The Apocalypse Reader (25 page)

The present danger, then, as described by team member E Gonzales Park, is that so much of our free time, or radical time properly speaking, will be locked into this noxious compound (which she refers to as petropsychotoxin or PPST) that we will be forced to bring up the vast deposits of PPST which the U.S. government has dumped or stored in various caves, swamps, holes, oceans, and backyards, and deliberately break down the compound, thus releasing free temporal radicals. Senator Helms and several Sunbelt Democrats have already protested. Certainly the process of reclaiming time from PPST is risky, requiring so much oxygen that we might end up, as O. Heiko, a third member of the team, puts it, with plenty of free time but no air.

Feeling that time is running out even faster than the oil wells, Heiko himself favors as "austerity" approach to the problem, beginning with a ban on aircraft flying in excess of the speed of sound, and working steadily on down through prop planes, racing cars, standard cars, ships, motorboats, etc., until, if necessary, all petroleum-powered vehicles have been eliminated. Speed serves as the standard of priority, since the higher the velocity of the petroleum-fueled vehicle, and hence the more concentrated the conscious or subliminal anxiety of the driver/passengers, the more complete is the petrolisation of time, and the more poisonous the resultant PPST. Heiko, believing there is no "safe level" of contamination, thinks that probably not even mopeds would eventually escape the ban. As he points out, a single gas-powered lawnmower moving at less than 3 mph can petrolise three solid hours of a Sunday afternoon in an area of one city block.

A ban on gas guzzlers may, however, solve only half the problem. An attempt by the Islamic league to raise the price of crude time by $8.50/hr was recently foiled by prompt action by the Organisation of Time Consuming States; but West Germany is already paying $18.75/hr-twice what the American consumer expects to pay for his time.

BLEEDING HEARTS? THE TEMPORAL CONSERVATION MOVEMENT

WILLING TO LISTEN to the cosmological and chemical hypotheses but uncommitted to either is a growing consortium of scientists and laypersons, many of whom have grouped themselves into organisations such as Le Temps Perdu (Brussels), Protestants Concerned at the Waste of Time (Indianapolis), and the driving, widespread Latin American action group Mafiana. A Mafianista spokesperson, Dolores Guzman McIntosh of Buenos Aires, states the group's view: "We have-all of us-almost entirely wasted our time. If we do not save it, we are lost. There is not much time left." The Mafianistas have so far carefully avoided political affiliation, stating bluntly that the time shortfall is the fault of Communist and Capitalist governments equally. A growing number of priests from Mexico to Chile have joined the movement, but the Vatican recently issued an official denunciation of those "who, while they talk of saving time, lose their own souls." In Italy a Communist temporal-conservation group, Eppur Si Muove, was recently splintered by the defection of its president, who after a visit to Moscow stated in print: "Having watched the bureaucracy of the Soviet Union in action I have lost faith in the arousal of class consciousness as the principal means towards our goal."

A group of social scientists in Cambridge, England, continues meanwhile to investigate the as yet unproven link of the time shortage with shortage of temper. "If we could show the connection," says psychologist Derrick Groat, "the temporal conservation groups might be able to act more effectively. As it is they mostly quarrel. Everybody wants to save time before it's gone forever, but nobody really knows how, and so we all get cross. If only there were a substitute, you know, like solar and geothermal for petroleum, it would ease the strain. But evidently we have to make do with what we've got." Groat mentioned the "time stretcher" marketed by General Substances under the trademark Sudokron, withdrawn last year after tests indicated that moderate doses caused laboratory mice to turn into Kleenex. Informed that the Rand Corporation was devoting massive funding to research into a substitute for time, he said, "I wish them luck. But they may have to work longer hours at it!" The British scientist was referring to the fact that the United States has shortened the hour by ten minutes, while retaining twenty-four per day, while the EEC countries, forseeing increasing shortages, have chosen to keep sixty minutes to the hour but allow only twenty hours to the "devalued" European day.

Meantime, the average citizen in Moscow or Chicago, while often complaining about the shortage of time or the deteriorating quality of what remains, seems inclined to scoff at the doomsday prophets, and to put off such extreme measures as rationing as long as possible. Perhaps, he feels, along with Ecclesiastes and the President, that when you've seen one day, you've seen 'em all.

THINK WARM THOUGHTS

Allison Whittenberg

THE WORLD BURNS; the sun stalks. Can life be sustained off a windowsill's moisture or a lead pipe's sweat?

Someone spills the orange juice we've been rationing. It spread more sunshine across the room. We splintered our tongues lapping it off the wooden floor.

In the white glow of night, a man bursts in and steals thirty-three ounces of water.

I should have shot him; we're all going to die anyway. This way.

As want drips into needs, it's a good-news-bad-news sort of thing. Contentment, comfort, it's all a matter of degrees. I am between cool white sheets. Outside, snow is falling, falling, falling like sugar, but it's piling up to hills, mountains.

They say a new ice age is upon us, but my fever is breaking and I remember a wise old saying.

THE ASH GRAY
PROCLAMATION

Dennis Cooper

MACKEREL LIVES IN a lower-class suburb of Pawheen, Arkansas. He's thirteen years old and wears his dirty hair long. He wanted to be an architect when he grew up. Then he got stoned yesterday and paid a psychic to tell him the truth. According to the spirits, he'll be dead from a drug overdose within forty-eight hours. Having been molested by half the town's male population, Mackerel is something of a pragmatist. So he has embraced an early death with a young teen's impatience. At the moment, he sits on his bike finessing dope off some sixteen-year-old junkie named Josh who lifts weights and has a trendy short haircut.

JOSH: (
impatiently
) If you want my advice, cut your vocal cords out. It's a simple operation. Otherwise you're so awesome, it's scary.

MACKEREL: Thanks, but I'm looking for dope.

JOSH: (
darkly
) Thank my uncle. You don't even want to know.

MACKEREL: Know what?

JOSH: That we're gay boyfriends, you idiot. I don't why we moved out here from L.A. You're all retarded.

MACKEREL: Thank him for what?!

Mackerel kicks one of his bike pedals angrily and it spins. Josh watches the pedal revolve until his eyes are wide with staring.

MACKEREL: I'm smart enough to know you're just like everyone else in this stupid town who wants my ass, but I don't care anymore.

JOSH: (
vacantly
) If you want to ask me something, do it now, because I think I'm hypnotized.

Mackerel snaps his fingers in Josh's blank face.

MACKEREL: Okay, do you want my ass or not?

JOSH: No, my uncle does. And he doesn't want it. He wants me to want it. I mean he wants me to have it first. So it's a trial run. But he's the one who has a thing for you. And he's not really my uncle. So, no, not technically.

MACKEREL: You lost me. But that's cool.

JOSH: He wants to be a cannibal. You should hear him talk about me. I'm a junkie, or I'd leave him.

MACKEREL: It's weird, but I saw that happening in a dream. I think I'm psychic.

JOSH: I dream all the time. Heroin's great.

MACKEREL: (
angrily
) Then give me some. Jesus.

JOSH: I need to buy a gun.

Mackerel climbs off his bike and starts undoing his belt. One of his ankles accidentally hits the spinning pedal, which stops it dead.

JOSH: Oh, shit. I was just hypnotized, wasn't I?

Mackerel lays his bike down on the sidewalk, which requires him to bend so far over that his baggy jeans are pulled tight.

JOSH: God, you have, like, no ass.

MACKEREL: Hey, I'm fucking thirteen. What do you expect?

JOSH: No, I mean I finally get the whole pedophile thing. Wow, it's addictive.

Ten minutes later, Mackerel is in an uncomfortable squat in some nearby bushes, and josh is on his hands and knees snuffling in Mackerel's crack like a dog.

MACKEREL: Dude, hey, gay boy. You're obsessed. But don't stop.

JOSH: It's the illegality.

MACKEREL: And what else?

JosH: That your ass is so nowhere. It's so flimsy and warm it's like an optical illusion. God, listen to me.

MACKEREL: I love it when you breathe out.

JOSH: Having sex with a thirteen-year-old. Who'd have thought? It's like I finally know myself.

MACKEREL: You mean you know me. Not to be egomaniacal.

JOSH: So you're an anarchist. That's hot too.

MACKEREL: I try. But I'm only thirteen, so it's all just a theory.

JOSH: You're God. I just figured it out.

MACKEREL: Maybe to you. I mean I wish.

JOSH: Seriously. You have to smell you. Use your fingers.

Mackerel dips a finger in his asshole, then pulls it out and gives the tip a very tentative sniff.

MACKEREL: Hm.

JOSH: What did I tell you?

MACKEREL: I am God, aren't I? Weird.

JOSH: Yeah, well, just don't tell anyone. Otherwise, I'll never get laid.

MACKEREL: It smells like every other ass in the world, only much, much better. That's a guess.

JOSH: Well, duh. Being gay is the truth. You ought to try it. Oh, shit, I'm going to come.

MACKEREL: Knock yourself out. Oh, shit, me too.

Fifteen minutes later, Mackerel's lower legs have started aching, so he's on his hands and knees. Josh has gotten hard again, and alternates between rimming Mackerel and probing his ethereal ass with a finger.

MACKEREL: Just give me some heroin. What's your problem?

JOSH: You are.

MACKEREL: That's why I don't care if I die. If one more guy does this to me, I'm going to freak. My blood pressure's insane.

JOSH: You should charge.

MACKEREL: I do. Money's not my problem. Beauty is. It's weird. I used to be no one for years.

JOSH: If you can hold out until you're middle-aged, you'll be no one again. You should see my quote-unquote uncle.

MACKEREL: Thanks, but death calls. That sounded more ominous than it feels.

JOSH: I would have paid you a hundred thousand dollars to do this. But I'm horny, so don't quote me.

MACKEREL: That would have worked.

JosH: I mean I would have if I had it. Maybe my quote-unquote uncle has it. He certainly acts like he's rich. He bought me from the straight world in so many words.

MACKEREL: What do you guys do in bed? Not that I care.

JOSH: This. Only I'm you, and he's every guy who's ever done this to you, if you catch my drift. He also fist fucks me. And he pretends to cook me in the fireplace, and then pretends to carve me into steaks and eat them. I guess they're steaks. They're invisible, so how would I know?

MACKEREL: What do you mean by fist fuck?

Jos H: What do you mean by what do I mean? It's self-explanatory. Why do you care?

MACKEREL: Because it keeps coming up in conversation. Well, not conversation, because I never say anything back. It must be a fad.

JOSH: I love you.

MACKEREL: Yeah, that word keeps coming up too.

JOSH: I want to protect you from the world, and give you give anything you want. I can't believe it.

MACKEREL: Ditto. I mean everyone says that too.

Ten minutes later, josh is finally bored with sex, and the two boys are sitting side by side on some grass.

JOSH: (
mournfully
) I'm no one now. I've gone from being you to being whoever.

MACKEREL: I'll be dead in a couple of days, if that helps. Besides, I make everyone depressed. Being God sucks.