
TITLE
INDICIA
DEDICATION
QUOTES
PROLOGUE
ONE
TWO
THREE
FOUR
FIVE
SIX
SEVEN
EIGHT
NINE
TEN
ELEVEN
TWELVE
THIRTEEN
FOURTEEN
FIFTEEN
SIXTEEN
SEVENTEEN
EIGHTEEN
NINETEEN
TWENTY
TWENTY-ONE
TWENTY-TWO
TWENTY-THREE
TWENTY-FOUR
TWENTY-FIVE
TWENTY-SIX
TWENTY-SEVEN
TWENTY-EIGHT
TWENTY-NINE
EPILOGUE
WHAT'S NEW
Written, Designed, Edited, and Kindled by Gremlin
Catering supplied by Starbucks, The Royal Hilltop British Pub, Village Inn, and McCoy's Family Restaurant.
This is a work of fiction, intended only for purposes of education and entertainment.The opinions herein are not necessarily those of anyone, including, but not limited to, the author.
All Rights ReservedThe characters, institutions, and situations portrayed within this work are the products of the author's imagination; any similarities to anyone, living, dead, or inebriated to the extent that it makes no difference, are purely coincidental, unintentional, and unfortunate; existing public figures, corporations, establishments, et cetera, are used in a fictional manner, and without malicious intent.
All images within this work are the creations of the author or his affiliates, licensed for use by their respective copyright holders, or understood to be in the public domain; relevant copyrights apply to each image.
Copyright © Gremlin 1998, 2008This work may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, by any means, known or unknown, including, but not limited to, mimeograph, photocopy, database, hypertext, reading each syllable dogmatically prior vapidly to chortling, or any electronic medium, without prior written consent by the author; brief excerpts used for the purpose of critical review are allowed for members of the press with proper credentials.
This product is not intended for use by persons with mental ages under eighteen.
By proceeding beyond this page, you agree to hold the author and his affiliates, known and unknown, harmless of liability; no warrantees regarding this product are expressed or implied.
WARNING: this product is not intended for use by an idiot; we at Wasted, Inc. are in no way expert in the cognitive abilities of any given imbecile, and cannot predict what said moron might do to itself or others, given this or any other product, without the close supervision of the American Government.
Published by Wasted, Inc.
For Kristen
Hit and rub, Babe....
The History of every major Galactic Civilisation tends to pass through three distinct and recognisable phases, those of Survival, Inquiry, and Sophistication, otherwise known as the How, Why, and Where phases.
For instance, the first phase is characterised by the question How can we eat? The second by the question Why do we eat? and the third by the question Where shall we have lunch?
---The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy[Douglas Adams]
No one ever reads the prologue.
Someone told me that once. I'm not sure I believe it; I might still be too optimistic for that. But, I can admit, I'm probably cynical and certainly realistic enough, living in the twenty-first century, to allow that the MySpace Generation at least, with its misspelled brevity, might likely tl;dr this whole thing in favour of whatever they hope to find in later chapters. Animgifs, maybe. MP3 controllers. Viral fucking videos. Anything to make this archaic pulpmatter more kinetic and interactive. The lucky ones will read it on a Kindle.
Now, don't get me wrong: I'm anything but a luddite. I was the guy wondering in 1983 why David Lightman was trying to crack NORAD's frontend security [and what was that, 8bit?] instead of circumventing the login and invading through the binary basement. I was the guy wondering in 1988 why we couldn't write books in pen and OCR each page into a MacintoshIIx to be molested into ASCII for formatting. I stared at the ToS for yahoo.com in 1995 trying to figure out why in hell they were charging money to plug URLs in by hand instead of writing a simple webspider to categorise sites into a RandomAccess database for logical retrieval. And, in 1999, I spent most of the year laughing at the panicky herd convincing itself that any computer using a mouse in place of punchcards stood any chance of rolling its calendar back to 1900 and erasing all hardcopy advances from those of the Brothers Wright to those of the Brothers Wachowski.
Which in its way supports my hypothesis: that, all things being equalised, in Dolby 7.1, via HDMI, supporting 24bit discretion and LFE, it's not always about 120fps Blu-ray; sometimes---just sometimes---those of us who can remember how to be mammals with mortgages might actually prefer the indelible marriage of polyvinylpyrrolidone and cellulose; which is to say that, while Web2.0 functionally began with BourneShell based UseNet prototypes in 1979, it has never to date managed to replace the simple, crossplatform, uncrashable format of ink on paper. In point of fact, being myself expert both in hypertexting evanescent RGB within the backend of a CMS and expatiating perdurable CYMK via notebook---be it 64bit or spiral---I remain appreciative of the latter's lack of comment fora.
All that said---whatever it was---there remains now the idiosyncratic and arguably idiotic process wherein I through clinical trials have established the irremediable practise of writing these bibliothecal artefacts in restaurants: coffee, ashtrays [to whatever extent those still exist in the Milky Way], and, customarily, precisely the calibre of people for whom I'm not writing a book. And this is where the fun begins.
Now, to be entirely honest, the party for whom I'm writing a book---any book---is invariably singular: I write books for myself, if only to see what they look like once I'm done. That said, I do as I write consider that there will eventually be an audience; to which end, my admittedly intrusive sesquipedaliae notwithstanding, I've been known at least to strive to limit the internal gags which only I and the sorts of friends Andy Kaufman tended to collect would understand, let alone find entertaining. And yet there's only so much I can do with that before atrophying into Ernest Hemmingway for the illiterate masses able somehow to find their ways to whichever eatery I happen to occupy on a given night.
Therefore: the following story is true. So far as you know. The names have been changed to conceal my inability to remember any of them. The corporate establishments are used in a fictional manner because it's hard to take any of them seriously as factual entities. The coffee is deplorable; the muzak is worse; the clientele--- Well: you'll see....
tl;dr: i writed a book; lawl
It was a dark and stormy---
Okay; I'm lying: it was the middle of summer---probably the middle of July---and still close to ninety degrees outside; if there were clouds in the sky, I don't remember them now; I do remember that there was a full moon---you'll get that later; and, as for any darkness---who to be real can tell how dark anything is anymore, betwixt the moonlight, streetlights, headlights, taillights, indicator lights, parking lights, map lights, squadcar emergency lights, fluorescent fuel island lights, neon open sign lights, animated construction sign lights, walk lights, don't walk lights, red lights, yellow lights, green lights, Camel Lights, Marlboro Lights, satellites, DSLites, and the occasional vestigial lightning bug; it wasn't dark, and it wasn't stormy.
Also, it was dusk.
From orbit, as the sun begins to disappear behind the planet, North America resembles a massive, chaotic LiteBrite set, one of its larger clusters being this city; reentry to this spot at 9.81m/s2 [or, for the pedants, may = -kvy-mg] approaching terminal velocity, the blob of white light would shatter, resolving to various colours, identifying this structure once known simply as a diner but in recent years perverted into the politically contentious Family Restaurant to make it sound somehow more important; in fact, it's a greasy spoon with a trademarked name and an advertising budget: not so much an eatery as an attractive nuisance in the night, calling to weary travellers like a Siren with Ebola.
It's the sort of place which never closes, though rumour perpetually has it that they'll drop the graveyard shift and shut down from midnight to six any day now; it just never seems to happen. Which of course is fine with us. You know: we lurkers. We who wander in as the sun is setting and sit here until it comes up again, doing whatever it is that we do, which is rarely much. Officially, as the laptop suggests, I'm here to write a book; realistically, as the evidence has shown, I'm here to hang out and chat all night; and, if there's ever anything to show for that, I've never seen it.
There are those, who shall remain managers, who hate it when we do this. Apparently, so long as we exist, we're costing the joint money. Nevermind that we spend at minimum a couple bucks each on coffee while actually consuming, at worst, a few cents in bulkpurchased product. And it's not like a lot of people are waiting in line for a seat: this isn't the sort of place people come to; it's the sort of place they end up. It's the last stop in town after all the good stuff has closed.
We in this instance were myself and my coffeechick---who doesn't drink coffee; it's not where the term comes from: she was my coffeechick because, at about the time the rest of the world failed to fool anyone by ameliorating secretaries into Administrative Assistants, I went the other way, refusing to call a spade an Agricultural American Particulate Materiel Relocation Implement. They're just coffeechicks. Possibly because I don't need much more from a secretary than an endless supply of trimethylxanthines; probably because calling her an intravocational fuckbuddy would be crass.
Reaching this glorified automat---I call it that because, as per the rules of regularism, the proclivities of managers notwithstanding, there eventually occurs the reasonable expectation from the waitress that, if we want more coffee, we know where to find it---we got inside, past the ornamental podium, to a booth, with minimal chitchat; the first real discourse ascertained that, yeah, I was good with coffee, and Leslie the Coffeechick was happier with Coke; no one was happy with the ashtray deficit, but the cattle had spoken on that matter.
The booth in question was located strategically next to an electrical outlet, into which I plugged the laptop, battery technology failing to outpace CPU drains. At roughly that instant, the sun disappeared at the horizon, its struggling corona going rapidly acute, and quickly away. Or, for the pedants, the planet rotated by a hundredth of a degree. Accuracy and poetry are antonyms.
Either way, night had now begun.
I don't deny being...whatever I am. That I can't identify it doesn't mean that I deny it. I'd deny what the more illiterate would settle for while searching their little vocabularies for a label: I'm not a narcissist, because I don't lose myself in mirrors; I'm not an elitist, because I don't like people enough to tolerate a minority; I'm not an asshole, because I'm not stupid; I'm not a bastard, because Dad's identity was never a mystery; I'm not a jerk, because I don't prepare soda. Whatever I am, it's not one of the boring words people settle for. Maybe I demand a new word; I might be that cool.
What I am, I suppose, is aware. And don't misunderstand that: I'm not pretending to know that the government of, by, and for the people are plotting, of, by, and for the people, to poison the people with fluoridated water, to impoverish the people into submission with inflated oil prices, or to rally the people against an unseen enemy by demolishing their own skyscrapers; I'm not psychotic. I'm simply aware that, insofar as the system might suck, it itself is a headless monster guilty not of conspiracy, but of incompetence.
All of which rather liberates me to observe that, in a government of, by, and for the people, there displays no statistically significant difference between an imbecile sitting in the Oval Office and an imbecile sitting in a booth a few feet away. To the extent that any given president is a drooling moron, all people evolving from foetal sourcecode compiled with available molecules to be equal, he does necessarily represent the sum total average of the country he fails properly to lead. The shorthand: if your president is an idiot, count yourself lucky for possessing the intellectual acuity to grok that, if not necessarily the intellectual honesty to understand why.
The irony, as most would misidentify it, is that, acutely aware though I might be that this country is little more---and often a lot less---than three hundred million plebeians exhibiting something of an atavistic remorse for a planet of seven billion, I at the same time remain able to regard each of them I meet as nothing more or less than people. Which brings me to the waitress, who in fact was just bringing herself, and my coffee, to me; in an efficiency of effort, she also brought Leslie's Coke to her; and all was right upon this damaged planet for the moment.
The waitress, according to her special little nametag, would have been called Jessica, in the unlikely event that anyone ever cared enough to find that out before calling her Miss. Resplendent in her pointless, demeaning costume, designed to impart upon the public that she was the wageslave to whom thoughtless orders were tactlessly to be given, she to me was clearly aware of her standing and able to accept the reality of the idiocy, though a small part of her still may have resisted subscribing to its philosophy.
She was in her twenties, and likely aware that her actions---or her lack---were starting to shape her destiny now: that there's a subtle difference between waitressing to stay alive during college and having got halfway through college before becoming a waitress for life.
The percentage of college she'd got through was behind her now; this was her job until she came up with something else.
'Here you go,' she told us, setting the Coke on the table in front of Leslie and habitually filling my coffeemug from the pot she'd be leaving with me in a moment, 'You okay with just drinks for a while?'
'Yup,' I told her, 'I'm good.' Leslie nodded to her, making eye contact but keeping her mouth fixed around her straw.
'Let me know if you do need anything,' she told us, 'I'll be around. I suppose you know that by now.'
I nodded, smirking knowingly. And she was off again, also satisfied that the world made a perverse sort of sense.
Regarding we lurkers: the waitresses---anyone beneath the manager, from the servers to the cook to the bussers, if they had bussers at night---all love us. Partly because we overtip them insultingly; partly because we don't tend to look down on them. These aren't robots, you know; they're just people: just like presidents and drunks, each just one of three hundred million in a world of seven billion, each capable of fucking up dramatically and each potentially capable of learning from its mistakes.
Robots, by contrast, tend to be predictable.
The waitress gone, the cook in the kitchen, the busser unemployed, and the manager likely hiding in his office playing Minesweeper, the place was uncommonly empty now, apart from our table. Which is to say that it at one time would have been uncommon to see all these tables empty at nine in the evening, even allowing that this had never been a place to which anyone really aspired to go. The difference, of course, was that this city, like so many, had recently been disrupted by the antismokers: one nut per thousand whose fear of cigarettes had motivated it to convince the two per three, who simply didn't smoke, to fuck over the one per three, who did, in general elections of policy to ban smoking in publicly accessible buildings amidst predictions that, the smokers being now less inclined to go to restaurants, the economy would hereafter be supported by those one per thousand antismokers who'd been avoiding these places to date, now that they could feel emboldened enough to seek out a cheeseburger in the middle of the night. In fact, the antismokers had failed to fill the gap left by the smokers, likely being too busy elsewhere conniving next to ban sugar and transfat in publicly accessible buildings; the simple nonsmokers had for the most part made no changes to their routines, apart from lacking the motivation to meet their smoking friends at the restaurants for coffee and pie; the smokers, already disinterested in paying ten bucks for two dollars in fairmarket value of food while paying five bucks a pack for a dollar in pretaxed cigarettes, became disinclined to frequent the restaurants which, as part of the restaurantoid guild, had supported the ban in the expectation of one antismoker per thousand replacing three hundred smokers per thousand in a fantastic universe in which mathematics are as dishonest as activists are.
It was for this reason that I continued to write in restaurants, while employing a coffeechick to watch over my laptop whenever I retreated out into the night to smoke; the upside, as my readers will attest, is that I've become far less forgiving in all regards, and therefore, in a world in which all reality television shows are in application The Gong Show, also more entertaining. So I'm not bitter, outside all circumstances in which I am.
The mall down the street having closed at nine, it now being after dark but before ten, George the Bum slunk in without a menu.
Releasing her oral deathgrip on her straw for a moment, Leslie nodded to him. 'Hey, George.'
George replied only by pointing, wildeyed and accusingly, directly at her, staring down his nose at what for all I know appeared to him to be one of the Lizardpeople of Altair IV. George wasn't sane, which I suspect had a correlation to his lack of residence: sane bums would at the least migrate, even on foot, to warmer places, spending their days on the lowrent beaches of Mazatlan and sipping drinks amounting to a small percentage of the monthly MoneyMarket dividends in their PayPal accounts---something I'll admit I should probably be doing, myself. But George, being insane, probably thought that PayPal.com, being eBay.com, was whitehouse.gov, and therefore lizardpeople.gov. It would be sad, if I were the type who could be saddened.
I had of course seen George outside the restaurant. His days, so far as I was ever able to determine, were spent looking through the trashcans down at the mall and accepting loose change and halfeaten foodcourt meals from the middle class. In return, on occasion, he'd burst into convoluted tirades, often reading from an invisible bible which only he could see, which apart from alien deities and their rules for mankind also included heretofore unpublished testimonies about deital aliens and their interests in fooling, enslaving, and possibly eating those who didn't follow the more commonly understood commandments of the novel.
He did most of that here in the restaurant, too. He had something like an unusual form of Tourette's, forcing him at random to dart his face ceilingward and erupt with thankalord every few minutes; other minutes, he'd seethe contemptuously at the sprinkler set into the acoustical tile above his favourite seat; the minutes not spoken for, he'd blurt out whatever random and incomprehensible series of syllables had slipped through the grate in his mind and fallen into the outbox of his speech centre.
George wasn't a novelty to me; I'd seen him before---and seen others like him---at other restaurants, over the years; thinking about it now: the others were all named George too; you probably know one of them, wherever you happen to live. In any case, I disregarded him and his sporadic outbursts for the moment and kept on typing.
The thing I was working on was, among other things, doomed. Eventually, I abandoned it; and I'll probably never go back and try it again. I do that a lot: of all the books I've written, I've published maybe ten percent. Not because the publishers disliked them---I never found that out---but because I lost interest, often even after they were finished, and exterminated them before they could taint my reputation. The best I can say about books like that is that they're better than approximately anything you'll read on the 'net, but not quite good enough to use as proof of that fact. Other writers---real writers, who do more than misspell uninspired slashfic online---will probably know what I'm talking about; the average slashficker, unable truly to relate, will still likely nod knowingly, fingers to chin, hmmming like a skeski with a slow leak.
Which remains okay, since anything I write, good or bad, is meant initially to impress an audience of one: myself. And that percentage of my belles lettres which sucks like a starving plecostomus serves the minimal purpose, at least, of illustrating the sort of thing I shouldn't do again. Edison once claimed that, instead of truly failing, he'd discovered a thousand ways not to build a lightbulb. Meaning I suppose that, in the end, he'd discovered a thousand and one ways to steal Tesla's idea. Application notwithstanding: practise, they say, makes perfect.
To the extent, as I've hinted, that perfection can in modern times include static text on implacable paper, which may not be the encompassing problem I've made it out to be: to some degree, any given thing will be subject to what I call the Jim Morrison Syndrome, in which the Lost Generation never heard of him, the Silent Generation regarded him as a damned hippy in need of a haircut, the BabyBoomers considered him a contemporary, GenerationX called him a visionary and a poet, and the Millennial Generation blink vacuously and ask who the hell was Jen Morrissey. Which is not to suggest that this new generation are clueless; arguably, they simply have a more realistic grasp of what's important in the world.
Which leads me to the stunning revelation, unto myself, that, for all practical purposes---or at least all philosophical ones---I'm functionally one of them: I dig their music and their hair; I tolerate their clothes and their slang; I recognise their paradox---that, while we could join the army while being prohibited from buying beer, they can be tried as adults while being prohibited from buying Grand Theft Auto. Generation Landslide: close the gap between'em; la-da-da-da-da. None of which might excuse these kids for their apparent fear of the printed word; but I can confess a certain empathy for those entertained by stupid, meaningless objects which move in silly ways, be them interactive flashgames, slinkies, or Paris Hilton.
By way of contrast to the phalanx of characteristics I've just delineated, insofar as the arguable majority of The Kids Today is minimally tolerable, the minority which reaffirm my hunch that the future is doomed then arrived.
The emo subset of the Millennial Opprobrium is not in and of itself a cataclysm; I do for example like the music; I know, because I also like Marilyn Manson, Trent Reznor, Alice Cooper, and Johann Sebastian Bach. What I don't love is the meretricious lament these beings have for all things containing molecules: there's simply something unidentifiably maniacal about being happy only while sad.
Leslie rolled her eyes in hopeless prediction as they walked past our table, her cybernetic convergence to her straw nearing irrevocable completion; I paused, fingers poised clawlike above the keyboard, waiting to see whether I'd ever guess what I'd been about to write when my train of thought had been highjacked by the murder of mimes flocking by; to save you the suspense: I never did get it back.
Strike that; that's unfair: less people hate mimes, which wear less makeup, have more talent, and make less noise.
The scenekids sat themselves at Table 74, where we were in 71 and George was in 75, their leader, the Alpha Penguin, striking out at a speed enviable by soundwaves to unscrew the lightbulb above their booth before making it clear to everyone within a mile radius how disturbed it was by the remaining lights as though altogether they held a candlepower to its iPhone.
Jessica caught up to the scenekids and began to explain, slowly, as if to small children, if small children exhibited no aptitude for learning from explanations, the importance of waiting to be seated should any expectation of service exist thereafter; then she noticed George sitting in 75 and gave up entirely.
'What can I get you to drink,' she said to 74, making no effort to hide her boredom with them this far into the relationship.
Two wanted coffee with scads of cream; one wanted Mister Pibb; the fourth asked for chocolate milk, causing Leslie to laugh, through her straw, very nearly voiding the proverbial warranty on my laptop before apologising and drying off the tabletop with her napkin.
Apparently to celebrate their emotastic arrival, the XM feed faded out Billy Joel's Piano Man and replaced it with Roundabout, by Yes: an instrumental powerballad some thirty-seven minutes in length and occasionally interrupted by a vocalistic arrogance emitting a noxious bombast regarding something including, and hopefully limited to, an area in and around the lake, making most reasonable organisms wish it would go well under the surface of the lake in question and take a rapid series of deep breaths. If memory serves, the song was eventually banned in the early nineties by an ACLU dreamteam working to outlaw the most cruel and unusual forms of torture, which also removed The Doobie Brothers' Black Water and The Georgia Satellites' Keep Your Hands to Yourself from Gitmo's repertoire; but I could be wrong.
'Thankalord!' George erupted, unprompted by visible elements, causing the scenekids to jump in fright as one. Which was at once ironic and expected, I suppose. When the emo's whole persona is developed around emotional extroversion, wearing its heart on the sleeve of its MCR shirt, fear being arguably an emotion itself, we can therefore assume that the scenekid is in nature little more than a panicky Chihuahua in application. Even if we can't assume that---if it's an unfair hypothesis---it still explains enough of the results to suggest at minimum something of a correlation.
Personally, I don't fully get it. Or, if I do, then what I understand fails to answer the larger questions it all raises. To explain this, however hastily: I had the same background the scenekids had: white in the suburbs, singular income nuclear family, two cars in the garage and a third in the driveway, a veritable Toys R Us in the basement, and everything else whimpered about in The Breakfast Club and Less Than Zero; the difference I suppose is that the activists of the world never successfully pressured me into feeling guilty about it. Also, that I'm good with My Chemical Romance and Panic at the Disco has little bearing, since only the scenekids misidentify those as emo bands.
The scenekids now overaccentuating their sniggering, where laughter in primates---humans included---is a reaction to fear, George ignored them in favour of reproaching the sprinkler above his table through whatever psionic means he might have possessed. And I went back to the novel I never, as mentioned, managed to finish.
I replaced my watch recently. Well, maybe not recently in the common sense. But, since the watch I'd replaced was a Casio GShock DW5600C I'd bought in about 1987, the new one should remain newish for the next five years or so.
Why I replaced the Casio at all is something of a funny story: its battery died, again, causing me to need a new CR2320, which has become rare enough that I couldn't find one at Safeway. So I found one at OnlyBatteries.com and ordered it, waited for it, received it, and went to put it into the watch by unscrewing the four microscrews on the back with a tiny screwdriver I didn't have.
So I went to Checker Auto Parts, of all places, to get one of those. And, by the time I got back, with the screwdriver, to get the backplate off the watch, I'd lost the battery I'd ordered.
Not wanting to order another online and wait a week to get it, I stabbed out to the nearest department store---Kohl's---to see whether they'd have a CR2320 for me. They did in fact have one, but they also had a Columbia CL5055 for all of forty bucks, so I bought one of those too. Meaning that I now have a newish watch, an old watch, a screwdriver, and two CR2320s somewhere in the house; but I don't care anymore.
In any case, the newish watch, like the old one, beeps every hour; the newish watch, unlike the old one, beeps nearly loudly enough to shatter glass. And, for all newish watches are able to do, you can't yet surf the 'net with them, and you can't adjust the volume of the hourly chime. So, when my watch beeped at ten, the entire northern hemisphere heard it. Sorry if I knocked any planes out of the air.
Now that the world outside had fully closed, a few more people had shuffled toward the corporate beacon above the restaurant and come inside. Behind Leslie, in 72, Ned Flanders and wife had dragged their kids [or, at the least, her kids] in for malts in what was becoming the middle of the night.
Further back, in 73, was Chuck. Like George, Chuck was a fixture, if a mobile one; he could be found at other restaurants at other times, possibly throughout the known galaxy; and of course he knew---and probably still knows---approximately everyone on the planet; if Table 72 were the Flanders Family, Chuck was the Norm Peterson of the world.
Sitting with Chuck, if without permission, was Hutch, who I think wanted to be Chuck, or Norm, or likeable, but wasn't. The guy was a joiner in every sense: he'd walk in without expecting his own table, sit with anyone appearing to have an open seat [I'd learned to fill up my booth with a backpack next to me, on the inside, and my feet up on Leslie's left upon the other seat, to prevent him from oozing in next to either of us], wedge his way into any conversation he lacked even the shallowest expertise about, and for all I know follow people home in the hopes of crashing on their sofa at the end of the night.
The scenekids remained for the moment in 74; George of course was still in 75 and wasn't likely to leave until the mall opened again the next day. And that was the entire row of booths along the window; from west to east: us, Flanders, Chuck and Hutch, the scenekids, and then George. Which didn't fill the restaurant; as suggested, 71 through 75 being along the window, six more rows of five tables each, most of them segregated by partitions in the middle of the dining area---11 through 15, 21 through 25, 31 through 35, 41 through 45, 51 through 55, and 61 through 65---remained mostly empty, awaiting a huge wave of people who, having seen the restaurant's adverts on television, might think that the happy, sunlit faces beaming above the massive portions of plastic perfection amidst a legion of servers grinning back and ensuring that nothing was wrong anywhere in the universe could all be found in this understaffed dive after dark. Although, to be honest, having on occasion sat in the place until noon, fifteen hours after I'd got there, while working on a given book, I can with authority deny that the happy republican eutopia depicted in the adverts actually happens when diurnally scheduled, either.
Of which, this was never about: our crepuscular occupation of the joint couldn't for the most part be considered indicative of the operations performed during the day by those who even as grownups were afraid of the dark. On which subject, things then began to get verbal.
Jessica came out with the malts for Flanders in 72, setting them in place and asking by habit whether there was anything else she could get them.
'Nope,' Ned said cheerily, then saying nothing more.
Jessica grinned and walked back toward the kitchen, slowing to grab my coffeepot and shake it before taking it with her to refill it back there.
'Thanks,' I said, though she probably didn't hear me. And I glanced over the laptop's screen at the next table, largely by accident, in time to see Ned glancing at me; he smiled theistically at me---take that as you will.
His next course of action was---and I couldn't make this up---to lead his [or, at the least, his wife's] kids in an extemporaneous prayer for the bounty of the malts the lord, and to a lesser if more visible degree the waitress, had provided.
Now, to keep this all about me, I need to mention a couple of important points here. I've never to date believed in deities---any deities---and, by the definition of the word belief, I never will: belief is the pretension that a condition is true, despite a lack of supporting evidence; once the supporting evidence for the condition is published and reviewed, belief becomes redundant against knowledge. So, while deities remain unsupported by published, reviewed evidence, I can't believe in them because that would be silly; if they're ever supported by published, reviewed evidence, then I won't believe in them because I'll simply have ingested the fact that they're real, and go back to ignoring them in general, just like I ignore the giant squid now that it's been ameliorated from the mythical kraken to the factual Architeuthis dux; show me published, reviewed evidence supporting any credible hypothesis that A.dux is additionally Cthulhu the Great Old One, and I'll make a note of that too.
Not that lovecraftian krakens have much of anything to do with this story. What counts is that I don't as a habit---or in fact ever in memory---happen to advertise my atheism, primarily because I don't consider it more or less important than my adracoism---my lack of beliefs regarding dragons---which I also don't bring up for the sole purpose of driving dracoists batshit with my implicit demand for supporting evidence.
That said: on those occasions in which someone---theistic or not---brings the idea of deities up while talking to me, I'll take that as permission to castrate the moron's intellectually lazy arguments and leave the twit bleeding by the side of the debate, wishing that the democrats would come to its aid by lobbying to ban mean people in publicly accessible buildings.
Meaning that, in fact, since I'd become something of a regular at this place and had on other nights got into the debates brought to me without my consent, and since Hutch was a joiner who possessed among other unfortunate traits an interest in recycling arguments he'd heard [if an inability to use them correctly] he, being not me, turned around in Chuck's booth to berate Flanders for giving his bogeymen blowjobs in public.
'Why do you people always have to makebelieve that shit outside your little churches,' Hutch demanded loudly enough to disrupt all conversations [and the typing I was getting back to] in the restaurant. Leslie rolled her eyes again. Flanders, looking a little too shocked, turned to see Hutch's fat, greasy face peripherally.
'Makebelieve?' Flanders asked, 'What makes you think it's makebelieve.'
And here, on Wild Kingdom, we now see what happens when a prey animal mimics a predator only to find itself lost for words when required to think outside its script.
'Well, because it's not true!' Hutch decided.
'Of course it's true,' Flanders said, 'How else do you explain it? You really think you came from monkeys?'
Next on Wild Kingdom: when prey animals spoofing predators attempt to attack other predators preemptively, when in fact those other predators are spoofs as well.
Leslie was smirking; she knew---and for that matter shared---my thoughts on the matter of theism.
'No,' Hutch said, 'because...uh...it's not monkeys; it's...ask him: he knows.' And now Hutch was pointing at me.
Flanders glanced at me, but remained focussed on Hutch. 'So explain it. Explain how life could come from rocks.'
'I dunno,' Hutch said, frightened now, 'ask him.'
I saved what I wasn't writing and clicked the laptop shut. Which in retrospect probably suggested to the psychotic state of Flanders that I wanted to talk to him. He turned back to face me, asking a stupid question I'd never heard before.
'So, where do you see yourself in a thousand years?'
I answered before I'd even processed the question: 'Probably in management.'
'Not Heaven or Hell?'
'Or Valhalla or Hades,' I added.
He rolled his eyes. 'Now you're just being silly: no one believes in those things.'
'No one believes that Odin slew Ymir and built the universe into his skull? What's wrong with that creation myth: it's unsupported by evidence, contrary to established facts, and entirely unfalsifiable. So what's it lacking.'
'A real god.'
'What's it lacking,' I asked, 'which differentiates it from any other creation myth. What's yours got that this one's lacking.'
'Mine's been proved,' he said.
'Your myth has been proved? I wonder why it remains a myth.'
'It's not a myth.'
'It's the definition of a myth,' I said, 'It attempts to explain an origin, using deities, and lacking external evidence.'
'That sounds more like evolution.'
'Not really: evolution is observed, replicable, predictive, and lacking in deital excuses. Also, it's got nothing to do with your mythology.'
The creatard having only listened to one word before starting to think up a response: 'It's not observed; no one's ever seen a dog turn into a bird.'
'No one's ever seen a stick turn into a snake,' I said, 'Which fortunately is still immaterial: evolutionary biology doesn't expect dogs to turn into birds. I take it then that you still have no evidence supporting your myth.'
'Evidence,' he said, grinning stupidly, 'How can you ask for evidence when evolution is only a theory.'
'Begging the question,' I told him, 'That things evolve is an observed fact; that things evolve through natural selection is a theory founded to explain that fact.'
'It's not a fact.'
'By the same token,' I added, 'that gravity occurs is a fact; the theory of gravity---that gravitons cause gravity to occur---is the theory founded to explain that fact.'
He blinked. 'Gravity's a law; evolution's just a theory; there's no law of evolution.'
'There's no law of gravity either.'
'Sure there is: "What goes up must come down".'
'So gravitons must come down? Because, in theory, they kinda can't.'
'Then you've just disproved the theory,' he said.
'The theory isn't that upwardly moving things can't fall down; that was your sophistic misunderstanding of your fictional law of gravity. The theory is that gravity, which causes gravitation toward the most massive object, is itself caused by gravitons. Just like the theory is that, evolution being nothing more or less than periodic allelic frequency vicissitude, the causal function allowing us to predict that dogs won't beget birds is what we lightheartedly call natural selection. None of which excuses your deital creation myth from requiring evidence to support it.'
He only stared at me for a moment.
'Which word confused you.' Something I've become used to asking people.
'Well okay but,' he began rapidly, as though understanding anything I'd just said was as unimportant as its content to a cdesign proponentsist, 'you still can't show that you evolved from monkeys.'
'I never claimed that I had.'
'Then what are you claiming,' he demanded.
'That your myth lacks supporting evidence. And by implication that I'll need to see its supporting evidence, preferably at about the time I read that you've won the Nobel Prize for Physical Sciences by surviving peer review, before I can take it seriously.'
'Why would they give out the Nobel Prize for proving what everyone already knows.'
'Why'd they give it to Fire and Mello in two thousand six for reaffirming evolution in RNA Interference.'
'What's that mean,' he asked.
'That your bronzeaged myth is outdated.'
'Well, one Nobel Prize doesn't prove anything. Al Gore got one of those.'
'Gore got a Nobel for Peace---which, granted, anyone can get for any thing. The Nobel for Physiology is a bit more real; and, really, every Nobel won in that category since the beginning of the twentieth century has been for something reaffirming evolutionary biology. How many have been won for showing humans to have evolved from dirt?'
Jessica returned with my coffee, and one of those looks. I told her: 'Thanks; and I didn't start it: he came to me.' She shrugged and wandered off again.
'God making man from dirt isn't evol---'
'Sorry: which deity are you talking about? Jehovah?'
'Yeah. The only one.'
'Just making sure it wasn't Odin or Allah or Christ or Quetzalcoatl or something.'
'No: those are myths.'
'Christ is a myth; noted.'
'No he's not; he's---'
'You just said he was.'
'No I didn't.'
'Everyone but you and your imaginary friend heard you call it a myth. But go on with your fable; it's probably not entirely boring.'
'Whatever. In the beginning---'
'Define "beginning".'
'G---what? The beginning. When the universe began.'
'Who told you it began,' I asked.
'Well...you did, for one.'
'I never said the universe began. I don't assume that there was ever anything here but a bunch of stellar whitish stuff in a big black bunch of nothingness. Do you?'
'Well, yeah: because then the lord said "Let there be light", and there was light.'
'Just like that.'
'Yeah. The bible says so.'
'And it said so before it introduced a talking snake, so it hadn't yet become laughable. How'd this lord make the photons.'
'The what?'
'The light particles,' I said, 'The little bits of light themselves. How long did it take them to get from zero to a hundred eighty-six thousand, three hundred eighty-three miles per second.'
'I don't understand what you're talking about.'
'That's the first plausible claim I've heard you make.'
'You just want to argue.'
'Actually, I just want evidence,' I said, 'Since you wanted to argue, I'm willing to settle for that if you lack the evidence I'd prefer.'
'The evidence is everything. Look around.'
'Everything's only a theory; that's why it's called the Theory of Everything.'
'That's just dumb.'
'You weren't aware that we had a Theory of Everything?'
'It's not what it means.'
'And "evolution is only a theory" isn't what the Theory of Evolution means. So that's settled now.'
'But no one's ever seen anything evolve!'
'I have.'
'You have not! What have you ever seen evolve!'
'Influenza.'
'Which is?'
'The flu. It evolves semiannually. Hence flu shots: as the virus evolves, new antiviral agents are needed to combat it. Which is to say that, again, everyone knows that things evolve, even if few people know all the words required to explain it.'
'Well then why do women have an extra rib; explain that.'
'Urban legend believed only by intellectually lazy morons.'
'It's not a legend. I've seen it.'
'Have you. Which rib is extra; which side is it on; which vertebra.'
'Uh...I dunno; but it's there.'
'But you saw it.'
'It's there.'
'Ever read Exodus twenty sixteen?'
'I've read the whole thing.'
'Can you quote it?'
'I'd need to look it up.'
'I needn't,' I said, 'It's "Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbour".' One of those silly rules people stuck to back when they believed in deities, I guess.'
Flanders said nothing. But his kids were looking at me. So: 'Kids: your dad's an idiot who's going to the bad hellplace for lying. Or, your dad's, you know, the milkman, who's going to the bad hellplace for delivering milk on a Saturday. Either way: pray that nepotism doesn't apply to egregious sin.'
'Don't you talk to my kids,' Flanders warned.
'Don't you bring them to a restaurant...,' I counterwarned, glancing at my watch, 'at ten twelve at night, before vexing sojourning strangers for your dark lord satan with false witness about your vast experience in peeping at women's ribs.'
'That's it,' Flanders said, getting up and scanning the table for his bill, which wasn't there; he gave up and slammed a twenty next to his malt, turning to me to pontificate: 'Render unto Caesar.'
'Yeah: you wouldn't wanna risk crucifixion by christlikely adhering to Deuteronomy twelve thirty-two,' I said. Did I at any point mention that I've actually read the bible, and that I tend to remember stuff? If not, it's covered now.
Redfaced, Flanders grabbed the closest lactosapien larva and yanked on it, ignoring its yelp, and dragged it quickly away toward the door to the carpark; the milkman's concubine led the other kid by the hand without saying a word. Broads....
I opened the laptop again.
'See,' Hutch invaded, 'That was what I was trying to do.'
'I don't care,' I said, not especially to him.
After a moment, Flanders reappeared---this time without any of the milkman's kids---to grab the twenty he'd left, probably because Jessica wasn't going to let him leave without handling the bill properly. Instead of rushing past again, he stopped at my table. 'You're the antichrist!'
'I get that a lot,' I told my laptop.
'This is what you do, isn't it: you just go around trying to talk people out of believing on the lord so everyone can go to Hell---'
'Stop spitting on my laptop, Perv.'
'---not gonna work while I've got anything to say about it! I'm warning you: you'd---'
'Ooh a threat.'
'---watch out with your...that thing you do---'
'That thing where I sit here not talking to crazy people until they ask where I'll be in a thousand years?'
'---and telling their kids---I didn't start this; you're not pinning that on me; you started it when you said...whatever you said...that it was makebelieve!'
'That guy behind you said that, not me.'
'Uh...well, you're all in on it together! So you just keep it up, Mister; I'll---'
'Doctor. I didn't spend twelve years in Evil Atheist School to be called "mister".'
'Oh whatever! You people---'
'We people: we smart ones who deign to question talking snake books written by drunk goatherders.'
'It was written by the lord---'
'Then the lord is illiterate. "The wages of sin is death"; murr derr; "wages is"; who talks like that.'
Unable to find another word for um, the twit simply stomped away again, letting me focus on my laptop after all.
Flanders, wife, and lactosapiens must have made enough of a scene while leaving, up front at the register, to get the manager's attention and remind him of his job description: to ensure by puritanical rule that no one within a parsec of the restaurant was having fun. Now, according to the timestamp on the video at about 10.21, he finally emerged from his office to patrol the dining area.
He made a few casual stops at tables I couldn't see from the seventies here at the edge of the map, beyond which be dragons, asking perfunctory questions of the last of the preferred caste who now remained after having come in for a late dinner while the world outside had still been open for business: How was everything tonight? Anything else I can have your server get you? Doctor Rigby: I didn't see your Viper out in the lot; are they still working on it? And other chitchat reserved for those whom the manager respected for making more per month than he made per year.
One might wonder, knowing that, why the manager didn't go into sycophantic mode upon reaching my table as, all modesty extinct, I too make enough in royalties [albeit only every three months] to buy and sell the little twerp on a whim. The answer is simple, if slightly ironic: I don't flaunt it. I drive a car twenty years old with 180,000 miles which cost in adjusted dollars about forty grand; it's not made today, but the Mustang was made at the time and cost about the same amount; it falls under the Millennium Falcon class of automobilia, looking at a glance like a dilapidated roadster yet routinely beating everything from 1969 Chargers to 2009 Teslas off the line. My laptop, in contemporary dollars, cost a couple thousand bucks four years ago, its 3GHz singlecore 32bit CPU beginning to die of Alzheimer's and its microscopic 60gig drive routinely begging me to relieve it of data eight gigabytes at a time through ThumbDrives, its CDBurner being slow and limited to 700meg discs. My watch, as I've mentioned, was forty bucks; so were my black and white ChuckTaylors; also my Knightsbridge twopocket buttondown, unbuttoned, and my Levi's 501s; my TShirt would probably cost that or more today, as it was a concertshirt from Alice Cooper's Billion Dollar Babies tour in 1973---at which show I actually wasn't [as a fun matter of trivia, I was eighteen when the song Eighteen turned eighteen in 1989] but my older brother, who was there, bought the thing as a matter of course and, following something of a tantrum I barely remember now, gave it to me the next day, following which I've had it ever since; while I tend to collect sunglasses---Gargoyles for $150, Blindes for $300, et cetera---the shades I'd kept on until I could see the stars above the streetlights were RayBans Wayfarers without any obvious logo, concealing their value of $139.99 and equating them with any plastic ripoff selling for $6.99 at 7Eleven to anyone not noticing that the lenses were made of glass. The backpack containing my laptop was a hundred and thirty bucks, but not for any visible reason---one might assume it cost whatever the cheapest bookbag at Safeway sells for. My hair at any given time looks stylish for anyone aged twelve through twenty and, by whatever miracle, it hasn't really begun to turn grey yet. On nights of clement weather, I've been known to leave the car [and the three-thousand-dollar leather trenchcoat] at home and arrive at the restaurant on a Santa Cruz skateboard adorned by stickers---one of which reads Skateboarding Is Not a Crime, Except Where Prohibited by Law---and which, while three hundred bucks in reality, looks to the average grownup like any Variflex toy selling for $14.95 at Target. So: my Patrick Bateman Bling Assessment out of the way, that I assume is why the manager neglects to infer my socioeconomic superiority, and therefore why I and by extension you get to see him for his true character---an elitist who, to borrow from Groucho Marx, shouldn't be so thrilled to be a member of any club willing to accept him.
The manager slumming it into the seventies stopped at my table first, hitting me with an exasperated if disparaging look of wanton contempt, his piebald Hannibal Lecter hair receding and the light bouncing menacingly off his pattern baldness from the suspended lamp behind him; slightly off the topic, I once overheard him boasting that he was already the manager [making no attempt to qualify that as graveyard manager] at thirty-nine years of age, meaning that he wasn't at the Billion Dollar Babies concert either, and therefore has no excuse to look twice as old as I do. He glanced at his watch---an Armitron---and back at me, eyebrows knitting together in a weird hybrid of intimidation and throttled concentration.
'Aren't you here a bit early tonight?' he asked.
I shrugged. 'The sun's down; that's about when I usually come in.'
Glancing at the table, he asked rhetorically: 'Just coffee and soda tonight.'
Other writers---by whom I mean Stephen King, saying this of other writers, while for all I know only talking about himself---while in clever command of words on paper tend to stammer and freeze up in public, thinking only later of what they should have said, in a perfect world in which they were as cool live as on Memorex. Not me. I empathise more with Emo Philips---only thinking later, after the fact, of clever answerslike Yes while, during the moment itself, saying things like Well, Officer Pythagoras: the closest you'll ever come to a straight line is if they do an electroencephalogram of your own brainwave---I've always been every bit as good at slander as I am at libel, as it were. Thus: 'I'd asked for Cerveaux Gestionnaires en Beurre Noir, but you're apparently out of that.'
'Is that French? We could probably figure something out. What is it?'
'Managerial brains in black butter.'
Really sad is that, once I'd translated it, it still took the 'tard a moment of thought to work out what I'd just told him. Then came the anger. 'Y'know: you come in here every night, plug that thing in and use our power, sit here with coffee for hours, and take up a table other people could be using.'
'Hang on a sec,' I told him, pulling out my phone. My watch might not surf the 'net, but my LG Dare does; also, it records fullmotion video which I can then post to my website directly and approximately immediately; guess whether cops like it when I do that to them. In this case, I switched to videomode and aimed the thing at the manager, explaining: 'I'm not real smart; let me get this down so I can memorise it later. You were saying?'
Unabated, he reiterated, beginning at 10.21pm: 'I said you come in here and drink coffee while other people could be sitting here eating; and you plug in your computer and use our electricity, which we don't actually allow here.'
'Oh? Why not. This place doesn't make enough to afford the electricity used by a laptop, which happens to equal the electricity not being used by the lightbulb over there at the Emo Table?'
He glanced at the scenekids before striding over and twisting the bulb back into place, causing them to shriek in melodramatic horror; then he came back to me. 'We can't risk liability if lightning hits the building and shorts out your laptop,' he said.
'So,' I paraphrased from behind the phonecam, 'In the event that lightning hits this building, on a clear, warm night during which it's not even raining, this place is so desperately beneath standard Osha requirements that anything drawing power, from my laptop to your lightbulbs, could surge and possibly explode?' Turning the phone to film myself, allowing the manager to see the fullmotion image and the small but obvious REC in the upper centre, I added: 'Could this be a case for Geraldo Rivera?'
I turned the lense back to frame the manager. Flustered now: 'Well, no---we---we're up to code and---it shouldn't be a problem---even if it was raining---and it's not---we just...our policy is to not allow our valued customers to plug things into our outlets.'
I turned the camera on myself again 'Then I should be okay, being not a valued customer, being instead a lurker drinking coffee to the chagrin of thousands upon thousands of invisible people waiting for Table Seventy-one specifically while more than half the tables in this place sit empty and forgotten.' I turned it back. 'Rebuttal?'
He nearly grinned, possibly to give his face something to do while thinking of his next catastrophe of words. 'All right, Sir: so long as we agree that, in the event that anything should happen to your computer upon these premises, this establishment can't be held accountable for the damages.'
I didn't turn the camera back on myself. 'I can live with that. Legally, you probably would be liable, in a number of circumstances; but, this laptop costing less today than I've made in interest while filming you, I could absorb it; we have an accord.'
Scowling and smirking, impossibly at the same time, he nodded and backed away toward the upper seventies in his mission to beleaguer others. I ended the recording, saved it, and posted it to my blogue.
In point of fact, I wrote my laptop off the year I bought it, which as I've suggested was some time ago. I could replace it with a newer, cheaper, smaller, bigger, faster, more conspicuously consumptive model if I wanted to; I just don't especially want to: I know where everything is in its Start Menu, while I don't know where everything is on its installation disc. For similar reasons I don't replace my car, though I suppose I could do that too.
Also in point of fact, looking at the video I'd sent to my website seconds after filming it, the night in question was Friday 7th August 2009. Just for reference. I guess it wasn't the middle of July after all.
In point of incidental fact, the manager having looked at his watch had reminded me to wonder what time it was getting to be, caused me to find out, and suggested that it had become time to get up and go outside for a smoke. Naturally, I found the waitress, Chuck, Hutch, and one of the scenekids out there doing the same thing. After lighting my cigarette, I asked generally: 'Is anyone in there even a nonsmoker, let alone an antismoker?'
Jessica shrugged. 'Maybe a couple over in the old nonsmoking section; but I really don't know.'
Chuck flicked his eyebrows. 'If they're gonna ban smoking in public, it should only be during normal hours. No one in a restaurant at night is an antismoker. Few if any are nonsmokers. No one at all cares much either way.'
Jessica smirked. 'You should see the bar rush.'
'I have,' Chuck said, 'Just, not lately.'
'Well, yeah,' she acknowledged, 'But, the little rush we still get is mostly drunks who forget that they can't smoke in there. You know how stupid it is that I have to remind them that the place is nonsmoking, when all I'm trying to do is get caught up enough to get out here to smoke with them?'
Chuck nodded gravely.
'The point is, though,' she added, 'that, if I didn't tell them they couldn't smoke, no one would care. Well, Larry---the manager---would probably care, just because he's a dick; but he's also enough of a coward that he hides back in the office and leaves it to me to tell a buncha drunk morons that they can't smoke. Like tips aren't down enough just because less people come in here now, now I'm alienating the people who do by going all Big Brother on them.'
'People have on average got an IQ of one hundred,' I said, 'It's not something to brag about.'
She nodded. 'I don't mean you, by the way; you guys never stiff me.'
'The manager is a dick,' the emo said, 'There's a policy that you can't unscrew the lights? What if you're, like, photophobic?'
'Are you?' I asked.
'Kinda.'
'How'd you get here.'
He pointed to an ageing MiniCooper. 'I drove here.'
'And the oncoming headlights didn't wash out your vision?'
He pulled a pair of cheap sunglasses out of his pocket and brandished them. I nodded.
'I'm not a poser,' he said, 'I know: a lot of us are; I'm just in the scene because it fits what I've always been. I don't pretend to be a vampire; I fucking hate Anne Rice---christian little cunt. But, I'm all about MCR and Rites of Spring and, really, do you see me punking out in a suit and shit? I figure I can look and act all emocore without the histrionics.'
'Okay,' I said, 'You can live.'
He grinned.
'I keep this internal list of people who can and can't live, in the event that I ever become oligarch of the universe.'
'What's that,' the emo asked.
'Oligarch? Uh, despot, kinda; dictator, maybe.'
'Oh, cool. Tha'd be a tight gig.'
'It would be rad,' I joked.
'Totally.'
'Arcane reference: the radical republicans; you had to be there.'
He laughed. 'It sounds like one of those sixties movements.'
'It was,' I said, 'It was just the eighteen sixties.'
'Whoa. So, you're, like, smart and stuff.'
People hit me with that all the time. And there's exactly no proper response to it. Fortunately, the waitress was there.
'You have no idea,' she said, 'this guy's actually a genius. Not like a genius at something: an actual brokethescale genius. He just doesn't dress like one.'
I nodded. 'I dodged the pocketprotector scene, since it fits what I've never been.'
'Nice,' the emo said.
My cigarette was half gone. I flicked it clear of needless ash.
'I should get back in there,' Jessica said, then asking: 'Do you need more coffee yet?'
I shrugged. 'I guess it wouldn't hurt. If I have any, it's probably coldish by now.'
'I'll get you some more,' she told me, opening the door and hurrying inside.
'You could so hit that if you wanted to,' the emo said.
I pondered that. 'Maybe.'
Hutch suddenly remembered that he was there. 'Knowing this guy, he probably already did.'
I hurried to finish my cigarette.
'You shoulda seen it this one time,' Hutch blathered, 'We all came in here---this was back when you could smoke---and this one girl who looked like a stripper---like, a good one---is just watching him for hours until suddenly the waitress comes to our table with French Silk Pie, because she'd ordered it for him because you can't really buy anyone a drink in this place. Then she came over to sit with him and took him home. Shit was so cash.'
The emo looked at me. I nodded. 'Pretty much. Except Hutch wasn't sitting with me, didn't show up with me, and isn't sitting with me when he gets back inside.' The filter being all hot now, I threw my cigarette into the carpark and waited until I was through the door and into the smokefree building to exhale.
Leslie, having finished her Coke, had sat back with her paperback of Duma Key. She glanced at me as I sat down, asking the obvious question with her eyes. I nodded, confirming: 'Hutch is still out there; give it a minute.'
She rolled her eyes, tapping her lighter against her Marlboro Lights atop the table as she read her book.
The thing with Hutch---well, one of the things with Hutch, which I haven't already covered---is that, while he kinda looked like Shaun of the Dead's fat friend, Ed, but with glasses, his specific psychosis not only suggested to him that he was everyone's friend who'd be welcome at everyone's table, and that he was everyone's friend who'd be welcome in everyone's conversation, but that he was everychick's friend who'd be eaten alive if he weren't svelte enough to escape their grabby little claws. Hutch was the type portrayed in half the films released in the eighties as the little geek claiming to have a girlfriend awaiting his return near the Canadian border.
Leslie being unhideous, Hutch always had this idea that she was into him. Hutch was wrong.
That Leslie was into me was a bit incidental. It was a casual thing. I as a rule stick to friends with benefits, adopting Cameron Frye's mentality that seeing how your parents interact will put you off marriage; I'm not in a hurry to fuck up a relationship with a glorified tax shelter. I'm not quite exactly a player; but I was fairly thrilled to learn recently that---excluding the continent of Africa---even after almost thirty years, only about one in a thousand people have AIDS.
Jessica showed up with my new coffee and Leslie's new Coke [not literally New Coke, of course] as Hutch, Chuck, and EmoGuy returned from outside; Leslie jammed a Sweet&Low packet into her book and set it on the table, exchanging it for her smokes as she got up to go outside; I went back to typing something I never managed to write.
The book before the one I didn't get written that night, which was doomed, showed up back at the house today. I've got this arrangement with my publisher, being more multifaceted than the average novelist, in which I write the book, handle its layout, insert whichever images wherever I want them to be, edit the thing [yeah: that's my fault], design the cover, and so on; for all that, once they've got everything they need on their end to transmogrify my digital submissions into the hard-and softcover versions you eventually see everywhere from amazon.com to Borders to Albertson's to the Public Library of Boise, they send me a blueline proof. Meaning in the vernacular that I get the cover and all the pages in the book---though none of it's bound yet---to look over and ascertain that it's the way I want it to look. Alongside the blueline, I also get a functional mockup of the book you'd find in a store; the only difference is that, the mockup being a oneoff copy, whatever R&D goes into binding it causes it to cost a couple hundred bucks, which makes me feel all special somehow.
In any case: The FedEx guy, having woken me up, then handed that off to me, damning me to five minutes of fighting the packaging and eventually getting rid of it by raking the DSLite's twopronged electrical cord across it until I'd scored a slit I was able to grab and yank on until it got the hell outta my way.
In case you're concerned: the book looked okay---both the mockup and the blueline. Of course, if you're concerned, then I'm a bit perplexed since, by the time you read this, it'll have passed the Blueline Ripped Open by the Sharp Bits at the End of the DSLite Cord stage, been approved, gone into production, and been shipped to wherever you'd wound up buying your copy; by that time, the book I ripped open earlier today to look at and approve will have gone paperback, following another such process.
Lucky for you, since I'm busy with this at the moment and had to find some shoes before heading out the door, I just glanced at the thing, seeing no glaring problems, and jammed it on the shelf to the left of my desk with all the other stuff I've written. Is it conceited, do you think, to note that it's about time to buy a larger shelf? It's hard to be humble when you're as prolific as I am. Anyway: I'll look it over in more detail when I get home to discover whether my publisher are a group of idiots this week.
Back in August, though....
Leslie returned nearly in time to get back to her Coke before its melting ice could dilute it into fizzless weak tea: something I've never personally understood and which I can only ascribe to the same American proclivities responsible for misspelling most words---etymology be damned---and driving on the portside of the car. But, again---as always---I'm not bitter. Much.
The cursor was blinking, and I was staring at it; having nothing better to do, I saved the file---untitled2009---resulting in one of those tilded tempfiles filling up My Documents: ~$titled2009.doc, created at 22.36 on 7th August 2009. Then I sat back and stared at the blinking cursor some more.
'Oh yeah...,' Hutch suddenly erupted, somewhat extemporaneously---though I still suspect that realising he existed at all was more truly impromptu, 'I almost lost my job the other day.'
'It's good to have goals,' I said.
'No; but, I've got a MySpace, right?'
'Probably.'
'So---oh, and my cellphone takes pictures.'
'Ah,' I said, 'You're the one.'
'So, someone found my MySpace the other day---'
'Let's establish one thing first,' I said, 'Someone found it, or you told everyone you've ever met on the planet where it was.'
'Well, yeah: I tell people about it; but that's not the point.'
'Surely not.'
'So anyway: you know how my cellphone can take pictures....'
'At a guess? Badly. In about twelve eighty by nine sixty, overgrained to emulate film, underlit to simulate expertise, overblurred because pressing the Okay Button on something weighing a couple ounces will necessarily shift the thing a fraction of a degree while its proverbial shutter is open, saved to overcompressed jaypeg up in the riscbased flashram despite the aftermarket card measuring in the gigabytes beneath it, eventually clumsily implanted into a misconfigured cascading stylesheet maintained apathetically by a systembot at MyspaceDotCom which could flunk a turingtest performed by Terry Schiavo---present day---and made ultimately available to whatever shiftmanager found your profile and got uppity about its content.'
Hutch blinked. 'Yeah. Like that.'
I told Leslie: 'Don't look at me; I just know stuff.'
She and her straw nodded knowingly. We bipeds hate MySpace.com professionally.
'Did I tell you this already?' Hutch asked.
'No. But that doesn't prevent me from knowing the story: blah, blah, fucking around with a phonecam getting supersensitive industrial espionage shots of drystorage at whatever glorified grocerystore pays you seven twenty-five an hour because unions and other mosquitoes were annoying enough to get minimum wage raised at a time when jobs worth doing were already being outsourced to India; blah, blah, uploading the shots to the goondocks of the internet wherein you can do your Chunk Shuffle; blah, blah, getting caught when "hit MySpaceDotCom slash I'm an Idiot" astonishingly led to results; blah, blah, telling everyone that the corporate media military industrial buzzword is quelling your freedom of speech, yo. Grow up, get over it, and move to Canada where life is all about happymoron legal sophistry and other assorted moosefucking.'
I maintain that, at least, I'm not as bitter as I could be.
'Well, no; because---see, my union rep---'
'I was so hoping I was joking about that.'
'---that, because there was nothing in the employee manual about cellphones or MySpace, they didn't have a case.'
'Yeah. Look. Go to hell. But also: they have a case. Or, they had one, before they made the mistake of explaining it. What I can almost promise is in the handbook is their---and your---prerogative to terminate the employment arrangement at any time, with or without reason. That they opted to give you a reason, which it happened was common, obvious knowledge but never explicitly covered in your how-to-stock-shelves manual, was stupid---arguably no more or less stupid than phonecamming shit you did likely agree implicitly to decline to talk about with the public at large, insofar as laughably amateur photojournalism is talking about something.'
'So, you think it's fair that a company can fire you for having a website?'
'I think it's in the rules, fair or not; I think you agreed to those rules first by applying for the job and perpetually since by cashing your paycheques. That said: not as such. To the extent that websites are fundamentally legal and available to everyone---especially at shitmills like MySpaceDotCom---rules outlawing the possession and maintenance of a site would overstep a simple, pedestrian boundary. But: a company---public or otherwise---still retains its own property rights and by extension its legal recourse to prevent and prohibit elements of its operation from being made public. It's not the Department of Defence, I'll grant; but even KingStoopids, or whatever, have a reasonable expectation of privacy and policy. Of course, I'm saying that in a restaurant full of smokers who all have to go outside every few minutes because that expectation specifically was cancelled out by other mosquitoes; but, for the fleeting moment, this place still enjoys certain protections against sabotage, foreign or domestic.'
'This wasn't sabotage,' Hutch said, 'It was like investigative journalism.'
'So it made the news?'
'Well, no; but, if I'd got a picture of something cool, it could have.'
'And then we'd be talking about paparazzi instead of policy.'
'Well, okay; but...what if it was just that they'd found my MySpace and there were pictures of me doing something stupid there?'
'"If"?' Shocked and appalled.
'Yeah; like, if I uploaded shots of being drunk somewhere. They fire people for stuff like that too.'
'Successfully?'
'Um...maybe.'
'Okay. So, the hypothetical here is...let's stop talking about you for a minute. The hypothetical is that Leslie, here---' She shot me a look warning me against giving Hutch any ideas regarding the skin beneath her clothes, which of course I missed completely, being not terribly intelligent [FakeEdit: I don't expect her to believe that when she reads this; but it's my story and I'm sticking to it], '---used to do webcam shows---probably accepting plastic, but maybe just at CamStreamsDotCom. That was in, say, two thousand five; maybe she was over eighteen by then. Now, nothing online being particularly temporary, everything being available---eventually---to everyone, screenshots or fullmotion SnagIt captures have been plaguing FourChanDotOrg and RapidShareDotCom ever since. Until, today, I happen across something, ascertain by whatever means that my coffeechick is in fact the chick in those files---doing whatever it was she was doing with that goat---and I've got something to think about for a minute. Could and should I sack her today for something she did online as a free agent four years ago? For that matter, if she'd done it online four days ago, but not while she was clocked in as my coffeechick, does it change much of anything? Now we're into minutiae. If she was in my employment at the time, was she doing anything to disparage or even mention my company? Have I got a trademark, tradedress, copyright, or patent at risk due to this file? If I could sack her over this, would I benefit from publicising the reason as damage control, or would I be better off entirely for quietly telling her to get lost without any overexplained reason. All of that could be argued---possibly for years, until the supreme court returned a ruling. And yet, the simple fact remains: if people didn't traipse about exercising their freedom of expression for nothing more than the sake of getting it some air, we wouldn't have the problem in the first place.'
'You're saying I should give up my free speech.'
'I'm saying that having free speech, and a phonecam, and a computer, and a modem, and the slightest idea what the backend of MySpaceDotCom even looks like, doesn't lead directly to an unquenchable need to use them all every second of every day. I'm saying that some things were left out of the employee handbook back when people had the atavistic common sense to know better.'
'We should know better because you say so,' Hutch said.
'Fine: I'm wrong. Next time, you and your phonecam can follow your boss into the bathroom and get all sorts of newsworthy shots. Then you can sit here telling us how right you are about everything until they stop giving you free Saltines and water.'
I thought about that for a second.
'To clarify: you can sit here in the building,' I said, 'not at my table.'
'Y'know,' the goth from out front began, 'It's kinda none of my business, but...well, I suppose I don't know the history here, though....'
'The history,' I said, 'is that it's none of his business either. Including my opinion.'
He slid out of his booth and approached, stopping beside Leslie and sitting on his heels somewhat attentively on the floor to her left, elbows on our tabletop. 'Your opinion of him is none of his business?'
'Not unless he lets it be; I'm certainly not releasing my opinion into the public domain.'
'You lost me.'
'It's zerosum,' I explained, 'My thoughts on this idiot---on any idiot---on anyone: all zerosum. It's functionally a paradox unto itself: if your selfimage is weak enough to be modified by my opinion, then my opinion's gonna be that you're equally zerosum and meaningless. Follow that through to conclusion, and I'll have modified your entire existence into a shiny container of nothingness. Unless I'm cooler than we think; then I might be able to manipulate you into antimatter and end the universe. How rad would that be....'
He laughed shortly. 'Ending the universe would be cool?'
'Ending the universe would be zerosum; that's sorta my point.'
He tilted his head slightly, curious but perplexed.
I nodded. 'In a hundred years, who's gonna care.'
'Care whether you slam people, or care whether you destroyed the universe?'
'I think we can take it as read that, the universe destroyed, no one would be too concerned, since no one would be, period. As to my bedside manner regarding a borderline stalker in a restaurant...that falls under my Call a Cop Policy: it's not against any law verbally to treat a selfinserting imbecile as anything less than an object of worship, making any castigation in the matter as meaningless as the imbecile in question.'
'But you don't deny that you could be nicer to people.'
'I could be a lot of things,' I allowed, 'To varying degrees of cataclysm. Which is approximately where the irony begins to scream. Isn't it curious that we---royally, myself not included---are willing to tolerate any caste of people except that caste unwilling to tolerate any other given caste.'
'What's that mean,' he asked.
'That, new, from the makers of the laughably inaccurate "reverse racism", is reverse hypocrisy. That diversity, while by definition the amalgamation of conflicting hatred, is in application the perceived ability to accept and tolerate everyone but the gaybasher. That, maybe I just don't understand Americans; but I find it odd that you guys are still beating yourselves up for fucking the injuns in fourteen ninety-two, but have already forgiven the Japs for nineteen forty-one. Is that just because Japan still exists and maintains a certain fungibility, or is there some simpler national masochism I'm misunderstanding.'
The kid smirked. 'I'm one sixteenth Cherokee.'
'Oh who the hell isn't,' I said, 'Strictly, genetically speaking, seven billion of us are one hundred percent African; susceptibility to sicklecell anaemia notwithstanding, any differences are aesthetic, making any inferences subjective, making---again---the whole thing zerosum.'
'So you take no responsibility for your opinions.'
'I take full responsibility for my opinions: they're not plagiarised; I just don't pretend that my opinions can hurt anyone who doesn't subscribe to them---to whatever extent---by acknowledging them in the first place. Don't like my ideas? Misidentify me as an idiot and walk away. Hanging around hoping to change a reasoned worldview with emotional buzzwords is the strategy of a fool.'
'I'm not trying to change your beliefs; I'm---'
'What beliefs.'
'You just said...your beliefs...your worldview.'
'A worldview isn't a belief,' I explained, 'It's a conclusion based on limited information. Given more information, it can change and even contradict earlier versions. A belief can't change, since it's the certainty that a condition is true, despite the lack of supporting evidence.'
'Sure it can. The doorbell rings when you're expecting someone to come over, and you might believe they're the ones at the door. If it's not, your belief changes.'
'Your belief dies; there's no point opening the door and seeing who it actually is, then believing that it's that guy instead; just accept that it's the other guy. I suppose you could play Visitor of the Gaps and believe that the first guy is also there, at a different door; but that's getting into psychosis.'
'But the guy could be at a different door.'
'Sure. Door A observed, he could be at Door B. And, now that we know that Jehovah doesn't actually drag the sun across the sky, we can think maybe it still lets whichever football team prays hardest be the one to win the game. There are always a few gaps left out there for these things to hide in. We've confirmed mathematically that there's no way for an animal the size Nessie's supposed to be to live in Loch Ness; still, thousands or millions of idiots run to Scotland every year, hoping to see it, or film it, or mate with it, or whatever.'
'Nessie can't exist?' he asked.
'There's not enough food in Loch Ness to support an elasmosaur. Let alone a breeding population.'
'What about Bigfoot then.'
'A big dumb furry mammal? Fascinating. I can think of seven billion of those I'm already thrilled about. Who cares.'
'So, the chupacabra...capybara...whichever it is.'
'Coyote. That's pretty well established now. It's a mutant, which is kinda cool; but it's a hairless coyote: nothing more.'
'Okay. UFOs.'
'What about them.'
'Are they real?'
'Sure. Unidentified Flying Objects exist. Even after they become Misidentified Flying Objects. Even aliens probably exist; it's a big universe. Nothing suggests that they're invading this planet, or even that they'd know about it.'
'You can't allow that aliens might be watching us?'
'Can you allow that they might not be?' I asked.
'Um...yeah; they might not be.'
'Then we're agreed,' I said, 'They might not be. That's as much as we can conclude for now.'
Around eleven, or close to it, the gangies arrived. It's at this point that I could frontload the disclaimers, starting probably with don't get me wrong but colon; however, if you've made it thirty-odd pages into the story without help form your lawyers, priests, or legal guardian caregivers, then I'm not in a hurry to insult your intelligence, let alone my own.
Oh all right; just for you special little troopers making an effort to become grownups but at risk of backsliding and reverting to, like, democrats: BlackricanAmerican blackro black people of colour are astoundingly important to society and its workings because, uh...like...one of them probably once, uh...some of...erm...like, I might not personally care about basketball but...wow; thanks for being good at throwing shit, guys....
Ever tried to apologise for something when you hadn't actually done anything wrong? Awkward, innit.
Okay; to make the point itself: that I don't pretend that blacks are better than any other misidentified colour in any important application doesn't preclude my ability to recognise the fundamental difference between George Foreman and George Jefferson. That difference, in fact, can be identified by a single word: effort; the difference as I'm able to quantify it is a matter of contrasting the upwardly against the uppity.
The latter classification would include the gangies.
'Shit,' one of them announced, magically implanting seventeen syllables into the word, seating himself and those following him at the Flanders' former table for a fraction of a second before sprawling out and slapping the table for NorthAmerica's attention: 'Get some service up in here; damn!' Cackling for a moment at his manufactured lulzriot, he glanced behind his seat to find Hutch starting vapidly at him. 'Whoa; di'n't see ya there all cool back like Fiddy; 'cept you be more like Fiddy Dollar!' And he cackled again, in much the way you'd expect old plumbing to laugh.
'Damn, man,' the other male---older and quieter---assessed, 'That cole; serious.'
'I just playen,' the first assured, 'Don't eat me now.' And more laughter from the Pipes&Gaskets Section of Home Depot.
Hutch of course was lost; I suppose, thinking about it now, that the boring little moron lacked prior reference: he'd never actually seen me deal with this sort of intrusion and therefore had nothing to fail properly to copy. He looked pleadingly in my direction, like I'd have had any interest in getting involved even if Hutch had been someone I'd wanted to save...should such creatures exist on this planet.
The younger one turned back to the older one. 'Muhfugger prolly do wanna eat me,' he muttered, 'Gayass muhfugger.' And slightly quieter, scratchier cackling: residential grade pipes, rather than industrial.
'Damn, Lamar...,' the chick with the younger, cacklier one berated, 'Just let it go, yo?'
'Oh you gonna tell me leggo,' Lamar contested, 'Damn, girl: don't gotta get all up like at; jam my foot up someplace an shit, get all mouthy me.' He glanced back at Hutch again, nearly like people glance back to see if they've been caught being stupid, but more to catch Hutch catching him, since that was more properly the point.
He didn't catch Hutch catching him; he caught Hutch staring at me, looking for answers, and followed his gaze to meet mine.
'Oh...,' he sang, 'Oh, I see. Uh-huh. Check it, Jamal: got whitey both sides; stumble inna gawdam klan meet here.'
'Damn time we go eat, same shit,' Jamal agreed, peeking round to see how white I might have been, 'Ain't no justice.' His chick, trapped on the inside of the booth like Lamar's, slumped down a bit and said nothing.
Jamal, an inch from Leslie's hair, started looking her over; feeling it, she moved slightly to the side. I shut the laptop again and waited.
'Fuck you got there,' Lamar said to the shiny, clicky thing I'd closed, 'That a GameBoy, sumpin?'
'Laptop,' I stated. No inflexion.
'Nah, man; laptop be y'lap; that a tabletop, sumpin.'
'As you say,' I allowed, unenthused.
'Oh you all cool f'a whiteboy, incha,' Lamar said, straightening up in his seat and obscuring Hutch, possibly on purpose. 'Don't nuddin scare likayou, do it.'
We talked earlier about Steve King et al thinking only later of clever retorts and my arguably selfdestructive ability to think more quickly than some writers might. Lemmings and Germs: I present Officer Pythagoras....
To Leslie I announced: 'The dark one mocks me.'
Another primary difference between the upwardly and the uppity is that the former will acknowledge the archaic futility of the colourwars and laugh with me at the latter for being spastic peacocks; no such animal was that night available: it was pretty much just me and this obstreperous little pufferfish.
'The hell you just caw me you dumbass cracker!' Lamar leapt to his feet but came no closer.
'Oh damn,' I said, 'I...who knows; I'd hoped you were smart enough to catch it.'
'Oh you think you funny now.'
'My readers think I'm funny.'
'I show you funny, muhfugger.'
'With what: a minstrel show?'
'Fuck's that.'
'You really had to be there,' I said, slightly noting the irony.
'The fuck you talkinbout.'
'It was this thing: white guys spoofing black guys; forget it and sit down.'
'Ah hell no,' Lamar intimated, 'Y'all don't getta call me black; be a African American, muhfugger.'
'I doubt it,' I said.
'Say what---whadda---whaddafuck you sane now you dumb fuggin cracker muhfugger.'
'I doubt you've been to Africa,' I said, 'I seriously doubt you're from there.'
'My peep from Africa, cos you peep kidnapped us, brought us here.'
'The English brought you here from Africa? I wasn't told. I'd heard that the Americans brought you here from Brasil.'
'You sane I from Sowmerica now.'
'Insofar as the Americans buying slaves got them largely from traders in Brasil; yeah.'
'Fucken school you get that shit from.'
'Most recently? Eton. You?'
'Don't need no school muhfugger; just natural smart and shit.'
'You'd have to be,' I said, 'to have a manufactured Chicagoan accent and no idea what the capital of Illinois is.'
'Capit---the fuck cares the capital Illinoise, muhfugger; that whitepeep shit, know I sane?'
'Only about every fourth word. But I don't speak Portuguese.' In point of fact, I actually do know some Portuguese, using it to approximately the effect to which I use English; I've got this Brasilian friend who calls me Malfador; it's a petname.
'Fuck that gotta do, anything.'
'It's the language endemic to Brasil. I thought we'd covered that.'
'The fuck you problem, cracker.'
Have we established that I don't actually care about anything? Doesn't matter: it's not actually true. Because that idiotic question actually got me to laugh. Shortly. Once.
'Well,' I said, thinking about it for half a second, 'You came in, started whimpering that white people were here, started talking to me without my permission, got up, got all froggy, proved that you lack the education available to a gardenslug, and made it out to be somehow my fault that you suck. And that's just in the last couple minutes.'
'So you got a problem wi'black peep.'
'Only the stupid ones,' I said, 'Only the lazy, useless ones blaming an exaggerated history of discrimination and slavery for their modern disinterest in becoming functional members of society. Only the ones able to live in a nation of free education and unlimited opportunity---antitrust laws notwithstanding---yet incapable of raising their kids, staying out of prison, or even learning the basic conjugations of fucking verbs. Only the ones who castigate the others, with whom I lack a problem, for being UncleToms, having bothered to work the system and rise above the securityblanket of clichéd oppression from the man. Only you, for projecting your impotence to succeed out upon everyone who never even cared that you existed. Motherfucker.'
Lamar gaped wordlessly for a moment, having understood none of that; then: 'Ah, shit's on now, muhfugger!' And he started patting himself down either because there were invisible spiders in his shirt, or...I really can't guess what the hell he was doing. Neither apparently could he; he stopped killing spiders and reached for the beltline under his jersey. 'Cracker goan down, righcheer.'
'By all means,' I told him, 'Cap me with your burner; that should end the stereotype.'
I neither doubted nor in all honesty cared that Lamar probably did have a gun in his Adidas, and might well have pulled it and used it [whether he could have hit me from four paces with less than fifty rounds at his disposal]; but, just then, the fuzz arrived.
I guess Jessica had called the police, probably the moment these idiots had walked in the door. Or maybe it was just dumb timing: a couple cops will generally wander into this place around eleven, which must be a shiftchange, for free coffee and pie; a comic whose name I've now forgotten once claimed to have been arrested for leaving a restaurant without paying his bill, the charge being impersonating an officer---lulz.
Here's the cool part: cops being packhunters, appearing minimally in pairs, both officers arriving onscene happened to be black; also, they happened to have the same tired look I could feel my own face displaying for Homey Joe Gopher here. As I say, black guys willing to live up here in the world have as much or more contempt for these selfparodied meerkats as the rest of us have. The rest of us being we grownups refusing to tolerate the intolerable for the unnatural purpose of embracing all diversity but grownupism. The cops had their hands resting on the grips of their Glocks.
'Hey there,' the closest said to Lamar as the other backed away and muttered something into the radio clipped to his epaulette, gunhand still at the ready.
'Sup,' Lamar said, already scanning for the seat he'd abandoned.
'Everything cool here?' the cop asked. Sometimes---more often than not---I kinda wish cops could be a little more...urbane about things, like that mythical cleancut whitegloved shinedshoed cartoon from the Monopoly board; I'm not talking about sensitivity training so much as finishing school; call me hypocritical, but I don't really need cops, who do in fact work for me, tossing out obscenities and slander at anyone, suspects or otherwise. But, in this case, the casual nature of the cop in question seemed about right.
Lamar sat down again. 'Ain't no problem, officer,' he said, overactively disinterested in the conversation.
'Didn't think so,' the cop agreed, then gave me a glance; I shrugged mostly with my eyebrows, and he nodded knowingly. 'Just the same,' the cop added, 'let's keep all the hands on top of the table for a while.'
Lamar looked more worried now. 'Y'all think I'm packen, officer?'
'Seems like a fair bet. You okay with a patdown?'
'Ah, man,' Lamar said, 'Shit I don't need.'
'Said it, man,' Jamal agreed, starting to slide to his feet.
The rearmost cop flanked Jamal. 'Hold up there, son; one at a time.'
Jamal deflated back into his seat; Lamar stood up, turned to the table, and interlaced his fingers behind his head.
'Oh good,' the first cop sang in a decent approximation of half the things Sam Jackson has ever said, 'You know the position. Makes my job easier. Oh now that's a shame: a fine black youth like yourself with a concealed weapon; wouldya look at that, Officer Davis.' He pulled the pistol free of Lamar's Adidas and handed it back expertly to his partner, who took it and set it quietly on the closest empty table. 'You a one gun sorta guy, or do I wanna look in your socks for something else.'
'That's all I got, officer,' Lamar said, 'I cool.'
'Oh you cool. You get that Davis?' He patted Lamar down to his shoes anyway. 'This one's cool. We got us a cool little kitty here. How bout you,' he asked Jamal, 'How cool are you.'
Jamal kept his hands on the table, standing up, then lifted his shirt by the collar to reveal his own waistline special.
'Damn, Davis: we got twins.' He zipcuffed Lamar quickly and nudged him back into his seat before stepping toward Jamal to take his gun too.
Davis moved in to slip Jamal's wrists into a ziptie. 'How you ladies doing tonight,' he asked.
'Hey we just met these guys,' Lamar's chick announced; 'we ain't no bangers.'
'That a fact,' Davis asked, 'Let's keep the hands on the table anyhow. Sound good?'
The first cop had arranged both guns into a square on the table, like shoes in a shoebox. He turned to me. 'Anything you and me need to talk about?'
I shrugged, this time with my shoulders. 'I think you've got it worked out,' I said, 'Our illustrious morons here came in with an attitude, got verbal, started dancing a bit, and here you are.'
He tapped one of the guns on the table. 'I don't suppose you've got one of these for me.'
'I don't suppose I have.'
'You mind if I see that for myself?'
'A little,' I said, 'Unless you have a warrant or sufficient probable cause.'
Anger flashed in his eyes for an instant, then the grin returned easily. 'I wonder where I might find myself some probable cause.' He looked to Lamar. 'If only someone had seen this guy maybe reaching for something?'
'He's clean,' Jessica said, appearing behind me, 'He's a regular; never been a minute of trouble.'
I nearly laughed again. It's probably better that I didn't.
NotDavis stared at her eyes for a second. 'All right then: we'll leave it at that.'
Two more cops wandered quickly in and the four mumbled amongst themselves for a moment, occasionally glancing and nodding at roughly everyone in the restaurant; then Davis taking Lamar by the arm, NotDavis taking Jamal, and the two new ones cuffing and taking the two chicks, they all left again amidst negligible pleasantries.
Jessica leaned toward me. 'You probably have got a gun, huh.'
'I don't suppose I have,' I said again; then I gave her a grin suggesting that I often eat babies.
She laughed. 'More coffee?'
'Please.'
'Coming right up.' She took the emptyish pot and walked away toward the kitchen.
I opened the laptop again.
'I wish that guy'd tried that shit on me,' Hutch lied.
I shut the laptop. 'Are you really still here.'
'I've just got a real problem with those people,' Hutch said, 'Little bullies like that getting up in your face and shit.'
I've discussed a couple matters with my legal staff; I won't confirm or deny that I did in fact have a gun with me that night. What I will say is that I didn't shoot Hutch.
I reopened the laptop and tried to ignore the mouthy moron for a while.
'Thankalord!' George shouted, knocking me out of the book I never finished; looking at the laptop's screen for a moment, trying to remember how I'd hoped to finish the sentence I'd been on, I finished it probably differently and sat back, stretching my head to the side to crack my neck before scrolling back up to the beginning of that chapter. The clock in the lower right of the screen read 23.17.
Leslie was looking at me, glancing also down at the back of the screen. I nodded, turning the laptop so she could see the book.
'I didn't bother printing it to PDF yet; just use the arrowkeys and try not to modify anything.'
'Right.' She pulled the machine closer and began to read, silently.
I cleared my throat and gave her a look. Which she understood. I've got this policy for coffeechicks: you can read the book, but not to yourself; I can't tell from over here what you're reacting to every time you laugh, squint, or whatever. She deflated a bit, exhaling, and arrowed up to the beginning of the chapter before beginning again to read, this time aloud: 'Chapter seven,' she read, then cleared her throat a bit.
'Yeah,' I acknowledged.
'Chapter seven,' she read again, 'The fires had begun to die along the pavement when Angie emerged from the trunk, dropping the jack to the side and falling to the edge of the road, exhausted from the stress alone. She glanced curiously at the tank under the car, surprised that it hadn't exploded inches beneath her following the blast; she'd read some book once in which a car had exploded on impact, its empty fuel tank having retained enough fumes to blow up, flipping the entire machine onto its roof; like most people, she'd never had an opportunity to test the hypothesis.
'Until now.
'Now, her car remained intact, if scalded and dusty; ash drifted snowlike to the ground amidst the odd corner of paper and spore of foam rubber; dark, greasy shadows played along the vestigial patches of grass left green to the east of the vehicles which had protected them from the firestorm, the sun now setting in the west behind pillars of black, acrid smoke from the meaningless structures which had been the skyline minutes before.
'If it had been minutes. It might have been years. Her watch had died, probably in the EMP; she pressed a couple buttons, hoping for a response, but got nothing. She didn't bother to take it off: it probably didn't matter either way.
'Reclaiming her phone---her flashlight before it had died in there---she confirmed that it was as dead as her watch; still, she stuffed it into the front pocket of her jeans as she circled toward the door.
'Her Zippo was still there on the seat, uncharred; she'd been wrong about that too: she got it to light on the first strike, laughing hopelessly as she glanced again at the flaming city behind her. Shaking a cigarette---'
Leslie stopped for a moment, glancing downward, probably at the pagecounter to gauge how many pages remained between her and the end of what I'd written, which she'd have to get through now before escaping outside for a cigarette of her own. Then she returned to the book: '---loose from the pack she'd left on the seat with the lighter, leaving herself about three to go on, wondering if any remained unburned in any of the stores out there. It probably didn't matter much anymore: if the blast had caused an electromagnetic pulse, it had probably irradiated everything in town, including the cigarettes, and including her. She inhaled deeply, waiting for her hair and teeth to fall out. They didn't.
'Her purse was in the footwell on the far side, probably shaken off the seat when the car had lurched in the shockwave. Feeling for the bump on her forehead, she sat behind the useless wheel and looked at herself in the mirror. She wasn't bleeding; at least, not externally. The purse in reach, she picked it up and dropped her smokes inside before opening the glovebox for the stash of Reese's Miniatures and a pack of Orbits she kept within. The chocolate at least had some sugar and carbs in it; the gum had no calories, but would keep the saliva going for a while.
'Finally, the jacket she'd tossed into the backseat remained as unscathed as the Zippo had. It wouldn't fit in her purse, and she didn't need it yet; but she'd bring it along, tied to her waist, for the night ahead. She got back out of the car.
'One last stop at the taillights. The jack had no immediate use, and she'd probably be able to find another one as needed. But she slid the iron free, testing its weight in her hand. It wasn't much---almost certainly nothing against them. But, she supposed, there would be new enemies now: the other survivors, who as desperation began to set in would likely kill her for her gum alone. She smirked at it, missing her MSixteen; that was probably irreplaceable now, the base likely flattened and melted to glass by those fucking bugs. She closed the trunk, unable now to latch it, holding the lid in place with her left hand before smashing the tool into it, denting the steel impressively, gouging a hexagonal scar in the paint. It wasn't an assault rifle, if even that would kill the damned things; but it would take out a human enemy if applied to the skull.
'She held the thing up and told it, "You're my new TripleA Club"; the army had conditioned her to name her weapon, to think of it as her only friend in the world; the habit had sunk in.
'Her Nikes weren't the jumpboots she'd have preferred, but at least she hadn't worn heels today; another shake of the TripleA Club, and she launched into a casual jog back toward the remnants of town in which she'd find shelter for the night.'
Leslie looked at me over the screen. 'Is it cool if I go grab a smoke for a minute? I've got...fourteen pages left, and I'm not sure I can get---' She saw me nodding quickly. 'Thanks; be right back.' And she grabbed her Lights and slid out of the booth, heading for the lobby.
Behind her seat, a new party had occupied the table formerly held by the Flanders and the gangies: a couple of thirtysomethings, one losing his battle to grow hair anywhere but his throat and wearing an organic TShirt designed to make me feel bad about the lack of peace in Africa, the other wearing a corduroy jeanjacket and beads in her hair. 'Are you a writer?' the female asked.
I reclaimed the laptop. 'I have a writing implement.' I know: I stole that from Naked Lunch. But she didn't know that.
'So how's it end,' the guy asked.
'How's what end.'
'The book. The...I guess she's a soldier?'
'How should I know,' I said, 'I'm still writing it.'
'You didn't outline it?' And now I knew what I was dealing with: one of those special little people which has convinced itself that it knows dick about the process and the industry.
'Nope. I don't do that. I start writing, finish the story, and stop.'
'Not very professional,' he said, not quite scolding, but not quite silent.
'Don't tell my readers,' I said.
'Have you got anything published?' he asked.
I don't know why people ask me that, but they ask me that a lot. I suppose maybe that everyone kinda wants to be a writer, while most everyone sucks at it, and asking whether I'm actually a novelist or just some idiot with a laptop would then allow them to ask what manner of magic is involved in writing something good enough to impress a publisher. Which is pointless, because, in all honesty, I have no idea. I know what I did; I don't know that what I did would work for anyone else; I don't even know whether what I did would work for me, if I did it at this point in history. Was it pure luck? No; but, if it had been, I'd have been okay with that too.
An auxiliary reason, probably correlated to the primary reason, seems to be next to ask what I've got published, either so they can read it and try to reverse engineer the magic, letting them know how to do it themselves, or just so they can pretend to know me well enough suddenly to ask for free copies, either to show off as evidence that they know me, to read and reverse engineer, or both.
In any case: I've got stuff published; I suppose you reading this have figured that out by now. For this guy, though, I opened the laptop and went back to the catalogue---the list of stuff I'd written and released to date. For you reading this, since I never finished or released that, the list of stuff Also by Me is back on Page V, three pages before Page One; it's the same list, since nothing released in the meantime has modified it. I turned the laptop so he could read the list from his seat.
'And those are all published?' he asked, stupidly.
'Yeah. I write a book, finish it, and upload it to a secured server my publisher controls.'
'Whoa. Aren't you afraid they'll just steal it?'
'Not really. The version I upload to them is in PDF, edited and ready to print. I keep the original, uploaded to my own server, timestamped on completion. And why would they steal it? At this point, if they were gonna do something that stupid, they'd benefit more from stealing my name and applying it to something else. And, if they did that, I'd sue them to hell, probably end them, and go to a different publisher.'
'You're more trusting than I am,' the idiot said.
I moved back to the point at which Leslie had stopped reading and closed up the laptop again.
'So it's about a chick in the army?' the female asked. I did have to give her points for using the word chick in a world of feministical fragility, if little else.
'She's not in the army anymore,' I said, 'She was, somewhere in the whole backstory; she'd been trying to get to the base she'd been stationed at when the---it's a long story.'
'So who blew up the city,' the guy asked, 'Le'me guess: terrorists.' He rolled his eyes, having decided that it was true, and that terrorists as plotdevices were the most clichéd, improbable, unrealistic of all possible entities.
'Aliens,' I said.
So he was wrong; now he gaped at me as though aliens attacking anyone was less likely than terrorists.
'What,' I said.
'Why would visitors destroy a city.'
'Because there's a war going on.'
'The visitors wouldn't be at war with us.'
'What visitors.'
'Your aliens. They're not warlike.'
'Uh, yes they are,' I said.
'How can you say that; they're a peaceful race.'
'I can say that,' I began, slowly, not really expecting the idiot to understand as readily as a small child would, 'because I wrote the book.'
'Then it's a stupid book,' he said.
'Then don't buy a copy.'
'I won't!' And he stared at me, apparently waiting for me either to shout good, or to change my mind about something.
I looked beyond him, to Hutch, who for once seemed to understand something about reality: he was squinting at the back of the guy's head.
'So,' the guy began, nearly changing the subject but not enough, 'You think the visitors are warlike.'
Steve Stirling once wrote, in Conquistador, that: There is a technical term for someone who confuses the opinions of a character in a book with those of the author. That term is idiot. And it's a pretty good point: I've certainly written a few books with characters who, to pick one almost at random, thought that people on average might not be imbeciles allowed to survive not through natural selection but through inane, emotionally defended laws against killing, cooking, and eating most of them; those characters, for example, might conclude that this twerp was against all evidence to date a functional member of the species whose thoughts and opinions and batshit conspiracy hunches warranted our attention and funding for further lack of credible study; personally, I'd disagree with those characters, and I'd win, being their Creator, who works in mysterious ways.
'I don't think the visitors exist, outside this unfinished book you haven't read.'
'How can you say they don't exist,' he demanded.
'The same way I can write that they do, though without typing anything.'
'Well then...how do you explain the pyramids.'
'Uh, maybe Quetzalcoatl did it.'
'So you don't have an answer.'
'I have an answer: I just gave it to you. In fact, it's stupid, unsupported by evidence, and relies on an animal never confirmed to exist through the scientific method; you should embrace that sort of thing.'
'There's evidence of aliens though,' he lied.
'Not real evidence. There's testimony, and a mathematical probability that, amino acids factually compiling autopoietically in nebulae and probably seeding planets with the genetic buildingblocks for RNAbased life, things exist on other planets, parsecs from here; but there's no evidence or indication that any extraterrestrial life has ever discovered Earth, let alone developed the means to get here and hang out in deserts and trailerparks without starting an interstellar war.'
'But you're writing a book about it!'
'And it's fiction.'
He rolled his eyes again, which I maintain is a shabby concession of point.
'They're coming,' George announced, however unfortunately. I should probably mention, or possibly reiterate, that George when not seething at the sprinkler above his table blurted out random noises without evident reason [his potential schizophrenia notwithstanding], which I'd learned to ignore as well as I ignore the clinking glass and muzak and everything else in a restaurant when I'm writing or, less importantly, talking to people; for that, I wasn't keeping much track of the muttering and clinking and droning and everything else I haven't been detailing to date in this story; it just wasn't relevant. George mentioning that they were coming suddenly edified his relevance in the scenario: HippyGuy, who'd had to turn entirely around in his seat to look at me, turned back to look at HippyChick, Hutch and Chuck behind her, the scenekids behind them, and finally George at the very end, looking beyond everyone at me. 'They're on their way,' George said, with possibly the same undisclosed entities hiding behind the pronoun.
Leslie returned to the table, smelling like smoke, exhaust, and the end of summer hours after the sun has gone down. 'Okay,' she said, dropping into her seat and tossing her cigarettes and lighter next to her Sweet&Lowed copy of Duma Key before noticing that the laptop was closed now, 'Wha'd I miss.'
'Nothing,' I said, opening the laptop and confirming that the cursor was blinking where she'd left off before turning it back to her, 'Go ahead.'
'You know about them,' HippyGuy told George, 'Don't you.'
'They've always been here,' George said, contradicting his statement that they were coming, to the total cluelessness of HippyGuy. Leslie was looking over her shoulder toward George now.
'It's nothing,' I said, 'Just read.'
'Yeah,' she said, turning back and skimming the page for where she'd left off, 'Oh. Okay.' She cleared her throat again and reread the last paragraph before the subchapter had ended: 'Her Nikes weren't the jumpboots she'd have preferred, but at least she hadn't worn heels today; another shake of the TripleA Club, and she launched into a casual jog back toward the remnants of town in which she'd find shelter for the night.' A deep breath, and she moved on to the beginning of the second subchapter: 'The bank of screens in the war room stopped fluttering in the aftershock and updated with the stream of incoming data: numbers and charts and maps. Jackson fell into his chair and grabbed for the phone.'
Behind her, HippyGuy turned round again, bumping her with his elbow in the process. 'Sorry,' he said, 'Just listening in, hearing about the visitors nuking a city they wouldn't nuke.'
'Ignore him,' I said, 'He's an idiot.'
Leslie regarded HippyGuy for a second, then shrugged and read on:
'He---uh, that's Jackson, I guess?'
I nodded.
'He pounded the hotline button with most of his fist, calling---'
'The hotline button,' HippyGuy echoed, 'Yeah, right.'
'---office, hoping the building itself remained intact.'
'It won't be intact,' HippyGuy said, 'The visitors'll have blown it up along with everything else they wouldn't blow up.'
Leslie was looking sideways at HippyGuy again. 'What.'
'Oh, nothing: keep reading this stupid thing.'
'Get away from me, and I will.'
'Whatever.' HippyGuy fell to the side, slamming his back against the wall beneath the window, no longer breathing on Leslie, but not facing properly in his seat, either; he kept a contemptuous eye on me as she got back to the book.
'The phone picked up. "Jackson! You okay down there?"
'"We're good," Jackson told him, "Still here, anyway."
'"The hell was that, a nuke?"
'"Negative, Sir," Jackson reported, "Radiation levels remain normal. Some sort of subnuke moab, maybe. We're still compiling the data on it, Sir."'
'Probably some bullshit neutron bomb,' HippyGuy blathered.
'"Can we get any specifics?" Arlington asked, "Find out what the hell they're using? Defend against it somehow?"'
'Who the hell is Arlington,' HippyGuy demanded, 'Man this guy sucks.'
'Arlington's the guy Jackson called,' Leslie said to the screen, 'which you missed with your outburst about the hotline button: "He pounded the hotline button with most of his fist, calling Commander Arlington's office, hoping the building itself remained intact." Now shut the hell up.'
'Like it's my fault no one can follow along,' HippyGuy mumbled.
Leslie gave me a look of exasperation instead of bothering to ask.
'Up to you,' I said, 'Keep reading or don't. Eventually the idiot will have to leave to score some weed before dawn.'
'Oh, now you think I'm on drugs,' HippyGuy said.
'Why not,' I answered, 'I am.' I slurped coffee demonstratively.
'I should tell your publisher you write while you're stoned,' he decided.
'Yeah. You should. Make sure to write it down in a letter, upscaling your slander to libel, with a clearly printed name, return address, and---to save time later---the routing number of your bank account.'
'It's not slander: you just admitted to being on drugs!'
'I didn't confess to being stoned. Caffeine is a drug. You'll learn that around eighth grade if you ever drop back in to school.'
'Whatever.' Also a shabby concession.
Leslie was staring at the ceiling. Now that it was comparatively quiet, she looked to me again; I shrugged, unconcerned. She took a deep breath and went back to reading:
'Jackson looked over the screens making up the wall. "Preliminary estimates put the blast into the megatonnes," he told Arlington, "Maybe the tens of megatonnes. Destruction is damn' near total out there, and'll probably be total once the fires finish off the buildings."
'"But there's no radiation," Arlington said, "We could get Rescue in there to cover the fires, pull out the survivors. Are there survivors?"
'"No data yet," Jackson said, "SatRecon over the area remains dark; we're waiting to get another satellite in place."
'"Keep at it, Jackson. I'm putting through a call to the president; maybe this'll get him to endrun that damnable comitatus headache and get the regular army in here to help us out."'
'Whatever that means,' HippyGuy scoffed, 'More bullshit from the writer.'
'Posse Comitatus was enacted in eighteen seventy-eight, following the reconstruction after the civil war,' I said, 'That's what prevented the troops in Iraq from being used in New Orleans in two thousand five, to the total confusion of stupid people; the congress has tried to limit Comitatus in the last couple years with defence authorisation fiscal acts; but, this story set a few years from now, in a country controlled by a fictional president, those acts were never passed, requiring Jackson, Arlington, and other guardsmen to hope that this fictional president will write an executive order to suspend Posse Comitatus and allow the major branches of the military---now what.'
HippyGuy was giggling. 'The fictional president. We've already got one of those.'
'Ah,' I said, uninterested.
'BamBam stole the election just like Dubya before him.'
'You actually wanted McCain?' I asked.
'I wanted Hillary.'
'That figures,' I said, 'Hitlery Clinton and her strange phobias about power and prosperity.'
'Beats Hussein and his "change you can believe in" which hasn't changed anything.'
'So, what: you wrote in Hitlery when you voted?'
'I didn't vote at all,' HippyGuy said, 'Fuck that: it was rigged.'
'Maybe that's part of the reason she lost,' I said.
'She didn't lose: BamBam stole it.'
'Fine. He stole it. Go tell on him: I'm not a cop.'
'Whatever.'
'Can I just read this to myself,' Leslie asked, 'instead of getting interrupted every few words.'
'I guess,' I said.
'I'll tell you if I see a problem.'
'I see a problem,' HippyGuy said, 'I see a big problem.'
'They're coming to set it right,' George said.
'I hope so,' HippyGuy told him.
'You see me,' George said, 'I've returned!'
Leslie covered her ears and kept reading.
HippyGuy, his back against the wall, was staring at George. 'You were abducted?'
'I was in a dark place,' George said, 'I can see again. The repticons did terrible things. To all of us. Like we were cattle. In a cave of light. There were noises. Beep. Beep. Beep. Wonk! Beep. Beep. Beep. Wonk!'
Leslie stopped reading and looked at me. 'Nevermind,' she said, closing the laptop and giving it back.
'Beep. Wonk! And something slithery, like old potatoes, if potatoes could slither, you know?' George erupted in the sort of laughter you don't want to hear at night on a mountain road. 'Squish. Beep. Beep. Beep. Wonk!'
HippyGuy looked over at me. I told him: 'Leave me out of it; you two visitards can figure it out between yourselves.'
'Wonk! Wonky, wonk! Wonk! And millipedes the size of stationwagons climbing the walls. But they weren't walls, because I could see myself through them. See myself like I was before, back on Earth, at the mall. And I cried because I missed the foodcourt and the people and the smells and then another wonk! And then it was quiet for a while until the ducks exploded.'
By now, the whole restaurant was looking at George. Jessica had stopped, her hand atop my dwindling coffeepot, probably about to ask if I'd been ready for more; now she was just staring at George, mouth still agape but making no sound.
'Boom!' George shouted, 'Boom! Boom! Wonk! Duck after duck. All in a line. Duck! Duck! Goose! And the wall behind them with the millipedes but it wasn't a wall because I could see the ducks in the pond on Earth behind them and boom! Boom! Boom! Wonk! Beep. Beep. Beep. Wonk! Boom! Boom! Boom! Wonk! Squish.'
'George?' Jessica finally got out, 'Are you okay?'
'My name was George! Wonk! Hello. Is there still soup left?'
'A...little. It's kinda grody, but---'
'Boom!'
'I'll go get you some,' Jessica promised, 'There's some clam chowder left. That okay?'
'Wonk!'
'I'll get you some coffee, too,' she told me, taking the coffeepot along.
'Boom! And the watermelons were watching and the wall behind them with a farm and the cows and the pigs but not like us. Not like us with the millipedes and the wonk! And the noises and the sounds and the slithery potatoes but they weren't potatoes and the clam chowder sounds fine thank you.'
Staring at George for a moment, trying to make any sense of all that, I opened the laptop and hit ControlN to start a new document, then wrote down what I could remember of his tirade, which you've just read to the extent that I was ever able to reproduce it at all.
Presuming that you read as much and as quickly as I do, therefore leaving Page Fifty-eight to the left and arriving over here at Page Fifty-nine without stopping to blink, no time will appear to have passed, on your end; here, behind the scenes, where I write these things, I've just taken a couple days off to look over the bluelines for problems and approve the last thing I wrote, since it happened to lack any evident problems after all.
Any problems, that is, with the book itself.
However unfortunately, that leads me to new problems. Or at least new annoyances. The book ready for release, we're now entering the silly season in which my publisher as always expects me to go on tour like some meaningless rockstar known only for writing the sheetmusic: malls and standalones, city after city, hanging out in smokefree oubliettes signing a book no one's yet read, based on a body of work few have read, damning each copy to be purchased now that it's been written in. It's a goofy system. Though the increasing number of stores requiring the customer to buy the book before having it signed perform an equally goofy practise, I suppose: See that guy over there? Notice how he looks like the guy on the back of the book? If you buy the book, you can go over and bug him until he writes something unimportant on the titlepage which you can hereafter pretend means that you know each other. That'll be thirty-nine ninety-nine plus local salestax, please. Would you like a cardboard bookmark with a cat performing anthropomorphised stupidity for an extra eight bucks? Thanks; have a nice consumership.
I won't say that I can't complain, since clearly I can, and do; that in fact I do complain does to a great extent make the books a hotter commodity. I won't pretend that my interest in writing was ever to produce competition for Dickens, or even just Twain; but the basic fact that, as a writer, I'm functionally a standup comic without a microphone who at the least doesn't have to wait around for the average idiot to get the joke and start giggling nervously in reaction was never really a basic fact I was in any hurry to accept; add the booksignings, and not only do I get to sit there watching people read, slowly and dogmatically, lips moving as they download the simpler words to their brains until, the datapackets assembled therein, they get to think about it for a moment before laughing dryly: I also get those people now expecting me to say something equally hilarious there in person while I'm signing an unenforceable contract to pretend to know who the hell they are. Though, again, Steve King and his unquantified masses of shouldasaids notwithstanding, I'm actually pretty good at that, if in no way which doesn't get people interested in punching me. Or, we now know, in shooting me.
Worse than both, perhaps, in arguing with me.
Having got his clam chowder, George had calmed down a bit, reverting to the occasional thankalord without mentioning the lizardpeople much.
Which solved nothing: HippyGuy was still waging peace largely by whimpering about those people entirely unlike himself trying to force their way of life on the uninterested whose right to counterattack was misidentified as terrorism. Which may or may not have included aliens who fix flowers instead of ovipositing monsters into people's stomachs.
Chuck over in 73 was being uncommonly quiet, probably because Hutch was being commonly obstreperous. That, thinking about it now, was impressive, since Chuck wasn't doing anything else: he never brought a book or an iPod or anything to the restaurant; in a sense, he showed up for precisely the reason Hutch showed up, except that Chuck was actually allowed to speak. That night---all night---he was pretty much just sitting there, allowing Hutch to blather on through omission of action.
The scenekids by eleven thirty were getting tired or bored or for whatever reason out. The three I never really met never really tried to meet me as they wandered past my table toward the lobby; the tolerable one, whose name I guess I never got, slowed to wave casually before catching up to the other three without a further word. That left 74 open for whatever might happen to us next.
I by eleven thirty had saved and closed Untitled2009 which, obviously, I never did get back to; instead, I had what was now called lizardpeople.doc open and full of George's insanity, whatever that might later be good for. Which I probably needn't really conceal: it led to the book you're reading now; thanks for the $39.99, of which I get less than the total and possibly less than your local salestax.
HippyGuy was still blathering, largely to HippyChick but loudly enough for everyone else to hear, making me start to wonder whether Table 72 was simply designated through some invisible cosmic justice for the yeckies and the gangies and the hippies and whatever other lunatic fringe could overestimate its importance. Tired of hearing that the government---that weird, alien entity made up of nothing resembling those Americans which had stopped whimpering about nothingness for long enough to come into power---had thrown $700billion at the überevil criminal global banking federal reserve new world order cartel conspiracy, I went out front for a cigarette.
A moment later, Chuck joined me, answering my next question before I could ask it: 'Hutch got caught up talking to Silkwood and Hoffa about...something.'
'He finally found someone willing to talk to him,' I said.
'Or so much more annoying that they're not really noticing him at all.' He lit a cigarette and looked at the road beyond the carpark. 'Ever get the feeling we're hurting ourselves more by coming out here to smoke, not from the smoke itself, but from the cars driving by?'
'It's occurred to me,' I said.
'What gets me is that, now that we all have to go outside to smoke, that puts us all in the same place at the same time, out in the open air, for the same people who aren't now inside to walk past and cough all obviously at us to let us know they don't appreciate us coming out here to where they still are.'
'There's that. I suppose they forced us out here in the hopes that we'd freeze to death or decide it wasn't worth it and just quit; instead, they polluted the fresh air they used to escape the smoky buildings to go breathe.'
'I guess the fresh air's in there now,' he said.
'Not really. In there, without the smoke, you can smell the dishwasher from the lobby. It gets worse if you go to a pub: everything smells like stale beer.'
'Ugh. Good thing I don't go to those places.'
'Not that I'd know anything about that: since I smoke, I couldn't possibly have a sense of smell left. Unless I happen to be naturally better than even the antismokers who seem able to smell and cough over anything from six blocks away.'
Chuck grinned and nodded, smoking.
Tired of just standing there, I backed illegally toward the door and sat against the window next to it, resting the back of my head against the glass.
'So, what are you working on this time,' Chuck asked. Oddly, he was one of those people who never expected a free copy of anything; though, that said, I'm not sure whether he ever bought a copy of anything either.
'I think I just gave up on it. Alien invasion thing. Which is actually kinda stupid. But it seemed like a good idea when I started it.'
'I heard a bit of it before---whatever Leslie was reading before you made new friends.'
'Yeah. If it's relevant, I'd already spent half a page explaining the phonesystem---the hotline button that dweeb got hung up on.'
'Made sense to me.'
'It's not just him though. I don't really like the book that much. My readers would like it; but it's not about that.'
'It couldn't be. If you don't like it, it's gonna fail.'
'Pretty much. What I'm thinking is that I should just write something like, you know: this. Something practical and plausible. What happens in a restaurant in the middle of the night. "Clerks" in a diner---or even just "Diner"; "Scenes from a Mall" or "Saint Elmo's Fire". Half the stuff Billy Joel ever did---"Piano Man" was on the XM a few hours ago, for example---but in literary form. I could write something like that, I suppose.'
'Not really what you usually do though, is it?'
'Nope. But for no reason. I could do it. Although...do stories like those actually have a plot at all? Is there ever really an antagonist, apart maybe from the circumstance itself? I'm not sure my readers---or any readers, anymore---would go for a story lacking overblown badguys and heroes in dire circumstances.'
'They wanna escape life by seeing something extreme,' Chuck said.
'Yeah. Though, then again, George alone...if that guy weren't homeless...I heard about a guy making twenty thousand bucks a month uploading stuff to YouTubeDotCom recently.'
'Two forty a year? Not bad.'
'Yeah. And, if he's selling his secret, I'm not aware of it; which itself adds credibility to the reports that he's making it happen.'
'Right. Anyone making more from selling a method than they make from the method itself doesn't really need a method in the first place.'
'Unless the method is Amway,' I said.
'Let's hope not.'
'So, as strange as George is, he should by all accounts be making millions with little more than a webcam.'
Chuck shrugged, finishing his cigarette. 'Maybe he is.'
I thought about that for a second. 'Maybe.'
'I should probably go make sure Hutch hasn't found a way to make pacificists wanna hurt him,' Chuck said, reaching for the door.
'You really worried about it?'
'Nope,' he said, going inside anyway.
I sat there for another minute, smoking my cigarette down to the filtre, looking up at the full moon and the lack of stars beyond. And at that moment---at 23.37 on Friday 7th August 2009---I abandoned the book about the insectile alien invasion in favour of something a little more realistic. Which was a funny thing to think at the time, given what I'd think a few hours later, at 6.08 the next morning, as the first rays of sunlight caught the settling dust.
Three hundred ninety-one minutes earlier, though, I tossed my cigarette into the carpark, got up, and went back inside.
And that concludes the backstory, I suppose---the real prologue, which no one reportedly ever reads. Fooled you: you've read it now. Neener.
Also, technically, the book is now finished, since I'd had to write it all nonlinear, starting from the next chapter, following my decision to write a book simply about that one random night at that one random restaurant. So, to reiterate....

I'm lying: it was the middle of summer---probably the middle of July.

Toldya I was lying. Which is good: now you'll never know what to believe. In order to allow that anything you're about to read could possibly have happened as described, it's important to establish that I'm not entirely to be trusted: I've given you every fact you ever needed---that the names have been changed, here in this undisclosed major city, within an unnamed restaurant, on the night of Friday 7th August 2009---to solve my little mystery for yourself.
Some of you will already have figured it out, from this page alone or from various hints in earlier chapters. Keep reading anyway. That goes for those who haven't yet figured it out too.
Turn the page: our story truly is about to begin....
I never had a chance to sit down before HippyGuy started making that horrible noise again: 'What a surprise,' he sang, supporting the lesserknown adage that sarcasm is the last bastion of the guy who's not actually any good at it, 'He smokes, too.'
'Shouldn't you be at Starbucks, complaining about some makebelieved corporate industrial complex capitalistic evil empire over a four-dollar pint of coffee?' I asked.
He gave me one of those looks serving as the closest thing to evidence that he was smarter than I was. 'No; because Starbucks is closed.'
I'll leave it to You the Reader to guess what I didn't bother saying next, since saying it would have been too easy.
Instead, at that point, The Refreshments' Banditos happened to come across the XM, requiring the imbecile to start crooning along, more or less, to the lyrics, insofar as he could remember and/or predict what they actually were. Which reminded me immediately of a proposal by A Whitney Brown: that Walkmen should come with warning labels alerting people to the important fact that listening to the music through the headphones will not improve your ability to sing outside the headphones, where everyone else can hear you. I agree entirely; except that, warning labels being for pussies, we should replace them with capital punishment, and this new law should extend beyond Walkmen and iPods to all music anywhere ever. The moron made a painful effort to make eye contact with me as he nearly matched the key of the chorus: 'Everybody knows...that the world is full of stupid people; but I've got the pistols...so I'll take the pesos...that seems fair.'
The solo shorting him out, I played dumb, asking, 'What sort of pistols.'
'I haven't really got any pistols: I don't believe in guns. I suppose you do, though.'
'I've seen guns,' I said, 'What's to believe in.'
That, Lemmings and Germs, is how you set up a moron, and knock it down. To wit:
'Whatever.'
And, in the background: 'Thankalord!' The inflexion being slightly different, the loose translation: George had finished his clam chowder and was now ready to beguile us again with his Tales from Altair IV. I suppose we all understood that at some level, and braced ourselves for the forthcoming staccato deluge of syllables and imagery, each in his own way, mine being to hit Enter a couple times and position my fingers above the laptop's keyboard as though preparing to slam some Bach into a pipe organ the size of a shopping mall. And more cosmic justice: someone at XM XY.Z, The Cliché, must have been in a mood that night; Banditos faded out and was replaced by Korn's entire, seven minute cover of Pink Floyd's Another Brick in the Wall.
Abandoning the pipe organ, I cheated, simply hitting Record on my phone.
'Beep,' said George, 'Beep. Beep. Wonk! The millipedes were climbing the walls.'
Daddy's flown across the ocean
'Potatoes, tomatoes, duck, duck, goose.'
Leaving just a memory
And now half ranting and half singing, to various melodies: 'Earth behind them: drifting; falling.'
A snapshot in the family album
'Floating weightless; coming home.'
Daddy, what else did ya leave for me
'Says Major Tom.'
Daddy, wha'd ya leave behind for me
'Floating in a tin can, high above the world.'
All in all it was just a brick in the wall
'Do you believe they put a man on the moon.'
All in all it was all just bricks in the wall
'And the cat's in the cradle, and the silver spoon.'
We don't need no education
'Little boy blue and the ruby Tuesday.'
We don't need no thought control
'Monday, Monday: so good to me.'
No dark sarcasm in the classroom
'I see a red door and I want it painted---'
Teachers: Leave them kids alone
'Grey would be the colour, if I had a heart.'
Hey, Teachers: Leave us kids alone
'Artichoke, potato, tomato. Wonk!'
All in all it's just another brick in the wall
'Millipedes and coffeespoons.'
All in all you're just another brick in the wall
'Afternoons and granfalloons.'
We don't need no education
'Thankalord: thy kingdom come.'
We don't need no thought control
'Thy will be done; thy 'roidrage fun.'
No dark sarcasm in the classroom
'Thy artichoke heart blackhole sun.'
Teachers leave them kids alone
'Wonk!' And a dangerous grin.
Hey, Teachers: Leave those kids alone
'Beep. Beep. Wonk!'
All in all you're just another brick in the wall
'Squish, squish; do it again.'
All in all you're just another brick in the wall
'We grew up and went to school; there were millipedes. Climb the walls; they have no bricks; watermelons watching me. The ducks and geese and repticons: beep, beep, beep, beep, squish. They come at night it's always night the moon above the spoon below the danger grows with mistletoe the military doth bestow the towmissiles the SDI the eye in the sky the state it lies it's no surprise just how time flies burger fries and shake the pies until they rise to semper fi but I decry we must defy the government the powers that be the heresy the tragedy the school of thought the discontent the sidewalk ends in wet cement.'
We as a restaurant, at this point, were bloody well transfixed. So it was probably a good thing that I was recording this, if not exactly filming his strange little scat rap.
'And I don't see no thought control no versatile rigmarole nor do I mean much to extol the process of the rhyme and role to indicate the magistrate and majesty of nine-eight-eight defenestrate the reprobate before the hate can replicate the Mesozoic oligarch escaping from Jurassic Park to slaughter maim destroy and tax the Earth as seen through parallax.'
I don't need no arms around me
'Arms race; save face; know your place within your race.'
I don't need no drugs to calm me
'See saw; hee haw; eat raw cole slaw.'
I have seen the writing on the wall
'Night will come with Coke and rum with bubblegum a tidy sum.'
Don't think I need anything at all
'I wouldn't mind another bowl of clam chowder, if I'm not imposing.'
No
'Maybe.'
Don't think I need anything at all
'Goopy soup, and greasy fries, before my eyes, to my surprise; stop the lies, you fucking guys; apologise: for rising pies.'
All in all it was all just bricks in the wall
'Reaganomics; repticonics.'
All in all you were all just bricks in the wall
'Kill the little teapot, short and stout: chowder within and copper without. Say the magic word before proceeding; see the millipedes from floor to ceiling. Keeping us in cells like incarcerated felons as I watch the planet far beyond the ducks and watermelons.'
Goodbye cruel world
'Below us.'
I'm leaving you today
'Drifting; falling.'
Goodbye
'Watching.'
Goodbye
'Waiting.'
Goodbye
'Coming home, alone; warning none; seeing all; as I fall toward the mall; hello, All.'
Goodbye, all you people
'Food.'
There's nothing you can say
'Shu'p.'
To make me change my mind
'I find.'
Goodbye
'It's time.'
So, that was weirdly fucking amazing. I've tried to guess how the punctuation, if any, would appear here in written form; playing the footage back, I'm still not sure I've got it right. But I'm pretty sure I've got the words he came up with, homonyms and mutterings notwithstanding. If not, maybe we can talk about AudioBooks at some point, securing the rights from Korn, Pink Floyd, or whatever entity controls the replication of the song itself; George's contribution could I suppose just be the recording I got on my phone, or as close an approximation as anyone's able to perform when it comes to reading the book in its entirety for the more illiterate listening mostly for the strange noises this novel might prove to make.
I can't as a rule stand AudioBooks, in principle or in practise.
Maybe I should take a minute to explain that. See, I do this weird thing in proximity to a book: thinking. I know: it's my fault; I just sometimes read something which makes me stop reading for a second and think about it. Whether that means that I've encountered a word I can't define [as you can guess, that hasn't happened in recent decades] forcing me to decide whether to derive its meaning from context or go look it up, or encountered an idea allowing me to wonder how the book ends [if I misguess that, I tend to remember it anyway and occasionally keep it in mind the next time I write a book], or whatever. When someone's reading a book to me---which itself is redundant, since I personally know how to read---I'd have to pause the recording, at best, which action is far too good at interrupting my thought process; rewinding after I've figured something out is also annoying. So, on principle, I hate AudioBooks because I can read a book without them; in practise, I hate them because I can't read a book with them. As for people expecting AudioBooks they can 'read' while driving: you already suck at driving, and probably suck at reading; let's not combine those so you can drive your car into mine while missing out on punctuation and paragraph breaks, okay? Learn to read, or get a grownup to read to you at bedtime, when you can't hurt anyone with your illiteracy.
'Thankalord!' George added. And I killed the recording to send to my server before I ran out of room on the phone.
George apparently done for the moment, the restaurant, to the extent that there was much of anyone in there at ten till midnight, returned to its meaningless mumbling and glassclinking for a bit. Leslie went back to her book for a couple seconds, but then stopped and looked at me.
'You stopped typing,' she said.
'Yeah. Thinking.'
'Does that mean I can read it now?'
'What. Oh. Not really. I'm not working on that.'
She rolled her eyes. Leslie had been around long enough to see me start a couple books, get halfway through writing them out, and give up. Also, she'd been around long enough to know that asking whether I'd given up was a good way to get me to give up. If I'm thinking about abandoning a book already, and you accuse me of thinking about abandoning a book, I regard it as consensus and just let it go. Of course, rolling your eyes is approximately the same thing.
I explained: 'I'm just not sure I can really write a book about an alien invasion, knowing how stupid that is.'
'You've written books about other stupid things.'
'Yeah; thanks.'
She laughed and sighed at the same time---this little huff she does. You'd have to know her. 'I mean: you write fiction. Your whole job is to fool people into believing something stupid. Not that it's stupid; I'm just using your word. The invasion thing isn't actually stupid: it's brilliant.'
'It's stupid. Not because aliens wouldn't attack; it's what animals do. But because they wouldn't know about Earth in the first place. I know: Sagan had them catch Hitler's broadcast out in space, which itself is really no different than my plotdevice of talkshows and things; but---'
'That's why it's not stupid,' she said, 'I'm not even sure you're wrong. When I see fat people dancing around on the Tyra Show like idiots, I wanna launch an invasion, and I'm from here.'
'But you don't. You don't go as far as Manhattan to launch an attack. But aliens are gonna fly parsecs?'
'I can't win,' she said, 'I can't fold space to New York and take out the building security, let alone the cops and the national guard and ultimately the army. If I could...well, whether I'd do it is its own thing.'
'I'm also rethinking the army. The national guard are in place to defend against invaders from other countries. If there's even a contingency plan for invaders from other starsystems, I'm not aware of it. They might just mobilise the real troops, legally or not, asking for forgiveness instead of permission.'
'So fix that. You don't even have to rewrite anything. You've done that before. The army stays out of it through Chapter---what, Seven? Because there's this lack of precedent. You've got Arlington trying to persuade the president already; have that work. Have the president agree that he's been thinking the same thing.'
I was shaking my head.
'Okay,' she said, 'you're right: it's stupid. But...do you get that it's because you see the stupidity that your books are so plausible? Most writers ignore the stupidity, or just don't care. You see the stupidity, and find ways to make it unstupid. Yeah: if this happened, the army would get involved; why not. But, where most writers would just pretend the army could hop in and counterattack, you bother to consider the bureaucracy behind that sort of decision. They can't just jump in and fight back; there's process and procedure and Code Pink and other speedbumps. That's why it's a novel, not a short story: the plot's the same---aliens attack---but you don't just have the Earthlings jump up and return fire; you have them deliberate and---and---and, uh, develop a course of action. That gives you a hundred pages right there. You add factors: we came, we saw, we caused them to figure out what to do about us. And your book is eight hundred pages instead of eighty; and, however stupid the premise is, you make it plausible.'
She had me there; I've got to admit that. But I wasn't ready to concede and recommit to the book.
'Okay: this guy,' she said, brandishing Duma Key, 'He's done it---a couple of times. "Tommyknockers" and...that other one, with the shitweasels. "Dreamweaver" or---'
'"Dreamcatcher",' I said.
'Right.'
'And that's no way to motivate someone: somewhere in "Tommyknockers", he plugged in a line about the stupidity of an alien attack---that no writer in his right mind would try that.'
'While he was trying it.'
'The guy thinks there's a velociraptor in his basement.'
'Really?' she asked.
'No. Probably not. But he said so. It's not the point. The point is that you can't...no one---well, no one rational would buy that aliens are watching and waiting and visiting or invading. It's just dumb.'
'Who cares about rational people,' she asked, 'Follow that to conclusion, and rational people don't read fiction. They read medical journals and shit. The other seven billion read the stuff you write. I wasn't there; I know. But, at some point, your stuff sold a hundred copies, then a thousand, then a million. Even if that was all in one day; I dunno. Are you really worried about it being irrational? A million copies is irrational. At a couple bucks a copy, that's a couple million bucks you made for doing what you like to do anyway. If you pick up the readership of the Weekly World "News" from a book about an alien invasion, is that really a bad thing?'
'You're missing the point. Getting paid for something I like to do is okay; writing a book I don't like isn't doing something I like to do.'
'You just don't like the book anymore.'
'That's what I've been saying.'
'But you're lying,' she said.
'Uh, no I'm not.'
'This is what you love,' she said, 'You love to hit a snag like this in something you're writing; then you get to go all problemsolver on it. "Oh wait: that sucks; how do we fix this"; and then you do it.'
'You can't fix something when even the stupidest of morons see a problem with it,' I said.
'No one's seen it at all,' she countered.
I tilted my head, giving her a thinkaboutit look. When that didn't work, HippyGuy still staring blankly in my direction anyway. 'Hey: you're an idiot, right?'
'No?'
'Thanks for playing along,' I said, 'A smart guy would think before answering. Would aliens travel pars---uh, lightyears to attack Earth over reality television?'
'Of course not: they're a peaceful race.'
I gave Leslie the look again.
'Oh come on,' she said, 'You'd have lost this guy in the prologue, if he bothered to read it. You can't---'
'Hey! I read prologues,' he lied.
'Name one,' Leslie said.
'Name what. "Prologue"; there; that's what it was called.'
'Which book.'
'Uh...just...whichever.'
'See?' she asked me, 'The book's fine; we can talk cinematic rights later, if you're worried about stupid people suddenly learning to think.'
'Maybe.' I was allowing that she had a point, not agreeing to write the book.
'Thankalord!' And we all looked to George again, waiting to see if he was about to go batshit once more. He didn't.
'You know what,' I said, replacing my phone to my pocket, 'I'm gonna go grab a cigarette and think for a minute.'
'You just had one,' Leslie said.
'Almost half an hour ago. And, last time, I decided against writing this thing; this time, I might---'
'Okay: go. But then I'm gonna go get one, since it's my turn.'
I gave her the babyeating grin and left. Lobby: door: outside and flicking the lighter.
Hutch oozed out the door a moment later. 'Y'know: I'd buy that aliens would attack over reality television.'
I breathed. 'Look: I don't know you. That's on purpose. You show up here, and just sit with people. No one knows you. No one wants to know you. No one wants you sitting with them. Why the hell do you even come here.' He was staring at me. 'What!'
'I'm sitting with Chuck.'
'I know.'
'He's okay with it.'
'No he's not. No one's okay with it. Who the hell are you---wait; don't care; don't tell me.'
'If you don't want me sitting with you---'
'"If"? The first time you did it I told you I didn't want you there. I can't even come here alone because there's no way to fill up a whole booth that way; I need her with me just so we can refuse to move over and give you room to invade my fucking table. And no: Chuck doesn't want you bothering him either.'
'Hey: I'm Hutch; everyone likes me.'
'Who told you that.'
'Everyone.'
'No they didn't. No one---you know what: go find someone who said that, and sit with them.'
'I'm sitting with Chuck.'
'No you're not: you're out here talking to me. You're not even smoking. Why are you here.'
'I was telling you that your book is good.'
'You haven't read the book. You don't know if it's good. You think saying it's good will get me to talk to you; it won't.'
'But, you're talking to me.'
'I'm trying to get you to leave.'
'If I'm just here because you're talking to me, I wouldn't leave because you were talking to me.'
'You're positing that you're too stupid to make sense of the words, and only hover around the source of the weird sounds?'
'What's "positing"?'
'Just go away.'
'If you didn't want me here---'
'Oh hell.'
'---you could just say so and---'
'I don't want you here; I have said so; you haven't left.'
'But you don't really mean it.'
'What the hell...what are you: you're too fat to be a stalker; elephants would hear you coming and hide.'
'Heh.'
'I'm not joking. I mean it. Go away. I'm trying to think.'
'About the book?'
'Yeah. About the book. Leave.'
'Do you think you can fix it?'
'Uh...yeah. "Once upon a time, aliens found out about Hutch; they attacked all of Earth in the vain hopes of exterminating him; but the joke was on them: Earth destroyed, Hutch followed them back to their homeworld and annoyed them into extinction; the end"; a story, by me.'
'Do I get to be, like, a commando, or something?'
'There's a flaw in the universe: your stupidity shouldn't cause me pain.'
Jessica came out the door, lighting a cigarette and seeing Hutch. 'Go back inside.'
'How come.'
'Because I'm on break, and I don't want to see you when I don't have to.'
'I don't have to go inside though,' he said.
'Did you pay your bill yet?'
'No?'
'Then you have to wait inside, or else you're a dine'n'dash.'
Hutch pointed at me. 'He didn't pay his bill yet.'
'His card's on file,' she said, looking at me and squinting slightly to show that she wasn't serious.
'That's discrimination.'
She blew smoke at him. 'Are you suing us over it?'
'I could.'
She looked at me. 'Tell'im.'
A couple months earlier, I'd overexplained something to a guy threatening to sue the restaurant over something, knowing a little about it; she'd seen that; Hutch hadn't. 'If there's an active lawsuit, the defendants would be advised to cut all communications with the plaintiff; you could sue but, as the suit was ongoing, you'd be a fool to eat here, and they'd be fools to let you. If you wanna sue, leave now, go home, get a lawyer, and come back from nine to five to serve papers.'
'I didn't say I was suing.'
'Then go back inside,' she said, 'before I call the police and tell them you left without paying your bill.'
He moped for a second, staring at his feet, then went back in.
'I hate that guy,' she said.
'Yup.'
'How's the book going.'
'It's not. I think I'm dropping it.'
'That's the alien thing?'
'Yeah. It was.'
'That sucks. I liked it.'
'Aliens don't exist,' I said, 'At least, not in any applicable way. They wouldn't attack the planet.'
'So? It's still a neat idea. I'd attack if I saw a gameshow.'
'You're not an alien.'
'How do you know. I could be an alien in disguise, sent ahead to, like, see what you people eat.'
'Not bad.'
'Gonna use it in the book?'
'Nope. But it's not bad.'
'So, CokeGirl,' she asked, 'How serious is that. She's been coming in with you for close to a year now, right?'
'I guess.'
'You're all hooked up?'
'Oh. Kinda. Why.'
'That's cool. I was just asking.'
'Not telling me why?'
'You know why,' she said; and she was right.
'Ah.'
'My fault: I shoulda said something when you were available.'
'Yeah.'
'If you'd even have gone for it.'
'Maybe.'
'Just maybe?'
'Last time I was available, I didn't really know anything about you.'
She frowned decisively. 'That's the point of hooking up: to know something about someone. If that fails, you move on.'
'I suppose so.'
'You know me now though. So?'
'So I'm not available.'
'You will be. Eventually. Probably. Still interested? If you ever were.'
I caught her wrist, moving her cigarette out of the way, and kissed her on the forehead. 'Maybe. If I ever was.'
'Cool.'
I finished my cigarette and threw it into the carpark. 'Anyway,' I said, not intending to say much else. Then I went back inside.
Once upon a midnight dreary, there I sat like Denis Leary, over coffee, pondering a halfwrit text of bullshit lore: aliens invading Terra due to quotes from Yogi Berra---mumblings like a nickel ain't worth a dime anymore. Called to Earth by talkshows: Donahue and Dinah Shore. Only this, and nothing more.
Quoth the maven: 'The hell with it.'
'The hell with writing it?' Leslie asked, 'Or the hell with giving up.'
'Nevermore,' said I.
She deflated, leaning against the wall and shaking her head. 'Then what are we doing here. What are you writing instead. They're gonna want something by the end of the year. And you had this one all figured out.'
'Part of figuring it out was figuring out that it was stupid.'
'So...!' She paused for a couple seconds. 'There's no way you can fix it?'
'Even if I can fix it, I can't trick myself into thinking it's a good idea.'
'It is a good idea. Look. Let's take it as read that aliens exist, and are looking for a reason to invade.'
'Stupid.'
'Fine. But it's established. Whether you're talking about the Tommyknockers or that stupid thing in the nineties with the locusts---'
'"Independence Day".'
'Yeah. "Welcome to Earf". Look: People want aliens to invade. This idiot' [HippyGuy, behind her] 'would probably tell you that the Egyptians wanted them to invade---'
'The Egyptians traded knowledge and resources with the visitors,' he lied.
'Okay?' Leslie asked, having proved her point through the spurious use of a moron, 'You don't have to explain that aliens exist to invade; you only have to explain why your aliens chose to invade. And you have. They saw people as people see people, which everyone capable of reading a book will identify with: overweight, undersmart dancing chimps on television begging to be exterminated. You've established that. The rest is just writing out the more realistic reactions to that event, and ultimately deciding who wins and why.'
'Which in its way just makes me another dancing chimp,' I said.
'You can't hate the book that much. Not all of it, anyway. If there's part of it you hate, do that thing---well, one of the two things you do: delete everything after and including that point and rewrite it, or just ignore it until you've got some excuse for making it work anyway.'
'I'm never happy with that. It's like getting caught lying about something, and lying again to cover it up.'
'But you don't get caught. You're the only one who knows it's a lie. I get it: you're a perfectionist; you want it to be perfect, even when you know it can't be; that's what makes you so good. But no one else notices it, even when it's not perfect. When was the last time you saw a negative review get close to the imperfections you worry about.'
'Um....'
'Never. I mean: isn't that itself a factor of the book? That people are on average so unimportant that they'll slam those who are? That an alien might wonder why a literary critic gets to whimper about a book when he's never written anything himself?'
'A little.'
'So do that. Hit them with a preemptive strike. Dare them to complain about one more book by a guy who's written dozens when they've written dick. You know that thing you do, to test them: adding a line somewhere in the middle you can ask them about, publicly, on your site, to show that most of your detractors have never even read the book? Do that, but subtly enough that even those who do read the whole book will overlook it. Then out them on your blogue when the barrage dies down. "For those reading both the book and the reviews slamming it, notice that no one ever noticed..." whatever. Hell: do that, and people who haven't read or even bought the book will go out and look for your little easteregg.'
'Probably.'
'So, you've got the idea, and a good hundred pages written, and you know where it's going next. Whatever problems you're hung up on, you can fix them. Even if you can't, it'll be good enough that no one will see the problems; they'll focus on things which aren't problems, and you'll know better. Okay?'
I shrugged.
'Okay. Then I'm gonna go get a cigarette while you think about it without one.' And she left.
I reopened Untitled2009 and stared at it a bit. Maybe more than a bit. Probably for a couple minutes, reading through to the end of what I'd got typed out to date.
'Ooh,' came a familiarish voice from behind and to my right, 'We're all gonna die!'
I looked to the source. 'Oh hi.'
I won't name names, since we've known each other long enough and well enough that we don't use names anymore---at some point, you just stop trying to impress each other with that sort of ability; I will say that, if I mentioned his name, you'd probably know it: he's the lead singer for a band you've probably seen all over your kids' TShirts.
'That's it? "Oh hi"? I totally snuck up on you.'
'You've gone deaf onstage, Rockstar.' He hates it when I call him that, since it's true.
'And you've gone blind at the laptop, Novelist. Check the new tats.'
'I saw them,' I said, 'I just didn't care.'
'You're no fun anymore.'
'I get that a lot. I'm actually about to delete this book.'
'Oh. Hang on then. Page...what; scroll down a bit. Yeah. Page Ninety-seven, and you're deleting it? You fucked up in ninety-seven pages?'
'I've got aliens invading because they saw daytime talkshows through satellite cable.'
'That's, uh...stupid.'
'Yeah.'
'I like it; but it's stupid. Of course, I just like stupid.'
'So, wait: what are you doing here. Are you guys in town or something?'
'Oh hell no. Just me. Couldn't take it anymore.' He fell into Leslie's seat. 'They booked us for, let's see...three dates in Tokyo, then the hell over in Paris, of all places, London, and then Rome. All in a week. Six shows in seven days. I got the hell outta there. Came here. The rest of the guys are...I dunno: probably still in Rome.'
'Trying to get fired?'
'A little. Mostly trying to remind the label who works for who. If they wanna get weird about this, I can wait out the contract and take up Sony or someone next time.'
'Sony from George Michael's days, or Sony who can't make a decent PlayStation anymore.'
'It's an example. Other labels are making noise too.'
'Well, okay.'
'Doesn't mean much,' he said, 'The others all suck too. It's just the industry. Well, you know: you do all the work; you're the one everyone knows; you get a couple cents for every dollar they bring in. It's bullshit.'
'At least you've got roadies and engineers to pay for; my team is a laptop and some software.'
'Oh damn...I was gonna ask what you thought of someone, then I forgot...people have been whispering about a book lately, like when Manson did "Long, Hard Road out of Hell". Some idiot thinks my life up to and including going pro is a commodity now.'
'It probably is.'
'Well, maybe. But I was gonna ask what you thought of the people pushing for that. Also, lawyers and agents aside, how open are you to helping to ghostwrite it.'
'Ah. Um...depends how full of shit it is. I was there, you know.'
'It would be pretty honest; that's half the reason I wanted to talk to you about it. And you've kinda done it before: that thing a few years ago where you based a guy on me.'
'Loosely. And unofficially.'
'Sure. But you nailed me. You had me saying shit I've said, which you never heard me say. You'd be the guy to give me things to say in a history I've totally forgotten.'
'I wouldn't have to do that,' I said, 'I remember what you said.'
'Even better. Look: just, keep it in mind; I didn't bring any paperwork or anything. But the job's yours.'
'I'll keep it in mind.'
'Cool. So what's up. You never call; you never EMail me.'
'I did call: your number had been disconnected---'
'I lose more phones in hotel rooms....'
'And...I think I EMailed you. Maybe I didn't. Have you still got that thing at HotmailDotCom?'
'Yeah. I'll check it and look for you. Or just EMail me---how bout I EMail you and we pick it up from there. I threw my phone in the Themes, so I haven't got a number right now; I'll let you know when I get a new one.'
'Okay. Or, just---here: tattoo this.' I brought up my number on my phone and showed it to him; he found a Sharpie in his pocket and wrote it on his arm between images.
'Cool,' he said, 'So---but you're deleting the alienbook?'
'It just annoys me.'
'Before it's done? Weird. I'd get it if you had to sing it every night for six nights in a week.'
'You've trashed songs halfway through writing them. I know: I've got old notebooks with my stuff on two hundred and ninety pages, and your stuff in your handwriting in the back.'
'Really? Wait: which songs.'
'I dunno; I'd have to look at them; it's been a few years.'
'Figures. You've probably got all the good stuff I've been trying to remember since last century. EBay it and see what they'll give you; I'll double it, get them back, record them, and make fifty million bucks.'
'Probably. A couple of those Spirals are books I never released; I should probably do the same thing.'
'You should, if they're the ones I'm thinking of. You had that one with the...the dragons, or something. You've never released that, have you?'
'The...oh. Nope. That one did suck.'
'Yeah,' he reiterated, 'But I like stupid.'
'So, what are you doing here. You just walked in, and---'
'Actually, I've been taking cabs from place to place I thought you might be. Then I saw your car here. You're still driving the "Millennium Falcon"?'
'Show me an eight cylindre made this century which doesn't look too stupid to drive.'
'The new Corvettes are okay. Almost bought one last month.'
'Maybe. But I like flipup headlights.'
'Well, yeah.'
'Is the taxi still out there?'
'Um...yup. I should probably go pay the guy.' He jumped up and passed Leslie on her way back in.
'Was that...?' she began to ask when I started nodding.
'It's a long story. One I might be writing, apparently.'
'You said you knew each other.'
'Right.'
'Why the hell would you know---oh wait: you knew each other as kids, didn't you.'
'Yeah. Back in the eighties. Dumb luck we each went off and did the same job with a different audience.'
'Actually, that's totally cool,' she said, looking at Duma Key, 'Like in "It": everyone from the scene going out and becoming massively successful. Was Pennywise involved?'
'After a fashion. The town sucked enough that Pennywise woulda been better; everyone living there was angry enough to go out and do something just to complain about it. Apparently, that turned out to be a trend.'
Rockstar bounced back to the table, stopping as he saw Leslie in his seat. 'Oh. Hello.'
'Leslie: Tiny Tim.'
'Leslie,' he said, and then, 'Dean Koontz.'
'Nice,' I said.
'No worse than Tiny Fucking Tim.'
'We could debate that,' I said.
'John Saul?'
'Stop trying.'
'So, am I okay to sit here, or---'
'Oh!' Leslie moved over, making room, 'Go ahead.'
'Cool. You know: your guy's deleting his alienbook.'
'Yeah,' she said, 'We were just talking about that.' She looked directly at me. 'About how stupid it would be to delete it, because it's so good.'
'Is it? I just saw Page Ninety-seven. It looked...bookish.'
'Did he tell you what it's about?'
'Uh...aliens attacking Jerry Springer? Maybe not really.'
'Aliens manage to see television as broadcast via satellite,' she explained, 'beginning with---did you keep the thing about the VietNam War? I remember you were wondering whether the satellites were in place in time for that. Anyway: more importantly, they see everything from Geraldo Rivera getting hit by a chair to the onslaught of bullshit available on a thousand channels today, judge the planet by that alone, and attack before we can get out into the universe to spread this virus.'
Rockstar looked at me in something like horror. 'You're deleting that. Are you fucking retarded? No, fuck that: you write it, or I will.'
'There are other problems with it,' I said.
'Fuck it. That alone is a story. If something else doesn't work, delete that, not the book itself.'
'That's what I've been saying,' Leslie added.
'It's not deleted yet,' I said, 'I'm still thinking about it.'
'You just do this, don't you,' he said, 'You did this in the beginning. That first book when you were seventeen. How many times did I talk you out of deleting that halfway through.'
'Oh really,' Leslie said, overinterested.
'Uh...that was a different book. Kids trying to make sense of rich parents destroyed by a nineteen-eighty-seven marketcrash and aliens attacking in twenty twelve are a little...different.'
'Yeah, but your process was the same. I do remember some stuff. Like the day "Less than Zero" came out and you were convinced you'd just got all scooped.'
'It was similar.'
'And there was that whole thing about the one guy's car?'
'The Banshee. Toldya that was a mistake.'
'It wasn't a mistake because they never built it; it was a mistake because your story was set in eighty-seven, when they hadn't even shelved it yet.'
'There was a Banshee?' Leslie asked.
I took a breath. 'When I wrote the book---and, yeah: I was seventeen---I was thinking that, if they made a film, they'd have to get a Banshee if I put it in the story. And then, you know, maybe I could have it afterward. Like I knew how films were made back then. I barely get it now.'
'Okay: there you go,' Rockstar said, 'You finish this book, and I'll personally go to Pontiac and make them make you a Banshee. Deal?'
'You haven't got enough. And I don't want one anymore. Much.'
'I'll buy you a car. Name it. Sky's the limit. Bugatti. One of those Lamborghini raptor things they only made, like, a dozen of.'
'You'd spend six or seven figures on a car, and give it to me, just to get me to finish a book you've read one page of.'
'I'd spend six or seven figures on a car and give it to you if you were holding the last doughnut captive: I'm stupid.'
'I'll think about it.'
'You should. Meanwhile: keep writing.'
'You want me to sit here writing a book at you after you flew here from Rome.'
'Why not. Besides: I should probably get outta here before wikipedia reports me dead. Call in and surrender so I can go play rockstar tomor---tonight in...whatever; Amsterdam, I think. Which would have its perks, of course.' He cackled, standing up and pointing at me. 'Write the book, Novelist: I know where you live.' He tapped my phone number on his arm and wandered toward the payphones in the lobby.
'So, he's insane,' Leslie said.
'You have no idea.'
'Was that really Tiny Tim?' Hutch asked.
I ignored him and stared at the flashing cursor again for a while.
'At the risk of being topically ironic,' Chuck said, appearing to Leslie's left, 'is it cool if I join you guys?'
It was 12.15 and I'd spent about five minutes typing relative nothingness into the laptop, knowing I'd likely delete it after reading it over: Angie's insertion into the city following the strike, something like Snake Plissken's invasion of Manhattan in Escape from New York, minus any real sense of danger. 'Just you?' I asked.
'That's kinda the point,' Chuck said, sliding into the booth as Leslie moved in to give him room, 'I'm starting to miss the emo kids.'
I looked over to 73: Hutch was turned round in his seat to face us like a deplorable dog discarded to the rear window of a stationwagon in its final trip to the vet to be put down for some latestage congenital besetment; I slid slightly to my right, more fully blocking access to the theoretical fourth seat of the booth, maintaining eye contact; after a few seconds, pouting, he dropped back into position facing George across the emptiness of Table 74.
On the XM, someone thought it would be a good idea to play Kajagoogoo's Too Shy, getting me to smirk at the ceiling. 'I blame these guys,' I said.
'The band?' Leslie asked.
'The turning point,' I explained, 'Kajagoogoo trying to set Bromleypunk to actual music, beginning a trend leading to The Cure and every emotastic whimperfest since. It helped that Chris Hamill looked like Faramir from "The Lord of the Rings" put on permanent press.'
Leslie blinked. 'Have I mentioned that, when you go all arcane in a book, where people can stop reading and look things up, it's bad enough; but when you do it live you sound like a sarcastic encyclopaedia?'
'If not, you have now,' I said, 'So it's covered.'
'Sad,' Chuck said, 'is that, at this point, emo's about the only music left. Since we're not counting rap. And then emo's just covering Phil Collins and Kate Bush, at least in the radio scene. I'm not sure I've heard anything in here tonight recorded this millennium.'
I shrugged, pointing a thumb doorward. 'Rockstar's still at it; you just wouldn't hear his stuff in a restaurant. Unless he's sitting there singing it to disturb people.'
'True,' Chuck said.
'I remember in nineteen ninety-four when I heard Alice Cooper's "It's Me" at a Perkins; I actually checked to make sure I wasn't listening to a Discman. On the other hand, someone did play Korn a few minutes ago; so, you never know.'
'XM doesn't count,' Chuck said, 'It's not the preprogrammed loop approved by Corporate. Restaurants are just starting to use it because it's cheaper than the CDI setup, and tends not to advertise their competitors between songs and traffic reports.'
'Science marches on,' I said, staring at the screen. Then, thinking again about Plissken: 'Huh.'
'Huh?' Chuck asked.
'Nothing. I just realised something funny. About a year ago, I was looking at IMDBDotCom and wound up at "Escape from New York", back in those idiotic messageboards I should never look at---brainless, CapsLocked, illiterate morons all positing what they misidentify as theories, having never gone to school. One thread, in the days leading up to the election, was asking whether the president, English though he was, was a democrat or a republican. It just occurred to me: he couldn't have been either.'
'Because he was English?'
'Because the whole plotline involved him returning from a summit about fusion. No republican would regard fusion as anything but only a theory; also, he was all about expecting others to save him, then disregarded those who did. On the other hand, he was apparently in favour of fusion, where democrats would think of fusion as nuclear power designed to globalwarm the universe faster than they thought the LHC would cook it. And he can't have been a libertarian, or Manhattan wouldn't have been a prison at all.'
'Huh.'
'Or it was just a fairly stupid film which shoulda ended halfway through, once Plissken had secured the president, neutralising the danger of sending in helicopters to extract him.'
'Hey,' Chuck said, squinting, 'yeah.'
'Never show a film to a writer,' I warned.
'They're remaking it, you know.'
'No they're not,' I said, 'They might be making "Escape from New York"; but I can just about promise that it'll be nothing but a quick, boring Rambo film sent directly to disc. Technically, they remade "Day of the Dead", somehow taking arguably the most intelligent of Romero's five films and turning it into "Aliens" with a touch of "V". That's "Visitors", not "Vendetta". That went straight to disc too.'
Sadly, HippyGuy caught that last bit. 'Yeah: "V for Visitors" was stupid, except for Willie; "V for Vendetta" was good though: Guy Fawkes.'
'Why do people idolise Guy Fawkes,' I asked, 'What's admirable about a largely failed attempt to replace one theocracy with another. "Vendetta" was more meaningless still, serving only to give boring people a new mask following Michael Myers in the seventies, Jason Voorhees in the eighties, and Ghostface in the nineties. Whee: Anonymous---none of us are as illiterate as all of us.'
'Huh?' HippyGuy asked.
'None is,' I said, 'None being a singular quantity, the verb tense is "none is", not "none are".'
'Anonymous?' he asked.
'I'm shocked and amazed that you don't know,' I said.
Hutch slunk over, dragging a chair from one of the tables and positioning it at the edge of 71. Before he could sit down and annoy us, Jessica grabbed the chair and replaced it to its table.
'Firehazard,' she said, grabbing my coffeepot to go refill in the back, 'Go back to your table.'
Somewhat dazed, Hutch did.
I looked at Leslie. 'Is it cool if I totally do her?'
'Nope.'
'You're no fun,' I said, staring at the cursor. And at the pagecount in the lower right. I was a hundred pages into a book I'd stopped caring about; worse: a hundred pages into a novella---maybe 35,000 words---maybe less. Microsoft Word was set to autosave every few minutes, and I'd probably saved Untitled2009.doc manually since last altering anything; but I hit ControlS again, just to feel like I was actively doing something with the laptop.
Seeing me actively do something with the laptop, Chuck asked: 'Are you working on the alien thing, or the new thing.'
'Both,' I said, 'And neither.'
'So you're sitting here not smoking.'
'Pretty much.'
'Like anyone's gonna buy a book about an alien invasion,' HippyGuy blathered. Misidentifying him as a peacenik, I ignored him, figuring he'd shut up without a stimulus. Optimistic me. 'Nobody would believe that the visitors are warmongers like people are.'
'HG Wells,' I said, 'September the twenty-first eighteen sixty-six to August the thirteenth nineteen forty-six, wrote "The War of the Worlds" in eighteen ninety-eight. Apparently forgotten by Halloween nineteen thirty-eight when Orson Welles fooled approximately everyone with a radio into believing that Herbert George's fictional invasion was in fact occurring. Since nineteen thirty-eight, invasion literature, already common without aliens before the first world war, has remained popular.' Having stashed a copy of The War of the Worlds on the laptop for reference, I opened it quickly and searched for dodo to bring up a paragraph. 'Wells justified the Martian invasion with "before we judge them too harshly, we must remember what ruthless and utter destruction our own species has wrought, not only upon animals, such as the vanished Bison and the Dodo, but upon its own inferior races. The Tasmanians, in spite of their human likeness, were entirely swept out of existence in a war of extermination waged by European immigrants, in the space of fifty years. Are we such apostles of mercy as to complain if the Martians warred in the same spirit". So. To reiterate: aliens, to whatever extent they might exist and know about Earth, being animals, are as likely as any other species to invade new lands.'
'Just because people invade doesn't mean animals invade,' he said.
'No. Animals invade because animals invade. That's the ecosystemic basis of natural selection: those animals better suited for a given environment will ultimately invade and replace its indigenous inhabitants. It's not personal; it's just how life works.'
'You're confusing animals with people,' he said, 'People invade over money and resources and religions and stuff; animals don't invade, but get pushed to new environments as people destroy them.'
'Uh, not really. People are animals; and animals have been invading new environments since about the time Earth cooled from magma.'
'Tell that to the passenger pigeon.'
'Find me one, and I will.'
'I can't. That's my point.'
'Good concession, then.'
'What. Humans drove them to extinction. They didn't drive humans to extinction.'
'They weren't superior. Maybe aliens would be.'
'Aliens wouldn't drive anything to extinction.'
'Oh,' I said, uninterested.
'They don't care about money. They don't trash environments to make a buck.'
'Are we on a new topic now?'
'Nope. It's the same topic. Humans destroy things for money. As long as there's more money, they'll keep destroying things. Now we're destroying the oceans with offshore drilling to keep cars running for two or three more years.'
'We're destroying oceans on which we ship cars to other countries to keep them running for three years? You actually think people are that stupid? How do you destroy an ocean, anyway: are we talking about changing the physics allowing hydrogen to bond with oxygen?'
'I'm talking about killing fish.'
'Bears kill fish.'
'Not all of them.'
'Humans don't kill all of them either. And, unlike bears, humans put them back.'
'You can't put them back when you've poisoned the oceans.'
'You haven't established that the oceans are being poisoned.'
'You don't think oil leaking into the ocean will poison it?'
'I don't think it's done it yet. For millions of years oil's been leaking out of the seabeds into the open water. I don't see how adding a drill to the equation changes anything.'
'It changes a lot. It makes money.'
'So, your problem isn't with natural selection and extinction,' I said, 'but with money.'
'It's always about the money,' he said.
'Got any?'
'Huh?'
'Money,' I said, 'Got any?'
'Um, yeah?'
'A lot?'
'No?'
'Just checking.'
'Why's it matter if I've got money.'
'Keep backing into your corner, and you'll see.'
'Whatever,' he said.
'Oh: you're done? Good.' I went back to staring at the blinking cursor.
'So, you like paying three bucks a gallon?'
The question coming out of nowhere, I bothered to think about it for a second. 'Apparently.'
'Oh, so you're stupid.'
'I don't do things I don't like to do. If I didn't like spending three bucks a gallon, I wouldn't do it.'
'Yeah. Then how would you get around.'
'Skateboard. Feet. Whatever.'
'That's stupid.'
'Is it? Damn. If only there were some alternative. Think anyone would go for some sort of motorised carriage to convey people and cargo from place to place?'
'What the hell are you talking about.'
'Cars,' I said, 'You've just identified a need and a market for cars. Fill it and make millions.'
'Oh sure: anything to get rich.'
'Define "rich",' I said.
'Six figures a year?'
'You're an idiot.'
'I'm an idiot because I don't wanna make millions making cars?'
'In part,' I said.
'So, you'd make millions making cars.'
'I'd make millions writing books.'
'You're not going to.'
'We'll let that be your little secret.'
'Like money proves anything.'
'It proves you can make money.'
'It proves you can get it,' he said, 'and keep it from everyone else.'
'No one else wants it,' I said, 'If they did, they'd go get some.'
'You think it's as easy to go make money as it is to just inherit it.'
'I don't think a significant fraction of a percentage of the rich inherited anything,' I said, 'I think ninety-nine point X percent of the rich started out with what you have or less, and built up whatever they have now.'
'Whatever.'
I went back to the laptop again.
'Nothing else to say?' he asked.
'I was devastated by your clever use of "whatever",' I said, 'Also: I didn't want to talk to you in the first place.'
'Too good for me because you make millions writing books?'
'It's a factor.'
'You're the reason we need a redistribution of wealth,' He said.
'And you're the reason we won't be having one.'
'What's that supposed to mean.'
'That the world is run by grownups. And we grownups are in no hurry to seek the economic advise of mendicants who, if they understood Thing One about economics, wouldn't be poor.'
'Who says I'm poor,' he challenged.
'You do. You have money, but not a lot; six figures is rich. Remember?'
'That doesn't mean I don't understand economics.'
'It's a strong indication.'
'Maybe I just don't have a need for the money.'
'Then go make it and give it away; redistribute it.'
'Whatever,' he said.
'I'm done talking to you,' I said, 'I've got a book to write, release, sell, make millions, and buy an oilrig as a taxshelter.'
Half past midnight. Smokebreak.
I was just putting my lighter back in my pocket when Leslie appeared.
'Chuck's watching the laptop,' she said.
I nodded. 'Of course, that doesn't prevent that idiot Hutch from sitting there by the time we get back.'
'He's busy talking to Captain Planet from his own table.'
'Captain Planet,' I echoed, 'What a stupid idea. The name alone is stupid. What the hell would Captain Planet do, anyway: command Private Industry? Meanwhile, he's subordinate to Major Destruction; even if he tries to go over Major Destruction's head, he runs into General Malaise. He's doomed.'
'You really do think too much.'
'Probably.'
'Y'know: your argument was a bit flawed,' she said, 'Poor people could understand economics; there could be other reasons why they're poor.'
'There's exactly one reason why people are poor, at least in this country,' I said, 'They spend more than they make.'
'Or they get robbed.'
'Same result. Make X: spend X or more: go broke; make X: spend less than X: have money.'
'What about people who don't make enough in the first place to live on.'
'No such animal,' I said, 'Not in the US, anyway. To the extent that people need bread and water to survive, and to the extent that a welfare state exists, you can't possibly go broke in this country while buying necessities. That said: you show me a perfectly destitute borderline homeless moron, and I'll show you his digital cable bill.'
'Well, yeah; but cable's...useful. Watch the right channels, learn stuff, apply it to making money.'
'So it's an investment,' I said, 'I'll buy that. I won't buy that an investment is necessary to survival. That cable isn't a writeoff is its own weirdness; but that one's not my fault.'
'It's not a writeoff because it's mostly the talkshows your aliens consider representative of the planet.'
'It's incidental,' I said, 'Cable notwithstanding, people order pizzas and buy videogames and---to be honest---buy books. If I write a book, and you buy it, you're either doing better than average for the planet, or you're an idiot wasting the money you should be saving for bread and water.'
'People don't wanna live on bread and water.'
'I don't agree that suicide should be a crime. Kill yourself and pray for reincarnation; maybe you'll come back as an heir to an empire.'
'Unrealistic,' she said.
'No more unrealistic than thinking it's my fault that you don't make enough for bread, water, and a Lexus leased for five years at loanshark rates.'
'Someone leasing a Lexus has good credit.'
'Yeah; that's its own mess.'
'What about someone just trying to maintain, like, a dying Datsun to get back and forth from work.'
'I don't know if you've heard about this yet, but driving is a privilege. If it were a right, it would be covered by welfare. Instead, we subsidise busses to get people lacking cars to and from the office. Though, granted, that doesn't work very well in practise.'
'So driving should be a right,' she said.
'I don't disagree. Owning and operating a horse was a right, functionally, since it was the common mode of transportation of its day, enforcing the right to travel; owning and riding a horse may be a right to this day---no one's really trying it. So, owning and operating a car, inasmuch as it's the new horse, probably should be a right; if it's not, then at minimum busses should run twenty-four hours and stop at every known intersection. Or---and I've seen this in places at times---if the bus isn't at a given place at a given time, you could call a cab, have it take you at least to the next functional bustop, and have the cabbie bill the city; I might go for that.'
'You should go into politics.'
'Yeah: waive my anonymity to help others; that sounds like me.' I tossed my cigarette into the carpark and went inside.
Chuck was sitting on the edge of his bench; he or Leslie had moved my backpack to the outside, probably assuming that Hutch wouldn't push it inward to sit down. So I pushed it inward to sit down.
'Saved you a seat,' he said.
'You didn't look at the book?'
'Why would I: it's not done, is it?'
'It's just weird. I'm used to people waiting for any opportunity to read what I've got so far.'
'I don't do that. I might read it when it's all there. If you don't give up on it.'
'I'm still working on that,' I said.
Leslie returned; Chuck moved inward for her.
'I was telling him he should run for office,' she told Chuck. He smirked, knowing I'd never do that.
HippyGuy not knowing I'd never do that: 'That's all we need: another neocon fucking the people over.'
'Boring,' I said.
'Welcome to the new America,' HippyGuy said, 'One guy works hard and pays all the taxes while another guy naps on a yacht and gets all the taxcuts.'
I looked at him for a second, loosely hoping he was joking. He didn't seem to be. 'Le'me see if I've got this,' I said, 'One guy makes fifty thousand a year, paying ten thousand---twenty percent---in taxes while the other makes five hundred thousand a year, paying forty percent---two hundred thousand---twenty times the taxes of the first guy, and you're whimpering that he might find a cheat dropping him down to only nineteen times the taxes?'
'He still ends up with more.'
'So, you want a system in which everyone makes forty thousand after taxes,' I said.
'It would be fair.'
'And, before taxes, everyone makes fifty?'
'Before taxes, some make less; taxes give them enough to end up with forty.'
'So, if you're making forty-one thousand, it's in your interests to cut it out and make only forty. If everyone else catches on, no one makes more than forty in the first place. Where's the money come from to punch up the guy making twenty a year to forty.'
'Like people are gonna be happy with stopping at forty.'
'I doubt it,' I said, 'That's the point. If anything I make beyond forty is taken away...let's drop this into terms you can understand. If you run up a hill and back, you get a dollar. If you do it forty thousand times in a year, you get forty thousand dollars. If you do it forty-one thousand times, you get forty thousand, because that last thousand goes to someone who only ran up the hill thirty-nine thousand times. Are you still gonna do it that extra thousand times?'
'Whatever.'
'If everyone only ran up the hill forty thousand times or less,' Chuck said, 'They'd change it to thirty thousand to make up for the people only running twenty thousand times.'
'Maybe,' I said, 'The fact is that the government being something of a holding corporation make enough before taxation today to cover the total budget for nineteen ninety-eight. Taxation is gratuitous, fuelling the practise of spending what they get and getting what they spend. You want a scenario I've considered for a book? One year, everyone refuses to pay taxes, forcing the government to decide whether to live without the taxes, proving it can do that, or to arrest everyone for evasion, proving they can do that. Either way, they'd be doomed: that they're able to operate with or without taxes would prove that taxation is supplemental at best.'
'Is that true?' Chuck asked, 'That they make enough before taxes for nineteen ninety-eight.'
'Apparently. I've seen the numbers on it. I'm not sure precisely where they get the money---postage stamps and whatever other products they sell, I suppose. But, evidently, the IRS exist pretty much entirely to pay for shit the congress have thought of buying in the last dozen years.'
'So, you're not a neocon,' HippyGuy said, 'You're a libertarian.'
'Well, yeah: I don't makebelieve deities,' I said, 'Actually, no: I'm not a libertarian; I don't care that much. I'm more of an anarchist: if and when the system fails, it'll be zerosum; mankind can die out and some other species can have the planet.'
'If we don't kill them all first,' HippyGuy whined.
'You haven't killed HIV yet,' I said, 'Or cancer. Or mosquitoes. Or any other organism no one's lobbying to preserve.'
'HIV was invented to kill black people,' he lied, 'And mosquitoes aren't in any danger.'
'Your second statement supporting my very point pales against the batshit lunacy of your first.'
'Enjoy your sleep,' HippyGuy said.
'Boring,' I said, 'Tell someone not stringing together a hundred thousand words in an operational order so he can nap on a yacht making royalties to the unfairness of a hardworking buttonpushing chimp wageslaving at McDonald's: I'm busy flaunting my evil education and superiority.'
'Whatever.'
Jessica stopped by my table, rattling my coffeepot to test its emptiness. 'More?'
'Sure', I said, 'Thanks.'
'You still okay with coffee?'
'Oh. Actually...le'me think for a minute.'
'Okay. I'll get this first.' She walked off with the coffeepot.
I'd stashed the menus we'd got in the beginning behind the salt and sugar and dessert card, against the wall beneath the window. I reclaimed one and looked it over quickly before handing it to Leslie. 'Since I'm not financially restricted to bread and water,' I told Chuck.
'You're not on a yacht, either,' he said.
'There are lots of reasons for that,' I said, 'the most important being disinterest.'
'Another reason,' HippyGuy intruded, 'is that I'm not buying a copy of your book. You won't have enough for a yacht.'
'You shouldn't buy a copy of the book,' I told him, 'That's what I've been telling you. If you haven't got enough money, don't waste what you've got on luxuries like novels. If you have enough to buy a novel for forty bucks, don't whimper about the redistribution of wealth, because you won't like the outcome if you ever get it.'
'That does seem like a lot,' Chuck said.
'Oh, it is,' I acknowledged, 'But, again, it's not really up to me: you buy a book for forty bucks, I make a dollar or two. And, really, it's just what things cost. A hardcover is six hours at minimum wage; a videogame is, what, fifty bucks? Sixty? Nine hours at minimum wage. If you can blow an entire shift at minimum wage on a videogame, still eating and making rent and all, you're fairly wealthy in global terms. You're not making three cents per twenty hour shift assembling Nikes in a jungle somewhere, that three cents being more than most of your neighbours make per day.'
'They make more than three cents, 'Chuck said, 'Three dollars maybe.'
'I know,' I said, 'I was being sarcastical. But, whatever they make, given the cost of living in those countries, they've got the purchasing power of someone making five figures here in the US.'
Jessica returned with my coffee. 'All set?'
'I can has cheeseburger?' I asked, 'Actually: double cheeseburger, please; fries; and don't cook it so much as threaten it with a hairdryer.'
She grinned. 'Anything for you two?'
Chuck shrugged. 'I'm okay.'
'Have you got taco salads this late?' Leslie asked.
'Nope,' Jessica said, 'But we can do it. Chicken or beef.'
'Beef. Please.'
'Beef,' Jessica said, 'And double cheese, hairdried, with fries. Got it.' She took the menu from Leslie and went back to the kitchen again.
For reference:
A quick and somewhat loose approximation of the layout.
The large rectangles, each numbered, are the tabletops, whether they're booths or standalone tables. The smaller rectangles are the benches in the booths. The circles are the chairs at each standalone table. All of which may seem really meaningless if you're listening to an AudioBook. If so, refer to the diagram included somewhere in the packaging. If you lack a diagram, stop stealing my stuff on MP3.
Not included in the diagram are the kitchen and register and everything else in the excluded half of the building allowing it to look more square than rectangular from orbit. By dumb luck, Table 71 being north of Table 61, the map is orientated correctly; so the kitchen, its preparatory walkway with the coffee and soda and salad dressing and all spanning roughly from Table 61 to Table 21 and the grille and whatever else behind that, were west of the actual dining area---left, on the map, and yet not hiding back on Page 98. South of the kitchen and west of Table 11 was the register; somewhere west of that, I think, was the manager's office, wherein he played Minesweeper all night until or unless he discovered an excuse to come out and suck at everyone.
This may be relevant to understanding the effort the twit had to have put into leaving his office, entering the kitchen, sucking, and being the one to deliver our food, including my cheeseburger charred into mummification.
'There you go,' he announced, sliding this unfortunate burnvictim up against my laptop with a profound cloink, then asking obtusely: 'Catsup?'
I squinted at all that remained of the tragic firebombing of the lesserknown nazi village of Cheeseburg. 'What did you do to it,' I asked.
'Federal law requires us to cook meat and poultry minimum well,' he lied.
'Yeah,' I said, getting my phone ready and aiming it at him, 'One more time. Why does my cheeseburger look curiously like Icarus?'
He cleared his throat. 'Because Sir federal law requires us to cook all meat and poultry medium well.'
'Which one.'
'All of them: burgers, chicken strips---'
'Which law.'
'Ah. That would be federal requirements---'
'If it's a federal law,' I told him, 'It'll be in the US Code. Is it for example before or after eleven point four thirty-two: impersonating a public servant, including but not limited to the impersonation of counsel for the state; that is...,' I said slowly as I brought up the law itself on the laptop, '"A person commits a misdemeanour if he or she falsely pretends to hold a position in the public service with purpose to induce another to submit to such pretended official authority or otherwise to act in reliance upon that pretence to his or her prejudice". It must be later than Section Eleven, huh.'
'I'm not---' he began.
I cut him off: 'Let's not go over the list of things you're not; I'm just asking for the sake of millions of fans which federal law, which itself must be in the US Code, which I can look up here and now, outlaws undercooked meat. Got any idea?'
'Look: I'm just upholding corporate policy.'
'No: upholding corporate policy would be telling me that corporate policy above and beyond compulsory law disallowed undercooked meat; impersonating a lawyer and misinforming the public of federal statutes would be a different activity.'
'I'm sorry you feel that way.'
'And I'm sorry you defrauded on our established contract, offered, considered, and accepted, whereupon a representative of your uncommonly misinformative corporation had agreed heretofore to prepare and deliver an undercooked double cheeseburger with fries. The catsup was a loophole; we can discuss the availability of malt vinegar for the fries at a later time.'
'If my server contracted to undercook a burger, then she's fired.'
'Cool. I assume the employee handbook explicitly and in no uncertain terms relayed the information that undercooked burgers were to be denied at point of sale, so she'll have no reason to sue you for many millions of dollars.'
The bald parts of his head, sweating now, resembled a shallow oilspill; astonishingly, HippyGuy never noticed and called the EPA to have the guy arrested for murdering dustmites. 'Well,' he decided, 'Thanks for stopping in; please don't return; I'll comp your bill and inform the police that you're now trespassing.'
'I disagree,' I said, pulling up the restaurant's website, 'Ahem. "Unlimited refills"---and some idiot trademarked that---"on coffee, tea, and softdrinks, for as long as you enjoy your stay". My enjoyment has only just begun. Whether you bill me for my coffee has no pertinent effects on my ability, having entered and been seated amidst reasonable expectations of delightful service, to hang out enjoying my experience until hell freezes over.'
'We could debate that point,' he said, nearly sounding intelligent.
'We could, and I'd love to: another burst of footage recorded to a secured server illustrating a shiftmanager misrepresenting law and corporate policy for hours and hours. I can add a laughtrack if no one in our studio audience happens to get the joke.'
'Okay, look: what if I go get you your burger the way you want it, don't fire the waitress, and just forget the whole thing.'
'Then you'll be back at par: doing the job you're supposed to be doing isn't precisely doing me a favour. Do your job, and, what I'll do is upload what we have here, showing without prejudice that you're a complete and total idiot, along with the happy ending that you grew the hell up and stopped pretending---for however a fleeting moment---that you were better than any customer ever to come in here, let alone me. We good?'
He said nothing for three seconds---a lifetime on a phonecam; then: 'I'll have your burger remade.' And he left.
'Thankalord!' George called.
'Don't thank me,' I said, 'Just doing my job.'
I didn't need a laughtrack after all. Once the commotion died down, I killed the recording and sent it to my site.
The downside to extorting someone into doing what you tell him to do is that he tends to take things literally. Meaning that my hairdried cheeseburger may in fact have been entirely raw. The cheese was unmelted and cold. The meat, which I now know was maybe seventy percent lean, was therefore thirty percent unheated fat. It was like ChapStick pâté. 'Seller too literal,' I told Leslie and Chuck, 'Would not buy again.'
'That's really sick,' Leslie said, watching me eat this cold lump of raw cow.
'Want some?' I asked.
She frowned at her taco salad, apparently debating whether to try eating any more of it.
'Meat is murder,' HippyChick lied, no longer content to sit quietly interfacing her aura.
'Mo is mot,' I said, chewing the raw meat to the minimal extent that it needed to be chewed at all before swallowing most of it, the buttery residue of fat lining my throat---possibly to this day---notwithstanding.
'How can you eat that,' HippyGuy asked, probably rhetorically; but what would I know.
'I'm evolved,' I told him.
'Did you know,' HippyChick offered, 'that the only reason meat has flavour is that, when the animal is murdered, uric acid spreads to every cell in its body? You're eating cowpiss. You're okay with that?'
'Agooawy,' I said, still eating, 'I gig gow gad.' Swallowing, I reiterated: 'I did know that, actually; except that, by definition, the only animals able to be murdered are humans. And only by other humans. And also only by other humans convicted of the crime of murder above more boring forms of homicide like manslaughter in a court of law. That aside: yeah, it's uric acid; I know.'
'Just because it's not illegal doesn't make it not murder,' HippyChick said.
'Actually, that's exactly what it does. All people presumed innocent until proved guilty in a court of law, no suspect can be regarded guilty of any crime without due process, including the right to trial as defended by counsel to be judged by a jury of his peers. It's like science, except you don't get paid for it.'
'So it's not murder until you've gone to court and been found guilty?' HippyChick asked, 'That's stupid.'
'That's America. Don't like it? Get out. You're too late for the Soviet Union, but a number of Asian countries still regard suspects as guilty until executed.'
'Execution is murder too,' HippyGuy said.
'Not in point of legal fact,' I said, 'Again, prior to trial and conviction for the charge of murder, an unresolved homicide can't be promoted to murder. There are other factors: defence, combat, et cetera. For my next amazing trick: soldiers killed in Iraq---or anywhere else---aren't murdered either; in legal terms, they're actually destroyed, being military equipment.'
'This isn't about laws,' HippyChick said---her version apparently of whatever, 'It's about ethics.'
'Which are subjective, open to individual interpretation and proclivities, and as unenforceable as the equally bullshit counterargument that abortion is murder.'
'Abortion isn't murder because it's the woman's choice,' HippyGuy said.
'Dying in Iraq isn't murder because it's the soldier's choice,' I said.
'Tell that to Cindy Sheehan's son,' HippyChick said in the same tone in which HippyGuy had told me to tell things to extinct passenger pigeons.
'Think it would help?' I asked, 'I'd heard he was dead. Of course, there are those who'd tell me I could tell him anyway, through prayer or something. So let's try that. "Hey, Dead Kid: Hi; heard you reenlisted, as an adult, legally allowed to make your own decisions and came down with a bit of death fighting for your country; your country being not my country, I officially have no opinion on the matter, but I suspect that a number of Americans appreciate your sacrifice; PS, if you're able, please haunt your mother until or unless she learns to stop lying that the army killed her child, on the offchance you're not already a bit insulted by the defamatory implication that you were a fucking toddler; amen and pass the ammunition". Okay?'
'It's all a joke to you, isn't it,' HippyGuy said, trying to look...maybe amazed, and maybe offended; mostly, he just looked stupid and perplexed, as always.
'Most of it; yeah.'
'How do you even live with yourself.'
'Practise,' I said.
'So, you don't think it's wrong to send soldiers to their death,' he said; he didn't even try to make it a question.
'That's not really the issue. The issue is whether it's wrong to call all forms of death "murder". And, according to the dictionary, it is. But, here's a question for you: is it wrong to let people kill themselves?'
'What's that got to do with anything.'
'At least as much as your question about sending soldiers to die.'
'I don't see how,' he defied.
'Answer the question, and you will.'
'Okay. Sure. If someone makes the rational decision to end his or her life, then who are we to stand in his or her way.'
'Yeah. First: this goofy "hizoror" pronoun? Let's not. The human animal is as a matter of simple convention indicated by male pronouns, just like ships are indicated by female ones; if you're not talking about some hypothetical ship as a "heeorshee", you're being at best hypocritical and at worst hypocritical and also illiterate.'
'Whatever.'
'Yeah. Now. Does the ethical allowance for someone to kill himself change if he happens to be in the army. The UCMJ aside, has a soldier got the same ethical right to die as a guy riddled with cancer in a nursing home. Yes or no.'
'Well, yeah; but---'
'I'm good with "yeah". Now. Is anyone in the army, right now today, who never wanted to be there. Yes or no.'
'Yeah. Anyone who was drafted by the fascist---'
'Name one. And, before mistaking yourself for someone smart, remember that you're naming someone in the army today who was drafted.'
'Well, just...anyone who was drafted into the army.'
'So, those guys drafted in, like, nineteen seventy-three who for the last thirty-odd years have totally forgotten not to reenlist every few years.'
'Well, I mean...okay, but....'
'Right. So. No one in the army, today, is there against at least his recent will. I'll allow that a few guys might have realised since joining in the last few years that the army's really not for them; but I won't pretend that anyone drafted in the seventies is still in the service, who doesn't want to be there.'
'But you're agreeing that people joining in the last couple years might not want to be there,' he said.
'Yeah. And that's a pity. It's a pity they didn't know what they were getting into before signing a contract. But whose fault is that.'
'Probably the recruiter's.'
'The recruiter caused them to sign contracts without reading them? Someone signing a contract without reading it first is anything but at fault?'
'Recruiters lie. They tell you it's okay to sign the contract, because it won't apply to you.'
'If they tell me that, I tell them to go to hell. If they tell you that, I could see where you might be stupid enough to fall for it.'
'Okay, but, signing the contract isn't agreeing to die.'
'So, you didn't read the contract,' I said, 'I did. It's right there, boldfaced and CapsLocked to stand the hell out. By joining the army, you stand every chance of going the hell to war; in the event of a war, your tour of duty may be extended through the end of the sixth month following the end of that war. Now we just have to find for "war"; think it sounds maybe a little deadly?'
'It's still not a contract to kill yourself.'
'It's a contract to become military gear, which may be used in any way allowed by the Uniform Code of Military Justice, which---yeah---includes going to war in one piece and coming back in several. No one's stupid enough to think otherwise. Not even you. Which means that you're now holding out only to avoid conceding that you were laughably fucking wrong. A soldier sent to war and killed in action is not murdered, either by his country utilising him as General Issue Equipment, nor by the adversarial army utilising him as target practise. Not by law, and not by logic.'
'That doesn't mean they have to be sent to their deaths in an illegal war for oil,' he said.
'They don't have to join the army at all,' I countered, 'And no one's sending troops to their death in an illegal war for oil; that's just stupid. Troops are used as sparingly as possible, because the army are having serious trouble replacing the dead ones; the war's not illegal according to the American constitution; and, really, it's not about oil and never was, not that fighting the war exclusively for oil would be unprecedented or even the wrong thing to do.'
'Whatever.'
'I win again,' I said to no one much at all.
In American Gods, Neil Gaiman's character Shadow observed that worldwide lulls in conversation tended to occur at twenty past or twenty till the hour. Maybe so. But this one happened at 12.49. It was broken after a few seconds by HippyChick disacknowledging that HippyGuy had just lost the argument she wanted to maintain.
'All life is precious,' she lied, 'even if it's a soldier.'
'Yeah,' I said, playing along sarcastically, 'You're all special and unique snowflakes: probably in my way, in my driveway, and about to get pushed the hell out into the street.'
'What made you so bitter,' she asked.
'What made you so content,' I counterasked, 'There are two important differences between us. One is that I've already researched and dismissed the meaningless bullshit you still whimper about---evil imperial cartels and whatever other makebelieve you ultimately blame on global warming. The other is that the actual problems in the world, remaining after I've repudiated your happymoron distractions, are specific enough that I can usually blame individuals over safe, anonymous masses like republicans and CEOs and anyone else you can hide from with a hastily added "present company excluded". It's the basic difference between prejudice and judgment: I could at a glance look at you with your hemp burlap cavemanwear and presume that you're some class of idiot; instead, I reserve that judgment until you've blathered enough to justify your largely unjustifiable existence to remove all doubt.'
'I dress like this because I'm a free spirit,' she said, missing the point and supporting it at the same time.
'Yeah. Here's why that's a brainless collection of words. Spirits being unevidenced, even allowing that they'd be some form of energy, energy being neither created nor destroyed but converted from matter, nothing in the universe is free: if you were or had a spirit, it would necessarily exist or occur at the cost of the matter lost in transition from its former state to yours. That said: energetic states have no need for clothes, appropriate or not; which is not incidentally permission to stop wearing them, since you look like a dehydrated condor and I'm in no hurry to see the rest of that.'
'I mean,' she said, 'that I'm a free spirit because I'm not constrained by rules.'
'Yeah. The fashion police are mythical too. Sadly enough.'
'The fashion police,' HippyGuy said, 'You haven't got much room to talk: you're wearing a TShirt with a gold coin on it. What is that, some hiphop thing?'
'Totally,' I said, 'Alice Cooper, nineteen seventy-three. Maybe you've heard of him: he was that guy who saw the hippies being boring and trite and waged a war against them, countering their unworkable peace'n'love shit with dead babies and necrophilia.'
'Dead baby jokes are stupid,' HippyGuy said.
'Which would matter if anyone had brought them up,' I told him.
'You just did.'
I told Chuck: 'I need to be less optimistic when talking to idiots.' He nodded knowingly.
'How many dead babies can you fit in a car,' Hutch called.
'Me?' I asked, 'Or you.'
'Well, no: it's a joke.'
'So, you then.'
'You're talking to Hutch,' Leslie told me.
'The hippies lowered my standards. I'm okay now.'
'Give up?' Hutch asked.
'In more ways than you could guess.'
'Two in front, three in back, and a million in the ashtray.'
'You couldn't fit a dead baby in an ashtray, Idiot.'
'Oh. Yeah. The ashtray ones are foetuses.'
'Foeti aren't babies,' I said, 'That's why they're foeti.'
'That's not babies anyway,' HippyGuy said, 'It's jews.'
'Whoa,' I said, a bit amazed, 'You're actually okay with, like, IsraeliAmerican jokes?'
'Uh...no,' he covered, 'I wouldn't joke about the oppression of, uh, IsraeliAm---'
'I would,' I said, 'Whether they're oppressed or not. Mostly because I don't denigrate cultures into special needs victims. If the state of being jewish makes one too fragile to survive a joke, something bigger and badder is gonna come along and exterminate them anyway.'
'That doesn't mean you have to be mean to them.'
'But it does make it harmless. Being nice to people is a defensive act of selfpreservation. Trying to preserve myself against a group of people too weak to survive jokes and meanness is effort I never needed to expend. If they can take a joke, then we're okay; if they can't take a joke...when it kills them, I can probably blame their demise on a coincidental high wind or something.'
'Oh, so you'd be okay with British jokes,' HippyGuy guessed.
'Sure,' I said, 'If they're funny.'
'So I could joke about your teeth.'
'By all means. My teeth being better than yours, I can't wait to hear your archaic misunderstanding of English pirates having rotted their teeth by overcorrecting for scurvy. Go.'
'Well, see, because, if you're British, then your teeth are bad.'
'Faulty syllogism,' I said, 'I live in the US and I can afford dentists; also, being under two hundred years old, I'm not morally opposed to oral hygiene.'
'So...see? British jokes aren't funny because they're not even true.'
'So, jewish jokes are funny because they are true?'
'They're not true either.'
'So, you're a holocaust denier,' I said, 'I didn't see that coming.'
'I don't deny the holocaust; I just don't think it's funny.'
'See: now you're denigrating the holocaust,' I said, 'Where I concede that nothing's funnier than the holocaust.'
'You're just sick,' HippyGuy said.
'You're just nosy,' I told him, 'Stop talking to me anytime.'
'You're talking to me,' he said.
'I'm heckling you. Because you keep saying words.'
'Just like you heckle the holocaust.'
'I haven't heckled the holocaust,' I said, 'Hell: Gramps died in a concentration camp.'
'He did?' HippyGuy asked.
'He was a guard,' I said, 'He fell out of a tower. Tragic.'
'That doesn't surprise me,' HippyGuy said, believing me.
Hutch called: 'Y'know, my grandmother actually did die in a concentration camp.'
'Seriously?' I asked.
He nodded slowly.
'Oh,' I said. 'Sorry. Didn't know.' And no one said anything for a few seconds. So I asked: 'Any chance she died when a guard fell on her?'
Chuck grinned massively at me.
'And it's always a joke,' HippyGuy said.
'Is it cool to joke about nazis?' I asked.
He shrugged.
'You wouldn't be offended if I joked about nazis,' I confirmed.
'Not if they were the target, I guess.'
'Interesting,' I said, 'The nazis being both obviously national socialists and less obviously a subfaction of catholicism.'
'No they weren't. They were, like, the original neocons.'
'The nationalsozialismus---the National Socialist German Workers' Party---were neocons?'
'Whatever.'
'This is the problem with you idiots,' I said, 'You have no idea what your roots are. You join these meaningless quasipolitical raves and drive around in flowered up Volkswagen Beetles with no idea where it all came from. You know that the first Volkswagen Beetles were commissioned by Hitler? That Ferdinand Porsche made the People's Car at Hitler's request? So here you are: national socialists driving Hitler's People's Cars, whimpering about antisocialistic rich people, like lawyers and bankers, themselves historically jewish. That's the joke. Badumdum.'
One in the morning.
Historically, the place would have crested the midnight lull by now, the most persistent of diurnal lurkers remaining from sunset---loosely including myself---and those leaving the pubs early beginning to bottleneck in the lobby, waiting for an open table. Most immediately, I blame the lack of ashtrays which began this unfortunate trend a couple years ago; but there are other factors.
The economy sounds easy to blame, though I've seen no evidence of that. After 2005, while the ashtrays remained in place, people drove here to complain at each other that petrol was three bucks a gallon---something I could never care much about, three per gallon being 75¢ per litre being maybe 35p per litre. Meaning that, until recently, Americans had been paying up to 15p per litre while predicting an economic armageddon any decade now. That unleaded had been selling in the more developed parts of Africa for around twelve bucks a gallon while it had hovered around a buck twenty-five after 1991 in the states was something they'd never been able to guess after, and certainly never bothered to find out. Even after 2008, when the economy crashing in March 2001 with the DotCom collapse really began to suck, the same people finding their ways to the restaurant---to any restaurant---still sat around complaining that coffee had magically jumped from 85¢ to $2.19, overlooking the fact that minimum wage had also jumped, from $3.35 to $7.25, in the same twenty years.
What I blame more than the rest is the availability and price of XBoxLive and other chatrooms: to the extent that people used to hang out in restaurants because they had nothing better to do, most are now fragging each other in TeamDumbass2 from home, where they can blame their ineptitude on invisible distractions like cats and parents instead of conceding a debate or rumble out in the world due to their own shortcomings. We in GenerationX practised anarchy by stealing squadcars; the kids today threaten each other with being removed from a MySpace.com Top Eight. As Oligarch of the Universe, I intend to hire Doug Stanhope as an advisor, even if he, like Denis Leary, has reportedly quit smoking.
One in the morning. My watch beeped, echoing through the ruins of this extinct civilisation; planes fell from the sky; George thankalorded in my direction.
'Still writing?' Leslie asked, making little attempt to hide the real question: how much longer we planned to sit here, doing nothing.
'Round here,' I said, quoting Counting Crows, 'we're never sent to bed early, and nobody makes us wait; round here we stay up very, very, very, very late.'
'The times,' Chuck said, quoting Bob Dylan, 'they are a'changin.'
I flashed my TShirt at him, quoting nothing.
'School's out?' he asked.
'Generation landslide; close the gap between'em,' I said, adding, 'And I laugh to myself at the men and the ladies who never conceived us billion dollar babies; la-da-da-da-da.'
Chuck squinted. 'Wasn't that more about the Boomers though?'
'That's sorta my point,' I said, 'In more ways than the obvious, GenerationX wouldn't exist without the Boomers. The term itself, Billy Idol notwithstanding, was coined by Douglas Coupland to describe his generation's progeny, defined as the first in recent millennia raised without theological ideals and given nothing much to replace the church and its moralistic prescriptions. What he didn't necessarily predict was that we'd turn out okay enough to see the next generation fail to meet even our standards, insofar as we have any. Which then brings me to Alice Cooper, who made every attempt to terrorise the other boomers with the mutated vestiges of the baroque, from the sad fact that eighteen-year-olds in nineteen seventy-one were handed a licence to kill without yet understanding what life even was to an admonition in nineteen seventy-three that he was done playing nice, though that led mostly into a couple records about nightmares before ending up in a mental ward. Enter Marilyn Manson, at about the time Alice was trying to reach GenerationX with "Lost in America", who noticed that, all hype aside, Alice had never really gone where we'd expected him to go after the early seventies; Manson took it to the next level, terrorising most of GenerationX, giving the Millennial Generation reason to think that, now, we in X are old and out of touch, just as we were given reason to think that the generation giving us Sid Vicious were old and out of touch.'
'So, nothing's changed,' Chuck said.
'Not overall. The kids today---and there are always kids today---misidentify the grownups as boring and unrealistic, because kids, while kids, tend to be retarded.' I pointed to Leslie's book. 'Your guy there once mentioned that the sixties, while regarded as fictional by the kids today, did actually happen, and what we've heard about them was largely true. That was only ten years ago. And I get that. Because, today, YouTubeDotCom being the new MTV, archiving BonJovi and other surfacelevel shit from the eighties, no one under twenty---well, thirty, really---has any functional idea what it was like to be there for real. The kids today can't imagine let alone remember the relief of hitting nineteen eighty-four without running into BigBrother. They think they're afraid of Korea and the American government, but know nothing about seriously wondering whether a nuclear war will begin while they sleep.'
'The Boomers had more to fear,' Chuck said.
'I know,' I said, 'That's what I'm saying. The boring soccermoms of the eighties had stopped caring about the USSR after about nineteen sixty-three. We didn't get that. We certainly didn't get that their parents had been those guys magically surviving hell in Monte Cassino. By the time we encountered any of these people, they were old and boring and had no idea how impossible the present was.'
Leslie shook her head, confused. 'So, my generation thinks things are worse than they really are, and yours thinks they're better than they really are?'
'More or less,' I said, 'Except that your generation, being young and stupid, could never guess after that; mine, having forgotten, no longer care.'
'Some of us still care,' HippyGuy intruded.
'So what,' I said, 'You're, what, twenty-one? Twenty-two?'
HippyGuy shrugged, not bothering to say whatever.
'You're an idiot,' I said, 'And not in any generational sense.'
'I'm an idiot because I'm twenty-one?'
'You're a genius because you're twenty-one. You're an idiot because you're missing the whole point that your generation does still care; you're trying to defeat my argument by agreeing with it.'
'Whatever.'
'Okay, new rules: "whatever" means "I concede". Got it?'
'Whatever.'
'Very good.'
'It means you're wrong,' HippyGuy said, 'and that I'm not gonna bother explaining why.'
'Then you're misusing it,' I said, 'Though it's good that you're not bothering to explain your doomed little position, since I didn't want you talking to me in the first place.'
'Then don't ask me to explain things.'
I stared at him for a second. Then I asked no one at all: 'Why can't anyone ever remember that I don't start these things; idiots come to me, intruding on my table, preventing me from writing a book...the hell with it: I'm expecting too much from stupid people.'
'If I'm so stupid---' HippyGuy began.
'Don't care meaningless 'tard.' I went back to trying to type.
'You do kinda respond to them though,' Leslie said.
'Caught that,' I said, typing, 'Not doing it anymore.'
'Thankalord!' George called.
'Yay,' I said, trying to focus on the laptop.
Out in the restaurant, Hutch made noises: 'He does this all the time. You talk to him, and then he gets all angry that you're bothering him.'
'Sure,' HippyGuy replied, 'He's writing a book nobody's gonna read.'
'I've read them,' Hutch said, possibly honestly, 'They're good.'
'I doubt it,' HippyGuy said.
'Well,' Hutch said, 'I think they're good.'
'If he's so good,' HippyGuy challenged through false dichotomy, 'then why's he gotta write them in a restaurant.'
'Sign, sign, everywhere a sign,' I muttered at the laptop.
'Hmmm?' Leslie asked.
'Five Man Electrical Band,' I told her, '"I took off my hat and said 'Imagine that: me, working for you'".'
'Oh,' she said.
'Applied irony,' I said, 'Hippies maintaining that they had a right to be where everyone else was.'
'Didn't they?'
'Sure. Forty years ago. Today, hippies are asking why I've got to write books in restaurants. They haven't even got signs to point to.'
'So, you're not talking to me,' HippyGuy said, 'But you're talking about me.'
'I can write about you too. What's your name.'
'I'm not telling you that.'
I shrugged. 'I'll just call you Melvin. You look like a Melvin.'
'It's not Melvin,' he said.
Typing, I announced, 'At which point Melvin embraced Hutch, erupting with, "I've got to have you. Here. Now. On the floor. The whole restaurant can watch, for all I care".'
'Very funny,' HippyGuy said.
'Then,' I recited, 'Melvin's head exploded from too much selfimportance in such a tiny space, and he never said anything again.'
'I'm still talking,' HippyGuy challenged, 'Your fiction doesn't change that fact. Do something about that.'
'And Hutch fondly remembered the combative pacifist who'd abandoned his moral code to get all uppity in the face of the real world.'
'Nobody's gonna read this shit,' HippyGuy lied.
'Is Hutch me?' Hutch asked, too happy, 'You're putting me in a book?'
I looked at Leslie. 'Maybe I'll go back to the thing about the aliens.'
She nodded.
'Talk about fiction,' HippyGuy said, 'If the aliens are so warlike, why haven't they destroyed the planet yet.'
'The leprechauns told them not to,' I told the laptop.
'So aliens don't exist?' HippyGuy asked, 'You really think you're alone in the universe?'
'I really think you're alone in your stupidity.'
'Whatever.'
'Once upon a time, aliens existed; they evolved and flourished on their planet for ten billion years until their sun burned out; in all that time, they never finished searching an infinite number of galaxies, each a hundred thousand lightyears wide, in order to stumble upon Earth; the end.'
'Short story?' Leslie asked.
'Not short enough,' I said.
'That's stupid,' HippyGuy said.
'This is why I hate morons,' I told Leslie, 'They ignore the fact that humans are, to our knowledge, the most advanced species, after a hundred and sixty thousand years of culturebuilding, ever to occupy this planet which is uncommonly protected from extinctioncausing asteroids by Jupiter, and which is only now in the twenty-first century beginning to develop the technology required to even film other planets and nearby starsystems and galaxies; but aliens, while mathematically probable, necessarily hail from planets which didn't waste four billion years evolving species exterminated by asteroids which did get through and impact, and have therefore been flying planet to planet since about five minutes after the big bang in their dedicated search for a rock ninety million miles from a tiny star in an indistinct arm of one galaxy among vigintillions.'
'So, aliens exist,' Leslie said, 'but can't find Earth.'
'Mathematically probably,' I said.
'Makes sense to me,' she allowed.
'But you can't rule it out,' HippyGuy whined.
I told Leslie: 'Which allows morons to presume that, being not ruled out, aliens and deities and intelligent hippies, which might exist, therefore necessarily do.'
'Right,' Leslie said.
'Which of course is stupid,' I concluded, 'To the extent that we can even ascertain the probability that aliens might exist, in any form, possibly but not certainly evolved beyond a monocellular state, even if that probability were ninety-nine percent, it wouldn't promote hypothesis to fact; it would totally fail to show that these potentially multicellular aliens were traipsing about the universe, looking for inhabited planets; add specifics, like having found Earth, whatever their warlike intentions, and the odds we haven't got yet tend to plummet even further.'
'Whatever,' HippyGuy said as though he were part of the conversation.
'I'm gonna write a book called "Whatever",' I told Leslie.
'Sounds boring,' she said.
'It will be. It'll be a selfhelp manual on how to lose a debate without retaining that pesky feeling of failure.'
'It would probably sell,' she said.
'Yeah: whatever,' I dismissed.
She smirked.
I looked at my watch. It was ten after one. 'I'm gonna go smoke for a minute,' I said, clicking the laptop shut.
'Oh,' she said, looking at her cigarettes.
'Go ahead,' Chuck said, 'I can watch your stuff again.'
She smiled and grabbed her smokes, following me outside. Once she'd lit one: 'You do kinda encourage these people, you know.'
'Not really,' I said, 'Not...if I'm sitting in a booth, doing something, not talking to anyone....'
'You do talk to them though. Even if they talk to you first.'
'Yeah. I'm in my booth, and they intrude. If I were at home, writing a book, and someone came into the house and started talking to me, uninvited, and I didn't just shoot them for it, it wouldn't be encouraging them to stick around if I asked what the hell they were doing there.'
'That's not what you're doing though. If you just told people to fuck off, that would be one thing; that you respond to their admittedly intrusive babble is another.'
'I do tell them to fuck off. In Hutch's case, literally. It doesn't stop them.'
'I guess.'
'I do get it,' I said, 'That I bother to explain why their statements are stupid is unnecessary when all I have to maintain is that their statements are uninvited. Like with the aliens: that idiot wants to discuss their intentions without bothering to establish that they know about Earth, or really even that they exist at all. By the same token, he wants to argue that he's not an idiot without bothering to establish that I care whether he's an idiot: I don't wanna talk to these people at all, let alone about the minutiae of their boring little makebelieve.'
'So don't talk to them,' she said, 'Don't respond. That's easy.'
'Not really. And you're kinda new here. I've tried that before. If you just ignore them, they get more insulted, come over, and try to scare you into acknowledging them.'
'Probably,' she said, 'But, that being illegal, it gives you a case. If they wanna take their importance from trying to talk to you to trying to scare you into talking to them, that's assault. Isn't it?'
'Talking to me at all is assault. But yeah: poking me to make sure I know you're there and annoying me is battery.'
'So wait for that. And then call the police.'
'Yeah, hi, police? Would you mind dropping everything and hurrying over here to arrest a stupid person tapping me because I don't wanna talk to him? Cool. I'll wait here.'
'So, what you need is a bodyguard. Someone who can sit there silently and direct the fanboys away from you.'
'Think I could write one off?'
'Doubt it.'
'Then it's redundant. The cops want taxes to maintain the peace? Then I expect them to do it.'
'They maintained the gangies before.'
'Two seconds before one shot me. That's not prevention. That's not maintaining peace: it's diffusing a crime in progress and returning the world to a perceived state of peace in which idiots are allowed and possibly encouraged to assault me.'
She shrugged. 'People have a right to say things. To some extent, you've just got to put up with that.'
'I'm not talking about free speech; I'm all for that. But free speech has in fact got limitations. Prior restraint: you can't use free speech to defame or threaten or defraud. And you can't use it as an excuse to force me to put up with you in a restaurant. The gangies are a good example: loud, stupid, annoying little creatures; that was irksome, but arguably legal until one of them started talking to me directly. That's when free speech ends and assault begins. Add the implication of real danger that I had to talk to the imbecile and be nice at the same time or I'd get shot, and...well, that's when the cops did get involved, however coincidentally.'
'We'll get you a bodyguard,' she said.
'I don't want a bodyguard. That's a step toward becoming Rosie O'Donnell with her insane idea that no one should have a gun but the guy guarding her. It would certainly be a concession that, while I'm supposed to be living in a world with rules, those rules are ignored to the degree that I've got to pay extra for additional, actually enforceable rules. I'd be okay with a bodyguard; but, if I'm paying someone, what, at least fifty thousand a year to replace the police, then I don't wanna hear from the police. They had their chance to do their jobs; they failed; I replaced them. No pulling me over for the unwritten crime of driving a car from the Reagan Administration in my neighbourhood of rich, elitist idiots.'
'You're already fixing that,' she said, 'You're phonecamming them and exploiting them on your website.'
'Only because those I've filmed to date presumed that they were being filmed live, or that I could upload the footage before they could get the phone away from me.'
'You think a cop would take your phone and cover it all up?'
'I think an idiot getting caught breaking a law will break more laws to ensure getting away with it,' I said, 'I think that cop before, trying to invent a circumstance in which he'd be allowed to search me, might invent a circumstance in which my phone could disappear. I think that, if I'd been filming him in front of a whole restaurant, he wouldn't have suggested that I'd been acting suspicious enough to be searched.'
'That's probably true.'
'Really sad is that, if I had a bodyguard, to whatever extent I'd deserve one apart from being able for whatever reason to pay for one, the cops wouldn't fuck with him, if they'd even showed up before he'd handled the gangies they considered criminal enough to go do something about.'
'So you'd be preventing a police state,' she said, 'You'd be helping to maintain civility without involving the cops. That's implied in society, isn't it? Apart from failing to commit crimes, aren't we supposed to be doing our part to prevent them?'
'Legally, yeah; socially, no. Remember Wapner's little buttmuppet? "Don't take the law into your own hands: take'em to court"? A couple generations of people took him too seriously.'
'So take the law into your own hands anyway,' she said, 'At worst, an idiot sues you for it. And no judge is gonna take the people bothering you very seriously.'
'So now I'm missing deadlines because I'm busy in court countersuing idiots for existing at me.'
'And keeping the bookrights for each case. You could be, like, a really angry Ralph Nader.'
'I'd never get the books written,' I said, 'Knowing people, they'd come over to fuck with me just to become famous.'
'Well, probably.'
'Evolution,' I said, 'Darrow explained Darwin's natural selection: that it's not the strongest of a species which survives, but the most adaptable to change. What I really need to do is to adapt to a world warholled into thinking it's important enough to warrant my attention. Learn to write things at home. Or buy a restaurant and replace the bodyguard with a manager who'll ban idiots trying to bother me.'
'That might be a writeoff,' she said.
'I'd do it if the laws didn't still prevent me from smoking in it,' I said, brandishing what little remained of my cigarette.
I sat down at the laptop again: the cursor blinking meaninglessly, a harsh but tiny vertical line amidst a sea of whitespace on the screen, I saved the book I was no longer writing and clicked the laptop shut again, slumping a bit in my seat.
'Again?' Leslie asked.
'Still,' I said.
'You got stuck?' Chuck asked.
I shrugged. 'I'm just not in the mood, I guess.'
HippyGuy glanced at me, then turned to HippyChick, mumbling something I couldn't make out---probably about me. Pusillanimous fucktard. Beyond, Hutch snuck a peek in my direction, saw me see him, and turned to face George across 74 again. No one spoke for a moment---not even George, whose attention for the sprinkler above his seat was bordering on stalkerdom.
'The problem...,' I began, then paused, trying to figure out precisely what the problem was; then: 'The alienbook is fucked; it's just not working. So I'm thinking about this other thing: writing about, like, this---sitting in a restaurant and...that's not working either.'
'The more realistic thing,' Chuck said.
'Yeah. And reality kinda sucks. I mean: I could have written about people lurking all night in a restaurant, ten or twenty years ago, when people still did that; today, that there are, what, four of us here? Four tables, I mean. There's whatever's over there in the vestigial smokefree section; but they never really counted anyway. But look at this place: one twenty---one twenty-one in the morning, and no one's here. To write a book about people in a restaurant, I'd have to set it not in two thousand nine, but nineteen ninety-nine; maybe nineteen eighty-nine. Today, reality is boring and sad.'
'So do that,' Chuck said.
'It was boring then, too,' I explained, 'That's why there were people here: they had nothing better to do. We're talking about a time when the most advanced electronic gadget on the market was the Nintendo Entertainment System. The original NES, with its weird, cubic controllers, before the Super Nintendo in nineteen ninety. We're talking about a time when one in a million of us had mobilephones; more people today have satphones. Russia was massive and soviet and not evidently imminently moribund. Things were different, but not entirely better.'
'Maybe you could write a modern, fictional version,' Chuck suggested, 'Change the facts: create an America where people can smoke indoors. One of those alternative history things. You could have, like, a President McCain or something.'
'I doubt he'd have led to smoking indoors,' I said, 'His people still support the bans: republicans don't as a habit hate corporations enough to castrate their freedoms of policy, but their makebelieve makes them fear smoke and fire and brimstone.'
'They're not exactly people persons, either,' Chuck said, 'So you're doomed either way. Democrats prevent corporations from allowing smoking; republicans prevent people from smoking as a matter of choice.'
I smirked. 'It's funny, if you think about it. Really funny. You know what I notice most? Just sitting here like this, I kinda wanna smoke simply because I want to smoke. Not because I need to. To whatever extent I chainsmoke---and the case could probably be made---it's not really about that. I don't quite care enough to bother getting up and going outside all that often. And that's now, while it's warm out there; winter would really suck. Which of course is part of the whole deadline process: the simple fact is that, if I can't at this point in history go outside for a cigarette without freezing off the fingers I'll need for typing once I get back inside, trying to write a book in a restaurant---something I kinda need to do, for better or worse---it's not gonna get done by the end of the year; I'd have to take the winter off, shelving a novel from about October until around May. And that's just me, where I'm a minority within a minority. You know what I have to wonder about? Cripples. Or, if you like, "persons with mobility issues". I'm impressed by how much the antismokers must hate the cripples, forcing them to limp their handicaptastic carcasses the hell outside. Ever seen that? It's deplorable. They look like bums. Not the happier, more potential homeless, but bums. Broken, pathetic derelicts littering the walkways outside restaurants and offices: huddled masses not unlike those refugees this country was once known for taking in, discarded to the status of human biohazard in the twenty-first century. They could smoke in here, the apotheosis of gaiety and eutopia; I'm actually a little surprised that provisions aren't in place for them---they get crippled parking spots, so why not crippled sections with ashtrays and other things within handy reach. But, no: people hate cripples, allowing for the moment that they can have good parking spots and ramps up to the door; but, once inside, they don't count to the degree that healthy yet fragile chickenlittle types whose fear of all things smoky count. Republicans might like businesses over people, but democrats seem to hate the streetlevel citisenry to minimally the same degree as the quoteunquote "neocons" reportedly do.'
'I suppose that's a point worth making,' Chuck said, 'Put it in the book, at least as an element, if not the whole thing---the moral, or whatever.'
'No one would care anymore,' I said, 'The war's over. We were on the losing side, if not necessarily the wrong side.'
'The browncoats,' he said.
'As it were.'
'You know,' Leslie said, 'You could just combine the two. Stick with the alienbook, using it to make the point. Maybe, given the stuff you've written to date, pull one of your trademark' unhappy happy endings: the aliens invade, kill the majority, leaving Our Antiheroes in charge of the world.'
'Meh.'
'I know: "Don't tell you what to put in your book"; but, you know---it's an option. Or something.'
'I guess,' I said, glancing at my watch: 1.23 now.
'Maybe it's just one of those nights,' Leslie said, 'The kind where you can't get anything written, and really shouldn't try forcing it. It happens.'
'It shouldn't,' I said, 'It's just about typing, really. I know the story---the alienbook story. The most I'd have to come up with during the process itself is the minutiae of dialogue and shit. Stuff you don't really plot out in advance while thinking through the overall concept. Stuff doing little more, really, than adding to the total wordcount.'
'Dialogue's what you're good at,' she said.
'Maybe. But...yeah: maybe I'm just in the wrong mood. Not that there's a right mood. That I'm functionally thinking about two different books now...that always fucks me up. If I try to focus on one thing, I get this sneaking suspicion that I'm neglecting the other one. Like Child Services are gonna come after me, or something.'
'There's probably a book in that, too,' she said.
'Oh sure: give me a third one to neglect.'
'Or to merge in with the other two.'
I thought about it for a second. 'Wouldn't work. Now you're talking about a book about a guy in a restaurant---probably a writer, since that's kinda my perspective of the world---in a world being invaded by aliens, all while the, like, Book Police are bugging him about...I dunno: it's too goofy to think about.'
Leslie shrugged. 'Good. That only leaves you with two.'
'Two and a half,' I said, 'I might not rule out a book about cripples being closed out of the world by those who used to champion for them before getting all selfabsorbed.'
'A human disinterest story,' Chuck said.
I frowned a bit. 'Also kinda stupid. I don't even know any cripples; maybe none of them smokes. Hell: the only cripple I can even think of is, like, Greg House. And that doesn't really count. Though, thinking about it, I guess he does smoke.'
'He does?' Chuck asked.
'A little,' I said, 'The occasional cigar, at the least. He's got an ashtray in his flat. Not that it matters: given how much shit I get for being me, where I'm arguably less abrasive, I don't see that guy getting away with a tenth of the shit he's magically able to do, crippled or not.'
Chuck laughed shortly. 'So get a cane and find out: you might be surprised.'
'I'd probably be disappointed,' I countered, 'If people suddenly made concessions for me, including leaving me the hell alone, simply because I had a limp---a limp I could for all they knew be faking---I'd...I get that people are meaningless morons now; that would push me over the edge I've been uncommonly gravityfree next to all this time.'
'Is this still about a book?' Chuck asked.
'Probably not,' I said, 'It's more about my plans for global suffering the instant I do in fact become Oligarch of the Universe.'
'That could be an interesting day,' Chuck said, 'If a short one for pretty much everyone alive at the time.'
'I'd hate to be boring,' I acknowledged.
George dropped his vigil of the sprinkler. 'Two, four, six, eight; one, two, four, eight; sixty-four, thirty-two, sixteen, eight; forty ninety-six, five twelve, sixty-four, eight. Damn.' He shook his head sadly, mumbling, 'Seven, eight, nine...nine, eight, seven. Eight, nine, eight? Nine, eight, eight; eight, eight, nine; damn.'
'Counting something? Hutch asked George.
'Four thousand, ninety-six,' George said, then pointed at Hutch, wildeyed, possibly guessing his weight: 'Five hundred twelve.' He looked at the sprinkler again. 'Sixty-four. Eight. Eight, eight, nine. Damn.'
I opened the laptop and punched the numbers George was obsessing over into Word, just to have them there:
88940965126481632641248
Apparently, he was just going through factors involving eight. And 8/8/9, presumably 8 VIII 9: 8th August 2009, which had become the date as of midnight. I saved the list to lizardpeople.doc and looked up again.
Leslie was watching me. So: 'I think he's upset that it's not seven eight nine anymore.'
'Huh?'
'August the seventh, two thousand nine,' I said, 'or, seventh August two thousand nine: seven slash eight, slash nine. Zero nine, I suppose. He's probably autistic, or just schizophrenic---arrested by numerical anomalies.'
'He wants eight slash eight slash eight,' she said.
'That was a year ago,' I said 'Maybe he'll be happy on September the ninth.'
'Nine slash nine slash nine,' she decided.
'Yeah.'
'So, what's five twelve,' she asked.
'Eight to the third.'
'Oh.'
George wasn't done yet. 'Five twelve,' he said, 'Five plus twelve is nineteen. Forty ninety-six. Four plus nine plus six is nineteen. Sixty-four. Six plus four is ten. Plus eight. Eighteen. Nine, eight, eight. Six plus four plus nine.' And he grinned victoriously at the sprinkler.
I looked at the numbers in lizardpeople.doc again, adding to the file:
8/8/94+0+9+6=195+1+2=8; 5+12=176481632641248
'Huh,' I said, 'He got it wrong. Five and twelve are seventeen. Though five, one, and two are eight again. So, I dunno.'
George was looking at me. And, while I doubt he could have heard me talking to Leslie while he'd been mumbling numbers, he nodded. 'Five plus twelve is seventeen; four plus nine plus six is nineteen; five plus one plus two is eight; one plus seven is eight; one plus eight is nine.' And he grinned again, having won something.
I looked at the file again, adding that in:
8/8/94+0+9+6=19; 1+9=10; 9-1=85+1+2=85+12=17; 1+7=86481632641248
And I looked at George again, thinking of correcting his math. Before I had a chance, though:
'Four plus nine plus six is nineteen; nine minus one is eight! Five plus one plus two is eight! Five plus twelve is seventeen; one plus seven is eight!'
'I guess he got it,' I said.
Then, this happened: 'Six plus four is ten, plus eight is eighteen, plus one plus six is twenty-five, plus three plus two is thirty, plus six plus four is forty; one plus two is three, times eight is twenty-four; four minus two is two, times four is eight, plus four is twelve, times forty is four eighty, minus sixty-four, minus eight, minus sixteen, minus thirty-two, minus sixty-four, minus one, minus two, minus four, minus eight is two eighty-one. Divided by sixty is four hours and forty-one minutes! They're coming!'
I looked at the clock in the lower right: 1.27 AM. 'It's one twenty-seven now,' I said, 'So...a little after six in the morning, I guess.'
'We'll probably still be here,' Leslie added, rolling her eyes.
'Not really planning on it,' I told her, 'Not at this rate, anyway.'
She rolled her eyes again.
'Weird,' I said, having AltTabbed over to Untitled2009.doc, 'I'm on page one twenty-seven in the alienbook. And one from two plus seven is eight, you know.'
'Spooky,' Leslie said, letting Chuck out of the booth for a cigarette.
'You know that Lincoln and Kennedy have the same number of letters in their name?' HippyGuy asked.
'You know that "dumbass" has the same number of letters, too?' I counterasked, 'It's also the same number of letters in "silence". And, counting spaces, it's the same number of characters in "go away".'
'Eight plus eight plus nine is twenty-five,' George said, 'Six plus eight is fourteen. Two plus five is seven; one plus four is five; seven minus five is two. Twenty-five minus fourteen is eleven; one plus one is two. Two of them. Six, eight, eight, eight, nine.'
'Where'd the six come from,' Leslie asked me.
'How should I---oh: six in the morning, maybe. From one twenty-seven plus whatever it was...four hours and forty-one minutes would be six something. I dunno...one, five; and then twenty-seven and forty-one is, what, sixty-eight? Oh. Twenty...thirty-three to two, plus four hours is six; and forty-one minus thirty-three is eight. So eight after six, I guess.
'About when the sun's coming up,' she said.
'Uh...maybe. Hang on....' I checked online for sunrise for 8th August 2009: 6.06AM. 'Pretty close,' I said.
'So we'll probably still be here,' she reiterated.
'It's possible,' I allowed, getting up to go out for a cigarette again.
Chuck was finishing his cigarette as I got outside. 'You left Leslie alone in there with Hutch?'
'Whatever she does to him,' I said, lighting a cigarette, 'I'm not gonna feel bad about it.'
'Good point.'
I looked up at the moon, unable to see the stars behind it. 'What's the closest known planet,' I said.
'Alpha Centauri, I guess.'
'That's a star. Or two.'
'Well, yeah: if there are planets there---and there probably are---I'm not sure we've seen them yet.'
'There was a planet discovered a few years ago,' I said, 'That was something like twenty lightyears from here. I wonder why we haven't seen planets in Alpha Centauri, if that's only four.'
'Maybe we have.'
'Maybe. Something to look up sometime.'
'For the alienbook?'
'I dunno. That's still bugging me. Even if there were a planet four point whatever lightyears from here, that's still over a parsec.'
'Your aliens can't move faster than light?'
'They'd have to. But there's still that problem with how they'd even know about Earth. If we can't see planets in Alpha Centauri, how can planets there see us.'
'Maybe we can see them,' Chuck said, 'And, if we can't, that doesn't prevent them from seeing us.'
'If there are planets there,' I said, 'And if there are aliens on those planets.'
'Did you say the aliens were from Alpha Centauri?'
'I never gave them a planet. I just have them invading. I figure with a good thirty years of broadcasting abject stupidity in ways other planets could potentially get a feed, that's a decent radius at lightspeed. Of course, if they can only travel at the speed of light or less, that changes the sphere of influence a bit.'
'At least, for once, it's really a sphere,' Chuck said.
'There's that.'
'Think anyone'll show up here tonight?'
'Like, someone we know? Or, really, that I know: you know everyone.'
'Like when the bars close, I mean.'
'Dunno,' I said, 'Maybe. Full moon on a Friday. If there's ever gonna be a rush in a smokefree restaurant, it'll be tonight. It's warm out, so there's no snow on the roads; they might even make it here alive.' I looked at my watch. 'One thirty now; if there's a rush, it'll probably start in fifteen minutes to half an hour. If memory serves.'
'The bars close at one forty-five,' Chuck said, 'That usually has people showing up here at about two.'
'So I've probably got half an hour to write something, while I'm not sure what to write, or really even whether I want to write it anymore.'
'Up to you, I guess.'
'Yeah. Except not entirely. If I drop it now, I'll keep hearing about it---that book I gave up on, which was so good and---am I really the only one who gets that these things are stupid?'
'Probably,' Chuck said, 'Someone reading along all at once, except maybe someone trying to see what's stupid, would just be reading the story. If you never mention where the aliens came from, or even how they got here, I doubt anyone'll really care. So why worry about it.'
'Because I hate it when stories try to hide the impossible parts by neglecting to mention them.'
'So mention it. Have characters talking about how it's even possible. If there's no answer, have them come to the conclusion that they can't figure it out. How many livingdead films are there now, and they keep dealing with how the zombies could come back to life not by explaining it, but by having characters guess how it happened.'
'I suppose,' I said.
'Does anyone really care how aliens get from planet to planet in "Star Wars"? It's not really about that.'
'I care, actually,' I said, 'How far was Bespin from Hoth: apparently, Hoth wasn't a planet but a starsystem; same for Bespin; Hoth was some outer rim thing no one would ever look at from, like, Coruscant; Bespin wasn't really in the downtown area of the galaxy, but it didn't seem like it was really on the edge, either. So, they get from the star of Hoth to the star of Bespin, without a hyperdrive, at sublight speeds, in, what, the time it took Skywalker to sit on Dagobah talking to Yoda? How many years are we talking about. And all while Vader's looking for them in a destroyer? At lightspeed, it would take us close to five years to reach the nearest star; I could see Skywalker training for five years; I can't see Solo flying to Bespin for five years, or an armada chasing him all that time.'
'It's a movie,' Chuck said, 'You're the only one who'd think this far into it. Goodguys and badguys fight to control the universe, or bring balance to the force, or whatever the whole point was. So, yeah: it was stupid; but it was fun---people liked it.'
'People are morons,' I said.
'Cool. Keep that in mind, and write a book morons'll like.'
'Boring.'
'It's that or find a way to write a book with zero plotholes which is so perfect that nobody can follow along. Of course, usually, books like that are in the nonfiction section.'
'Also boring,' I said.
Chuck shrugged, heading back inside.
Jessica caught the door and came out. 'Full moon,' she said.
'Yeah,' I acknowledged
'Fuck. And on a Friday night. This won't make my job any easier.'
'If anyone even shows up.'
Having lit a cigarette, she exhaled slowly. 'They'll show up. Last Friday was kinda busy---I guess you weren't here. Full moon plus Friday plus getting toward the end of the summer: this is when everyone runs to the restaurants before it starts getting too cold to go out at night.'
'Maybe,' I said, 'But, with four tables in there out of, what, thirty-five? Maybe it's just that no one does this anymore.'
'Last Friday I had something like six hundred tables overnight,' she said, 'I'm just glad I have Saturday off.'
'They let you do that?'
She exhaled smoke. 'I told them I've got church on Sunday, so I can't be in here all night the night before.'
'You actually go to church?'
She laughed. 'No. But, if that's my excuse, they can't really force me to come in here: I could sue them.'
'Theists aren't a protected class,' I said.
'Dunno. That's just what I told them when I said I needed Saturdays off. And they let me do it without arguing. Not that they could really push me to, like, go to a church on some other day, or anything.'
'It's clever,' I agreed.
'Well, so far,' she said, 'On the other hand, if there's a god, it'll probably get pissed at me for this.'
'Depends which one it was,' I said, 'If it were Jehovah, it would be pissed that you're here on the sabbath.'
'It's Friday.'
'The sabbath is sundown Friday to sundown Saturday,' I said, 'even if stupid people think it's just dawn to dusk on Sunday.'
'Weird.'
'That would be religion,' I said, 'Weird.'
'Speaking of weird,' she said, 'Is it cool that I let you know I was into you, or are you gonna, like, stop coming here now.'
'Why would I stop coming here.'
'I dunno. It's just me, I guess. Like, if I like a guy, I don't really tell him that. I guess I doubt he'll like me back. And, if he didn't like me back, it would be weird if he still had to be around me. I dunno: nevermind.'
'Oh,' I said, 'Because you're all icky, you mean.'
She shrugged, looking mostly at the ground.
'I'll still be here,' I said, 'The advantage to not caring is that I don't care either way. And you're not icky.'
'I'm not?'
'Who said you were.'
She shrugged. 'No one, I guess. Except it's not like I ever asked. People probably think I'm icky anyway.'
'Fallacy,' I said.
'Like a lie?'
'Like faulty logic: absence of evidence.'
'Oh.'
'You're presupposing that people don't tell you that you're icky because you are icky; if you weren't icky, they still wouldn't tell you that you were.'
'I guess so.' She took another drag. 'So, you don't think I'm icky?'
'Not really.'
'So that's one, anyway.'
'Yeah.' My cigarette was about gone. 'I wouldn't worry about it much. At a guess, Hutch is totally after you.'
'Ew.'
'Still: that's two.' I threw my cigarette into the carpark and grabbed the doorhandle.
'Thanks,' she said, not really sarcastically.
I was already in the building when I saw Leslie heading out for a cigarette. I didn't double back to watch the two chicks talk to each other.
'Chuck's at the table,' Leslie said.
'I know.'
'I'll be back in after this.' She lit her cigarette as she walked out the door.
I got to the table and sat down.
'Leslie went for a cigarette,' Chuck said.
'Yeah: there's one door.'
'Oh,' he said, laughing, 'Yeah.'
'Four hours and thirty-five minutes,' George called.
Chuck rolled his eyes. 'Apparently, George is calling out the time until they get here. Whoever they are.'
'Every minute?'
'That's what Leslie said, anyway. When he told us it was four hours and thirty-six minutes.'
'So, this should be fun,' I said.
Chuck nodded severely.
'Oh hell,' I said, 'Jessica thinks there'll actually be a rush tonight.'
'Could be,' Chuck said, 'There was one last week.'
'She mentioned that.'
'Oh yeah: you weren't here last week.'
'Got a new videogame,' I said, 'So, what happens if we get a bunch of drunk morons in here, and George is screaming out the time every...he's really doing this once a minute?'
'Wait and see,' Chuck said.
I did, watching George, glancing down at the clock on the laptop every few seconds.
At the instant the clock went from 1.33 to 1.34: 'Four hours and thirty-four minutes!'
'So, I'm not writing anything else tonight,' I said.
'Is he right?' Chuck asked, looking at his watch.
'To the second,' I said, 'And according to the atomic clock.'
'Weird,' Chuck said, looking back at George.
I shrugged. 'I've known people who could wake up at a precise minute, regardless what time they'd gone to sleep. People seem to keep track of time internally, possibly to the second. And George is a bit strange anyway. If anyone could keep perfect track of atomic time, it might as well be him.'
I went back to the laptop, AltTabbing a bit between lizardpeople.doc and untitled2009.doc, seeing nothing I could really do to either of them.
The problem with writing a book, which people who don't write books never understand, is that it's not a simple, mechanical process. Mechanics are involved: at some point, there's the simple typing, simpler now that we have Backspace Keys in easier reach than the Liquid Paper once used to undo mistakes on typewriters; but writing isn't routine---there may after years be muscular memory to banging the keys in sequence to produce the more commonly used words, but there's still thought behind it. Writing a book isn't the automated process of sawing through a board or assembling preforged pieces into a machine: the kilocalories burned in the physical practise are negligible against the energy expended in the neurological act of thinking what to write.
That most people think of writing as the instance of marking down I Will Not Waste Chalk over and over on a blackboard, or possibly spitting out picayune bullshit in EMails---article, noun, adverb, verb, article, noun, comma, preposition, article, noun, comma, blather, babble, blah---allows them to makebelieve that, if your job is writing books, your process is tantamount to their process of taking the hamburger off the grille when the timer runs out. When in fact, to the extent that nearly any job can be done not by robots but by simple, springactuated clockworks, writing is less manual, menial, replicable a science, supposing that it constitutes a science at all.
At the risk of sounding like some emotastic primadonna, writing relies most heavily on the correct mood, far beyond vocabulary and education and even creativity; deadlines imposed by those who can't write [or why would they be giving others a deadline] tend to cause a paradoxical reaction, sending writers into something of a tailspin of clockwatching.
Never give a writer a deadline. And never tell him the time.
'Four hours and thirty-three minutes!' George called. And I AltTabbed between unwritable documents, no longer thinking even about general ideas, let alone specific words.
'What are you doing,' Leslie asked---entirely the wrong thing to say.
'Trying to think,' I told her.
'Are you gonna be able to work on it anymore tonight?'
I didn't look at her. 'Why do you ask me these stupid questions. Ask me when I'm done. Ask me how many months it wound up taking me to write a few hundred pages.'
'I didn't mean---'
'You meant "how long does it take to write a hundred thousand words or so",' I said, 'And the answer is "maybe". Which hundred thousand words, in what order, between what interruptions while I'm trying to think. That's the question.'
'It just seems like we're sitting here not doing anything, watching you sitting here not doing anything.'
'It does, doesn't it,' I said, 'And you're painfully wrong. I'm thinking. Which is doing something. I'd hazard that an FMRI would show that I'm doing more than most people in the zipcode. Except at the moment, when I'm merely addressing your meaningless and inaccurate observation.'
She said nothing for a few seconds. Then: 'Sorry.'
I disacknowledged it, simply staring at the laptop. What: I'm evil, which will always triumph, because good is dumb. And I held down Alt, thumping Tab in cardiac time, not watching or caring which iconic sheet of paper with the W in the upper left was which; the binary roulette wheel stopped on the alienbook, and I simply started typing:

Back at SETI, Hamilton paused to run his fingers back through his chaotic hair. It felt about ten inches long now; he should probably look into getting it cut the next time he had exactly nothing better to do on the planet.


'I can't find it,' he said---not a declaration, but a surrender.


'You're still working on it?' Brewster asked, not looking up from his own screen, 'What's the point.'


'I just want to understand where the hell they came from. If I ever get that, I'll wonder how they knew about us, how they got here, and maybe even why.'


'It's academic,' Brewster said, 'Getting the answer won't change anything.'


'It'll change the part where I don't understand,' Hamilton said.


'Lofty expectations.'


'You know how big just this galaxy is?' A rhetorical question: Brewster knew as well as he did. 'Let alone the universe, supposing there's any measurement but "infinite". But, wherever they were, they found us. I want to understand how they cheated the math and got that done in the first fourteen billion years.'


'Thirteen point seven,' Brewster said.


'But I'm the one being academic,' Hamilton muttered.

'Four hours and thirty-two minutes!' George called, ending my typing. I looked at Leslie.
'So you're still working,' she said.
I rolled my eyes toward the crown of my head, letting my eyelids flutter; it took less words.
Wanting more smoke and less noise, I'd disconnected the modular powercord from the laptop and gone out front, sitting with my back against the window beside the door, one ankle atop the other, the computer on my thighs, a cigarette at the corner of my mouth. Therefore:

Taylor Cleveland backed away from the door in thoughtless horror before thinking to step forward and twist the deadbolt into the frame. A moment to breathe, and she pushed the couch across the doorway as well.


Her mobilephone was still dead, along with everything else---iPod Touch, Flip Mino, and probably whatever promotional shit she'd stashed here in the dressing room over the years. Feeling her way to the makeup table, she groped for a lighter, igniting her meditation candles. The dead lightbulbs bordering the threeway mirror leaped and lurched in the flickering light.


The mirror itself was a nightmare. Crying and underlit, she looked a hundred years old, high, tight cheekbones in the controlled, measured lighting of the studio now casting waxing and waning shadows upon her sculpted nose. Her light, greenish brown eyes, hidden behind oversized pupils, looked cold and dead; her trendy rose lips with that hint of mauve were as purple as the latestage decay of some prehistoric creature dredged up from the lowest trenches of the ocean.


The candles popped and fizzled minutely, evident only in a silence this dead. She noticed that she was holding her breath, and forced herself to exhale slowly and quietly, not upsetting the meagre flames of the candles, not reminding the monsters to keep looking for her.


And they were monsters: more legs than any animal should have, those grabby external teeth---


mandibles


---clicking and clacking and possibly sensing. Like millipedes the size of motorbikes, and yet far less charming. Massive and solid, yet able to slither silently and mercilessly; endlessly. And their eyes: bugeyed more metaphorically than literally, not insectoid in any sense, but crazy, bulbous orbs more at home in the face of an eel.


They were going to get in. Through the door, past the sofa; through leadlined cinderblocks if that was their goal.


Through the mirror containing her centennial, underlit self.


She reached for the phone on the counter---an archaic landline---wincing as her trembling fingers banged the receiver against the teeth of the cradle, the muted bell seeming to echo within the room. There was no dialtone; there was no tone at all; it was simply dead. She set the receiver on the counter next to the base, not wanting to ring the bell within again, hoping to hear a dialtone magically begin, knowing she'd never live that long.

I threw my cigarette into the carpark and read it over. I suppose, my own disbelief for the possibility behind the story aside, I was okay with the more upfront bits: the people caught in this ridiculous circumstance, their reactions, and their plans and failures in a world being invaded by angry monsters. If I hadn't begun by begging the question of aliens, instead pulling the insects off some forgotten continent or directing their escape from some clichéd weapons lab, the play by play of the story itself might have worked for me. Writing may not be an exact science; but, to me at least, reading is: if I catch a flaw in a literary hypothesis, the whole thing is scrapped until it's gone back to the drawingboard, been revised, and been resubmitted for peer review.
Technically, I was still in the drawingboard phase, potentially able to rectify the mathematical impossibility of my starbugs discovering Earth in these first several billion years following the bigbang, either through dialogue conceding that no one would ever know, or through some borderline magical technological means I hadn't yet thought up. Still, every word which wasn't the explanation I was still waiting to discover remained a difficult word to type in earnest.
The laptop's screen snapped to black---not the result of an EMP, but of the settings telling the monitor to die after sixty seconds of inactivity on battery power alone; four more minutes, and the drive would hibernate, leaving its programmes running nominally in the background, potentially for weeks. I hit Control and End to set the cursor to the last line of untitled2009.doc and bring the screen back to life; the battery was now at ninety-three percent and falling.
I looked out at the carpark: my car, Chuck's, Jessica's, Larry the Manager's, Hutch's dismal little automotive abomination, a technically unidentified airsick green Toyota Prius displaying more aftermarket stickers than any known HotTopic; if George had a car, I'd never seen it. Suddenly I wished I'd brought the Santa Cruz with me so I could skate around a bit and think: the negative effects of deadlines are equal to but opposite the effects of being away from the laptop, thinking, without any chance of writing anything down---something else no one but other writers would understand is that more gets done while driving or skating or playing videogames than while actually sitting in any functional proximity to the word processor. The screen went black again as I lit another cigarette.
A moment later, having parked somewhere in back of the building, Davis and NotDavis appeared, copswaggering, thumbs hooked into their little batbelts, approaching the door.
NotDavis, whom I suppose I can just call Jackson [he really did remind me of Samuel L Jackson, whether or not by intent], saw me sitting against the window. 'You're still here?' He asked.
'I'm still writing,' I said, 'I came out here to smoke while I'm doing it.'
'You know you can't smoke within fifteen feet of an opening door?' It seemed more like a real question than an announcement.
'I didn't bring my rangefinder with me,' I said.
He grinned easily. 'Don't worry: I didn't see you breaking a bullshit law.'
'Cool,' I said.
'So, whatcha writing,' he asked, 'A book?'
'A novel,' I said, 'Alien invasion thing. If I don't just give up and scrap it.'
'Sounds fun.'
'Maybe to read. To write, it kinda sucks.'
'I've always wished I could do that,' Jackson said, 'Write books. I kinda suck at it.'
'On the bright side,' I said, 'you get to run red lights.'
He grinned again. 'Only in the right car.'
'Seriously? Other cops'll give you a ticket?'
He grinned more widely. 'Off the record?'
'I'm a novelist, not a journalist.'
He shrugged. 'If another cop pulls me over when I'm not on duty, I can usually just flash my badge.'
Davis pulled the door open, telling me 'You're okay: I can get through' as if I'd tried to move out of his way.
Jackson caught the door and held it open. 'You coming back in, or just hanging out here for a while.'
I looked at my cigarette. 'Probably coming back in: sitting out here isn't making the book suck much less.' I threw my cigarette into the carpark as I stood up, walking through the door Jackson was holding for me.
'You know that's littering,' he said.
'I know it wouldn't be if there were ashtrays,' I told him, 'But people voted against those.'
'Not bad,' he said, following and letting the door close behind him.
'So what happened with those twerps earlier,' I asked, 'What was it, Jamal and Lamar?'
He shrugged. 'They went to jail. Concealed weapons without a permit.'
'No assault charge?' I asked.
'They went quietly. Was there an assault?'
'They blathered at me without permission,' I said, 'A case could be made.'
'If you wanted to file a report,' he said.
'And waste more time on those idiots? I didn't see a thing, Officer.'
'So there you go,' he said.
'I've filed reports before,' I said, 'This little twerp hit me with a wrench. No one cared.'
'When was this.'
'Years ago. Last century. The next guy he hit, he hit with gun. Killed him. People cared about that. He's in prison now.'
'That's kinda the way it works,' Jackson said, 'Once a fuckup, always a fuckup; they all go to the greybar in the end. Hey: I guess we're sitting over here; take it easy.' And he swaggered over to join Davis.
I got to 71 and sat down next to my backpack.
'Problem?' Leslie asked.
'Nope,' I said, 'Just following up on the goofs from earlier. They were charged with concealing weapons.'
'Oh.'
Reclaiming the powercord, I plugged it back into the laptop, brightening the screen and replacing the battery icon in the tray with a plug beneath a lightningbolt.
'Four hours and nine minutes!' George called. I looked at the clock next to the plug and lightningbolt: 1.59.
'This is going to be a long night,' Leslie told me.
'Maybe,' I said, 'On the other hand, it might let me know how much I can write per minute.
'You're still writing?'
'I added a page or two outside, while I was smoking. They raided the studio; that talkshow host is hiding in her dressing room now.'
'Can I read it?'
'Um....' I looked at the screen, paging up and down a bit, 'I guess so. It just kinda runs out at the end, for now. Though I guess maybe it's a good place to end the subchapter for a while.' I turned the laptop toward Leslie, making sure the powercord remained connected.
She moved up to the beginning of Chapter Eighteen and cleared her throat. 'Chapter Eighteen,' she read, 'Taylor Cleveland backed away from the door in thoughtless horror before thinking to step forward and twist the deadbolt into the frame.' Then she stopped reading.
'What,' I said.
'I dunno. There's something weird about it, I guess. "twisted the deadbolt"? You don't really twist a deadbolt: you twist the little twisty thing connected to the deadbolt.'
'I suppose so,' I said, 'If there's a better word for "twisty thing".'
'I guess it's okay,' she said, 'I suppose you can go back and fix it later if you have a better way of writing it.'
I was trying to think of the actual term for the twisty thing when George announced the time: 'Four hours and eight minutes!' It was two o'clock in the morning.
The Russians have this great word: It happens to be pronounced approximately the same as the more recent English word pogrom---officially, something of an organised destruction or massacre; functionally, the instance of large groups of drunk morons all finding a restaurant at two in the morning. See also conniption, paroxysm, and ragnarok.
George announced the ETA for his lizardpeople; the laptop tracking atomic time updated to 2.00; my watch beeped, dropping planes out of the sky; and the pogrom began: scores of slobbering, selfsatisfied Americans [in historic, smoky times, they'd have numbered minimally in the hundreds] appearing as a single if unrelated group in the lobby. They didn't wonk their ways in, as George's repticons would have---they used the door, to varying degrees of success---but their presence, unannounced and unwelcome, still seemed to occur somewhere in a fraction of a second. In that instant, I, Leslie, and Chuck, HippyGuy and HippyChick, Hutch, George, and the two cops over in the vestigial nonsmoking section became the tolerable minority; now we were outnumbered, if not necessarily outgunned, by minimally exceptional asshats primarily of the Brokeback Mountain persuasion.
Larry the Manager remained in hiding, sniffing out those pesky bombs in Minesweeper, leaving Jessica alone out in the public area to---in no logical order---seat those of the pubrush selfaware enough to wait to be seated, send their lesser counterparts back to the end of the line in the lobby, and promise each and every selectively amnesiac idiot that she'd be back as soon as humanly possible to get their drinks, none of which really worked very well. Covering those events precisely would take more pages than I feel comfortable releasing as a completed manuscript; omitting them entirely seems equally unprofessional; so, here's at least some of what happened, beginning at two in the morning....
For the first minute or so after two in the morning, Jessica simply ignored the rash of morons invading the restaurant, instead dealing with Davis and Jackson, whom she'd seated in 11 [see the chart back on Page 99], bringing them their coffee and asking what they'd like to eat. That handled, she continued to ignore those waiting correctly in something resembling a line in the lobby, stopping at every table suddenly occupied illegally by those lacking the mental wherewithal to wait to be seated as recommended merely by the large, clearly printed Please Wait to Be Seated sign affixed to the podium by massive, Dremelstripped screws similar to those used to assemble everything in the restrooms and asking, telling, and eventually ordering these illiterate imbeciles to return to the lobby, to the end of the line, to wait to be seated, which necessarily had to happen before they got anything to eat or drink. Some denied having seen this cyclopean sign; some whimpered that having to wait to be seated was a stupid policy, therefore amended by the lawless adage that the customer is always right; some lacked the basic selfawareness to grok the issue itself, requiring a particularly remedial dialect of babytalk before getting the vastly complex point and shuffling back to the lobby amidst magniloquent complaints, some actually containing the laughably anachronistic Well I Never.
Keeping track of Jessica throughout, I caught her reacting to Jackson asking whether she needed any help by shaking her head---a harmless lie similar to the one a few hours earlier, when she denied that I was the sort likely to carry a gun in my backpack.
'Four hours and seven minutes!' George announced, to the unpleasant snickering of those drunks selfseated without permission here in the vestiges of the smoking section; moving from booth to booth, Jessica ordered them back to the end of the line in the lobby.
The chaotic invasion contained properly in the lobby again, Jessica reverted to form, beginning to seat each party in turn, sequentially, depositing the first into 12, the next into 13, the next into 14, the next into 15, and the next into the second row, beginning with 21; eventually, she dropped a party into 74, between Hutch and George [asking neither lurker to leave to make more room]; the final few parties, comprising a total of about thirty people, were left in the lobby, given the choice between waiting for the next open table [probably, any of them could have opted to sit with Hutch, but she didn't tempt anyone with that poisoned apple] or leaving and finding less packed a place to eat, pass out, or whatever else any of them was likely to do beyond the lobby, in either direction. Everyone seated who was going to be seated, for the moment, Jessica returned to the first row, to 12, to start asking what everyone would like to drink---something of a loaded question allowing for the infinitely droll plagiarism of that pioneering fucktard who first ordered a Jack and Coke at a campfire lacking a liquor licence in neolithic times.
One of the 'tards sitting in 74 stopped sitting in 74, instead approaching 71, wherein sat I, to ask, regarding my HP7140US laptop, 'Yo: is that a computer?'
Instead of answering him, I pulled out my phone, set it to film video, and framed him in its display, hitting the Record Button. Then I explained, probably more for the benefit of those watching the footage later, who might stand a glacier's chance in hell of understanding the paradigm: 'I've got a policy: anyone who beleaguers me without my permission while I'm working becomes famous; go.'
'Huh?'
'Which word confused you.'
'I don't understand---'
'That's true.'
'---what...what?' And he laughed nervously for a few seconds before apparently rebooting his 4bit little brain.
'Dead air, Dummy,' I said, 'You're wasting your fifteen minutes.'
'No,' he slurred, 'Is that a computer, there.'
'Yes: the laptop computer here is a computer not unlike the Eniac serving as its prototype but for its size, speed, storage, powerdrain, and ability to perplex stupid people.'
The 'tard took predictable offence: 'What's "stupid people" s'posed to mean.'
'That you wouldn't recognise a joke if you happened to look down while taking a leak,' I said.
Remarkably, the 'tard matched up that sequence of words to a baselayer of referential images somewhere to the left of his subroutine of breathe in; breathe out down in the don't piss yourself batchfile of his brain, taking yet more unimportant offence: 'Yo: you tryne to say something, muhfugger?!?'
I looked him over, confirming his empirical whiteness before frowning decisively and agreeing: 'And, being impossibly skilled, succeeding, too.'
'Oh, you think you funny,' the wigger told me.
'My readers think---haven't I done you already?'
'Say what?!?'
'Big word, big word, huge word, big word, small but unknown word, big word, big word,' I said.
'Oh yeah?'
'Yeah.'
'What would you say if I took this outside.'
'Depending what I did,' I said, 'either that it was funny that you'd forgotten how to eat, or that it was funny that a big, strong plebeian like yourself had got beat up by a genius.'
'Oh, you want some a'this,' he said.
'Not really: item flimsy and stupid; would not buy again.'
'Four hours and six minutes!'
Turning the phone on myself: 'For those playing along at home: George has taken to counting down to the end of the world. Or just sunrise. To whatever degree those might be different things.' And I turned the lense back 'tardward to frame the wigger again. 'So. You were whimpering...?'
'Whatever,' the wigger said.
I tilted the phonecam to include HippyGuy in the frame to the left of the wigger. 'Have you met the masterdebater here?'
'Whatever,' HippyGuy said.
'Thanks for playing,' I told him, swinging the phonecam back to centre upon the wigger. 'You know what your problem is?'
The wigger opened his mouth, probably as something of a preamble to blathering something; but I didn't care.
'Well, I say "problem" as though your intellectual maladies are singular; but a problem endemic to you idiots---and, by "idiots", I mean you, developmentally disabled to the extent that you're unable to grasp the advanced concept understood by more erudite stupid people---that you're just another boring, financially overprivileged, suburban white kid whose homophobia---that's Greek for "selfhatred", by the way---sends you immediately to the uninspired conclusion that you'd be far cooler if you were black; and, while I'm inclined to agree with that presumption in systemic terms, the sad fact remains that, black though you may wish you were---possibly to allow you to remain lazy and unimportant in a world afraid to view actual blackrifan blackimericans as anything but righteously justified following overinflated millennia of exceptionless oppression---you're white, Dude; at the least, you could look, talk, and dress more like a failed evil investment banker, as per your caucasoid pigmentational shortcomings.'
'Yo: did you just call me a cock?'
'Not actually,' I said, 'Though, now that you've brought it up, I suppose a case could be made.'
'Four hours and five minutes!'
The wigger looked back at George. 'The fuck's that guy doing,' he asked, probably rhetorically.
'I've hired him to perplex you minute by minute with large numbers,' I said, 'like "four" and "five".'
'Oh, you think you funny,' the wigger said again.
'I thought we'd covered that,' I said, 'But maybe not: yes, I think I'm funny; so do my readers; so, in fact, does the odd literary critic, if often for the wrong reasons. Do you think I'm funny? That's all that's really important, after all.'
'Funny looking,' he produced magically from his microscopic repertoire of precompiled templated insults; then he paused, possibly waiting for the known universe to chortle at the funny he'd made, or possibly to run that breathe in; breathe out subroutine he'd neglected for a few seconds while attempting to say words; if it was the latter, he may have succeeded.
'Ah,' I said, curiously disinterested in sending any more syllables wiggerward.
The wigger's brain apparently arrested nonetheless by that syllable, he stood there stupidly, breathing in and out, largely without making any respiratory mistakes, until George announced 'four hours and four minutes!'
The wigger turned to face George, possibly thinking lightly about trying to make some more of his meaningless noises in an eastwardly direction, never finding out whether he was capable of that before Jackson swaggered up to end any conflicts forthcoming.
'Everything okay over here?' Jackson asked no one specific.
'Shit, no,' the wigger lied, 'This muhfugger be getting all up my grille, shit.'
Jackson looked to me and I nodded. 'Grilleupping as charged,' I said, adding, 'With intent to barbecue a moron's credibility online.' I wiggled the phonecam slightly to indicate my twitroasting strategy.
Jackson smirked jacksonly at me and my phonecam, then addressed the wigger: 'Let's just have a seat and calm down before we do have a problem.'
'You sayne this muhfugger ca'just record me a'he like online an'shit,' the wigger inferred.
'I'm saying,' Jackson said sternly, 'that it's time for you to have a seat, before something happens to get my attention.'
Dejected, the wigger limpstrutted the three metres back to his booth, one hand protecting his junk from fruitflies or something, and fell obstinately into his seat, mumbling something both incomprehensible and largely unthreatening, possible intent aside, in the direction of Jackson, myself, or both.
To me, Jackson grinned casually and suggested 'Turn that damn' thing off, willya?'
And there ended that videofile, at the first half of George's announcement: 'Four hours and three minutes!'
In the next moment, Evanescence's Bring Me to Life came across the XM, naturally forcing the wigger and his wiggette, by intellectual lack of alternate options, to dance badly in their seats in a meaningless defiance of authority, keeping eye contact with Jackson; it might be just as well that I didn't film that: I'm never sure how accountable I really am for copyrighted content hitting me as background noise when I'm filming an idiot for exploitation on my website. That said, in the intellectually honest pursuit of the factuality of the circumstance: the little goof further squelched out 'Wake me up!' every time Paul McCoy screamed it within the song I may or may not be legally allowed to admit that I know exists without reproduction rights.
Jackson returned to 11; George announced that we had 'Four hours and two minutes!' left; I went back to staring at the blinking cursor for a while.
'Three hours and forty-eight minutes!' George announced, making it 2.20 in the morning. Making it also twenty minutes now since Jessica had sent the morons back to the lobby, before beginning to seat them in turn, before then asking what each officially sanctioned table would like to drink [before ignoring highlarious demands for various libations]; some of the drunks had drinks now, back in the formerly segregated nonsmoking section; the wigger and wiggette in 74 were of course still waiting for their beverages, being lower on the list than anyone in the sixties and fifties, who were also still waiting, those in the forties only now, after twenty minutes, getting theirs. The topic of actual food hadn't yet been raised in any important way.
Not that I blame Jessica for that, though I could justly blame Larry the Manager for hiding in the back with Minesweeper instead of coming out to meet the icky public and help her to do the impossible. I could really blame the anonymous dummy corporation, designed to wholly own the trademarked greasy spoon while removing itself by several layers of protocol from liability, for thinking liabilitilessly that a single waitress could functionally maintain a restaurant of thirty-five designated tables, each containing an average of three squealing idiots, all expecting everything they'd ever wanted in life, to the exclusion of the interests of the other thirty-four parties of approximately three squealing idiots each; I could blame them more identifiably if their dummy corporation didn't by design employ lawyers fully capable of handing mine their collective asses after the fact; it's unfair, and I think I should be entitled to large sacks of free money because of it.
Jackson and Davis were keeping things largely under control, inasmuch as the situation remained controlled so long as drunk, squealing idiots trying to light cigarettes within the restaurant were reminded that a statelevel law prohibited the smoking of smokably smoky stuff in places able to contain antismokers, even if antismokers never actually entered those places as a matter of practise; bitter though I might be, Jackson and Davis, at least, seemed to have subscribed to my low opinion of those lying little activists, whether Jackson and Davis happened to smoke, personally, or not.
'Three hours and forty-seven minutes!' George called.
'Would you shut the fuck up,' the wigger demanded.
'No shit,' HippyGuy agreed.
'Way to tolerate the diversity of the psychiatrically interesting,' I muttered to the laptop; either HippyGuy didn't hear me, or he was learning through painful negative reinforcement not to go into a battle of wits without a working brain to fall back on. So I kept typing--- 'Hey; yo!'
---despite---
'Hey; yo! Sir? Hey!'
---noises out in the world---
'Hey! Can you hear me! Hey!'
---until I had to start filming again.
'Hey!' the idiot from 61 screeched again, now standing and approaching.
'What,' I demanded.
'Hey: whatcha working on there.'
'A letter of marque and reprisal,' I said, 'What's your name.'
'Huh?'
'Your name,' I clarified, 'What is it; got any idea?'
'My name?' he asked stupidly.
'That's the one,' I confirmed.
He laughed uncertainly. 'Why do you want to know that,' he asked as if I hadn't already told him at least once.
'Complex reasons you haven't understood to date,' I said, 'What do you want.'
'What are you working on.'
'A novel of a hundred thousand words no one in your family tree will ever prove capable of learning. Anything else before your intrusive idiocy spreads like a virus from my website to the entirety of the internet?'
'Whoa; why the hostility.'
'Because I've made it painfully clear that I don't want you people talking to me while I'm working, if ever.'
He seemed to consider that for a couple seconds before stumbling across something serving as a whole idea: 'Well, you never told me that, did you.'
'Being optimistic,' I said, 'I prefer it when people bothering me against my will meet or exceed my IQ; thusly I lump any given dozen of you into a single, unfortunate entity.'
He blinked vapidly. Once. Insofar as a single blink can betray vapidity.
So I simplified the brainbreaking concept: 'I saw no need in advance to initiate the conversation required to explain that I don't wish to converse, While I'm Working.'
Stunned for an instant of blissful silence, he then whimpered: 'Well, all you had to do is say so!'
'Is that all I had to do,' I said, 'Wow.'
'We are so getting you a bodyguard,' Leslie told me.
'Three hours and forty-six minutes!' called George.
'Shut up,' the wigger pleaded.
'What's with him,' Sixty-one asked.
'He's counting down to the extinction of all things stupid,' I said, 'You're in your final four hours to really shine before stampeding toward the tarpits.'
'What is your problem,' Sixty-one whined.
'I'm working; you're talking; working is more important, while incompatible with your ceaseless noise.'
'Well, why are you working in a noisy restaurant, then.'
'I can ignore the mindless noise until it goes "hey, hey, yo, hey, hi, hey, talk to me I suck"; then it gets on my unavailable nerves.'
Jackson returned, less open to grinning this time. 'Again?'
'Hey,' I said, 'Gi'me ninety seconds to save and upload the video, and you can watch on my website that, again and always, I didn't start it.'
Turning his attention to Sixty-one, he ordered: 'Sit down and stay there.' To me, he added: 'I get that you're just reacting to these people in an admittedly legal fashion; but you really could be more polite about it, before one of them actually does shoot you.'
'Consider it taken under advisement,' I said; and I ended and uploaded the recording.
'Three hours and forty-five minutes!'
'Would you shut the fuck up,' the wigger in 74 whimpered.
'Hey!' Jackson spat, 'Howbout you shut the fuck up, before I hit you with disturbing the peace.'
'Muhfugger here dis'in duh peace, nuh'me.'
'And,' Jackson added, no joking implied, 'maybe a little public intox, too. You get me?'
'I getcha,' the wigger mumbled, adding hastily, 'dumfuggenfascistfuggenpig.'
'Y'know,' Jackson said calmly and genially, 'I don't think I caught that. And I don't think you want me to catch it if you say it again. Now, you just settle down, eat your food, and stay cool; next time I have to tell you that, my partner over there'll be with me, ready to size you for a new pair of bracelets, right?'
'How I s'pose eat my food, ain't got none yet; shit: ain't even got nuthun drink, yo.'
Hooking a thumb into his bat utility belt opposite his Glock, Jackson leaned down into the wigger's face---his grille, if you like---and told him plainly: 'The waitress is very busy tonight; you need to grow up, calm down, and cut her some slack before that nastyassed breath of yours finds its way into a breathalyser and gets you a ride down to the drunktank. Are we clear now.'
The wigger played it as cool as a white kid amidst a racial identity crisis can be for all of two seconds; then, meekly and barely loud enough for bats to hear: 'I gotcha.'
'Great!' Jackson sang, straightening up again, massive grin occupying half his shiny brown face, 'And you remember to have yourself a good, quiet, polite evening, Citisen!' Turning to go and return to 11, Jackson gave me the grin too. 'And, really, Man: knock it off with the camera and smartassed remarks; please; just while I'm here and can't really deny seeing it.'
I shrugged noncommittally.
Shaking his head, Jackson returned to his coffee.
'Three hours and forty-four minutes!'
And I went back to failing overall to write a book about aliens invading to exterminate the stupid among us.
'Three hours and two minutes!'
And George returned to watching the sprinkler above his seat for any dirty tricks it might have in store.
Now that it was after three in the morning, Jessica finally got to 74 to ask the Wigger Party what they'd like to drink; being too stupid to enact any basic tactics of selfpreservation, they'd actually hung around for an hour, waiting while Jessica had got drinks and even meals out to the tables back on the more fashionable end of the restaurant---the side Larry the Manager could visit without injuring his fantastical selfimage too greatly, not that Larry had been seen since going on cinematic record to lie to me about federal laws. 'Okay,' she began, clearly exhausted some three hours before her shift would even begin to end, leaving only the task of cleaning up the entire building while the diurnal shift sat about, already on the clock, drinking coffee and juice and complaining that the place was always a mess when they arrived to sit about, already on the clock, drinking coffee and juice and complain, 'What can I get you two to drink.'
'Yo,' Wigger croaked, halfway dehydrated and raspy from having told George to shut the fuck up once a minute for the last hour, 'Y'all gots a manager here?'
'So they tell me,' Jessica said, 'Drinks? Or not.'
'Shit fuggen sucks,' Wigger said.
'No doubt,' Wiggette agreed.
'Look,' Jessica said, 'Maybe you missed the part where half the city showed up here in a single minute, an hour ago, when I'm the only one here---and I honestly don't care anymore whether you missed that or not---but, now, I'm here, at your table, asking what you want to drink. So hit me: what the hell are you drinking tonight.'
'Uh,' Wigger stammered, somewhat obviously trying to decide whether pulling the shit he was about to pull would get his ass killed, and then pulling it anyway: 'Uh, y'all gots, like, Colt Forty-five on tap?' And a laugh like a Muppet ruled by committee to be too stupid to be allowed into Sesame Street---Aloysius Snuffleupagus' mentally defective cousin, Hypomemonius, perhaps: Ull, I dunno...Bird...I'd gotsta think about that fer a long coupla decades....
Jessica said, simply and without room for doubt anywhere in the universe: 'No.'
'The fuck wit dis here booshit,' Wigger asked, doubtfully expecting an answer, 'Take a Coke, sumpin, guess.'
'Three hours and one minute!'
Jessica ignored George, looking to the wiggette. 'And you.'
'Same; 'cept Cherry Coke.'
'Not really the same,' Jessica said, 'but okay. You know what you'd like to order yet?'
'Do I know---Bitch,' Wigger made the mistake of blurting, 'we been here a fuggen hour now; course we knows what we fuggen ord'rin. Shit.'
'Which is?' Jessica asked.
'Uh...yo: get duh damn' drinks and we thinkbout a while.'
'Take your time,' Jessica told him, striding toward the kitchen, grabbing my coffeepot along the way.
'Hey, yo!' Wigger screeched once she was out of the room, 'Get some fried chicken, yo?'
'We're out!' Jessica called from the coffeemaker, 'Dinner ends at midnight!'
'Fuggen shit,' Wiggette---apparently the less mathematically inclined of the two---proposed, 'Betcha we'd gots us some fried fuggen chicken, she done took our order when we fuggen got here.'
'Three hours and zero minutes!'
I saved untitled.doc and clicked the laptop shut. 'Fuck it: I'm gonna risk it,' I said. I hadn't had a cigarette since the one I'd littered into the carpark in front of Jackson back before two, simply because going outside to smoke sounded like something of an advanced agreement to end up in a physical brawl. I got up and wandered out into the night, lighting up as I reached it.
Ten seconds later, Jackson appeared, asking, 'You suppose you got a spare one a'those?'
'Didn't know you smoked,' I said, finding him a cigarette and passing it over along with my lighter.
'I don't, as a rule,' he said, 'But, it's a nice night out here, and---now, don't take this wrong---you're not a small guy, and I don't doubt you can handle yourself---but there are some people back in there who might as soon wander out here to start some shit with you. So, they say there's never a cop when you need one. Maybe that's not always the case.'
'Fair enough,' I said, reclaiming my lighter.
'Tell you what, though,' he added, 'That group in there tonight: I'm not sure they won't fuck with you whether I'm standing out here or not. If I were you, I might think about kinda taking the long way home when you finally bounce outta here---don't let none a'them follow you where you sleep, if you get me.'
'Gotcha,' I said, 'Though I'm not too concerned.'
'Prob'ly nothing to be concerned about,' he agreed, 'On the other hand, you just never can tell.'
'Yeah. You get to live,' I said.
'How's that?'
'It's nothing. Little bullshit list I keep of those I allow to live if and when I ever become the oligarch of the universe.'
He puffed his cigarette and leaned in, smelling like a middleaged black guy on his seventeenth cup of coffee, with maybe a slight undertone of something stronger he'd sipped at since waking up tonight. 'Okay: the what now?'
'The guy who runs the universe,' I said, 'Kinda. If all rules were up to me to think up and enforce, a small percentage of people on this bothersome planet would survive.'
'Oh, I gotcha,' he said, 'Like world domination.'
'More or less.'
'And, but I get to live. Okay, so that's good news. I think.'
'Beats the alternative,' I agreed.
'So, hey: that writing thing. How's that work for ya. I mean: I don't wanna ask if you don't wanna tell me; but, that pay the sorta moolah I think it pays?'
'It can,' I said, 'The right book at the right time, and all that. Or even the wrong book at the wrong time, but by a guy who was right at the right time once already. Get that one book out there, and anything else you yarf out at the market for the rest of your life is gold.'
'The chicks dig that too, don't they---writers and singers always get the chicks.'
'Only the ones who can read,' I said, 'Which is good: who wants the stupid ones.'
'Hey, I've had a couple of fine stupid ones,' he said, then laughed, coughing a bit, 'Damn. I really don't smoke much at all; this is about my third butt this year.'
'Y'know that used to be common?' I asked, 'There weren't really a lot of smokers and nonsmokers; people would just have a cigarette every once in a while, like today they have lobster once in a while; it was just a treat when they were in the right mood. Cigarette girls used to hand out free little packs of five cigarettes each, and that would last people minimally all night. Fun little uppers, harming pretty much no one. But, it's America; so, sooner than later, people got gluttonous with them, until we had chainsmokers burning through three or four packs a day, developing habits pervasive enough to be confused with addictions, slaughtering their immune systems and becoming physically unable to burn out the cancer you get just from being alive. Suddenly we get cigarettes with filtres built in, to save us from the cancer; and lights and ultralights and whatever's lighter than that. Another decade or two, and we started losing our fundamental right to smoke---hospitals, then aeroplanes, then malls, and now pretty much the civilised world.' I looked at the cigarette shortening in my fingers. 'All from a tiny fivepack of cylindrical happiness once prescribed by doctors to improve moods and cure anxieties. Which of course is why, as oligarch of the universe, I promise to let each and every meaningless waste of meat out there die from its own stupidity.'
Jackson regarded me for a moment. 'You've put some real thought into this oligarch thing, haven't you.'
'No law against that,' I said, 'Unless I start stockpiling WMDs, or something.'
'No: I'm with you; I just never put that sorta thought into it. Maybe, now, I will.'
'The evil that all men do,' I said.
'Hmmm?'
'Shakespeare,' I said, 'Julius Caesar: "The evil that men do lives after them; the good is oft interred with their bones".'
'Whoa. That's bleak.'
'That's life. We remember the badguys. Even if they were goodguys. Which was sorta the point, I suppose: that we'd remember Caesar necessarily as a badguy, regardless how good he might have been in life. Good is boring. Want another? Dylan Thomas: "Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay". Why? Because good is boring.'
'And Green Bay sucks,' Jackson added.
'Heh. Not Green Bay, Wisconsin; just a green bay; a paradise, or something.'
'Oh. Gotcha.'
'There are thousands of examples---maybe millions. What counts is that---well, think of a given badguy, real or imagined; then try to think about his opposing goodguy---it's never as easy. You'd forget who'd opposed Hannibal Lecter, but for "Quid pro quo, Clarice". Good is boring, and, in simple fact, a bit unnatural. We're in such a hurry to get along and save everyone and...I look at people and try to imagine, like, sharks forming committees to discuss the humane, ethical treatment of seals; it's absurd. People are animals: carnivorous mammals kept in line by arbitrary, subjective rules---half of which you're expected to enforce---thought up by people taking offence to the sad fact that we're just yet more organisms on a planet of predators and prey.'
'So, you've thought about this a hell of a lot.'
'I'm a writer,' I said, 'It's kinda my job.'
'So it's hypothetical.'
'It has to be: there are seven billion reluctant animals maintaining the illusion of human goodness I'd have to convince before going pro with that whole oligarch thing.'
Jackson pondered the last of his cigarette before tossing it illegally into the carpark I used as an ashtray. 'You are not a dumb guy, huh.'
'Not according to my neurologist,' I said, 'I'm what head doctors call "special".'
'I'll bet that helps you make some money off writing the books.'
'Oh hell no,' I said, 'Some of the most successful writers alive are also some of the stupidest, subviral specimens I've ever encountered. I won't name names; but, if you read as much as I do, you'll figure it out for yourself.' I tossed my cigarette into the carpark, hitting Jackson's, and thinking I should have scored some number of points for it.
He opened the door and held it for me. 'After you, Sir Oligarch.'
I smirked somewhat in denial and went inside. Jackson spilt off and returned to his table as I approached mine.
'The cop again?' Leslie asked.
I shook my head. 'He had about the same idea I was having: that one of these mitochondria might follow me out and elect to die. Then we rapped about Shakespeare and Dylan Thomas and Hannibal Lecter.'
'If you wrote down a tenth of what you talk to people about...,' Leslie said, then said nothing else.
'I probably will, at some point,' I said, 'Boring a book though that actually would be.'
So: who knew....
Drunk morons lacking perseverance and stamina, they began slipping back out of the restaurant shortly after three, some even remembering to pay their bills before being sent back in by Jackson and Davis, under pain of incarceration, to argue over the price of taco salads which may or may not have been cheaper elsewhere, during the day, when they were sober, or any combination thereof; thirty-five open tables became thirty, and twenty-five, and twenty, and fifteen, and then, finally, ten, or so.
The wiggers in 74 were among the last unable to find the door back to the world outside, Wigger himself cornering Wiggette against the wall, not against her evident will, preventing the rest of us from clubbing this chick---who, if gumchewing were gainful employment, would be the world's first trillionaire---and absconding with her dumbscrillyicious ass back to Team Genius for the win; before them remained enough uneaten pancakes to kill a blue whale---which, thinking about it, having no idea whether cetaceans can even digest pancakes, might not mean a whole hell of a lot---each containing approximately half an oildrum of cold, congealed maple syrup, more of which was likely permanently bonding the plates to the tabletop, their neglected bill itself a victim of this ecoterroristical sapspill.
'Two hours and thirty-seven minutes!'
'Juh shuggafuggup,' Wigger moaned, losing half a mouthful of pancakes from behind his teeth, catching a decent percentage of it again in a couple ropes of cheap bling Mister T would roll his eyes at.
'Oh damn,' Wiggette sang in a tone reserved by more intellectual morons for reacting to the unexpected explosion of the sun, 'You be wasten food, yo!'
'Ffft!' Wigger declared, more pancakes go for launch, 'Ain't nuffin: affo' all a'pan'akes I won, know it.'
Wiggette divaricated: 'They be starven kids Africa don't need y'all spitten fuggen pancakes all over lan' duh free; damn, got no fuggen brains.'
Wigger impugned: 'Know y'all juh playne, that brain shit: fuggen smart like fuggen Einstein up here, yo.'
Wiggette elutriated: 'Don't e'en wanna hear none that shit, dumbfuck nigger poser---'
Wigger punctuated: 'Know y'all din't just hit me duh NBomb, Beeyatch.'
Wiggette remonstrated: 'You be acken like a muhfuggen nigga, I be callen y'all a muhfuggen nigga, fuggen nigga.'
Wigger contravened: 'Ah, heh naw; shit ain't right, ma bitch.'
Wiggette abjured: 'Be yo bitch muh longer, keep dis shit up, Muhfugger.'
And that, as they say---well, in fact, they don't say, since, to my knowledge, no one's ever attempted to spell out this sort of babytalk in a novel before; though I could be wrong.
'Two hours and thirty-six minutes!'
'Dey yo nigga rye dey,' Wigger said, possibly indicating George, but possibly trying to remember the lyrics to a Harry Belafonte song, 'Go tow he ass bout duh fuggen Africa, Beyotch.'
Jackson approached, this time with Davis. 'Wha'd I tell you about making me come over here again,' he prompted.
Wigger and Wiggette launched into a cacophony of stuttering perplexity: their impersonation of Jawas denying that they could ever have guessed that R5D4 was going to blow its motivator like that.
'Now jus---just---you listening?' Jackson asked, 'Just calm down and---and what the hell did you do to this table. Damn. You got maple syrup...oh, just look at this.' Picking a corner not glued to the table by syrup, Jackson lifted the wiggers' bill, ripping it in half in the process. 'See there? How'd you think you were gonna pay this, with syrup all over it.'
'Shunt gotta pay for it, all,' Wigger denied, 'Damn. Wait a hour just t'order a damn' Coke...nother hour get pan'akes. Service fuggen suck, yo.'
'Yo,' Jackson agreed, 'I think it's about time you go pay the nice waitress lady and call it a night. You think?'
'Don't gotsta pay shit, meal all cole an' shit, crazy muhfugger back dey callen out d'time every coupla seconds.'
'Oh, I think you do gotsta pay this bill,' Jackson said, waving the half he'd rescued from the Exxon Jemima, 'And I think you gotsta leave one hell of a tip, Boy. Maybe even apologise to all these nice people for putting up with your confused ass for the last hour or two. You get me? Huh?'
'Damn,' Wigger sang, the sun still not exploding out in space, 'Be police brutality, some shit.'
'Oh no,' Jackson said entirely certainly, 'No, you're mistaken about that, Son: this is not brutality; I have yet to become brutal. Tell you what though: if I become brutal, your first hint will be that it was the last thing you ever saw on God's Green Earth. Now are you gonna pay this bill, or am I gonna redefine your understanding of brutality.'
'Two hours and thirty-five minutes!'
And Jackson lost it, laughing like a schoolgirl frightened by a spider. Composed again: 'Okay: I'm done playing now. Show me the money; c'mon; show me you've got the money to cover this bill, we hand it over to clear you out, and you walk out that door free and clear. Don't have the money? I start with charging you with larceny and then see what else I can think of on the way to the station. So c'mon, People: get those wallets out; let's see what upstanding little citisens you weirdassed little whitefolk are.'
For whatever reason---and I'll probably never really know which---Wigger muttered something quickly, possibly in Sanskrit, before sliding halfway under the table to pluck a stash of Benjamins from the front pocket of the jeans cinched around his knees, slapping them precisely into the deepest puddle of syrup on the table. 'Fine!' he erupted, losing his blaccent, 'There you go---there's all my fucken money. Okay?'
'Hey, Davis,' Jackson said, 'How much cash does a kid need on him at any given...whatcha got here, five thousand? Ten?'
'Fuggen know,' Wigger said, shrugging, 'Nuff.'
'That might just be enough,' Jackson said, 'You know that, if you've got enough cash in your pockets, we gotta call in the FBI? Secret Service? Make sure you're not counterfeiting the shit?'
'Yeah, whatever,' Wigger said, pointedly adding, 'Officer.'
'You know what though,' Jackson decided, 'I don't wanna fucking know you anymore. What say we take one of these Benjamins...,' he proposed, sliding one off the top, 'let that cover your bill here, and the waitress just keeps the change. How's that sit with you.'
'Two hours---'
'Fuck it,' Wigger said, 'I gots more. A fuggen lot more. Fuggen knew who I was, find out what fuggen brutal all bout.'
'Oh, yes, Sir, Mister Citisen, Sir,' Jackson allowed, 'I'll make sure you get a commentcard with my name, rank, and badge number, so your daddy can sue my black ass the hell back to Africa. You're done here. Go home before I change my mind. And you better take a damn' cab: the next Officer of the Law will not be as kind as I've been, if you get pulled over driving drunk.'
'Whatever,' Wigger said.
Mock astonished, Jackson noticed him. 'You still here, Motherfucker? The fuck out. You do not want to test me.'
'Fuggen place sucks,' Wigger said, sliding out of the booth and grabbing his money, Wiggette following closely and silently, 'Ain't commen fuck back this fuggen place.'
'I think that'll suit everyone just fine,' Jackson said, nodding to Davis, who followed a few steps behind the wiggers until they'd left the building.
Standing at the window, Davis called back. 'Little fucker got right into his car and drove away.'
'Not surprised,' Jackson called back, 'Do a pussy little punk like that a favour, and you get this.'
'Yeah,' Davis muttered.
'The rest of you folks,' Jackson announced to the seventies, 'Sorry for the inconvenience.'
'Two hours and thirty-three minutes!'
'Yeah,' Jackson told George, 'Specially you.'
Davis returned to the seventies. 'I got his plates. I'll call it in, give out their general heading.
Jackson nodded, grabbing a chair from 62 and sliding it up to 71, sitting backwards in it, arms folded atop the chairback. 'Think you'd put that in a book?' he asked.
'Think anyone would believe it?' I asked back.
'Believe it? Shit. I'd be surprised if they didn't expect it. The hell's wrong with those punks, acting all black like it gains them anything.'
I shrugged. 'Michael Jackson,' I guessed.
Jackson laughed. 'Dude's whiter'n you are.'
'Maybe. But he got huge in the eighties. Pissed off the blacks, maybe; but that's only about twelve percent; the other eighty-eight percent wanted to be the guy. But I dunno: it could be unrelated.'
Looking at 74 with its unruly lake of syrup, Jackson mused: 'I just don't know what I'm supposed to make of those...whaddaya even call people like that.'
'Wiggers,' I said.
'Come again,' Jackson told me, behind precisely the look you never want to see on a cop facing in your direction.
'Wiggers,' I said again, more clearly, 'With a W, not an N.'
'Oh: wiggers. I gotcha.'
'Though, at the risk of being too honest, I have no compunction against calling them niggers, either.'
Jackson blinked. 'You really just said that to me, didn't you.'
'I did,' I admitted.
'Now, you do realise that I,' Jackson said slowly but unsoftly, 'am a black man.'
'Is that right.'
'Born and bred.'
'What else ya get for chris'mas.'
He stared at me for a long second, then cracked the grin. 'You are something else. You know that?'
'I get that a lot.'
'Two hours and thirty-two minutes!'
'Okay, so explain this to me,' Jackson said, 'Don't feel threatened; I can talk to a white guy about this sorta thing. You have no, what, compunction? Against the word "nigger". That's what you said, right? And, so why's that, precisely.'
'Initially? Because I'm English, and we have nothing resembling the colourwars you have in this country.'
'Okay,' Jackson allowed, 'So, initially, it's cultural; I'll buy that. But you're here now. So, what makes it okay for you, do you think.'
'Secondarily,' I said, 'I don't pretend that there's any difference between us.'
'Is that a fact.'
'It really is. In that regard, I mean. You're a cop; I'm a writer; those are different things. But, as I understand basic biology, there's exactly one human race. Right?'
'With you so far,' Jackson said.
'So, we might be different colours; but so what. We're different heights and weights and all that too.'
'Okay,' Jackson said, 'So it's just another differentiating characteristic; I get that.'
'Except that it's not.'
'I can agree there too.'
'No: it's not really a differentiating characteristic. Biologically, we're all pretty much the same; culturally, apart from what we claim to be...we're all from Africa---you, me, those idiots who just left. Ultimately, humans evolved in and wandered out of Africa. Since then, some have evolved whiter skin; but it's meaningless.'
'Two hours and thirty-one minutes!'
Jackson bobbed his head a bit. 'Yeah...not really. I'm not sure you'd think it was so meaningless if you'd grown up---in this country---as a black kid.'
'Of course not,' I said, 'That's the point. Its meaningfulness is subjective. If you'd grown up as a white kid in London, you'd be perplexed by the reports of race riots and kangaroo courts designed to implicate black guys over in the US.'
'So, what you're saying is that it doesn't matter, because it's not your problem.'
'I'm saying it's not anyone's problem, unless they let it bind them.'
'No,' Jackson said, 'No: I gotta disagree with that. If I don't let my blackness bind me, it won't make me any less black to anyone else. I'm afraid I'm stuck with this particular shade of brown.'
'Okay,' I said, 'All emotion aside.'
'I'm not being emotional. Trust me: I get emotional about a white dude saying "nigger", you'll be the first to know.'
'Okay: there you go. You're allowed to say it.'
'Sure. Look: for how many hundreds of years, that's what we were---it's all we were to you---okay, to be fair, not to you, but to people of your, you know, fishbelliness.'
'Right.'
'I think it's perfectly fair that my people have captured and domesticated "nigger" for our own, personal, private use.'
'Has it worked?'
'Has what worked: capturing it?'
'Yeah. Now that it's yours, is it harmless?'
'Uh...sorta. It's harmless if I say it; it's not so harmless if you say it. And that little punkassed bitch a few minutes ago's got no business saying it.'
'Two hours and thirty minutes!'
'Okay,' I said, 'So, due to a history of---and pardon me for refusing to dance around a couple of truly meaningless syllables---due to a history of "nigger" being used to categorise black people as some lesser form of animal, its use today must either be for that same purpose, by we white guys, or for the purpose of flaunting your domesticated appropriation in spite of the manner by which we white guys have no choice but to use it.'
'Uh, ye...ah,' Jackson said, 'I could go with that explanation.'
'Cool. Let's talk about "cracker".'
'Oh, I getcha.'
'And "honkey",' I added, 'For that matter "limey" and "pom".'
'Yeah, I know; but it's not...how hurt and offended are you really by "cracker" and "limey" though.'
'By the words? Zilch. Words have only the meanings defined by a given group of people prior to their use; if we agree to define "nigger" and "cracker" and "limey" as unimportant species of arctic trees, then no one will ever be offended. I'm slightly offended---and only partly for myself---that I'm not allowed to use "nigger", but you're allowed to use "cracker". Now---I know---now, the other half of that is really interesting. I have no doubt that I can say "cracker" all day long, just as you can say "nigger", right? Okay. Yet, only one of us is allowed to say either or both, by modern societal convention. Now---and think about this purely logically before you respond, because I'm making a point, not insulting a percentage of this country: if there are two sorts of people, and a set of double standards, and the standard appointing the greater set of freedoms, or the lesser set of repressions, if given to the one group over the other---and here's the important part---insofar as special treatment is as a matter of course given to that group too fragile to adhere to the rules thrust upon the other group, what would you derive from that.'
'Two hours and twenty-nine minutes!'
'Okay. Um...I'm not just disagreeing with anything,' Jackson said, 'because I'm honestly not sure I'm following you anymore.'
'That might be best. Let's back up a bit. Everyone hates the French; so let's use them. The French are frogs; that's a given. Now, supposing a huge number of frogs lived in the US---enough to make up about an eighth of the populace, say.'
'I get that.'
'Okay. Now, they take offence to being called frogs, which, in the US, is totally within their rights: here, you can take offence to three fifty-seven in the afternoon if it makes you happy.'
'Right.'
'So, we as a culture agree that nonfrogs are hereby prohibited by etiquette if not by law from calling frogs "frogs".'
'I could see that.'
'But the frogs can call themselves "frogs", because they're capturing and domesticating the word.'
'Okay.'
'So, this word exists, and one smallish group is allowed to use it, intent not counting for much---they can use it to joke, or to insult each other within their little froggy group. You and I, however, are prohibited from using their word, although, for the sake of argument, they can call us crackers and niggers because, hey: they're the French, and they've earned that slanted right.'
'I see.'
'Do you? If a frog can call you a nigger, and you can call yourself a nigger, and a frog can call himself a frog, and you're not allowed to call him a frog, there's a doublestandard created to account for, what, a weakness on the froggy end of the emotional spectrum?'
'Okay: yeah. I do understand. I also understand that the French were never called frogs to strip them of their humanity and turn them into property. If that had happened, I'd be more forgiving of a double standard allowing them to use whatever words they liked, for me and for themselves, when I personally wasn't allowed to use the same word to talk about them.'
'Two hours and twenty-eight minutes!'
'And that's a valid consideration,' I said, 'But I, personally, have never called a black guy a nigger as a---well, really, I've never called a black guy a nigger at all; I use it passively and hypothetically; but, I've certainly never used it to discuss a brownish guy I happen to own. So, by that sort of logic, I'm immune to this unwritten law by virtue of having never been the guy whom the unwritten law was unwritten to penalise.'
'I get that too. But, the simple fact is that, if you, being white, go around calling black guys niggers, it's not like you're gonna have paperwork affirming that you're not the white guy the law was unwritten over.'
'So, I could use the word, and be right about using the word, and be misunderstood by those of the correct colour to use both that word, and words meant to categorise me as a white guy.'
'Two hours and twenty-seven minutes!'
'I...guess so,' Jackson said.
'Let's flip this a bit,' I proposed, 'What if you weren't allowed to call me a cracker.'
'I'm not gonna call you a cracker anyway.'
'So you'd be willing to lose that freedom of speech.'
'Oh boy. Well, in those terms exactly? I don't know if it's that simple.'
'It might be: it's that simple that I can't say "nigger", directly or hypothetically, lacking the ability to show that I wasn't here three hundred years ago, owning brown people.'
'It...kinda, yeah. But...well, you know what: it's complicated.'
'Doubtlessly.'
'So, I'll tell you what. It won't solve the problem you're really talking about, which I don't particularly even disagree with; but, as far as I'm concerned, understanding who you are and where you're from and that you aren't an eighteenth century slavedriver: if you wanna use the word "nigger", I won't hold it against you. But you still have to understand that I'm not speaking for the brothers here; a lot of them won't wait to hear your rational explanation and hypothetical situations: they'll just fuck your shit up.'
'Oh yeah: I know. It sucks, but: what can I do---I'm white; mine's a colour not trusted with the responsibility of rational thought and judgment in using certain words properly.'
'Okay: now you're just fucking joking with me,' Jackson said.
'Of course. Again: I've got no compunctions. If I say something, and someone takes offence, and I even care enough to explain why I'd said it, he can hear me out or not; and, really, if he won't hear me out over something I'd said, he's gonna wanna beat me up because I'm wearing the wrong shirt or something anyway.'
'Two hours and twenty-six minutes!'
'There's still more going on than all that,' Jackson said, 'But I think you understand that.'
'So,' Hutch called, entirely too confidently to stay alive much longer, 'If I understand all that, do I get to say "nigger" too?'
Jackson whipped a look of unleashed death at him. 'Okay: Fatboy needs himself some quiet time now before he finds a tactical response boot in his ass.'
I went out front for a cigarette again. No drunks whose utterly minimally recommended daily attention I'd attracted remained in the restaurant anymore, so the cops didn't escort me out like the Secret Service watching for snipers. Which may have been just as well: to the extent that Jackson understood and even agreed with my whole negroclature rant, Davis---also black---never really gave me a response or even an indication; I'm not entirely sure we were okay.
Something I wish I'd explained---and to explain it now, in narrative, seems oddly like proselytising---was my actual and simple point that, to whatever degree anyone today holds anyone else in contempt for any word, it's ultimately an archaic sort of grudge. To stick with the French, based on their history of running away from any fight, if for the sake of argument calling them frogs was ever somehow relative to regarding them as subhuman property, then if they remained offended and outraged today by people using the damned word, the problem really would be on their end for trying to hold onto a past no one alive can really remember now, that few alive ever saw firsthand. If we can all agree that the French taking offence to frog centuries [or even just decades] after it was last used to denigrate their 'race' to the status of livestock or agricultural gear, since that would be a silly and selfserving attempt to revitalise a forgotten abomination while begging the question of intent in the twenty-first century which lacks the ownership and oppression of the French, then our next step is to replace 'race' as a word and conclude pretty much the same thing about black people who get uppity about a word no one under the age at present of fiftysomething can even conceive of holding any firsthand emotional power over a group of people, and which no one currently less than about 150 years old could ever relate directly to slavery as anything resembling an eyewitness.
What I wish I'd explained was simply that, regardless any ingrained fear and loathing of what sounds to be little more than the bastardisation of the name of the country of Niger, it's time to get over it and get back to hating the fucking French, who as recently as 1986 desperately deserved it, as I can tell you remembering firsthand the tugboatwar of Qadaffi v Countries with Real Navies. Quod Erat Death to Froggy.
I hadn't taken the laptop outside with me this time: I'd simply gone out to replenish my nicotine levels and remain sane. Ish.
Also, I really wasn't in a hurry to go back inside, sitting there, finishing my cigarette, sitting there, lighting another, sitting there, finishing that one, and finally going back in when my watch beeped at four. My watch being a couple of seconds behind the clock in my laptop, and therefore the atomic clock in Boulder, Colorado, I missed George's probable announcement that we had two hours and eight minutes to go, or to live, or to see how long we could go without killing him, or whatever he was counting down to; we really didn't know what he thought he knew.
Knowing now what he thought he knew, and for that matter whether he was right...well: all in good time; we've got a couple hours to talk about first.
I was in the lobby when Davis and Jackson got up and headed quicklyish toward the door. Davis said nothing, never even slowing; we probably weren't okay. Jackson stopped, letting Davis go on ahead out the door and around back to get the squadcar. 'Got a call,' he said, 'Time to clock back in.'
'Same here, I guess,' I said.
'Listen, um...well, I probably won't be back in here again before tonight---Saturday tonight, but...nevermind; I gotta go; I'll catch you next time.'
'Okay,' I said.
Then, he was out the door and meeting Davis pulling up in the roller, hurrying into the passenger seat without grabbing for his seatbelt. He waved quickly as the squadcar chirped to a start and picked up speed on the way to the street, lightbar cycling sirenlessly in the night.
The next time I'd see cops, things would be less friendly than that had all been. But, ultimately, that was after sunrise, and therefore beyond the scope of this anecdote.
I got back to my seat just in time for George's announcement: 'Two hours and seven minutes!'
'That really is getting annoying,' Leslie said.
Next to her, on the inside, Chuck had fallen asleep. But Larry the Manager was busy minesweeping somewhere, and Jessica just didn't care: she was still clearing tables dirtied and abandoned over an hour earlier, for $4.35 per hour before tips, of which there were now really none coming in at all.
College was behind her; this was what she did now; and she knew it. Once Oligarch of the Universe, I intended to let her live too.
George had begun muttering, outside his countdown, still making approximately no sense, but possibly slightly more anyway. 'Boom,' he said hopelessly, 'Boom, boom, boom. The ducks exploded. Who hates ducks that much. So they eat bread; so what; does bread hate the ducks? Does bread hate toast---is it considered suicide? I dunno. Boom, boom, boom; watermelons too; boom, boom, boom. And then someone explain the gophers, if they were gophers; maybe they were groundhogs, y'know? Maybe they saw their shadows up there; so they went boom, boom, boom. Six more weeks of winter, so boom, boom, boom. Someone sure hates groundhogs. And carrots. What's that about. Two hours and six minutes! I don't get the antelopes at all. Do velociraptors like antelopes? I dunno. Someone doesn't: boom, boom, boom; poor little deer, or whatever the hell those things are; could be Switzerland; hell: I dunno. Boom. Wonk. Millipedes the size of motorbikes. Wonk. Boom. Vroom.'
'Hang on,' I said, looking at Leslie, 'Did you ever read that?'
'Read what.'
'The---in the book,' I said, scrolling up to Taylor Cleveland hiding in her dressing room, 'The...this: "And they were monsters: more legs than any animal should have, those grabby external teeth---mandibles---clicking and clacking and possibly sensing. Like millipedes the size of motorbikes, and yet far less charming"---did you read that.'
'No,' she said, 'That's in the book?'
'It started with "Taylor Cleveland backed away from the door in thoughtless horror before thinking to step forward and twist the deadbolt into the frame", remember?'
'Oh yeah. No. I stopped reading because I thought you were gonna fix the deadbolt thing.'
'Right,' I said, looking at George, 'So where'd "millipedes the size of motorbikes" come from.'
'I guess from...I have no idea. Did you pick it up somewhere?'
'Where,' I said, 'Has anyone in the history of the planet ever strung "millipedes the size of motorbikes" together before? I'm pretty sure I've never seen it in a book anywhere.'
'Coincidence?' she asked.
'Regarding a specific concept as described by a precise sequence of words?'
'I dunno,' she said, simply adding, 'George is weird.'
'Two hours and five minutes!'
'And,' she said, 'we might find out in two hours and five minutes.'
I nodded slowly, watching George mumble, no longer certain that I wanted to be in the restaurant at dawn.
'Huh,' I said.
'Huh?' Leslie questioned.
'I just had a stupid idea,' I told her, 'which may beg more questions than it solves, which might work anyway.'
'For the alienbook?'
'One hour and fifty-one minutes!'
'Yeah. Okay: stupidtime. We know from the metaphysicapricious that their mythical souls have to exist because energy can't be created or destroyed---basic misunderstanding of thermodynamic theory, possibly complicated by special relativity: energy divided by lightspeed squared, and all that.'
'So, this is physics,' Leslie said, 'Your explanation is going to involve physics no one normal, like me, knows a thing about.'
'Kinda. Maybe not. They don't understand it either; they use physics to suppose that, no one understanding physics, it's probably therefore true.'
'Not knowing something makes it true?' she asked.
'They try to play it all paratransitional. Is there milk in your fridge? Maybe? Suppose so. Is it spoiled? Maybe. Suppose so. Can you be certain that it's spoiled? No? Good. Therefore it's an elephant. They're idiots.'
'People do that? That's stupid.'
'That's not how metaphysics works,' HippyGuy said.
'See?' I asked, 'I don't have to go talk to these people; they come to me; they can't not jump in to suck at me.'
'Metaphysics isn't about milk,' HippyGuy said, 'It's about finding the meaning of life.'
'One hour and fifty minutes!'
'Partly,' I said, 'The whole ontological bullshit thing based on the begged question of prepared algorithms. Life occurs; when that's not enough to keep butthurt morons happy, they have to invent preordinate bogeymen to have thought up a meaning for life in advance, somewhere in a design phase for the universe, which never addresses the meaning of that bogeyman's life, because they further makebelieve that its life, inasmuch as it's even a lifeform, must be way cooler than theirs.'
'Whatever,' HippyGuy recited.
'Which then leads minimally to spinozan determinism,' I said, 'nonsequitur though that may be, and beyond, until you're into cosmogenic firstcause bullshit and ignoring einsteinbreaking issues like tachyons and...it's irrelevant. Well: probably. Somewhere in there, there may be something relevant to what I'm thinking about now.'
'So, physics again,' Leslie said.
'A little,' I said, 'Everything's physical; that's sorta my point. Even thought is physical, ultimately: a given thought, regardless how long and complex and recorded, is maybe half a second as a burst of energy, peeking and poking and playing random access across a physical brain---organic data storage. To the extent that the brain is something of a flashdrive, sectored nearly logically, thoughts act something like search queries. Hitting GoogleDotCom and searching for something is similar enough to trying to remember whether there's milk in the fridge that we can relate them within the point.'
Leslie nodded sceptically, not apparently getting the point. Which was fair: I wasn't explaining it very well.
'One hour and forty-nine minutes!'
'Okay,' I said, 'Thoughts go through brains and pull up information; that's a given. How they do that precisely is in question; we don't really know exactly how that works, and we don't really have to: we're good at it anyway. We do know a few cool little tricks for---we can implant things---devices---DBS and whatever; we can control brains to some degree, arguably simplifying thought and remapping---well, not remapping, exactly, but reestablishing points. Can't remember something? We can fix that. Can't control your legs? We can fix that. Smallish stuff like that. We do know that the brain ultimately contains all this shit; we're still in the process working out exactly what does what; but that's not the point.'
'So, what is the point,' Leslie asked.
'He hasn't got one,' HippyGuy lied.
'Sh'up,' Leslie told him.
'We can DBS into storage,' I said, 'right?'
'Maybe,' Leslie said, 'Depending what "DBS" is.'
'Deep Brain Stimulation,' I said, 'Bionic implants reestablishing contacts within the brain.'
'More fiction from the writer,' HippyGuy lied, 'Bullshit theoretical cybernetics.'
'One hour and forty-eight minutes!'
'You're an idiot,' I told him, 'Likely, you're an idiot who's already met a cyborg: we've been implanting people for years. Well, obviously: pacemakers are implants in the strictest sense. But, yeah: there are people walking around today---a lot of them---with DBS allowing them to walk around. Idiot.'
'Whatever.'
Meekly, HippyChick told him: 'My grandmother has DBS for Parkinson's.'
'Whatever,' HippyGuy told her.
'Anyway,' I said, 'We can reestablish processes within movement disorders to a large degree; we can with limited success override OCD and Tourette's; probably, we can slam an electrode into, like, the caudal zona incerta---'
'The what?' Leslie asked.
'The brain. It doesn't matter, really. But, probably, we can use this to reattach lost memories to the brainbased searchengine, as it were. That make sense?'
'I guess so,' Leslie said.
'Okay,' I said, 'Now, something else we'd have to take as read: simple memory being acoustic and ingrained memory being semantic---whether that's true or not; it doesn't really matter---stored memory ultimately ends up in the hippocampus. Then you get into that whole central executive episodic buffer thing and you have no idea what I'm talking about again.'
'Not really,' she said.
'It still doesn't matter,' I said, 'What matters is that, probably, everyone's functionally eidetic---well, not functionally---that's the problem---but everyone seeing and hearing and thinking anything retains a copy of it somewhere in his brain. Let's assume that for now.'
'Okay.'
'One hour and forty-seven minutes!'
'Then let's assume that DBS or something like it didn't need to be implanted; let's assume it could be external, possibly as some sort of InputOutput thing. Like there'd be a way to WiFi brains.'
'You'd get interesting new hackers,' she said.
'Crackers, really,' I said, 'But yeah. And this is where it gets important to the story. I'm not WiFied here, because this place kinda sucks; the phone and laptop are getting online through Verizon. To go WiFi, I'd have to get close enough to a hotspot, and possibly crack my way in to get online. Because the signal strength on WiFi sucks. Because the FCC suck. How do we get around that? Signalboosting. Theoretically, if unshielded, a hotspot could be, well, the size of the universe, I suppose. Given enough power behind it, the range could be unlimited. I think. I actually haven't ever looked that up. But that's okay: this isn't about WiFi.'
'Of course not,' she said.
'Yeah. Brains store information; thoughts access information; we know that. And we hear from Sagan that aliens can receive broadcasts from mechanical sources. Let's drop Sagan and stick to thoughts. What if aliens could access brains externally, using a slightly advanced version of what we're already using, and from parsecs away.'
'If they could read minds from other planets,' Leslie said.
'Yeah, basically,' I said, 'Not only would they read thoughts,' I said, 'but they'd see what we were seeing. If you were watching Tyra Banks or Jerry Springer, processing that information into your brain, these aliens could ultimately be receiving that information after however many years it would take at lightspeed to reach them.'
'So, that's scary.'
'One hour and forty-six minutes!'
'That's me: scary,' I said, 'Add in a few other ideas, like tachyons and wormholes and everything the genre already relies on, and, purely theoretically, the aliens could chronologically receive your thoughts before you'd thought them.'
'So, "Minority Report",' she said.
'Uh...no,' I said, 'But sorta. In reverse. Kinda. Forget paradoxes for a minute; we're not gonna care about those because there's no reason to pretend that the universe would explode over the instance of a causeless effect.'
'And we're back to physics,' she whined.
'Quantum; but yeah,' I said, 'Only to dismiss it though. As many questions as it begs, we're starting to look at the universe as an eternal thing. Like, there won't be a bigcrunch with all the mass gravitating back into a singularity and reexploding. And we're dismissing the concern that, one plus two being three, three now being three, removing one from its history, it's still three; that doesn't end the universe, because it's silly. If you write something down and throw away the pen, what you wrote down still exists; it doesn't really matter.'
'Throwing away the pen doesn't erase it from history,' Chuck mumbled, waking up.
'Okay,' I allowed, 'but: erasing the pen from history doesn't undo the universe.'
'Why not,' he said
'Because...it's my book and I say so; it doesn't matter.'
'This is about the book?' Chuck asked, 'Okay.'
'One hour and forty-five minutes!'
'So,' I said, 'Let's wait a few octillion years, since the universe isn't going anywhere. That gives our aliens time to evolve and go all technological and they can be anywhere in the universe---technically, they could be on Earth---or, not really, since the sun's only got five billion years to live. But they could be on a planet like Earth, the right distance from the sun, protected from asteroids by something like Jupiter, containing the amino acids required for life to autopoies...ise---happen. Or, for all I care, to allopoiesise. Somewhere out there in the universe, maybe far into the future, these aliens exist and thrive and invent the means to scan the universe, theoretical border to theoretical border, from the literal beginning of time. Okay?'
'Okay,' Chuck said with the wrong face for okay.
'Anyway: the aliens scan the universe, possibly sequentially, from the beginning, and, close to fourteen billion years into the scan, these goofy little primates on a rock ninety-three million miles from a star in an arm of a galaxy over in, you know, "Plural Zed Alpha", or whatever, inadvertently report watching Springer and Tyra and Donahue and fucking FTroop and whatever else the human animal should be a little ashamed of. And, being the sort of aliens I as a deity create while working in mysterious ways, they take offence and declare war, flying---or teleporting---to Earth and throwing down.'
'Why not just blow the planet up entirely,' Leslie said.
'To make the book longer.'
She pondered for a moment. 'Okay. I don't get it. But you get it. And it's your job to make me get it. So just write it down, using small words.'
'Boring,' I said.
'Isn't that the point?' she asked, 'That we're boring? So the aliens wanna kill us for being boring?'
'More or less,' I said.
'One hour and forty-four minutes!'
'Maybe they wouldn't just blow up the planet because some people were worth saving,' I said.
'In a boring species,' Leslie said.
'It could be the whole firstcause thing,' I told her, 'Like one guy, or a few guys---people---whatever---had to survive in order to invent something important. The aliens are from the future, so they'd know that, I guess. Or, maybe, they'd see things fourthdimensionally, knowing all possible outcomes---the only real way to be omniscient while omnipotent. Which isn't quite the point. They could know that this guy or these people would---oh. Maybe, if they didn't exterminate the stupid, the thing wouldn't be invented. Something like that. That could be the whole punchline: that, like...it could even be a timeloop thing. Aliens kill almost everyone; these guys who aren't morons invent something to counterattack; that invented, uh...something allows for something which allows the aliens to develop the means in the future to scan for Earth and all. Kinda like "The Terminator" was before they cut the ending and made sequels and a television show to fuck it all up.'
'The cyborg ending up in the factory which later developed the cyborg from the remaining parts,' Leslie said, 'That was the sequel.'
'Originally, it was in the first film,' I said, 'The camera pulled back and up and showed that the factory was called "Cyberdyne".'
'They cut that?' she asked.
'Yeah.'
'Idiots.'
'One hour and forty-three minutes!'
'So,' I said, 'I'm not cutting that. Our Hero has to survive to invent something to repel the aliens, allowing humans to evolve with this new technology, become new species, explore the universe, and eventually, I suppose, become the aliens who, without remembering any of all that, have to go back to Earth in the twenty-first century to kill the stupid people, for their own reasons, allowing Our Hero to invent...over and over.'
'Cool,' she said, 'I like it; do that.'
'So, probably, the aliens wouldn't be all that fourthdimensional after all; but that's okay: Vonnegut already did that. Of course, Crichton already did this, kinda. "Sphere". But...you know: "Beowulf"; it's all been done already; that's a given.'
'So,' Leslie said, 'You're doing a sort of "Terminator" meets "Sphere" meets "Donnie Darko" meets---'
'Yeahyeahyeah,' I said, 'I dunno. There are problems with it still: humans aren't gonna evolve into starbugs. Though human interference could be what allows the starbugs to evolve. Humans---Our Hero---start up the technology; humans die out; bugs benefit from it somehow...I can make it work; I just have to think about it a little more.'
'One hour and forty-two minutes!'
'And,' I added, 'If I can think about it in the next hundred minutes before the world ends, that'll be good too.'
'The world's ending?' Chuck asked.
'Nah,' I said, 'But, since no one has any idea what George is counting down to, we're calling it that. Speaking of, you know, "Donnie Darko".'
'If that fucking rabbit shows up here,' Chuck said, 'I'm gonna freak. I hated that thing. Creepy fucking rabbit.'
'You just didn't understand it,' HippyGuy said.
'I understood it,' I said, 'Also, I liked it. Furthermore also, you're still an idiot. Go back to waiting for DBS to be invented.'
'Whatever.'
Jessica walked by with the last of what she'd removed from 74 while cleaning it up. 'You okay on coffee?' she asked.
'I dunno,' I said, lifting the coffeepot and shaking it, 'Maybe not entirely. Actually: You think I could get, like, a big plate of ch---fries?'
'Sure,' Jessica said, 'Like, a double?'
'Probably,' I said, 'Since everyone else'll try to eat them.'
'Ranch?' she asked.
'Um...sure,' I said, 'why not.'
'I'm good,' Chuck said, 'I just ate, like...what time is it.'
'One hour and forty minutes!'
'Four twenty-eight,' I said, 'apparently.'
'I get fries though,' Leslie said, 'Right?'
'With ranch,' I said.
'You don't like ranch?' she asked.
'I like it,' I said, 'It just confuses me. When did it go from being a dressing to a condiment. That just happened one day. It's like it's following Miracle Whip, if that ever really was a salad dressing.'
Leslie shrugged. 'Ranch is kinda the same though, isn't it? It was always for fries.'
'No it wasn't,' I said, 'One day in about nineteen ninety, it just became a dipping sauce. It didn't make the news; it just happened.'
'Nineteen ninety,' she said, 'I was three. Or, probably, two.'
'This is why I hate you,' I said, 'I was in college. Postgrad.'
'Sorry,' she said, 'I forgot to be twenty years older than this.'
'Just don't let it happen again,' I told her.

EPILOGUE


A mere ten billion years after cooling from magma into an oblate spheroid capable of sustaining life---that life rising from amino acids delivered by meteors in the first three hundred million years---that life evolving from RNA to DNA, to infusoria to fish to mammals to humans: Earth began once again to melt, its sun---in the end an asymptotic giant branch---expanding its diameter to three hundred fifty gigametres, its hydrogen depleted, its helium fusing, its existence---and that of the planets relying upon it---ending.


The life itself hadn't ended. The protozoa ameliorating to fish and mammals had branched and fractured, giving rise also to the arthropods, the myriapoda, the diplopoda: a class once containing some ten thousand species, one of them Illacme plenipes, a siphonophorid with a future.


The humans had died out, along with the rest of the mammalia, bequeathing the planet again to the arthropods. The siphonophorids evolved and thrived, diversified, and grew larger, and smarter.


As the planet began to melt back into magma, the progeny of Illacme plenipes were gone, but not extinct. They'd left Earth to explore the stars, evolving, fracturing, and spreading.


Three hundred billion years beyond the death of the sun supporting the planet their ancestors had once occupied, living now on new planets in new galaxies, millipedes the size of motorbikes now scanned the universe for signs of life: side to side, back to front, top to bottom, and beginning to end.


It took less than a million years to catch a signal: a creature on the minds of millions of its fellows; a creature called Taylor Cleveland.


It and its fellows, the millipedes concluded, were too stupid to survive.

I saved it and turned the laptop to Leslie, then grabbed some chips.
'You wrote the epilogue?' she asked.
'Yeah. I know how it ends now,' I said, 'Or, really, how it begins.'
'Hang on,' she said, 'Should I even ask what all these words mean?'
'Probably not. That's what I'm wondering about: without looking them all up, can you grok them from context.'
'Oh. Okay: hang on.'
'One hour and ten minutes!'
'Did you look all this stuff up?' Leslie asked.
'The spellcheck went batshit,' I said, 'So I made sure I was spelling things correctly. Otherwise: not really. The plenipes is real, by the way: discovered in I think nineteen twenty-six and then lost until about four years ago when someone found another one; six hundred legs on average; the record is seventy fifty.'
'You really are evil,' she said.
I ate fries at her. 'I went with the plenipes partly because it's the closest thing we know about to a true millipede, since nothing actually has a thousand legs. Also, it's in California, so it's got a bit of a headstart on handling heat. When the planet warms in the next billion years and exterminates mammals and reptiles, it'll probably go back to the arthropods.'
'Yeah. I'm reading that: "bequeathing the planet again to the arthropods". You might wanna explain that somewhere.
'I will,' I said, 'I'm gonna have a palaeontologist come in to analyse the bugs. But for the Permian extinction, the arthropods would probably control the planet today.'
'I guess that'll help,' she said.
'One hour and nine minutes!'
'Of course,' I said, 'that still leaves writing most of a book; and I might change things a bit in the epilogue by the time I'm finished. But, I know how to play it now. The rest is mostly just typing.'
'Yeah,' she said, 'Stick to dialogue; you're good at that. You don't even need descriptions: people get what's going on just from people gaying dings---gang on...just from people saying things within quotes. Also, eat your fries or I'm going to.'
'We can get more,' I said, 'I just wanted something to munch on. Also, more importantly, I want a cigarette. So: AFK now.'
I got up and moved toward the door.
'Wait,' Leslie said, 'Did you delete the rest of the book?'
"AltTab,' I said, 'I started a new file for the epilogue.'
'Oh.'
I got outside and lit a cigarette. Chuck showed up after a minute, lighting one too.
'I can't believe I fell asleep in there,' he said.
I shrugged.
'And you didn't stop me,' he added.
'No one cares,' I said, 'That idiot manager's still missing. And Jessica's not worried about it.'
'She said that?'
'She didn't say anything. If she were worried about it, she would.'
Chuck rolled his head around on his shoulders, cracking his neck. 'Maybe I'm getting too old to hang out all night at restaurants.'
'George isn't too old,' I said, 'He's gotta be sixty.'
'He's crazy,' Chuck said, 'In the first week without sleep, he wouldn't even know about it.'
A car pulled into the lot, including a bumpersticker reading Blessed Be. 'Oh hell,' I said, 'Stupid people; run.'
Chuck looked up at the moon. 'Full moon on a summer night; wiccans at five in the morning: this can only mean one thing.'
'That the hippies are no longer alone,' I said.
There were four of them in the Subaru: a guy with a couple feet of blackdyed hair and something of a sandlot Van Dyke---not black, and too sparse to work correctly; the three chicks were even from this distance bothersome freespirit twats gypsied up in flowing black polyester dresses and fishnet, like the cast of Little House on the Prairie at a Def Leppard concert.
'Blessed be,' one of the chicks told me, passing me and walking into the building.
'Yeah,' I said, 'I already read your car.'
'Merry meet,' the next said.
'I can't marry meat in this state,' I told Chuck, who grinned.
The last chick, and Anton Szandor Custer, simply walked past us into the restaurant.
I looked at my cigarette. 'This may be one of those times when I stay out here and have a few of these.'
'They'll probably sit in the old non section,' Chuck said.
'Jessica just finished clearing seventy-four,' I told him, 'Whaddaya wanna bet.'
'Good point. Think they'll like Hutch?'
'On second thought,' I said, 'maybe I'll just finish this one real quick.'
'One hour and two minutes!'
I sat down and went back to eating chips, which were getting cold now. 'Miss anything?' I asked.
Leslie looked at me. 'Here be wiccans.'
'Fluffbunnies,' I said, 'They advertise: they've got a bumpersticker.'
It should be mentioned I suppose that, until about two minutes after meeting me, Leslie had been something of a wiccan; three minutes after meeting me, she understood how silly it all was and got over it.
It should be further mentioned---reiterated, really---that I don't actually go around looking for theists to heckle, inasmuch as wiccans are even theistic. But my ethics don't really apply to Leslie.
'I feel cleansed,' one of the wicchicks announced, causing Leslie to laugh mercilessly for a few seconds.
'Full moon,' Leslie said, smiling almost sadly, and nodding, 'They just got back from that Circle shit.'
Jessica came out to see what the wiccans wanted to drink.
'What the hell is wrong with these people,' Leslie said.
'You're the one who used to be one,' I told her.
'And you were right,' she said, 'It's stupid.'
Leslie was being loud enough that the wiccans could hear her. And of course wiccans can't say anything without being onstage at the time, whether there's a stage or not; they'll makebelieve one. So:
'Normals!' Colonel von Sanders announced in a sadly manufactured rasp, choleric and overimportant. Worf, from Star Trek.
'Why do they plague us so,' one of the wicchicks whimpered in meretricious bombast.
'Are you plaguing anyone?' I asked Leslie.
'Um...not that I can tell,' she said, 'Unless I'm astralprojecting without noticing.'
'So that's probably it,' I said.
The wiccans started shuddering something like the pirates reacting to Jack Sparrow's black spot, trying to, like, shake off the normalcy, which arguably worked instantly: no question they were abnormal once again.
'What do you want to drink,' Jessica said again, slowly; when she'd asked before, while Leslie was laughing, the abnormals had evaded the question in favour of makebelieving the plague; probably just to make Leslie cackle again, which happened to work pretty well; Jessica added, 'You can't drink normals.'
'I could drink their blood,' Worf declared.
'No blood,' Jessica told him, 'Tomato juice?'
'One hour and one minute!'
'Oh god I hope the world doesn't end in an hour,' Leslie said, laughing herself to tears, 'I want to laugh at these idiots all day.'
'That figures,' HippyGuy said, 'Anyone who thinks different than you gets laughed at.'
'Oh shut up,' Leslie told HippyGuy, still laughing.
'A kindred spirit!' a wicchick yelped, actually and literally pointing at HippyGuy.
'You have no idea,' I muttered.
The pointersister scowled at me. I think she wanted to look something like Tina Fey, which might mean she wanted to look something like Sarah Palin; ultimately, she looked something like Sybil Trelawney, from Harry Potter.
'So, are you getting tomato juice?' Jessica asked.
'Coffee!' Worf barked, 'With lots of cream!' It has to be mentioned that this guy could append an exclamation mark to the end of a shrug; to be more accurate, he actually said Coffee! With! Lots! Of! Cream! but I'm not gonna write that way.
'Can I just get hot water?' Sybil asked, 'I brought my own tea.'
'Of course you did,' Jessica said, 'We can't do that anymore: people were making tea out of marijuana. Orange pekoe okay?'
'I guess,' Sybil said, magically losing seventy percent of her volume as she deflated, dejected, into her seat.
'Do you have Coke?' asked Mary Meat.
'We have CocaCola,' Jessica said, 'We don't have anything Bolivian.'
'That's what I meant,' Mary said, disappointed about something anyway.
'And you?' Jessica asked, turning to Blessed Be.
'You wouldn't have mead here, huh.'
'I wouldn't have mead here,' Jessica said, 'even if I was allowed to have mead here. Coke, diet, cherry, Pibb, Sprite; coffee, tea, milk, chocolate; orange, tomato, grapefruit; lemonade; and there's always water.'
'Do you have Hershey's Syrup?'
'Yeah? Something like it, anyway. You want to drink that?'
'No; if...could I get a Coke, without any ice, with Hershey's Syrup in it?'
'A Chocolate Coke,' Jessica said.
'Right!' Blessed Be screamed orgasmically.
'I'm not really sure we can do refills on that,' Jessica said.
'That's okay.'
'Okay,' Jessica said, 'You've got your menus; I'll go get all that while you look them over.'
'Blessed be!' Blessed Be called after her.
'Not in this place,' Jessica muttered at me.
'At least she didn't say "marinated meat",' I told her, 'That would be the other one.'
'Dinner ended at midnight,' Jessica said, going back into the kitchen.
'One hour!' George announced.
'Good Sir!' Worf screamed, 'Why do you count the time so!'
'Naturally,' I said, 'this idiot wouldn't know what a crier was.'
'You see me!' George said.
'Oh not this again,' I told Leslie.
'Only an hour till the end of the world,' she let me know.
'Of course I see you, Strange Person! For you are right here!'
'I've returned!' George said, 'They let me go! It was so terrifying up there! And it was up there. I was on a ship. I think. With the ducks and the watermelons and boom! Boom! Boom! Wonk.'
'A village idiot, perhaps!' Worf said to...I dunno; he just said it.
'Boom! Boom! Boom! Wonk! Velociraptors smell weird.'
Now, I think I should explain something real quick about writing a book, since I ordinarily write fiction and, of course, this isn't fiction. So...actually: c'mere a sec....
To the extent that this is too weird a story to appear as anything but fiction, it's really not; that said, I'm not much personally for writing nonfiction, which a lot of people find a bit ironic, since I put all this effort into writing fiction lacking batshit plotholes and impossibilities. Naturally, now that I've got this nonfiction thing to write, it's weirder than anything I've ever just thought up and written down.
So, granting that, as this book reads to date---Page 188---it could be fiction but wouldn't really have to be, what happened in the next instant will probably push that over the edge. I think, anyway. If I hadn't seen it myself---if someone else had written it down and told me it wasn't fiction---I wouldn't believe it; it's too perfect, and yet completely weird.
Maybe it's not that weird; maybe it's just weird compared to how I'm used to seeing the world work. But, if it is that weird, I wanted you to know that I know how weird it is, and to assert nonetheless that it really did happen, exactly this way, to the best of my ability to remember it. Not that it's something I'd forget. You know: ever.
'Boom! Boom! Boom! Wonk! Velociraptors smell weird,' George said, whatever velociraptors had to do with anything. Maybe his lizardpeople. There was no telling.
Then, the wigger returned. The same little moron from before. He walked directly up to the wiccans and started screaming at them.
'I want my money back!' he screamed.
And, because it's a weird world, Worf replied in his usual conversational manner: 'I! Haven't! Seen! Your! Money!'
So the wigger screamed more screamingly. 'Oh, you wanna piece of me! Huh, Bitch! Let's go! Check it! Gots mad skills! Bring it!'
So, Worf did. And, by did, I mean that he stood up, flung his goofy cloak off his hip, and had a fucking broadsword. Which of course he pulled out and brandished proudly, twisting it in the light and probably hypnotising himself. 'This is live steel!' he bellowed, then bellowed nothing further.
'What the fuck is "live steel"!' Wigger counterbellowed, backing away.
'I'm thinking that thing in the second "Terminator" film was live steel,' I offered, 'Or, you know, a sword you can buy at the mall.'
'Just,' Leslie began, then shook her head in something like pain, then added, 'Don't even bother.'
'The hell is "live steel",' I asked her.
'A sharpened edge,' she said.
'So, it's sharp steel, not live steel.'
'It's like live bullets,' she said.
'That's stupid.'
'That's wicca.'
'Fifty-nine minutes!'
'I'll crush your bones into powder!' Worf bellowed, raising the sword.
'Oh good,' I said, 'He thinks his tapestry is Mjolnir.'
'Tapestry?' Leslie asked.
'Wallhangings,' I said, 'Like cheap, aluminium swords from Hot Topic.'
'I just want my fucking money!' Wigger screamed, losing the blaccent again.
'I have no money!' Worf bellowed, paused, possibly thought about what he'd bellowed, then added: 'Of yours!'
'Dude!' Wigger shrieked, 'Just---put the sword down!'
Jessica appeared with a tray of drinks. 'Okay: what in the blue fuck is going on---why is there a sword---what the hell are you doing back here---I was back there for thirty seconds---what the fuck.'
'You really wanna know?' I asked.
'Uh, yeah?'
'Right. So, the beastmaster was talking to George about being an idiot; the wigger rushed in and demanded money from the beastmaster; the beastmaster got up and pulled out---yeah---a fucking sword at him; wigger stopped sounding like Jimmie Walker; you came out and know about as much as I do now.'
'Fifty-eight minutes!'
'What money,' Jessica said to the wigger, 'You had thousands an hour or two ago.'
Wigger hunched. 'My dad says I wasn't supposed to spend any of it.'
'Ah! You see!' Worf bellowed, 'A child who listens to his elders!'
'Zip it,' Jessica told Worf; to Wigger: 'It wasn't your money?'
'Not...technically,' Wigger said, 'It's a long story.'
'I don't care,' Jessica said, 'Did you leave it here somehow?'
'I must have,' Wigger said, almost crying now, still watching Worf's sword, 'We left here and I got home and I didn't have it anymore.'
'How much,' Jessica said.
'Twelve thousand,' Wigger said, 'Dad gave me money to buy a car today.'
'He gave you cash,' Jessica said.
'The whole family's retarded,' I said.
'You laugh at the youth's misfortune!' Worf bellowed at me.
'Hey, Olaf: si'down,' I said; to wigger: 'This was the cash---the twelve thousand---you had in your pocket. In the jeans you never pull up past your knees. And you're surprised it fell out somewhere?'
'It's never happened before,' he said.
'I've never met anyone as stupid as you before,' I said, 'Things can change.'
'Fifty-seven minutes!'
'Did you actually have it with you when you left here?' Jessica asked.
'I thought so,' Wigger said, 'But now I can't find it.'
'Twelve thousand?' I asked, 'Hell: I'll give you the money.'
'Really?' Wigger asked.
'No. See? You're stupid. Endlessly stupid. You can kill'im now, Worf.'
'Uh...what?!?'
'So it's probably not sharp steel,' I said.
'Not live steel,' Leslie said.
'It might be alive,' I told her, 'It might be smarter than he is.'
'Too much negative energy!' Sybil whimpered, sliding out of the booth through the opening Worf had left and starting to dance around the room, shedding frontier clothes.
'She's gonna be furry under there,' I told Leslie.
'Sick is that you're probably not wrong,' she said.
Mary and BB started chanting; Worf danced around with Sybil, still holding the sword, swinging it a bit now. Yo Ho and a Bottle of Rum or something; something Irish, maybe; probably something about placing bombs in churches; who knows.
'Fifty-six minutes!'
'I just want my money!' Wigger screamed, producing a cheap gun from...somewhere; I really can't guess where the hell he'd been keeping it, if he couldn't keep bills in his pockets.
'A boomstick!' Worf bellowed.
Jessica backed up into the kitchen.
'Just gi'me the money!' Wigger screamed.
'Violence is never the answer!' HippyGuy shrieked.
Leslie punched him in the head.
'Ow!' he shrieked.
'Fire away!' Worf said, 'I shall deflect thy bullets!' Seriously. He actually said thy. I didn't mishear that.
I looked at Chuck. 'You thinking what I'm thinking?'
'I hope not,' he said, 'So, probably.'
My lawyers won't like this next bit. But there's really no way to get around it. I opened my backpack.
'If you strike me down! I shall become More! Powerful!' Worf lied.
'Just shut the fuck up!' Wigger said, flinging the gun around wildly.
'Hey, Stoopid,' I said, 'How many bullets have you got.'
He flung the pistol, which incidentally contained eight rounds, in my direction. Then he froze, and set it carefully on the table next to him. 'I'm cool,' he said.
I lowered the Uzi slightly. Like I really need a fucking bodyguard.
'Now go away,' I told him.
He looked at the pistol on the table.
'The gun stays,' I said, 'You leave.'
He glowered at me.
'This thing fires eleven rounds per second,' I said, 'It'll cut you in half faster than a sword will.'
Worf looked at the Uzi, and put his sword away.
'Of course he's got an Israeli submachinegun,' HippyGuy said, 'The fucking zionazis are everywhere.'
'This is not a good time to remind me that you exist,' I told HippyGuy, 'you boring, smelly moron.'
'Fifty-five minutes!'
Wigger blinked once, then bolted, running for the door and barely slowing to push through it.
I switched hands on the Uzi, holding it by the foregrip with my left hand; with my right, I grabbed a napkin and dropped it over the wigger's pistol, then picked up the whole thing.
Jessica came out of the kitchen. 'So, you have got a gun,' she said.
'I don't suppose I have,' I said, setting the pistol on 71 before ejecting the magazine from the Uzi and yanking back the bolt to eject the chambered round; I put the bullet back in with the other forty-nine, reinserted the magazine, and slid the thing back into my backpack. Taking the napkin off the pistol, I looked at Jessica. 'You want one?'
'Why have you got an Uzi,' she asked.
'Because I can,' I said, 'And because it's really cool. And because it irks the shit outta the sorta people who wish I didn't have an Uzi.'
'Why do you have it in here, though.'
'Because, if I didn't, the wigger would still be waving this little thing around.'
'That's how you solve the gun problem,' HippyGuy said sarcastically, 'More guns.'
'Apparently so,' I said.
'How bout if neither of you had a gun.'
'It seems less likely.
'Fifty-four minutes!'
The Uzi in my backpack, and the wigger's pistol harmlessly on the table, Sybil and Worf went back to dancing to purge the evil cold pricklies from the restaurant. Mary and BB were still chanting Irish shit. George was still mumbling things between announcing the time.
'So, I wasn't thinking what you were thinking,' Chuck said.
'Ah,' I said.
'I didn't know you had an Uzi,' he said, 'I thought you were just gonna go punch the guy out, or something.'
'Then he'd still be here,' I said, 'And who wants that.'
Jessica finally set down the tray of drinks and disappeared into the kitchen for a few seconds, then came back out with a bus tub, held it beneath the edge of 71, and wiped the pistol into it with a rag.
'Are those our drinks?' BB asked.
'Yup,' Jessica said, 'Help yourself: I quit.' She went back into the kitchen with the bus tub.
When she came back out, she pushed me further into the booth and sat down next to me. 'Seriously,' she said, 'I just fucking quit.' She took off her nametag.
'Nobody likes a quitter,' I said.
'Nobody likes me anyway,' she said, 'You don't like me. My fault, I guess; I never told you before....' She looked at Leslie. 'Sorry. I kinda like your guy here.'
'I get that a lot,' Leslie said, 'Chicks dig a guy with a big SMG.'
Jessica stood up again and took off her apron before sitting down again.
'You're really quitting,' I said.
'What's the point,' she said, straightening the collar of the costume they made her wear, 'Four thirty-five an hour, which almost covers taxes on eight percent of sales. You know I have to pay that whether I actually get the tips or not? If that cop hadn't kinda made that wigger gi'me a hundred bucks, he wouldn't a'given me anything. They never do.' She tugged at the collar now, and glanced up at Sybil shedding layers of polyester. And she laughed. Once. Shortly.
'What,' I said.
She stood up and pulled her costume off, threw it on the floor, and sat back down next to me. 'Sorry I don't match,' she said, indicating what little she was still wearing.
Seeing that, Sybil inferred a competition, and hurried to get undressed. And, seeing that, BB and Mary hurried to join in.
'Did this happen last Friday?' I asked, 'I was playing a videogame.'
'Fifty-three minutes!'
Jessica laughed and drank some of my coffee.
'You're in here a lot,' I said to Chuck, 'Is this, like, normal?'
'Um...no,' he said, 'Not actually normal. But, all things considered, not all that weird either. It's kinda average. No one's died yet.'
'There's that.'
'One night,' he said, 'A guy died. Over there in...I think it was seventy-three, where Hutch is. He just, you know: died. Stopped living. Paramedics came out, made sure he was still dead, and took him away.'
'Wha'd he eat,' I asked.
'That's what I asked,' Chuck said, 'Larry thought I was joking, so he never told me.'
'Dick.'
'Is it always this cold in here?' Jessica asked.
'You're usually wearing more,' I said.
'I know; but, really: is it always this cold? Being dressed most of the time---'
'Most of the time?'
'---and always moving around, I guess I never noticed how cold it gets in here.'
'The wiccans seem okay with it,' I said, looking at them, 'Of course, they've got blubber going on. Whales would be okay with it too.'
Unable to stand it any longer, I suppose, Hutch waddled over. 'So, uh...you're quitting?'
'Go away,' Jessica said.
'Well, no, because...I don't like to, uh...I don't like to, you know, date girls when I go where they, you know, work---'
'Would it be wrong,' Jessica asked me, 'if I went and got that gun after all?'
'Works for me,' I said.
'Fifty-two minutes!'
'---thinking maybe, you know, if you wanted to go somewhere---'
'You're still talking,' Jessica told Hutch, 'Words are happening to me. I'm not into that.'
'Forget it,' I said, 'He's in Hutch mode now. He's like the flu: rest and wait for it to go away. Or, depending on the strain, maybe it just kills you.'
'---so okay, so, I dunno. Whaddayou think.'
'What do I think,' Jessica said, 'I think a jury would feel very, very sorry for me.'
Hutch looked at Leslie for support.
'I'm not getting undressed,' she told him.
He moped a bit.
So,' I said to Jessica, 'Are you gonna get all better, or am I gonna have to film you. Because, right now, I'm thinking that, if I were to talk about this---ever---no one would believe me.'
'Film the dancing ones,' she said, 'They're more interesting.'
Hutch looked over at the three chicks now actually entirely naked, dancing and trying to sound Irish while singing about...something. 'They're wearing less than you are,' he told Jessica.
'Is that what it's about?' Jessica asked, standing up and pulling off what little remained, 'Is this what you're after? Here! Look! Check out the attentionwhore! Should I take off my shoes, cos that'll take me a minute!'
I didn't film it. I shoulda. But I didn't.
'Fifty-one minutes!'
'Um,' Hutch said.
'What!' Jessica demanded.
'Uh,' he said, 'Depends whether you really quit.'
'What possible difference could that make anymore!'
'Um,' he said, pointing to the lobby, 'That?'
We all looked to the lobby. It was 5.17 in the morning, and the breakfast types expecting that advertised plastic perfection were beginning to arrive.
Jessica gaped for a second. Then: 'Be right with you!'
The nuclear family waiting to be seated gaped back. As Jessica gathered up her clothes and retreated into the kitchen to put them back on, I told the waiting family: 'Casual Friday.'
'It's Saturday,' Dad told me.
'We've been here a while,' I said.
Dad wandered over to better see the three wiccans still dancing with Worf. 'And this is still that?' he asked.
'We're looking into a theme for this place,' I said, 'So we're playtesting dancing naked idiots and big fat gay guys. There are some kinks to work out.'
'There are some kinks,' he said, 'That's the right word for it.'
'Dear?' Mom called.
Dad looked back at her. 'No; don't; just...wait there.' Another glance at the dancing morons and he told me, 'I think it could work, but maybe not on a Saturday morning. We might come back when you've got it figured out.' And he hurried back to the lobby to grab the wife and kids and flee from the building.
'He believed me,' I said, then looked at Leslie, 'He actually believed me.'
'Toldya,' she said, 'It's all about the dialogue.'
'Fifty minutes!'
I pulled out my phone and began to film the dancing morons, narrating: 'So, we're still at the restaurant and...there's really no setup for this clip: things just kinda...happened.' Getting up and moving in, I continued: 'So, these would be wiccans---not unlike these idiots.' I framed the hippies. 'But wearing less, apparently. The waitress is also naked...I think...unless she's got her clothes back on by now. Not that she's a wiccan. Unless she is. I'm not sure what's going on anymore. Except that I'm having the weirdest night. Also, I wrote the end of the new book; so...whenever I get the rest---'
Worf, who was in no way small, slamdanced into me, knocking the phone out of my hand and sending it under 74. 'Good job, Baryshnikov,' I said, dropping to reclaim my phone. And, just to make everything make sense again, the wigger's twelve thousand bucks.
I'm joking, of course. Actually, it was only $11,900. I guess because one of the hundreds had already gone to Jessica. One of the bills was still sticky with syrup. Dumb luck I charge $11,900 to have to touch old syrup, huh.
I ended the recording and put my phone away, careful not to get syrup all over it. And I returned to 71.
'He actually did lose the money here?' Leslie asked, watching me find a pocket for the cash in my backpack.
'Nope,' I said, zipping that pocket back up.
'You can't keep it,' she said.
'Apparently I can,' I told her.
'You've got money,' she said, 'You're actually keeping the money he's saved up for a car?'
'He didn't save it up: his dad gave it to him. And he pointed a gun at me.'
'You pointed a gun at him.'
'My gun's not insulting. His was all...I'm insulted that he pointed it at me.'
'You really are evil,' she said.
'You want it?' I asked.
'No! Well, yeah. But: no.'
'So that's settled,' I said.
'You realise you've probably made that much in book sales since we got here tonight,' she said.
'I know,' I said, 'It's not about that. If she's really quitting, I'll give it to her. I guess. Or something. I dunno.'
'Well, that's a thought,' Leslie allowed, 'That little fucker did kinda deserve to lose it.'
'Yup.'
'Forty-nine minutes!'
Jessica came back out, slowly and tearstained, but dressed.
'They left,' I told her.
'I can't believe I did that,' she said.
'I can't believe you stopped,' I said.
She nodded at the wiccans. 'They're still at it though.'
'Yeah,' I said, 'But they're boring.'
Hutch had gone back to 73. 'You can sit here with me if you want,' he said, 'Even if you've got clothes on again.'
'So,' I said, 'I'll be smoking now.'
'Oh yeah,' Leslie said, 'Me too.'
Jessica followed us out front and we all lit up.
'At least there are no cameras pointing where I was,' Jessica said, 'You didn't actually film me, did you?'
'Not yet,' I said.
'Hey!' Leslie squealed, hitting me.
'What,' I said, 'I'll film you too. Probably make more money filming you two than I get from writing books.'
'He's joking,' Leslie told Jessica, 'I'm not...you know.'
'She totally is,' I told Jessica, 'German, you know. East German. She's cleaned more carpet than Rug Doctor.'
'I'm not either,' Jessica said, 'Well, that I know of. I guess.'
'Curious isn't gay,' Leslie said, 'Yet.'
'That's what I'm saying,' I said, 'You are so way past curious.'
'Would you shut up,' she said, grinning.
'Oh: idiot,' I said.
'What,' Leslie said.
I told Jessica: 'Take your clothes off again. Then I can film you. I've already filmed Leslie.'
'No he hasn't.'
'And---uh, yes I have. That one time; you know.'
'You said you deleted that!'
'That doesn't sound like me. Huh. So anyway: Photoshop is my friend; so...yeah: we should totally do that.'
'We should? Jessica asked, 'How come. Why would I do that again.'
'I've got twelve thou---well, eleven thousand, nine hundred bucks saying you won't do it again.'
'That I won't do it again? You don't want me to?'
'I don't want you to not do it and also lose the money,' I said.
'Did you two want to be alone?' Leslie asked.
'See?' I asked, 'She's okay with it.'
'I didn't say that,' she said.
'But it's true,' I said.
Jessica looked at her.
'Oh come on,' Leslie said, 'It's five in the morning, I'm tired, and I'm not talking about going all lesbian with a waitress who likes you more than me anyway.'
'She's okay with it,' I said again.
Jessica shrugged. 'I guess I don't care. I mean, I'm okay with trying it out.'
'We're seriously talking about this,' Leslie said, 'Why are we seriously talking about this. I'm not talking about this. I'll be inside.'
'Yeah,' I said, 'Go back in with the three dancing naked chicks; that'll get your straight on.'
'She's not okay with it,' Jessica said.
'Ffft,' I said, 'Some people are so intolerant.'
'You know I'd get naked again, for you, and you wouldn't have to pay me.'
'Oh yeah. I know. But...remember the twelve thousand the wigger lost?'
'Yeah? Oh no. Did you find it?'
'Of course. Things couldn't be weird enough otherwise.'
'You're gonna keep it?'
'I'm not gonna give it back to him. Fucker pulled a gun on me.'
'We kept the gun, too,' she said. Then she laughed.
'Bonnie and Hyde,' I said.
'I thought it was Bonnie and Clyde.'
'It was. But Clyde wasn't evil. Unless you count Dick Tracy. Hyde was evil: ask Jekyll.'
'Huh.'
'What.'
'I'm trying to decide whether I'm a lesbian now.'
'Probably not.'
'How come.'
'Because, technically, I'm having a really bad night,' I said, 'So it wouldn't fit the pattern.'
'You want me to be a lesbian.'
'Nah. I don't actually care. I'm just kinda supposed to care.'
'Maybe I could try out one of the wiccans,' she said.
'Feel free. I'm not going to.'
'You know, I didn't really get dressed again.'
'Okay....'
She glanced around quickly, then pulled up her dress at me.
'Oh,' I said.
'The rest is still in the kitchen, on the make table.'
'That's oddly icky,' I said.
'Don't ask what else has been on it then.'
'The coffee's safe though, right?' I asked, 'You drank some.'
'Did I? Oh god.' She started choking. Then she laughed. 'I'm kidding: the coffee's fine.'
'The coffee sucks,' I said, 'But that's a given, outside Europe.'
'I should go back in and get more dressed,' she said.
'Or less,' I said, 'Whichever's easier.'
'Heh.'
'So you're not quitting?'
'Nah. Not yet. If I quit, I'd never see you again.'
'Never know,' I said.
'You should write a book about this,' she said.
'That's what I've been saying.'
'Except...if you wrote about this, you'd have to include me getting goofy and walking around naked in there, huh.'
'Well, yeah: that's the best part.'
'Shit. Would you have to use my name?'
'Not all of it. Your nametag says "Jessica", when you've got it.'
'Oh shit. It's on your table.'
'I can just use that.'
'Cool. Do I get a free copy?'
'Don't make me beat you,' I said.
'Forty-two minutes!'
5.26 in the morning. The sky beginning to lighten in the east. But the sun wasn't up yet. Not for another forty-two minutes.
When it rose, it would be approximately in front of me. I had my sunglasses ready to go.
Jessica was sitting next to me now, which seemed oddly weird; Leslie, across from her, wasn't holding it against me. Not that I was holding anything against Chuck, for that matter; not that he was staying awake too well, either.
'Hey,' Jessica said, kicking him under the table, 'Don't fall asleep in here.'
'I'm not,' he said, opening his eyes again, 'Time is it now.'
'Five twenty-six,' I said.
'The countdown,' he clarified, 'When's the world end.'
'Forty-one minutes!' George called.
'Oh,' he said, turning toward George, 'Thanks.'
'Thankalord!'
'Right,' Chuck said, starting to fall asleep again, 'If I pass out: wake me up at about five minutes to go; I don't wanna miss...whatever.'
The hippies remained, possibly because they too wanted to be here to see what George was counting down toward. Hutch was still there because, really, it was Hutch: he wasn't going anywhere else.
And the wiccans still danced nakedly about, as clueless as anyone about George's announcements, but less curious.
Jessica was rolling silverware, casually watching the wiccans. 'You think I should kick them out or something?'
'You could,' I said, 'I've filmed them enough already.'
'If Larry comes out and sees this,' she said, 'or if customers come in and see this...; hey! Morons! Put your clothes on and sit down!'
'The wench beckons!' Worf bellowed.
'The wench tells you to get dressed or get out,' Jessica said, getting up and walking over to them, 'Now.'
'The world isn't meant for clothes!' Sybil whimpered.
'But this restaurant is,' Jessica said, 'So cut it out and act---'
'Normal?' asked BB, 'You're forcing normalcy upon us?'
'I'm forcing policy upon you,' Jessica said, 'Now. Or I'm calling the police.'
'Police are so negative,' Mary said, 'Join us and be free!'
'I did that already,' Jessica said, 'Then I got better.'
'Forty minutes!'
'You're probably counting down to me losing my job,' Jessica said to George, 'Aren'tcha.'
'We cannot be restrained!' Worf bellowed.
'Yeah,' Jessica said, 'Okay. You know what?' She turned to me, 'Wanna film something?'
'You gonna flash the camera?' I asked.
'Maybe,' she said, 'But not right now. Roll'em.'
I got out my phone and started filming. 'Okay: go.'
'Okay,' Jessica said, 'For the record: I'm officially telling these dancing fucking morons---can you edit that out? Or can I just start---yeah? For the record: I'm officially telling these dancing morons to get dressed, immediately, and sit down before I call the police. I just want that to be understood, while I'm on my way to the phone, in case my manager stumbles in here and sees this before I can get it taken care of.'
'The manager would hate this,' I agreed, 'These twerps constitute undercooked meat.'
'Okay: I'm done,' Jessica said, 'I'll flash you again later. Are you still filming?'
I killed the recording. 'Nope.'
'Is that thing timestamped?' she asked, 'Can I just sit down and pretend I did that three seconds before Larry walks in here?'
'The sky's getting lighter out those windows,' I said, 'He's an idiot, but he might notice that.'
'Okay then,' she said, 'Get dressed now, Morons: I'm calling the police in ten seconds.'
'Thirty-nine minutes!'
'Very well!' Worf bellowed, 'But I shall require a commentcard!'
'Ahem. "Dear Holding Company",' I mocked, '"Having eaten nary a morsel in a fortnight, it was my occasion to partake of the juice of coffeeberries and the milk of cattle within your worthy establishment; I must query nonetheless: wherefore doth thy serving wench getteth off imposing upon us mandates whereupon we shalt not shed our suits of clothes and shalt fondle not our swords...." I don't see this getting the reaction you idiots are after, somehow.'
'Calling them now,' Jessica said, heading for the register up front, 'Oh shit.'
Larry the manager walked into the dining area for a second, saw the wiccans dancing naked in the former smoking section, turned, and simply walked away again.
'Thirty-eight minutes!'
'That went well,' I said.
'He'll come back in a minute to see if he's still hallucinating,' Leslie said.
'Probably,' I said.
'I'm awake!' Chuck promised, 'Wha'd I miss.'
'Not a lot,' I said, 'Dancing morons and the manager didn't see you sleeping.'
'The manager?'
'He saw them dancing, and left again.'
'Wish I'd seen that.'
'Thankalord!'
'Nine!' Jessica called out from the phone, 'One! Wanna guess the next number? No? One!'
'She calls the constabularies!' Worf bellowed, 'We must flee!' And he sprinted out to the lobby, through the door, and to his Subaru, leaving the three naked chicks behind.
Jessica returned. 'They're on their way. Get dressed and get out.'
BB blinked vacuously at her. 'Should we pay for---'
'Out.'
Worf wandered back in. 'Guys?'
'They're coming,' Jessica said, 'Go wait for them outside.'
Worf shrugged. 'Then I shall take my leave of you and your fine---'
'We have guns!' Jessica screamed, 'Leave!'
'Very well! I bid thee---'
'Would you get the fuck out---all of you...fuck!' Jessica dropped angrily into the seat next to me.
'This is that mood you're in when you get naked,' I said, 'Innit.'
'Thirty-seven minutes!'
'Don't start,' she said, 'At least: not right now.'
'They won't survive,' George said, "Boom! Boom! Boom!'
'Maybe I really should quit,' Jessica said.
'And miss all this?' I asked.
'Would you miss all this?' she asked.
'Not for---well,' I said, 'not for eleven thousand, nine hundred dollars.'
'I thought you didn't want all the interruptions,' Leslie said.
'That was then,' I said, 'Now? I am so writing this all down.'
'Good luck with that,' HippyGuy said, 'When the cops get here, I'm gonna tell'em you've got that jewish gun.'
'I didn't really call them,' Jessica told me.
'Didn't think so,' I said.
'How is the gun jewish,' Chuck asked.
'Firing pin's been circumcised,' I said.
'Ah.'
Having found all their clothes, instead of bothering to put them on, the wiccans walked to the lobby and out the door into the early morning, the sound of birds beginning to sing out there.
'Thirty-six minutes!'
'It's the waiting that kills me,' Chuck said.
'If it's the end of the world,' I said, 'It'll be thirty-six minutes from now that'll kill you.'
'That's true,' he said.
'Hey, George,' Jessica said, getting up and going over to 75.
'You see me!'
'Yeah,' she said, 'Listen: what happens in thirty-six minutes. What happens at dawn.'
'They're coming!'
'Who's coming.'
'The....' And George began slowly to cry.
'That could be a bad thing,' I said.
'Or he's really, really happy about it,' Leslie said.
'That could be a bad thing too,' I said.
George cried for a bit, saying nothing; then: 'Thirty-five minutes!' and he was okay again.
'Who's coming,' Jessica asked again.
'They're coming.'
'Who are "they",' she asked.
'The...the lizardpeople. They're coming. From Altair Four.'
'Like "Forbidden Planet"? she asked.
'This is the forbidden planet,' he said.
'This is Altair Four,' she said.
'This is Earth. And it's a forbidden zone. No one will survive.'
'Survive what,' she asked.
'The attack,' he said, 'They're going to attack. They're going to attack in thirty-four minutes and twenty seconds.'
'What makes you think that,' she asked.
'They tell me,' he said, 'Over and over. They tell me. That's why they're letting me live. I tell you, and I get to live. Because I know the secrets. And I know what they tell me.'
'What do they tell---'
'Thirty-four minutes!'
'What do they tell you, George.'
'That, in thirty-three minutes and fifty-two seconds, they're going to attack.'
'Why.'
'Because we're here now.'
'Here on Earth,' Jessica asked, 'or here in the restaurant.'
'We're all here together,' George said.
'We're all here in the restaurant?' she asked, 'Just us...eight people? Ten. The manager and the cook. So, we ten? Together?'
'Because I'm here,' he said, 'And because their leader has joined us.'
'Their leader?' Jessica asked, 'They sent their leader here from Altair Four?'
'Their leader was always here,' George said, 'Watching and waiting, preparing for the attack.'
'Where's their leader,' she asked.
'Thirty-three minutes!'
'George? Where's their leader.'
'Among us,' he said, 'Watching and waiting.'
'Can you see it now?' she asked.
'Yes. All the time. At night, during the day, at the mall, all the time.'
'Okay, George,' Jessica said, 'It'll be okay. Why don't I find you something to eat; maybe you'll feel better with some food.'
'Thankalord.'
'Right, George. Just a couple minutes, and I'll have food for you.'
'I should eat before I leave.'
'You will,' she said, 'In just a couple of minutes.'
'Thirty-two minutes!'
'No just a couple---oh. You want food before that though, right?'
'Okay,' George said.
Jessica got up and approached, heading ultimately for the kitchen. To me, she said quietly, 'He's just crazy. He sees invaders everywhere. Sad.' And she went back to get him some food.
For a couple minutes, while Jessica was getting his food ready, we just sat there, listening to George mumble. Most of the time, he didn't really say anything. Once a minute, though....
'Thirty-one minutes!' 5.37AM
'Thirty minutes!' 5.38AM
'Twenty-nine minutes!' 5.39AM
Then I went out for one more cigarette before the end of the world.
'Twenty-eight minutes!' I heard George call as I stepped out onto the sidewalk beneath the brightening purple sky. The birds were chirping loudly now; the odd squirrel danced from tree to tree; more cars were driving by on the road to the south, though it was only 5.40AM on a Saturday. I lit a cigarette and watched them all: the morons driving about, going nowhere, unaware that, if George wasn't completely crazy, something was going to happen, probably right here at this restaurant, beginning in twenty-seven and a half minutes.
I was watching my Columbia CL5055 now, keeping track at least approximately of George's countdown within.
My watch being about two seconds behind the atomic clock, we had twenty-seven minutes and eight seconds to go.
I pulled the door open and listened for George, keeping an eye on my watch.
'Twenty-seven minutes!'
Two seconds slow.
Not that I ever really expected George to be right about the end of the world---not, in fact, that he'd ever really said the world was going to end. And, as you're alive and able to read this, you see what I mean about the world not actually ending. But you've got that cool hindsight thing, I suppose. For us, in those last twenty-seven minutes before the sun came through the eastern windows...I didn't think the world was going to end, but I'll admit that I wasn't really sure what to think.
But, for the stupid among you: no; the world didn't end at dawn last August. Also for the stupid among you: stay away from me. I mean it.
'Twenty minutes!'
And I looked at my watch:
'I just realised something,' Jessica said, 'I'm off at six, if not actually out of here at six. Whatever happens in twenty minutes, I'm probably gonna miss it.'
'Maybe, if something happens, I can film it for you,' I said.
'Maybe, if you film it,' she said, 'your camera will be all that survives.'
'I've got a gun,' I told her.
'If George's leader showed up,' she said, 'a gun might not be enough.'
'It's a really good gun,' I said.
'Twenty minutes,' she said, 'Damn. That's not even long enough to....' She looked at me. 'At least, I hope it's not long enough to---'
'Nineteen minutes!'
'Depends,' I said, 'You still naked under your clothes?'
She laughed. 'Pretty much always, actually.'
'That's it,' Leslie said, 'Nineteen more minutes of this, and the world is gonna end.'
'Did he say it would end?' Chuck asked, 'What the hell is supposed to happen in nineteen minutes.'
'This leader thing shows up,' I said.
'The leader's here already,' Jessica said, 'Others show up to join it, I guess.'
'Oh right,' I said, 'Two of them show up at dawn. Or, just after. Eight after six. And probably zero seconds.'
'So, should we get ready to go?' asked Leslie, 'Like, in case whatever happens is something we wanna be ready to run away from?'
'Nothing's gonna happen,' I said, looking at my watch, 'C'mon. The guy's nuts. He's fixated on a certain time on a certain day. He's able to keep track of numbers to the second, and he's just counting down to...probably to reset when he gets there. Or his head'll explode or something.'
'What if it's more than that,' Leslie said.
'Then I'm wrong. You wanna go? Okay. I'm gonna stay here and see if his head explodes.' I glanced at my watch.
'Eighteen minutes!'
'If his leader's here,' Jessica said, 'I'll bet it's Larry. The Manager. That would explain so much.'
'There are stupid aliens?' I asked.
'Probably. Those are probably the ones they send to Earth. "Go abduct people! Why'd you abduct people from trailerparks!" Or something.'
'Or,' I said, 'it's you, sent ahead to see what we people eat.'
'Oh yeah,' she said, 'Forgot about that.'
'This is stupid,' Leslie said, 'Is anyone in here not an alien?'
'I'm only part alien,' HippyGuy said, 'On my mother's side.'
'You asked,' I told her.
'Wait,' Leslie said, turning to see HippyGuy, 'Are you joking.'
'Nope,' he said, 'My grandmother reproduced with an alien.'
'Okay, good,' Leslie said, 'I didn't want to think you were that smart.'
'Enjoy your sleep,' HippyGuy said.
'You think there's a bumpersticker somewhere saying "Enjoy Your Sleep"?' I asked, 'It can't be a coincidence that these idiots all fall back on it when they've run out of makebelieve.'
'Seventeen minutes!'
'Tick tock,' I said.
'Seventeen minutes to kill,' Leslie said.
'That's not really that long,' Chuck said.
'You'll probably sleep through it,' she said.
'Well, yeah; probably.'
'Hey, George!' Jessica called.
'You see me!'
'Yeah. Is the food okay?'
'Fine. Thankalord.'
'You're welcome,' she said, telling me, 'I got him an omelette. That's all protein and stuff, right?'
'Pretty much. And carbohydrates.'
'Oh.' She frowned.
'That's a good thing,' I said, 'Atkins is an idiot.'
'This is taking too long,' Leslie said, 'I don't wanna sit here for the next seventeen minutes, doing nothing.'
'That's just because you're the alien,' I told her.
'Yeah,' she said, 'That's probably it.'
'This is weird though,' I said, 'We've got these two idiots, and Hutch of course, and then George. It's almost six on a Saturday. Don't people usually come in here about now?'
'Usually,' Jessica said, 'Including the day crew. Can you get the news on that thing?'
'Yeah.' I hit cnn.com, waiting for it to load on what Verizon Wireless called broadband. 'Senate hearings and shit,' I said, 'Nothing interesting.'
'Oh wait,' Jessica said, 'There's someone.' She got up to see the car pulling into the lot, then stopped. 'Marge,' she said, 'Day crew.'
'Sixteen minutes!'
I looked at my watch:
Marge got inside. 'I know: I'm almost late; sorry.'
'It's slow now,' Jessica said.
'Trying to get used to it out there,' Marge said, 'I'm used to getting here after the sun's up. Summer's ending again.' Wandering into our section, she announced, 'Hi, All. I'll be clocked in once...oh. It's only five fifty-two,' she said, looking at the big digital clock on the wall to the west of my seat, 'I guess I'll clock in after a few minutes.' To Jessica: 'That Larry gets so angry if I punch in a few minutes early; says I'm running them out of money here.'
'Larry's an idiot,' Jessica said, 'Which reminds me: George's meal over there is covered.'
'Is it?' Marge asked.
'I comped it,' Jessica said, 'I thought he needed the food.'
'Well, he probably does,' Marge said, 'Poor man. Does he even have a home?'
'Dunno,' Jessica said, 'Not that I know of. He comes in and I give him coffee. Soup sometimes if we're about to throw it out anyway.'
'That's so sad,' Marge said, then looked at me. 'Isn't that sad?'
'Deplorable,' I said.
'Fifteen minutes!'
'Oh my,' Marge exclaimed, looking to George, 'Fifteen minutes? Until what, I wonder.' Marge had that impossible accent somewhere between rural Texas and Oxford, England, old people wind up with as magically as black people wind up with southern Chicago, allowing her to insert a good three syllables into what when it was part of something resembling a question.
'He's been doing that all night,' Jessica said, 'Counting down to, well, fifteen minutes from now, I guess.'
'Whatever for, I wonder.'
'He's...not entirely sane,' Jessica said.
'How sad,' Marge said, 'Isn't it? Sad, I mean.'
Old people always like to tell you what they mean, even when it's the only word they ever say. Like we'd hear sad and isn't it and assume there was some other adjective out there to discuss.
'Fourteen minutes!'
'Why, there: he did it again,' she said. Since old people also like to tell you what you and they just witnessed. Pray to hell you never see an old person near a VCR or DVR or anything else rewindable; your life with be trapped for eternity in that single moment. 'Did you see there where he did it again?'
I began to hope that George really was counting down to the end of the world, thirteen minutes and infinite seconds hence.
'You know what,' I said, 'I'm gonna go grab a cigarette.' I got up and hurried to the door.
'Oh?' Marge asked, 'Oh, you know, you really shouldn't smoke. My late husband smoked for thirty---'
'Yeahyeahyeah,' I said, 'Hell of a guy.'
Then I was outside. And smoking.
'Shoulda taken my sunglasses,' I said, back inside, five minutes later, 'It's getting bright out there.'
'We figured it out,' Jessica said, grinning madly, 'Marge is the alien.'
'I believe you entirely,' I said.
'Nine minutes!'
'Can I go smoke for nine minutes? Leslie asked.
'Yeah,' I said, 'Why not. But: if you're the alien, we'd rather you didn't leave town; we may have other quest---and then she walked outta my life, just like that, into the suns---rise...nearly, birds chirping and---she said she was coming back, right?'
'Dunno,' Chuck slurred, 'Not sleeping.'
'She'll be back,' I told Jessica, 'She's into me.'
'That's why I come back,' she said.
'Was that sarcasm?' I asked, 'That's so cool.'
'Didn't know I could be sarcastic?' she asked.
'Never know,' I said, 'Some of us are incapable of sarcasm. Like, as if I could ever be sarcastic; ffft.'
'Okay,' Marge said, coming out of the kitchen, 'I'm all clocked in and ready to go. Have you got all your sidework done?'
'Most of it,' Jessica said, 'I've got three open tables here, since George is comped out.'
'Well, don't you want to get started?' Marge asked.
'We got slammed,' Jessica said, 'I just want to sit here for a few hours.'
'Well, you'd better not let Larry see you sitting out here.'
'Ffft. He's a pud.'
'And Mike'll be here any minute.'
'He's off today.'
'Are you sure? I'd better go check.'
'He's---nevermind,' Jessica said, 'Mike's in Montana for the weekend.'
'Larry's here until, what, four?' I asked.
'Ten,' she said, 'The other two split the morning shift. Which was stupid: Carl coulda come in. Though that would suck if he were about to get here.'
'Carl sucks?'
'Carls retarded. Like, literally. You've seen him. That one eye looks up and to the left, and the other kinda jiggles?'
'Eight minutes!'
'Look out,' I said. Then my watch beeped and planes fell out of the sky.
Working my way to the alarm, I set it for 6.08. Just for the hell of it.
'So,' I said, 'Oh. Carl. Yeah. The chameleon. He's weird. And, yeah: retarded.'
Leslie hurried back in and sat down, excited. 'Okay that was weird. I was out there smoking and the birds stopped chirping. Just like that.'
'So?' I asked.
'Just all at once. They stopped chirping. Think that means anything?'
'My watch beeped,' I said, 'It probably killed them.'
'So, when's dawn supposed to be,' Leslie asked, 'Because it's really bright out there.'
'Six minutes,' I said, 'But, by now, the sun's just over that hill out there. And it's not perfect anyway: sunrise over town is in, uh, five and a half minutes. Out here, between the curvature and the topography and...I dunno: sometime today.'
'It might not be in five and a half minutes?' she asked, disappointed.
'George is counting down to...hang on....'
'Cue George,' I said.
'Seven minutes!'
'So, if I go back out and smoke slowly,' she said, 'I might get back just about exactly in time.'
'You might miss it entirely,' I said, 'Whatever it is.'
'Is there anything in there I can read for seven minutes?' she asked, eyeing my laptop.
'I could tell you the basic story,' I said.
'Okay.'
'Okay. Sitting comfortably?'
She had an elbow on the table and the heel of her hand propping up the skin behind her eye more than the skull within, mouth open in gaspy boredom. 'No.'
'Right. So. Once upon a time, the Lizardpeople of Altair Four were scanning the galaxy---'
'Wait,' she said, 'What? Lizardpeople?'
'Yeah, the---oh hell. No. The millipedes. That was odd.'
'Maybe you should switch it to lizardpeople,' she said.
'I like the millipedes.'
'I hate millipedes,' she said.
'That's why I like them,' I said, 'They're all scary. No one cares about lizards. Snakes, maybe. Bugs, entirely.'
'Six minutes!'
'I could live with snakes,' she said, 'I just hate bugs. A lot.'
'What about spiders.'
'Spiders are bugs,' she said.
'Spiders are arachnids,' I said, 'Not insects.'
'Don't care,' she said, 'They're still bugs.'
'You sound like those idiots who say that whales are fish.'
'No one says that anymore,' she said, 'Everyone knows that whales are mammals. And everyone knows that spiders are bugs.'
'Only because "bug" doesn't mean anything,' I said.
'It means "bugs",' she said, 'And we hate bugs.'
'So the aliens are bugs,' I said.
'I know. And I hate it. Because they scare the hell outta me.'
'You're slipping,' I said.
'I'm what?'
'You're about to fall down,' I said, 'Sit up before your palm loses traction on your face.'
'Oh,' she said, sitting up and blinking.
'Also you're drooling.'
'No I'm not.'
'How do you know.'
'I'd feel it.'
'You look numb,' I said.
'Five minutes!'
'I'd still notice,' she said.
'Anyway,' I said, 'the bugs scanned the universe for millions---well, for...now I can't remember. It doesn't matter, I guess. They scanned the universe for a long time.'
'I still think it should be lizardpeople.' She said, 'If you're gonna tell me a bedtime story, I want lizardpeople.'
'A bedtime story,' I said, 'at a restaurant.'
'Sleepy,' she said.
'Okay. The...okay. Once upon a time, the lizardpeople scanned the universe for millions of years, from side to side, and from front to back, and from top to bottom, and from beginning to end. They scanned the universe inch by inch and second by second, possessing the technology to do that sort of thing. Until one day, way back in the past, they caught a signal: humans, on a planet the humans called Earth, watching television, because they were a planet of idiots; the humans mostly watched reality television and gameshows and talkshows and ESPN and MTV and whatever else sucks on television these days.'
'Four minutes!'
'The aliens watched the televisions---not directly, but through the eyes of the humans whose brains they were scanning. And they monitored the pleasure centres of the humans' brains, discovering that humans, watching this meaningless bullshit, were actually happier while watching television than they were while making burgers and assembling machines and even mating with people they'd been married to for too many years. The aliens saw that the humans were for the most part happiest when they were ignoring everything apparently important in life. The humans would stay up late watching infomercials, then sleep too little before waking up and being too tired to enjoy being productive at the office the next day. So: do you know what the aliens did?'
'Three minutes!'
'The aliens decided that humans, wasting their lives watching television---not even good television---were too stupid to survive. Because, one day, uh...they'd become a threat somehow. Maybe by broadcasting this shit so much and so often that the universe would be clogged by the signals. And the aliens, evolved to scan the universe for signs of intelligent life, would instead get caught up in soap operas and gameshows and talkshows and shows about shows and shows about fishing and shows about angry people who hate their jobs cooking food and building motorbikes and being Paris Hilton---whatever she does---and...and the aliens watching all this through the eyes of the humans watching it, and the eyes of the humans making it, might get lazy too. They might stop scanning the universe for intelligent life, instead making television shows about intelligent life, slowly but inevitably becoming more and more human: more and more lazy and complacent. More and more lifeless.'
'Two minutes!'
The sky really bright out there now, the sun hiding just behind the hill across the street, I got my sunglasses out and put them on, continuing: 'So the aliens plotted out a course to the planet of Earth, preparing to exterminate the entire planet in a single deathstar blast. But, being an advanced, civilised society, the aliens had committees and ethics and other things already dropping them within dangerous proximity to human stupidity, so they argued and considered and, in the end, settled on a proposal to invade Earth, on the ground, seeking out and destroying only the stupid, leaving the smartest to survive in a new twist of natural selection. And so they did. Flying to Earth would take billions of years; but, being that advanced, they were able to teleport here instantly: wonk!'
'Wonk!' George agreed.
'Wonk; wonk; wonk,' I said, 'They teleported in and opened fire, killing their approved targets and making the world a smarter place one moron at a time.'
'One minute!'
'Eventually,' I said, 'They'd exterminated the stupid and the lazy and the satisfied, leaving alive only those ironically enough most likely to pose a real threat: those willing to get up off their asses and fight back. But, of course, by then, that was no longer necessary. Because the aliens were done now. They'd invaded and accomplished their goal and were ready to go home now, back to their homeworld, back to scanning the universe for other intelligent life.'
I looked at my watch, seeing that I had about twenty seconds to go; and I concluded: 'In the end, of course, those humans remaining alive advanced in leaps and bounds, idiots and politicians and other speedbumps out of their way. Earth became a eutopia, with only smart, sane, useful people, progressing, ever after, into the future of mankind.'
'That's stupid,' HippyGuy said.
'Showtime!' George announced.
Tick.
Tock.
BeepBeep. BeepBeep. BeepBeep. BeepBeep. BeepBeep....
No one ever reads the epilogue.
Someone told me that once. I'm not sure I believe it; I might still be too optimistic for that. But, statistically, ninety percent of books purchased become owned by people who never bother to read beyond the first chapter [whether they bother to read the prologue in the process is something after which I can't really guess] before relegating the thing to a bookshelf or a coffeetable for people coming over to watch a football game to see and be fooled into thinking the owner of the house was clever enough to have read through. Maybe so.
Maybe, though, this book will have been different. Since, in a real sense, this book is all about the epilogue; it's really why you bought the thing, even if you never knew, while buying the thing, that this book was going to be that book.
I could have written it differently, of course; there was a time when I'd have had to write it differently, my publisher not letting me get away with this format. I could have written the ending first [in a sense, of course, that's exactly what I did; I just happened to write the ending first as the epilogue, saving it in a separate file until the rest of the book was written] and skipped the backstory explaining what I'd been doing there in the first place.
But that's not the way I do things: I don't write down to people; I don't make it easy for the masses trying to use my stuff to learn to read. I write books for myself, if only to see what they look like once I'm done. I do as I write consider that there will eventually be an audience: I've been known at least to strive to limit the internal gags. And yet there's only so much I can do with that before atrophying into Ernest Hemmingway for the illiterate masses able somehow to find their ways to whichever eatery I happen to occupy on a given night.
No one ever reads the epilogue.
This time, I think you'll read it. Here's what you already know: the attack came at dawn.
Here's what happened next....
From orbit, as the sun begins to appear from behind the planet, North America resembles a massive, chaotic LiteBrite set, one of its larger clusters being Denver, Colorado; reentry to this spot at 9.81m/s2 [or, for the pedants, may = -kvy -mg] approaching terminal velocity as we used to know it, the blob of white light would shatter, resolving to various colours, identifying this structure once known simply as a diner but in recent months perverted into the politically contentious Ground Zero to make it sound somehow more important.
In fact, it's what it always was: a greasy spoon with a trademarked name, albeit with international attention. Not so much an eatery as an attractive nuisance in the night, calling to weary travellers like a Siren with Ebola. Some of which, it seems, travelled more lightyears than others.
At 6.08 in the morning, on Saturday 8th August 2009, two minutes after the official sunrise, Sol's beams first crested the smallish hill east of the restaurant, rounding down through the windows in front of me and to my right before Marge, replacing Jessica for the morning, could drop the blinds and keep the sunlight out of everyone's eyes for the next hour or two. Leslie squinted at the stark fireball reflected in the framed corporate artwork behind my seat, and in my sunglasses, shifting to avoid staring at it; Chuck settled for shielding his eyes with his hand.
HippyGuy and HippyChick basked in it, of course: Gaia greeting them with warmth on this meaningless morning in a series of meaningless mornings---their evidence that Earth was to be worshipped, if only for being within a hundred million miles of a small, forgotten star in an anonymous arm of one of an infinite number of galaxies in the universe.
Hutch was facing the eastern windows, watching George haloed in the sunlight now that his countdown had run out. I'm not sure what he'd have been thinking at that moment---possibly that, if They were coming, They might let him talk to Them.
George was catatonic, but silent. Which, thinking about it, should sound redundant. Except that he always looked catatonic, even while talking, and especially while chanting the slowly draining ETA for the Lizardpeople of Altair IV.
The sun was up. It was daytime now. The night had ended on schedule.
It happened in an instant, when it happened. A loud pair of noises, each really sounding like wonk, the air palpably sliding out of their ways; then, where the sound had been, there stood two lizardpeople.
I suppose there's no need to describe them, since you've seen them since: reptilian and bipedal, hunched forward and counterbalanced by vestigial tails. The scientists, including palaeontologists, posit that they could be highly evolved theropods, if not by that same description simply modern birds. The two I saw were about the same height---each maybe four feet tall, able to crane upright toward five. Like all of them, they wore nothing and had no weapons or other tools; if they are indeed an army, none has any insignia I personally can identify: they really do all look alike, to me.
At first, no one said anything. I don't even remember anyone screaming or trying to escape. I think we were all just staring at the lizardpeople. Then, things got confusing, one turning to George and one turning to Hutch.
Hutch spoke first: 'I don't understand.' It was of course a response to something I never heard.
Then George spoke to his lizardperson: 'I waited, and tried to tell them. No one ever believes me.'
'You can just call me Hutch,' Hutch said, 'Everyone does.'
'Thank you,' George said, his lizardperson raising an arm and pointing a tridactyl finger---its index finger, really, between its thumb and pinky. Then, George faded quickly out of existence. It wasn't quite that Star Trek teleportation thing, but it was clearly a form of movement; he seemed to shrink away, maybe slightly faster than his clothes, which disappeared as well. Also, he clearly wonked instead of booming.
Hutch looked scared now. Maybe we all did. But Hutch was the one holding my attention just then, even if I peripherally noticed George's lizardperson now approaching the hippies.
'But I don't understand,' Hutch whimpered, 'Why does it matter---'
And that was the end of Hutch. He didn't teleport anywhere. He simply flew. Everywhere. Hutch didn't wonk: Hutch boomed.
HippyChick was staring intently at her lizardperson, obviously concentrating strongly; Hutch's lizardperson arrested HippyGuy's mind and engaged him in another telepathic discourse I couldn't follow.
After a moment, the two lizardpeople gave each other something like a glance; they may have nodded, unless I simply got the impression that they should have just then. They looked back to the hippies for a second; then, in a pair of booms, the hippies exploded as Hutch had.
The lizardpeople telepathed with Leslie and Chuck for a moment. I won't bother relaying what I learned about that later, partly because it's actually none of your business; it's really barely any of mine.
Then, one of the lizardpeople wandered off into the kitchen; the other turned to face me.
Do not be alarmed, I thought---though of course it wasn't I who thought it; the lizardperson simply didn't have a voice of its own in my head, As I see you've surmised, we are the Lizardpeople of Altair Four; George spoke of us; you wrote of us; we are now here.
'Um,' I said.
You have no need to speak in order to be heard. I know your thoughts before you think them. I know your brain. I've scanned it and seen what it contains. No conversation is required. I see you understand now. That's efficient. I will now explain: As you're beginning to understand, we have methods and technology beyond that of your species. We communicate through a form of thought not entirely unlike your fictional descriptions of telepathy. We travel through a process similar to your hypothesis for folding space. We monitor the universe from Altair Four; you are correct in presuming that we don't call it that, while incorrect in presuming that our name for our planet defies pronunciation on your end: we communicate through bursts of images, including words as you might read them; your brain processes the sounds of those words as images, leading to the illusion of noise. It's complicated, and irrelevant.
You had presumed incorrectly that we on Altair Four would be unable to observe your planet across a distance of sixteen point seven lightyears; in fact, we've monitored your planet longer than your species has existed. In recent times, we've monitored your communications---television, as you've written, as well as your evolving methods of reposition; as you now presume, we can read the contents of your phone and laptop from our planet; we can in fact read your brain from the same distance.
We like your brain. It contains more relevant knowledge than those of most members of your species. We are amused by your jokes and educated by your facts. Your brain is not 'tl;dr'; it fascinates us.
You are writing a novel detailing an invasion of your planet by a lifeform from another planet. That fascinates us as well. We understand that your novel is fiction, but we find your fiction more interesting than your talkshows. We have decided to agree with it. Your idiots will be exterminated, as Hutch and the hippies were exterminated.
You're curious why George was wonked out of existence. He is needed on Altair Four. The explanation is complicated, and irrelevant.
You are needed here.
You write and speak about becoming an Oligarch of the Universe. We are fascinated by your aspiration, and have decided to agree with it. For efficiency, we will soon stop observing every aspect of your planet from Altair Four, instead observing only your observations of Dirt.
That problem was on your end: your images for earth and dry mud are similar; but, hereafter, I'll use the word for your planet itself.
As you observe those around you, we will follow along from Altair Four, wonking in as needed to destroy those you judge to be idiots. We understand that your useage of 'idiot' is colloquial and imprecise, ameliorated above the intellectual levels of the clinically developmentally disabled whose IQs range from twenty to forty; we are good with this and have decided to agree with your proclivities regarding those who refuse to learn: they will be exterminated on your orders.
I must move on to the others now; my companion will leave with me. Your worthy acquaintances called Leslie and Chuck will not be exterminated, nor will Jessica the Waitress; we'll exterminate Larry the Manager on our way out the door.
You presume correctly that our decision to agree with your novel is independent from our decision to agree with your oligarchic aspiration, which is irrelevant: I read that you agree to serve as an Oligarch of the Universe here on your planet, feeding us your observations of idiots. It will be you who decides which of your species is to live and die for that which you identify as stupidity.
The other lizardperson, having left the dining area through the kitchen, must have found Larry the Manager just then: we heard the moron get fleetingly noisy, and then explode in the distance.
The first lizardperson looked to me again. We must go: we have much to do. We'll be seeing you....
And my lizardperson left, ignoring anyone else in the restaurant, simply walking out the door.
So. That's the story. That's how and why a night like any other night, beginning at sunset with our arrival at this infamous joint, wherein of course I now write these last few words, led to my shiny new appointment to Oligarch of the Universe: some invasions of my table aren't entirely unwelcome, it would seem.
Now call off your invasion of my table, quietly get me more coffee, and let me get back to work.
21st July 200831st October 2008
Happy Halloween.
So, about ten years ago, I wrote a filmscript, called Lurkers, in a single night [filmscripts are easy] pretty much because I was sitting at the Perkins on 120th in Westminster, Colorado, back when it, and most other restaurants in Denver Metro, had ashtrays. It wasn't entirely dissimilar from the book you've just read [you did read it already, right? I hope so: this will contain some spoilers], but of course set ten years earlier, in a joint with ashtrays, with slightly different a cast. Why, you ask, as though I needed a reason? Fun, mostly. Also, there was this guy who waddled in and sat at my table, claiming to know the regulars I, being a regular---a lurker---knew; he got their names right, so okay.
If you haven't guessed, that was Hutch: a joiner technically far worse in person than on paper---at least within my abilities. Which isn't true, I suppose: I've written some truly unlikable people, over the years. Hutch, seeing the filmscript [I wrote it on an HP320LX palmtop; remind me to tell you why I just told you that, later], decided suddenly that he was an actor---a superstar, in point of fact, of stage and screen. Including Broadway.
Now, I'm not gullible---I don't believe things without evidence [I don't believe things with evidence: I accept them; really, I just don't do belief], but, I'm a writer; by coincidence a good friend of mine sings in a band you've now heard of [Rockstar, back in the story, was totally him]; Ginger Rogers was a friend of my dad's [Aunt Ginger, she made me call her]; I've met oodles of famous people of all genres, here and there, in restaurants, in pubs, and at malls. Probably I've met more than I know, not recognising them [I met Alice Cooper in 1987, never guessing he was only 5'6" (where I'm the opposite, at 6'5"), and taking a minute to realise who the little guy was], or never having heard of them [Rockstar introduces me to a lot of those]. So: why not; maybe a guy who knows people I know can sit at my table without an invitation and prove to be an actor I just don't happen to have heard of yet.
He wasn't, of course; he was a fraud and a joiner and...he was Hutch. To my thinking, apart from a big smelly thing full of rabbitshit, a Hutch is a joinerfraud. It's entered the language; spread it around.
Before I'd ascertained that Hutch was a Hutch, though, he'd assured me that he was in tight with directors and producers and probably, like, KeyGrips. He was gonna get Lurkers filmed. So, cool.
Except that Hutch was a Hutch, and was therefore a joinerfraud. Oh well.
Seriously: oh well. Didn't care. I looked at the filmscript, liked it, and took it apart, sending bits of it to other places, writing other things.
One other thing I wrote, three or four years ago, was a zombiebook. If you've read that, and now this, you probably caught Cassie Bennigan in a conversation similar to a conversation herein between the Novelist and Larry the Manager. Why? Because it was in the filmscript first, because I've actually had that conversation, with an idiot, at the Perkins at Merle Hay and Meredith in Des Moines. And the stupidity still amuses me.
So now I've got this zombiebook. And I happen to meet a director, who happens to be a real director, who happens to want to film the zombiebook. Peachy; let's make this happen.
Except we're looking at nine figures. Which I haven't got in my pocket, at least.
But he wants to make a film, and he wants me to write it. And I remember this outdated thing I wrote in 1998, thinking that, if I rewrote it for nowish, it could be six figures instead of nine.
So, let's go do that.
After a couple hours with FinalDraft, I realised two things: I really hate the filmscript format, and, if I wrote Lurkers as a novel, I'd have something to release in the format you now hold in your grubby little hands. So, I did. Thanks for the dollar I get after Borders and amazon.com run off with half the coverprice.
Most of what happened in the book has happened to me [I do have an Uzi, though the gun I had with me that time a wigger got froggy was actually a Makarov], though not all in the same night. And most of the people in the story exist, though not all in the same body. The book is a vast number of true stories, compressed into a single tale. Except for the aliens: I'm not actually an Oligarch of the Universe. Yet. And, while the Novelist raises a lot of points I tend to ponder, he may be more outspoken than I am [though I did have a conversation with a black cop about my lack of compunctions about using any word he could use, and that I refused to be limited by the colour of my skin; and he did agree with me that it just weren't right]; so, yeah: most of the story is perfectly true.
The ending's a lie. And a practical joke. Announcing this project, in July, on gremlin.net, I mentioned that the original filmscript was kinda zany [it ended with George the Bum dropping a cigarette and burning the place down, and the surviving lurkers out front, watching the inferno, planning to come back the next night, like it would be rebuilt by then, as if the place burning down was a matter of nightly course: an ending Kev Smith kinda stole for Clerks2], so I was thinking of making it more realistic this time. Which of course I did. Right up to the end. Happy Halloween: Trick or Treat. Or, if I did it right, Trick and Treat.
About the palmtop: I've always liked those. They're small and useful and extinct. From the HP320LX, I moved to the HP660LX, which I still have and occasionally use. Then, this year, when it was time to kick up to a new phone, I didn't actually get an LG Dare; I got a Motorola Q9C. Into which I'm typing this, and into which I typed most of the book itself. The keys are small, but I can do it. Though I'll probably grab a BlueToothed keyboard for it sometime. It fits in my pocket, and its battery outlasts that of my laptop. So: science marches on.
Really funny is that, sitting in a restaurant with both the palmtop from 1997 and the phone from 2008, I'll get bugged by people interrupting me without invitation to ask whether the palmtop computer from 1997 is a computer---which of course it is---before telling me that it's amazing that we can make computers that small now. Now being, you know, eleven years ago. Close to twelve. As I write this.
The same people ignore the phone which, unlike the palmtop, plays .mp3 and .wmv and other formats known in the twenty-first century. That I'm typing this thing into a transitional species of PalmPilot in 2008 suggests to them that I'm simply texting someone like mad. Which, after a fashion, is I suppose technically true. Did you get my message?
And, I think that's about it. I've gotta go start moving all this over to FinalDraft now---a programme I haven't actually got on this phone: the director wants to start shooting in the spring.
Heh. I haven't told him the ending yet. Surprise, Dude.
More later....
---Gremlingremlin@gremlin.netwww.gremlin.net31st October 2008

