by J. I. Greco
Morty shrugs apologetically. “Well, that was when you were a minister.”
Chapter Nine
“Do you believe the nerve of that guy?” Trip asks, striding out the front door of Morty’s house. “Rent. From me. It is both unprecedented and alarming.”
“I’ve never seen you out-negotiated before,” Rudy says, stepping out into the street after Trip. He glances around for Hunt-R. The robot, and his kids, are nowhere to be seen. He shrugs and gives his nipple a soft tweak. “I think I’ve got a new hero.”
“I took it easy on him,” Trip says out of the corner of his mouth as he lights a cig and heads north up the dirt and loose stone excuse for a main street. “You know, ‘cause he’s old and frail.”
Rudy follows his brother. “If anybody took anybody, it was him taking you. Like out to the wood shed and spanking you with a coffee table while a dwarf in a Richard Nixon costume plays the bongos in the corner.”
Trip’s left eyebrow goes up. “A dwarf in a Richard Nixon costume?”
“Yeah, and the bongos are skinned with the ass-cheek flesh of Spiro Agnew.”
“That’s some unusual imagery, even for you.”
“New THC analog mix.” Rudy pats his stomach and smiles dreamily. “Added in some LSD. For flavor.”
Trip stops short to avoid tripping over a dog-sized rat darting in front of him from the alley. He stays stopped to wait for the pair of machete-wielding, dirty-faced pre-teens chasing the rat to pass. “Ah.”
“Yeah,” Rudy says as the two start walking again. “Anyway, who knew Morty had it in him?”
“He used to be quite the ball breaker CFO, according to Rox, before the big crash of ‘207 and the siren call of beer brought him to the Wasteland. But let’s make one thing perfectly clear, here. I did not get taken. Morty and this piss-ant town of his is what’s getting taken, here.”
“Sure, we’re just paying more per month on a patch of undeveloped industrial wasteland than we paid for a year’s worth of rent at the place in Cali, and that was an actual building.”
“As usual, you’re not seeing the forest for the killer mutant oaks. You’re forgetting the refugee influx.”
“Don’t know how I could.” Rudy thumbs back over his shoulder in the approximate direction of the center of town. “You know how much they wanted for rat-on-a-stick in the square this morning? Twice what they wanted yesterday, and that was three times what they wanted a week before that. Inflation’s going through the roof.”
Trip punches the air with his cig. “Exactly. All these refugees flooding in, ruining the economy… What do you think they’re doing with their time?”
“Started a Ska band that roams around the back country in a psychedelically painted van solving mysteries with a talking dog?”
“Just how much LSD did you mix in?”
“Only forty-seven percent. I haven’t had any in ages, figured I’d start low.”
“Very wise,” Trip says as they pass a corrugated-steel and cardboard shack of a home that’s been converted into a recruiting center for the Sisters of No Mercy’s civil patrol. There’s a line of girls out the door, a couple dozen long. Trip winces and stamps his cig out on the street in front of it before walking on, heading straight for Shunk’s main gate at the end of the street. “Anyway, all those refugees, they’re just standing around, picking their noses and asses, bored and unemployed, waiting for some handsome cyborg industrialist to come along and give their lives purpose.”
“Egomaniacal leanings aside, I have to admit that’s pretty noble.”
“Noble as shit, damn straight. Can you say dirt cheap labor pool?”
“And there’s the brother I know.”
“It’s the perfect buyer’s market. We’re gonna cover the cost of the rent and more by hiring refugees for next to nothing,” Trip says as they pass under the open arch in the city-state’s wall of stacked flattened cars out into Shunk’s new suburbs, a vast, loose sea of tents and cardboard lean-to’s, swarming with hundreds if not thousands of refugees. “Profit margin maintained. Morty taken. Trip triumphant, as if there was ever any doubt.”
“So, let me see if I’ve got this straight,” Rudy says. “This plan of yours depends on a large number of unemployed, bored people willing to work for you for next to nothing.”
“Willing and thrilled to do so,” Trip says, giving Rudy a confident half-smile. “We’ll be hailed as heroes, the only guys in this damn town willing to step up and give the schlubs a reason to keep on living.”
Rudy frowns. “Not the only guys, though,” he says, tipping his head at a patch of tent-free ground up ahead where dozens of booths and tables have been set up.
“Wait… what?” Trip asks, slowing to a stop. He scans the booths. Each and every one is advertising some kind of employment opportunity. Jobs at the brewery. Jobs at the beer warehouses. Jobs trucking beer. Jobs guarding beer. Jobs procuring grain, for beer. Along with the jobs themselves, the placards nailed to the booths and the hawkers manning the booths shout about competitive salaries, paid vacations and holidays, and employer-provided daycare — and of course, free beer just for talking to a representative. “Vishnu’s overdue parking tickets, what the Shatner is this?”
“Job fair, looks like.”
Trip nods slowly. “Job fair,” he says through pursed lips.
“Pretty big one, too. You know, I don’t think we’re gonna get schlubs for cheap,” Rudy says, noting the surprisingly thin crowd of refugees strolling through the area, idly checking out the booths, sipping beers, not looking desperate for work at all.
“Son. Of. A. Bitch.”
“Yep,” Rudy says. “Is it the LSD or are they actually fighting over the refugees?” he asks as a shouting match breaks out between hawkers from two neighboring booths over a passing refugee.
“No, I see it, too.”
“Even the giant inflatable swords?”
“No, those are the LSD.”
“So, not a buyer’s market, then?”
“Nope,” Trip says, lighting a cig. “Quite the opposite.”
“Sellers market.”
“Yep.”
Rudy pats Trip on the back. “Quite the triumph you’ve got yourself, here, dude.”
“Don’t suppose I can convince you to jump into the fray?” Trip asks as a fist is swung and the shouting match becomes a full-on brawl, other hawkers throwing themselves into the fray, the fought-over refugee shrugging and walking on. “You know maybe snag us a couple employees through brute, drug-induced force?”
Rudy shakes his head. “No way am I getting anywhere near those chocolate dinosaurs.”
“Chocolate dinosaurs?”
“Both delicious and ferocious. —So what’s the plan now?”
“We need workers.” Trip spins on his heel and starts walking back to the main gate. “Dirt cheap workers.”
Rudy follows, glancing back cautiously at the dinosaurs, their skin melting in the heat of the day, rivulets of gooey brown sloshing onto the rippling, cotton-candy ground. “We ain’t gonna find them here.”
“Nope, there’s blood in the water, and the sharks can smell it. We can’t afford to pay a tenth what these guys are offering.”
“You know… there is one place where there might just be a good pool of dirt cheap workers. Just down the road. For the asking.”
“Problem is who I’d have to ask.”
“Sure, she was going to kill Roxanne, but technically she is family,” Rudy says as they walk under the arch. “We forgive family. Well, most family.”
“Oh, yeah, right… forgot she did that.”
“You think she’s gonna want to have a say in the war car design, don’t you?”
Trip nods. “I swear, she tries to fuck with the software, I’ll EMP that egomaniacal nanotech pseudo-daughter of mine into a puddle.”
“So, when you wanna leave? Sooner the better.” Rudy lowers his voice and jogs his head at one of the stacks of beer barrels flanking the open door to yet
another new building, the Shunk Welcome and Bulk Beer Ordering Center just inside the main gate. “I do not like the way that peanut-butter filled tyrannosaurus over there is eyeing me.”
“Can’t. Tonight I have to let Rox try and mend the fence she drove the truck carrying the Ministry of War she stole out from under me through.” Trip sighs. “Should be fun.”
Chapter Ten
There are rose petals on the floor. Okay, not rose petals — the Wasteland doesn’t do roses. So what if they’re just torn pieces of newspaper? There are hundreds of them, so many they’re practically ankle deep. And dozens of candles on the equipment racks lining the walls, casting flickering warm yellow light. And a generous cheese and cracker plate. And a tray of assorted body oils.
And Trip lying there on the Queen-sized mattress in the middle of the floor, all naked except for the sheet demurely covering his knees.
Roxanne walks into the bedroom, lost in her own thoughts, and leans against the door sill, sliding her boots off.
Trip clears his throat and she looks up, finally seeing him there.
A bemused smile spreads across her face. “What’s all this?”
“Hmm, let me see.” Trip lazily rolls onto his side and props his head up on his fist. “We’ve got candles, oils, and post-coital snacks… I’m just guessing, but I’d say it might be someone’s expecting sex.”
“Oh, yeah, right.” Roxanne shrugs out of her minister’s jacket and hangs it on a wall hook. “Romantic evening.”
“Incredibly romantic,” Trip says. “Down right impossible to resist romantic. Which is why I’m just a little confused that you’re not completely naked already. The jacket’s a start, but if that pantsuit isn’t off in the next ten seconds, I’m going to feel really bad about making Hunt-R shred all these newspapers. Not to mention putting him through all that trouble to track down cheese that wasn’t made from rad-rat milk.”
“We might have a problem.”
“Zipper on that pantsuit stuck?” Trip waggles his fingers at her. “Come here and I’ll fix that right quick.”
“It’s not the zipper,” Roxanne says, drawing the zipper down all the way from under her left armpit to her left ankle. “It’s the schedule.”
“The schedule?” Trip asks, sitting up. “What schedule?”
“My schedule.” Roxanne lets the pantsuit drop to the floor. She stands there naked but for the heavy golden chain and double-helix phallus of her office of Mother Superior in the Sisters of No Mercy, her hand gently rubbing the side of her pregnant belly. “Like in that it is packed. Jammed.”
“Jammed with what?”
Roxanne reaches for the epauletted black leather front-laced bustier hanging on the hook next to her jacket. “Ministerial stuff.”
“Ministerial stuff? How could you possibly be jammed up with ministerial stuff? I was Minister of War and I was never jammed.”
“Yeah, but that’s only because you were doing it wrong,” Roxanne says, stepping into the bustier and pulling it slowly up over her knees and then her hips.
Trip’s left eyebrow goes up. “Wrong?”
“Okay, bad choice of words.” Roxanne eases the bustier into place around her torso, favoring her bulging belly. She starts cinching the laces, keeping the ones around her stomach nice and loose. “You did it your way. You tended not to sweat the details. Or even the broad strokes.”
“They call that efficiency.”
“That’s one way of putting it.”
“That is the way I’m putting it.”
“You know me. I’m just a little more conscientious about responsibilities.”
“Anal, I think the word you’re looking for is.”
“Okay, sure, yes.” Roxanne grabs her red patent leather stiletto boots, standing waiting against the wall, and plops down on the edge of the mattress. “But the thing is there are a lot of them. Responsibilities, I mean. Keeps my days pretty well packed.”
“All right, so your days are spoken for. Cool, I get that. But it’s not day right now.”
“Well, you know how my days used to be pretty packed already with Mother Superior stuff…”
“And you haven’t quit the Sisterhood.”
“No. Couldn’t if I wanted to. Sister for life.” Roxanne slips the boots on, all the way up past her knees. “My Sisterhood stuff, those duties haven’t gone away. Wouldn’t want them to. They’re important. Not just to me but to my sisters.”
Trip nods. “I see where this is going.”
“Yep. Since my days are spoken for by Minister of War duties, the Sisterhood stuff tends to speak for my nights. I’ve handed over what I can to Bernice, but there are some things only a Mother Superior can do.”
“Which you have to do tonight? You can’t skip a night?”
“New recruit orgy tonight. It isn’t official if I’m not there to preside, and if it’s not official, the new recruits won’t qualify for their initiate vespers. And the vespers, those are the cornerstones to the entire experience.”
“Can’t do without those vespers, right.”
“I’m sorry, Trip.” She lays a hand on his thigh. “When I made the date with you I forgot about tonight. Can we do this tomorrow? I can free up tomorrow night.”
“I don’t know. The cheese might not keep. Truth be told, it probably is rad-rat milk cheese. You know Hunt-R, always with the shortcuts. And no qualms about lying to me. Wonder where he gets that from?”
“I’m okay if the cheese doesn’t keep.”
“It’s not just the cheese,” Trip says with a shrug. “I’ve got a schedule, too, you know. Jammed packed. And getting jammier.”
“Really?”
“Really. Was gonna give Lock a visit, see what she’s been up to.”
“You’ve got a scheme brewing, don’t you?”
“And it’s a good one, too.”
“You leaving in the morning?”
“I’d have to check my day planner, but yeah, I think that was the plan.”
“You gonna come back, this time?” Roxanne asks. “Or are you going to put even more on my plate and make me hunt you down again?”
“I do like being hunted. Especially by you.”
“Trip.”
“I’ll be back.” He sets his hand on the curve of her belly. “Before this thing pops.”
“You’d better be.”
Trip hops off the mattress and grabs her cloak, hanging over the back of the chair in front of the work desk, piled high with salvaged electronics in varying degrees of disassembly. “Come on, I’ll walk you to the temple,” he says, offering her a hand to help her stand.
“You’re going to try and get a peek at the orgy, aren’t you?” Roxanne asks as she pulls herself to her feet.
Trip hands her the cloak with a devilish half-smile. “What do you think?”
Chapter Eleven
Noon and the harsh Wasteland sun is at its highest and harshest, not a cloud in the pale gray sky. The Festering Wound rips down the cracked and broken two-lane blacktop that runs parallel along the long-ago dried up Susquehanna, its pock-marked depleted uranium armor plates glinting in the sun.
“I mean, what even is the point?” Trip asks, interlocking his fingers behind his head and leaning back. Hand-rolled cig dangling on his bottom lip, the steering wheel makes WIFI mind-controlled micro-adjustments in synch with his rapidly twitching left eyebrow. “Why bother making a sequel if you’re going to rip out everything that made the first one a classic to begin with?”
In the passenger seat, Rudy’s got his T-shirt pulled up and is fiddling with his left nipple, a contented daze over his eyes. “A classic? Really?”
“Vishnu’s receding hairline, are you shitting me?” Trip whips his head around. “You’re honestly going to sit there and attempt to argue that Tron isn’t one of the finest motion pictures ever made?”
“It was okay, dude.” Rudy pinches his nipple, adding a squirt of LSD-analogue into his bloodstream. His dumb smile gets dumber as spectral
colors start creeping in around the corner of his vision like sprinkle cupcake-tipped fingers reaching greedily for his rapidly dilating irises. “Just okay. Those graphics… so low-rez. And the acting—”
Trip interrupts. “Cindy Morgan never looked better than in that skin-tight neon jumpsuit.”
Rudy shrugs and pulls his T-shirt down. “No argument here, but it was so cheesy, and what about that scene in the arcade where the three of them are talking and you can see the mic come up between them? A mic in shot. How did that even make it into a final cut on a frakking Disney film? One they spent actual money on?”
“The 80’s were a weird time, I admit.” Trip sucks his cig down to a lip-burning nub, then flicks it out the window. He immediately reaches into his tux jacket to pull another cig out of the tin, twitching his eyebrow to get the dashboard lighter warming up. “And okay, the film’s got its problems, nobody’s denying that, but you’ve got to look at it on a deeper level.”
“Deeper level? It’s a 16-bit Wizard of Oz riff. That’s as deep as I need to dig.”
“Sure, but this Oz is a place you actually want to spend time in.” Trip lights the cig and tilts his head left, then right, his neck cracking. “The universe it depicts, that’s what makes it a classic. Forget the acting, forget the plot holes, forget even the nonsensical blast-proof warehouse door–”
“Why does a software company need a blast-proof door?”
“Focus on that universe. A world inside a computer. And not just any world—the world the programs in the computer live and work and love and die in. Not a simulation of a world, mind you, but their actual world. The secret world of computer programs–accounting programs, game programs, you name it.”
“Yeah, so?”
“Yeah, so? Do you not get how significant that is?”
“Obviously not.” Rudy waves his fingers in front of his face. “But then again the hippy juice is kicking in. Either that or I’ve actually turned into liquid metal. I haven’t, have I?”
“No, you’re still the same old hairy lump of flesh and bone you’ve always been,” Trip says. “And their world wasn’t something someone programmed. It was internally, logically consistent, with laws and physics and social roles and norms that rose spontaneously up from the primordial calculator ooze and evolved on its own. An entire universe created not by the harsh realities of biological Darwinism but the harsh realities of digital Darwinism.”
