Corpus Chrome, Inc.

by S. Craig Zahler

  “I cannot believe that I am in New Queens on a Saturday afternoon!” R.J. the Third complained to Champ as they walked up the cracked, neglected and noisome street. “I would not be surprised to learn that Architect is protesting my presence here by brutally knocking his head against a pillow. A firm pillow.”

  “It’s that one, right?” asked the garbage man, pointing to a huge gray and blue building that looked like it belonged in a post-apocalyptic world where the only available protein was human flesh. (The only other time that he had seen the edifice was during the clandestine mannequin dropoff, which had occurred four nights earlier.)

  “Yes, that is his lair.”

  The garbage man, clothed in jeans and a t-shirt that read The messiah is here. Right here., and the popinjay, clad in silver, strode toward the building, upon which swatches of peeled paint hung like the cracked tongues of sick canines.

  “Sagesse couldn’t fix it up a little?” inquired Champ. “Looks like a holocaust.”

  “You are a fool, Champ Sappline!” R.J. the Third pointed to the edifice and stated, “This abraded shell…this foreboding façade…this dilapidated husk—yes, that is the most apt description—this dilapidated husk in the middle of the most wretched place on planet Earth—I speak of New Queens—”

  “Figured.”

  “—this dilapidated husk is engineered to disguise the illicit honeycomb within.” The popinjay scratched his short black hair, fingered the trio of rings on his big nose and spat.

  Walking east, the duo avoided gum, cans, milk cartons that had green fur, chicken bones, toilet paper, towels, tampons, a towel that looked as if it had been used as a tampon, urine-filled paint buckets, a cabbage that resembled a rotten head, a defunct exercise bike, half of a sneaker, a flat basketball and a dead turkey pigeon that had been blinded by bleach.

  “New Queens is in dire need of some fine garbage purveyors such as yourself,” observed R.J. the Third.

  “They shouldn’t’ve pissed off the union.”

  Champ’s lily beeped, and a demure female voice said, “Incoming call: Potato O’Boyd.” This was the third time that the old Irish American had beeped in the last twenty minutes, but the garbage man refused to answer. He had not spoken to any of his father’s friends since the night of the fire and was wary of revealing the location of the mannequin to anybody: Corpus Chrome, Incorporated had called nine times, and their most recent message intimated that their next action was an in-person visit, which would be supervised by police officers.

  At the concrete stoop of Sagesse’s building, the duo climbed the steps to a rusty hinged door. The air smelled vaguely of semen.

  Champ asked, “Does he know that we’re—” but stopped his inquiry when the door slid ajar. The points of two chopsticks emerged from the centimeter-wide opening and snapped together like the mouth of an alligator.

  “Payment,” said a girl from inside the building.

  The chopsticks reopened.

  “Let me see my dad first.”

  The chopsticks retracted, and the door slid shut.

  “Hey!” objected Champ.

  R.J. the Third eyed the garbage man and said, “I think you shall have to pay him first.”

  “What if he broke my dad? I’m not gonna pay that guy if he screwed him up.”

  “Whether or not his enterprise was successful, Sagesse did many hours of labor at your behest. His compensation, therefore—”

  “That’s a bunch of crap,” said Champ, withdrawing the money card into which he had transferred all of his savings.

  The door slid ajar, and the two chopsticks returned, clicking thrice. Sighing through his nose, the garbage man decided that he would pay, but that if he was unsatisfied with the Frenchman’s work, he would take the card back one way or another.

  “Fine.”

  Champ extended the green plasticore rectangle and had it snatched from his fingers by snapping chopsticks.

  The door shut, remained closed for ten seconds and opened wide, revealing Sagesse, a large black French fellow who had tiger-striped dreadlocks. Securing a belt around his bright red Japanese robe, he said, “Enter.”

  Champ and R.J. the Third walked into the anteroom, and a Japanese girl in a cheetah bikini manually shut the door behind them.

  “Follow.”

  Sagesse walked across the varnished hardwood floor into a hallway, quiet as a feline, and the pair from Nexus Y followed.

  “Were you able to get him offline?” Champ asked the tiger-striped dreadlocks that hung down between the large man’s shoulder blades.

  No response issued from the mouth within the ropy hair.

  Champ’s lily beeped, and the demure female voice said, “Incoming call: Butch Goldberg.” Again, the garbage man let the caller go to his reservoir.

  Walking along the hallway, the trio passed a framed animated poster for The First and Final Rocket, upon which Honcles the homunculus fought the mechanical bird on the titular vehicle’s windshield, observed from behind the cracked glass by the black scientist, Arthur, and his white-haired father. For reasons that were most certainly related to his own shortcomings, the image from R.J. the Third’s (self-proclaimed) meisterwerk filled Champ with a deep melancholy.

  “Would you like for me to put my signature upon this fine artifact?” the popinjay asked the tiger-striped tendrils.

  “No.”

  “I appreciate that you wish to keep it in mint condition.”

  Sagesse walked through exposed bricks that were actually a hidden (and perfectly sculpted) living wall. The duo from Nexus Y transcended, and behind them, nanobuilders crackled.

  Champ smelled copper, filaments, smoke, oil, rubber, acids and molten plastic while his eyes adjusted to the dim blue lighting of a cavernous enclosure that had once been a brewery. The far wall was a honeycomb of plasticore storage units, which could be accessed by skiffs, catwalks and ladders. In the illuminated cubicles, the garbage man saw six foam-rubber cars, twenty mote aquariums, eight bubble mopeds, a gold-plated lion skeleton, an airborne riot wagon, a famous painting of fat women, a pile of guns, a bisexual humpball and several hundred plastic crates that were decorated with Japanese flags.

  “Where’s my dad?” asked Champ, firmly.

  Sagesse walked toward the honeycomb. “Follow.”

  Irked, the garbage man strode behind the French fellow and the popinjay. The foam floor absorbed the sounds of their footfalls.

  R.J. the Third said to Sagesse, “A katana—a samurai sword—would wonderfully complement those robes that you have on.”

  No comment emerged from the pile of tiger-striped dreadlocks.

  Champ’s lily beeped, and the demure female voice said, “Incoming call: Mikek Ghentz.” The garbage man could not remember the last time that he had received five calls in an hour, and at that moment realized that something must be wrong. Double-tapping his lily, he answered, “Yeah?”

  “Are you watching the news?”

  “Never.”

  “Is your father okay?”

  “I’m at…the place…right now. This is the first appointment I could get with the guy.”

  “They blew up CCI,” said Mikek. “Did you know? About an hour ago.”

  “What? Who did?”

  “Terrorists. They destroyed it. And then all of the mannequins…their heads….” The driver hesitated. “Their heads exploded.”

  Fear seized Champ as he followed Sagesse and R.J. the Third onto the railed skiff. The French fellow twisted the lift dial clockwise, and suddenly, the warehouse floor dropped away.

  “They’re calling it genocide,” said Mikek.

  Dizzied by the news, Champ gripped the rail to remain upright.

  The driver gently inquired, �
��Is your dad…have you seen if he…if he…?”

  “I’ll call you,” the garbage man said and then cut the connection.

  Rising, the magnetically buoyed skiff passed the Japanese-flag-decorated crates, two bubble mopeds and a stack of mote aquariums, each of which had a dent in the same place (the top right corner) as did the unit that R.J. the Third possessed. Sagesse then twisted the dial counterclockwise, stopping the platform in front of a darkened cubicle.

  Sweat glazed Champ’s face, and his chest thudded.

  The French fellow whistled a C-sharp and said, “Ampoule.”

  An orb in the ceiling of the enclosure illuminated. Pure white light glinted upon myriad crisscrossed wires, an almost visually incomprehensible metallic tangle.

  Squeezing the skiff rail with both hands, Champ surveyed the chaos. A fire-blackened chromium torso and a matching left arm were suspended in the metal latticework as if caught in a spider web and a pair of disembodied legs knelt in the left corner, proffering more wires. Against the right wall were an acid-filled bucket that was labeled “Bugs, Transmitters & Receivers” and a table with a score of microsurgical tools, in the center of which sat the mannequin’s head.

  The skull was intact.

  Relieved, Champ relaxed his grip upon the balustrade and exhaled trapped air.

  Sagesse pointed to Eagle’s head. “Offline.”

  “Did I not tell you that Sagesse was the master of extrications?” R.J. the Third said, in an effort to win himself a few accolades.

  “Yeah. But…but my dad’s a mess.” Champ gestured at the chaotic room that was his father.

  Sagesse shrugged.

  “The brain’s still frozen, right?” asked the garbage man.

  The French fellow nodded an affirmation, his dreadlocks stirring like the trunks of huddled elephants. “Oui.”

  “Can you put him back together?”

  “Two thousand sixty.”

  “Globals?” asked Champ, surprised by the low price.

  “Year.”

  “You can’t fix him until twenty-sixty? No way. You’ve gotta be joking.”

  The French fellow refuted this statement with a shake of his head, his dreadlocks stirring like the fronds of rainforest trees.

  “Sagesse is not inclined toward japery,” informed R.J. the Third.

  Champ was furious. “This is fucking unbelievable.”

  “Believe,” said Sagesse.

  The garbage man shouted, “That’s it!” and clenched his right fist.

  R.J. the Third clapped a hand to Champ’s shoulder and said, “Before you launch that fist of yours, I would like to remind you that Sagesse is the man who dismantled your father and, very likely, the best—if not only!—man who can rebuild him. Perhaps also ponder that Sagesse is far, far larger than you and a Negro.”

  Champ stuffed down his anger and asked the French fellow, “Can you maintain the liquid nitrogen until then? For a year and half?”

  “Of course.”

  “Fine.”

  Sagesse whistled a C-sharp and said, “Arret.”

  Darkness enshrouded the metal abstraction.

  Epilogue I

  The Limitations of Flesh

  Summer, A.D. 2059 (One year later)

  A lithe black woman who was dressed in a knee-length corduroy shirt that had bursts of white wool around its collar and sleeves took Miss Karlsson’s hand and kissed her on the mouth. Snapdragon stood at a nearby drinking spigot, taller and thinner than he had been a year ago, watching the two beautiful giants.

  The stranger pulled away from the instructor, glanced at the gawking twelve-year-old and said with her purple-painted lips, “Hello there.”

  “Um…h-hello.”

  “You must be Snapdragon. I’ve heard a lot about you.”

  “I didn’t do it!” defended the Asian boy, who then ran down the hall, past myriad cubbies, through a living wall and across tuffgrass, toward the yellow foam-rubber car within which sat his father, eating cinnamon-flavored peanut elephants. In the back of the vehicle sat Autumn, shaking her head and mouthing something that might have been “You are great!” but wound up being “You are late,” when she repeated it to him ten seconds later.

  Snapdragon hugged and kissed his father, but was careful to call him “Dad,” rather than “Daddy,” in front of his female friend.

  “Sleepovers are the best,” the boy said to the Jewish girl. “It makes everything much funner.”

  “More fun.”

  “We agree.”

  * * *

  Sitting on the bed beside Snapdragon, Autumn separated the herbivorous dinosaurs from the carnivorous ones and said (not for the first time), “These shouldn’t go together.”

  “Maybe they can teach each other? The meat-lovers can show the other ones what they’re missing.”

  The girl did not seem to care for this idea. Methodically, she divided the dinosaurs by their culinary inclinations and then sorted them by size and estimated intellectual capacity. The boy watched, enjoying the way his guest pursed her lips when she ruminated.

  “Snapdragon?” inquired Autumn, her eyes focused upon the spiky terminus of a stegosaurus tail.

  “That one’s Roger. I changed his name from Peter, which’s what it said on the box.”

  “Do you like Elizabeth?”

  “My stuffed penguin? Of course. She’s best friends with Alfred the puffin.”

  “I’m talking about the girl in our interaction session,” clarified Autumn.

  “Liz Cheung?”

  “Yes. Her.”

  “She’s okay,” said the boy, shrugging. “She wants to hang out.”

  Autumn gauged Snapdragon for a moment and then turned her gaze to a tyrannosaurus rex that held a flute in its tiny arms. “Do you think she’s pretty?”

  “For a tyrannosaurus.”

  “Not that. Elizabeth. Do you think she’s pretty?”

  “She’s okay.”

  Autumn fixed her brown dress, folding her real and special legs beneath its hem. “She was wearing shorts at Ezekiel’s birthday party.”

  “Ezekiel’s hamster is incredible.”

  “I think she likes you,” said Autumn, scrutinizing the shell of an anklyosaurus who wore sunglasses. “A lot of girls look at you now.”

  “Because I got taller. They can see me better.”

  “They think you’re cute,” said Autumn, her cheeks turning scarlet.

  This information made Snapdragon nervous. “Um…wanna watch m.a.?”

  “I would enjoy watching something that’s both topical and educational.”

  “As long as there’re some robots.”

  * * *

  The twelve-year-olds went into the den and sat upon the air bench, their shoulders and legs touching. (Snapdragon was glad that his new jeans and King Monster t-shirt did not have any stains upon them.)

  Once the test pattern finished, the boy whistled a C-sharp and said, “Search reservoir: Topical; educational; robots.”

  Rendered upon the stage in three-dimensional letters was the following:

  Top Recommendation for Search: Topical/Educational/Robots…

  Speech given by Steven Cord on the night of August 31, 2059, at the Corpus Chrome, Incorporated Memorial.

  “It’s some dumb guy talking,” said Snapdragon.

  “I would like to watch that speech.”

  “It’s gonna be boring. Crazy boring.”

  “We can watch something that’s more exciting afterwards.”

  “Deal.” Snapdragon whistled a C-sharp and said, “Play.”

  Rendered upon the stage by three hundred thousand flying pixels was
>
  a kidney-shaped chrome dais. The platform was the size of a full city block, and its perimeter was decorated with thousands of disembodied mannequin hands. The upraised appendages clutched spheres of blue light that illuminated the myriad spectators who surrounded the memorial.

  Seated alone upon the raised platform was a weirdly shaped person.

  The pixels dispersed and then rendered

  the misshapen individual on the dais. The fifty-six-year-old man was clothed in a chrome-thread suit and lying on his back atop a buoyed divan. His face was covered with burns, his scalp was blistered and he lacked his left arm and leg. In the socket beside his blue right eye was something that resembled a prune. Tubes connected him to buoyed cylinders that contained fluid, tissue, oxygen, lungs and intestines.

  The weirdly shaped man said, “Lawrence Cord never felt the need to explain himself or his company to the public, but I do feel the need to defend his legacy on this day of remembrance, one year after the tragedy.”

  “I remember when that happened,” said Snapdragon, his voice freezing the pixels in the mote aquarium. “Smelled like lighter fluid for a week. Resume play.”

  “My name is Steven Lawrence Cord.

  “The founder and president of Corpus Chrome, Incorporated, Lawrence Robert Cord, was my father.”

  All around the dais, the spectators were silent.

  The misshapen man continued, “Before the dedication, I would like to clarify a few things about the tragedy and also about Corpus Chrome, Inc. I have released several statements to the media, but because of my injuries on August thirty-first, I have been physically incapable of speaking until now.