducated?"
"No, it's just, I-" Alex stammered.
"Let me put it this way. I know what you know, and then some. For example, what do you make an hour?"
"Sixteen," he admitted.
"You're fucking joking," Cho said.
It was, Alex would later recall, the only time he ever heard him utter a vulgarity.
"No, sir. That's all she offered me."
"Come on," Cho said angrily.
They walked back to Renee's office trailer and barged in. She was on the phone, naturally. Cho looked her in the eyes and disconnected her. Alex expected her to be angry, outraged, even. But she folded her arms across her chest and listened.
"Sixteen dollars?" was all Cho said.
"What? I was fucking with him. I expected him to blink. He didn't blink. Look."
She turned her ledger toward him.
"See? Twenty-eight dollars an hour."
Satisfied, but still angry, Cho said, "Don't mess with my helper," and walked out, Alex in tow.
"He's still my bitch!" Renee called out to them, laughing.
She resumed her work on the phone, trying to source cheaper materials.
###
Alex began trying to connect the pressure gauges to the oxy-acetylene rig, and had to admit his ignorance once again. One of the gauges wouldn't screw on. Cho let him struggle for a while, then stepped in and said, "Forget what you know about 'Righty-Tighty'."
Alex turned the brass bonnet counterclockwise and it screwed right on.
"Reverse threaded," Cho said. "See the marks here? That indicates a reverse threaded coupling. Don't over-tighten because brass is a soft metal and you'll ruin the threads. Then you'll have to tighten them more each time. But get a good seal on each."
Alex tightened them both down with a crescent wrench, and then Cho opened the acetylene valve.
"Watch," he said.
He produced a lighter and lit it near the connector. A small blue flame leapt to the brass and hovered there. Alex panicked and cringed. Cho jokingly swatted him and said, "Relax."
As he did so, Cho said, "The oxygen is just as dangerous. It won't ignite. On its own, but if you spray the gauges with WD-40, then they'll explode when the oil atomizes and mixes with the pure oxygen."
"Have you ever seen a bottle explode?" Alex asked breathlessly.
"Nope," Cho said. "Not on my watch. But I've seen pictures. These tanks are milled from a single disc of steel that's stretched into a bottle shape and then threaded at the top. It eliminates any other possible point of failure. But," he continued, "I have seen what happens if a bottle falls over and the gauges break off."
"Really? What?"
They turn into torpedoes. A kid knocked one over once, and the gauges hit a fab table. That bottle took off in the opposite direction and went through six walls before it stopped. It traveled over a thousand feet. We actually measured the distance, we were so awestruck."
Alex took the lesson to heart.
"That's why you ordinarily tie bottles down to a column or something, or rack them in a cart like this one."
Cho kicked the bottles over and Alex felt his heart leap out of his chest momentarily.
"See?" Cho said calmly. "The design of the cart prevents such an accident. Um, I don't recommend you teach your own helper using such radical methods."
###
Renee was determined to live up to her new role as fitter-helper. She approached James, who was attacking the end of the freshly-cut pipe with an angle grinder.
"Can I help, sir?" she asked him.
"No," he said tersely. "Stay back ten feet unless you have the same P.P.E. on as I have."
"Personal protective equipment," she laughed. "What a joke."
He dropped the grinder and threw his faceshield on the ground.
"Let me tell you somethin'," he said. "My first helper job, I was clueless like you. All they gave me was a fuckin' pair of safety glasses. I didn't even know to keep my hair covered. I used that piece of shit grinder all day like a good monkey.
"When I got home to my wife and kids, I was so tired, I took a nap, something I ordinarily never did. When I woke up, I felt like I had sand in my eyes. So I did what you would normally do, I rubbed them. Twenty minutes later, I was crawlin' around on the carpet bawlin' like a fuckin' baby. Scratched corneas. Your eyes are precious. Protect them at all costs."
Finished with his lecture, James put his faceshield back on and picked up his grinder again, resuming his work. Renee went and found monogoggles and a faceshield of her own and rejoined him.
"Thank you," she said when he had stopped grinding in order to rotate the piece of pipe he was working on.
"No problem," he said.
Now protected to James's satisfaction, she was free to put her face close to where he was working and observe more closely. He playfully shot sparks in her face, and she marveled at the display of orange-red lights rapidly flying at her and falling away. It was like being in the middle of a fireworks display.
"Can I help?" she asked again over the din of the grinder.
He stopped what he was doing.
"No."
"Aww, why not?"
His face grew stern and serious again.
"Look, I don't know what your game is, Ms.-"
"Renee."
"Ms. Renee. But in my opinion, helpers suck, and they don't."
"Don't what?"
"Don't help."
"That's silly," she said. "Helpers have to help. It's axiomatic."
"In my experience, helpers that actually help you are as rare as hen's teeth. If you place your trust in them, they usually let you down."
"But you were a helper an hour ago!"
"And I was a good one. But a good helper is a fitter. And you have a ways to go before you're a pipefitter."
"Will you teach me?"
He considered this for a moment.
"If you're serious."
"I am," she said earnestly.
"Then be here everyday, rain or shine. Come early. Ask questions. A good helper learns, assists, and, honestly, does most of the work. The fitter takes responsibility and teaches. And sometimes, learns. But don't think you're gonna walk onto my job site and shake your ass for a free pass."
"No sir, I won't."
"You are pretty sexy, though," James added.
"I know," she said, smiling.
###
As soon as she walked in the door, Renee's mother was doting on her, taking her coat, hugging her. She even attempted to wipe her nose.
"Mom, stop," Renee said. "I'm a grown woman."
"Not to your mom, you're not. You'll always, always be my little girl."
Renee rolled her eyes at her.
"Your face is going to get stuck like that someday," her mother said.
Renee rolled her eyes harder and stuck her tongue out.
"What's for dinner?"
"I made your favorite. Chicken and dumplings."
"Mom, last night you said macaroni and fish sticks were my favorite."
"You have to admit, I make a hell of a macaroni."
"My point is, you can't decide what my favorite food is. I'm-"
"A grown woman. I know. But you're not a woman just because you have a job."
"Okay, I'm a young adult with a job. So how do you define womanhood, mom?"
"Well, married with kids, I guess."
"So if I never marry or have kids, I'll never be a woman?"
"No," he mom said, "I guess not."
"That's preposterous, mom. I might not ever do either, just to prove a point."
"I meant I guess those things don't make someone a woman, after all."
"Oh, okay. Let's eat, I'm starving."
When they walked into the kitchen, Renee saw a dirty dishtowel on the kitchen table."
"Ooh, poop or chocolate!" Renee said, snatching it up and licking it.
"Renee-"
"Fuck!" she said, running to the sink.
"Poop. Mitzi had a little accident. I dropped it on the table when I heard you at the door."
"Thanth a lot!" Renee said with her tongue under the running water.
"See, Renee? You're still a kid. Grown women," she said, making finger quotes in the air, "don't play games like 'Ooh, floor candy!' or 'Poop or chocolate?'"
"Lesson learned," Renee said. "I've lost my taste for that game."
"Tuesday already, Renee?"
"It's always Pun Tuesday with me, mom. But you'd probably know what day it is more often if you ever left the house."
Her mom served up bowls of soup.
"More," Renee said. "I really have an appetite since I started my job."
"You don't want to get fat," her mother said.
"No, I don't," Renee said. "But if I want to, I will. I'm not getting married anyway, remember?"
This time, her mother rolled her eyes.
"When the soaps go off, I know it's the weekend."
They lived off of her father's death benefits and social security fund, but it was a tight budget. Her mother generally left the house twice a week. Once on Saturdays for groceries, and again for church on Sunday. Renee avoided both, if she could help it.
She still had to pop into the market during the week, occasionally, but had reduced her church visits to Easter and Christmas, which her mother absolutely insisted upon.
"That's not healthy," Renee said. "You need a job or a boyfriend. Or both."
"Renee, I could never remarry."
"Why not?"
"I love your father too much."
"Ma, he's dead. It's okay. Seriously."
"No man will ever compare favorably to your father. So why bother?"
"How about sex?"
"Renee Audrey Hollander, don't you dare go there!"
"For real, mom. If you ask me, that's when girls become women. You're a woman. You need sex."
"Some of them are still girls, Renee. Some of them stay girls."
"We're talking about you, not me, or some theoretical case study."
"Not at the table, please," her mom said, closing the subject. "Besides, I'd lose my food stamps and health benefits."
"You don't need them anymore. I make plenty."
Her mother said nothing.
"Maybe when I'm ready."
"You need to live a little," Renee said, putting her plate in the sink.
###
[image error]
August 1, 2012
Cover Reveal - Zombie Killa/Six Stories Short & Sweet
I just got the final proofs back for two covers from CL Smith of Humble Nations, my favorite cover designer. Spectacular.
Print resolution, great use of stock images, subtle shading and shadowing, excellent typography. I could go on and on.
But mostly, I want to say he's low pressure, and patient. Oh, and helpful, easy to deal with, and he makes changes painless. Not that he really needed to make any changes.
The logo design alone is worth more than I paid for the covers! I can't stress enough the importance of author branding.Think of it like this. Would you rather try and promote twenty different novels across seven genres, or just promote your name as an author?
http://humblenations.com/2012/08/01/jason-z-christies-zombie-killa-and-six-short-and-sweet-finals/
July 31, 2012
Preview of 'Dittobabe'
My superhero novel. It's probably a year away from being written. Or so I think.
Kent walked down the block in Times Square, staring at his feet and the garbage-strewn sidewalk. He found New York amazingly scummy, so it was perfect for him. The trash, he suspected, mostly appeared spontaneously when no one was looking, as if some set designer striving for realism had decided that every square inch of the city had to have at least one piece of trash, gum or dogshit on it.
He ignored the people, viewing them mostly as obstacles to maneuver around. In his nine months in NYC, he had failed to meet a single individual that he felt was worthy of his friendship. Sure. he had high standards. But he was also an excellent judge of character.
Fifteen years in foster homes had left him more than a little detached.
He'd been bounced around long enough to know that most families were bullshit. So a few months before he had the option of applying for emancipated minor status, he forged an impressive set of identification papers and credentials, and took off for the city.
Why? Because he had bought into the Hollywood premise that the city was a vibrant, exciting place, full of interesting and colorful people. It wasn't. But for his purposes, it still suited him well.
He passed a man in the street and the thought came to him, "murderer".
Kent didn't know how he knew, but he did. He also knew the information was passed on to whoever dealt with such matters. He passed a pair of rapists soon after, and the scenario repeated.
He only concerned himself with rapists and killers. When he'd first become aware of his unique ability, he also monitored for thieves. But that's not exactly true. When he'd first become aware of his powers, he was sure he had gone insane. After a period of adjustment, he marked off the city's thieves, murderers and rapists. It was too much work, as virtually everyone showed up as a thief of some sort. He learned to tune them out.
One of the reasons Kent was in such a funk was that he'd just viewed the latest X-Men film. The entire premise bugged him to no end. A school for mutants? As if. Unless your mutant power was recognizing other mutants, there was absolutely no reason in Kent's mind that they should all be aware of each other, much less work together.
He gritted his teeth, and the ground trembled slightly. He really needed to work on that.
That was something else that bugged him about superheroes in general, they were all too perfect and selfless. And for what? To protect a bunch of norms that were unappreciative at best,. and at their worst, hostile and malicious.
Kent only helped them out because he couldn't stop. While he could crank it down to a degree, he had found that there seemed to be no way to shut it off completely. So he embraced his role as best he could, and just sort of tried to get on with his life. Being a mutant was lonely work. He had to assume he was a mutant, having rejected all other possible explanations. There was simply no one on Earth he could relate to, as far as he could tell.
He had stopped on the corner to wait for the light to change when he first saw her. He was absent-mindedly scanning the crowds on the opposite corners when his eyes came upon a girl roughly his own age. She stood out in sharp relief from the others, as if he were zooming in on her. It was something he hadn't experienced before.
She glowed and sparkled like a damn Hollywood vampire.
He shook his head and dismissed her, focusing his attention on another corner. And there she was again, smiling an impish grin that was clearly directed at him. He looked back at the other corner, and she was still there, as well.
Kent looked to the third corner to test a theory that was rapidly forming in his mind. She was there, also. Three of them. The thought came to mind that he would probably be happy with just one of them.
Without thinking, he reached behind himself and his hand closed around a slender wrist. Then he felt it disappear, along with the other three of her.
Damn.
###
Joy couldn't resist. She'd been tailing him off and on for a week before she decided to show herself. He was cute! And clearly an alien. She couldn't tell what his abilities were, but she sensed power there. But he wasn't from her planet. Wherever that was. As far as she could tell, she was entirely unique on Earth. The thought made her lonely.
So he made for a delightful new diversion from work. They had a lot in common.
But that name! She had stalked him in various guises until she felt she knew him completely. Or at least she knew his secret identity really well. So contrived. She wondered if he thought he was from Krypton.
At least he wasn't a reporter who wore glasses. His day job was middle-grade web programmer in one of the Soho boutiques or salons or whatever the current trendy term for office was there this month. Although he was a blogger, which was close.
But it was his blogging that was so attractive to her. They shared similar interests. It was a good thing, because he otherwise seemed to lead a pretty boring and routine life. If he ever did any superheroing, Joy didn't see it.
Kent ran a website called LetsKillSomeMotherfuckers.com. It was basically a news aggregation site, but he wrote regular Friday columns that really connected with her. He hated humans with a passion.
The site automatically gathered news articles about convicted rapists and murderers, listing their full names, crimes and cities of residence. In some cases, their home addresses. There was a disclaimer on the bottom of the page in eight-point type: "Parody site. Not to be taken seriously. Don't kill any of these motherfuckers."
But Joy knew that was just cover-your-ass. What it really was was a hit list. And she knew this because she had already used it twice since she shoulder-surfed him while he was updating the site at a Starbucks. It was sort of funny. She approached him in the form of a dumpy latina barrista, complete with dark moustache. She wiped down a few tables, then began wiping around his laptop, shaking the table and spilling his coffee.
He stood up and cradled his apparently precious Mac Air to his chest as she half-heartedly mopped the tabletop. All she needed was the URL, and she had it.
When he was angrily stuffing his gear into his bag, she disappeared. Before he left, he complained to the manager, and was informed that no such employee existed. He bit his tongue and left. Thinking about it, she did seem to be in violation of their Beautiful People policy. He put it out of his mind. Pondering imponderables was a waste of time.
Joy was on her phone within minutes, looking up his website. When she realized what it was about (as if the domain name wasn't enough), she felt a small chill. Not of revulsion. It was like he knew her too well already. She'd found a convicted rapist in the city who had received probation. Outrageous.
One of her projections knocked on his door, seduced him, and then summarily castrated him. It was far from her first, but it was the first time she did it with help. Like they were a team.
She didn't know the specifics. Her projections had no feelings, and the details were blocked to her, but she knew she got results. She also knew something else happened, because she had never read a news report about convicted rapists found with their balls cut off.
She did think about it, though. It was impossible not to. Did they cut them off? Bite them off? Dentata action? She knew when she wasn't watching and actively controlling them, her holograms were capable of anything. She was pretty sure at least one had transformed into a fierce black dog and bitten them off.
Joy was a little jealous of her projections. Not so much for the killing part, but because she knew they were enjoying the seduction aspect, if it were possible. She thought of them enjoying the sensation of warm, wet lips crushing their own, strong hands grabbing and groping them.
She signed, and black smoke streamed from her mouth. A passerby saw it and did a double-take. But she didn't care if people saw her projections or not, anymore. What could they do about it, anyway?
Back at home, she counted up her take from the Starbucks.
Chapter Two
The encounter with the girl had left Kent shaken, stirred, and drained. He was ordinarily in complete control of his thoughts. Now his mind pendulumed back and forth between paranoia and eroticism.
Who was she? What was she? She was hot! There were four of her! What did she know about him? How much? What should he do? Would he see her again? How? Did he want to? Yes!
She had been completely shielded to him mentally, until he touched her. Then he understood what an anomaly she was. A murderer, much like the ones he routinely tagged and dispatched. But a good murderer. His kind of girl.
He had encountered such situations before, on occasion. Sometimes he would note a murderer, and then receive a vision of their justification. A few follow-ups on his part revealed that these people were never taken away. There was such a thing as justifiable homicide.
His normal detection range was a square mile or so, and not limited by speed. He could work just as well at forty miles an hour as standing still or walking. So at least once a month, he took the train randomly around the city, or took a cab ride across town.
Kent never had a specific destination in mind. He considered it a form of garbage collection. But on each jaunt, he would encounter a feeling along the way that told him it seemed random, but wasn't. There was a bigger, specific target that he had been led to.
This had the unintended outcome of grouping criminals geographically, as those that remained beyond his areas of influence were more or less safe. Unless the bumbling police managed to get one right for a change. It happened occasionally.
He had even considered joining the police force, or hiring on in some administrative fashion, to access the unsolved cases and pending investigations. But he'd dispatched more than his fair share of dirty cops already. Enough to turn his stomach and mind away from such thoughts. Any organization that was corruptible wasn't worth having. Joining one that was already corrupt was ludicrous. He disliked the absurd, much as Hitler despised surrealism.
Kent walked down the block in Times Square, staring at his feet and the garbage-strewn sidewalk. He found New York amazingly scummy, so it was perfect for him. The trash, he suspected, mostly appeared spontaneously when no one was looking, as if some set designer striving for realism had decided that every square inch of the city had to have at least one piece of trash, gum or dogshit on it.
He ignored the people, viewing them mostly as obstacles to maneuver around. In his nine months in NYC, he had failed to meet a single individual that he felt was worthy of his friendship. Sure. he had high standards. But he was also an excellent judge of character.
Fifteen years in foster homes had left him more than a little detached.
He'd been bounced around long enough to know that most families were bullshit. So a few months before he had the option of applying for emancipated minor status, he forged an impressive set of identification papers and credentials, and took off for the city.
Why? Because he had bought into the Hollywood premise that the city was a vibrant, exciting place, full of interesting and colorful people. It wasn't. But for his purposes, it still suited him well.
He passed a man in the street and the thought came to him, "murderer".
Kent didn't know how he knew, but he did. He also knew the information was passed on to whoever dealt with such matters. He passed a pair of rapists soon after, and the scenario repeated.
He only concerned himself with rapists and killers. When he'd first become aware of his unique ability, he also monitored for thieves. But that's not exactly true. When he'd first become aware of his powers, he was sure he had gone insane. After a period of adjustment, he marked off the city's thieves, murderers and rapists. It was too much work, as virtually everyone showed up as a thief of some sort. He learned to tune them out.
One of the reasons Kent was in such a funk was that he'd just viewed the latest X-Men film. The entire premise bugged him to no end. A school for mutants? As if. Unless your mutant power was recognizing other mutants, there was absolutely no reason in Kent's mind that they should all be aware of each other, much less work together.
He gritted his teeth, and the ground trembled slightly. He really needed to work on that.
That was something else that bugged him about superheroes in general, they were all too perfect and selfless. And for what? To protect a bunch of norms that were unappreciative at best,. and at their worst, hostile and malicious.
Kent only helped them out because he couldn't stop. While he could crank it down to a degree, he had found that there seemed to be no way to shut it off completely. So he embraced his role as best he could, and just sort of tried to get on with his life. Being a mutant was lonely work. He had to assume he was a mutant, having rejected all other possible explanations. There was simply no one on Earth he could relate to, as far as he could tell.
He had stopped on the corner to wait for the light to change when he first saw her. He was absent-mindedly scanning the crowds on the opposite corners when his eyes came upon a girl roughly his own age. She stood out in sharp relief from the others, as if he were zooming in on her. It was something he hadn't experienced before.
She glowed and sparkled like a damn Hollywood vampire.
He shook his head and dismissed her, focusing his attention on another corner. And there she was again, smiling an impish grin that was clearly directed at him. He looked back at the other corner, and she was still there, as well.
Kent looked to the third corner to test a theory that was rapidly forming in his mind. She was there, also. Three of them. The thought came to mind that he would probably be happy with just one of them.
Without thinking, he reached behind himself and his hand closed around a slender wrist. Then he felt it disappear, along with the other three of her.
Damn.
###
Joy couldn't resist. She'd been tailing him off and on for a week before she decided to show herself. He was cute! And clearly an alien. She couldn't tell what his abilities were, but she sensed power there. But he wasn't from her planet. Wherever that was. As far as she could tell, she was entirely unique on Earth. The thought made her lonely.
So he made for a delightful new diversion from work. They had a lot in common.
But that name! She had stalked him in various guises until she felt she knew him completely. Or at least she knew his secret identity really well. So contrived. She wondered if he thought he was from Krypton.
At least he wasn't a reporter who wore glasses. His day job was middle-grade web programmer in one of the Soho boutiques or salons or whatever the current trendy term for office was there this month. Although he was a blogger, which was close.
But it was his blogging that was so attractive to her. They shared similar interests. It was a good thing, because he otherwise seemed to lead a pretty boring and routine life. If he ever did any superheroing, Joy didn't see it.
Kent ran a website called LetsKillSomeMotherfuckers.com. It was basically a news aggregation site, but he wrote regular Friday columns that really connected with her. He hated humans with a passion.
The site automatically gathered news articles about convicted rapists and murderers, listing their full names, crimes and cities of residence. In some cases, their home addresses. There was a disclaimer on the bottom of the page in eight-point type: "Parody site. Not to be taken seriously. Don't kill any of these motherfuckers."
But Joy knew that was just cover-your-ass. What it really was was a hit list. And she knew this because she had already used it twice since she shoulder-surfed him while he was updating the site at a Starbucks. It was sort of funny. She approached him in the form of a dumpy latina barrista, complete with dark moustache. She wiped down a few tables, then began wiping around his laptop, shaking the table and spilling his coffee.
He stood up and cradled his apparently precious Mac Air to his chest as she half-heartedly mopped the tabletop. All she needed was the URL, and she had it.
When he was angrily stuffing his gear into his bag, she disappeared. Before he left, he complained to the manager, and was informed that no such employee existed. He bit his tongue and left. Thinking about it, she did seem to be in violation of their Beautiful People policy. He put it out of his mind. Pondering imponderables was a waste of time.
Joy was on her phone within minutes, looking up his website. When she realized what it was about (as if the domain name wasn't enough), she felt a small chill. Not of revulsion. It was like he knew her too well already. She'd found a convicted rapist in the city who had received probation. Outrageous.
One of her projections knocked on his door, seduced him, and then summarily castrated him. It was far from her first, but it was the first time she did it with help. Like they were a team.
She didn't know the specifics. Her projections had no feelings, and the details were blocked to her, but she knew she got results. She also knew something else happened, because she had never read a news report about convicted rapists found with their balls cut off.
She did think about it, though. It was impossible not to. Did they cut them off? Bite them off? Dentata action? She knew when she wasn't watching and actively controlling them, her holograms were capable of anything. She was pretty sure at least one had transformed into a fierce black dog and bitten them off.
Joy was a little jealous of her projections. Not so much for the killing part, but because she knew they were enjoying the seduction aspect, if it were possible. She thought of them enjoying the sensation of warm, wet lips crushing their own, strong hands grabbing and groping them.
She signed, and black smoke streamed from her mouth. A passerby saw it and did a double-take. But she didn't care if people saw her projections or not, anymore. What could they do about it, anyway?
Back at home, she counted up her take from the Starbucks.
Chapter Two
The encounter with the girl had left Kent shaken, stirred, and drained. He was ordinarily in complete control of his thoughts. Now his mind pendulumed back and forth between paranoia and eroticism.
Who was she? What was she? She was hot! There were four of her! What did she know about him? How much? What should he do? Would he see her again? How? Did he want to? Yes!
She had been completely shielded to him mentally, until he touched her. Then he understood what an anomaly she was. A murderer, much like the ones he routinely tagged and dispatched. But a good murderer. His kind of girl.
He had encountered such situations before, on occasion. Sometimes he would note a murderer, and then receive a vision of their justification. A few follow-ups on his part revealed that these people were never taken away. There was such a thing as justifiable homicide.
His normal detection range was a square mile or so, and not limited by speed. He could work just as well at forty miles an hour as standing still or walking. So at least once a month, he took the train randomly around the city, or took a cab ride across town.
Kent never had a specific destination in mind. He considered it a form of garbage collection. But on each jaunt, he would encounter a feeling along the way that told him it seemed random, but wasn't. There was a bigger, specific target that he had been led to.
This had the unintended outcome of grouping criminals geographically, as those that remained beyond his areas of influence were more or less safe. Unless the bumbling police managed to get one right for a change. It happened occasionally.
He had even considered joining the police force, or hiring on in some administrative fashion, to access the unsolved cases and pending investigations. But he'd dispatched more than his fair share of dirty cops already. Enough to turn his stomach and mind away from such thoughts. Any organization that was corruptible wasn't worth having. Joining one that was already corrupt was ludicrous. He disliked the absurd, much as Hitler despised surrealism.
George Orwell on Janique Turner
"If you want to know the future, imagine Janique's stiletto heels walking all over bitches. Forever." - George Orwell, via Chris Turner.
More from 'Ultimate Hustle'
Chris sat, stunned, and pondered the imponderable. Janique had walked out on him. He rubbed the stubble on his jaw and debated making another pot of coffee. In a moment of non-clarity, he wished he had gone forward with his proposal to develop a coffee pot that determined in advance exactly when it should make more.
"Your brain gives off an 'I want coffee' signal when you want coffee, right?" he remembered asking her.
"Sure," she said.
"So, the electroencephalograph monitors for that signal. The thing is, you don't instantly want coffee, the urge develops over time, and at certain times. You determine what that point is, electromagnetically, and work your way backward from there for the amount of time it takes to make a cup."
"Sort of like a built-in caffeine gauge."
"Exactly!" he said, elaborating. "So it can also use fuzzy logic based on past instances to more or less predict when you'll want coffee, like in the mornings. Between the two methods, you should always have hot, fresh coffee whenever you realize you want some."
"Impressive," Janique said. "With the unintentional side-effect of sometimes making coffee when you didn't know you wanted any."
"Well, you don't have to drink it," he offered up sheepishly, smiling.
"Right. And such is the price we pay for convenience. So what would something like that cost?"
"I could probably put it on the shelf for fifty thousand, with installation costs."
"Installation costs?" she asked, ignoring the ridiculous price tag.
"Sure. That's actually cheap for an EEG machine. This is sort of a mini version, so you can wear metal around it. Pretty powerful electromagnets, ordinarily. And this way, it doesn't require any implants."
Janique beamed. "Because we all know Ultimate Hustle rule number four," she said.
"No implants!" they said together and laughed.
"Chris, I think we should do it. We have the money to fund the research. It's a good idea, if it'll work."
"Oh, it'll work."
"Well, a fifty-thousand dollar coffee pot is stupid, but if you can introduce new functions with the same hardware, and I'm operating under the assumption that you can..."
"Of course," he said. "I guess I was a little fixated on the coffee pot aspect."
"You do have sort of a one-track mind," she said, giving him her Academy Award-winning smile. "My question is, can you find the engineers to do something like that?"
"Oh, I've got the engineers," he said. "Not to mention the fact that most of your techie types tend to gravitate toward young, beautiful women."
Janique excused herself with a kiss on his cheek, and left with his latest scripts and concept pieces.
###
Chris had gotten pretty deep into the tech once UH was on autopilot. The films he still appeared in were rare, and always unplanned for in advance. Janique (or someone else, he thought distractedly) arranged "scenes", as they called them, seemingly randomly. Unbeknownst to him, they were largely based around his own movements throughout the world.
No one, they agreed, wanted to see more films of Chris Turner going off on some frightened yet blase' starlet in the same old locations. He had become so reclusive, he rarely left his lab. The trouble was, no one used the locations he selected, and no one told him of any particular place he should visit. He had no real sex drive anymore, apart from Janique.
Chris was high on the act of creation. He considered the scripts and scenarios he released into the wild little art viruses. They always mutated from his notebooks to the store shelves and digital archives, but some core of her personal truths managed to slip through, regardless.
Inevitably, the end result was better than if he had struggled to maintain tight control over every aspect of production.
But there was so much more to it than that, and it couldn't be shared with anyone. It was difficult to express alphanumerically, but rather incorporated runic figures, ideograms and symbology. He sent ideas out into the ether, and the universe responded in kind.
No one would believe or understand anything he said, so he said nothing.
Instead, he got high, wrote a little, occasionally evaluated audition tapes of second stringers the company sent him, and poured his earnings into new and secretive tech projects. He funded a cadre of like-minded researchers and developers who pursued faster than real-time processing and rendering.
So far, they had broken through to the extent that they gained the ability to diminsh or remove blemishes, so even the demo reels showed the girls in an idealized form. This led to dissatisfaction on Chris's part, so they began the more intensive work of developing the technology that would instead let them augment skin surfaces with tattoos and interesting scars. It was starting to feel too sterile, otherwise.
Their current pursuit beyond that was actually enhancing the figures of the actresses, so that the cameras showed them as even more curvacious and ripe, adding that big extra to Ultimate Hustle productions, allowing them to further outpace any other production houses in existence.
Chris became lost in thought, seeing a point where they would actually have the ability to artificially make someone (women), appear younger or older. He didn't fund development for actors. It was an entirely new set of costly problems, and they could instead go to a gym or something.
Intro to 'Star Hustle'
The Ultimate Hustle series is as follows:
Radar Love (published)
Penultimate Hustle (written)
Ultimate Hustle (plotted)
Superlove (plotted)
Star Hustle (?)
Dark Hustle (?)
Star Hustle will be the merger of the Perfect Me and Ultimate Hustle universes. I actually developed Prail as a character to counteract Janique, and then they started working together...
Chris and Janique Turner stood poised on the edge of the building, high winds whipping at their hair.
"Here goes nothing," she said, looking into her man's eyes.
They, like many other rich celebrities, had been visited in their dreams. They were promised Paradise. All they had to do was go along with the plan. The World Trade Centers were packed to the brim with world leaders, criminals, evildoers. The planes were loaded with movie stars and musicians, artists and poets.
Stephen King and Peter Straub piloted them.
It was going to be the most spectacular piece of interactive performance art the multiverse had ever known, second only perhaps to Prail and Project X's political scheming. And Chris and Janique held the positions of honor, as the beacons to guide the planes in.
It was Chris's idea to jump. The ultimate romantic act.
At the approach of the planes, Chris held Janique's delicate face in his hand, turning her to face him.
"I just love you," he told her.
"And I, you," she replied.
They jumped, hand in hand. As the ground rushed up to meet them, wind rushing through their hair and clothes, they held each other in a final, eternal embrace. They heard an unfamiliar tune as they fell: "Meet me in outer space / I will hold you close, if you're afraid of heights".
At the last possible instant, two superheroes swept in to grab them out of the air, Jason and Johnnie Christie.
"Superlove, bitches," Jason said, laughing.
Radar Love (published)
Penultimate Hustle (written)
Ultimate Hustle (plotted)
Superlove (plotted)
Star Hustle (?)
Dark Hustle (?)
Star Hustle will be the merger of the Perfect Me and Ultimate Hustle universes. I actually developed Prail as a character to counteract Janique, and then they started working together...
Chris and Janique Turner stood poised on the edge of the building, high winds whipping at their hair.
"Here goes nothing," she said, looking into her man's eyes.
They, like many other rich celebrities, had been visited in their dreams. They were promised Paradise. All they had to do was go along with the plan. The World Trade Centers were packed to the brim with world leaders, criminals, evildoers. The planes were loaded with movie stars and musicians, artists and poets.
Stephen King and Peter Straub piloted them.
It was going to be the most spectacular piece of interactive performance art the multiverse had ever known, second only perhaps to Prail and Project X's political scheming. And Chris and Janique held the positions of honor, as the beacons to guide the planes in.
It was Chris's idea to jump. The ultimate romantic act.
At the approach of the planes, Chris held Janique's delicate face in his hand, turning her to face him.
"I just love you," he told her.
"And I, you," she replied.
They jumped, hand in hand. As the ground rushed up to meet them, wind rushing through their hair and clothes, they held each other in a final, eternal embrace. They heard an unfamiliar tune as they fell: "Meet me in outer space / I will hold you close, if you're afraid of heights".
At the last possible instant, two superheroes swept in to grab them out of the air, Jason and Johnnie Christie.
"Superlove, bitches," Jason said, laughing.
Walter Midi
I wrote this in 2008. Matthew Broderick will star in a remake of The Secret Life of Walter Mitty this fall.
I spend my days killin' grays
Hidden by a RAID arrary
Motherfuckers try to game me
But I still don't play
Now the ways I slay
Are my dirty little secret
Don't speak it
If you do I'll have to tweak shit
The secret life of Jake, Zakk and Randy
Some motherfuckers can't stand me
Because I tell 'em that they're pansies
Nancy drew boys in the name of Freddy
I stay ready
For whatever comes next, see?
I'm all about the Blitz Basic
Just face it
The last time I flipped I put a hole in the matrix
It's a fact that I'm back and I'm mad as hell
I took the bass and turned it up because you don't hear so well
I'm Bartleby the Scrivner, I'm also one of the Watchmen
Fuck around? I'll have to go Tex Watson
Both flotsam and jetsam
Alpha dog, straight omega
ATL are the ones
Who played you like Sega
Valentine Michael Manson
Pooh Bear to my friends
And like Mike Patton said
It just never ends
I'm all about the Blitz Basic
Just face it
The last time I flipped I put a hole in the matrix
Like Carol Anne
I went into the TV
It kinda makes it hard to see me
But it's easy
Once you finally know the formula
I cool out
Once I know that I'm warmin' ya
But I'm warnin' ya
You're never gonna be me
I'm too leet
Like Corpus Christi
Nice try
Bitch, you fuckin' missed me
I'm all about the Blitz Basic
Just face it
The last time I flipped I put a hole in the matrix
I spend my days killin' grays
Hidden by a RAID arrary
Motherfuckers try to game me
But I still don't play
Now the ways I slay
Are my dirty little secret
Don't speak it
If you do I'll have to tweak shit
The secret life of Jake, Zakk and Randy
Some motherfuckers can't stand me
Because I tell 'em that they're pansies
Nancy drew boys in the name of Freddy
I stay ready
For whatever comes next, see?
I'm all about the Blitz Basic
Just face it
The last time I flipped I put a hole in the matrix
It's a fact that I'm back and I'm mad as hell
I took the bass and turned it up because you don't hear so well
I'm Bartleby the Scrivner, I'm also one of the Watchmen
Fuck around? I'll have to go Tex Watson
Both flotsam and jetsam
Alpha dog, straight omega
ATL are the ones
Who played you like Sega
Valentine Michael Manson
Pooh Bear to my friends
And like Mike Patton said
It just never ends
I'm all about the Blitz Basic
Just face it
The last time I flipped I put a hole in the matrix
Like Carol Anne
I went into the TV
It kinda makes it hard to see me
But it's easy
Once you finally know the formula
I cool out
Once I know that I'm warmin' ya
But I'm warnin' ya
You're never gonna be me
I'm too leet
Like Corpus Christi
Nice try
Bitch, you fuckin' missed me
I'm all about the Blitz Basic
Just face it
The last time I flipped I put a hole in the matrix
