“Beautiful job, Mayor!” beamed Ferria, each and every one of her polished white teeth a product of a real dentist with real facilities and equipment...well, there was only one in the E.C. as everyone well knew. Just try and get an appointment with him!
As it happened, this dentist was particularly pleased to maintain Ferria’s complete set of white beauties for the pivotal privilege of inserting something other than his fingers into her mouth on a regular basis. Completely illegal, of course, as she was still only a Stage Five. That perfect smile had taken three visits and Ferria thought that she had made a good bargain. The dentist had been more than satisfied at his end.
“One of your better ones,” agreed the Mayor, blowing his cheeks in and out to help himself unwind. Ferria wrote all of Elias’ speeches, inserting the prompts to make sure that he followed a rhythm. Speaking live on TV always brought out the child in Elias. He had difficulty controlling his bladder on such occasions as he peered into first one, then the other of the cameras, never really knowing which one was on because neither of the red lights above the teleprompter ever seemed to be working. This struggle with his bladder often led the sensation that he was floating on a big rubber inner tube on a quiet lake. The sensation was pleasing, yet ultimately necessitated an immediate visit to the facilities when someone finally said, ‘That’s it!’.
And it was with that overwhelming intent that Elias heaved himself out of the chair into a standing position, the full weight of his bladder immediately confirming what he already knew.
“Nice touch with the Rhonda thing. I thought that damn cow was dead!” Elias lurched past Ferria only to… “not you again, Bonham! I said I don’t have the power to throw people out of the street!”
Ferria took a step back. She watched Elias fob off the segment’s producer, a cream-suited, cream-faced eel. He seemed desperate to obtain the Mayor’s permission to evict his tenants in #365 Scarborough Mall in order that he might open a tearoom for respectable clientele of toe-fetishists. Elias fled for the washroom and his sanity, closely pursued by the insistent producer.
Ferria was feeling intensely alive in the studio, drinking in the excitement of live broadcasting, captured by the theatrical allure of hot lights, tensionsweat, wires, cables, and buttons to press. It was safe to say that only she was affected given the bored look on the faces of the technical staff.
Her bright auburn hair bubbled like brookwater over her shapely shoulders. Pleasant, cheerful features crinkled with amusement below cat’s eyes. And those perfect teeth. Her physical beauty was further enhanced by her intelligent choice of fashion, presently demonstrating the excellent fashion sense of an oyster white silk blouse and jet black skirt. It was her third visit to TV, all of them in the company of Elias, who swept her breathlessly with him past security and fans, and through a myriad of doors accessible only to very important people.
It thrilled her, this sense of now! being provided instantly anywhere in the malls. No wonder the Grief Team had exclusive control over the facilities, she thought, for here was the power to make stars. Like many others, Ferria dreamed of having her own show, reaping the adulation which always seemed to accompany the excitement of appearing in people’s homes as part of their everyday lives. Oh, to be one of the select seven citizens appointed to appear on camera!
Perhaps it should have been enough to actually meet these honoured few—Elias, of course, being the first—and spend time in their company in the secretive surroundings of the studio, but for Ferria it was not. For her, one of the benefits of intelligence was the ability to realize that one was intelligent. It then followed logically that some intelligences functioned at a higher level than others. With the mall population maintained at precisely 16,135 inhabitants, she had deduced that there was little doubt that, statistically, her Stage Five results were extraordinary. It was with significant relish that she had been able to reckon her future standing in the malls as somewhere between Elias and his son Gabriel. Clearly, someone was taking up space. Ferria’s space.
Ferria found herself wandering toward the door leading to another set where Countdown to Horror was about to go ‘live’ across the Malls. In her final days as a Stage Five and with her citizenship on Revelation Night assured by virtue of the fact that she was Elias’ Executive Assistant, Ferria was closer than ever to being allowed—finally!—to announce that something deep inside her eagerly responded to the grotesque.
Already she had served the Mayor in more ways than one for, poised atop that mountain of flesh like a cherry on top, at seventeen years of age, Ferria d’Mont had experienced a depth of orgasm that even her contraband Male Substitute couldn’t provoke. She was experiencing the first adult delights of her true nature and, come Revelation Night, Ferria was planning a Personal Listing in the Chronicle that would go a long way towards satisfying everything she wanted to experience. And she’d be happy to start with sneaking into Countdown to Horror if only the Mayor would turn a blind eye; unfortunately, a rather unlikely prospect.
“The Craft Centre people worked all night on her,” said Ferria, walking quickly to the Mayor’s side as he and the producer returned. The man had finally uncoiled his grip on the Mayor and he slithered away, his mission accomplished.
“What?” The Mayor was in an ebullient mood. Granting favours always brought out the best in him.
“I was answering your question. You said that you thought Rhonda was dead.”
“I thought she was dead!”
“She’s not. Apparently there is a problem with the inflatable bladders that they use. The foreman says that sometimes the rubber they get has been reconstituted so many times that it becomes unreliable. They want new supplies moved higher up on the Zone Exchange. Do you want to do that?”
“What is it likely to cost us?”
Ferria frowned. “Only the Deutsches have better rubber than we do. They know that, so the price will be high.”
“How high?”
Ferria pulled out her screen and tapped the touch-sensitive pad twice. She read her notes and quickly pecked at the numbers. “The technicians are asking for one metric ton of rubber compound. The Deutsches are likely to ask for three sixpacks of embryos but we’ll get it for two because they owe us for providing the sampling mechanism on their joint venture in the Celtic oil rig in the North Sea.”
“Two sixpacks. Twelve embryos. Nordics, I assume.”
Ferria smiled. “You assume correctly.”
“What the hell,” the Mayor said, attempting to paste an errant curl with saliva against his forehead, “two sixpacks is reasonable to keep Rhonda’s Fan Club off my back. Put it just below hemorrhoid cream and the new pump for the air circulation system in Oakville Place. We have to have that soon before everyone dies of carbon monoxide poisoning.”
“It’s already being installed. I told you that yesterday evening.”
Elias smiled and took her left hand, clasping it warmly between his own. It was like wrapping a bird in warm, moist dough. “I was too busy with you yesterday evening,” he growled. “Maybe I misheard what kind of pump you were referring to.”
Ferria laughed, removing her hand gently as she did so. Public displays of affection from the Mayor were still a little disconcerting, torn as she was between the shame of her attraction to those hectares of fat and the stabbing thrills of desires fulfilled. It was, she knew, one of the Seven Sexual Dilemmas (see endnote 5) that she had learned about in school, but learning about something was a lot different than actually experiencing it. Even after the tremendous build-up in the classroom about how great sex was and how the history books told of Mayor Dickie twinning the sexual experience and the social experience, permitting free expression of both, Ferria was a churning dichotomy of new experiences and emotions, almost afraid of her desires, yet learning to love the intensity. What she had felt at fourteen, she knew now, was not sexual fulfillment but sexual disadvantage. It was completely different at eighteen. The sudden impulse that she wanted the Mayor to seize an
d mount her right there on the cable-strewn floor of the studio almost overwhelmed her.
”I wonder if we might get a few extra minutes of screen time for you tonight? An interview with Wilson-Wilson? I know he’d like to have you on his show.”
“Fuck that, I get enough screen time already and that ass Wilson-Wilson is always available. More people suck that pseudo-historian’s dick in a twenty-four hour period than a WildKid has fleas.” Elias was now busy combing his long dark locks, displeased and frustrated that several perspiration-soaked ringlets were again bobbing out in stark perpendicular relief against the flushed skin of his forehead. “Is there a hair dryer available?”
Ferria quickly scanned the small studio for the skinny make-up kid who had powdered the Mayor’s features. “Would you like me to ask for one?”
The Mayor winced. “Damn these ringlets! Schedule an appointment for me at Maria’s tomorrow. Make it early.”
Ferria smiled and nodded, making the note. Some days she had so little self-control. Jumping Elias’ bones right here in front of the technicians and security people? What would her parents say if she did something like that before she became a citizen? Still, Ferria wasn’t particularly concerned; she was only following what the textbook said, the one she got for her evening Sex Education course in the Academy at the Children’s Mall. It warned that there would be wild, insane flashes of sexual desire as she neared citizenship age but that it was logical to assume that these flashes were designed by the body for preliminary use only—what Mayor Dickie called “priming the pump”—and were not logical opportunities meant to be acted upon.
Dogs’breath, thought Ferria, the faculty at the Academy wouldn’t believe how many Stage Five virgins are currently losing their non-participatory status in these final days before Revelation Night. At least twenty classmates that she knew had already pressed the Disable icon on their Saf-T-Alarm anklets and had found a classmate willing to do the same. Something that I suppose I should do, she considered, just to go with the flow in case anybody’s noticing on behalf of the Revelation Night Committee. Those old lechers, every Stage Five’s worst nightmare…
Elias smiled. He knew that Ferria was prey to the excitement of the hot, busy TV studios, especially as it happened to be Thursday Night and Countdown to Horror, the most popular show on TV, was happening live right behind that door over there. What was that Dickie had said…all that shit about TV brainwashed children and caused teenage gangs to re-enact the violence they saw…how it had just gotten worse and worse until Prime Minister Haardvar had sent in C.S.I.S., the spy network, and seized control of all telecommunications facilities in the country.
Such a drastic action should have placed Canada’s gentle alliance with the Americans in great jeopardy—particularly as American-made shows ranged across all stations, Canadian-or-not—but, as it happened, Washington had turned loose the F.B.I. at the same time and thus, across the continent, station managers and their staffs and television stars were pulled off the air. Inevitably there were a number of deaths as news-anchors fought for control of their news-anchor-desks and the subsequent carnage was broadcast live on each station until agents found the main fuse boxes and, one by one, gave them a big kiss each with a pound of Semtex 30/30 out of a shoulder launcher.
“It was the single, stupidest decision which two political morons ever connived together!” Mayor Dickie had written. (see endnote 6) “The President of the United States was politically somewhere to the far right of the White Aryan movement and our own Prime Minister Haardvar was a fuckin’ nutbar! You’d see lobsters on cocaine picking lint out of my asshole if those two were capable of acting with a shred of logic between them…and calling off the dogs twelve hours later and blaming it on hackers tampering with the government ‘net was a fucking cowardly lie!”
It was true. Ferria loved the lights, the smells, the action, the electric charge of being at the very centre of live TV; the atmosphere felt like sexsweat. She was dying to suggest that they join the studio audience in Countdown to Horror next door, but there was the Mayor’s prestige to be accomodated.
Elias winked at Ferria. “I see Countdown to Horror is on next door.” He winked again, a thick fold of pink skin dropping over a deeply recessed blue eye.
Ferria grinned. “Darn your Parenting skills, Mayor!”
Mayor Kraft shrugged. “Know thy child! I used to like the slashers myself. I know it’s a Stage Five phenomenon. All 17-year-olds are 50% orgasm, or erection as the case may be, and 50% bloodlust. Mayor Dickie used to say that Stage Five’s were prisoners handcuffed to their sexuality.”
“Mayor, you’re embarassing me!” Ferria glanced around the studio, but none of the television crew were paying the slightest attention. She looked again at the Mayor, his grin now replaced by a soft frown of contrition. Ferria waited, she knew the Mayor’s better nature.
“You can stay and watch the action if you like, I am going to my supper.”
Ferria watched, elated, as the Mayor headed for the exit. As always, movement near his person stopped abruptly and he passed through citizen statues like an heroic if overfed Greek ghost.
Ferria was quick to take advantage of her great luck. How many other Stage Fives had ever been able to see this show and live to tell about it? Ferria knew the answer: none she knew of. She’d heard stories of course but the fact was that no child below eighteen was capable of achieving access to the signal, controlled as it was throughout the malls by the Grief Team.
No one, until me!
She was instantly on her way to Studio H where, only thirteen minutes and two severed heads before, Countdown to Horror began beaming into TV sets across the malls. It was Thursday night and all Mall children were safely tucked into their beds and, as doors were promptly opened for the Mayor’s Executive Assistant by Mulls who bowed low with dignity, Ferria was already experiencing one hell of a thrill in anticipation of the events presently being enacted onstage for the (older) citizens of the malls.
It was 11:15 before Elias reached his bedroom in his apartment on the top floor of the E.C. On his way across the plush broadloom, he opened the door to his son’s bedroom but Gabriel was not inside. Often, Elias knew, his son slept at his desk one floor below in the Grief Team’s communications centre. Mary Clement, their neighbour, who shared kitchen privileges with them, would already have sent down a sandwich and coffee. She had always made a habit of making sure that Gabriel had what he needed whether he knew that he did or not. When Mary decided to look after you, you were looked after. Elias, who still had sex with her several times a month at her request, had never asked but assumed that Gabriel did as well. Mary was a great friend.
Elias opened the door to his small bedroom with its modest furnishings and pulled off his nightgown. He slept naked, a habit he was not above mentioning, usually when he’d had a skinful of Alf Barner’s Dark Lady cordial, that began when he was born. He would further enlighten those assembled by claiming that pajamas were invented by the old Catholic Church as a method of birth control. He always insisted that the temperature in his bedroom be maintained as that of a cool September evening in the Maritimes. Before he retired, he usually turned on his sleep enhancer, a gift from Gabriel on Father’s Day two years before and invariably set to the Sleep, Perchance to Dream icon. He often fell asleep before the crickets started.
On this particular evening, however, the thoughts of Elias Macdonald Kraft were disturbed. Ranging far and wide on disparate topics, pressing items and half-formed ideas that flickered and flitted about in his brain like confetti in a breeze, his brain would not relax. In an effort to make it do so, he lay down on his bed and held a pillow over his face, luxuriating in the cool touch of fabric. After several minutes, his breath now hot against the pillow, he flung it aside. Sleep, he knew, was out of the question. Rolling himself off the bed, swinging legs with calves as thick as tree trunks onto the floor, Elias stood, reached for his nightgown and pulling himself into it, opened his bedroom door and headed fo
r the kitchen. He needed food if he was going to be making decisions. And, he thought to himself, as he lumbered through the darkened apartment, refrigerator in sight, it may be that decisions have to be made.
On a planet where unusual circumstances had become as everyday as breathing itself, Elias still considered those events which surrounded his own birth to have been fateful, though decidedly less catastrophic. He had always accepted Mayor Dickie’s belief that a mathematical purpose existed in the universe and that this was otherwise known as fate. Elias wasn’t as heavy-handed about it as perhaps the old Mayor had been; instead, he preferred to mimic the downhome, straight-forward, practical approach to life that had comfortably served every Maritimer he had ever known.
It was a Maritime attitude, born and bred before the planet went crazy, as logical in its steadfastness of purpose as it was inimical to bullshit. It was what Mayor Dickie referred to as “meat ‘n tatties.” In Elias’ mind—a mind trained at the feet of the Father-of-the-Malls—fate and reality were fraternal twins and all else followed in their wake. Yet there were occasions, usually after sex when Elias was feeling regal, warm and toasty that he ruminated on the fact that a little “whipped cream” was also certainly worthwhile.
Elias, father unknown, had entered a very different world in 1983, when his mother, Louise, who had come from Moncton in New Brunswick to visit her sister down the road apiece in Upper Canada and, although unplanned, also to give birth to her son under the huge brass clockworks in the centre of Oakville Place Mall. Mall shoppers and gawkers swore that the child had first opened his lungs to cry at precisely the same moment that the mechanism struck one o’clock, but they were simply echoing the sentiments of Louise who, barely concious at the time, quoted the astrological permutations she had read in the weekly supermarket tabloids.
The Grief Team Page 6
