Gift-Wrapped & Toe-Tagged: A Melee of Misc. Holiday Anthology

by Dr. Freud Funkenstein, ed.

  I leave the house through the back door and drive away without headlights so they won’t see the glare and wake. A fragment of moon hangs limply in the midnight sky; I glance at it, half expecting to see a sleigh pass across its yellow face.

  At the Phillips 66 station, I turn and drive three blocks. The lights are still on, even at midnight. I look closer at the house this time and notice peeling paint. The house is rotting outside just like the man is dying on the inside. Volunteers put up the lights, but can’t paint the place? All people care about are those goddamn traditions—shitty town. They don’t care about his pain, suffering. He’s dying for Christ’s sake.

  I pull around to the alley, sure that the loud Christmas music pumped on an endless loop will cover the sound of the back door splintering around the lock. Maybe he wants to die in his own house. I take up the hammer, feel its weight in my hand, and imagine the peace the old man will feel once I’ve cracked open his skull and ended his misery. That will be a real Christmas gift.

  Then, I’ll take down the lights.

  Jeffrey Thomas

  IMMOLATION

  1: Keeping Up With The Joneses

  THEY HAD MADE it snow again this weekend, as they would every weekend until Christmas. Not on the weekdays, hampering the traffic of workers, or so much today as to inconvenience the shoppers; rather, enough to inspire consumers to further holiday spirit, and further purchases.

  High atop the Vat, a machine that to some might resemble an oil tanker of old standing on its prow, Magnesium Jones crouched back amongst the conduits and exhaust ports like an infant gargoyle on the verge of crowning. His womb was a steamy one; the heat from the blowers would have cooked a birther like a lobster. Jones was naked, his shoulder pressed against the hood of a whirring fan. When he had instant coffee or soup to make he would boil water by resting a pot atop the fan's cap. He was not wearing clothes lest they catch fire.

  Not all the cultures were designed to be so impervious to heat; some, rather, were unperturbed by extreme cold. On the sixth terrace of the plant proper, which faced the Vat, a group of cultures took break in the open air, a few of them naked and turning their faces up to the powdery blizzard invitingly. It had been an alarming development for many, the Plant's management allowing cultures to take break. It suggested they needed consideration, even concern.

  Jones squinted through the blowing veils of snow. He recognized a number of the laborers. Though all were bald, and all cloned from a mere half-dozen masters, their heads were tattooed in individual designs so as to distinguish them from each other. Numbers and letters usually figured into these designs ― codes. Some had their names tattooed on their foreheads, and all tattoos were colored according to department: violet for Shipping, gray for the Vat, blue for Cryogenics, red for the Ovens, and so on. Magnesium Jones's tattoo was of the last color. But there was also some artistry employed in the tattoo designs. They might portray familiar landmarks from Punktown, or from Earth where most of Punktown's colonists originated, at least in ancestry. Animals, celebrities, sports stars. Magnesium Jones's tattoo was a ring of flame around his head like a corona, with a few black letters and a bar code in the flames like the charred skeleton of a burnt house.

  Some artistry, some fun and flourish, was also employed in the naming of the cultures. On the terrace he recognized Sherlock Jones, Imitation Jones and Basketball Jones. He thought he caught a glimpse of Subliminal Jones heading back inside. Waxlips Jones sat on the edge of the railing, dangling his legs over the street far below. Jones Jones held a steaming coffee. Huckleberry Jones was in subdued conversation with Digital Jones. Copyright Jones and M. I. Jones emerged from the building to join the rest.

  Watching them, Magnesium Jones missed his own conversations with some of them, missed the single break that he looked forward to through the first ten hours of the work day. But did he miss the creatures themselves, he wondered? He felt a kinship with other cultures, an empathy for their lives, their situations, in a general sense...but that might merely be because he saw himself in them, felt for his own life, his own situation. Sometimes the kinship felt like brotherhood. But affection? Friendship? Love? He wasn't sure if his feelings could be defined in that way. Or was it just that the birthers felt no more strongly, merely glossed and romanticized their own pale feelings?

  But Jones did not share the plight of the robot, the android...the question of whether they could consider themselves alive, of whether they could aspire to actual emotion. He felt very much alive. He felt some very strong emotions. Anger. Hatred. These feelings, unlike love, were not at all ambiguous.

  He turned away from the snowy vista of Plant and city beyond, shivering, glad to slip again into his nest of thrumming heat. From an insulated box he had stolen and dragged up here he took some clothing. Some of it was fireproof, some not. The long black coat, with its broad lapels turned up to protect his neck from the snow, had a heated mesh in the lining. Worn gloves, and he pulled a black ski hat over his bald head, as much to conceal his tattoo as to shield his naked scalp from snow. He stared at his wrist, willing numbers to appear there. They told him the time. A feature all the cultures at the Plant possessed, to help them time their work efficiently. He had an appointment, a meeting, but he had plenty of time yet to get there.

  As much as he scorned his former life in the Plant, there were some behaviors too ingrained to shake. Magnesium Jones was ever punctual.

  * * *

  Walking the street, Jones slipped on a pair of dark glasses. In the vicinity of the Plant it would be easy to recognize him as a culture. The six masters had all been birther males, criminals condemned to death (they had been paid for the rights to clone them for industrial labor). Under current law it was illegal to clone living human beings. Clones of living beings might equate themselves with their originals. Clones of living beings might thus believe they had certain rights.

  Wealthy people stored clones of themselves in case of mishap, cloned families and friends, illegally. Everyone knew that. For all Jones knew, the president of the Plant might be a clone himself. But still, somehow, the cultures were cultures. Still a breed of their own.

  Behind the safe shields of his dark lenses, Jones studied the faces of people he passed on the street. Birthers, Christmas shopping, but their faces closed off in hard privacy. The closer birthers were grouped together, the more cut off they became from each other in that desperate animal need for their own territory, even if it extended no further than their scowls and stern, downcast eyes.

  Distant shouted chants made him turn his head, though he already knew their source. There was always a group of strikers camped just outside the barrier of the Plant. Tents, smoke from barrel fires, banners rippling in the snowy gusts. There was one group on a hunger strike, emaciated as concentration camp prisoners. A few weeks ago, one woman had self-immolated. Jones had heard screams, and come to the edge of his high hideout to watch. He had marveled at the woman's calm as she sat cross-legged, a black silhouette with her head already charred bald at the center of a small inferno...had marveled at how she did not run or cry out, panic or lose her resolve. He admired her strength, her commitment. It was a sacrifice for her fellow human beings, an act which would suggest that the birthers felt a greater brotherhood than the cultures did, after all. But then, their society encouraged such feelings, whereas the cultures were discouraged from friendship, companionship, affection.

  Then again, maybe the woman had just been insane.

  * * *

  To reach the basement pub Jones edged through a narrow tunnel of dripping ceramic brick, the floor a metal mesh.below which he heard dark liquid rushing. A section of wall on the right opened up, blocked by chicken wire, and in a dark room like a cage a group of mutants or aliens or mutated aliens gazed out at him as placid as animals waiting to eat or be eaten (and maybe that was so, too); they were so tall their heads scraped the ceiling, thinner than skeletons, with cracked faces that looked shattered and glued back together. Their hair w
as cobwebs blowing, though to Jones the clotted humid air down here seemed to pool around his legs.

  A throb of music grew until he opened a metal door and it exploded in his face like a boobytrap. Slouched heavy backs at a bar, a paunchy naked woman doing a slow grinding dance atop a billiard table. Jones did not so much as glance at her immense breasts, aswirl in smoky colored light like planets; the Plant's cultures had no sexual cravings, none of them even female.

  At a corner table sat a young man with red hair, something seldom seen naturally. He smiled and made a small gesture. Jones headed toward him, slipping off his shades. He watched the man's hands atop the table; was there a gun resting under the newspaper?

  The man's hair was long and greasy, his beard scruffy and inadequate, but he was good-looking and his voice was friendly. "Glad you decided to come. I'm Nevin Parr." They shook hands. "Sit down. Drink?"

  "Coffee."

  The man motioned to a waitress, who brought them both a coffee. The birther wasn't dulling his senses with alcohol, either, Jones noted.

  "So how did you meet my pal Moodring?" asked the birther, lifting his chipped mug for a cautious sip.

  "On the street. He gave me money for food in turn for a small favor."

  "So now you move a little drug for him sometimes. Hold hot weapons for him sometimes."

  Jones frowned at his gloved hands, knotted like mating tarantulas. "I'm disappointed. I thought Moodring was more discreet than that."

  "Please don't be angry at him; I told you, we're old pals. So, anyway. should I call you Mr. Jones?" Parr smiled broadly. "Magnesium? Or is it Mag?"

  "It's all equally meaningless."

  "I've never really talked with a culture before."

  "We prefer 'shadow.'"

  "All right. Mr. Shadow. So how old are you?"

  "Five."

  "Pretty bright for a five-year-old."

  "Memory-encoded long-chain molecules in a brain drip. I knew my job before I even got out of the tank."

  "Of course. Five, huh? So that's about the age when they start replacing you guys, right? They say that's when you start getting uppity. losing control. That's why you escaped from the Plant, isn't it? You knew your time was pretty much up."

  "Yes. I knew what was coming. Nine cultures in my crew were removed in two days. They were all about my age. My supervisor told me not to worry, but I knew."

  "Cleaning house. Bringing in the fresh meat. They kill them, don't they? The old cultures. They incinerate them."

  "Yes."

  "I heard you killed two men in escaping. Two real men."

  "Moodring is very talkative."

  "It isn't just him. You killed two men. I heard they were looking for

  you. Call you 'hothead,' because of your tattoo. Can I see it?"

  "That wouldn't be wise in public, would it?"

  "You're not the only escaped clone around here, but you're right, we have work that demands discretion. Just that I like tattoos; I have some myself. See?" He rolled up a sleeve, exposing a dark mass that Jones only gave a half-glance. "I hear they get pretty wild with your tattoos. Someone must enjoy himself."

  "Robots do the tattooing. They're just accessing clip art files. Most times it has nothing to do with our function or the name that was chosen for us. It's done to identify us, and probably for the amusement of our human coworkers. Decorative for them, I suppose."

  "You haven't been caught, but you're still living in this area, close to the Plant. You must be stealthy. That's a useful quality. So where are you staying?"

  "That's none of your concern. When you need me you leave a message with Moodring. When he sees me around he'll tell me. Moodring doesn't need to know where I live, either."

  "He your friend, Moodring, or is it just business?"

  "I have no friends."

  "That's too bad. I think you and I could be friends."

  "You don't know how much that means to me. So, why did you want me? Because I'm a culture? And if so, why?"

  "Again...because you killed two men escaping the Plant. I know you can kill again, given the right incentive."

  "I'm glad we've got to that. So what's my incentive?"

  "Five thousand munits."

  "For killing a man? That's pretty cheap."

  "Not for a culture who never made a coin in his life. Not for a culture who lives in the street somewhere."

  "So who am I to kill?"

  "More incentive for you," said Nevin Parr, who smiled far too much for Jones's taste. Jones seldom smiled. He had heard that smiling was a trait left over from the animal ancestry of the birthers; it was a threatening baring of the fangs, in origin. The idea amused him, made him feel more evolved for so seldom contorting his own face in that way. After his smiling heavy pause, Parr continued, "The man we have in mind is Ephraim Mayda."

  Jones raised his hairless eyebrows, grunted, and stirred his coffee. "He's a union captain. Well guarded. Martyr material."

  "Never mind the repercussions; he's trouble for the people I'm working for, and worth the lesser trouble of his death."

  Jones lifted his eyes in sudden realization. He almost plunged his hand into his coat for the pistol he had bought from Moodring. "You work for the Plant!" he hissed.

  Parr grinned. "I work for myself. But never mind who hired me."

  Jones composed himself outwardly, but his heart pulsed as deeply as the music. "The union is cozy with the syndy."

  "The people I work for can handle the syndy. Mag, those strikers out there hate you.shadows. They've lynched a dozen of your kind in a row outside the Plant barrier. If they had their way, every one of your kind would go into the incinerator tomorrow. You yourself got roughed up by a group that got inside the Plant, I hear." Parr paused knowingly. His spoon clinked in his mug, making a vortex. "They broke in. Trashed machines. Killed a few of your kind. I heard from our mutual friend that they found you naked by the showers, and cut you.badly."

  "It didn't affect my job," Jones muttered, not looking the human in the eyes. "And it's not like I ever used the thing but to piss. So now I piss like a birther woman."

  "Didn't bother you at all, then? Doesn't bother you that Mayda works these thugs up like that?"

  They were angry. Jones could understand that. If there was anything that made him feel a kinship with the birthers, it was anger. Still, the weight of their resentment...of their loathing.their outright furious hatred.was a labor to bear. They had hurt him. He had never intentionally harmed a birther. It was the Plant's decision to utilize cultures for half their workforce (more than that would constitute a labor violation, but the conservative candidate for Prime Minister was fighting to make it so that companies did not have to guarantee any ratio of non-clones; freedom of enterprise must be upheld, he cried). Let the strikers mutilate the president of the Plant, instead. Let them hang him and his underlings in the shadow of the Vat. But didn't they see ― even though Jones worked in their place while their unemployment ran out and their families starved like the protestors ― that he was as much a victim as they?

  This man was under the employ of his enemies. Of course, he himself had once been under their employ. Still, could he trust this man as his partner in crime? No. But he could do business with men he didn't trust. He wouldn't turn his back to Moodring, either, but in the end he needed to eat. Five thousand munits. He had never earned a coin until he had escaped the Plant, and never a legal one since.

  He could go away. Somewhere hot. Have his tattoo removed. Maybe even his useless vestige of "manhood" restored.

  Parr went on, "A third bit of incentive. You're no fool, so I'll admit it. The people who hired me.you once worked for them, too. If you decline, well.like I say, they'd like to get a hold of you after what you did to those two men."

  Slowly and deliberately Jones's eyes lifted, staring from under bony brows. He smiled. It was like a baring of fangs.

  "You were doing well, Nevin. Don't spoil it with unnecessary incentives. I'll help you kill your ma
n."

  "Sorry." Ever the smile. "Just that they want this to happen soon, and I don't want to have to look for a partner from scratch."

  "Why do you need a partner?"

  "Well let me tell you."

  2: The Pimp Of The Inverse

  From his perch atop the Vat, with its stained streaked sides and its deep liquid burbling, Jones watched night fall in Punktown. The snow was a mere whisking about of loose flakes. Colored lights glowed in the city beyond the Plant, and flashed here and there on the Plant itself, but for less gay purposes. Once in a while there was a bright violet-hued flash in the translucent dome of the shipping department, as another batch of products was teleported elsewhere on this planet, or to another. Perhaps a crew destined to work on an asteroid mine, or to build an orbital space station or a new colony, a new Punktown, on some world not yet raped, merely groped.

  He watched a hovertruck with a covered bed like a military troop carrier pull out of the shipping docks, and head for the east gate. A shipment with a more localized destination. Jones imagined its contents, the manufactured goods, seated in two rows blankly facing each other. Cultures not yet tattooed, not yet named. Perhaps the companies they were destined for did not utilize tattoos and decorative names ― mocking names, Jones mused ― to identify the clone workers. Jones wondered what, if anything, went on in their heads along the drive. They had not yet been programmed for their duties, not yet had their brain drips. He, whose job it had been to bake these golems, had been born already employed, unlike them. They were innocent in their staring mindlessness, better off for their mindlessness, Jones thought, watching the truck vanish into the night. He himself was still a child, but a tainted innocent; the months since his escape had been like a compacted lifetime. Had he been better off in his first days, not yet discontented? Disgruntled? There were those times, he in his newfound pride would hate to admit, that he felt like a human boy who longed to be a wooden puppet again.