Outrageous Fortune

by Tim Scott

  “Thank my huge great cock!” shouted a sweating moustached man, suddenly appearing from nowhere in front of my face, then running alongside me with massive effort. “Thank my cock! You’re the Ad Sniffer guy, right?” he puffed. “I’m from computers. Computer’s the game. Frank’s the name. We’ve two Base Ones and a Klimy. I think it’s the Klimy doing the damage in there, although the Base Ones may be eating the Damsen. Hoo! We had one a few months ago. They took out a whole egg!”

  Despite everything, I felt duty-bound to draw a line in the sand here. I knew this sort of person, and this sort of computer jargon, and I hated it. Call it a deep-seated prejudice. Call it just plain stupid, but I pulled up doggedly, bringing our little party to a halt. Then I turned to this guy and said slowly, stressing each word, “I have absolutely no fucking idea what you’re talking about.”

  There was a pause, and I watched as his face tried to pull an expression that was appropriate, but he just couldn’t think of one and his broad smile remained there, with only a slight flickering in his eyes giving away any sign of uncertainty. In his mind, we were friends, compadres. In my eyes, he was the sort of dickhead I had never had any time for. I’m sorry, but there it is. I found, with this sort of person it’s better to cut to the chase. Or ideally, cut to the bit after the chase.

  “You better leave Mister here alone,” said Tom, cutting the pause short. “He’s a job to do, double quick.” And he lugged me away as the moustached man’s voice floated down the corridor after us.

  “Good stuff!” he cried. “Just thank my cock you’re here already.”

  Somehow, I felt Tom and I had bonded over the incident, which was a little weird. We turned a corner to another corridor, where windows looked down onto one of the wide streets in Easy Listening. As I glanced out, I saw a man sitting on a bench smoking a pipe, and a plasi-screen above him with some ad about cardigans that began targeting someone with the name Luke K34. An alarm bell didn’t so much ring in my head as explode, then a variety of other alarm bells came to see what the excitement was about.

  That was the name of the Belgian assassin Caroline had said would come after me to sell me those ludicrous encyclopedias. How had he found me? My brain coughed like an engine struggling on a cold winter’s morning. I had to get that card and just get out of here. Time was definitely ticking.

  “Here’s we are, mister,” drawled Tom, cutting into my thoughts as we came to a couple of pointlessly monumental double doors that gave the impression we were entering a particularly crucial Roman temple.

  Stamped across them in dramatic bulging metal letters, ten feet above our head, it said:

  DECOMMISSIONING.

  32

  The doors sliced apart, allowing a sliver of light to escape, then the gap widened into a blinding door-to-door salesman grin. I squinted involuntarily, and tilting my head down saw a deep wound gouged in the wood of the doors where the Odysseus Hats must have chafed and torn each time they had been wheeled through.

  There was a sudden, unexpected smell of grease and cauliflower, then a faint whisper of music that sounded like a swing band wafted about. I looked at Tom and he nodded faintly, with the serene smile of a cat who not only got the cream, but also quite a bit of the salmon mousse and possibly a couple of large brandies.

  He ushered me through into Decom with a proud chew of his gum, and I realized he clearly felt a part of all this. I moved warily into the glaring curtain of arc light that made it impossible to see anything for ten yards, then stepped beyond into a pool of soft shadow and let my aching eyes readjust.

  We were nestled on a wide balcony flanked by two stone ramps that meandered down on either side. I followed Tom’s gaze and saw far below the familiar little decommissioning areas, each with its own gaggle of machines huddled around, except that everything was turned on its head.

  There was a carnival going on down there now.

  The place was decorated with delicate midsummer party lights and streamers that wound like Shakespearean ivy over everything. People in cocktail dresses were swanning about, and others in less-well-fitting outfits were not so much swanning as waddling like startled ducks. There was an ageing swing band playing with the enthusiasm of a group of teenagers who were more drunk than they ought to be, and a stage area hooped around one of the decommissioning areas, with a banner whirled about it proclaiming: “Our ten thousandth decommissioning! Thank you, boys and girls!”

  And there, marooned and ignored amid the bustle and chatter, was a tired, middle-aged lady with her arms outstretched in the decommissioning machine, and her feet in the clips, simply waiting alone and in confusion.

  Around her in the melee, waiters swooped with canapés and drinks. People mingled gaily, and a little party of officials were huddled on the stage just behind her, laughing at jokes that probably weren’t all that funny as they fidgeted with the nervous self-importance of those about to make a speech.

  “On the stage,” said Tom at last, more to himself than me, and grabbed my arm with a waft of body odor that nearly sent me unconscious. “He’s got his tail in a twozzy,” he informed me at one point on the way down, and I got the feeling this was part of a much larger sentence, but the rest of it was drowned out by the expectant hubbub of the purring crowd. We scooted down onto the floor below, and hit the melee almost at a run, so I was certain we would collide disastrously with one or two cocktail dresses and maybe a few waiters. But a passageway opened up before us—the same way the crowds part impossibly late for a racing cyclist on an alarmingly steep mountain, and I put it down to Tom’s somewhat terrifying presence coupled with his smell. It would certainly have had any self-respecting skunk reaching for the deodorant.

  Chiffon dresses in shiny blues and pinks slipped past, and the ring of glasses and squeals of excited laughter fell around us like blown rose petals. The next moment, I was hauled up on the stage and directed to shake hands with someone who was partially bald. And then someone else. I cried at my brain to catch up with events and still not be dawdling on the images it had seen on the way through the crowd. The men I was meeting had wide business-meeting smiles, firm handshakes, and jackets that reached around them like wrestlers’ bear hugs, betraying, all in all, that they’d had a few too many desserts over the years.

  The second guy took me aside on the stage.

  “Jesus, man. It’s a godsend you were in the building,” he growled, and I recognized him with a shock as the politician Elnor Elnorian—the man who had made the feted corruption speech a few Thanksgivings before. His silver hair looked thinner, and his eyes darker from the plasi-screens. “Not that I mean God had anything to do with it at all. Thank God I’m an atheist, eh?” he corrected himself, staring at me, gauging my character as people in politics do—weighing up my likely beliefs and desires and mentally looking for weaknesses. “My ass saved, though.”

  “Your ass in my hands? That’s a privilege, sir,” I said, not breaking eye contact, and fortunately the comment didn’t get past his thick smile, which was just as well when I realized what I had just said. “What’s the lady here for?” I added, nodding at the back of the woman in the decommissioning stand to change the subject.

  “Probably tried to take over the whole world!” he said, widening his smile to impossible proportions—and, I guessed, trying to inject some humor to cover his ignorance. “Mr. X…I’ve a feeling we’ve met somewhere? X. Did I award you a Sparkling Citizen Kitchen Colander?” I could see his brain ferreting about in his memory and I didn’t like this. We had never met, but I didn’t want anyone to start making inquiries as to who the fuck I was. And I’d certainly never won one of his Golden Colanders, which were handed out to people when he needed to look caring.

  “No, I think I would remember that, sir,” I said. “What’s your problem here?”

  “Yes, good. Right. I’ve caught an ad virus on the way here, the damn thing keeps going off every few minutes, and these zappers they throw at me can’t cope with it at all. You appreciate I
’ve a speech to make, and it’s central to my campaign.”

  “Another of your famous speeches, eh?”

  “Oh, yes. It’s time to reassure the record companies how confident I am in their ability to take us forward into a new era of space exploration. I’m moving the emphasis away from God, you see. He’s only made real by belief after all, isn’t he? So I’m going to stop that belief at the source. Shazam! You see?”

  “I’ll happily leave that kind of thinking to politicians.”

  “Oh, come on! Don’t be so coy, Mr. X. Look, it has an equation: G equals B squared over F,” he said, pointing to a huge sign hanging behind him. “You know what that means? Simple! God equals belief squared over fear. You see that? It’s as simple as that.”

  “That’s a pretty weird idea; a lot of people might think you’re some kind of power-crazy dickhead, sir.”

  “No, no, it’s all proven by professors and cleverer men than us. It’s been through the mill, as they say, and come out solid as a rock. G equals B squared over F. It’s the way the future is going for all of us, so you’d better come along, because the train is leaving, Mr. X.”

  “I’ve always liked walking. A lot.”

  “Well, I can see you’re stubborn as hell, but it’s a great future, Jonny. A future of truth,” he said, slapping me on the back. “Now, let’s cure this damned ad virus, shall we, my boy?”

  “Of course, sir,” I said, nodding and staring at him, trying to force my desire to keep my cover overpower my intense desire to deck him.

  But it was impossible to cure his ad virus.

  The scanner I had merely ate the spores from which people caught the ad viruses, but once in the body it was like a disease. You had to wait for it to run its course while the blood built up immunity. This was first-grade stuff and he should have known it, but I guess he didn’t have much time for actual thinking, being a politician and all.

  “Hold still,” I said, realizing the truth wasn’t going to get me anywhere. I flicked on the scanner and the thing hummed and fussed. Elnor held a powerful eye contact with me, and I felt vaguely uncomfortable until the moment was broken by the scanner detecting a spore on his clothes. It began vibrating excitedly before eating it in its ludicrous way.

  “Ah! Well done!” said another official, barreling up at that precise moment with a rather flimsy woman hanging off his arm. She was wearing more makeup than the average clown.

  “We need more people like you,” said Elnor with unexpected jollity, and I realized he was playing to these people. “Here’s my card. Ring me if you ever need anything. And I mean anything!” He handed it over with a firm hand and flitted back to the little group of officials at the back of the stage, wiping the memory of me away in three short steps.

  I glanced at the card. “Elnor Elnorian. Whatever I said, don’t get any ideas about contacting me, ever, OK? I’m a busy man,” it read in italics. I shook my head. At least he was open about being two-faced.

  “Whole place is full of spores, mister. Chief wants you to sweep it right off, or we might get sued or something,” said Tom suddenly, at my elbow. I nodded, inadvertently making eye contact with the lady in the decommissioning stand. From the balcony above, I had thought she had looked scared and lonely, but from up close I noticed something far more remarkable. There was a strength in her eyes, and a stillness, as though she had already accepted what was going to happen and was not afraid anymore. It was so unexpected and powerful that I paused, but as I opened my mouth to speak, Tom bundled me off the stage and the Ad Sniffer immediately got interested in a spore on one of the waiters. He tried to swat me away with furious indignation as the thing nuzzled under his jacket and began humming with pleasure, but the Sniffer was pretty persistent. It had that one, then leapt immediately on the tail of a woman’s dress. I could hardly control the excitement of the thing.

  And so it went.

  It turned out there were spores everywhere on the floor of Decom, and I realized someone must have released some sort of ad virus bomb in here because I couldn’t go ten feet without finding one. I began to see that discovering one on Elnor Elnorian had not been such a coincidence, after all. The Sniffer started becoming riotous—either not used to dealing with quite so many spores, or it was a rogue one Teb had not quite fixed properly. It began making other satisfying noises and finally, after eating an apparently huge ad virus off a woman in a blue dress, flagrantly burped in her face.

  I’d had enough by then, and I’d finally managed to lose Tom, so I struggled for the OFF button and whacked it before the machine noticed. It took me a second to realize the lights had dimmed and the swing band had halted.

  I scanned the place. I was in a hurry, but something made me hang back as Elnor Elnorian stepped to the stage. Despite everything, he had a certain magnetic presence, and I wanted to hear what the bastard had to say.

  An expectant hush rippled through the crowd, who were buoyed up by the alcohol and ready to applaud anything. The thought occurred to me that many of them might well have been paid to be here.

  “Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, brothers and sisters and…” he paused, with a well-rehearsed twitch of the mouth, “…and that elk they’ve supposed to have trained up in Nebraska to read…” Huge laughter. “Seriously. We all belong to one thing—to this universe. A universe that talks to us with its math and its geometry and its order and its mysteries. A universe that is telling us it is the power behind our lives. We have no evidence for some mystical God—nothing but a lot of stories—but we do have the universe. We can see it every day of our lives, and that’s why I believe the space fund and space exploration are things that are fundamental rights of every man, woman, and child on this earth. To support renewed space exploration and to cut the budgets of all religious institutions is the clear way forward, for all of you.”

  I didn’t like the sound of this. I didn’t like the way it connected to thoughts of assassinating God. Maybe it was a coincidence but it was an uncomfortable one.

  “Technology can only be good. Technology can only serve to smooth our way through this world. I give you these words,” he crooned with faked sincerity. “I give you these four simple words, to hold and caress as each and every one of you moves forward with your own lives. Four words—”

  “Plink! Plink! Fzzzz! Fuck!” cut in a voice from his ad virus deciding to play itself with impeccable timing. “Plink! Plink! Fzzzz! Fuck!” it sang again, as it was picked up and amplified over the whole place.

  Everyone watched as Elnor’s face wrestled painfully with the moment.

  “Hot Ice Cubes!” chirped on the hologram. “Buy some tubes…today!”

  The crowd of officials started clumsily battling with a number of zappers, but the ad virus wasn’t responding—probably because it was a different strain.

  “I’m sorry. Technical problems.” And Elnor smiled aggressively at the audience.

  “Hot Ice Cubes are the technology of next week in your pocket,” ranted on a holographic voice from the ad virus. “Use them to warm up drinks or soup. Keep them for emergencies when you…”

  “Right,” cried Elnor, trampling supremely loudly over the words from the hologram as he tried to rescue the event. “I would like to declare the ten thousandth person here…decommissioned!” And he ceremoniously tugged down a huge lever by the woman in the clamps, then acknowledged a response that didn’t happen.

  Finally, uncertain applause broke out from the party of officials on the stage, which began to firm up as people in the hall became more confident about joining in. And then a slight buzzing of chatter built up.

  I saw the jolt of pain slip into the poor woman’s arms as the machines kicked in, but she blinked for only a second, then seemed to let it go. I watched, transfixed by her strength as she stood there marooned amid this sea of chatting people with her arms outstretched. There was no anger in her eyes, but something calmer. My head started to feel weird again, and the sensation I’d had before of warm melting s
yrup dripping out of spaces in my skull where it had been cooped up began to overwhelm me. I looked up and felt as though the woman was staring straight at me.

  It seemed as though her eyes were burrowing into my head with some message, but I didn’t know what that message was. The people around me began to fade, and I was left in a strange defocused tunnel with just me and this woman at the other end. My brain gave the sensation it was melting like hot cheese, and thoughts began to slide perilously around, like cargo that has broken free on the deck of a ship. It was beyond my control, and yet it was happening inside me. I tried desperately to focus on reality, but all I saw was the woman in the clamps still staring at me, and now she seemed annoyed that I didn’t get what she was trying to convey. My eyes creeped shut, forced down by some outrageous weight.

  I swayed unsteadily.

  An aching pain jabbed at the base of my skull, and then erupted into an unearthly fork of agony coursing through my head. I screamed silently as my life seemed to slip into some other place, and I battled with bits breaking down, cells breaking down, my own self breaking down into its constituent parts. The clutter of things said and things left unsaid swirled inside me and somehow dislodged something pivotal—unleashing a white light that burst through me like it was fracturing open some dark forgotten area of the universe. And in that moment, a chunk of memory tumbled back in one great lump.

  It was a while before I could dissect what was in it; a long second before I could make sense of the images and words and feelings that were there.

  And then I realized what had happened.

  I had remembered about Eli’s brother. I had remembered all the events from the day Jack had died.

  33

  Jonny! Jonny!” I heard a voice somewhere. “Jonny!” And then a tugging at my arm. “I’ve got it! I got the card. Jonny! Come on! Let’s get out of this fucking place. Jonny?”

  I stood motionless, still struggling to reattach myself to the reality around me. The woman was gone from the decommissioning machine now, but a few of the crowd still hung about draining the last dregs of free hospitality from the event, and I had no idea how long I had stood there.