Codename Prague (19 page)

“Sixth law of robotics: don’t be a pain in the ass,” said AW.

“That’s the eighth law of robotics,” said CNP. “The sixth has to do with empathic synchronicity.”

CR said, “Get to the point, Anvil-in-Chief Prague. You called us. We assume you have something worthwhile to tell us. Not to mention you called collect. The MAP is paying for your boloney. Per usual.”

CNP stared blankly at the officials………AW said, “You are a disgrace to—”

“I’m on the trail of this asshole I found in Prague,” interrupted CNP. “He committed an illegal act of ekphrasis. He’s a monster. I’m chasing the fucker to Hong Kong. I know a smooth criminal when I see one.”

AW & CR glanced at one another. “Ekphrasis?” mouthed AW.

CR looked at CNP. “So you’re no longer in Prague, then?”

“I’m no longer in Prague. That’s correct.”

“So you’ve had relations with a certain femme fatale, then?” AW & CR snickered under their breath.

“Relations? Grow up, Farmer Ted.”

“So you’ve completed your mission, then?”

“No. Yes. Maybe. Take your pick. I never knew what the mission was.”

“That’s beside the point,” said CR. “The less you know about your mission, the better. You shouldn’t even know that you’re on a mission. How do you know that?”

“Maybe he is a robot, after all,” said AW.

“Who?” said CR.

AW pointed at CNP through the gel-screen.

CR frowned. “Who’s that? I don’t know who that is. How did you get this number? The MAP fines prank callers, without mercy, & at the outer limits of absurdity. I hereby fine you the head of Alfredo Garcia.”

“Failure to produce this head in a timely manner with period-piece sunglasses intact,” interjected AW, “will result in All Out Conversion to Suicidal Gore wherein you will be forced to stab yourself to death with Peckinpahesque recklessness & whimsy.”

Smiling, CNP said, “At any rate,
zèng bié
. I’ll let you know how everything pans out. Or not. I do what I want. That’s all a man can do. You know what they say, boys. The early bird catches the mutated bullfrog. Someone let the cat out of the black hole. Go fly a kakistocracy. Keep your irons in the fires of Eden. A woman’s work is never overcooked. Beauty is only a skin rash. Look before you lionize. There is no honor among thespians. Walls have frontal lobes. Ignorance is piss. Great minds think alone. No news is good news with Gary Gnu…”

*

CNP told the tranzbubble to give him his briefcase. He re-cuffed himself to it.

The tranzbubble said thank you & evaporated…

Panoramic shot of Kowloon beneath a pink sun:…terminal sprawl of mirrored matted blinking bottlenecks turtlenecks torpedoes cacti antennae scratch the sss-Ur-[f](ace) of atmosphere behind it the ancient sloping backbone of a mountain green as a special effekts superscreen…Tronlike grid of bleeding pseudofolliculitis streets & (a)causeways the silver chutes penetrate the hot depths in orderly alloyed oiled brigades of tendrils…fireballs spewed from eyes/holes in the sky…& the scikungfi fights broke out like hives in bullet-time CGI…contact dermatitis breakout/breakthrough…Hot-tempered ichi/alpha males clad in flashy Judogis & Keikogis & Aikidogis & Doboks & Shinobi Shozukus & Cobra Kahn uniforms clashed
en bloc
in the clouds & on rooftops & on the streets with fists & feet & trans-tech WMIs (Weapons of Mass Instruction) vibroswords flowswords blowswords chainswords bioswords hyperswords nietzscheswords swords that altogether defied swordlike behavior…steady thunder of dares threats soporific warcries…

Vertigo.

For a moment, CNP merged with the spectacle of sociometroscikung-fidom—the technology of Desire extended into its eschatological occupation, penetrating it, aluminizing it, metamorphosing it…& suddenly he had lost himself, body & mind, in a fit of passive-aggressive ecstasy. He was no longer a man. He was Abba. He was the city.

Verfremsdungseffekt
.

As quickly as he had lost himself, he reestablished a sense of personhood. He was not the city. He was not Abba. He was just a man. He forced himself to say it out loud. “I am not Abba. I am not Abba. I am—”

A pillow swallowed CNP like a hungry mollusk.

*

CHASE SCENE: CNP pursued TSM on foot, then by fanglider, jetpack, & batsuit. TSM hurled taunts & Molotov cocktails over its shoulder. They hailed wicker ferries that took them to Hong Kong where DKs demolished skyscrapers & devoured innocent antagonists by the handful. Long sequence here with a vivid synesthesic depiction of Hong Kong’s Tetsuo Sektor.

*

Cornered & out of breath, TSM did the only thing it could do: took a bus to the Bruce Lee Funpark…

*

DREAM: The astro-zombie evolved into a man who possessed a community college associates degree. He stumbled across the lawn & tripped over a piece of yard art. Died. A portal to a ridiculous science fictional dimension masquerading as a Pop-Up Video bubble formed over his skull. Inside the bubble was the author photo of an extra-terrestrial alien, sharp white chin resting on the back of a loose fist.

*

Over the megascape of dragoncoasters, an echoic aluminum screech…

LOCATION: Chopsocky Sektor, Hong Kong, China. SIZE: 1 Sq. Mile. POPULATION: 80,000
daikaijus
, 10,000 Bruce Lees, 5 Chuck Norrises, 1 James Coburn & half a Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. COST OF ADMISSION: Death Wish + Tier Eight Knowledge of Jeet Kune Do, Wuxia Pian & Postspeculative Scikungfi. FEATURED RIDE:…FEATURED SNACK FOOD: Bamboo Surprise…

CNP uncuffed himself from the briefcase. A DK hawked a fireball at him. He dodged it & recuffed himself to the briefcase.

The Bruce Lee Funpark upheld tight security measures, its inhabitants permanently on the brink of leaking out & infesting wider Hong Kong & the Chinese mainland. It had happened before. At one point the Chinese government was being run entirely by BL & DK life forms—senate scikungfi fights from that era appeared in syndication to this day—prompting surrounding countries (e.g. Mongolia, Vietnam, North Korea, Russia, etc.) to install various Bruce Li
^[17]
androids &
Supa Robottos
in powerful administrative positions so as to at least contend with the infection on a sociopolitical level. Aided by the council of several notable Amerikan pulp science fiction paperbacks, however, Chinese natives were able to quell the infection, & now every BL & DK had been neutered, as it were, so that if an aspirant scalawag stepped beyond the clearly demarcated boundaries of the BLF, it vaporized. As an additional precaution, the BLF boasted thousands of vigilant, oscillating tower canons. Sometimes the tower canons killed indiscriminately, without provocation. Sometimes they killed innocent, paying customers. But as with all postreal places & spaces, one always pays, enters & exists at one’s own risk.

…“Catch me if you can,” said TSM & disappeared into a game room. CNP chased the monster inside.

The game room was full of old coin-operated arcade machines—row after row of Konami
^®
Kung Fu interrupted by the odd game of Contra, Track & Field, & Tutankham. A BL hunched over each machine manipulating ball-peen joysticks & fingering red buttons.

CNP advanced up & down the aisles. He called out to TSM, insulting the monster’s manhood & sense of style, ensuring the monster of immanent demolition, but CNP’s attention mainly fell on the wide assortment of BLs that populated the arcade, all of whom swore in Chinese & made irritated, high-pitched BL noises as they lost their respective games & had to stuff more quarters into the machines’ slots.

There were BLs in black tights.

There were BLs in parachute pants.

There were BLs in yellow
Kill Bill
uniforms.

There were BLs with big hair, BLs with butt cuts & buzz cuts, BLs with mullets & Mohawks & Jheri curls.

There were Cato BLs.

There were cartoon BLs.

There were Mr Hyde BLs, Frankenstein BLs, Nosferatu BLs, Wolfman BLs, Lizardman BLs, Invisible Man BLs, Planet of the Apes BLs, Caliban BLs, street mime BLs, Jason Vorhees BLs, Mecha-BLs (
in effigie
Cylons, Voltron, Megatron, Biotron, Mr Roboto, Robocop, the Tin Man, the Maria-Robot, Gort, Herbie the Volkswagon, Dr Identity, Yul Brynner, Lance Henriksen, F451’s Mechanical Hound, etc.), Adam Ant BLs, Grendel BLs, Sasquatch BLs, Medusa BLs, Jack the Ripper BLs, Morlock BLs, Oscar the Grouch BLs, Mugwump BLs, Incredible Hulk BLs, Clockwork Orange BLs, Lady Chatterly BLs, Jackie Chan BLs, Pokémon BLs, Teletubby BLs…

There were DK-sized BLs who reposed on their knees & Lilliputian BLs who stood on each other’s shoulders like totem poles.

There were scrawny BLs from the early years. There were shredded, musclebound BLs from the last days.

BLs with rubber noses.

BLs with Doc Oc tentacles and Ultimate Warrior facepaint.

BLs whose six-packs had virally overtaken the rest of their bodies, rendering them giant washboard six-packs crowned by dark, pubic ruffs of hair.

BLs overeasy, BLs à la carte, Blaxploitation BLs, Bruceploitation BLs, BLs [Mad Lib]…

The VG protagonist of a Solomon Grundy BL playing Contra ran out of ammo & an enemy soldier shot him dead. It was the last man. The BL threw a temper tantrum; it was supposed to have unlimited ammo. It slammed a fist into the screen, shattering it, then punched the arcade game with right & left hooks & hammer fists. Soon the machine lay in smoking, sparking chunks. Unsatisfied, the BL stomped on the wreckage. Nearby BLs told him to grow up. The Solomon Grundy BL turned its aggression on them & a fight broke out.

The BLs stopped fighting when they noticed CNP watching them.

“Solomon Grundy BL, born on a Monday as well.” The android gnashed its teeth. “Ticket please.” It stuck out its hand.

CNP blinked. “Ticket?”

All of the BLs in the arcade turned from their games & looked at CNP expectantly. Sound of VG protagonists being killed or trounced by their opponents…

“Grundy BL crush pimple-man!”

CNP touched his face. “I don’t have any pimples.”

50+ BLs blitzed CNP…scikungfi battle royal…they flowed out of the arcade into the BFL proper…The scene went BLACK & RED. Coronets warmed up. Drum roll on a splash cymbal…West Side Story finger-snapping sequence in silhouette. A Pony Boy BL in tight blue jeans & a wifebeater led the family of scikungfi fighters across the stage of concrete & asphalt & iron………………………………….

*

CNP grabbed the faces of the BLs & smashed them into the ground & their heads exploded like water balloons. He darted up the leg & the torso of a DK & ripped its beak in two & the movie monster’s throat turned inside out & its tongue went stiff with rigor mortis. He killed eight more DKs in the same manner. BLs clutched their hairdos. BLs made sharp exhaling noises.

*

Flickering lights. A headache brought on by a surge of inclement weather.

*

NARRATIVE MALFUNCTION…circuits overlarded…………………………………… ………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………. Review of this sentence in
The Prague Daily
: “This sentence is full of little dots. This sentence is full of
itself
. & its author has merged with Dr Oblivion. A cancerous sentence. An evil, indecipherable sentence.
Introibo ad altare Dei
…P.S. the word ‘overloaded’ is misspelled…”

*

TSM hid behind a wall & clubbed CNP with a metal pipe when he ran by, nearly decapitating him. CNP tore off his damaged head & threw it aside. Martini juice ejaculated from the neck wound. He uncuffed himself from the briefcase, removed a fresh head, put it on, & recuffed himself to the briefcase. He shook a finger at TSM & flicked his nose with a thumb.

TSM vanished into a herd of DKs…

*

Random Chapter w/in Chapter: There Is a Fifty-Foot
Mecha-Michael Ironside Monster Crawling Out of a Hole…

Some actors always play hard bastards, but they are often not hard bastards in “real life.” Family members and intimate acquaintances compare them to figures the likes of teddy bears, pacifists, “gentle giants” or “big sweeties.”

This is not the case with Canadian-born actor Michael Ironside (1950-2056) a.k.a. Frederick Reginald “They Sucked Their Brains Out” Ironside.

During adulthood, Ironside was documented on multiple occasions exhibiting behavior in “real life” evocative of hard bastardry. The cause of his death at the age of 106 remains a mystery. After considerable debate, coroners finally validated the COD with one simple word:
ANGER
.

Ironside’s family donated his corpse to the Ministry of Applied Pressure, as specified in his will. The MAP, then, in stride with the era’s dominant fashion craze, extracted the late celebrity’s DNA & used it to manufacture a legion of fifty-foot tall mecha-Michael Ironside monsters, the purpose of which was never made public,
although it has been speculated that an extremist faction of the Department of Goodwill
& Selflessness intended to use them against an extremist faction of the Department of Unexplainable Metaphysical Occurrences that threatened to stab holes in the fabric of reality so as to deflate reality like a car tire. The threat never came to fruition; in retrospect, people think of it as an urban legend, despite the many fifty-foot mecha-Michael Ironside monster sightings that have transpired since the actor’s death. At the moment, for instance, outside the front door of Prague’s Goltz-Kinsky Palace, there is a fifty-foot mecha-Michael Ironside monster crawling out of a hole…

*

Deliberate Chapter w/in Chapter w/in Chapter:…

& Out of Another Hole…