Boy versus Self: (A Psychological Thriller)

by Harmon Cooper

  Closing remarks. The art descriptions in this book, from the techniques to the studio set-ups were taken from The Artist’s Handbook by Ray Smith, which tells you pretty much everything you need to know about technique. I also consulted with an Austin, Texas-based artist named Royce Moreohsheck, who also provided art for the draft version (of which only five copies exist, I think, including the one my grandmother hates). Also to Kay in Scotland – thank you from the bottom of my heart for rereading this book and greatly improving its quality with your suggestions. I wish I could thank you more.

  Finally, the name Boy versus Self comes from the solo project of a musician friend of mine who passed away in 2008 due to a heroin overdose. We recorded two songs together and I’ll never forget the impact he had on my life.

  Call for reviews. This book isn’t part of a series, nor is it part of the sci-fi/ techno thriller books I normally write (which you should check out if you enjoyed this book, start with Life is a Beautiful Thing Book One). If you enjoyed Boy versus Self, I need your reviews to get this piece into as many hands as possible. As you may know, all readers (including myself), look at the reviews before we purchase or borrow a book on Amazon. A book like this, from a new writer, will be overlooked if it doesn’t have reviews. Click here to review the book on Amazon. I can’t tell you how much this means to me. Please review readily.

  If you’d like to get started on the Life is a Beautiful Thing Series I mentioned earlier, sign up for my reader’s group to receive free copies of Book One and Book Two. Yes, two free books. This should get you adequately started on the series. Book Three is out now and Book Four will follow shortly. You can also sign up for my reader’s group at www.harmoncooper.com

  Thanks for taking the time to read this and supporting independent authors. Your reviews and patronage go a long way.

  Harmon Cooper, June 2015

  Writer.harmoncooper@gmail.com

  Reviews for Book One:

  'Read it, then read book two!!' - Amazon reviewer

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  'Mesmerizing, dark dystopian thriller. The action never lets up.' - Amazon top 500 reviewer

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  'If Palahniuk wrote Trainspotting as a dystopian futuristic sci-fi, it would be this book...smart, funny, stylish, quick-moving, and cyberpunk-sexy.' - Amazon top 500 reviewer

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  'Strangely thrilling; imaginative and depressingly fresh, Cooper introduces a freakishly diverse cast of characters in a futuristic setting that is, sadly, a feasible reality in which to devolve.' -Liquid Frost, Amazon Top 100 reviewer

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  'This book will make you want to read the entire series.' - Amazon reviewer

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  'Crazy, funky, mind-boggling view of a whacked out future.' - Amazon reviewer

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  'Imaginative and fast paced.' - Amazon reviewer

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  ‘Love it or hate it – this is stunning!’ –Amazon UK customer

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  'Definitely cyberpunk (William Gibson meets Phillip K Dick) with a side order of Clockwork Orange sums it up.' - Goodreads reviewer

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  'Serious page turner.' -Amazon reviewer

  (Sample) Life is a Beautiful Thing

  BOOK ONE

  Harmon Cooper

  Edited by George C. Hopkins

  Copyright © 2015 by Harmon Cooper

  Copyright © 2015 Boycott Books

  Cover by White Comma

  Edited by George C. Hopkins (georgechopkins@yahoo.com)

  www.harmoncooper.com

  writer.harmoncooper@gmail.com

  All rights reserved. All rights preserved.This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  P.S. Share this book with someone awesome.

  ZERO∞

  **A note from the author before you get started**

  This book hops right into the fray with Meme, a human therapist for Humandroids (read: androids) who is at a bar in LA using what are known as pollutes. He’s just met Nelly, a pregnant woman who will have a huge impact on his life as the series progresses. He is on the verge of meeting Sauria, a powerful businessman and CEO of a company called Executive Executions who will later call for his death. Meme is also about to encounter Yeshi, a Humandroid escort who, like Nelly, will greatly impact his life.

  Whew.

  I tell you this for the sake of clarity. I read loads of novels, and it is always helpful to get a grip on things before diving headfirst into a series, especially one that is as bizarre as Life is a Beautiful Thing.

  Books two, three and four are out now and available here. The Blue Books, Books 5-8, will be released in 2016.

  The madness begins on the next page. Enjoy and strap yourself in.

  --Harmon Cooper

  ONE∞

  Currently, I’m getting wasted off pollutes with a pregnant woman three days before Halloween at POLLUTION CLUB 512 in Los Angeles. Nelly is a tall chick with a silver glaze on her belly caused by a recent application of C-Baby. She’s in a cheesecloth shirt, topless underneath. Conservative compared to most at the club tonight.

  As I speak to her, Nelly closes her eyes and logs into iNet. I really don’t care if she’s paying attention to me or not. I’ll have her soon enough. I reach for a pollution mask, strap it on. Inhale, exhale, repeat. Life is a beautiful thing.

  ‘So, do you want to switch bodies or not?’ I ask her. I push the pollution mask to the top of my forehead. No sense in wasting time when time wastes you. The bulge of her pregnant stomach touches something primal inside me, reminds me of my own time in the womb, a glorious nine months. Rattle dasein!

  ‘I’m talking to my friend Carloza about it,’ Nelly says with her eyes closed. ‘It’s complicated when you’re pregnant.’

  ‘So you’ll think about it then?’ I ask. ‘Let me get the next round.’

  ‘Okay, just a little though.’

  I set my pollution mask on a hook in front of the bar. The mask resembles a plague doctor’s mask with emerald polypropylene eye lenses. It has a long beak-like nose to allow excess pollution to linger. The nose is connected to a series of distributor cables tucked under the bar. The designer ones are made from real leather and on some occasions, endangered animal skulls and other fine materials.

  I glance back at Nelly. She reaches for her mask and pulls it down over her forehead. She’s calm and collected, ready to inebriate. There’s something different about her gait, as if she isn’t used to coming to this pollution club or perhaps, not used to the commotion on the ground floor level. Intriguing to say the least, fascinating to say the most.

  ‘I’ll have one Naked Lunch and one Loathing Hunter,’ I tell the bartender. He pulls out one of his dreadlocks and starts cleaning the inside of a shot glass with it. He positions the dreadlock above the first shot glass. An antifreeze-colored liquid trickles out of the end of his dreadlock. Nothing like getting high off fresh pollutes.

  ‘You want an Ayahuasca topper?’ He looks at me through a pair of old leaks.

  ‘Sure.’ I nod towards Nelly’s stomach. ‘It’ll do the baby good.’

  The bartender pours the drinks into a grimy tube connected to a series of pipes attached to the bar. I hear a hissing sound as the drinks are instantly vaporized into a fresh pollute. I point to the tube connected to Nelly’s pollution mask. She nods and pulls her mask over her face.

  We inhale to exhale.

  TWO∞

  Let’s get this out of the way.

  You’re a tall person, or maybe you’re short. Perhaps you’re between tall and short. You’re a fat person who is skinny at heart, or a skinny person who wants to be larger as to appear more intimidating. You’re a mixture of tall and fat, fat and short, skinny and tall, or simply medium sized. Nothing wrong with being medium-sized. You are almost above average and we’re both mediocre.

  You’re my grandmother on the verge of her seventy-sixt
h birthday, five hundred and thirty-two in dog years. You’re my ex-girlfriend who is mad at me for breaking up with her over iNet. You’re Columbian. You’re a mix between Irish and Brazilian. You’re a protomartyr with a penchant for self-righteousness. You’re white and your grip on the world has finally started to subside. You’re Asian. You’re a librarian and you have a small pen in the shape of a Kalashnikov. Your mother is from Malaysia. Your father is from Niger and he rode velocipedes as a child. You were born in Melbourne and are a closet kangatarian who is into auto asphyxiation.

  You’re unique, you’re angry, you’re patriotic, you have an addiction, you don’t give a shit about politics, you love your country, you’re racist, you’re funny, you’re a thief, you’re good in bed, you’re a war veteran, you believe in magic, you aren’t sincere, you think too much, you say too little, you’re pathetic, you love your television, you hate your country, you routinely French kiss your spouse, you’re a sex offender, you loathe your brother, you dance while no one’s watching, you listen when no one’s speaking, you’re going to die tomorrow (goodbye!), you have a long life to live, you’re aggressive, you believe the fortunes in fortune cookies, you worship God and despise the heathens, you day trade in crypto currencies, you’re the ninety-nine percent, your mother is dead, you’re a virgin, you have an eating disorder, you’re lactose intolerant but you always crave cheese, you suffer from coulrophobia, you have traveled the world in search of nothing, you were born over international waters, your uncle is nuts, your sister is getting married soon, your half-brother sells frozen yogurt for a living, you’re a victim of senescence.

  You’re at least one of these things and I’m at least two. On a good day, I’m three. Remember that.

  The pollution club has a dance floor designed by a Mongolian immigrant named Batbold. The ceiling has over two thousand black lights interspersed with strobe lights. The corners of the club are tenebrous and mysterious, a perfect place to fuck or be fucked. In the center of the floor is a cream-colored stupa adorned with mirrors. On top of the stupa are light-up eyes with multifarious lasers that respond to the choons. The walls are coated with velvet speakers and pencil-thin LCD screens. Boom-boom goes the bass as people lose face.

  The floor tilts backward and forward, increasing the chances of vomiting. Smart enough to realize this, Batbold built a vomit trough on both sides of the dance floor. The vomit funnels into a cement truck outside, where it’s churned until morning comes. The following day, it’s freeze-packed at a factory on the outskirts of LA and shipped off to Third World nations under the highly successful Vomit-For-Petrol Program started by the UN.

  All around the dance floor, people perch like long-nosed gargoyles inhaling pollutes from pollution masks. No one sits. Instead, people squat on plush cubes stained with three-dimensional world currency symbols that change colors every couple of minutes (they’re updated every time a currency gains or drops in value on the global market).

  Popular pollutes such as Burberry Third World Exhaust, Prada Stink Bomb Bloody Sundays, White Comma Lead-Based Paint, Marc Jacobs’ Sinsemilla and Clive Christian’s Imperial Atrocity are pumped into various pollution masks. The pollute clouds mingle with the sweaty bodies on the dance floor. They create an odor that is instantly orgasmic. Delete occhiolism.

  Almost everyone wears masks on the tilting dance floor. The DJ, in a caged booth that sits atop the stupa, wears a fluorescent Guy Fawkes mask. All the other masks are various degrees of frightening or anodyne – this shit cray!

  As I dance with pregnant Nelly I notice a Lady Gaga meat costume, a Steve Jobs with an apple in his mouth mask, a Minion mask, a Jennifer Lopez booty mask, a zombie Osama Bin Laden mask (with oozing bullet wounds!), A Putin mask shaped like a dick, a classic Cheney snarling mask, a flip phone mask (which is scarier than it sounds), an Angela Merkel mask (also scarier than it sounds) and a Justin Bieber after puberty and before extreme alcoholism mask. Tonight’s pre-Halloween party theme is the early twenty-first century. Long live the aughts!

  The people that don’t wear masks are generally naked or have their bodies painted in elaborate ways. As is popular with the times (at least in ‘Murica, at least in LA), most of the women have a thick nest of pubic hair with braided strands. The men have a straight line shaved from their pubic region to the base of their cocks, a style meant to elongate the appearance of an erection while dancing. Every able-bodied male has the strip, including myself. No one cares about nudity anymore, especially this close to All Hallows’ Eve. Confirm and conform.

  I’m wearing a pair of jeans, a body-switcher necklace and a shirt that has been unbuttoned all the way down to the last button. The hardest button to button. Suave and sophisticated, muy guapo I am. On my head is a military cap with the words ad undas written in black light responsive paint on the back of the hat. I have no idea what it means, but a guy wearing a plastic Satan mask complimented it as he pinched my ass.

  In case you think I’ve forgotten, I’m still interested in switching bodies with pregnant Nelly. I just need to find the right time to ask her again. I admit, earlier, I might have been a little too assertive with my request. Duly noted. With a few more pollute shots and some time on the dance floor, I figure I’ll be able to take her back to my flat and trade bodies before the ass crack of dawn shits another day on LA.

  I spot Nelly navigating her way through the tilting dance floor. She is def the hottest pregnant woman I’ve seen in weeks. She has a pair of white contact lenses on and an elaborately jeweled neon bindi glued between her eyebrows. Her hair is wrapped in a bun and held together by a light-up chopstick that blinks with a red Coca-Cola advertisement. A skirt hangs from beneath the bulge of her belly to a foot above her kneecaps. Modest. With the C-Baby applied to her stomach, I can see her fetus squirming under the intense black lights. It’s a girl, something to be proud of. The species must live on. I take a breather and catapult myself towards a free pollution mask. Mouth-to-mouth that ego!

  Note to Reader – it’s hard to run on a tilted dance floor. As I near the edge, my knees buckle and I fall forward. I catch the arm of a muscular mustached man wearing a checkered top hat and a flashing bowtie. He slaps me across the face and then hugs me, laughing maniacally. I can taste my blood and his sweat on my upper lip. He licks my chin and bites my earlobe. I push him away, step off the dance floor and reach for a pollution mask.

  ‘I’ve never kissed a black man!’ he screams over the booming bass.

  Neither have I.

  The masks on the dance floor have a little touchscreen keyboard attached so you can tell the bartenders working in the other room what kind of shot you want. There are also apps that instantly send your order, but I like going manual from time to time. I type in LoathHunAyaTop and a blue light on the tube flickers twice. It turns green. Credit approved – a feeling that will unite humankind for centuries to come.

  Thirty seconds later and I’m inhaling my favorite pollute. In a haze, I push the mask to the top of my head and look out onto the dance floor. I catch Nelly dancing with a short woman. She’s giggling and swaying left to right feverishly. The baby churns in her pregnant stomach… she must be eight months pregnant at least! My sweet lord is nature beautiful!

  ‘That’s my body,’ I say to a fat man wearing a Burger King crown. His belly is pulled up by a pair of red suspenders, allowing me to see his nether regions. He’s the first man I’ve seen in a long time without a strip shaved through his pubes. In place of the strip is an equal sign. Can you believe that? Who’s equal these days!? Who’s ever been equal? What’s he thinking? Even the President has a strip!

  Maybe he’s on the verge of a new fashion trend I’m yet unaware of. Instinctively, I want to close my eyes and log into iNet and image search ‘new pubic hair styles’. I refrain from GoogleFacing impulsively because I don’t want him to think I care. Never let someone think you care. The less you care the better you fare. Fake it ‘til you make it or beat it ‘til you can beat it.

  Th
e man turns to me and spits a piece of gum into his hand, ‘Do you want to switch bodies?’

  Fish lip jiggle tits. He shows me the bubble gum, his flush face beaming with anticipation. The gum has a few iridescent blue specks in it. A body-switcher. I’ve never seen such a clever body-switcher before. I’ve seen used soda cans, chewed pencils, bent thumb tacks and empty make-up containers, but I’ve never seen a piece of gum. Personally, I use a guitar pick (which is currently hanging from my neck).

  ‘You can chew it?’

  ‘No, no,’ he says. ‘I just keep it in my mouth under my tongue. I wouldn’t actually chew it. The name is Sauria, by the way.’

  Sauria is definitely into something big. He must have purchased the device illegally in Hong Kong. I’ve read many articles about the illegal body-switching technology they have there. He must switch bodies all the time. Maybe he works for the FCG. He is fat enough to at least be on the city council. I eye the man suspiciously, not sure what to make of him. The ends of his smile disappear into his chubby pig cheeks.

  ‘Do you work for the FCG?’ I ask him point blank.

  He nearly takes a swing at me. ‘Do I work for the Federal Corporate Government? Is that what you’re asking?’

  ‘Yeah…’

  He changes the subject. ‘It sure was sunny today.’ He pulls his pollution mask over his face and takes another swig. He’s puffing on some Japanese stuff called Uniqlo Wet Dream Poi.