Codename Prague (3 page)

“Underwear,” he intoned. A pair of pinstripe boxer briefs tumbled out of a closet. They scuttled across the floor and up his legs and snarled into place.

He took SAMSA 066 by the arm and dragged him into a corner, trying not to get the toothpaste that the agent bled on his skin. SAMSA 067 bled electric ants. In the universe of fashionized ultraviolence and reanimation, virtually everybody had swapped their blood for something chic, or at least something that wasn’t blood, which is to say, something that didn’t look like blood but contained all of its essential ingredients (with the addition of sundry varieties of Hamburger Helper). Many citizens had surrogated their organs with inanimate objects, too, ranging from fruits and vegetables to sand and stuffed animals. Prague wondered how SAMSA 067 afforded the ants. Posh dialysis by anyone’s standards. A Victory gin martini was the best Prague could do on his embarrassing income. One day, in his own private Idaho, he hoped to upgrade to Hammer blood, the voguest artificial brand on the market. Or at least a martini mixed from Steinhäger.

SAMSA 066’s mouth was a serrated hole. “You killed my partner,” the hole wheezed. “You killed me.”

Prague clicked his tongue. “They can rebuild you. They have the technology.”

SAMSA 066 swore. And died.

The vidphone rang again. Prague watched it ring.

Fifteen rings later he answered the call.

Rabelais. Commodore Ronald Rabelais. General Assistant Managerial Choreographer of Mortal Affairs for the Ministry of Applied Pressure’s Department of Anthropologism. He fizzled into view in the guise of Marvin the Martian. Prague’s vidphone had a catatonic converter that portrayed callers as Looney Toon characters on its screen. What Looney Toon character it was depended on one’s physiognomy, physique and personality, all of which were
gauged by the teleanalytic finesse of the vidphone’s Transparent Eyeball. Callers were cartoonized based on which character they looked and acted like the most. With Rabelais it was a no-brainer. Except for being Caucazoid, he sort of resembled Marvin the Martian in real life with his thin limbs, big eyes, and round head. He was a small man, too—a hairdo’s breadth away from Lilliputian. And as long as Prague had known him, he had, like the Martian, always demonstrated a cosmic death drive and a steel-toothed love of thanatopsis.

“Ah, Vincent,” chirped Rabelais in a muffled, kazoolike voice. “There you are.” He stood center-screen in token broomhead hat, kilt and sneakers. Apropos his skin was jet black.

“Here I am,” uttered Prague.

“Well then. I trust you’re on your way out the door? They’re waiting for you at the slaughterhouse. I hope my boys haven’t given you any trouble. Boys will be boys.”

Prague looked over his shoulder at the ramparts of the SAMSAs. “I don’t think your boys’ll be home for dinner, Pops.”

Cdre Rabelais nodded gravely. “I see.” He lifted his chin. He scratched his chin. He started to pace back and forth across the north pole of the little red planet beneath him. “Reanimation is a costly affair. Reanimation is a costly affair.” He kept saying it.

Prague sighed. “Look. Spit it out. I’m out of one-liners and it’s time for breakfast. Eggs and bacon. No toast.” Was the Commodore really sore because he put two measly functionaries out of their misery, if only temporarily? Or was it the usual exhibition of short man’s syndrome? Prague couldn’t tell. He could never tell what was eating Rabelais. But he knew better than to assume a short man living under technopatriarchal constraints wasn’t bitter to the core.

“It’s OK, it’s OK,” said the Commodore dryly. “I promise not to cry.”

“I cry. I cry all the time. Have you seen
my wardrobe? It’s a burlap factory in there.”

Cdre Rabelais stopped pacing, faced Prague, and forced a plastic grin. “At any rate, you know what this is about, yes? The MAP needs you. You’re back in. I need your magic, as the Bearded Walrus says. No questions asked. Figure it out.”

“What if I don’t want back in? I killed Nowhere. What did I get in return? Tupperware. Walking papers. A dick in the ass.”

Cdre Rabelais ripped off his hat and hurled it into space. His black, bald head disappeared into the onyx backdrop. “Get the fuck in here!” he exclaimed. “Do it! Do it! Do it! Do it!” Rabelais paused, collected himself. And in a soft voice: “Since I have you on the line, Vinnie, we might as well talk about a name. A codename, to be precise. New case, new name. Any ideas? There’s a team of ghostwriters brainstorming as we speak. We can’t have you walking around like a plebe with your real name. You need an artificial name.”

Prague stuck out his lips. “I’ve got an artificial name. Call me…Prague. Call me Codename Prague. My real name will be the mark of my artificiality—the ultimate disguise.”

Fighting off another outburst, Rabelais closed round white eyes. “Right. Hm. I’m not sure if that sobriquet does the trick. Identity is a delicate matter. Let’s not rush the matter. Let’s—”

Marvin the Martian disappeared. THE END, read the grey screen of the vidphone.

01

Slaughterhouse-Five

The Slaughterhouse District ruptured the sleek geometry of City City in a jagged bulge of steeples, chimneys, ducts, pipelines, escalators, elevators, fire escapes and smokestacks. The buildings were black, sharp, latticed by tiny blue windows. Gold-rimmed gondolas whizzed across the metallic grey sky on thin tracks of wire. Periodically the shadow of a man in a bird suit passed through the moon, a great jaundiced globe that hung above the night like a tumor.

Taste of copper, fluoride, soot…

…the mouth of a docking cove in Slaughterhouse-Five swallowed a quiet gondola.

The doors scraped open. A flock of smoldering fedoras poured out and disappeared into a long row of antique elevators…

…elevator attendants in colorful, brimless hats told jokes about ballerinas—the one about the emaciated ballerina, the one about the buck-toothed ballerina, the one about the arthritic ballerina, the one about the ballerina who had a lisp, the one about the ballerina who overdosed on anaphora…

Laff tracks flared. Cigarette embers pulsed.

Floors dinged.

…From one end of the hallway to the other, convicts hung on hooks in the walls and waited to be prestidigitated by the Law. Most of them hung there without incident, docile, eyes glazed over, limbs flaccid. Whenever a convict made trouble or got wise, he was dealt with posthaste, sometimes by an officer with a fusion baton, sometimes by the surveillance system, which had an itchy trigger finger and always looked for an excuse to violate some asshole’s civil liberties and right to due process.

Among the plainclothes and copper-plated officers that rushed up and down the hallway lingered the occasional piece of livestock. Cows, mainly. But also swine, fowl, goats, sheep. The animals had been genetically enhanced and treated with growth hormones. Some chickens stood over five feet tall. On their hind legs, some pigs approached eight feet. Unfamiliars often feared for their lives. The livestock’s emotional and somatic sensoria had been plucked, though, ensuring that none of them got in bad moods and commenced people-eating rampages.

In one room, a deep, horrified oink…

In the next room, an interrogation turned grisly. Fruity Pebbles poured out of the victim’s wounds…

In the next room, a Jim Carrey robot with red Riddler hair impersonating a CSI
David Caruso
clone took off its sunglasses and squinted at a docket, said, “Mark my words, ladies and gentlemen,” put on its sunglasses and looked at the ceiling light, took off its sunglasses and squinted at the docket, said, “That’s all she wrote, boys and girls,” put on its sunglasses and looked at the ceiling light, took off its sunglasses and squinted at the docket, said, “Here comes the Big Hurt, folks,” put on its sunglasses and…

In the next room, an assistant to the deputy chief’s second lieutenant’s sixth vice principal of Purloined Letter memorabilia sang a Barry Manilow ballad to an audience of blank-faced colleagues who slurped coffee and fingered donuts…

In the next room…

Codename Vincent Prague burst in as if shot from a cannon. He flew headfirst across a table, smashed into a wall, bounced off it, somersaulted backwards across the table, and disappeared out the door. The door slammed behind him. A suspect crouched before the table. Two detectives stood on either side of him. A giant sheep stood in the corner.

All of the interrogation room’s occupants idly watched Prague enter and exit…

Prague came back in, shut the door and locked it. “What’s the charge,” he droned. He wore a scramble suit that projected over 100,000 physiognomic fraction-representations of photographs, sketches, illustrations and caricatures of pulp science fiction author Philip K. Dick onto its superthin, shroudlike membrane. The effekt was simple enough: you never knew which Dick you were dealing with.

“What the hell is that?” said one of the detectives.

“An allusion,” replied Prague. “Or plagiarism. Same thing in this case, perhaps.” He grinned. “Pardon me. I haven’t had any coffee today. Don’t even talk to me if I haven’t had any coffee.”

“Who the hell are you?” said the other detective. The sheep baaed.

Shaking his head, Prague unzipped the scramble suit and shrugged and stepped out of it. Beneath he wore a Philip K Dick flab suit. The suit was extremely lifelike and adequately represented the author at the height of his chubbiest, drugged out years: high forehead, giant face, piercing blue eyes, vulture’s nest beard, barrel chest, disproportionate spare tire around the waist, cheap shirt, cheap pants, flip-flops, and a self-refillable snuff box collar that constantly stuffed tobacco into his nostrils with thin mechanical arms.

The detectives looked at each other. The suspect said, “Is he going to kill me?”

“That’s enough outta you, goodfella.” Prague slammed his fist into a wall. He grabbed the table and hurled it aside. He picked the suspect up by the scruff and shoved his nose in his face. “Answer me! Answer me you stinking douche bag!”

“You d-didn’t ask me a question!” The snuff collar misread noses and shoved a pinch of tobacco into the suspect’s nostrils. He cried out. He sneezed. Prague threw him back into the chair. The detectives told Prague he was out of line. Not only that, he didn’t even know the charge—by his own admittance. Prague said he knew enough. He proceeded to play badcop/goodcop by himself, screaming at and punching the suspect one moment, then smiling, speaking softly, and massaging him. He oscillated back and forth between cops four times before the detectives restrained him. He let them.

He removed the PKD flab suit.

“Mr Prague!” exclaimed a detective. “We’re so sorry. We didn’t know it was you.” His partner handed him a pen and paper and asked for an autograph. Prague obligingly scribbled it down:

Beep Beep!

The detective frowned at the autograph. His partner invited Prague to stay for lunch. “We were just about to eat,” he said. “Please do join us. It would be our honor.” The other detective agreed. Prague replied evenly: “I eat alone.” But they wouldn’t hear of it. Rolling up their sleeves, they pistolwhipped and cuffed the suspect to a radiator, brandished gigantic butcher knives, and fell on the sheep…

It took a while for the animal to die. Longer than Prague expected. The detectives kept missing their mark. It came as no surprise considering the ridiculously unbridled abandon with which they executed their task. They chopped off its tail, its hind legs, its snout. Once or twice they nearly chopped off each other’s appendages.

The sheep’s incisive, high-pitched scream shattered the interrogation room’s two-way mirror, exposing a guilty-looking janitor on the other side. The janitor ducked out of view…

The sheep flailed and convulsed and tried to crawl away, pulling itself onward with its forelegs, bleeding real blood. The detectives studied the blood. Prague studied the detectives.

The sheep went faster. Soon it pulled itself in circles around the room at an impressive speed.

Panicking, the detectives hacked at it indiscriminately. They missed every time, the wide blades of their knives clattering against the concrete floor. Prague marveled at their inability to make contact. He knew toddlers that had better aim.

Finally Prague put the sheep out of its misery. He pulled out a supersized F/X pistol, leveled it at the sheep, and fired…The sheep’s head exploded in Technicolor. Vivid pastels and gaudy chromatics marked the fountain of brain and skull and veins that blossomed upwards, reaching for the ceiling at an increasingly slower pace…The gruesome pyrotechnics freeze-framed for one…two…three beats…then imploded in fasttime.

The headless sheep continued to move forward for a few seconds before lying still.

Prague holstered his firearm. “Poor sonofabitch,” he said.

“Sheep brains are a delicacy,” said the detectives in tandem. “What’s the matter with you?” They wiped the blood on their hands onto stiff white shirts.

Prague puffed out his cheeks. “Same thing’s the matter with everybody, I guess. Not enough green tea in my diet.” He never understood the concept of privatized carnivorism, especially in that it only applied to civil servants. Was requiring civil servants by Law to kill and prepare their own meat an attempt on the government’s part to discourage citizens from the profession? Or was it meant to encourage them? Either way made as much sense as nonsense. At any rate, Prague elected to be a vegetarian from the very beginning of his employment. Not because he didn’t like meat. He was simply too lazy, hygienic and smug to prepare meat.

The detectives didn’t forgive Prague for his hastiness easily and presented him with a Two Minute Hate that included everything from offended glares to loud, inventive trills of cursing and gesticulating. Prague took what they dished out, hoping they would lay a hand on him. No luck. After the Hate concluded, all was well. They apologized and shook Prague’s hand and slapped him on the back and took turns pistolwhipping the suspect to make sure he was still unconscious and dewooled the sheep’s torso with stylish rust-textured retrofutique vibronic shears and skinned the sheep with vintage Rambo knives and stripped off its flesh with their bare hands. A third detective entered the interrogation room wheeling in a long barrel grill and complaining about a propane monger who had sabotaged the reserve of hydrogen-cell grills. He poured in a sack of charcoal. He doused the charcoal with lighter fluid. He tried to light the charcoal with a match. It wouldn’t light. He tried again. It wouldn’t light. He lit the entire matchbook on fire and threw it in the grill. It went out.