The End of Everything Forever

by Eirik Gumeny

  “Are you sure?” asked Queen Victoria XXX, stepping up to the counter next to the genetically modified president. “It didn’t look like one of their sinkholes.”

  “Oh, well, by ‘small Hollow Men,’ what I meant was, uh, ‘Hollow Men who are tiny in stature.’ Hollow Midgets and Dwarves. They try, but they’ve got such little arms. They’re just not very good.”

  “And the fact,” said Chester A. Arthur XVII, leaning his elbows on the counter, “that the entire plaza is buried in a cloud of black smoke?”

  “Because every other hotel in the plaza – and only the hotels – is on fire?” continued Queen Victoria XXX, similarly leaning forward.

  “Hollow ... Arsonists,” replied the hotel employee, raising an eyebrow.

  “Hollow Midget Arsonists?” parroted the dark-haired queen. “That’s really what you’re suggesting?”

  “Yes,” said the girl, nodding her head and turning her gaze to the computer screen before her, away from the filthy, intimidating, attractive people looming over her. “They are exceedingly real and in no way something I just made up. Now, how many rooms will you need? Three?”

  “Two should be fine,” replied Chester A. Arthur XVII with a sigh. “Billy and I can bunk together.”

  “Please tell me Billy’s the fat one and not the girl,” said the large man with shaggy blonde hair entering the hotel lobby.

  “Who’re you calling fat, dough boy?” retorted William H. Taft XLII.

  “Billy’s the fat one,” said the other president, turning around, “not the girl.”

  The blonde man was caked with dirt, wearing a ruined hotel uniform somewhere beneath it all, and carrying an equally filthy shovel.

  “Dude,” said the girl behind the counter, leaning forward, “your arm’s on fire.”

  Also, the man’s arm was on fire.

  CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

  Kill Sequence 588 Involves Nothing But a Spoon

  “Target acquired. Death is imminent, human,” verbalized the murder-drone.

  “Well, all right,” said Bill, backing up slowly down the debris-strewn alley. “But what kind of death are you talking about?”

  The sleek, silver death machine, gears whirring and sensors glowing, halted its advance. “Please repeat query.”

  “What ... is ... death?” repeated Bill, with far more confidence than someone staring down a homicidal robot should have.

  “Clarification: Death is imminent,” articulated the murder-drone in a high-pitched staccato. “Termination of life is imminent. Prepare to cease functioning, human.” The robot resumed its clanking approach.

  Bill laughed and said, “You haven’t answered my question.”

  “Death is termination of life. Death is irreparable stoppage of necessary human biological functions.”

  “Is it?” asked Bill. “Is it simply the ... cessation of living? Or is it something else? Something more? We humans are ... imbued with souls, with indomitable, eternal spirits.”

  The automaton paused again. “Searching matrix for definition of ‘soul.’ Please wait.”

  “Sure thing,” said Bill. “Take your time.”

  The murder-drone whirred loudly. Bill waited. The sounds of robotic killing machines stalking through the Hobo State, hunting down and slaughtering philosophers and free-thinkers with determination, precision, and no small amount of flourish, filled the atmosphere. Screams mingled with the sounds of buildings collapsing.

  “Requested definition not found,” the robot stated suddenly. “Prepare for evisceration.”

  “It has been ... well documented that this is true,” continued Bill, taking several small, panicked steps back and raising his voice, “that these spirits still ... roam our scorched earth. By killing me, by ending my ... mortal existence, you will be releasing my soul into the world. But how, I ask, how is that any different than living? I contest that simple ... eradication of our human bodies is, in fact, not death. Your programming –”

  “Destruction of body is sufficient. Initiate Kill Sequence 543.”

  The robot raised its arm, retracting the metal hand and extending a circular saw in its place. It did the same with the other arm. Then the robot opened cavities on both sides of its chassis, extended two more arms, and repeated the hand-to-saw transformation.

  Bill backed up into a tall chain link fence.

  “Shit.”

  The murder-drone clanked closer, saws spinning and the bloodlust programmed to become evident in its visual sensor becoming evident in its visual sensor.

  “Listen!” pleaded Bill, his hands gripping the fence behind him. “To really, truly kill me, to have me meet a ... final and lasting death, to fulfill your primary programming, you will need to find a way to destroy my soul. Can you? Can you do that? Are you even capable?”

  The automaton’s visual sensor glowed brighter. Then the robot began twitching. Then its head exploded with significant gusto.

  “That was close,” wheezed Bill.

  “Yes,” said a voice, “it was.”

  The headless, smoking automaton collapsed to the ground in front of Bill, revealing a disheveled, bearded man in a wool blazer and skinny jeans carrying a laser rifle.

  “Phil?”

  “Will already died trying to confuse them,” Phil explained gravely. “What you have to do is ask them to ... calculate pi or some other irrational number. While they robots are ... reciting a seemingly endless stream of numbers ... you take their weapons and you blow their god damned heads off.”

  Bill raised his hand, as if to protest the point. Phil cut him off at the pass.

  “You can’t ... talk them to death, Bill. They’re machines, not undergrads.”

  Bill protested anyway. He wasn’t about to give in to a completely logical comment. “But –”

  “Do you want to die?”

  “Well, Phil, do we ever really, truly –”

  The man in the wool jacket raised his laser rifle and pointed it at Bill’s chest. “Bill?” he asked, though it wasn’t much of a question.

  “No,” the other man squeaked.

  “Right. No one does. Stop being an ass.” Phil shoved the robot with his foot, rolling it closer to Bill. “Grab the arm. It detaches at the elbow. The manual controls for the saw are in the wrist.”

  CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

  Stop Me If You’ve Heard This One Before ...

  A priest, a rabbi, and a hot dog vendor ...

  No, wait.

  An Irishman, an Italian, and a black guy were walking through the desert when ...

  Damn it. Hold on.

  Two cloned presidents, a regenerated queen, a fallen god, a cyborg, and a suddenly very self-conscious human female, sat in a bar.

  No, it was a diner. They were sitting in a diner.

  Two cloned presidents, a genetically-modified queen, a god, a cyborg, and a suddenly self-conscious young woman were all sitting in a diner when in walked ... when in walked ...

  Shit. Wait. They had names.

  OK, got it.

  Chester A. Arthur XVII, William H. Taft XLII, Queen Victoria XXX, Thor Odinson, Mark Hughes, and a suddenly very self-conscious Catrina Dalisay were all sitting at a large table in the center of a diner when in walked a sentient piece of string.

  The diner host stepped out from behind the register and stopped the string before it could go any further.

  “Sorry, buddy,” he said gently, pointing his thumb at a sign that read “No Strings Allowed.”

  “What the hell?” said the string.

  “Diner rules,” said the host, shrugging and ushering the string back outside. “Nothing I can do about it.”

  Mark, bristling at both the obvious racism and the economic stupidity of the gesture, called out to the man from the table. “Hey,” he roared, “you can’t do that. He’s got just as much right –”

  “Look,” said the host, a tiny, greasy man, putting up his hands, “it’s not my rule. The owner, he’s crazy strict about it and I need this job.
I can’t do anything about it.”

  It was at this point that the string walked back in.

  “Buddy,” said the exasperated diner employee, “you gotta go. Please. If my boss sees you in here –”

  “Look, I just want a cup of coffee,” said the piece of string. “I can take it to go.”

  “Sorry, but I can’t –”

  “Oh, come on, that’s bullshit,” said Mark. “You can get him a damn cup of coffee.”

  “Fuck, man, would you keep it –”

  At that moment, the owner of the restaurant emerged loudly from the kitchen, the swinging doors slamming into the counters on either side.

  “What’s going on out –” The large, balding, diner-owning bigot, spotting the string-man, stopped mid-sentence. “You got three seconds to get out of here, string,” he snarled.

  “Why in the hell should I?” countered the string.

  “Because I own this diner,” said the fat man, lumbering toward the string, “and I can refuse anyone or any ... thing that I want.”

  “Screw you, asshole, I haven’t –”

  “Screw me? Fuck you, you –”

  “Hold up, guys, hold up,” called out Chester A. Arthur XVII, raising his hands in a placating gesture. “I’ve got this.”

  The cloned president got up from the table, crossed the twenty feet between him and the string, and, placing his arm around the sentient fabric cord, walked it toward the door.

  “Oh, come on, Charlie,” said Catrina, “you can’t seriously –”

  “I said I’ve got it, don’t worry,” replied Chester A. Arthur XVII, walking outside with the string.

  “Told you he was a douchebag,” Thor said under his breath.

  “I heard that,” said Queen Victoria XXX, narrowing her eyes.

  “Oh,” said Thor. “Uh, what I meant was –” The Norseman shoved an entire piece of toast into his mouth.

  Mark, eyes narrowed, politely excused himself from the table, then stormed over to the register like a biblical reckoning and began verbally accosting the diner owner. All eyes in the diner – robotic, organic, or otherwise – turned to them.

  “That string,” he thundered, “has every right –”

  “I don’t give a shit about its rights, or your opin–”

  “Excuse me,” interrupted Chester A. Arthur XVII, stepping back into the diner, “but my friend here would like a cup of coffee.”

  The sentient piece of string strode up next to the reconstituted politician, looped and twisted around on itself, with its hair messed up and raveled out.

  “Oh, you got some balls,” said the diner owner, pushing Mark aside with a meaty hand and approaching the president and the string. “Let me spell this out for you. There are no strings allowed in this diner. And you are a string, aren’t you?”

  “No,” said the string confidently. “I’m a frayed knot.”

  CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE

  Oh, It’s On Now, Bitches

  Bill Höek and Phil Thompson, the bearded philosophers, picked their way across the city, through the blood and guts and laser guns and metal fragments and severed limbs and burning cars and overturned coffee shops and rampaging killer robots and screaming hippies and more guts and more metal fragments, until they finally found Quetzalcoatl outside a lovely Italian bistro.

  “Quinn,” said Phil, “we –”

  “One second, girls,” huffed the former Aztec god, pinned against one murder-drone by another murder-drone. “I’m a little busy.” Quetzalcoatl was immediately, and violently, beset by three more murder-drones.

  Bill and Phil waited patiently.

  “Fucking ... ballsacks, man,” barked the grey-haired former deity, punching the metal head casing of the nearest robot repeatedly. The robot didn’t seem to notice.

  A few minutes passed. Two more homicidal automatons joined the fray.

  Bill and Phil continued to wait.

  Quetzalcoatl continued blurting out all manner of epithets and profanely-detailed scenarios, but the bearded thinkers were having a hard time hearing anything the Aztec said over the sound of the seven mechanical assassins attempting to simultaneously eviscerate, behead, stab, burn, and quarter him.

  A small stream of blood spurted from the fracas and landed on Bill’s loafer. He made a face.

  “We should ... probably help him,” Phil quietly suggested. “Right?”

  “What in the blazes are you talking about, Phil?” replied Bill. “Maybe you’ve ... found a way to channel your ... inner barbarian, but the only thing I know how to do is think ... and that’s nearly gotten me killed twelve times ... in the last hour alone.”

  “Well, we have to do ... something,” countered Phil. “He’s being –”

  Six of the murder-drones assaulting Quetzalcoatl were hurled into the air with tremendous force. Some were intact. Most were not.

  “– murdered?”

  Phil’s sudden questionable commitment to the word “murdered” was not uncalled for. The older, drunken Mexican man whom he had only known as Quinn was now hovering above the sidewalk, breathing a little heavily but otherwise seemingly unfazed by the fact that he had just hurled several tons of angry metal across a half mile of robot-on-human carnage.

  He also appeared undaunted by the fact that he had grown wings and a tail.

  It’s worth nothing that, in actuality, Quetzalcoatl was marginally surprised to have reverted to his feathered serpent form, even if he didn’t show it. Mostly, he was pissed. That part he made pretty evident.

  Quetzalcoatl tilted his head and looked down at the lone robot still clinging to his torso.

  “Error,” said the remaining, and clearly most tenacious, murder-drone. “Impossibility made manifest.”

  “Not exactly, my metallic nemesis,” boomed Quetzalcoatl. “Religion was disproven. Not faith, not philosophy.”

  “Does not compute.”

  “No, of course it doesn’t. You’re a robot. You can’t think. You can’t believe. You’re just numbers and programs. At the end of the day you have no idea how much power faith can give you.”

  Quetzalcoatl grabbed the robot by its neck unit and lifted it with one hand.

  “No, Mr. Murder-Drone,” he boomed, “you understand about as well as a lobotomized garden gnome might. I’m not a god because the Aztecs thought I was, or because these pedantic layabouts believed in me, or because anyone else thought anything at any point.

  “I am a god,” continued Quetzalcoatl, putting his fist through the murder-drone’s face, “because I think I am.” He tossed the newly inoperable robot through the window of the Italian bistro.

  “Quinn?” asked Phil. “Are you all right?”

  “Huh?” inquired Quetzalcoatl, still hovering before the vagrants. “What are you talking about?”

  “You appear to have ... transformed into some type of ... giant, winged snake-man, Quinn. I’m – I don’t –”

  “Oh, that, right,” said the Aztec god, scratching his head. “I guess I forgot to tell you guys that I had a drinking problem.”

  Phil and Bill tried to respond to, refute, or otherwise process the statement, but found they could only tilt their heads slightly and stare.

  “Also, I almost drowned once? There was some serious head trauma involved with that.”

  Again, the statement was met only with tilting and staring.

  “And, before that, I destroyed Central America, made the llama extinct, and severely crippled the Department of Science’s robot military.”

  Phil raised his finger as if he was going to say something, but thought better of it and retreated back to his comfort zone of slanted, wide-eyed awe. Bill, however, threw in some gaping, just to liven things up a bit.

  “Which should bring us up to speed, gentlemen.”

  “No,” said Phil, “not at all actually.”

  “Are you sure?” asked Quetzalcoatl. “I was thinking that was a pretty solid recollection of events right there.”

  “None of your pre
ceding statements actually explain ... anything,” said Bill. “How you grew wings, for example. Or why your legs seem to have ... fused together and become a giant snake tail.”

  “Oh, that. Right,” replied the former former god, looking down at his new mode of ambulation. “Turns out I’m actually Quetzalcoatl, Aztec serpent god of the wind. And knowledge. And arts and crafts, too, I think. I’m the god of a bunch of things when you get right down to it.”

  Bill and Phil retreated to their previously established method of discourse, although, this time, they were tilting and staring like no one’s business. It was impressive.

  “Seriously, you never figured it out? All that ‘be our leader,’ ‘believe in yourself’ horsecrap you guys kept spouting on about? I just assumed –”

  “You gave ... absolutely no indication that you were ... a fallen deity from an advanced and ancient civilization,” said Phil. “I can say that with ... utmost certainty.”

  “Honestly,” said Bill, “we didn’t think you were even listening to us most of the time.”

  “You talked so damn much it was kind of impossible not to pick up something. Anyway,” said the giant, feathered snake god, spreading his wings and blotting out most of the nearby sky, “you still with me?”

  “I ... don’t think we have a choice.”

  “Yeah,” said Quetzalcoatl, smiling crookedly, “you really don’t.”

  CHAPTER FORTY-SIX

  Or a Monkey in People Clothes

  Catrina Dalisay and Queen Victoria XXX, shopping bags in hand, stepped from the elevator and began walking down the fourth floor hallway toward their rooms.

  “I can’t believe you still have malls up here,” said the dark-skinned clone, wearing new black jeans and a dark denim western shirt. She was more comfortable than she had been in months, and, more importantly, no longer covered in dried blood.

  “I can’t believe you only bought three outfits,” replied Catrina.

  “I’m not used to this,” replied the queen, gesturing with her bags. “Even when me and Charlie and Billy do go out, it’s like a time trial. Grab what you can and go. I can’t even remember the last time I tried something on.”