Dr. Identity

by D. Harlan Wilson

  Sometimes it was legal to kill movie stars. Particularly if they appeared in a bad film or their acting lacked sufficient realspace credibility. The legality was recently established to encourage filmmakers and their entourages to produce quality artwork as opposed to the trash the last two centuries had seen them put out. Not so with Voss Winkenweirder. The actor invariably starred in superb films and his performances were always watertight. The unsubstantiated murder of such a hypercelebrity would not only guarantee our deaths. It would guarantee torture and very likely public disembowelment. Dr. ——— had good reason to be upset. Nonetheless I put an end to his hysterics with a firm backhand across the face that sent him spinning. I caught him and apologized. He stared at me dumbly. I told him I didn’t strike him to shut him up. I did it to safeguard his voice box. Then I explained how I actually enjoyed the aesthetic beauty of his foul-mouthed diatribes. They demonstrated an industrious use of the imagination.

  “Thank you, Dr. Identity,” whispered Dr. ———.

  I shrugged. “That’s what friends are for.”

  05

  LITTLEOLDLADYVILLE, PART 1 – 1ST PERSON ('BLAH)

  It was no use trying to escape Bliptown. The whole world knew about us now. No doubt commodity-paraphernalia created in our image was already in production. As early as tomorrow morning I expected to find Dr. ——— and Dr. Identity action figures in store windows. Our avatars were probably already for sale in the Schizoverse. Variations of our names would soon be affixed to jetpacks, hairdos, fast food. Book sales of the author I surrogated were probably on the verge of skyrocketing. No matter where we went, we would be hunted by countless human and machinic extensions of the Law. Every city on Earth and Mars was immediately accessible via the Schizoverse anyway. Bliptown seemed as good a place as any to suffer and die.

  We could flee to the artificial rainforests, which had been constructed on the few remaining land masses between the cities. But that was tantamount to suicide. The last remaining agents of photosynthesis, the rainforests were full of mechanical dinosaurs, abominable snowmen, Frankenstein monsters, King Kongs and other artificial creatures disseminated by the government in order to discourage people from settling outside urban interzones. Dr. Identity and I wouldn’t last more than an hour in the wilderness. We were better off fending for ourselves against our fellow anthropomorphous assholes.

  Initially the murder of Voss Winkenweirder terrified me. But I got over it. I no longer cared about what happened to us, and the fear of death dwindled to a dull, barely recognizable pulse somewhere in the basement of my emotional townhouse. At that moment I didn’t care about anything. I would very likely be dead within the next twenty-four hours. It didn’t matter. I had committed no actual crime myself. But Dr. Identity’s crimes were as good as my own. That’s a risk of purchasing and employing a ’gänger: the user is entirely responsible for his commodity’s actions. Before today I had been unwilling to take that responsibility. Now I was unconditionally willing.

  This psychological numbness lasted for about thirty seconds. Then it disappeared, instantly, as if ripped out of me.

  I screamed.

  Dr. Identity picked me up and shook me. It set me back down.

  I vomited. I cursed it for shaking me so hard.

  “Your conduct, your discourse, and the flows of your desires belong to a child,” said the android. “I would prefer it if you acted like an adult from now on. At least play an adult.”

  I blinked.

  The Beesuppie Dr. Identity had thrown in the garbage crawled out. He slipped as he tried to throw his leg over the edge of the dumpster and landed on his face. His neck cracked. An uncannily bright red pool of blood oozed out of his mouth, nostrils and eyes.

  Dr. Identity admired the pool. “Hammer blood,” it said. “I wish my veins pumped that piece of trendiness.” It bent over and inspected the blood with wide-eyed curiosity. “To inject vogue into the body—the ultimate fashion statement.”

  The accidental death of the Beesuppie shocked me back into coherence.

  “We have to go,” I said.

  “Go where?”

  “Littleoldladyville.”

  Dr. Identity glared at me. “Why would we do a thing like that?”

  “Because I say so. Get your jetpack on.”

  Littleoldladyville was an ADW (Allpurpose Department Warehouse), which sold virtually every product imaginable. Imaginations themselves were available in a range of brands, styles and creative angles of incidence. While cheap, an imagination cost arms and legs to download. Most shoppers couldn’t afford it. And those that could afford it—the student-things that attended Corndog University, for instance—were uninterested in them. They gravitated more towards products like ’gängers, Schizoverse avatars, innovative slang terms (decreed commodities by the Law only last Spring), prosthetic genitals, disco and break dance moves, alternate voices, and other indicators of “personality.”

  Littleoldladyville recently assimilated its last remaining competitors, rendering it the only extant ADW in the Amerikanized world. Every major city harbored five or six of them, and their great bulk constituted roughly thirty percent of each city’s superstructure. It was easy to get lost inside. I once got so lost it took me almost three days to get out. Precisely the idea. The elusive, labyrinthine structure of the ADW prohibited many shoppers from finding their way out when they wanted to. In order to maintain a sufficiently breakneck flow of consumerism under such conditions, a law was imposed: No customer will exist for more than thirty minutes without buying at least $100 worth of products under the penalty of death.

  Products could only be bought by means of retinal scans. Cashiers had gone extinct. All a shopper needed to do was run a product’s barcode across its eyes. At birth everybody’s vision was registered with the government so that they could buy things simply by looking at them. If shoppers failed to make a purchase inside of thirty minutes, a mechanical Bug-Eyed Monster attacked and swiftly tore them to pieces. Littleoldladyville had impeccable surveillance technology. On the occasion of my going astray, I forgot to buy something within the designated time frame, and just moments after a half hour elapsed, I heard the monster scuttling towards me from a nearby aisle. Luckily I made a purchase before it made an appearance. Although horrifying, the BEM was a nice touch from a literary perspective—yet another instance of reality imitating science fiction. In the end my three day misadventure skidrowed me. But I was already skidrowed. Everybody was always-already skidrowed.

  The name Littleoldladyville had been devised by its founder, Hilda Grumpstead. Coincidentally she was a little old lady at the time of the name’s conception. A profound love as a child for her grandmother Babetta, a shopping queen who had won awards for her many consumer-capitalist accomplishments, had invoked a lifelong fantasy of a superstore full of grandmotherlike beings who might consume products to their heart’s content. Not until Hilda was a grandmotherlike being herself did she amass enough capital and technopolitical clout to bring her pipe dream to life. By then Babetta was long dead, although she had recreated an android in her image. She had recreated thousands of them. And whereas Hilda died last century and Littleoldladyville was hardly the utopian superstore she originally envisioned, the machinic versions of little old Babetta continued to populate the store—as managers, stock girls, aisle guards, mannequins, consumer spies, in-house plastic surgeons, and shoppers themselves. This demographic was complimented by the majority of the ADW’s shopping community, which predominantly included little old ladies and their ’gängers. Some came there to die. Others refused to let elderliness get their goats; for them, Littleoldladyville was an opportunity to prove that they still possessed youthful (or at least middle-aged) spunk. Others were senile and psychotic.

  In addition to weapons and food, Littleoldladyville offered us new disguises. Our current disguises were necessary but unacceptable. We lacked facial hair and accoutrements, and the clothes were old, faded and unfashionable. Dr. Identity wouldn’
t tolerate it for long. I could barely tolerate it.

  Littleoldladyville also featured scores of surgery booths where we could have our faces reconstructed by a skilled Babetta. Facelifts were something to consider, but ultimately we didn’t need them. If we managed to evade the Law for long enough, eventually the thrill of the hunt would wear off and the government would set its DNA hounds on our tails. No matter where we fled, we would be sniffed out. First we had to concentrate on camouflaging ourselves with en vogue body armor and stocking up on our present arsenal of weapons, which now consisted solely of Dr. Identity’s appendages. The android was clearly an able-bodied killer. But going into Littleoldladyville amounted to going to war. And we lacked both the means and the intention to pay for our share of the battle.

  We activated our jetpacks and ascended into the dark, contorted spiral of strip malls above us. Dr. Identity took the lead. I followed him through a web of flyways, shielding my face with my collar, dodging traffic, and trying not to focus on the torrent of images that accosted us at every turn. Bliptown was alive with our electronic headshots and Winkenweirder film clips, and Papanazis were ubiquitous, digitizing everything and everyone. Most were easily distinguishable. Jetpackers wore large Grim Reaper exoskeletons and robes, and the Papanazi standard issue vehicle was a souped-up Third Reich warplane, the Heinkel He-162 Volksjaeger. I had expected this kind of mayhem, but being in the middle of it terrified me. I pulled next to Dr. Identity and told him to speed up.

  Babettas guarded either side of the palatial, Romanesque entrance of Littleoldladyville. They were about five feet tall, including the beehive hairdos, and signified late octogenarians. The original Babetta had been addicted to tanning booths and a dull orange color tinted their leathery skin. Their faces were sharp and birdlike. A hairy mole was artfully positioned on their chins, and coke bottle spectacles sat on their noses. The spectacles magnified their white, irisless eyes to an estranging degree. Hairy shawls covered their hunchbacks. Their pencil-thin legs were sheathed in netted stockings with fashionable tears in them. From afar, they looked like neckless, over-the-hill ostriches. They didn’t look much different close up.

  Shoppers marched in and out of the entrance in a fluid, orderly swarm. Like the Babettas, most of them were short, frail-looking, and blue-haired. Dr. Identity and I stuck out like spraypainted sequoias as we slipped into the swarm and made for the door.

  I nodded politely at the Babettas as we passed. They didn’t nod back. They stared at me with their giant eyes. One of them growled.

  We entered the store and checked our jetpacks with another Babetta. It was illegal to bring anything into Littleoldladyville except the clothes on our backs, items that were themselves suspect, especially since most fashion statements entailed outrageously baggy outfits, the perfect hideaway for stolen merchandise. In effect, the ADW’s current board of directors was involved in litigation to have clothes banned from it. Soon the only permissible style of clothing on store grounds would be a birthday suit.

  The Babetta flicked us a number and shuffled into a long, narrow hanger, dragging our jetpacks behind it like two dead animals. We would of course never see them again. This wasn’t a problem. If we lived, Littleoldladyville carried a vast array of jetpacks. We would simply add them to our list of needful things.

  “I’m hungry,” I whispered out of the corner of my mouth. The stench of hot cabbage in the air grew stronger and thinned out as clusters of little old ladies toddled past us.

  Dr. Identity narrowed its eyes at me. “Why are you whispering?”

  I gnawed on my lip. “I don’t know,” I said in a normal voice. “Anyway, I’m hungry. But we need weapons first.”

  “I know what we need. I know you’re hungry. You don’t have to keep telling me. Over and over you tell me.” The android surveyed the insane parade of aisles that stretched over and ahead of us like a galactic cornfield. “We need an entropy projector. And organic weaponry. Biological claws, tentacle wads, piranha balls, maybe a few monsters-in-a-can. We’ll want vibronic munitions. A glaive for me and a tetronix for you. Cutting edges are essential. Fusion stilettos, razor fans, razor tentacles, toxic flechettes, force projector shurikens. I’d like a hypersharp Vorpal sword. And a monofilament whip. And a razorwire yo-yo. We shouldn’t forget about guns. I prefer blades, but one likes to be well-rounded. We would do well to amass everything from idiot guns to biologic, electric, psychic, metaphysical, phenomenological and linguistic firearms—the latter three for kicks, of course. I’ve always wanted to pump someone full of French turns-of-phrase with a raison d’être MK-7. I’ve always wanted to turn someone’s reality inside-out with a stream of excited quarks fired from a lepton pistol. We don’t have time for these kinds of fun and games. But one likes to keep up an air of theatrics.”

  My ’gänger spoke in a detached monotone. I didn’t know if it was kidding or serious. Either way, it was unwell. I wondered when psychosis would fully set in and short-circuit its nervous system.

  “I’ve let you teach too many science fiction classes,” I said.

  Dr. Identity’s pupils mutated into large asterisks. “It’s possible. More likely, however, I’m just a product of the future. And the future’s been extinct for a long time.”

  06

  ACHTUNG 66.799 & CO. – 3RD PERSON

  Achtung 66.799 came up with the idea of a stainless steel cuckoo clock while doing secretarial work for Dodo, Meese & Bolshevik, a company that produced the number six for several successful brands of holographic, digital and corporeal clock faces. At the time he was getting reprimanded by the secretary-in-chief for fooling around in the Schizoverse during working hours. The secretary-in-chief was being surrogated by her ’gänger. Its breath smelled like sulfur. Achtung 66.799 stared over its shoulder at the antiquated Weiner wood cuckoo clock hanging on the wall as the android accused him of laziness, lack of enthusiasm, a mild case of anthropomorphism, and “inexorable loutishness.” The clock struck nine, a door irised open, and a mechanical bird tentatively poked out its head. It was Tuesday and the clock’s real bird, a clone of a crimson-breasted shrike, had the day off. Although new and tentative about telling the time, the surrogate finally produced an irresolute squawk.

  The surrogate was made of stainless steel. Achtung 66.799 liked the way it gleamed in the light of the office. The guise worked for the bird. Why not for a whole clock?

  “Hey!” shouted the secretary-in-chief’s ’gänger. “Pay attention to me when I’m tearing you a new asshole!”

  Achtung 66.799 nailed the android with a right hook. The punch broke two of his knuckles. He screamed out his resignation and puttered to the nearest surgery stand on the broken wings of a blue-collar jetpack.

  As a street surgeon rebuilt his knuckles, he mulled over the particulars of his would-be new invention, wondering where he might get the capital to produce it. There were also the formalities of cuckoo clock copyrights and a patent to consider. He didn’t know shit about those things. Nor did he know much about clocks in general. He barely knew how to tell time.

  Achtung 66.799 realized that quitting his job may not have been the wisest course of action. He was too proud to beg for it back. But it didn’t matter. Within minutes of his departure surely a fresh assistant secretary replaced him. He would have to get another job. Fast. He only had enough savings to last him six, seven hours at most…

  The next morning he secured a position as a lawn jockey. Had he kept track, he would have discovered that this was the 183rd position he had secured in his young adult life.

  The two and a half square footage of yard he had to pose on was rather large considering its location in a densely populated neighborhood and rooftop. He had plenty of room to stretch on the occasion that nobody looked in his direction and caught him not being perfectly frozen and sculpturelike.

  His outfit consisted of a glazed white terracotta helmet, a skintight red riding coat, beige polyester pants that flared out at the thighs, and shiny black kneehigh boots. Now
and then the owner of the lawn, Mr. Archibald Grapesmuggler, asked him to dress up in blackface.

  Things went smoothly for a few days. He came to work on time every morning, posed, took a break for lunch, posed, and left at dusk. Then he let his guard down. He came to work with a hangover. A bad one. He could barely keep his eyes open. And his arm hurt: the strain of holding up a kerosene lamp seemed insufferable. Thinking nobody was watching, he lowered the lamp and sat down on the grass for a minute to rest. Seconds later he was curled up in a fetal position, snoring and drooling.

  He didn’t know that his employer had been spying on him from a gopher hole in the lawn.

  Mr. Grapesmuggler pushed his head through the hole and crawled out like a zombie from the grave. Achtung 66.799 woke up, tendered his resignation, and ran away…

  He came back a few minutes later and said he was sorry. Mr. Grapesmuggler accepted the apology and handed him a handkerchief. “You’re drooling.”

  An idea came to him. It wasn’t like the others. This one was sound, realizable—an anti-drool serum. One specifically designed to turn off (or at least tone down) salivary ducts during sleep. His friend Dale Begonia dabbled in street chemistry. The two of them could invent such a commodity extraordinaire if they put their minds together. And once it appeared on the market, the split would be 70/30 in favor of Achtung 66.799. He would market the product, after all, and marketing was more valuable than scientific innovation and practice. The value of science was in fact only as good as the marketability of the merchandise produced by science. He rethought the split and decided on 80/20. He rethought three more times and finally settled on 86/14. Then he kneed Mr. Grapesmuggler in the nuts and tendered his resignation a second time…

  The plan failed. Dale Begonia turned out to be more of a hack than he thought; apparently his skills as a chemist didn’t go much further than a rudimentary knowledge of the periodic table, an ability to define the term isotope, and holding test tubes full of Sea Monkeys over Bunsen burners until they boiled and exploded. Achtung 66.799 had also forgotten about the patent again. The blow to his optimism was devastating. He went on a drinking binge that lasted a half hour before the time came to sober up and find (and lose) another job.