by David Gullen
Cloudio grinned like a nauseous chipmunk. ‘The women’s shoes?’
‘Women’s, men’s, children’s.’
‘Perhaps–’ Cloudio glanced at Novik, who gave him a discrete thumbs-up. ‘We also have InterLace, a gender-plus range.’ Cloudio stood on one foot and spread his arms, ‘For those days when you just want to be different.’
‘I am different, Cloudio. Add them in.’
‘All?’
‘All.’
‘I–’ Cloudio’s composure disintegrated. ‘Fuck it, if that’s what you want.’
‘Ten percent for cash?’ Novik said.
Cloudio gave an indifferent shrug, ‘Sure thing. No problemo.’
Half an hour later an enormous stack of shoe boxes occupied the centre of the shop. At the very top were Cloudio’s own white slip-ons. Novik had insisted.
Josie placed a thick wad of bills into Cloudio’s damp hands. As he counted the money his mouth began to twitch. He blinked, he grimaced, his toes curled inside his socks. ‘We have a special offer on buy-to-store this week. Free delivery straight to the self-store warehouse of your choice.’
Novik was incredulous. ‘People do that?’
‘Everyone’s doing it. It’s uber-popular.’
‘For shoes?’
‘Particularly for shoes. Especially for shoes.’ Cloudio grew enthusiastic. ‘It’s a virtual wardrobe, but one that’s full of real shoes. Think about it – simply the most perfect way to own your purchases without the inconvenience of keeping them in the finite volumage of your domicile. They’re there for you, waiting in a low-light, humidity controlled environment, ready for the day you want to visit them. To touch them, smell them.’ Cloudio’s eyelids fluttered, ‘Slip your feet inside them–’
Novik took a step back. ‘Go home, Cloudio. You’re done here.’
‘What about all your shoes?’ Cloudio exclaimed, ‘Don’t you want them?’
‘We’ll come back tomorrow,’ Novik said.
The concept was so novel Cloudio became temporarily catatonic.
‘Thanks, Claudio.’ Josie tugged the receipt from his unresisting fingers and left the shop.
Outside, Novik was ecstatic. They’d had this plan and he’d seen it work.
‘That was brilliant,’ he said. ‘You were awesome.’
‘It was fun,’ Josie said. To her own surprise, she actually meant it.
Benny looked back at the shop, already the lights were out, the shutters coming down. ‘This is a smart plan. You bought his stock and blocked resupply. That retail outlet is out of action.’
Josie had spent a lot of money, and it had felt good. A year’s wages spent on shoes in under an hour. It had taken a small dent out of the cash, more of a nibble, but it was start. The closed shop unsettled the passing shoppers, young and old. Skittish and unruly as spooked colts, they made impulse-buys in adjacent shops and hurried away, defensively hugging their unwanted purchases to their chests.
‘We’ll have to move fast, people are getting nervous,’ Josie said.
‘A lightning raid, and move on.’ Novik liked the idea. ‘Like Parker and Barrow, Dillinger and Frechette.”
‘Except the police won’t hunt us down, they’ll provide escorts, an honour guard.’
Novik surveyed the mall like a lion of the Serengeti. He saw what he wanted. ‘Over there. Power tools.’
The sun was setting when they made their way back to Mr Car. All afternoon shops had ceased trading as they had bought them out. Now the entire mall was closing. Weary shoppers tramped across the parking lot, whole families of day-trippers, coach parties of excursion purchasers. Security guards manned the barriers of the entrance lanes to the car park and turned away confused and disappointed arrivals.
Back at the Cadillac, ‘Peace Dog’ was playing on Mr Car’s stereo. Benny listened to Duffy’s licks and power chords, peered inside the vehicle then stood back to admire the external lines.
‘The next war will not be cool but you are one awesomely cool piece of techno, Mr Car.’
‘Thank you for noticing, sir. I also believe it to be true.’
‘When will the next war be?’ Josie said.
‘Probably quite soon. Maybe never,’ Benny said. ‘When I find out, you’ll be the first to know.’
Novik slipped behind the wheel. Josie tossed her bag onto the passenger seat beside him. It was empty of everything but long strips of paper. A million dollars exchanged for a dozen metres of till receipts.
Shopping usually left Novik drained; right now he felt energised and empowered, an endorphin high. Doing something, taking a stand, making a point – they had proved it could be done. ‘We can do this, I know we can, but we need a real plan, a scheme, a strategy. Then we’ll come back and really take it to the man.’
Beside him Josie’s smile was half worn-out. She kissed his cheek, ‘Let’s take a break, keep heading south and hit Mexico, strip down and party. Catch some rays.’
‘I don’t want to lose momentum. And we need a plan.’
‘Sure thing, hon.’ Josie’s voice was light, carefree. ‘We’ll make a plan.’
‘So this new guy’s coming with us?’ Mr Car said as they buckled up.
‘Benny? Sure. Why not?’ Novik said.
‘Ah. No reason,’ the Cadillac replied as they pulled away into the traffic.
That colour? It’s just you, it so is. That perfume? Absolutely! That automobile, I can see you in it! Darling, it defines you. It is you.
Well, no.
These days, does anyone of sound mind really believe owning a single high-end branded commodity will embellish their social personhood?
Of course not. How ridiculous. How naïve. We’ve moved on, today’s society is far more sophisticated.
My own research indicates that, at any one time, you need to display thirty to seventy mid-tier, or twenty to thirty-five brand-iconic logos on your combined physico-virtual personage – your McLuhanite para-social media extensions.
Yes, that’s display, not own. Ownage should be significantly higher. How else are people going to discover who you are, where you’re coming from and where you’re going to?
Today the challenge is to macro-balance all those designs into a gestalt ‘Moi’. Tomorrow it will be synergistic integration with Meeja-II.
Fortunately, today’s solution is actually quite simple: Context-sensitive Logo-montage feedback loops!
– Teh Poon Leet, Logo-Me-Beautiful consultant.
- 8 -
Just like 05 and 24, the National Guard were on the levees of the ever-growing shoreline of Pontchartrain-Maurepas. Now hugely extended, the earth ramparts flanked Interstate 12, broke south-west past Raymond and followed the high ground to Sorento, where construction still continued.
The difference was this: instead of spades and sandbags the Guard now carried assault rifles and night-vision goggles. The searchlights of helicopter gunships played across the dark water as they patrolled the perimeter of the permanently flooded and officially abandoned city of Nu-Orleans like giant black dragonflies.
Some miles east, Jericho Wilson sweltered in the heat and humidity of the saturated night air and watched the uneasy waters.
His amphibious pickup was parked under the trees a hundred yards back. Wilson himself hunkered down among scrub cypress overlooking a concrete slipway that ran up over the broad top of the earth levee and down to a dirt road. He thought about a cigarette but didn’t want to risk the glow or the smell.
Wilson might be in the middle of a swamp, but it didn’t mean he was alone.
Overhead, reflections from the searchlight beams shone in glowing patches across the heavy cloud base. In the city centre, targeting lasers flickered from the roofs of abandoned storm arcologies. The ruby beams kept far enough away from the military choppers not be a threat, and close enough to let them know that Mitchel Gould, Lord of Nu-Orleans, accepted them under sufferance.
Out in the gulf the miles-wide storm columns of Permanent Larry blanke
d out the southern sky like a brooding god.
Slowly, quietly, Wilson flexed his legs. This kind of work didn’t get any easier. Thick in the waist and greying at the temples, his bushy moustache was like that of an old-time marshal.
He looked towards the hurricane and wondered how many little boats were out in the gulf that night, how many handmade rafts and dinghies chugged towards the Louisiana coast from Central America and Haiti, their failing third-hand outboards paid for with sex, children, or a promise to pick up the phone one night and do whatever you were told. Sure, we can get you to the Nortamericanos, señor. The price is the same for everyone: all you own and a little bit more.
He thought about what it must be like to be that desperate, how many times Permanent Larry had to wreck your house, sink your boat and destroy your crops before the chance of making it to the USA as an illegal, compared to drowning in a cockleshell boat, felt like a good bet.
The vegetation around Wilson was recovering from Larry’s last visit. Broken stumps were shooting green from new buds, spear-fronded fern colonised bare ground, one of several species pushing north with the weather.
Larry hadn’t rolled along this part of the Southern Littoral for over a year. Maybe it wouldn’t come again this year, almost certainly it would the next. When it did, in its wake, amongst the flotsam and storm-beaten wreckage, people would stagger out of the angry surf, abandoning their waterlogged rafts and leaking boats. Nobody knew how many set out, or how many arrived, but they kept on coming.
Wilson chided himself for letting his mind wander and settled down to watch and listen.
It had been a long while since he had feelings that deep. These days he just wanted to do his job. He found his man and brought him in alive. Always alive. It had become his reputation and when people found out who had come for them it sometimes made things go easier. Sometimes not.
Long ago there had been one death too many. Now, apart from Mitchell Gould, Wilson wanted nothing more to do with killing. People would still get hurt, fair play. Wilson was good at hurting.
After a while there was a change in the texture of the darkness. Wilson became very still.
Drifting out of the night, a flat-bottomed green metal dinghy swung towards the slipway with its outboard on tick-over. Before it grounded, a man dressed in a dark jacket, trousers and beanie slipped into the water. He lifted a holdall out of the boat and balanced it on his head. Then he took hold of the boat’s painter and waded ashore.
As the man dropped the bag onto the slipway, the night lit up with a pulse of light towards the city. Moments later, the rumbling crackle of the explosion followed. The brief illumination showed Wilson the newcomer’s heavy jaw, cropped hair and bandito moustache. It was Meineck, the man his sources said would be here. Meineck might have arrived by boat, but he was no climate refugee. He was a wanted man with a price on his head.
Meineck sloshed back into the water and swung the boat around. He set the throttle up a notch and sent the empty craft put-putting away into the night.
As Meineck stood with his back to the shore Wilson moved down the slipway and drew and aimed his neural mop.. ‘Hold it there, Meineck.’
Meineck turned fast, his right arm coming up. Wilson shot him in the chest. Meineck squawked as the barbed vial struck home, gave a whole-body twitch as sodium ions vented from his synapses, then flopped face down into the water. He got his knees back under himself, so Wilson shot him again. Lacking all muscle control, Meineck blew bubbles from both ends and sank.
Wilson waded into the water, hauled Meineck onto the slipway and slapped an electrolyte patch on his neck.
Meineck sprawled on the concrete. ‘Sweet Jesus.’
‘Quite a rush, eh?’ Wilson cuffed Meineck’s wrists with cable ties, found and removed a knife and a telescopic cosh from his utility jacket, and a second gun from the back of his waistband. He threw them all into the water and hauled Meineck to his feet.
‘Expecting trouble?’ Wilson said.
The muscles on one side of Meineck’s face were slack from electrolyte loss. ‘Don’t take me back,’ he slurred.
‘I never take them back.’
‘God, no, not that!’ Meineck fell to his knees. ‘Not like this, not here.’
Wilson jabbed Meineck in the neck with his neural pistol. ‘Shut up, you punk. You think I work for that sonofabitch Gould? I’m taking you to prison.’
He was angry now, the urge to slug Meineck hard to resist. Wilson wanted to bust Meineck up good, pulp him, kick his god-damned teeth in. Teach him to be quicker with the gun, to aim faster and just shoot it. Shoot it at Wilson, shoot him in the head. Just like Wilson had done to Mandy on that awful night long ago.
Pale as a ghost, Meineck looked up at Wilson, terrified by the rage in his captor’s face.
Mentally and physically Wilson took a step back. ‘Christ, if I worked for that scumbag, I’d zap you again and hold you under until the bubbles stopped. You want I do that, you low-life bottom-feeder?’
Meineck’s eyes had gone hollow, he swallowed hard. ‘No, I don’t.’
Another flash-bang lit up the sky.
‘What’s that?’ Wilson said.
‘Gould’s dynamiting the levees. Trying to lower the water levels.’
By any standards Mitchell Gould’s operation was impressive. When the USA effectively withdrew from the coastline, when civilisation moved twenty miles inland all the way from Corpus Christi to Tampa, Gould had seen an opportunity and moved his operation down from Birmingham. Now he ran his own law from one of the abandoned self-contained and weather-immune arcologies built after Katrina III. When Permanent Larry returned again, and then again, the flaw in the arcology plan was revealed: nobody wanted to live in a wasteland.
Gould moved drugs, climate refugees and contraband across what had come to be called the Southern Littoral, the no-man’s land between the ocean and the USA. His fief extended from the ruins of Morgan City to the Gulfport marshes, fifty miles in each direction.
Low concussion waves from the levee charges broke on the slipway. Meineck shifted uncomfortably.
‘You okay?’ Wilson said.
Meineck gave a grimace of revulsion. ‘I shat myself. When you shot me.’
‘It happens. I got spare clothes in the pickup. You going to mess me about?’
Too weary to speak, Meineck shook his head. Wilson helped Meineck up the ramp, dropped the dry clothes at his feet, and cut the cable-ties. When Meineck had changed Wilson re-cuffed him and put him in the passenger seat.
The beat of rotors swung overhead as Army helicopters homed in on the explosion sites. Flickering red targeting lasers followed behind.
Meineck shut his eyes and leaned back, ‘It’s a relief, you know? Not having to run any more. Jail is going to be easy. I’m ready to go back, I can do the time.’
Wilson pulled a half of scotch out of the door pocket. ‘You want a drink?’
‘Sure.’
Wilson held the bottle to Meineck’s mouth until he nodded. There were a couple of inches left, Wilson drained the bottle and tossed it out the window. ‘You think I’ve done you a favour?’
‘Yes, sir. I think you have.’
Wilson gave a short, harsh laugh, ‘You’re an even bigger fuck-up than me.’
The whisky did its job on Meineck’s sodium deficient system and he quickly fell asleep. It also did its daily work on Wilson’s scarred emotions. An hour’s driving brought Wilson to the local bondsman pens in a mellower mood. While Meineck was booked, processed and logged for onward transportation, Wilson collected his fees and scanned the lists for his next job. Among the usual dealers, illegals, thieves and gangsters, someone on early release gone AWOL caught his eye. Here was yet another person who thought cutting his tag in the bath meant it couldn’t send a signal. Now he had broken parole, damaged government property, and dragged any accomplices down into the system with him.
It was exactly what Wilson was looking for. He accepted the job, printed the
information sheet and vacated the booth.
Another bondsman waited to use the console. His massive frame, plaited blond hair and full beard gave him the appearance of a latter-day Viking.
‘Curtis, how’s it hanging?’ Wilson said as they shook hands.
‘Like a small banana. What you take?’
‘The parole bust,’ Wilson said.
‘What’s he done?’
Wilson read from the sheet: ‘Behaviour or opinions promoting or deemed to promote un-American commercial modalities.’
‘Part of Snarlow’s round up. Poor bastard. My brother-in-law was a charity worker, now he’s doing three to five on the same charge.’
‘I hope he’s got the sense to sit it out,’ Wilson said.
‘He’s daft, not stupid.’ Curtis chuckled sourly. ‘Then again, he did marry my sister.’
‘How’s she doing?’
‘Family’s pulled together. She’s a good kid.’
‘You be careful,’ Wilson said.
‘You too.’
Wilson climbed into his truck, started the engine and read through the sheet again. He knew what Curtis meant: parole breakers often got violent. They had done a stupid thing, when they realised how stupid it made some of them desperate.
Just what he was looking for.
Wilson folded away the paper into his breast pocket, put the vehicle into gear and pulled out the lot. He had a little ritual at the start of any job, a phrase he always spoke. He said it now: ‘Mr Novik, my name is Jericho Wilson and today I’ll be your nemesis.’
Meeja 101
With hindsight, we can say the internet was never a place, it was a platform. You could contribute to it, consume it, or comment on it, but you could never go there for your holidays.
If publishing is simply “the act of making a created item public” then all the internet ever was, and ever could be, was a method of publication. Nevertheless, it was incredible, transformational, a genuine innovation. It was magnificent, it was gigantic, and in its day it ruled the world.
