On the eleventh floor of the sleekly styled BigPointyBuilding, in midtown, was located the beating heart of the NationalProcedures organization, an officeless open space divided into more than a hundred cubicles, each occupied by a bonded Gatekeeper whose job it was to bring into the company as much asset as possible during every 24-7 work cycle. The floor was known within the company—and throughout the industry, for that matter—as the Comb. Where the worker bees deposited and stored the honey. Score was kept by means of a stadium-size electronic board mounted to the wall at the front end of the floor. Each employee’s position in the hive could be read at a glance by anyone who cared to look.
At the moment Gatekeeper 65, in row K, cubicle 8, was listed at number 47 on the company’s flickering box card—not too horrible, not too great. UnauthorizedReproduction’s personal goal for the day was to close at 40, a level he had come tantalizingly near but never quite attained before. The most important part of the job, he’d learned quickly enough, both professionally and personally, lay in eavesdropping on conversations in nearby cubicles and the treasure trove of the break room and turning the overheard data to lucrative advantage for himself and the company. He’d scored big today, overhearing a convo in cubicle 10 relating to significant updrafts at MurmurLow, one of NationalProcedures’ major competitors. So he punched in a handful of letters and numbers and made the company two million dollars justlikethat.
But the best advantage to pilfering personals on his colleagues, both professionally and personally—though at this point, what was the difference?—lay in discovering who was fucking whom, the company’s most sensitive intel. What he knew so far: MisterMenu was fucking both NeedlePliers and DelicateSear and many more employees than anyone could keep accurate track of, including TearDrop, who was fucking BlisterPac, who of course was also fucking DelicateSear, who was also fucking EmeryBoard, who was fucking TrollFarm, who was fucking CapsaicinPod, who was fucking SlapHappy, and DigitalSignage, who was fucking…and on and on (you get the drift), so the sugar noogies were passed ever and steadily downward, sweetening the firm from top to bottom. Of course, there was always a sourpuss or two who didn’t enjoy the same candy the others did, and these people would try to get their gummies wherever they could. Outcome: not good.
Occasionally MisterMenu himself made an appearance on the floor. He’d stand at the front of the room, engage in a brief face-to-face with SpringLoaded, the Comb’s floor pimp, let his eyes roam unseeingly over the roomful of bad-postured employees, then depart. And sometimes, after one of these cursory check-ins, a female Gatekeeper would casually rise and exit, as discreetly as possible, by the same door. Rumor had it that MisterMenu maintained a capacious boudoir off his executive suite, which got significant play. UnauthorizedReproduction didn’t know whether to believe the rumor or not. MisterMenu had to be smarter than that. Or did he? Nevertheless, UnauthorizedReproduction kept watch. And, based on his careful scrutinies, he couldn’t help but fantasize about fucking his own way to the top. And why not? He’d seen the movies, too. Of course the preferred lead of those pictures was almost always a woman. But why couldn’t a guy successfully crawl over a few willing female execs? Maybe he could if he were as gorgeous, well built, and all-around studly as PumiceStone or CordialLips and had a slick screenwriter draft the script for him. So in his mind that’s what he was. And when that particular scenario had been brought to a satisfying conclusion he’d dissolve into the next long-running feature: Doughnuts to Dollars, in which he, UnauthorizedReproduction, played this time by CocktailRepartee, seduces TearDrop, played, of course, by the irrepressible PageTurner, and, in a memorable scene of hilariously staged pillow talk, learns that the all-time favorite doughnut of MisterMenu, impeccably impersonated by the ever-fluid KingClover, is the GlazedLumbarCluster, available only on Tuesdays until product runs out from the CrustToneBakery in Chyron Heights. Next Tuesday the image of Unauthorized gets up at dawn, makes the hurried trek to the Heights, buys a box of a dozen Clusters, and, back at a reasonable facsimile of the BigPointyBuilding, stations himself in the stage-set lobby until KingClover arrives, then boldly fast-talks his way into a convincing connection with the great man, who, naturally, invites him up into the executive aerie, where, after a bit of comical business with the farcical staff, installs him as prime doughnut procurer for the entire corporation at a thousandfold increase in salary. Maybe he marries the boss’s daughter, NoDeposit; maybe he doesn’t. What does it matter? Curious how much of his on-the-clock was consumed by these absurd brain flicks, which, transformed into the prevailing script format of the day, would simply expire unnoticed because of funding deprivation in the ward for terminal long shots. He had already been briefly cast in a real movie in the real world (he’d fucked the casting director’s assistant in high school) as an underpaid, defeated peon in a national epic of consuming self-love, unglued greed, and emotional slaughter entitled Fat Chance in a Slim Boat.
But what the hell, it was lunchtime. He fervently prayed that today, at least, OnDelivery, row I, cubicle 8, would please, please, please take her lunch break somewhere outside. If she had her carton of yogurt at her desk again he honestly did not know if he would be able to restrain himself from getting up, barging down the row, and strangling her to death with his bare trembling hands. It was the scraping, the constant, endless, nails-on-the-blackboard scraping of her plastic spoon against the plastic container, relentlessly, screechingly, tormentingly determined to extract each damn speck of the precious curdled milk from the walls of the precious damn cup. Obviously she was locked inside a perpetual diet, like every other woman at this and every other corporate infirmary in the whole doomed town, and was hence perpetually hungry. If he did indeed put her out of her misery, that one act of lunatic violence would make up for a year or more of sitting chained to this rigid chair while waiting for the earthquake, tidal wave, towering inferno, or inevitable catastrophe that would permanently erase the BigPointyBuilding from the face of the big bad earth.
At 12:23 p.m., more or less, OnDelivery, crumpled paper bag in hand, departed her station and exited the floor. She returned at 1:04, more or less, sans bag. For UnauthorizedReproduction this simple event signaled a successful workday. The closing buzzer sounded at exactly at 6:00 p.m., but no one moved. NationalProcedures employees were expected to set their own hours, preferably to the point where each pixel wrangler could no longer bear one single second more of profitable activity, and try to go beyond that. Today, for some reason or other, UnauthorizedReproduction determined he could endure at least thirty more minutes of desk posture. Which he did. At precisely 6:30 he looked up, checked the tote. His final score for the day stood at 45, a grand improvement of 2. In the afternoon he’d added another five million or so to NationalProcedures’ already obscenely bulging vault. Was that enough? Hardly. Even after bringing in for the day what he calculated was a net of roughly eight million. A drop in the profits bucket. He got up and left the floor. First one out the door on this particular Friday.
What he needed now was a drink. His favorite bar: the PastelLoon, over on Cosset Street. He walked in and, whaddya know, failed to encounter a single face he knew. Which was fine by him. He took a table in back and ordered his usual, a double GoldenLariat. To his slight surprise, he’d only been seated about ten minutes when he began mulling over in his head the feasibility of purchasing a boat. Why? He’d never wanted a boat before. They were notorious money pits. And what would he do with one, anyway? Where would he go in a frigging boat? He didn’t know. Destinations would come to mind. That was the thing about minds. They were always coming up with something.
He was on his second GoldenLariat and staring at a girl who looked just like BonusCash, his first steady back in high school, waiting on line for the ladies’ room. He wondered if that could actually be her. He wondered where she was, how she was doing. He wished they were still in touch. Then he heard somebody talking to him. He turned around. It was CyberLawn. He worked over at ManagedSpill. He had the same sort of job as Unauthorized, doing stupid shit all day to make money for some asshole who didn’t need any more money.
“The joys of the mogul life,” said CyberLawn.
“We love it,” said UnRepro.
Then they proceeded to get blind drunk and try to top each other with stories of the most egregious piece of bullshit they’d had to handle in the past eight hours. Today the contest was declared a tie. They’d each had to fudge at least one financial regulation by noon. Two hours and who knew how many doubles later, CyberLawn tried to pick a fight with some execubrat-in-training posing at the bar who seemed to be exuding in almost visible particles the stink that he enjoyed his phony-baloney job just a shade too much, and he and UnRepro were both kicked out of the joint. They reassembled themselves at TheFracturedHorn, on the next block. They made their unsteady way to the closest vacant table and plunked themselves rather noisily into disappointingly unchic chairs.
“Now,” said CyberLawn, “what was it we were drinking at the Loon?”
“I believe those were GoldenLariats. Why?”
“Never mix your liquors. A famous wino once told me that. Can really fuck you up. Always stay true to your brand.” Which, incidentally, was the corporate motto at ManagedSpill. He looked around, casing the house. “Now,” he said. He spoke in a drunken stage whisper. “Who in here do you want to fuck?”
UnRepro looked around. “The blonde in the green. Over at the bar.”
CyberLawn turned around and checked said quarry for one extended second. “Me, too.” He reached in his pocket and pulled out a quarter. “Flip you for her.”
“Heads.”
The coin dropped tails.
“See you back at the ranch.” CyberLawn struggled to his feet and made his wobbly way to the bar. After a few minutes of whatever alcohol-steeped palaver he was capable of serving this girl, the two turned simultaneously, as if attached to connected strings, and directed toward UnRepro a pair of identical smiles, as if they’d just shared a big secret about his personal life. Drinks in hand, they then began marching in comic step toward him.
“This is RiderAgreement,” CyberLawn said. “She just got fired from KanisterCan. Can you believe it? For taking too many piss breaks. I mean, can you fucking believe it?”
“What can I say?” she said. “I have a weak bladder.” She took a seat between them. Up close she looked like a once-trending product that had been left in the window too long.
“Takes an iron bladder to man a sentry post in the eternal struggle against quarterly deficit numbers,” said CyberLawn.
“You’re smart,” said RiderAgreement. “Never thought about it that way.”
“Welcome to the real world,” said CyberLawn. “Fuck the real world. Let’s go to my place.”
So they did.
CyberLawn lived in the renowned KrinkleTowers. He was only able to afford such digs because his parents, whom he hated with a politically correct hostility, owned a significant share of the building. He had a view of the ReadyToWear River and the LookAway Harbor, a private chef, and daily maid service made up of unbearably polite and efficient illegal immigrants he didn’t talk about. His parents were major contributors to the Frightened White Man’s Flying Freedom Freedom Party. He didn’t talk about them, either. He worked at a routine loser’s job at a company his father owned, where he was supposed to be diligently working his way up to that platinum turret in the sky. He could care less. The job was well beneath him, intellectually, physically, sexually, aesthetically, and, most important, financially. Other than injecting as many millimeters of concentrated hell into his parents’ sniveling lives as possible, he hadn’t a clue how he wanted to occupy his portion of existence on the planet. The only useful function that had occurred to him so far was to become a connoisseur of boredom. Sometimes, in mockery of his family’s genealogical pretensions, he’d even refer to himself as the Duke of Ennui.
The inebriated trio made their tottering way as best they could over to the guarded entrance on Kalpa Street, where CyberLawn genially greeted the armed doorman, who blessed them all back with a defiantly impertinent stinkeye. They stumbled across the thickly carpeted lobby, accompanied by their own a cappella rendition of “Wishes and Fishes.” CyberLawn led his raucous party over to an elevator door in a niche separate from the others. He pressed his palm against a pane of glass, the door magically opened, and they fell into the elevator as a more or less coordinated group, where RiderAgreement promptly threw up on the imported parquet. CyberLawn lived on the sixty-fifth floor, which seemed to take at least three hours to arrive at. They celebrated their triumphant disembarkation into the entryway of CyberLawn’s ridiculously grand apartment by knocking over every expensive-looking table bearing every expensive-looking vase holding every expensive-looking bouquet of every expensive-looking flower to be found in the entire expensive-looking world.
Somewhat stunned by the opulence, they passed more or less silently into the living room. The sunlight cascading through the wall of windows was so radiantly real it seemed fake. As did the room itself. The furnishings, so numerous and ornate, appeared as objects fashioned out of buttery icing for an exotic splendiferous cake no one was ever really going to eat.
RiderAgreement was visibly impressed and ran through her own private store of adjectives exclaiming over what she was seeing. “Why do you work at all, living in a palace like this?” she said.
“I like to keep busy,” CyberLawn said. He led them on into the bedroom. Unauthorized had seen it all before so had no need or inclination to add to the shower of compliments RiderAg was sprinkling throughout the place. RiderAgreement asked to use the john. CyberLawn showed her to the proper door. She entered and remained for about five minutes, then exited and said, “How do you turn the water on? There’s no handles.”
“You think it. If you want cold, think cold; hot, think hot.”
She let herself absorb that fascinating piece of info for about half a minute, nodded sagely, and said, “Cool. Ultra cool.” She disappeared back inside, where she remained for about half an hour.
“What the fuck she doing in there?” Unauthorized said. He and CyberLawn had adjourned to the entertainment center on the other side of the apartment, where they’d been sampling Cyber’s extensive liquor cabinet and flipping through the two hundred channels available on his massive Himalayan-size TV.
“I better check.” CyberLawn excused himself, and then he, too, was gone for about half an hour. Later Unauthorized managed to tear himself away from a rerun of the last episode of BloodOnTheKeypad, the one where it is finally revealed who killed DoctorOakenBucket. He wandered through the rooms, discovered the john door open, and then, in the bedroom, CyberLawn passed out fully clothed on the spacious bed and RiderAgreement, fully unclothed, going methodically through his pockets.
“He’d probably give you the money if you asked,” UnRepro said.
“I’d be too embarrassed to ask for a handout.”
“But not too embarrassed to steal.”
“Guess not.” She sat up with her bare legs folded under her but opened wide enough to display fully all her charms. Without a hint of self-consciousness. She studied him for a while. “So,” she said, “you wanna fuck?’
He studied her for a while. “Sure,” he said. She scooted over to the other side of the bed, spread her (this time) fully extended legs. He got undressed and climbed aboard.
“Beautiful appendages,” he said.
“So I’ve been told.”
“You’ve been told right.” He lay down and began gently stroking them. They were incredibly soft. They felt incredibly good. “Mmmm,” she said. “Mmmm,” she said again. He moved forward and began kissing them. It was like kissing rose petals, or so he believed at the moment. “Baby like,” she said. “Don’t stop.” So he didn’t. After a while he shifted his body upward so he could get himself into a favorable position to apply his horizontal lips to her vertical ones. Which he did. She began moaning and writhing around. A fine current began running pleasantly through both of them. For a while there they were floating together through a cloud of pink cotton candy. Or so they liked to imagine. They’d been released into that agreeable lostness sharing bodies can generate. Then abruptly his probing tongue encountered something unexpected up inside her. Something foreign and inorganic. He retracted his tongue, then cautiously extended it bit by careful bit. Again he touched something, some strange inhuman object that should not be where he had found it. He abruptly backed out of her and sat up. “What’s wrong?” she said. He reached in with the forefinger of his right hand, felt around for a moment, and pulled out what he’d discovered: a wadded-up condom. Used. He held it up on display. “Oops,” she said. UnRepro rolled off the bed and rushed to the john. He opened the cabinet, frantically searched the contents, and finally found what he was looking for: a family-size bottle of CootiesBeGone medically approved mouthwash. He took a healthy slug, swished it around in his mouth for a moment, spit it out into the sink. Then he repeated the procedure. He returned to the bedroom. “Sorry,” she said.
“You should take better care of yourself.”
“I’m sorry. It happened today at lunch break in the women’s room. Didn’t know there was anything left inside.”
“Not too in touch with your body?”
“Thought I was.”
“You might want to reassess.”
She stared down at her fingers, which were playing idly with the end of a bedsheet. “I can’t look at you,” she said.
“I gotta sky,” he said. “Listen, take care of yourself, okay?” And he turned and left the room, left the apartment, left the building, and hoped he’d left her for the remainder of his life.
Outside, he decided to splurge and take a cab home. First one he tried hailing stopped immediately for him. Miracle of the day. He settled into the back seat, gave the driver the address, and tried to enjoy the ride. He stared out the dirty window at the passing phantasmagoria. The city itself looked used, too. What didn’t appear interestingly preowned had been demolished and replaced with the steel and glass equivalents of plastic. Money has ruined this town, he said to himself, trying not to replay the scene he’d just escaped. Whatever it touches turns to lead. The tired city looked like a copy of something for which there had been no original. And the people living in it, too. End of the day on Friday thoughts. End of casual sex with random strangers day. Maybe he’d feel better in the morning. Then he was back on his own safe street in what had once been his own safe, comfortable neighborhood. No more. Aside from a few grizzled veterans like himself, only those coming into town with pockets stuffed with cash or those lucky enough to have fallen into jobs whose employers didn’t mind stuffing their pockets lived there now. Rents were obscenely high and still climbing. Sidewalks jammed every night with drunken hordes of rampaging trust-fund barbarians. He’d seen storefronts go from art galleries to restaurants to banks. He’d been in the area for more than a dozen years, and all the friends he’d made in those first years were long gone, priced out. But gone where? Seemed the places left in which to hide were becoming fewer and fewer. Money ruined everything. Shut up, he said to himself. Pay the driver and go upstairs. So he did.
InvoiceEnclosed was in the kitchen. Puttering around doing some kind of kitchen activity.
“Where were you?” she said.
“Having a drink with CyberLawn.”
“Well, you could have called.”
“Sorry.”
“I made that baitwurst pie you like. With callowbeans.”
“Lickety-fine. Any beer?”
“Picked up a six-pack of StormThunderLite on the way home.” She was Effigy’s current bra groomer and, besides being well reimbursed for her talents, got to travel the world with the pop star whenever she was on tour, which was almost always.
“How’s Effigy today?”
“Usual. This afternoon she tore a custom-made SpottedRambler in half cause it was supposedly pinching her side boobs, and those things are pricey and hard to find. Then just for good measure she fired CalamityFeet cause, supposedly, he was looking at her, and I quote, ‘funny.’”
“Wow. Hasn’t he been with her for years?”
“Since the Burning Cake album.”
“These people are all so terribly spoiled.”
“News flash. Anyway, after he got the swipe left, he went out to the parking lot and keyed her CloudRemedy.”
UnRepro laughed heartily for the first time that day. “She probably won’t even notice.”
“Or care. Listen, I already ate. Want a plate?”
“I can get it.”
“No problem. I’m already up. Just sit down.” So he did. She served him a steaming platter of baitwurst and a sweating bottle of cold StormThunder. After he finished eating (it was all good, better than he deserved) they flaked out in bed for a while watching the last half of CelebrityCroquet. Tonight’s message: celebs suck at croquet. Then they distracted themselves playing with each other’s genitals, leavened by a couple of halfhearted fucks.
“Well, that was decidedly bleh,” InvoiceEnclosed said. “Did you get fucked on the way home?”
“No. I can’t believe you’d even ask me that.”
“You’re just not in your usual let’s-take-Vaginagrad mode.”
“Work,” he said, as if that were enough of an explanation. And it was. They lay there for another while discussing for the umpteenth time whether he should finally walk from his high-flying lameass job. And for the umpteenth time arrived at no clear conclusion. When they grew tired of that burned-out topic, they decided, on the madcap spur of the moment, to try to catch the last showing of Apocalypticus at the nearby HappyMore. Even though it was well past midnight and the picture was already ten minutes in, there were only a few seats left and they were lucky to get them. In the empty lobby they bought a tub of VolleyCorn, a couple of bars of NixNo, and a large NothingCola, which they shared. In case the theater collapsed during the show they’d have sufficient supplies to survive on until they were dug out of the rubble. Wildly popular, the picture was the boffo smash of the summer and seemed primed to gross out (in more ways than one) all the other wannabes in a heavy wannabe year. It was the ridiculously entertaining story of a drug, LeanLove, the diet pill gone bad. The reducing aid had been formulated from by-products discovered during the manufacture of plastic garbage bags. Ingesting just a single pill a day resulted in almost immediate and visible weight loss without requiring any change whatsoever in diet or exercise regimen. Big pharma rushed in. Unfortunately, the pill also reduced the volume of the average adult cerebral cortex to a throbbing knob of nerve endings about the size of a walnut. Major side effect: irrepressible urge to kill anything that moved, skinny or fat. Big firearms rushed in. But by then zillions of the miracle tablets had already been sold and consumed. The world erupted into a frenzy of murderous rage. A CGI wet dream. And when not slaughtering the innocent outright, the twigs, as they were called—because of their generally emaciated, sticklike appearance—got busy spiking all unattended stores of food and drink with the horrific supplement. Amidst the carnage, though, real love found purchase and bloomed, if only briefly. Which made for a couple of diverting sex scenes involving actors inside cartoon bodies you wish you had. By the time the film ended, humanity itself had been reduced to an embattled enclave of a couple hundred survivors, none of whom could trust each other not to try to kill them. Prognosis for mankind and the planet looked undeniably grim. Here it was at last: the end of everything. But wait, not to worry, socko trailer coming up, there was a big-budget sequel already in the works.