by Eirik Gumeny
These medical professionals were immediately hunted down by armed insurance representatives and brutally massacred. Their heads were put on pikes outside of hospitals, as a warning to anyone who might dare to help someone without first thinking about the obscene levels of profit that could be made in the process.
As a result, actual, competent, good doctors were in short supply. Not that this mattered to the insurance companies or hospitals. Using what ultimately was only a small fraction of its untold wealth, the medical-industrial complex managed to reduce the process of getting a doctoral degree to an online test that could be completed in an afternoon, thus ensuring that the only people willing to fill the positions were unskilled and desperate or unethical and horrible. Even the janitors sucked. Hospitals quickly devolved into hideous, disease-riddled cesspools of everything that was wrong with humanity.
“Why don’t you come with us to Las Máquinas?” offered Catrina, gently stroking the back of Timmy’s head. “Dr. Arahami or Dr. Gonzalez might be able to do, I don’t know, something, right?”
“That’s not a bad idea,” said Chester A. Arthur XVII. “Even if they can’t, I’m sure they’ll know someone with expertise in artificial aging.”
“Works for me,” replied Mark, sitting down on a planter. “Plus mad scientists are probably going to be able to put up some defense against all the crazy being thrown at us.”
“You may need to clarify that statement,” said Queen Victoria XXX.
“Oh, right,” said the bed-and-breakfast owner, a huge grin forming on his face. “The lady at the mall didn’t attack us at random; she was hired by someone. Turns out WANG was connected to the Walt Sidney Company after all! And they’re pissed off and actively trying to kill us!”
“You are way too happy about that.”
“Sorry. Validation gets me sexually excited.”
“That’s not something anybody needed to know,” replied Thor, shoving another slice of pizza into his mouth.
“Which they?” asked Chester A. Arthur XVII.
“What?” countered Mark.
“Which they? You said ‘they’re pissed off and actively trying to kill us.’ Which one, WANG or Walt Sidney?”
“Does it matter?”
“Yes, absolutely. WANG is a shriveled nub of its former subordinate self, with limited versions of its already limited resources and manpower. The Walt Sidney Company, on the other hand, literally has more money and power than any other organization in the world. We can handle the former, but if it’s the latter that’s after you our best course of action would be finding an underground bunker and hiding you and Timmy away for the rest of your lives.”
“You are such a fucking pansy lately,” said Queen Victoria XXX.
“Satan,” Timmy thought weakly, turning in the crook of Catrina’s arm.
“What?” she asked, instinctively lifting the squirrel closer to her ear, despite the fact that he was talking psychically to everyone.
“Satan, the devil,” continued the jumpsuited, newly elderly rodent, “he used to be in charge of WANG. When I went down to Atlanta to check on them, to make sure they were done, I heard ... After Mark and I flattened their headquarters, Walt Sidney fired everyone, including Satan, and made WANG go legit.”
“So you think it was Satan that sent that woman to attack you?” asked Chester A. Arthur XVII.
“She did say she wanted her job back,” said Mark.
“I can’t imagine the devil wouldn’t hold a grudge,” added Timmy.
“That’s fantastic,” said Queen Victoria XXX.
“I can’t tell if you’re being sarcastic or not,” said Catrina.
“I’m not really sure myself,” she replied. “These last couple months of not righteously marauding have got me all turned around.”
“Then I suggest we go and find out,” said the patchwork president, “by beating the devil.”
“This is because I called you a pansy, isn’t it?”
“You mean, like, physically beat, right?” asked the thunder god through a faceful of pizza. “With fists?”
“Yes, Thor,” replied the Frankensteined politician. “With fists.”
“Hot damn. This is so great,” said the lonely Norseman. “Do you think he’ll have powers? I hope he has powers.”
“You people have the weirdest priorities,” replied Mark.
“Says you, Mr. Scared of Hospitals.”
“I’m not scared ...”
“Do you think Satan sent the dragons too?” asked the reconstituted monarch. “Maybe he’s coming after all of us because we effed up his plans to take over the continental grid.”
“If I was a betting man,” said Chester A. Arthur XVII, “that’s the likelihood on which I would place my allotted stake of money.”
“I don’t know,” said Thor, “I’ve pissed off a lot of people.”
“That is also definitely a possibility.”
“A lot.”
“Either way,” continued the president, “we need to be prepared for anything. We’re going to need weapons, any and all intelligence we can find on Satan, his current whereabouts and known associates, a plan of action ...” The more he talked, the more authoritative his voice became. “Several plans of action, actually, dependent on any of myriad combinations of possible adversaries and outcomes ...” The calico clone found himself standing up straighter, his paunchy midsection becoming less pronounced, his khakis looking less boring. Synapses were firing, blood was flowing.
“There’s the cold-blooded strategist I fell in love with,” purred Queen Victoria XXX, her blood also flowing, albeit in a different direction.
“Hey, can we maybe, y’know, bring my boyfriend back to life first?” asked Catrina. “Like we promised him on his deathbed?”
“Oh, right. Ali. Sure,” replied Chester A. Arthur XVII. “You and Thor can take my other car and drive out to Las Máquinas.”
“The Batmobile?” asked Thor hopefully.
“For the last time, it’s not a Batmobile.”
“It looks like a Batmobile.”
“Bring Timmy and Mark with you,” continued the president, ignoring the thunder god, “find someone to help them. Vicky and I will stay here and see if we can track down Satan.”
“Among other things,” cooed the queen.
“We know you guys are going to have sex,” Mark grumbled, “you don’t need to insinuate it every time.”
“I like insinuating it, OK, Mark?”
“Oh. OK,” replied the cyborg, taken slightly aback. “I didn’t – So it’s, what? Low-level exhibitionism or something?”
“Pretty much,” replied the cloned monarch with a shrug. “Full-on public boning doesn’t do much for me, but everyone knowing we’re up to something filthy?” Queen Victoria XXX shuddered, a smile crawling seductively in its underpants across her face.
“Huh. I always figured you were doing it for our benefit. So we wouldn’t walk in on you guys or something.”
“Like we’d even notice.”
“I can actually vouch for that,” mumbled Catrina.
“Let’s get going, everyone,” ordered Chester A. Arthur XVII, gathering up the pizza boxes. “Every second we waste is one more second wasted.”
“Was that supposed to sound stupid?” asked Thor, snatching the pizza from the president’s hands. “Because it did.”
“What about that whole ‘don’t get involved if we’re not getting paid’ thing you’re always going on about, chief?” asked a very elderly-looking Timmy.
“That was before they attacked you and killed one of our friends.”
“And our diner,” added Thor, his mouth once again full of pizza.
“And before Vicky insulted his manhood,” added Catrina.
“And before he remembered how boring settling down actually is,” added the queen.
“Honestly,” said Chester A. Arthur XVII, opening the driver-side door of his wood-paneled minivan and placing a foot inside, “I don’t know
who I was kidding.”
“Yourself, mostly.”
“And whoever sold you that van,” added Thor.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Paging Dr. Feelgood
Persephone staggered toward the abandoned café on the outskirts of the literal shithole that was once Philadelphia[xxxiv]. The bell above the door jingled mightily as she stumbled inside and over to the first seat she saw. She plopped down into the faded orange mohair sofa with excruciating exhaustion. Satan and Steve Careers looked up from a nearby table.
“You didn’t tell me they’d fight back,” she spat, each hand covering the bleeding wound in the opposing shoulder.
“I thought that part was obvious,” said Satan.
“It was not.”
“The two of them destroyed WANG. On their own. They were clearly a force to be reckoned with.”
“How was I supposed to know that, Lucy? All you told me was that I was going after a mall cop and a bed-and-breakfast owner. You absolutely failed to mention that they had previously caused any kind of damage or that the gerbil was telekinetic.”
“Really?”
“Really,” replied Persephone. “Asshole.”
“You, uh, you seem to be bleeding,” said Steve Careers, pointing meekly, “a lot.”
“That’s because I was stabbed with a pair of broken chair legs by a guy who was part robot. Something else no one felt compelled to tell me.”
“Right. Sorry about that,” said Satan.
“You should probably get to a doctor,” said the tech entrepreneur, turning back to his laptops. “You don’t want to get tetanus or something.”
“Can’t you fix me?” the former goddess of the underworld asked, nodding toward the devil’s nubby horns. “Aren’t you made of magic now?”
“Not exactly,” said the former King of Hell, igniting a tiny fireball in his hand. “Besides,” he said, extinguishing the fireball, “repairs aren’t exactly in my wheelhouse.”
“What about ... Ta-Bitjet?” asked the IT guy, using the internet to stalk nearby gods and the like. “Think she could help?”
“Not a chance,” replied the devil. “She’s one of those goodie-goodie types. I highly doubt she’d be interested in helping Seph get fixed up just so she could go a-murderin’ again.”
“Oh.” The former entrepreneur shifted his gaze from his computers. “It’s just ... I mean, she’s a giant scorpion-lady. I figured she was one of us.”
“Nope,” answered Persephone. “Plus her deal is mostly poisons, healed by her menstrual blood. Which, ew.”
“What about Shitala?” continued the tech-adept demon, typing furiously.
“Diseases only,” explained Satan.
“Verminus?”
“Cows,” replied Persephone.
“Seriously?”
“Seriously.”
“Huh.”
“You know,” said the former goddess of the underworld, leaning forward slowly and carefully, “you’d think with the way mortal healthcare turned out, we’d really have someone with some kind of medical skills on our side.”
“It certainly would explain a lot,” said Steve Careers. “In the meantime,” he continued, with no small degree of flourish, “at least we’ve got Bite, Pear’s proprietary search engine.”
“Really?” Persephone raised an eyebrow.
“Steve,” Satan chided, “you’ve been dead for a good long while now. You don’t need to keep pretending.”
“Oh, thank goodness,” replied the founder of Pear, deflating. “I am going to Google the crap out of this.”
“You’re not going to use Bing?” asked the Greek goddess. “Or Yahoo? Or ... those ... other ones?”
“Bing is only good for porn and hating yourself, and Yahoo’s all about making rich finance fuckers richer and fuckier.”
“Benedict Cumberbatch,” she mumbled, “tell us how you really feel, Steve.”
“Well,” he began, “Bing has unbelievably poor relevancy algorithms, despite everything Microsoft says to the contrary, weighs commercial and paid results significantly higher than they should, and can be tricked by cheap SEO hacks from the late 1990s. Yahoo, on the other hand, while admittedly older and arguably briefly relevant, doesn’t even run its own search engine anymore and might as well die in a garbage fire for all the good that it does.”
“That was ... It was just a joke.”
“Oh.”
“I think I saw some twine and a tiny knife around here somewhere ...” muttered Satan, turning to rummage through the coffee shop.
“I’m going to regret this, aren’t I?” asked the goddess, carefully sliding off her blood-soaked coat.
“If this were Bing,” answered Steve Careers, scrolling through Google’s search results, “absolutely.”
The preceding chapter has been paid for by Google.*
Google: “Come on. Have you ever actually used another search engine?”
*The preceding chapter was not actually paid for by Google.
However, if Google would like to pay for the chapter retroactively, the author is open to that.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
♫ I Cut Down Trees / I Eat My Lunch / I Go to the Lavatory ♫
Catrina Dalisay pulled the custom-built luxury tank into a spot outside I’m A Lumberjack And I’m OK – a boutique specializing in denim, flannel, and silky, frilly things in big and tall sizes – and threw the gearshift into Park. She turned in her seat and said to Thor: “Get out and buy some clothes right the hell now.”
“What? Why?” argued the naked Norseman sitting spread-eagled in the back seat, his skin still raw and red and revolting. “I’m fine like this. I kind of like it.”
“You’re a hideous eyesore,” said Mark Hughes, turning in the passenger’s seat, “and there’s no way having all that damaged flesh exposed to the elements is good for you.”
“I’m getting better.”
“You look like a bunch of salami sticks tied together with slugs.”
“Why don’t you guys have to buy clothes?” The blonde man nodded his beard toward Mark. “You’re covered in blood and Catrina’s basically in pajamas.”
“You’re oozing on the seats,” said Catrina.
Thor shrugged. “Charlie coated them with that stuff to make them super resistant to, like, everything, remember?”
“I don’t care. It’s disgusting.”
“You mean distracting, right?” replied the thunder god, waggling his eyebrows and nodding his chin suggestively.
“No, I mean disgusting,” replied the young woman, looking at his burned wang and swallowing back vomit. “I honestly don’t know if I’ll be able to sleep with Ali again after seeing that.”
“I thought he had a robot dick.”
“He does. That’s how messed up yours is right now.”
Thor lifted his roasted wiener and began flopping it back and forth between his hands, examining the extent of his injuries.
“I don’t –”
“Get out of the car, Thor!” ordered Mark.
“OK, OK ... Benedict Cumberbatch,” he mumbled. Thor threw open the door, climbed out, and began walking towards the store. After a few steps, he stopped, patted himself up and down, and then turned back around.
“Does anyone have any money?” he asked, poking his head back into the luxury tank. “I don’t have any money.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
Megazord Sequence Has Been Initiated
Amen-Ra, the man formerly known as the Creator of the Universe, was standing at the map board of a rest stop off the abandoned interstate with a pen and a Tim Horton’s napkin in hand, plotting out the most efficient and least treacherous drive to Sidneyworld. Looking up and squinting, trying to convert kilometers into American Freedom Units, Ra absentmindedly took a step back, directly into someone doing the same thing as him.
“Watch it, you maple-eating –” Amen-Ra stopped abruptly, realizing he knew the man. “Vulcan?” he asked.
&n
bsp; “Ra!” exclaimed the bearded, grey-haired Italian man. “Hey, man!”
The two former gods, old friends and slightly less old leaders of Fortune 500 energy companies, embraced warmly.
“What in the world are you doing here, man?” asked Vulcan.
“I am going to avenge myself against Walt Sidney,” rumbled Ra, his voice like a crowded bowling alley. “But the lady at the desk back in Cairo gave me the wrong ticket.”
“Same thing happened to me in Genoa. That’s weird, man. That’s weird.”
“Excuse me,” said a woman who looked remarkably like Catherine the Great LXIX, the CEO and owner of Horsepower!, an energy production company based out of McMoscow[xxxv]. “Did I hear you say something about revenging yourself against Walt Sidney?”
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
When You Gotta Go ...
The frozen head of Walt Sidney floated in his jar atop the end of a large white conference table, in a sparse room decorated to resemble the 1950s’ version of 1990.
“Thank you, Ukko,” said the CEO, nodding to the large, hirsute Director of Acquisitions, formerly the Finnish God of Storms. “And now, Loki, what’s the status of our proprietary information breach?”
“Well, the reporter’s dead.”
“That’s something. And the actual troublemakers? The ones with the capacity to be ongoing problems for us?”
“I am making their lives extremely difficult, sir.”
***
Thor stood beside the custom-built luxury tank, bouncing from one foot to the other and staring out into the hundred miles of nothing surrounding them. Catrina waddled back from the rest stop bathroom, similarly uncomfortable.
“That one’s broken too!” she shouted.
“Then fuck it,” said the burly Norseman, undoing his jeans. “I’m pooping behind the picnic table. Nobody look.”
