by Ernest Hogan
SMOKING MIRROR BLUES
Or, The Return of Tezcatlipoca
A Novel
ERNEST HOGAN
STRANGE PARTICLE PRESS
ISBN: 9781615096658
Copyright 2018 by Ernest Hogan
For further information contact:
Digital Parchment Services
para mis padres
CONTENTS
Acknowledgments
MY LONG, STRANGE TRIP WITH TEZCATLIPOCA
PART ONE: DEAD DAZED
1. SUNDOWN KISSOFF
2. DON'T TRY THIS AT HOME!
3. ENTER SUPPORTING CLASHES
4. I AM TEZCATLIPOCA
5. NITE FLITES
6. POSTMIDNIGHTMARES
PART TWO: TI-YONG/HOODOO INVESTIGATIONS
7. SMOKEY DAWN
8. URBAN ANGELS
9. FUN, FUN, FUN
10. GETTING OLVIDADOID
11. SCAN AND BE SCANNED
12. AND NOW A WORD FROM OUR SPONSOR . . .
13. PLANET PHOEBE
14. SMOKEY RISING
15. BODY FLUID VISIONS
PART THREE: RECOMBOIZATION
16. INSPIRED SCANNING
17. SMOKEY SINGS THE BLUES
18. HOLLYWOOD HOLY WAR
19. THE BIG COUNTDOWN
20. DIVINE LUSTS
21. MONDO RECOMBO
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
These blues were sung because: Ben Bova opened the gate. Elinor Mavor made her computer have visions, as well as play games. Paul T. Riddell aided with the Dia de los Muertos research, and provided me with a wild ride to Texas. Misha Nógha gave shamanistic advice. Michael Chocholak made music. Ian Hagemann defined recombo. Don Webb, Vance Anderson, and Stephen P. Brown made me an Aztec priest. Richard Kadrey inspired the novelettization. Scott Edelman published the novelettization. Fred DeVita brought Beto to life in living color. The Lunation Libation Society (Rick Cook, Peter L. Manly, G. Harry Stine, and the supporting cast) provided camaraderie under the full moon. My family was always there and kept me connected to Los Angeles. My wife, the fabulous Emily Devenport, is a constant source of stimulation and inspiration. And Tezcatlipoca himself keeps whispering those dangerous ideas into my ear. Don't forget to feed the loas . . .
MY LONG, STRANGE TRIP WITH TEZCATLIPOCA
Ernest Hogan
It is said that Tezcatlipoca, the Warrior/Trickster God of the Aztecs, whispers into the ears of mortals, giving them dangerous ideas. That may explain my life and career. Tezcalipoca keeps hijacking me, talking me on long, strange trips. Sometimes I wonder if I wrote Smoking Mirror Blues – or did he?
My first idea came back in the Eighties. I was writing like crazy, going nowhere, studying preColumbian cultures and mythology, thinking that I was onto something. Maybe I could come up with a real breakthrough. Maybe a guy getting possessed by Tezcatlipoca.
My first concept was for it to be a horror/urban fantasy type thing. Only urban fantasy wasn’t really a thing back then. I noodled around with some fragments and sketched out some of the characters, but it didn’t come to life . .
Then I sold Cortez on Jupiter, put the idea on a back burner. I sold High Aztech, too. Even though I didn’t consider myself a cyberpunk, the world seemed to see me as part of the movement, moment, or whatever it was. And there was an appeal in plugging my preColumbian/Chicano material into a high-tech/futuristic world. Computers had come and taken over my life. Maybe instead of voodoo-esque possession, Tezcatlipoca would come out of a computer, the Internet?
I was feeling good, confident. I wrote up some sample chapters and an outline, the way they said a good professional should in those days. I was having visions of selling what I was then calling Tezcatlipoca Blues being published in hardcover, becoming a bestseller . . .
Only that was when the weird stuff started happening. Even though people wanted and liked my books, Tor claimed they weren’t selling. I’ve written about this before, and am rather sick of the subject. Anyway, Tezcatlipoca Blues was rejected. First by Tor, then by every other publisher that was publishing science fiction in New York.
My agent suggested that I write the whole book, and we try selling it that way.
Meanwhile, I was working as a grade school janitor, getting depressed, drinking beer, watching a lot of Mexican action movies on a local Spanish-language TV station. Not feeling very hopeful. Not being very productive.
Then I heard from Scott Eldelman. He was editing a new science fiction magazine, Science Fiction Age, and wanted something from me, maybe for the first issue. It was like a dream come true. Only one thing was wrong. I didn’t have anything for him.
Then I thought: What about an excerpt from this work in progress?
I sent a section, but Scott didn’t think it worked as a stand alone – thought it needed an ending. I racked my brain, and couldn’t think of one.
Then my wife, Emily Devenport, author of Medusa Uploaded, suggested, “Why not just write the end of the book?”
I knew how it was going to end. Thought about the idea, and realized that she was right. It’s amazing how many time she’s come with an answer for me.
Scott liked it. A “novelettization” titled Tezcatlipoca Blues appeared in the July 1993 issue of Science Fiction Age. The world did not beat a path to my door. Everybody tripped over spelling and pronouncing Tezcatlipoca.
And I couldn’t publish anywhere but markets that didn’t pay much, or anything. I got more depressed. The novel went to places I hadn’t intended. I didn’t think it was ever going to get published. I was beginning to wonder if my career was over.
I stopped trying to think about what would sell, and just vented all the angst that was building up inside me. I felt, like Henry Miller with Tropic of Cancer, that I wasn’t writing a book, but “. . . a prolonged insult, a gob of spit in the face of Art . . .” Kind of like taking dictation from Tezcatlipoca. But then writing a novel can have the same effects as demonic possession.
I shouldn’t have been surprised that, when I did finish, the folks in New York still decided they didn’t want it. They still treat me like the most talented leper they ever met. I started wondering if I was ever going to publish a book – or anything else – ever again.
My bitching and moaning must have been pretty loud, because David Memmott, of Wordcraft of Oregon got in touch with me, and soon a small press edition of what is now known as Smoking Mirror Blues was published.
This, of course, was after a Mormon artist refused to do the cover because of the tantric yoga scene in the open chapter. Did he think that we would insist he paint a graphic depiction of the Dead Man’s Asana? Talk about a twisted imagination.
It came out September of 2001. The world wasn’t in the mood for a crazy Aztec Chicano cyberpunk novel. It actually seemed like it was about to go up in flames.
Somewhere in the chaos, I heard Tezcatlipoca laughing.
Somehow, I started laughing, too.
So what if Western Civilization was coming to an end? It never treated me very well anyway. Might as well keep laughing, and dance on its smoldering grave . . .
And I did my damnedest to let the world know about Smoking Mirror Blues.
Good reviews came in. The people who liked it really liked it. I wasn’t showered in money, but this book seemed to be able to prosper in in the brave new century.
A decade later, I self-published an ebook, and that kept it going. Nalo Hopkinson taught it as part of a university course. Academics write about it in papers and dissertations. And, yes, there are people who just plain like it.
And now, another, new, improved edition is in your hands.
Maybe Tezcatlipoca planned it that way.
And I have a feeling that the trip isn’t over.
Stay tuned for updates . . .
PART ONE: DEAD DAZED
Strange things happen in Los Angeles and the people couldn't understand it.
– Thornton Dial
1. SUNDOWN KISSOFF
Not just as your President, but as someone who cares about you, I strongly recommend that you don't go out into the streets to celebrate Dead Daze this year. The SoCal medianets will provide excellent coverage for all festivities that you can watch from the safety of your own home. You wouldn't want to get caught in any riots like there were last year.
But, if you do find yourself out celebrating this upcoming Dead Daze, please, try to behave yourself, and cooperate with the National Guard and your local police.
*
"For God's sake, Beto," Phoebe Graziano said as whiny as she could muster, "it's Dead Daze, and it's almost sundown and I got this real sumato costume and everything!" She slipped her mask back on over her strawberry blonde hair that was netted down for the occasion – on which she was dressed like a robot-faced Medusa, with a head covered in multicolored snakes that writhed and hissed and stuck out their forked tongues.
Beto Orozco was not turned into stone at the sight.
She did a fashion-model spin to show off her black kimono decorated with blood-red Haitian vè-vè patterns. She was supposed to be some kind of neomythical recombocultural chimera. Real sumato, as all the recombozos and recombozoettes say.
"You know I don't give anybody's damn about God the Generic," said Beto. "I told you I have plans and am not available tonight." He was in his usual stay-home-and-work outfit of an old, faded T-shirt – this one with a baboon off some Egyptian tomb barely visible on the chest – frayed sweat pants, no shoes, his jet-black hair uncombed and sticking out everywhichway like shards of shattered obsidian.
"So, what are you going to do tonight?" Lights in the mouth of her mask lit up as she talked. Cute.
He ran a finger down one of the wings of his Manchu-Villa moustache. "I can't tell you. It's a secret."
"Is somebody in there with you?" She tried to force her way through the door of his conapt.
"No." He blocked her. "Just me and my secret project."
"You have another woman in there, Beto! I just know it! Bet it's that bitch you met on that last trip to Mexico! I knew I shouldn't have let you go!"
"As if you could have stopped me."
"How dare you cheat on me!"
His brown, almond-shaped eyes looked straight through the mask's eye-holes, directly into her blue – framed by dark purple makeup – eyes. "Don't give me that, Phoebe! You know you have yours, so why can't I have mine?"
Her eyes grew icy; the snakes hissed. "Chingow! You know that's different!"
"Is it really?"
The snakes got louder. She did not blink for a long time. "I hate you, Beto! I never want to see your xau-xau latio face again!" She turned around and walked off into the gigantic sun that was as orange as a pumpkin ripe to be carved into a Jack O'Lantern or calavera for Dead Daze. She headed for Hollywood Boulevard.
Beto stared into the sun that was so filtered by the smog that it didn't hurt his eyes. "If only it were true this time."
*
A huge orange sun sets over the purple-grey silhouettes of the L.A. landscape. A cyberanimated Jack O'Lantern face fades into a fanged skull that combines the styles of Mexico and Indonesia. The skull smiles.
"It's getting close to October 31st through November 2nd here in the Pueblo del Rio de Nuestra Señora La Reina de Los Angeles, and you know what that means – Dead Daze! But don't wind up dead this Dead Daze. Let's make these Dead Daze safe, sane and sumato, but no reruns of last year's big mess. Let's all live these Dead Daze."
The skull moves forward. Fade to blinding white.
PAID FOR BY THE AD-HOC COMMITTEE FOR A SAFE, SANE AND SUMATO DEAD DAZE.
2. DON'T TRY THIS AT HOME!
In their office/conapt in a refurbished, burnt-out floor of the building that used to be the Bank of America on Hollywood and Vine, Madam Tan Tien and Zobop Delvaux were celebrating the setting of the sun on Dead Daze in their special way:
They were both naked. Zobop's seven-foot tall, amply muscled, chocolate-brown body was stretched out face-up on an ornate Persian carpet. Tan Tien, an asio woman of indeterminate age stood over him, facing his feet, with one of her little feet on either side of his hips. His large penis was hard and pointing, with a slight tremble, to her glistening vagina, which dripped a bit of her juices as she squatted and took him into herself.
Finally they were locked in the Goddess and Deadman asana. Over the years they had found that this tantric yoga routine was the perfect ritual for Dead Daze. It had everything: recognition of death, celebration of life, pleasure and fear, as if it had been invented in contemporary El Lay rather than ancient Tibet.
*
Knowing that if he slammed the door Phoebe would get a great deal of satisfaction out of it, Beto waited until she had walked out of sight, then slowly, silently pulled the door shut. Then he walked across his cluttered conapt, sat down at his workstation, and waited a little longer. He had been seeing her on and off for a few years, and knew she could change her mind without notice. Eventually he took a deep breath and figured she was gone, at least for the evening; maybe for all of Dead Daze, and hopefully forever.
He flicked the workstation on. It purred and flickered and said, "Whatta ya wanna do now, Beto?" in a sexy, synthesized, feminine voice.
"I'd like to complete the Tezcatlipoca experiment," he said. "Oh, no, not yet – first I should make a call."
"Who'd ya like t'call before completing the Tezcatlipoca experiment, Beto?"
"Xochitl."
More purrs and flickers. "No listing filed that way – couldja give me more information?"
"Try Echaurren. Xochitl Echaurren. She lives in Mexico City."
Purr; flicker. "International call being placed to Xochitl Echaurren. Please stand by, Beto."
"Sumato."
While it rang, Beto stared at his waiting, decorated-with-Aztec-symbols computer. He really should have told Xochitl that he had cloned her nanochip for his experiment, but there had been the chance she would have said no – decent, practical Mexican woman that she was – and he couldn't risk that. He had to do this. It had become an obsession.
The words NO VIDEO AVAILABLE – Mexico not yet having switched to picture-phones – appeared on the screen. Then Xochitl's voice gave her answering machine message in Spanish.
So she wasn't home, or a least couldn't come to the phone.
Where the hell could she be?
*
The three-foot tall figure in the glowing skull-mask was determined to chase Xochitl out of the Alameda Central all the way down to the Paseo de la Reforma, and maybe even all over Mexico City.
"Miss Echaurren," he would say, over and over, "we want to talk to you about the program you have been working on."
She had tried to keep the fact that she was working on a program to simulate gods through artificial intelligence a secret. The concept made some people crazy.
Like Beto.
When she had been fool enough to tell him about it – they had both been naked and her guard had been down – his manic eyes had lit up and he could barely manage to express himself in Spanish:
"Fantastic! AI gods could take the place of imaginary ones – this could revolutionize religion, or at least turn California upside down!"
That was exactly what she was afraid of: people actually worshipping AI gods instead of using them for serious experiments in belief-system mechanics. She worried about it to the point of thinking about it all the time, walking around, seeing dangerous ideas on the faces of strangers . . .
Then the phone calls started:
"Miss Echaurren, we want to talk to you about the program you have been working on."
The first time she
hung up. After that, she started screening her calls.
It was a different voice every time, leaving the same message, from the same script. They would never leave a phone number, just say:
"Sorry we missed you this time. We will catch up with you soon enough."
She had noticed that people on the streets were watching her. And finally, while walking through the Alameda Central, a surrealistic image from the Diego Rivera mural of that park, the dwarf with the glowing skull-mask (as if to start early on the Day of the Dead celebration by doing some North American Halloween-style trick-or-treating) had asked her about the program.
She was soon running down Reforma, and nobody thought much of it.
The Paseo was full of skull-faced figures, monsters and people who were screaming, running and laughing.
It was October 31st, a day on which traditionally in Mexico people would light candles and give offerings of toys and food to the angelitos – the spirits of dead children. But this was the 21st century, and recomboculture was a global phenomenon. Halloween collided with the Day of the Dead, becoming Jaloguin even here in the very heart of Mexico. Someday soon it would become a mongrelized Dead Daze, just like in Beto's El Lay.
At the big traffic circle where Reforma intersected with Insurgentes and several other streets, Xochitl ran into a crowd of masked revelers that were dancing in the street, causing a major traffic jam. Losing sight of the dwarf, she made her way to Dinamarca and dashed into the Metro Station at Avenida Chapultepec.
*
Beto rattled off a message that he thought was clever, hung up, and decided to commence with the experiment.
The time, Dead Daze Night One at sundown, was perfect; but the atmosphere had to be right, too. He ran to his hard files and pulled out all his pictures of Tezcatlipoca: as a handsome young warrior, a wizard with a missing foot, a skull-faced apparition, a complex semi-hieroglyph; all kinds of images of the god, ancient and modern. He gunked them up around the room. Then he wondered about the sound; the booming bass beat from several portable stereos, the crowd roaring and chanting, all leaking in from the streets were good, but he needed more.
