Commercial Break The Big Sleep
“Pull that goddamn dick down outta the air!” Buzzworm yelled at the NewsNow engineer, shoving him into the van with Emi slumped in the front seat. Kerry lowered the telescoping antenna, and Buzzworm gunned the van into action, jammed it between the spreading lanes. He could see the chasing helicopters in the rearview mirror approaching in a cloud of rainbow smoke. It could have been an air show, even with the strafing machine guns and multiple explosions. Emi, bleeding through her New Age tan and towel, appreciated the precision timing as if it were special FX.
“Can’t you drive any faster?” she taunted as if this E-ticket wasn’t E-nough.
Buzzworm wove the van through the droves of screaming and panic-stricken people like so many walk-ons, avoiding the sudden car explosions and shattering glass, careening around the digitally constructed dismembering of cats and dogs and even a horse. A cast of thousands—military and civilian—ran this way and that in an epic disaster. Emi looked on with dull approval; it was B fare. The explosions could be extended, the ride sped up, the sensation of violence and speed intensified. Strange, but she could actually smell the gasoline and smoke. Her eyes teared uncontrollably.
The van’s rear tire blew, and Buzzworm forced the thumping vehicle up the side of the freeway valley, heading instinctively for some palm trees swaying against the wind of helicopter wings in a camouflage of smog. Stray bullets hailed from above as he crouched through the ivy, cradling Emi, and slipped with her between that tight constellation of palms. It was strangely and suddenly peaceful there.
Emi pulled a bloody hand up to her face and stared. “I give you permission not to touch my blood,” she said. “I tested negative, but you never know.”
Buzzworm held her close. He knew a dead cooky when he saw one.
In the corner of Buzzworm’s eye, she could see the monitors in the van flickering beyond the palms. There she was, the NewsNow producer sunning on the NewsNow van. There was the shot and Buzzworm heroically scrambling up to pull her off the roof. The camera swung wildly looking for the direction of the shot. Easy does it. But what the camera caught was how the first shot was the push-button that set off all the others. It panned the barrage with a horrible urgency that made the viewer remember momentarily that a human eye directed its vision. Captioning ran across the bottom of the monitor: Breaking News! LIVE footage from the downtown freeway interchange . . .
Buzzworm wondered what could be live in this sense. Emi, on the other hand, lived for this. And it would repeat itself again and again to remind the world what the beginning of the end looked like. In this sense, she would never die.
Even so, Emi’s mind wandered from current events. “I had a dream that I got buried in the La Brea Tar Pits, and years later I became the La Brea Woman. You know, my bones and a holographic image of me.”
Buzzworm smiled his smile.
Emi winced, “Here I am in the healing capitol of the nation. You’d think some spiritual force would make its appearance at a time like this. Where are all the Jesuses and Mohammeds when you need them?”
“Making a living, I suppose.” Buzzworm shook his head.
“Wonder where my private dick is?” Emi murmured.
“I know Balboa’d be here if he could.” Buzzworm was unconvincing in the sympathetic mode.
“Are you going to sweet-talk me now that I’m dying?”
“Was hoping you’d leave a year’s supply of batteries for me in your will.”
“Only if you promise me the complete package: Forest Lawn, naked Davids, daily rosebuds, and eternal music. What’s that you’re listening to?” She nodded at his earplug.
“’S not eternal.” He shook his head.
Emi smiled. “Who’d a thought you and I’d get this close?” She might have embraced him, but her limbs had ceased to feel. About all she could do was to look deeply into his eyes and flutter her lashes. “If we can jus’ get along, maybe all our problems will go away.”
“Gonna take more than holdin’ hands to start that revolution.”
“Oh well,” Emi blew it off. “For Gabe. Did you try the net?”
“Baby sister, you know I don’t know nothing about that.”
“Gabe’s into the net. Ever since he saved that village, he’s been devoted to online.”
Buzzworm looked around, wondering if the net could save anyone from the current situation. In the smoke, he could see the military, in jungle camouflage, making its move down the freeway canyon. The live monitor didn’t show this. It was too busy repeating the beginning of the end, ad nauseam. Being the hero of this footage, he looked to her as the heroine. Finally, her death would be unforgivable. Emi’s enraged media would see to that. A thousand homeless could die, but no one would forget her ultimate sacrifice.
She continued, “Last I looked, Hollywood wants to buy the rights to the guerrilla war in Chiapas.”
“Why even go that far?”
“Tell Gabe, I got lucky and went to The Big Sleep.” She pouted for effect. “Did you see it?”
“What?”
“The Big Sleep. There’s a chauffeur who dies, see. His car gets pushed off the Santa Monica pier. Suddenly they stop the action. Someone asks the question: Who killed him? Script continuity, see. Nobody knows. They call up Raymond Chandler. He doesn’t know either. Gabe told me this, so it’s all hearsay anyway, but it’s like that.”
“Like what?”
“The Big Sleep. Just cuz you get to the end doesn’t mean you know what happened.”
“Oh.” Buzzworm wasn’t going to push it.
Didn’t matter. She just rambled on anyway. “Hey, I read there’s some guy digitizing L.A. Gonna put this treacherous desert outpost online. Maybe the big sleep is a big digital wet dream. And life is just a commercial break. Maybe Gabe can call me up in cyber, and we can do it in my sleep.” She grinned and gasped, “Interactive-like.”
“I’m not gonna remember to tell Balboa something I don’t even understand. Can’t you keep your message simple?”
“How about this? I just want to know one thing: What color is blood in . . . black and . . . white?” It dribbled down in a thick vein over her lips.
Buzzworm noted it would most likely be black, but he said, “It’s all shades of gray, baby sister. Shades of gray.”
Emi’s voice sank to a whisper. “Abort. Retry. Ignore. Fail . . .”