LERISTORY -- Episode One
"That's Entertainment"
ScottoThere came a point in her life when it became clearly apparent that family life was ultimately not as entertaining as it could be.
It wasn't her oppresive parents, and the sado-incestuous brands of techno-torture they employed to at once keep her in line and supplement the family income. It wasn't the taunting and torment she received at the hands, feet, and teeth of her maniacal siblings, all of whom had at least one more reason to be alive than she. It wasn't her complete, forced isolation from the rest of culture at large, and the ridiculously ominous and tiny room she lived in when her shows were over, and it wasn't even the lack of table service, the way food was hurled into the room sans plate, bowl, fork, and glass, so that she might just as well wear her food as try to eat it.
Nope. Wasn't any of that. After all, heck, you could drop into a routine like that, and really, if it's all you've ever known, who says it can't be enjoyable? Not her. She can groove with the best of 'em.
It is something else, some nag, some -- dare I say -- existential twinge, some metaphysical beacon that occasionally blinks behind her forehead like a little supernatural LED. She sees it mainly when they apply the high voltage, right at that point in the show where they literally fry all of her clothes off for the benefit of the assembled grunges. She hesitates to give this little flash any credence, she knows the theories behind the shock, heck, part of the torture was an oh-so-explicit description of the exact method of torture before the actual event, let you sit and stew, dagnabit, but her parents are professionals. And her father's stereotypically leering visage is replaced by a twinge, a beacon, an LED, a whatchamacallit, that says to her in not so many words, "Hey, what's a nice girl like you doing hooked up to monstrosity like that?"
But it fades, of course, that's what you'd expect, they take the power away, and there it goes. And yet, needless to say, she can't just forget, heck, if she could, it wouldn't be torture at all. She knows it's there, or rather, she gnows it's there, waiting for her to answer. It's a kind of bitter irony that the only time she's asked the question is precisely the time when she's powerless to answer -- that electricity takes hold of you in so many ways, and there's just no arguing. And she doesn't thing to ask, "Yowsa, what kinda way is this to live," she actually looks forward to the moment when they'll jam those bare wires under her skin, so that she can maybe, fucking once at least, squeeze out a tiny, pathetic, little "Help," just to see what would happen.
It's raining like a mother fuck, to use the colloquial jargon. It's raining just like a mother fuck might rain, if mother fucks were actually entities that involved themselves in precipitation as a matter of course. It's a smelly, dirty kind of rain, the precipitation of the accelerated industrialized world at large, creating grime on his coat as he slides through the streets. He's very slick, of course, and it's not at all inappropriate to say that he does in fact slide through the streets, through the throngs of grunges who inhabit the Perimeter (TM). Granted, he's not slick enough to live under the Dome (TM), but he's just slick enough to stay out of the Camps (TM), and that's good enough for him. He had the word "cyberpunk" tattoed on his arm back in 1993, and he leaves it there, for old time's sake. That was a time, of course, when damn near everybody thought it'd be groovy as hell to "jack into the Matrix" and "cruise through cyberspace" -- fucking cyberspace. He giggles at the thought.
Gotta get inside, get some sustenance, find a power port to plug his Disposable Terminal (TM) into, maybe read the news if he gets a break. The makeshift -- what did they used to call 'em -- ah, yes -- shantytown, Hooverville, Global Village that surrounds the Dome -- completely surrounds the Dome -- is a sprawling, desperate Entity Unto Itself. As in, the streets have eyes, the walls have ears, the people have diseases, and the food has no spices, it's just that bland sort of "Oliver Twist" shit you'd expect from a Tibetan monastery, back before the Tibetans all quit their bodies and headed for Parts Unknown (TM). There's a row of entertainment shacks ahead, and he decides it's been long enough since he's had an erection; destination sighted, he slides toward it.
There's a pug-nosed brat at the door, wanting money; nobody's looking, so he jams a Stimstick (TM) under the kid's chin and "accidentally" knocks him unconscious. Should he wake up any time in the next 24 hours, he will think his name is "Cecilia"; those Stimsticks are the craziest thing. There's a bar in the back with some kind of stew-thing going in a giant pot, and a stage at the front with a big gaudy neon sign above it that says "See The Tortured Distress Of LORELEI!" And he thinks to himself, "Maybe I'll do that. Maybe I'll see the tortured distress of Lorelei."
He sidles up to the bar, orders sludge on the rocks -- remember the good old days when "the rocks" meant actual ice cubes? -- and a big bowl full of whatever constitutes the stew these days. Then he asks for the nearest power port, and the barkeep offers him an old extension to the nearest port free of charge. He sets his terminal on the bar, to the assorted "ooohs" and "ahhs" of the plebes around him. Most of these folks haven't owned a computer since the Gay Nineties; some of them have never seen one. And it's not just surprise that he's got a computer, it's surprise that he hasn't got one in his head like all the uppercrust in the Dome.
The news pops up on screen, and there's that anchorperson that he loves so much, Veronica James, rattling off the latest in Dome politics. For some odd reason, he feels the need to keep up, just in case, someday, on the off chance that an opportunity displays itself, stranger than fantasy, sure, a million to one odds, it could never happen, heck, a googol to one, but just in case -- he might get inside. Yowsa, he says to himself. Yowsa.
The lead story is once again the ETs. And once again, the story amounts to, there they are, what the fuck do we do know? The Dome has of course forsaken weaponry of all kind, especially the noo-cu-lar variety, but rumor has it that various Governmental (TM) types aren't above dealing with the Fringe Market (TM) every now and again. And, Veronica says, it would simply be a shame and a half to embarrass our poor planet by going off half cocked about this affair. But attempts to communicate have remained futile; the ETs are here, but they're quite a reticent sort, it seems. They must not speak the non-local lingo, he thinks to himself.
The Dome covers, approximately of course, one third of the reconstructed face of the Earth. Inside, all your dreams can come true. The climate is beautifully controlled, it's a spring-like 72 degrees most of the time, it rains every Thursday evening after work, and a couple days a year, around Christmas, it snows a bit, but don't worry, it melts right away. Veronica used to like it, but, oh, you know, it'd be nice for a bit of variety, you know, some kind of spice. Even if it was just the weather, even if there was just a bit of unpredictability about it, that would do the trick.She leaves her office building and catches a taxi, which promptly lifts off towards her home address with a polite "Please fasten your safety belt." Hell, even her job was the utmost in boredom before the ETs came along. Before that, the only news to speak of was the occasional Governmental press release, a couple of sports scores, the occasional Ejection Notice ("John Doe and his family were today summarily ejected from the Dome after failing to meet minimum average IQ requirements..."), and, of course, the Billboard Top Twenty. The only requirement was a beautiful face and a pleasant speaking voice, and even the voice was optional, heck, you could synthesize that if you needed to.
She slips into her apartment, heads for the couch, orders some food from the service, and searches for her Connection (TM). Hard to believe some obscure Sci-Fi author from the Gay Nineties actually predicted/caused the rise of this technology, huh. But there it is, you can't just introduce a meme to the meme pool without at least warning the other swimmers. She raises the flap on the back of her scalp -- a designer flap, to be sure, complete with witty saying on the inside, today it's "My karma ran over my dogma" -- and inserts said Connection.
"Channel Twenty-Three," she says.
Moments later, she's screaming in pain and terror, clawing at the Connection. How's that for variety, she reverberates to herself before succumbing to unconsciousness.
He can't believe what a waste of power this is, and yet, needless to say, he can understand the macabre appeal of such a show. Mother and father team up to "educate" their wayward daughter Lorelei, through any means necessary. At first it's just the usual, whips and needles, blunt instruments about the head and neck, scalding hot water and just the wrong ointment to take care of the problem, but then, it starts to get interesting, the innuendo starts flying, the grunges start shouting, and suddenly a couple pug-nosed brats wheel onstage this giant medieval-looking contraption, and Mother hangs her clothes on it, and Dad yanks out these two thin steel wires, and before you know it, the voltage is absolutely coursing through poor Lorelei.
He wants to remain detached, of course, and needless to say, he's seen worse, a couple months ago someone actually melted some kid, and no one knows if they did it on purpose or not, but this show is relatively popular, as in, it happens every night, the regulars know just when the daughter's clothes are going to sizzle away, and Dad's gonna "jack in to the Flesh Matrix," as he likes to say.
And he glances down at his terminal briefly, intending to shut it off, and sees the screen has been wiped clean, and one simple word remains.
HELP.
He wipes his eyes, shakes his head, but there it is, enigmatic as all get out.
He looks up. And he sees the strangest thing in Lorelei's eyes, he doesn't at all see what he had expected. Normally in a case like this you'd expect Lorelei's eyes to have that glazed-over, lobotomized kind of look to him, but quite the contrary, Lorelei's eyes are vicious and intense, aware and struggling, searching, penetrating, whatever, but there they are, actively engaged. Not in what her Dad's up to, of course -- engaged in something else, something just out of sight, and it looks like it's damn near compelling.
It seems like a strange coincidence that the word "HELP" should appear on his screen just as they apply the electricity to the poor girl. And naturally there's no possible way for there to be an apparent connection between the two events -- it's just synchronicity, and that's all. But when viewed from the proper perspective -- "we got ETs in the sky, dontchaknow" -- it becomes apparent that far stranger things have happened, and after all, wouldn't be something else if he actually decided to give a shit about some of the people in this dung heap? Especially one who's getting an inordinate amount of wattage pumped through her on a nightly basis.
He slams his terminal shut, stuffs it in his pack, and stands up. The shack is relatively packed, but he's counting on typical grunge ambivalence toward anything but their own immediate survival. He strides toward the stage, confident in his own lack of a real need to do what he's doing, watching closely for any sign of a potential conflict, which he doesn't expect to arise until he actually jumps onto the stage.
He jumps onto the stage, and a conflict immediately arises. The Mother turns toward him with a disgusting grimace on her face -- coitus interruptus will do that to some people. Before she can react, she receives a stimstick right in a very sensitive spot, and he's certain her sexual orientation will be quite unique when she awakes. It takes Dad a little longer to react, mainly because he's much closer to completion of the act, and when he does react, it's mainly with a surprised "what the fuck--", which is not at all akin to the anticipated thread, and then Dad hits the floor, sleeping the sleep of those who've just had most of their internal lexicons deleted.
The wires are still attached, and he steps over Dad's body to turn the machine off. Moments after he turns it off, he kicks it over and watches it burst into flames. Then he turns to Lorelei. The crowd is muttering a bit. They can't tell if this is part of the show.
"Hi," he says to her, unstrapping her from the metal rack.
She responds with a "huhhnnnn..." that he clearly takes to be a "Thank you, thank fucking God you came," and he takes off his jacket and wraps it around her in a chivalrous fashion.
"I'd like to take you away from here," he says, and realizes just as he says it that he really does sound like a commercial when he says it.
She replies, "whhuuuhhh...," and he translates that into a "Yes, yes, God yes, anywhere," and he lifts her up in his arms and starts off the stage.
The grunges begin to get restless, but he thinks he can make it out the door before they really raise a fuss. But a more immediate problem presents itself: three pug-nose brats appear, and block his way out. He sets Lorelei on the ground and faces them.
"What the FUCK do you FUCKING thing YOU'RE doing, FUCKFACE?" one of them says.
He's in the mood for witty repartee like this, and so he replies, "None of your GODDAMN FUCKING business, SHIT-FOR-BRAINS." Cursing in capital letters is one of his pasttimes, after all.
"Where the FUCK do you think you're FUCKING going with our FUCKING sister?"
"None of your GODDAMN FUCKING business, SHIT-FOR-BRAINS." The classic lines always work the best.
"If you don't FUCKING walk the FUCK out of here, ALONE, I'm gonna mash your FUCKING SKULL up into a powder and put it in the FUCKING STEW." This particular pug-nose has an attitude, it seems.
"Oh, so THAT'S the FUCKING taste I wondered about," he replies.
The game has gotten a little annoying, and a quick stimburst knocks all three of them onto their little pug-asses. One of the grunges has started to finger Lorelei, and for him, he simply employs a swift steel boot to the forehead. Then he picks her up again, and starts for the door.
There's a fire on the stage behind him; he wonders if the grunges will ever get up to move. He's almost to the door when he hears the horrific sonic scream that always precedes the firing of plasma weapons -- fucking plasma weapons -- and then the air behind him is filled with plasma bursts, screaming through the air straight at his back, and he and Lorelei are about to be disintegrated, and it's at that moment that he realizes his unrequited love for Veronica James will never be fulfilled. Darn the luck...
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