But Mags knew she didn’t really need the money. She just liked her line of work. In fact, she loved it. She supremely loved it, and that was all that mattered.
Asteroid Underground Interview:
Meteor Mags
So, Meteor.
Please, call me Mags.
Mags. Our readers want to know if there’s someone special in your life?
Oh, for sure. Sooo many special people. Well, my nephew, and Patches, and Celina, and of course all the girls at the club, and—
Now Mags, you know what I mean. Do you have a boyfriend?
Next question.
Maybe a girlfriend? I mean, you and Celina seem—Aaaaaaaa!
See, if I snap this wrist—
Aaaaaaa! Stop—
If I snap this wrist, you aren’t going to be very useful as a writer! Got it?
Yes! Aaaaaa—
Alright then. Next question?
Next. Ow. Next question.
Thank you, dear. Why don’t you ask me about Gramma Margareta’s estate?
Okay. So, tell me more about La Plaza Margareta. How would you describe it?
That’s easy. It was a matriarchal utopia consisting of anarcho-syndicalists with a unified vision.
Anarcho what?
Am I using too many big words for your little brain? Anarcho-syndicalists. Nobody was in charge. I mean, sure, we had people taking charge of different operations. We had people leading teams, if everyone felt they were best suited for that. But do you know who the real boss was?
Who?
The vision we all shared. All of us, at least at the beginning, came from a continent ravaged by war. Most of us had nothing, no clothes, no toys, no food, no family, nothing. And so we knew what it was like.
What was it like?
It was fucking horrifying, man! Hahaha! What kind of idiot question is that?
Well, I just—
So, you know, thanks to Gramma’s genius with a billiards cue—I mean, she wasn’t too shabby at business either, I’m just sayin’. She was so good, we hardly had to hustle, you know. We just set up impossible challenges and people would bet on them, and she made sure she got a cut of the action. And that’s not some sleazy hustle. Gramma didn’t have a sleazy bone in her body. She was just that good.
She sounds like quite a lady.
She was amazing. So, we got a stake, you know? We got some cash together. She even won some properties, and we just started rebuilding the estate. We would take these poor girls in, and get them some healthy food and medical treatment and just—help them get normal, you know? But as more girls joined us, the ones there would keep focused on helping the new ones. Because like I said, we all knew what it was like.
And that was the vision of La Plaza Margareta?
Totally. Gramma didn’t run around shouting orders. Not after the first few months, anyway! She did go on quite a rant the one time we… Well, no one ran around barking orders. We all knew what we had to do. Help each other.
And did you ever see John Coltrane again? He died just a few years later, didn’t he?
Yeah, no we never saw each other again. It’s a shame. He and the whole quartet were just amazing. I would have loved to have the later ensemble play at Gramma’s, too. I just love putting Interstellar Space on the speakers of the Queen Anne and hearing John in space and thinking, damn, man, I wish you could be here with me right now! And then I realize he is.
Thanks for interviewing with us, Mags.
Always a pleasure, dear. See you.
7
The Western Route
Tracing the right of property back to its source, one infallibly arrives at usurpation. Theft is only punished because it violates the right of property. But this right is itself nothing in origin but theft.
—Marquis de Sade; L’Historie de Juliette, 1797.
PART ONE: SHOTGUNS IN SPACE
September 2029: Vesta 4.
“What in the hell are you doing to my cat?!” Meteor Mags stood in the doorway to the room, one hand on her hip and the other waving in the air.
Patches looked up and froze in Tarzi’s lap. “Meow!”
“Oh, Auntie, settle down. She’s fine. Look at her!” He scratched Patches’ cheek.
Celina just laughed. “Now you can say you’ve seen it all.” As Tarzi combed the bushy fur, Celina worked a sizeable ball of it onto a spinning wheel. From Patches’ tail, through Celina’s fingers, and around and around the wheel grew a thread of calico.
Mags shook her head and walked over to inspect the proceedings. “Now,” she said, “I have seen it all. Where did you get that spinning wheel? It looks ancient.”
“You don’t recognize it? It’s from your gramma’s place!”
“No way.” Mags let the edge of the wheel brush her fingertip, and she smiled.
“Yeah, it was tucked away in the corner of the barn with all the pool tables. I only saw it when they were putting the last one on the truck. I just put it with the stuff to go to the club.” Celina stopped pumping the wheel with her foot. “Look, don’t be cranky. I made you something.” She reached into a bag at her feet. “Okay, close your eyes!”
Mags closed her eyes.
“Hold out your hand.”
Mags held out her hand.
Celina filled it with something soft, then closed her fingers around it. “Now open up!”
Mags opened her eyes and laughed. “Nice sock. Where is the other one?”
“Patience was a virgin. This takes forever the old-fashioned way.”
“Yeah, but watch this.” Tarzi swiped the sock from her hand.
“Hey!”
He produced a lighter and held the sock over the flame. “Doesn’t burn.” The small fire did not make a mark. “You can’t cut it either. I tried.”
“He tried a lot of stuff,” said Celina.
“I’ll bet he did! So, now I have a single indestructible sock. Great! One of my feet will be thrilled.”
“We wanted to surprise you, but that’s all gone to bollocks now.” Tarzi handed back the sock. “It doesn’t hurt her. She may be invulnerable, but she still sheds.”
Patches jumped down to Mags’ feet and rubbed on her calves, wrapping her tail lightly around a boot.
“We’ll start a new comic strip called The Invincible Yarn Man. Listen, have you seen Plutonian? He said he would spin tonight, but I was hoping to talk to him first.”
Patches whined, then got scooped into the air and cradled.
“Aw, that’s right, dear. Party time tonight! We’ll get you some earplugs.” Mags scratched her behind the ears. “If you happen to see him, ping me. I’ll be in the shop for a little bit.”
As Mags walked down the hall, Tarzi turned to Celina and said, “I told you she would freak out!”
“She took it pretty well. I think this whole thing with Patches has her gobsmacked. One day she has a normal cat, and then…”
“Then the next, she has indestructible cat hair socks. Just wait until Mags finds out this wasn’t our first.”
“That,” she said, fixing her gaze on him, “is why we will wait until her birthday to surprise her with the whole thing.”
★ ○•♥•○ ★
“Hellooo, Mister DJ! Are you busy?”
“Never too busy for my biggest fan.” Plutonian set down his tablet. The waveforms on the screen showed he was quite busy assembling another one of his audio collages. But he never objected to a visit from Meteor Mags.
She peeked around the corner of his open doorway. “Hey,” she pouted. “Who are you calling big, you scurvy pirate?”
“Arrr.” He made a mock frown. “Don’t tell me I have to walk the plank again.”
She swept her white bangs back from her forehead. “Not this time. But look! I brought you something.” Her arm appeared in the doorway, holding a black padded bag. “Wanna open it?”
“Oh, what have we here?”
She sauntered into his room.
He had grown quite co
mfortable at Club Assteroid in the two years since Mags rescued him from the MFA. He had his own quarters, freedom to play anything he wanted on the club’s internal radio station, and enough parties to keep him amused. Tesla sprawled on their bed below a series of framed concert posters. The posters were all replicas, not the originals hung in their previous station, but they made the DJ and his cat feel at home.
Vinyl albums covered a table. “I see you’ve been rebuilding your collection of ’60s freakbeat singles. Oh, the Easybeats. And The Poets! Love those guys.” She laid the bag on top of them. “Now, I don’t mean to knock your trusty old Remington double-barrel, but I thought maybe—just maybe—it might be time for a little upgrade.”
Plutonian came to the opposite side of the table. “Just let me get these out of the way.”
“Of course. Sorry, dear.”
He swept the albums up and stacked them, placing them in an empty crate.
Mags rolled her eyes, shaking her head with amusement. “So organized.” She held the padded bag in the air until he was done. Then, slowly unzipping it, she asked, “Have you ever seen one of these before?”
He drew a breath and placed a hand over his heart. “Mags! Where did you get this?”
“Do you like it?”
“Like it?” He ran his fingers over the length of the gun, from barrel, to stock, and back again.
“The pistol grip really isn’t my style,” she said, “but I thought you might like that kind of thing. You can take it off if you don’t.”
“Benelli,” he said softly.
“Indeed. Best thing to come out of Italy since pepperoni pizza!”
“The M3. Mags, they don’t even make these anymore.”
“No, they don’t. It’s practically an antique at this point, you know.”
“May I?”
“Of course! It’s yours now. I mean, if you want it.”
He lifted the shotgun from the bag. “I’ve dreamed of having one of these!” He pulled the bolt back, making sure the chamber was empty. He sighted it along the wall in the other direction. “Seven rounds in the magazine, one in the pipe. Pump action for light-duty rounds, and all you have to do to switch to semi-auto is—this.”
“Now here is a man who knows his shotguns.” She purred, and her tail flicked back and forth. “So I thought you might like these, too.” She placed a pouch on the table and unzipped it. “Accessories! This will hold six more rounds on the stock. Here’s a strap. This is a telescopic sight you can attach to it. And this is a laser you can mount for those annoying low-light shoot-outs. Did I miss anything?”
Plutonian admired the weapon in his hands. “I don’t even know what to say. You’re not going to tell me where you got it?”
She placed her fingertips on the table. Leaning over it she said, “I tell you what. I promise to tell you all about it, on one condition. You go outside with me right now and shoot the living fuck out of it!”
He laughed. “It’s a deal. What kind of loads have you got for it? Buckshot?”
“Oh, I have buckshot if you want it. But listen. These creepy fuckin’ lizards, have you seen them?”
“Can’t say that I have. I’ve only heard talk. What’s the score?”
“Armor. Body armor, and lots of it. And underneath that armor? Some seriously thick hides.” She turned her hip, lifted it, and sat on the tabletop. “Now, Tarzi, he doesn’t mind guns. In fact, he’s kind of crazy about them! And Celina’s no stranger to a firefight either. But these girls at the club, they’re not exactly shooters. I think the closest any of them got is playing hand-me-down copies of Call of Duty.”
“That’s about as realistic as Tetris.”
“That’s what I’m sayin’! So if we get into a scrap with these reptiles, I need to know we can lay down some serious firepower. I need somebody backing me up with a weapon that can take them down. And I’m not talking about some pussy laser pistol, or nine millimeter bullshit, or even my thirty aught six. I mean take them down, motherfucker. That’s why I got these.” She slammed a box of shells onto the table.
“Hell, Mags! Three-inch slugs? You could take down a hippo with these things.”
“You could take down a hippo if she was hiding behind a refrigerator. These bastards will rip a fucking hole in any armor the lizards can dream up, and then some.”
“This is like, what? 3000 pounds of force?”
“Exactly. Within twenty-five meters anyway. It’s like getting hit with a ton of bricks.”
“A ton and a half.”
Her lips curled into an evil smile. “Precisely. I don’t care what they’re made of. They’re going down.”
“At close range, at least. But even at a hundred meters, you can get a four-inch cluster with a Benelli. With a little practice.”
“Does that mean you’ll come practice with me?”
“Let’s go! Tesla! We’ll be back in a bit.”
His cat lifted his head and blinked. Then he rolled on his back, stretched as far as he could, and closed his eyes.
Outside, on the surface of Vesta 4, Mags drove Plutonian to her makeshift shooting range. She handed him a pair of modified headphones which combined noise-cancelling protection with a built-in communication system. They switched off the mics to mute the noise from the shotguns, but a stream of music from the new PBN played in their ears. He had put on her favorite album for starters: Armed Love by The (International) Noise Conspiracy.
At the range, Mags had a table set up for boxes of ammo. Down the range sat a wide array of targets, expired household appliances, and other fun things to shoot. She also had a matching Benelli M3, freshly cleaned and polished, except she had removed the pistol grip. Seven slugs fit in the bottom, and she popped an eighth in the chamber.
Holding it to her shoulder, she aimed at a washing machine thirty meters out and clicked the safety off. She squeezed the trigger once, and a gaping hole ripped in the machine’s metal casing. She waved at Plutonian to take a turn.
He followed suit, firing at a water heater. “Damn!” He rubbed his shoulder, then lowered the shotgun to just above waist level. He advanced on the useless appliance, firing from the hip.
The metal tore into shreds, sparking in the dim, cold light of space. Shell casings flew out to the right, one after another. On semi-automatic mode, it took less than three seconds to empty the magazine.
He raised his hand and made a circling motion in the air, then pointed forward.
Mags played along, advancing on the helpless appliances. Plutonian gestured at the washing machine. Mags, shotgun still at her shoulder, pounded three more rounds into it.
Plutonian pulled more shells from the holder on his stock, loading them into the bottom of his weapon. When she paused to reload, he blasted away at four targets surrounding the appliances. He only nicked the first two, but he put two rounds a piece into the centers of the final two. Then he was empty.
From his left side, Mags placed a shot into each of the targets’ heads.
He raised his hand again, palm flat. They tapped their earpieces to turn the mics back on.
“Fuck yeah! Nice shooting, mate.” She gave him a thumbs-up.
“I think it’s safe to say the appliance rebellion has been crushed.”
“That’ll teach them to oppress us with their mechanistic bullshit. Death to laundry! No hot water without representation!”
“Mags, this thing fires like a dream. These slugs have a serious kick to them, though! I need to adjust my stance. Shooting from the hip is no way to go into a firefight.”
She shrugged. “It worked out at close range.”
“Yeah. But we don’t want the lizards getting that close, do we?”
“No, we sure as hell don’t. But I’d take you as point man any day. Nice lead.”
“I’m a little rusty. Give me a smaller round and let me get warmed up, and then we’ll take these fascists at two hundred meters.”
“This is you not warmed up?”
“Mags,
I’ve been firing shotguns since I was eleven. But that’s not a story you want to hear today.”
“Isn’t it?”
“Not when you haven’t told me where you got these babies yet.”
“Fair enough,” she said. “A deal’s a deal.” They walked together back to their starting point at the table full of ammo. “So, these things came out in ’89, same as Nirvana’s first album. But I didn’t see them ’til a couple years later when I was on the West Coast in the states, and that’s where I ran into Slim. Do you know my buddy Slim?”
“The guy who runs Below the Belt?”
“Yep, that’s him. So, Slim wasn’t always the fun-loving criminal he is today. In fact, when I met him, he was in some pretty deep shit.”
★ ○•♥•○ ★
September 1991: San Diego County, California.
She checked her mirrors again. Her van looked much like any other van on Highway 5, but the back of hers was loaded with crates of stolen guns. A single shotgun hid under a beach towel up front with her, just in case. A bottle of sunscreen and a pair of sandals she had no intention of using completed its disguise.
Mags cranked the tunes and sang along. She had only picked up the new cassette tape Ten from Pearl Jam two weeks ago, but she must have listened to it a hundred times already. She especially liked the song Deep. Mags pounded the steering wheel and screamed the words.
Meteor Mags: Omnibus Edition Page 15
