The Toyminator (17 page)

“Chickens fed on chicken heads,” said Jack, shaking
his
.

“Well, think about it,” said the head chef. “If you want a chicken to taste really chickeny, then the best thing to feed that chicken on would have to be another chicken. It makes perfect sense, doesn’t it?”

Jack looked up from his chopping and said, “I can’t argue with that.”

“Mind you,” said the head chef as he drizzled a little oil of chicken over a headless chicken and poked a rotisserie skewer up its backside, “chickens are a bit of a mystery to me.”

“Really?” Jack nodded and chopped.

“I don’t know where they all come from,” said the head chef.

“They come out of eggs,” said Jack. “Of this I am reasonably sure.”

“Do they?” said the head chef. “
Of that
I’m not too sure.”

“I think it’s an established fact,” said Jack.

“Oh really?” said the head chef. “Well, then you explain this to me. Every day, in Los Angeles alone, in the Golden Chicken Diners, we sell about ten thousand chickens.”

“
Ten thousand
?” said Jack.

“Easily,” said the head chef. “We’ll do five hundred here every day and there’s twenty Golden Chicken Diners in Los Angeles.”

Jack whistled.

“And well may you whistle,” said the head chef. “That’s ten thousand, but that’s only the tip of the chicken-berg. Every restaurant sells chicken, every supermarket sells chicken, every sandwich stall sells chicken, every hotel sells chicken. Do I need to continue?”

“Can you?” asked Jack.

“Very much so,” said the head chef. “It’s millions of chickens every day. And that’s only in Los Angeles. Not the rest of the USA. Not the rest of the whole wide world.”

“That must add up to an awful lot of chickens,” said Jack, shuddering at the thought.

“I think it’s beyond counting,” said the head chef. “I don’t think they have a name for such a number.”

“It’s possibly a google,” said Jack.

The head chef looked at Jack and coughed. “Possibly,” he said. “But where do they all come from?”

“Out of eggs,” said Jack. “That’s where.”

“But the eggs are for sale,” said the head chef. “We do eggs here. Again, at least five hundred a day. And that’s just here, there’s –”

“I see where you’re heading,” said Jack. “Googles of eggs everyday.”

“Exactly,” said the head chef.

“Well, the way I see it,” said Jack, “or at least what I’ve always been led to believe, is that fertilised eggs, that is those that come from a chicken that has been shagged by a cockerel, become chickens. Unfertilised eggs, which won’t hatch, are sold as eggs.”

“You are wise beyond your years,” said the head chef, “but it won’t work. The numbers don’t tie up. Unfertilised eggs, fine – battery chickens will turn those out every day for years. Until they’re too old to reproduce, then they get ground up and become chicken feed. But think about this – to produce the fertilised eggs you’d need an awful lot of randy roosters. Billions and googles of them, shagging away day and night, endlessly.”

“Nice work if you can get it,” said Jack.

“What, you’d like a job shagging chickens?”

“I would if I were a rooster. And it’s probably the only job they can get.”

“Well, it doesn’t pan out,” said the head chef. “I’ve never heard of any chicken stud farms where millions of roosters shag billions of chickens every day. There’s no such place.”

“There must be,” said Jack.

“Then tell me where.”

“I’m new to these parts.”

“Well, don’t they have chickens where you come from?”

Jack remembered certain anal-probings. “Well, they do …” he said.

“It doesn’t work,” said the head chef, oiling up another chicken and giving it a little flick with his fat forefinger. “Doesn’t work. There’s simply too many chickens being eaten every day. You’d need a stud farm the size of Kansas. It just doesn’t work.”

“Well,” said Jack, “I have to agree that you’ve given me food for thought.” And he laughed.

“Why are you laughing?” asked the head chef.

“Sorry,” said Jack. “So what is your theory? I suspect that you do have a theory.”

“Actually I do,” said the head chef, “but I’m not going to tell you because you wouldn’t believe it. You’d laugh.”

“You’d be surprised at what I believe,” said Jack. “And what I’ve seen. I’ve seen things you people wouldn’t believe.” Which rang a bell somewhere.
[27]

“Well, you wouldn’t believe
this
.”

“I’ll just bet you I would. Trust me, I’m an assistant chef.”

“Well, fair enough,” said the head chef. “After all, you are in the trade, and clearly destined for great things. But don’t pass on what I say to those Puerto Rican wetbacks – they’ll only go selling it to the
Weekly World News
.”

Jack raised his cleaver and prepared to bring it down.

“They are not of this world,” said the head chef.

Jack brought his cleaver down and only just missed taking his finger off.

“What?” said Jack. “What are you saying?”

“Have you heard of Area Fifty-Two?” asked the head chef.

Jack shook his head.

“Well,” said the head chef, “ten years ago, in nineteen forty-seven,
[28]
a flying saucer crashed in Roswell, New Mexico. The Air Force covered it up, gave out this story that it was a secret military balloon experiment, or some such nonsense. But it wasn’t. It was a UFO.”

“And a UFO is a flying saucer?”

“Of course it is. And they say that the occupants on board were still alive and the American government has done a deal with them – in exchange for advanced technology they let the aliens abduct a few Americans every year for experimentation, to cross-breed a new race.”

“Go on,” said Jack, his cleaver hovering.

“Half-man, half-chicken. Those aliens are chickens, sure as sure.”

Jack scratched his head with his cleaver and nearly took his left eye out.

“And I’ll tell you how I figured it out,” said the head chef. “Ten years ago there were no chicken diners, no fast-food restaurants. Chickens came from local farms. Shucks, where I grew up there were chicken farms, and they could supply just enough chickens and eggs to the local community. Like I said, the numbers are now impossible.”

“But hold on there,” said Jack. “Are you saying that all these google billions of chickens are coming from Area Fifty-Two? What are you saying – that they’re being imported by the billion from some chicken planet in outer space?”

“Not a bit of it,” said the head chef, oiling up another bird. “Well, not the last bit. These chickens here are being produced at Area Fifty-Two. The alien chickens would hardly import millions of their own kind to be eaten by our kind every day, would they?”

Jack shook his head.

“When I say that they’re being
produced
, that’s what I mean. Look at these chickens – they’re all the same. All the same size, all the same weight. Check them out in the supermarket. Rows of them, all the same size, all the same weight. They’re all one chicken.”

Jack shook his head once more and made a face of puzzlement.

“They’re artificial,” said the head chef. “I’m not looking now, but I’ll bet you that each of those chickens has a little brown freckle on the left side of its beak.”

Jack fished a couple of chicken heads from the bin and examined each in turn.

They both had identical freckles.

Jack flung the chicken heads down, dug into the swelling head bin, brought out a handful, gazed at them.

And said, “Identical.”

“Sure enough,” said the head chef.

“This is incredible,” said Jack. “But why hasn’t anyone other than you noticed this?”

“It’s only at the Golden Chicken chain that the chickens arrive with their heads on. They don’t have their heads on in supermarkets.”

“Whoa!” said Jack. “This is deep.”

“Do you believe what I’m telling you?”

“I do,” said Jack. “I do.”

“Well, I’m glad that you do. You’re the first assistant chef I’ve had who did. Mostly they just quit when I tell them. They panic and run. They think I’m mad.”

“Well, I don’t,” said Jack. “But what are you going to do about it?”

“Do?” asked the head chef. “What do you mean?”

“I mean,” said Jack, “that you know a terrible secret. You have exposed a dreadful conspiracy. It is your duty to pursue this to its source and expose the perpetrator. All of America should know the truth about this.”

“Well,” said the head chef, “I’d never thought of it that way.”

“Well, think about it now. Surely as head chef you could follow this up the chain of command. Identify the single individual behind it.”

“Well, I suppose I could. We head chefs are being invited to head office tomorrow. I could make subtle enquiries there.”

“It is your duty as an American to do so.”

“My duty.” The head chef shook his head. It had a chefs hat on it. The chefs hat wobbled about. And now much of the head chef began to wobble about.

“Your duty,” Jack continued, “even if it costs you your life.”

“My
life
?” The head chef’s hands began to shake.

“Well, obviously they’ll seek to kill you because of what you know. You are a threat to these alien chicken invaders. They’ll probably want to kill you and grind you up and feed you to the artificial chickens that are coming off the production line.”

“Oh dear,” said the head chef. “Oh my, oh my.”

“You’ll need to disguise the shaking,” said Jack, “when you’re at the meeting tomorrow – with all those agents of the chicken invaders. I’ve heard that chickens can smell fear. They’ll certainly be able to smell yours.”

“Oh dear, oh my, oh my,” said the head chef once more, and now he shook from his hat to his shiny shoes.

“If you don’t come back,” said Jack, “I will continue with your cause. You will not have died,
horribly
, in vain.”

The head chef fled the kitchen of the Golden Chicken Diner upon wobbly shaking legs and Jack found himself promoted once again.

By the time Jack clocked off from his first day at the Golden Chicken Diner, it had to be said that he was a firm believer in the power of the American Dream.

“Head chef?” said Dorothy as she clocked off in a likewise manner.

“Hard work, ambition and faithfulness to the company’s ethic,” said Jack, and almost without laughing.

Although Jack didn’t feel much like laughing. Jack felt anxious and all knotted up inside. Jack worried for Eddie. Feared for his bestest friend.

Jack’s bestest friend was more than a little afeared himself. He was afeared and he was hungry, too. Eddie had spent a most uncomfortable day travelling third class in the luggage compartment of a long black automobile.

There had been some stops for petrol, which Eddie had at first assumed were stops for winding of the key. Until he recalled that the cars of this world were not at all powered by clockwork. And there had been lots of hurlings to the left and the right, which Eddie correctly assumed were from the car turning corners. And there had been slowings down and speedings up and too many hours had passed for Eddie Bear. For as Eddie knew all too well, with each passing hour, indeed with each passing minute, the car was taking him further away, away from his bestest friend Jack.

“I can see that look on your face again,” said Dorothy to Jack. “You are worrying about Eddie.”

“How can I do anything else?” Jack asked outside the diner as he slipped on his nice clean trenchcoat.

Dorothy shrugged and said, “You’re doing all you can. And my, that trenchcoat smells of chicken.”

Jack made that face yet again.

“I’ll tell you what,” said Dorothy. “I’ll take you out tonight, to a club – how would you like that?”

“If it’s a drinking club,” said Jack. Hopefully.

“I’ll see what I can do.”

“Dorothy,” said Jack, and he looked into the green eyes of the beautiful woman. “Dorothy, one thing. You only had enough money to pay for a couple of cups of coffee earlier. How come you can now afford to take me out to a club?”

“I stole money out of the cash register,” said Dorothy.

“Oh, that’s all right then,” said Jack. “I thought you might have done something dishonest.”

No further words were exchanged upon this matter and Jack and Dorothy walked arm in arm down Hollywood Boulevard.

Dorothy pointed out places of interest and Jack looked on in considerable awe, whilst wishing that Eddie was with him to see them.

“That’s where the Academy Awards ceremony is held each year to honour the achievements of movie stars,” said Dorothy. “One day I will go onto the stage there and receive my award for Best Actress.”

“I thought you were going into producing,” said Jack.

“Yes,” said Dorothy. “Best Actress and Best Producer and I hope you’ll be there, too. You’d look wonderful in a black tuxedo and dicky bow. Very dashing, very romantic.”

At length they reached the Hollywood Wax Museum.

“Would you like to see the movie stars?” asked Dorothy. “They are here in effigy.”

Jack shrugged. “About this drinking club. I’ve had a hard day and I do like to unwind over a dozen or so beers.”

“All in good time, come on.”

Now wax museums are very much like Marmite.

In that you either love ’em or hate ’em. There’s no in between. No, “I think I fancy a visit to the wax museum today, sort of.” It’s either yes indeedy-do, or no siree.

At the door to the wax museum stood the effigy of a golden woman in a white dress, the skirt of which periodically rose through the medium of air-jets beneath to reveal her underwear.

“I like wax museums,” said Jack. “Yes indeedy-do.”

“That’s Marilyn Monroe,” said Dorothy as she purchased the tickets from a man in the ticket booth who looked like a cross between Bella Lugosi and Rin Tin Tin. “She’s the most famous actress in the world.”

“Does she have a nursery rhyme?” Jack asked.

“No, silly,” said Dorothy. “Come on.”

And they entered the wax museum.

It was dark in there – well, they always are, it lends to the necessary ambience. And disguises, of course, the fact that wax museums are generally housed within crumbling buildings with really manky decor, faded damp-stained wallpaper and carpets that dare not speak their name.

But that’s part of their charm.

Jack viewed The Legends of the Old West: William S. Hart, Audie Murphy, Jimmy Stewart, Gabby Hayes, Hopalong Cassidy, Clayton Moore, Roy Rogers and Trigger.

Jack then viewed The Mirthmakers: Buster Keaton, Charlie Chaplin, Laurel and Hardy, the Marx Brothers (whose hand prints Jack had viewed outside Mann’s Chinese Theatre) and Abbott and Costello.

Then The Hollywood Horrors: Lon Chaney Senr., Bella Lugosi, Dwight Frye, Boris Karloff.

“Oh,” said Dorothy. “They scare me.” And she nuzzled close to Jack.

And Jack took to this nuzzling and Jack turned up the face of Dorothy and kissed it, on the forehead and on the cheek and then on the beautiful mouth. And Dorothy kissed Jack and moved his hands from her shoulders down to her bottom.

And, as there was no one else around, and the lighting was so dim and everything, very soon some clothes were off and the two of them were having sex.

And somewhat sooner that Jack might have hoped, it was over, and somewhat soon after that the two of them were back in the evening sunlight of Hollywood Boulevard.

“Well, thanks for
that
,” said Jack.

But Dorothy put her fingers to his lips. “It took your mind off Eddie for a while, didn’t it?” she said.

“Damn,” said Jack. “I wish you hadn’t said
that
. Now I feel worse than ever.”

Eddie Bear felt worse than ever. He felt hot and he felt sick from all the bumping about and when the car finally stopped for good and all and the lid of his prison was lifted, Eddie Bear peered into the sunlight and felt almost exhilarated. Almost.

“Out,” said the voice of his bestest friend, which came not from that fellow.

“I’m wobbly,” said Eddie. “You’ll have to lift me out.”

“Out, or I’ll kick you out.”

“Well, there’s no need for
that
.” Eddie struggled up and over and down. To rest his paw pads on sand. “If I ask you where I am, will you tell me?” he asked.

The other Jack shook his head grimly. “Where you’ll not be found,” said he. “Come on, get a move on, that way.”

That way proved to be between the open steel-framed gateway of a tall and barbed-wire-fenced enclosure. Eddie looked to the left and the right of him. The fencing faded off in either direction. This was a large enclosure. There was a guard post by this gateway. A uniformed guard sat in it.

There was also a sign on an open gate. The sign read:

AREA FIFTY-TWO

UNAUTHORISED ACCESS FORBIDDEN

There were some rules and regulations printed beneath these words and these were of the military persuasion.

Eddie looked up bitterly at the other Jack. “I’m hungry,” said Eddie. “And thirsty, too. Is there a bar nearby?”

“There’s plenty of bars where you’re going,” said the evil twin of his bestest friend. “All made of steel.” And he laughed, in that mad way that supervillains do.

“Most amusing,” said Eddie. “But why have you brought me here?”

“Because you are
so
special,” said the anti-Jack. And he did more of the manic laughing.

Jack wasn’t laughing. He now felt
very
guilty.

“Listen,” said Dorothy, “you’re doing everything you can. Didn’t you tell me that as head chef of a Golden Chicken Diner you were invited to the head office tomorrow for a motivational training session?”

“I don’t recall doing so,” said Jack, “but that is what I’m doing.”

“So you’ll probably be on the board of directors by lunchtime and in a position to find out where they’ve taken Eddie.”

“You really think so?” said Jack.

“Just follow the American Dream.”

“I am a little confused by the American Dream, as it happens,” said Jack as he and Dorothy walked on, passing the Hollywood Suit Company, which knocks out really natty suits at a price that one can afford.
[29]
“I mean,” Jack continued, “if it is every American’s born right to follow the American Dream and succeed in this following, how come most Americans aren’t googlaires living in mansions?”

“It’s their right to
try
,” said Dorothy.

And
that
was
that
for
that
conversation.

“Let’s go on to a club,” said Dorothy.

Jack took to halting and gazing at her. “Actually, let’s not,” he said. “As you might be aware, I have nowhere to sleep tonight.”

“You can sleep with me if you want.”

“I was hoping you’d say that. Why don’t we give the club a miss, go to your place, have some more sex and get an early night? I have a hard day ahead.”

Dorothy looked up at Jack. “All right,” she said. “We should both have an early night. There’s no telling what might happen to us tomorrow at the Golden Chicken headquarters.”

“Us?” said Jack. “I will be going alone.”

“I think you’ll find that all management staff have been invited. Restaurant management as well as kitchen management.”

“So that’s why I’ll be going alone.”

“And that’s why you won’t. I follow the American Dream, too, Jack. I manage
our
branch of the Golden Chicken now.”

“What?” said Jack.

“There was some unpleasantness with the previous manager,” said Dorothy. “She didn’t go quietly. I was forced to use my Dimac.”

“Early night it is, then,” said Jack.

The Californian sun rose once again. As it always does, unfailingly.

Its warmth and golden wonder did not fall on Eddie Bear, however, for he lay dismally in a barred cell, many floors beneath ground level in that Area known as Fifty-Two.

It touched upon the cheek of Jack, though, who lay in the arms of Dorothy in the single room she rented in a house in Blue Jay Way that would one day be rented in its entirety by George Harrison, who would write a rather pleasant song about it. But not yet.

Jack yawned, stretched, rose. Viewed his clothes, all washed, ironed and ready, hanging on a hanger. Looked down upon the sweet sleeping face of Dorothy and kissed her on the cheek.

Dorothy stirred and murmured, “Not now, Brad.”

“
Brad
?” said Jack.

And Dorothy awoke.

“Brad,” said Jack. “You said Brad.”

“Brad is the name of my dog,” said Dorothy.

“You said that your dog was named Toto.”

“Bradley Toto,” said Dorothy. “He’s a thoroughbred from England.”

Jack laughed loudly. “Your first lie,” said he. “We should celebrate it with some early-morning sex.”

“I’m not in the mood,” said Dorothy.

“Your second lie,” said Jack.

And when the early-morning sex was done and Jack was once more feeling really rotten about himself for having such a good time whilst Eddie was either in peril, or dead, they had their breakfast. Which Jack really hated himself for enjoying so much.

And then they got dressed and went out.

And that sun was still shining. Like it does.

And they caught a downtown train and it took them to downtown LA, where they alighted downtown.

And Jack looked up at GOLDEN CHICKEN TOWERS and Jack went, “Wow, that’s big! Especially the lettering.”

Golden Chicken Towers was located next to the Eastern Building, which remains to this day a triumph of Art Deco and is celebrated for the fact that
Predator 2
stood upon its roof and was not at all concerned when his retractable spear jobbie was struck by lightning.

The foyer, entrance hall, vestibule, lobby or whatever you might wish to call it of Golden Chicken Towers was nothing less than palatial.

It was sumptuous. It was golden. It was chickeny.

To either side of the expanse of golden floor tiles stood golden plinths, upon which rose statues of golden hens. These hens stood in noble attitudes. Some held tall upward-thrusting spears beneath their golden wings, spears capped with golden pennants, each emblazoned with the company logo. Some of these hens wore uniforms decked with golden medals. Others looked defiant, bearing golden guns.

“I don’t know about you,” Jack whispered to Dorothy as they joined a queue to receive their official passes, “but all this is
very
wrong.”

“It’s like some temple dedicated to the God of All Chickens,” Dorothy observed. “Those are very big statues.”

Jack craned his neck and peered along the queue. It was a long queue made up of eager-looking young Americans. They were all spick and span and as near to business-suited as they could afford. They had that scrubbed quality about them that is somehow unwholesome, although it’s difficult to explain exactly why.

To Jack they all looked all of a sameness. And this, Jack felt, was odd. And then it occurred to Jack, perhaps for the first time, that they all
were
of a certain sameness. That everyone he had encountered since entering this world that was exclusively peopled by his own kind, even though they had certain superficial differences, they
were
all of a sameness.

They were all of a single race. The human one.

And suddenly Jack yearned to be back in Toy City. This was
not
his world, even if these
were somehow
his people. There was such diversity amongst the denizens of Toy City, the gollies and the dollies, and the teddies and the clockwork folk. Each with their own specific, particular outlook on life, their own ways of being.
They
were Jack’s folk. Jack was one of them now. He had always been an outsider, always looking for something. But there was nothing
here
he wanted.

Jack looked towards Dorothy.

No, not even
her
, really.

Jack just wanted to be back with Eddie. Back in Toy City with all of this horror behind him.

“What are you thinking about?” asked Dorothy. “Eddie, I bet.”

“More than Eddie,” said Jack. “I was thinking about … well, no, it doesn’t matter.”