Billy Boy Thorn frowned. “The last time I was swimming I was in a flooded elevator shaft and I thought I’d die and miss heaven. I missed it anyway.”
Venus chuckled. “Hopefully this will be a little bit more relaxing for you this time.” She patted the dashboard again, and said to it, “Could you go a little faster?”
The feeling of the acceleration flushed Billy Boy Thorn with memories. He was driving a huge car. The law was chasing him and the car went off the bridge, flipping over the railing from being at such a high speed, and twirling into the river far below. He was underwater and was accepting of his own death. Then he was in a gondola shooting up the side of a space tower. Then he was soaring past a tiny distant moon that looked cold and horrible. With great speed he was sliced into a thousand strips of living meat.
“Isn’t this fun?” Venus asked. “I love it when we go fast.”
Lady Hatchet shook her head. “It can probably hear you and you’re just encouraging it. We’re going too fast!” She held her hair with both hands. “We’re going way too fast!”
“It’s fun!”
The car passed through a series of tunnels and arches, their glossy surfaces reflecting light and flashing back at them. Billy Boy Thorn remembered when his car was shot with a lightning gun. His car crashed but they rescued him to prosecute his criminal brain. The trial was humiliating since he was already dissected. He couldn’t run, or even scream. “Yeah. Fun.” He remembered blood on the outside of the windshield obscuring his view, before the crash. “Aren’t we going too fast?” He remembered running over the first woman and it was so exciting to him. So he drove on hunting for another, and then another, and then another. He missed most of them but he had a full battery and the city was crowded. “We’re going too fast, aren’t we?” He now started to feel sick. “He heard screams and the window thudding, with crunching bones, repeatedly, from different victims.
“Too fast? Ask the damn car!” Venus laughed. “We’ll go to the camp and see what’s up. If the entire hippistick nation is exfoliating again then nothing will have changed with them.”
“What’s that? What’s camp?”
“Where some of our kids have set up,” Lady Hatchet explained to him. “They don’t like the corporate built city. Some of our kids grew up so fussy. So they made their own camp and we always have to go out of our way to see them anymore. They never come to us.”
He asked, “You’re both mothers?”
“No.” Venus quickly shook her head. “I didn’t mean our kids damn literally. Union worker’s kids. It’s just an expression, don’t be so damn literal. A tribe seems to be the best way to raise kids, anyway. A tribe. Were you a dad on Earth?”
He nodded. “I think I remember it. Those marriages didn’t work out well. I think I was married twice. Such odd memories! Marriage had such odd isolation to it.”
Venus continued, “Earth likes the nuclear family but it’s so inconsistent and isolated, especially for the kids. A tribe is best.”
Lady Hatchet made a sour face. “I grew up where there was no privacy. I think people would rather have privacy.”
Venus smirked. “Earth probably wouldn’t be very happy to see that there are commies in space.”
“Phhh. The only real communism here is with all the machines ganging up on us to try and do everything. The people aren’t so organized and forget how to do anything in a heartbeat.”
Venus added, “These kids don’t want to work, or like our work. And by now they don’t even know what it is.”
“Typical.” Lady Hatchet sneered. “They got all high and mighty and anti-union and anti-clone and anti-everything else on us. They think that just because they’re breeding typically it’s proof of something. Nobody ever told our kids to go breed. Pee-you. Those piggy people are having children just to have something to indoctrinate. They need kids to help reinforce their own goofy strictures and superstitions back to them. Scared people. Scared of their own mortality and they don’t want to live with us in Metroplex even though there’s more than enough room and furniture.”
Billy Boy Thorn said, “That’s why we got married on Earth, too, I guess. You were supposed to have children to take care of you when they grew up. But I didn’t take care of my dad. I don’t remember why.” He remembered his father beating him. He held his bald head. “That was such a wild thought!”
Venus smiled. “I can’t wait to show them a real live clone and watch them all scream. They’re so damn anti-science. They’re so anti-clone. And, also, you’ll see what you’ve been missing. You’ve been missing out on plenty.”
“Missing out?” He asked, “What’s at this camp that Subco Gibeah doesn’t have? Women? I know what that is. I remember now. Damn, such another damn wild thought!”
Venus cackled. “The camp doesn’t have the perverse controls like your city had.”
“Perverse controls?”
Lady Hatchet nodded. “Without the genders making fun of each other, everybody takes themselves too damn seriously. I bet Subco Gibeah was a gray earnest place. Separatists are always too serious. Come to a hippistick party and you’ll see men and women trying to out-carriage each other, and you’ll laugh your clone right off.”
“What’s that?” he asked. “Out-carriage?”
“Liking each other,” Venus explained. “But then feeling superior to each other. Wanting each other while wanting to be special from each other. Finding the other a little gross. Finding the other a bit nummy. Boys and girls together are funny that way. Differences repel and attract all at the same time and contradict each other. What saucy fun!”
“Well said,” Lady Hatchet nodded grandly. “You’ve just described mental illness.”
The car left another cave tunnel and after a few turns drove across a stretch of green lawn of fake grass and stopped in a great warm space on the backside of a waterfall. The people there turned and waved when they spotted it was Lady Hatchet and Venus.
“This is it?” Billy Boy Thorn asked, looking up at high globe lights dangling over hundreds of glowing tents that were set in circles. A few cacophonous children swung from nets and boxes that hung from pipes.
“Careful up there,” Lady Hatchet called to one of the children. “I fell from one of those, once, doing that.” The child ignored her. “Lazy commies. Come look what I found,” she yelled out to the gathering crowd. “Look. Look! Come look, damn you! I found me a living breathing talking Subco Gibeah clone man! Hot damn!”
Billy Boy Thorn looked at the children and was flooded with memories. He had to rub his chest to make the sick feeling go away. He remembered being very small and playing too close to the passing bullet train. As it raced by him it almost sucked him under its wheels but he held onto tall grass and barely survived. “Is this a good idea?”
Eleven Jane, a beautiful young woman in her twenties, walked towards the three visitors. She wore a simple severely patterned blue and white mini dress. Her long ruby hair hung down to her feminine hips. “Hey, you two,” she greeted the old women. Then she glared at Billy Boy Thorn from head to toe, with piercing green eyes. “Sooooo… what are you two up to now?”
Venus smiled. “Clone shopping. Clone chopping. You know how we always get things mixed up.” She laughed bawdily with Lady Hatchet.
Eleven Jane took a step back. “You a clone?”
He nodded. “Yeah. That’s what it seems.”
“You look so… soooooo bald.” Eleven Jane wrinkled up her nose. “A bald gorilla.”
Billy Boy Thorn smiled. He had remembered what a woman was but now that he was standing before a young one he felt his heart stop… and then leap. He couldn’t believe how female she looked. When she looked at him angrily he couldn’t believe how eyes could have such a perfect shape.
Venus laughed. “Hi Eleven Jane, how are you? How are your vegetables growing?”
“The cucumbers mutated again but that just gave the kids something to play with.”
Eleven Jane stopped gla
ring at Billy Boy Thorn. She turned to the old women and tossed a lock of hair behind her ear as if irritated by it, and now everything. “What is this? What have you two done? Why is that dirty thing here?”
Venus smiled big. “Isn’t he marvelous?”
She shrugged her feminine shoulder. “So he’s big and strong and handsome. So what. He’s also a filthy beast, and a fake one at that. It’s a monster.”
Venus grinned. “A very pretty monster.”
Billy Boy Thorn took a small step backwards, not sure what it was about her that frightened him the most, her attitude or glorious body. The female sights of Lady Hatchet and Venus hadn’t confused him like this. Faces in his memory floated by; his mother, his wife, his daughter, a second wife, a second daughter. His murdered victims. Though the memories were very old by calendar years, he felt faint with new flushes of burning guilt.
“Is it a clone?” a boy asked.
“Do they let them out of the puppy mill?” a bearded man asked. “Where’d he come from? The control experiment? Rust! Scary! Is his brain still in there? Let’s cut it open and look around in there.”
Another man said, “He doesn’t look like a puppyfish to me.”
Another man stepped up. “He looks a little bit more than just a man. Is he real?”
Venus declared, “He’s real. A real damn man. Alive. And yes, a brain in there, too. It rattles a bit when you try and talk to it.”
“He’s a lot of generations along in his cloning,” Lady Hatchet explained. “That’s why he looks a bit much.”
Eleven Jane asked, “Are you sure he’s real? Somebody poke him with a stick and make sure he isn’t a hologram.” She looked at Lady Hatchet and smirked. “I know your tricks.”
Lady Hatchet slapped his arm to make it obvious he was there in the flesh. “Neither of us are holograms. We’re really here, for real.”
Billy Boy Thorn looked down at Eleven Jane’s bare feet. Her toes were long but small and beautiful. He looked back up. “Hi!” He blushed.
Eleven Jane turned away from him and hollered towards a balloon tent, “Malbri Three! Look what the dinosaur women brought us! A monster right out of the gerbil wheel!”
“What?” A young man in a simple robe stepped out of the tent but stopped abruptly at the sight of Billy Boy Thorn. “For real? Dude, are you real?” He poked the clone in the arm. “Freaky!”
Venus nodded. “Yes, he’s real for real.” She said to Billy Boy Thorn, “Malbri Three is my favorite hippistick. If it wasn’t for him we’d have poisoned their drinking water long ago.”
He replied, “Oh, then I’m sorry. I’ve been poisoning yours.”
Venus smiled sardonically at him and then continued explaining to Billy Boy Thorn, “Most the kids go hippistick to prove something or other about a life of angst in an asteroid.” Then she turned to Eleven Jane. “I got a real bonifide clone, here. A billy boy. This model now goes by the name of Thorn. Say hi to Thorn.”
“They call me Billy Boy Thorn.”
“Hi Bill.”
“Billy Boy Thorn. I was a senior cop. Thorn is my name and a billy boy is my… was my… proud profession. A cop.”
Malbri Three tried not to look shocked. “It can’t be. I just read the children a story the other night about a clone monster that escaped from the labs. The children ate him before he ate them and saved the day. We hate clones. They have no soul. Why did you bring this monster to us?”
Lady Hatchet scolded the young man, “Your children’s stories are always so anti-science and demon haunted. We all know the clones don’t eat children. As a matter of fact, not to be ironic or anything, but it’s only always the other way around.”
Eleven Jane clamped her hand over her nose and mouth. “Is it safe to have him with us like this? He’s breathing on all of us!”
“If you were gonna catch your death from him you would have years ago,” Venus explained to her. “It’s the same air that circulates all over most this place. At least down here. Do you really trust the air filters? All these years?”
“Look! A clone!” Eleven Jane called to the dozens of hippisticks who were still gathering. “We get to party with a real clone. A cop one.”
“Give the dude some LSD,” Malbri Three said.
“No!” Venus gasped.
Malbri Three looked earnest. “Give him some LSD. I wanna see what a clone does on LSD.”
Lady Hatchet shook her head. “No, dummy, he’s just coming out of what they called wild thoughts. If he tripped out on us now, we’ll lose him to his pillplace.”
“So?” Malbri Three shrugged. “It could be fun to watch him fall off his monorail.”
Lady Hatchet said, “We want to keep him as a hostage for the damn union to use. We’re going to figure out a clone war. Or something using our standard operational procedures.”
Malbri Three asked her, “Are you still trying to get job security?”
Eleven Jane urged Lady Hatchet, “Just quit the union fight and allow yourself to enjoy life before you die. Just give up and live like the rest of us... naturally.”
“No! Nothing is natural. And I want job security! I want to still have my job a hundred years from now, if I have to have something, if work is how the world is going to work, putzing in a factory or something. If the damn robber scientists have their rack still screwed on tight at their age then I want mine! I want to be cloned on and on like this piece of clone art, here. I want a young body! I want to look as gorgeous as you, Eleven Jane. I used to look like you. I was once as pretty as you. And now some stupid years went by and this happened.” Lady Hatchet looked at the back of her bony mottled hands. “It’s horrible! It doesn’t seem fair at all to my way of thinking.”
“Let’s have a bonfire for the clone,” Eleven Jane suggested, nonchalantly flipping her long hair behind her again. “We can cook up some yummy cracker mash with clonehair wine and get to know each other as people, and get real.”
Venus asked her, “Are you still using that pasta crank?”
Eleven Jane narrowed her eyes. “I threw that in the lake. I have limits.”
Venus widened her eyes. “It was fantastic!”
Eleven Jane said, “You can putter about. It’s not for me.”
“How long were you in the fishtank?” Malbri Three asked Billy Boy Thorn, with a bit more condescension than intended. “How long have you been out in the air, dude? If you’ve just been machine plugged for so long then what is there in your head to get to know?”
“I was…” Billy Boy Thorn tried to say, but his mind wandered. Was he ever really a cop or did he just think he’d been? He looked around at where he was now. It was an impossible situation to be where he was now, when he was a cop minding his own business and everybody else’s just a day or so ago. He rubbed his temples. “I don’t know.”
“What was your living conditions like?” another hippistick asked. “Is it true you were all brainwashed?”
“We think for ourselves,” another older hippistick bragged. “We’re a tribe. Is it true you were all made to act like religious rodents?”
A child pointed. “Gerbils in the wheel!”
Another man laughed. “They say you were all just a bunch of retards in there.”
Billy Boy Thorn said, “We were good! We always thought of heaven!”
Malbri Three chuckled. “They really hoodwinked you in there.”
“Now that’s enough,” Lady Hatchet interrupted them. “Give the poor clone a break and don’t be so quick to chop him up like that.”
“Just give him some LSD and we’ll find out everything,” another upheld. Malbri Three now grinned, vigorously nodding with him.
“No!” Eleven Jane loudly cut them all off. “I agree with the old women. A bonfire drumjari will be mind dilating enough. Let’s eat and dance to oneness. All of us!”
“With him?” Malbri Three made a face.
Eleven Jane reluctantly nodded. “We’ve played with robots before. Soooo, we can give a clo
ne a chance to amuse us for as long as he can. Why not?”
Billy Boy Thorn said, “I’m a real human. Really!”
Venus suggested, “Let’s chat up the library and show him a few pages about Earth, first. The one about the change. He doesn’t know what happened since he left.”
“He’s been gone more years than it looks,” Venus said to the hippisticks. She turned to Billy Boy Thorn and asked, “Where did you live?”
“Little Rock Arkansas for most my life, in that very first life.”
“Gone.” Venus sadly shook her head. “Most of North America was just ruined.”
“What happened?” Billy Boy Thorn asked. “What do you mean gone? You mean the desert?”
Venus explained, “The New Madrid earthquake fault broke loose. There was a lot of nuclear and chemical storage all squeezed open making for hundreds of toxic waste dumpsites. It was worse than the pollution that was already there.”
“Redundant death.” Lady Hatchet sadly shook her head. “Those who could then flooded into Columbia and Brazil, mostly. Taking it over before they dropped dead of what radiation had already soaked into them. It can take up to two weeks to drop dead after you get zapped like that.”
“Do you want to see it?” Eleven Jane asked. “We have our own special library here.”
“We don’t tap into the city library,” Malbri Three quickly bragged, nodding towards the city on the other side of the lake. “The Metroplex library is dripping with corporate lies. This is our own filtered library.”
“A commune propaganda library,” Venus scoffed, disdainfully, squinting her wrinkled little eyes at him.
“Better then a corporate propaganda library.” Malbri Three jabbed back. “Our propaganda is better than yours. We have the wisdom of the ages. We have the quotes of great people. You have the history of oil wars, soft drinks and mood pills.”
“Ask away,” Eleven Jane said to Billy Boy Thorn. “Ask about any page.”
He saw zillions of lists of possible files flashing by on a myriad of monitors. He asked it, “Who am I?”
“Has a book been written about you?” the library asked. “Have you written a book about yourself?”
Multitude Page 8
