Shopocalypse

by David Gullen

  ‘Better?’ Guinevere said, bent down and hoovered up the other line.

  Gordano just grinned at her, the tension gone from his shoulders.

  The cocaine hit Guinevere like cresting a rise too fast, a super-thrill suffusing her like a whole-body chemical yell. She felt seven feet tall and randy as a seasoned-up hyena. She wanted to dance, shout, strip naked and ball. She could do Gordano. He was all right, the way he handled the Pharma, he knew how to have fun. Lobotnov could watch them, the weird little creep would masturbate and take notes. The thought made her laugh out loud.

  ‘What?’ Gordano poked her arm. ‘What is it?’

  Guinevere sucked it in, put a lid on it and turned it round. Use the power. She took Gordano’s arm and steered him back to the data wall. While they had snorted coke the two green semicircles pushing down into Mexico had coalesced into one. Now the green surged south into Durango. West and east the states of Sonora and Nuevo León changed colour.

  ‘See? We’re going to do this, Oscar.’

  Gordano clenched his fist. ‘One for the USA.’

  ‘In it to win it.’

  ‘Fuck, YEAH!’ Gordano punched the air.

  Across the room Lobotnov laughed with mock anxiety. ‘If I’m going to have to prove my loyalty, I need to floss.’

  - 16 -

  Listen to this:

  ‘Linear growth, 20% year on year for the past decade.’

  ‘We continue to expand existing facilities, and develop new sites.’

  The first is Storzit-4-U CEO Germaine Brasher at their recent AGM. The second is 11-year old billionaire founder of Russian Doll, Stacey Wiggins. With Meeja uptake set to pass 50% of households this year it is still a good time to buy into the Self-Store sector.

  East coast competitors Big Bad Box are equally confident. ‘People just don’t throw any more. It’s the one good thing we learned from the eco-fringe. Dumping perfectly good purchases in landfill is crazy. Just keep it all.’

  Statistics speak for themselves. Early this century self-store warehousing would barely have covered Manhattan Island. Today it would reach to forty stories. With most retail outlets now offering Buy-to-Store deals this can only increase.

  – Daily update, Free World Market

  They were back in the desert and heading north. Novik looked through the fly-specked windshield and realised it was all starting to make sense. He hated it when that happened, hated being in tune with The Man and having insights into the sick logic of the macroeconomic bandersnatch of state-sponsored murder. Snarlow was going to stomp out a new border far to the south and solve the refugee problem once and for all. Isolated between the USA and the Federated States of South America, all Mexico’s friends were in Europe and Africa. By the time they acted it would be too late.

  What could a one-man assault on the consumer economy do compared to that?

  It was an unfair, selfish thought. Novik took it back and tried again. What could a man, a woman, a technophile’s wet-dream of an automobile, and a fruitcake do?

  The answer was more or less the same. Disillusioned by his own assessment, Novik flipped open the glove compartment and dug around in the mess of loose change and sweet wrappers.

  ‘What are you looking for?’ Josie said.

  ‘Anything. Anything at all.’

  Benny dug around in his back pocket. ‘I got these,’ he said and tipped a small pile of flat blue and orange pills, white capsules and scraps of greyish pink blotting paper into Novik’s outstretched hand.

  ‘Don’t do this, babe, we need clear heads now, more than ever. There’s no point acting like some kind of chemical ostrich,’ Josie said.

  Novik poked at the pills and scraps with a finger and paid her no attention. He blew off the lint, tipped the lot into his mouth and slumped back, eyes wide, staring at the roof lining.

  The road was empty and straight, the desert flat and wide. Josie glared at Benny in the back seat. ‘What did you give him?’

  ‘I don’t know. I bought my pants from a thrift store, that stuff was in the pockets.’

  Josie looked at Novik, still resolutely chewing. ‘You’re trying to drop aspirins, stale candy and bus tickets.’

  ‘Gah.’ Novik opened his mouth, the sticky mess of paper and flavourless sweets sat on his ink-stained tongue like a mutant bubo.

  Mr Car rolled down the window, Novik leaned out and gobbed away the entire mess. Benny passed over a bottle of bourbon, Novik rinsed, spat, and rinsed again.

  ‘Why, when you say you don’t do drugs, are you doing drugs?’ Mr Car said.

  ‘Yeah, it must seem pretty stupid to you.’ Novik swallowed the bourbon. ‘I’ve had enough, Mr Car. The world’s a messed-up place. I want to forget, I want to be numb. I want to hide, crawl under a stone like a bug.’

  ‘Yet while hiding and forgetting, the problems still remain.’

  Novik exhaled through his teeth. ‘That they do.’

  ‘If I may venture, the issue may not be living with the problems.’

  ‘Thanks a lot.’ Novik’s mouth twisted unhappily. ‘Thanks a whole rotten bunch.’

  ‘Mr Car, you are not being helpful,’ Josie exclaimed.

  ‘I thought I would mention the logical flaw inherent in an emotional response. I have noticed humans seldom do this.’

  ‘Usually for a good reason,’ Josie said.

  ‘It was just an experiment,’ Mr Car said. ‘One I might not repeat.’

  A road train of Russian Doll trucks rumbled by in the other direction, each piled high with obsolescent consumer electronics, home entertainment systems, greaseless fryers, 2-D projectors, last year’s phones, last Christmas’ keep-fit fad, all headed for storage. Later, they overtook a flatbed truck trailing a plume of dust, grit and diesel soot. A zinc bathtub and an ancient bicycle hung from the tailgate. As they passed by, Novik saw it was driven by a young native American woman wearing a fedora with an eagle feather tucked in the hatband. Beside her, an ancient man, his weathered face seamed like leather, clutched a suckling pig.

  The sun sank down towards the desert mountains, a sullen ball of smoky orange. All around them the mesas and arroyos bled expanding pools of purple-grey shadow.

  ‘How come we always end up back in the desert? Do you think it’s some piece of Karma we’ve got to work off?’ Novik said.

  ‘I hope not,’ Josie said.

  ‘Hey, Mr Car, can you clean the dead bugs off the windows?’ Benny said.

  ‘Sure.’

  Instantly the windows were clean, the view crystal clear. Even the wiper streaks had gone.

  ‘That’s cool,’ Novik said, grudgingly impressed. He was still upset with Mr Car.

  ‘Wasn’t really there,’ Benny said, leaning on the back of Novik’s seat. ‘It’s like the TotalHud, right? You’re running analogue superposition, like a human brain’s visual cortex.’

  ‘Correct. The dirt was a digital artefact, appropriate verisimilitude,’ the car replied.

  ‘Thought so,’ Benny sat back with a smile, ‘some things you think are real just because they fit a preconceived model.’ He lowered a side window half-way and compared the landscape through the window and the open air. ‘Perfect.’

  ‘Drop the roof. I want to see the sky and feel the breeze,’ Novik said.

  ‘It’s safer if I run sims,’ Mr Car replied. ‘My glass is rated small-arms proof to 21 inches of calibrated gelatine. Furthermore, I’m impervious to satellite IR, microwave and pulsed laser scans at sub-lethal energies. A big E-M pulse would get me.’

  Benny’s ears pricked up. ‘How big?’

  ‘Big enough.’

  ‘Just let me see the real thing,’ Novik said.

  ‘Technically, even when you’re looking at something you’re not really–’ Benny caught Josie’s look and fell silent.

  The Cadillac slowed down, a hermetic seal broke along the upper edge of the windshield. One by one the roof segments lifted, slid back, and stacked down behind the rear window.

  Novi
k reclined the seat and looked up into the evening sky. Wind ruffled his hair, the breeze sifted away his cares like dust and old cobwebs. He closed his tired eyes, ‘Can’t beat a ragtop.’

  The air was warm, soft from recent rain. The desert was changing as temperate plants invaded the gritty soil, their seeds and spores carried by new, damper winds blowing across the land. Moss and fern sporelings flourished in crevices sheltered from the sun, rushes and horsetails colonised the margins of the pools that lasted longer and longer each season. Many of the new plants died as the desert dried between the rains, but up in the shade of high cliffs and deep canyons saplings were already several years old, the soil under their shade richer and damper than it had been for ten thousand years.

  ‘Leave the main lights off,’ Novik said when the sun began to set. ‘I want to see the stars.’

  When Novik woke, the Cadillac was parked off the road at the bottom of a gentle slope overgrown with sagebrush and scrub thorn. The roof was up, it was dark and a full moon shone down. Josie was in the back seat, making out slow and gentle with Benny. Novik watched them for a while, appreciating the way the moonlight turned Josie’s breasts and collar bone, the ridges on Benny’s spare, muscular stomach a pale and silvery grey.

  ‘You two are beautiful. Like space creatures come down from Luna.’

  ‘It’s true,’ Benny said. ‘I’ve been travelling incognito while I live among you and try to learn your earthling ways.’

  Solemnly, Novik held out his hand. ‘Pleased to meet you. Welcome to planet Earth.’

  Josie held out her arms. ‘Come and join us, hon.’

  Novik shook his head, turned and slid back down into the driver’s seat. He was still in shock from what he’d seen at the border, they all were. Josie needed the physical reassurance of someone to hold; Novik needed solitude, he needed to switch off. Back in jail they called it turning your face to the wall. Given time, you usually came back. It helped if you had a friend. In the cellblocks that wasn’t something everybody had.

  Inside Josie’s bag, Novik discovered a perfectly rolled 6-skin spliff of Tajikistani resin. He looked at it for a while. Josie hardly smoked, she must have made it for him, a get out of jail gift. He lit up and smoked it slowly, holding each draw deep in his lungs, feeling the car rock on its suspension as Josie and Benny made love behind him.

  Constellations slowly wheeled far overhead and ∆9-THC tranquillity spread through him. Life went on and everything was going to be all right, all he had to do was stop worrying, float with the vibe and chill.

  Novik sat up. Dope didn’t make the world a better place, it just changed your attitude towards it. This wasn’t what he wanted. Mr Car had tried to warn him off and even Benny knew the difference between what was real and seeing what you wanted to see.

  He fought back against the drug-induced complacency, pushed open the door, ground the fat, mostly unsmoked reefer into the dirt and walked out into the desert. The night air was bitterly cold, he welcomed it, the near-freezing chill cleared his mind.

  ‘Damn it,’ Novik yelled into the empty land, shouted up at the unblinking stars. ‘We had a plan,’ his voice faded to a whisper, ‘I had a second chance.’

  He was crying now, the car two hundred yards away across a freezing landscape of cold rock and dark air. Where was a dammed hug when you needed one? Teeth rattling, Novik huddled down in a crouch under the burning moon.

  What chance now? The country was at war, a conflict that was going to last for years, nobody was going to give a wet fart about saving the world. Without thought, he moved small stones and pebbles around on the desert floor, attempting to reconfigure their geometry into a meaningful form. A labyrinth began to take shape, a circling maze with a single path forwards into mystery.

  ‘Come to bed, honey.’ Josie crouched next to him, a blanket around her shoulders.

  Shuddering with cold, Novik turned into her arms, buried his face in her shoulder. ‘Mexico,’ was all he could say. He wanted to explain his vision, but it wouldn’t come. ‘They’ve thrown a veil over it all, another excuse to make money. It’s just a business plan.’

  Benny stood close by. ‘Don’t give up, man, not now. Nothing’s set in stone.’

  ‘What’s the point?’ He really needed to know.

  ‘You said it yourself. War is a continuation of the economy by other means.’

  ‘What about those three men in the diner?’ Novik said. Dear Lord, they had talked about veils too. Evil possessed such a clear-sighted gaze.

  Josie enfolded him in her arms and gave him her warmth, her love. ‘We’ll move fast. By the time they work out where we are we’ll be gone.’

  She didn’t have to say this. Novik was ready to throw it in, and here she was, encouraging him, trying to give him strength. It was a self-betrayal. She knew it, and yet she had to say these things, and mean them too. If not, Novik would stay as he was now. He’d recover his emotional strength, of course he would, and he’d walk and talk, and smile at jokes, they’d live their lives as if everything was fine. Through all those years, to the end of his life, he’d be a broken thing, someone who had not failed after giving it his best shot, but simply stopped trying, overwhelmed by life’s hard twists and turns, and been diminished. She’d know it, they’d both know it and that knowledge would eat away at them. They’d become dried out husks, automatons without feelings, without any emotion except bitterness. Life would become a series of excuses. It would destroy them both.

  She lifted Novik to his feet. It was no effort, he was light as a wisp. ‘If we don’t try, it’s like we’re agreeing. Silence is the same as consent.’

  They were fighting their own strange war now.

  Novik ached inside, wrung out by his thoughts and emotions. Benny and Josie waited in silence. Around them the desert chill grew, a rime of frost sparkled on the cold ground.

  ‘The three of us?’ Novik’s voice creaked like an old hinge.

  ‘Four,’ Benny said. ‘Mr Car is part of this too.’

  Josie led Novik back to the Cadillac. Mr Car had folded the front seats flat against the rear bench, soft amber lights glowed in the door panels, warm air fanned from the vents.

  Novik kicked off his boots and crawled in. As soon as the warmer air touched him, he started shivering uncontrollably. Using their clothes as extra blankets, Bennie and Josie wrapped their arms around him and they slept.

  – MUSIC UPDATE – MUSIC UPDATE –

  Bariatric Babes – Larger than Life!

  Live in Times Square, on a specially reinforced stage, the Bariatric Babes debuted the audio-visual aspects of their new Meeja, ‘Hot Tonnage’, in front of an audience of hubbed-up fans, protesters and passers-by.

  Make no mistake, ‘Hot Tonnage’ is a super-sense overwhelm from the biggest girls in the biggest band in the world. They got the body cams, sensors and texturisers, they got the costumes, they got the best chefs, they’ve got new logos, and they’ve got active implants. As God is in his Heaven, they are awesome, even live.

  Zeppelina, Little Missy Massiv, and The Calorific Queen left this high-expectation fan pole-axed and brick-batted. Take it from me, the full-on Meeja version is going to bury you in a colossal hyperglaecemic avalanche of bariatric love snuff.

  ‘Hot Tonnage’ has got something for absolutely everyone. I hesitate to go this far, but I’m gonna say it anyway – even if you’re Anna or Mia, check this one out. You owe it to your aching heart.

  – Wesley Strosner – Venus Maxima

  (Fans continue to be concerned by the health of nineteen year old Zeppelina, real name Laetitia Berkley, rumoured to be battling kidney failure.)

  - 17 -

  The sun was rising before Guinevere managed a few minutes on her own with Lobotnov.

  ‘Cheswold.’

  He cut to the chase, it was why she liked him. ‘Who’s going to lend, Ginny? The Chinks? Maybe in fifty years. Right now they need every yuan for pensions. Europe you can simply forget–’

  ‘How lo
ng?’

  Lobotnov looked down at papers and blew out his cheeks. ‘Not long, that’s for sure.’

  That was worrying. Lobotnov never prevaricated and never dissembled. He always had the facts and Guinevere knew he had them now. Just for once he didn’t want to tell her.

  ‘How bad is it?’

  Lobotnov sat down. ‘We’re a busted flush. Sure, we’ve got lines of credit, they’ll last for a couple of quarters. Home suppliers are technically always good but if there’s an embargo, and there will be, they’ll come unstuck.’

  ‘You’ve factored in Mexico?’

  ‘They’ve got oil, tech and raws, sure.’ Lobotnov looked her in the eye. ‘Only if we can pacify in time. Until then the country’s a money pit where we need a strip mine.’

  ‘We’ll pacify if I let Andriewiscz off the leash. You’re telling me we need a wrap down to Chiapas before Phase II, and I agree. We’re going to close one front before opening another. I’m not going to make that old mistake.’

  Lobotnov fell silent. This was the part he didn’t like. The whole point was to provoke Europe, make them kick off first so America could strike back. Once they’d done that, going global would be simple. Until then there was a lot of risk. Lobotnov cleared his throat. ‘Look, ah, I’ve been thinking about Crane.’

  ‘You said he was a no-hoper.’

  ‘He is, but his daughter–’

  ‘You think we can get to him through her?’

  ‘Not exactly.’ Lobotnov hesitated. ‘I’m thinking if anything happens to Crane she’ll inherit.’

  ‘What about her mother?’ Snarlow snapped her fingers as she tried to remember her name.

  ‘Bianca Hutzenreiter. Estranged. Crane pays her an allowance, a very big allowance. It’s an open secret they still get on well.’