Shuteye for the Timebroker (39 page)

No matter, the old man thought. He had never wanted to get rich. He had done what he had done for all of humanity.

But how he wished the charity nursing home he had ended up in didn’t recycle its dead residents in his invention!

13.

THE CLASH OF HOLIDAYS

Today was little Jimmy Maynard’s favorite day of the year.

The one day of the year that wasn’t a stinkin’ holiday.

Sleepless for most of the night, Jimmy got up extra early because he was so excited. Today he could go to school and do his chores! He could eat the plainest of foods! He could dress in simple clothes! He could skip any kind of holiday craft-making!

What a glorious prospect!

His house would be undecorated for a wonderful twenty-four hours, free of any holiday regalia. No Christmas tree, no Easter eggs, no Thanksgiving papier-mache turkeys, no Secretary Day’s steno-pad napkins. No visitors would pop in bearing holiday greetings or traditional gifts, such as the candy pistols of NRA Day. The mail would bring no cards, the television would show no specials.

What more could a kid want?

Jimmy took his time dressing, savoring the feel of his non-holiday clothes. He went downstairs, gratified not to smell Kwanzaa cookies or matzo balls. Maybe he’d just have some dry toast for breakfast, or cereal eaten by the handful straight from the box. He anticipated the easy smiles his mother and father would wear as they were spared—for just one uniquely un-special day—churchgoing or shopping or parading.

Bursting into the kitchen, Jimmy was stunned to see his parent’s crestfallen faces.

“Mom! Dad! What’s the matter?”

“Jimmy,” said his dad, “you’d better sit down. I don’t know how to tell you this, but the government has just declared a new holiday—”

Jimmy screamed, as visions of sugarplums danced in his head.

14.

MADAME CALIVERA’S CORPORATE IDENTITY PROGRAM

The spaceship resembled a giant metallic carrot with three legs sprouting from its narrow end. It touched down on the barren plains of the planet designated by humans as Limpdick III, striking a gout of dry dust from the surface. After a short interval the ship disgorged a land-crawler whose front grille mimicked the grimace of the rock-eating lizards of Why the Fuck Are We Here. The crawler set off across the plain, raising clouds of cinders and soil particulates.

Fifteen minutes of travel brought the crawler to a native village: a collection of mismatched huts flanked by rudimentary benches and fire pits and rubbish heaps. On the benches sat various natives of Limpdick III: repulsive green warty indolent trolls with enormous genitalia. The penises of the males and the labial folds of the females flopped over the edges of the benches and into the dust.

A door in the crawler gull-winged open, and a human woman emerged. Clad in a black and white skintight business suit, the woman exhibited an imperious air. She stalked confidently over to the nearest native, a male.

“Where’s Drongo Kaboom?”

The troll used both hands to shift his dick to avoid a line of creeping insects. “I am Drongo Kaboom.”

“Did you enroll in the home-study Master of Business Administration program at Harvard University?”

“Yes, that I did.”

“And did you realize that your tuition payment was drawn on a non-human bank account that paid Harvard only in the dried skins of puke-cats?”

“The puke-cat is our global currency.”

“Furthermore, do you acknowledge that every one of your term papers has been plagiarized off the Interstellar Internet?”

“Why should I strain my delicate brains when stealing is so much easier?”

“Lastly, do you admit enticing a female freshman from Brookline, Massachusetts, all the way out to Limpdick III with promises of a ‘monster kegger’ and then leaving her stranded halfway to the Magellanic Clouds, covered in quarts of your jizm?”

“I have recordings indicating all relations were consensual.”

The woman glared at the troll for a moment, then broke into a smile and extended her hand. “Mister Kaboom, you’re just the material Harvard Business School is looking for! How’s tenure sound?”

15.

THE SPECTER OF CARTOON APPEAL

Artist Number One Hundred and Fifteen, they called him. A skinny kid in shorts and an outsized Raiders T-shirt, with his glossy black hair in a crude bowl cut, the Hmong boy labored day and night in one of the evil Southeast Asian cartoon sweatshops, drawing eel after eel of American animation. So stuffed was his head with the uncouth imagery of his distant employers that he had forgotten all his native rituals and customs, his family, and even his own name. Taken by outlaw recruiters from his village after exhibiting drawing prowess at an early age, he was now and forevermore only Artist Number One Hundred and Fifteen.

Artist Number One Hundred and Fifteen’s best friend, naturally enough, was Artist Number One Hundred and Sixteen, who occupied the drafting table and rickety, unpadded bamboo stool next to Fifteen. A kidnapped Korean, Sixteen did not even speak the same language as Fifteen. And yet they had managed to form a bond of friendship, helping each other. Some days Fifteen would massage Sixteen’s aching wrists. Other days, Sixteen would share some of his ration of dried cuttlefish and counterfeit Pocari Sweat drink with Fifteen, who, after all, was still a growing boy, while Sixteen was an old man who had been drawing cartoons since the heyday of
Tom and Jerry
.

One day the eel-master stomped in, visibly outraged. The brawny, brutal overseer, a former Thai pirate known for his cruel way with the lash, clutched in his hand the printout of an e-mailed communique from the Cartoon Network in America. Artist Number One Hundred and Fifteen recognized the letterhead. The Thai slave driver shouted in pidgin English, the de facto language of the international bullpen.

“Who the motherfuckin’ funny guy? Who put graffiti slur against Thai king in background of
SpongeBob
? Big riots all across American Thai communities. Plenty shit now to go around for everyone!”

None of the artists dared speak. The eel-master whirled on Artist Number One Hundred and Sixteen.

“Maybe it you, old man! Or maybe you know who! Either way, time for you to get whipped!”

Artist Number One Hundred and Sixteen’s heart gave out after the tenth lashing. The Thai boss kicked the corpse, had it hauled unceremoniously away, and then said, “You goddamn buggers all think on this! I be back in the morning to find out who really guilty!”

Locked in the dark, stifling, stinking bunkhouse with his comrades, Artist Number One Hundred and Fifteen cried for two hours for the death of his only friend. But then he wiped his eyes and resolved to take revenge.

From the near-obliterated depths of his memory came the details of certain arcane rituals of his people. Fifteen set out to perform them. They involved nothing more than some bodily fluids, a handful of dirt, a lizard bone saved from supper, a pencil stub wrapped in cobwebs, and a scrap of paper.

In the morning the artists cowered, awaiting the arrival of the eel-master and his whip. But he never showed. By noon, with their bladders bursting and stomachs growling, they dared to break cautiously out of the bunkhouse.

They found the overseer and the other bosses flattened to a lifeless two-dimensionality, as if they had been run over by a large macadam-smoothing machine. Incredulous at their good fortune, the artists dispersed, each making for home.

Back in his village, Artist Number One Hundred and Fifteen reunited with his family and soon was reintegrated into the ancient ways. He never spoke of his period of slavery, and showed little interest in matters outside his village.

Years later, a charity package of drugs with expired dates arrived from the United States. The contents were protected with recent newspapers. Smoothing one out, the young man who was no longer Artist Number One Hundred and Fifteen saw pictures that made him smile.

Even now, years later, the American authorities seemed to be having trouble rounding up all the slavering, gibbering, whirling Tasmanian devils that had slaughtered all those studio executives.

16.

THE SPECTER OF MONSTER APPEAL

Putting a point on his claws with the wall-mounted sharpener, Furry Hackerman began pasting up the latest issue of
Famous Monsters of Filmland
. He employed his claws to spike various articles in anticipation of immediate need. At one point in his compositional routine, when all his claws held multiple articles, and other gluey snippets had stuck accidentally to his hairy form, Hackerman the editor looked as if he had fought a battle with the Sunday edition of the
Monsterville Times
and lost.

Hackerman’s furry, fanged, fiery-eyed face wore a look of intense concentration. He was trying to decide which piece would be the lead in this issue.

Should he go with
Greedy Corporate Executives Suck Blood of Stockholders
or
Ancient Male Senators Force Women to Give Birth to Unwanted Babies
?

The first item focused on the new Roger Goreman film,
Corporations Ate My Future!
A real thriller-diller, starring those hairless apes that had suddenly become Hollywood’s latest monsters du jour. Of course, no hairless apes existed any longer in Hackerman’s world. The players in these films were all shaved werewolves (Hackerman’s own species), or giant salamanders with many prosthetics and much makeup, or trolls in rubber suits. But the very memory of these so- called humans and their incredibly bizarre society as it had once existed in genetic isolation on the island of Madagascar was still potent enough to generate boffo box office.

The second item related to John Carpenter-Ants
Legislature of Hell!
Another hairless-ape spooktacular. There were some really effective scenes here of humans drooling as they affixed their signatures in blood to the deadly legislation. Those shots would play well with Hackerman’s juvenile audience of young ghouls and goblins.

In the end, Hackerman went with
Legislature of Hell!

Hours passed as the editor continued to paste up the issue. Around eleven, his secretary entered, bearing a steaming cup of grue. Trixie Frankenstein’s tall column of lightning-streaked hair barely cleared the door frame.

“Furry, it’s time for your break. You’ll work yourself senseless if you go on like this.”

“Hey, baby, life’s short. I’ll sleep when I’m undead!”

17.

THE CYCLOPEAN POTENTATE

Hazel Dimpflmaier, sitting alone in the sunny plaza outside the office building where she worked, bit into the big, juicy Macoun apple she had packed for her lunch.

Much to her surprise, her first chomp revealed not the undifferentiated pulp of a real apple, but an intricate structure of equipment-filled rooms. And the rooms were occupied by scores of worms!

Hazel gagged and spit out most of the unchewed remnants of her mouthful of faux fruit. But she did not immediately hurl the mock-apple away from herself, somehow hypnotized by the activity within.

The tiny worms were scurrying about, pulling various levers with their mouths and striking various buttons on their equipment with the accurate tips of their bodies. Hazel could hear their little piping voices shouting encouragement and warnings and damage reports.

Eventually, one worm emerged from the confusion and crawled up to the top of the apple, to perch on the fruit’s outer skin—where it boldly confronted Hazel.

This worm wore a distinctive hat, which, Hazel intuited, marked it as the leader. It exhibited an exceedingly ugly face, mostly human save for the fact that one big cyclopean eye dominated its visage. A hairy soul patch decorated the worm’s chin.

The worm opened its mouth and shouted, resulting in a sound about the magnitude of a cricket chirping. Amazingly, it spoke English.

“Cruel human! You have destroyed our ship! Now we will never be able to return to our home in the Coalsack Nebula.”

Hazel glanced about to make sure none of her coworkers were present to see her addressing a piece of fruit, and then she answered, “How—how was I to know? Your ship looked just like an apple!”

The cyclopean worm looked disconcerted. “An apple? Our orbital probes to your world revealed no such edible counterpart to our ship. I will be shortening those responsible for this gaffe by at least two segments!”

Hazel had begun to feel somewhat more at ease with these tiny harmless visitors from space, and now contemplated how best to ease their plight. “Don’t worry about anything,” she finally said. “Mankind will be happy to offer you a new home here.”

The worm captain grinned in a horrifying fashion. “That is only just. We are quite pleased that you will not be putting up any resistance. I have just received reports from two of my crew whom you swallowed, and they say that your intestinal tract is some of the most agreeable real estate they’ve ever seen!”