The Naked Lunch.

Jeff Bezos by Steve Jurvetson, (Wiki.)

The Evil Dr. Emile Schmitt-Rottluff.

Guest Blogger.

The great thing about the tech industry was the corporate culture.

Bibbles Inc., a two month-old start-up in the child-sharing industry, had everything from day-care, a spa, a gym, even a basketball court on the widely-treed grassy swath out behind the building. They’d raised ten million in the first round and twenty-five in the second.

The cafeteria was served by an award-winning chef with a crew of a dozen assistants. Meals were free, and the monthly staff meetings were a lot of fun.

It was a real opportunity for staff to bond with each other, and the company.

It was possible to take all this a little too far, of course—

For example, Thursdays and the newest mad wrinkle in internal relations.

That would be the Naked Lunch. A good number had considered quitting. Some wanted to stay home and call in sick, some seriously considered calling their attorneys. Some threatened to boycott, or eat their lunch out of a paper bag at their desks or just go outside and sit in their cars for an hour or so. 

Some would probably do it, but at least some of their jobs were well-paid and the future-promised benefits good.

Working conditions not too bad for what was known to be a pretty frenetic industry.

More than anything, they wanted to see what happened next.

***

“Oh, look, here comes Seth.” It was, the moment they had all been waiting for. “Holy, shit.”

Tom choked on his blueberry Slurpee-Latte. A good line hit him.

“Jeebus. I can see why he’s CEO.”

It was true, their shaven-headed fearless leader was hung like a Shetland pony. Maybe even the full-grown animal.

“…and why I’m still a junior accountant, in other words.”

The guy was completely hairless. While not a body-builder, he didn’t look fat either. He wasn’t skinny—more like Ghandi with a couple of good meals in him. He waved like the Queen from her golden carriage, upper arm straight out and the forearm in the vertical position.

Catching one of those burning, coal-black eyes for a tenth of a second, Tom gave a firm but polite nod. He turned away, an expression of personal autonomy—right out of Seth’s book, not that it had done him much good so far.

Hell, this ain’t my idea—but I sort of wish it was.

“Hey, you said it, buddy, not me.” Tom was fairly confident in his six and a half inches, although the fact that he’d shaved the old pubes a couple of weeks previously had been hanging over him.

On the other hand, at least he had a pretty good thatch on his chest.

The short but luxuriant growth around the bag-pipes he now sported was some consolation, as some of the older male executives had pubes that sort of overshadowed, in pepper-and-salt tones, their more important personal bits.

“Oh-my-God. Oh, my God.” Poor old Sluice sort of froze, looking out the corner of one eye.

Mouth open, Tom took a sidelong glance.

Stacey—from Public Relations.

Holy, frijoles!

Her breasts were just as perky as they had often speculated. Her puss was spit-shined, it had been shaved that close, or recently….now there was a thought. Her chin was up and she was ignoring the stares.

No doubt. And yet she was here, too.

Maybe this wasn’t so bad after all.

“Psst. Oh, fuck, here’s Robert.” Robert Pyle, their vice-president of sales and marketing.

Which really ought to have been capitalized, thought Tom.

Fuck, with that guy, it really ought to be All CAPS.

VICE PRESIDENT OF SALES AND MARKETING…!!!!!

He didn’t seem particularly well-endowed, but the ponderous big belly and the flaming face and neck did lend itself to a certain backwards-leaning dignity. Being naked meant he couldn’t wear the Armani…nor the shoes, which he made a big point of talking about. All the fricking time.

They said he was competent, though, and in fact pre-orders of their so-far, practically non-existent product, were going through the roof.

Seth was known to hand-pick the menu on a day-by-day basis, spending a bit of time on Sunday mornings with the paper and the lifestyle-slash-cooking section of the paper and figuring it out a week in advance. He must have been having an off day. Today it was Chicken-a-la-King, scalloped potatoes, cheeses, pickles, artichoke hearts, and according to their server—one of a hundred unpaid interns, fruit cocktail or rice pudding later on.

The salad was all right, the soup not so good according to Sluice.

“Ah, fuck. It’s God-damned Murray. Is he headed this way?”

“Ah, yes, I would say so.” Murray, their immediate supervisor and a royal pain in the neck, was indeed headed straight for them.

Eyebrow-less, Seth was ascending the podium, the stage, perhaps even going straight to heaven on a beam of light or something.

Murray sat down, his eyes cloudy and troubled. He would probably be leaving a wet spot when it was all said and done…he’d already brought up the subject of disinfectants, labour and other costs, privately and behind the scenes.

Thoughts of a big titter running through the audience passed through Tom's mind, but oh, well.

“Hey, guys.”

“Hey.”

Seth beamed out over the crowd.

“Thank you, thank you, ladies and gentlemen, ah, for being here today. I know things may be hard for some of you—” A brief patter of applause and laughter went through the eighteen hundred or so assembled employees.

“…but I will keep this short.” (More chuckles. The guy really was like that.)

Seth couldn’t avoid a bad pun if it killed him.

The red-head from R & D was staring at Tom from three tables over. He gave her an impulsive wink, his face reddening when he realized Ronnie, the gay guy from the training group was sitting there at table or row number two—he was simpering away like crazy, and he gave Tom a quick little finger-waggle type of wave before turning back to listen to his boss.

The really, really big boss…

Seth was beaming out over the crowd as the house lights came down and the screen lit up behind him.

So.

Apparently there was going to be some kind of announcement.

***

His strong need for adulation satisfied, Seth had launched into his speech.

“Self-power serves the progressive expansion of truth.”

People stood up and screamed.

It was always this way.

“Intuition differentiates into infinite abstract beauty.”

“Yay!” His acolytes roared, Tom and Sluice among them.

They were up on their feet.

It was always like this—Seth was just that kind of a guy.

What in the hell that was about, no one could ever clearly explain except with words like charisma and Nietzsche. And shit like that.

“Death is inherent in karmic self-knowledge.” The room went kind of wild, why, Tom couldn’t exactly say, but one had to admit it was kind of funny.

Those liquid black eyes were suddenly fixated upon him and his heart sank.

“So tell me…Thomas. What is the one great thing about our product.”

It was de rigueur to stand up and be seen at times like this. Tom had sympathized with others centred-out and put on the spot, although he’d never experienced it himself.

Yeah, they all fucking sat down now, didn’t they—

Well, good for them.

Now was his chance.

“Well. The other day, I was driving down the road. There was this young guy. He was maybe mid-twenties, thirty years old, maybe. And he had these six or seven kids out on the road—it was like a circle or a crescent, being a bit of a subdivision, I guess. He was tossing a ball to a couple of white kids—these were maybe his own boys, and there were a couple of black kids, an Asian kid. There were a couple of little girls. I couldn’t see everything, and yet I had this sort of epiphany at the time. And I sort of envied that guy.” Tom had made some choices.

Those choices led him into certain paths—and ruled out some others.

The boss listened intently, or gave the illusion of doing so.

The room was very quiet, as Seth’s eyes shone. This would be the world’s first trillion-dollar start-up with people like this on the job.

“And how did that make you feel, Tom?”

Tom heaved a deep sigh.

“Okay. Bearing in mind that I’m only twenty-four.”

They chuckled.

“…but it sort of occurred to me that I have in fact made choices. One of which was to come here—”

The room was very quiet as Seth nodded.

“I’ve never been married. I may never be married—or have an apartment, or live in a house, for all we know…I may never own a car, or have a wife or kids of my own.”

“Go on.”

“We sacrifice much to be here with you, sir—”

“Never call me sir.”

Tom plowed onwards, relentless.

“But the way I got it figured, uh, Seth.”

“Yes?”

“We need to figure out how someone can really trust someone else to borrow their kid for half an hour—oh, I know for a fact that parents will be grateful. Jesus, H. Christ, I know they will. But there’s that whole issue of trust. It’s not all online persona, we know that, sir. So many fake accounts, so many fake names and pictures. But it goes even, I don’t know, maybe a little deeper than that.”

“Hmn, I’d say you’ve, ah, definitely grasped our greatest challenge here, Tom. But I sense there’s more.”

“Yes, Seth. There is. For one. This whole thing actually works better for dogs. That whole micropayment thing will kick in, don’t you worry about that, sir. There’s going to be an abundance of demand, we all believe that. Why, just the other day, I had a friend’s dog sitting on my lap, and it was surprising how satisfying it was, to however momentarily, to have the affection of what was a pretty nice little dog, sitting on my lap. Dogs, are uncritical—I think that is the key. That goes a hundred times for a kid. Think of how warm and heavy that would be sitting in your lap—and our customers are going to go nuts.” It really spoke to something deep inside a person in his words.

Seth nodded. He turned and whispered to someone, Nathalie, his personal secretary, a bit wide in the hips but definitely attractive in the Earth-Mother way that Seth was said to favour.

“So, what are you saying, Tom.” Those sick-basterd eyes were all over him.

“What I’m saying, sir, is that I feel that self-power exists as a panoply, and an abundance of mysterious consequences. But, honestly, uh, sir,—I, uh, really really think that this could work.” Fifty cents for a half-hour with someone else’s dog—people would literally enjoy picking up the shit, putting it in a bag, and being slobbered over.

It really didn’t mean anything.

“Really.”

“Yes, and more importantly, I sort have to ask who might like to come over to my house and cook my dinner tonight—I think we really need to think about that, sir, not just as a company, but as individuals.” And how much that might sort of be worth to them.

Music came up from somewhere and drowned out any further feedback.

The same held true for kids, of course, but the risks for app-users were greater in Tom’s opinion.

Seth nodded, and a few people clapped politely, and Tom reckoned this was either grounds for dismissal, or he had just made Vice-President in Charge of Philosophical Musings, or SOMETHING LIKE THAT.

Now was the time to bob one’s head and sit down—

Either way, it was good with him. At eighty hours a week, minimum wage didn’t exactly amount to a hill of beans.

Not in this town.

He hated Seth in that moment, as two big balls of sweat rolled down his ribcage.

Other than that, the free lunch was pretty good, and the Merlot was competent enough.

It was a job, and nothing more.

END

Editors Note: fuck off, you son of a bitch.

My Momma Told Me...

c2011Shalako


My Momma told me there would be days like this.

Last month I sold about twelve or thirteen books and one short story. I have a dark sort of a poem coming out in the next few months, and a science-fiction parody sort of a story story coming out at the end of the month.

That story is with Bewildering Tales, and they have another one coming up as well, but I don't know when. I've got one or two pretty good submissions out there, but I haven't heard anything back. I've got a few other subs out there too. I haven't heard anything from them either.

Those guys are probably wading knee-deep through the sluch pile, and they will get to mine sooner or later! And they have another room full of slush-pile queries.

Okay, so the big challenge is to find a place to live, which would be easier if I had first and last month's rent. All I can do is to stall for time and think well. If I'm going to end up in a one-bedroom apartment, either the cat gets fixed (or what?) and that's probably another three hundred fifty I don't have either.

Should I sign a lease, or just 'pay as you go?' Allegedly my number for housing comes up in September, but they told me 'May or June' just last March. I got that in writing, ladies and gentlemen. The lady on the phone says, 'Let us know where you are.'

I don't know what to do for the next four or five months...

What do I tell any potential landlord?

"As a former homeowner, I don't actually have any references...is there some way I can put this on my credit card?"

This morning I woke up just absolutely brimming over with agression.

That says one thing, and one thing only, ladies and gentlemen: insecurity.

# 99 Easy Street: The Thrilling Conclusion. Louis Shalako.

Jorge Ryan, (Wiki.)

Part One

Part Two

Part Three

Part Four

Part Five

Part Six

Part Seven

Part Eight

Part Nine

Part Ten

Part Eleven

Part Twelve

Part Thirteen

Part Fourteen

Part Fifteen

Part Sixteen

Part Seventeen

Part Eighteen

Part Nineteen

Part Twenty

Part Twenty-One

Part Twenty-Two

Part Twenty-Three

Part Twenty-Four

Louis Shalako

He did up the bottom of the jacket. Taking the cat from Amy, he stuffed it into the top, sort of in front of his left shoulder and then hurriedly zipped it to the neck. With his left arm slung under the cat’s weight, he led off, holding the rail with his right hand. Amy was right at his back, one hand on his shoulder and one on the handrail.

Each floor was about ten feet in elevation and then he was poised on the brink. Ten or twelve feet to safety. There were people boiling out of the front doors and down the front steps. Mark wasn’t exactly sure how this particular fire-escape stair worked. It was probably sprung on torsion-bars. He put his foot on the swinging section and it pivoted downwards.

“Okay, just wait until I’m down.” Mark bent at the waist again, trying to keep the cat from falling out of the bottom of the jacket, but he wanted both hands to hold on. “Here we go.”

The stairs tilted more steeply, and he cursed, not sure if he should be going down backwards or what. But they had been designed for people in a panic, which he was trying not to do. 

That sort of implied just running down frontwards…

Everyone was yelling, and there were sirens in the distance. Hopefully they were heading for this building but it was a big city and there was always a fire someplace, always sirens going somewhere. Sirens, always in the background noise, in some sort of horrid urban process of life, death, and renewal.

There were more people on the fire escape, crowding down from above. Their voices were high-pitched and Mark had better get on with it. They were going to cause problems for Amy, and the whole apparatus was shaking under his feet.

He stepped forwards as boldly as he could, and the thing leaned farther with a long, agonizing screech.

Wouldn’t that be just like a slum-lord like Olivetti? The fire escape wasn’t worth shit, and Mark found himself grabbing the cat through the coat again. He stomped, ultimately jumping up and down on the second and third steps, hunched over like Quasimodo, and finally the damned stairs let go with a lurch. The stairs fell the last eight or ten feet, Mark going weightless for a moment before the end hit the sidewalk with a crash.

The cat kicked, squirmed and clawed, and Mark hurriedly got down the last few steps and out of the way.

Amy didn’t hesitate, following him down and out onto the sidewalk where people were milling around, looking up and around, trying to see who was there and who wasn’t…women were screaming, children were crying and the males were cursing whole-heartedly.

“Argh.” Mark undid the top of the jacket, and the cat’s head popped out.

Seeing all the commotion, the animal hesitated, and he tried to calm it. If the thing got away from him, they’d never catch it.

Amy grabbed his other arm.

“Come on.”

Mark turned, looking back up at the building. He’d lived there a little over a week, ten days at most…

Lurid orange flames poured up and out of the top two floors. The windows glowed red below that, including his own unit. The roar and crack of the flames was horrific, a pillar of smoke lit and backlit by the lights of the city all around. Three people came down the fire escape, coughing and gasping, eyes watering. The smell of smoke, like burning garbage, was intense even in the clear air at ground level. People were congregating across the street and there was at least one cop, on the scene and stopping traffic in both directions.

He found himself crying, as Amy tugged and pulled at him.

His eyes searched the crowd.

“Mark. Mark. We have to go—”

“Fuck. Where’s Duke—”

He saw the black people from across the hall—there seemed to be a half a dozen of them, which accounted for about as many as he had seen. There was the guy from the laundry room, and the woman, and the child. There was the little old lady…the deaf guy from the second floor. There was the grey-faced fat guy with the backpack, Mark had never been sure if he lived there or what. There were a lot of people he didn’t recognize, passers-by most likely.

The sirens were getting louder and two police cars came around the corner a couple of blocks up.

Navigating the mess of stopped traffic, they slewed to a halt and men began jumping out.

They turned and tried to un-snarl the traffic. There were more sirens as the fire trucks became visible, red lights flashing from blocks away as they raced inbound.

Just at the curb was a familiar, scruffy blue sedan.

O’Hara.

Mark’s jaw dropped. It couldn’t have been fifty feet away, and there was someone in there. 

The dark silhouette of a head and shoulders was clearly moving around in there, probably on the radio.

His feet began to move and Amy wept, dragging him along. The cat’s head stuck out, as the thing began to wiggle and move again, if it had ever truly stopped.

Wailing sirens began to wind down at the first two fire units slowed to a crawl and then stopped.

The car door opened and O’Hara got out. He stood beside the vehicle, looking up at the building, the microphone on its curling extension cord up to his mouth. Turning to and fro, O’Hara’s eyes swept the crowd, both sides of the street and Mark’s guts froze as the deadly blue eyes swept over him and Amy.

Just then, the front door of the building opened and Duke came out, hood up and sweeping Maude along in front of him.

She hadn’t been out of the building in years—

She was hysterical, her crinkly blonde flower-child hair flailing around as she backed up, beating on Duke’s chest as she desperately tried to get back in. Maude was making a big thing out of it, a real scene and then O’Hara turned.

Mouth open, Mark pulled Amy into the mouth of the second alley.

Duke gave Maude a shove as O’Hara spied him. Duke was yelling at Maude, at people, and someone, someone from the building who must have known something about Maude, ran forward from a clump of people on this side, but a few yards on the other side of the building. 

They grabbed Maude, hugging her close and fighting with her as she put her head down and then just slumped, falling halfway to the ground. More people grabbed arms and legs and tried to deal with her hysteria.

That white parka stuck out like a sore thumb.

“No.” No.

O’Hara slammed the door. He was running past the front of the car, drawing his gun.

The noise was such that it was like a silent film.

O’Hara was shouting and Amy was crying and trying to drag Mark away.

Fuck.

“Fuck.”

Duke had a horn case in the other hand…it was that fucking horrible scuffed, matte-black colour and Mark hadn’t seen it at first. How the hell Duke had managed to manhandle Maude and hang onto the thing was a mystery, he really shouldn’t have been able…

“No!” No.

O’Hara had the gun up. Duke was about to melt into the crowd as firemen raced past, pulling hoses and nozzles up the front steps, although it was already a foregone conclusion. O’Hara couldn’t shoot without hitting them.

Duke dropped the case, flinging it aside from his left hand as he spun, dropping into the gun-fighter’s crouch as known to every kid in the whole wide world from comic books, film and television…

Duke’s gun spat flame but O’Hara was already firing.

***

They were in the train station, completely numb.

Grand Central was never quiet, but at this time of night, shortly before dawn, they could at least talk and hear themselves think.

Mark was sick at the stomach, nauseous at what had transpired. Amy, shocked herself and sympathetic, struggled to control the cat, who had been constrained long enough.

“We’ve got to do something about this creature.”

Mark nodded, wondering if they should just let the thing go. But to do that was irresponsible, and would probably doom the animal to a short, brutal and nasty life on the streets or in the train yards or in the tunnels under the city.

“Extra! Extra! Read all about it!”

Mark raised an arm.

“Yeah. I’ll take one.” For a dime, Mark’s arms sagged under the weight of all the news that was fit to print.

Number Ninety-Nine Easy Street was plastered all over the front page, probably because a photographer had gotten to the fire at just the right moment and they had some good pictures…

***

Amy had the cat inside her sweater, grateful it wasn’t very big. The thing had simmered down under her gentle administration, scratching it under the chin and cooing and murmuring in reassuring tones. The real problem was the harsh, loud announcements over the loudspeakers.

These were increasing in frequency as the day began and they would have to make a move soon.

“What does it say?”

Mark’s eyes raced across the page, and then he rapidly turned the pages, trying to find where the continued story picked up in an inner section.

“Okay. No one injured in the fire—that’s good.” Tears sprang to his eyes, at the thought of his friend, risking his ass, trying to get the people out when he could have gotten clean away himself.

The significance of Duke borrowing his coat was also deeply troubling.

“Go on, go on.” Amy’s own stomach was rumbling.

They hadn’t slept in what seemed like days, and the fact was that they had to do something—

Mark’s heart began to race when he spotted O’Hara’s name.

Slowing down, he read it aloud for her benefit.

“…New York Police Detective Ed O’Hara was dead at the scene of a shooting that occurred in front of the building at the time of the fire…”

It was like he just couldn’t get any air.

“…Detective O’Hara, according to witnesses, was shouting incoherently, with his weapon drawn, running around at the scene. The detective was observed to discharge his weapon at a second victim. Elmer Barrett, of Ninety-Nine Easy Street, returned fire and killed the detective with several shots. He is presently in hospital with injuries that are described as critical…”

Fuck!

Duke was alive.

Mark lowered the paper, staring off into the infinite distance, shiny stone walls notwithstanding.

O’Hara dead and Duke alive.

With Amy peering over his shoulder in the garishly bad light, he read on.

“According to unnamed sources, Detective O’Hara had been struggling with depression and alcoholism as a result of divorce and separation from his wife and children. The detective had taken a number of sick days over the past few months and was seeking help for medical problems. As for the motive in the shooting, police are not speculating, and information is being withheld pending the outcome of a full investigation.”

Whoa.

Holy, crap.

Even so, there must be more to it than that—O’Hara might have been nuts, but that was rarely enough to make a man kill. He just had too much to lose, and in the story they said he had been seeking help.

Hmn.

Mark quickly read to the bottom of the story, disappointed that there wasn’t much more.

“Shit.” He folded up the paper after dumping a lot of supplements and inserts that he wasn’t going to read in a nearby trashcan.

“Shit. Amy. What in the hell are we going to do now?”

***

It was Thursday night, and Mark had made it in to work.

He had a half-decent used trumpet and a sax that wasn’t quite such a nice instrument as the one lost in the apartment, but it was in much better shape. Mark had picked them up in a pawn shop.

He’d bought some clothes, doing his best. Benny would have read the papers and would accept things at face value, when it came right down to that.

Mona and Benny were at their table with a few guests. While he was pretty sure Mona wasn’t a predator, her eyes came back to him often enough…

There was a reasonable crowd in the club for a Thursday night. The low murmur of people’s voices rose and fell, following some unknown but mass social logic of its own as the waiters plied their trade in a slow ebb and flow.

Amy had agreed to stay away, badly as she wanted to be there to witness this moment. Mark had stayed with her and Sandy for a couple of nights while they tried to figure out what to do. 

The answer had eventually made itself obvious—to do nothing.

Nothing at all.

Duke would live. With his injuries, he was safe enough from the draft board. With a bit of luck, he might never have to serve at all. Still in intensive care, Mark would be visiting Duke (or Elmer) the minute the doctors allowed it. In the meantime, they just had to wait—and to worry, and to try and get on with their lives.

An expectant hush came over the big room.

There was a smattering off applause from the more aware.

It was seven o’clock and Doc was beaming and waving at the crowd.

Doc leaned into the nearest microphone.

“Ladies and gentlemen. Mister Dale Cromwell…” Some of the more female members of the audience definitely sat up a little straighter upon hearing it.

He heaved a deep sigh, purging his lungs of CO2, nodding at Dale as the fellow came onstage.

Mark was standing six feet behind him, just off his right elbow.

Dale was impeccable in the clothing, his hair perfect and looking very pink and scrubbed in the slight jowls he was developing.

Having Amy there would have added to the pressure. More than anything, Mark just wanted to get used to it.

Doc tapped his stick and they were ready.

The house lights came down as Dale put the horn up to his lips and began to blow.

This was it.

This was real.

This was now, baby.

END

 
 

Wow, that was scary, eh, kids? Thanks for reading. I don't know about you guys, but I had a wonderful time.

Here are some Louis Shalako books and stories on iTunes.

***