The One Percenters (18 page)

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I wanted to do something grand, even if it wasn’t all technologically advanced and whatnot. I wanted to leave the media in a whirl of confusion, and maybe even shock some people. I wanted to teach the world a lesson. But the cops back there, they scared me. I’m not the type to get edgy, but they made me. .leery. I was leery. I was afraid for my trigger finger. If I lost that, I’d have to find another way. It wasn’t as if I was scared, mind you. I would have had the balls to pull it off any which way at this point. I wasn’t some newbie anymore. I was Edward P. Caine, Renaissance Man.

It was a time of rebirth if there ever was such thing. A time when men’s hearts were invested in the market and their souls were buried in the bottle. The Earth was dead in the new Millennium; that much is sure. So I wasn’t afraid of doing it another way. But what other way was there? Poison was the only other way I knew, and I’ve already explained to you that I’m not a chemist. I’m tired of having to repeat myself, Jill.

My God, I hope she’s looking down upon me now. I need all the help I can get.

I need a pill now. Sometimes they help, sometimes not. But they’re the only friend I have in this world.

I took two. Just now. Real time, as the techno-geeks put it. What a bunch of horseshit.

I walked past a barn, an old textile mill, and several minor strip malls. I realized that as long as I waved this gun, wasn’t nobody gonna push me off of the sidewalk. Maybe I couldn’t walk down the center of the road, but the shoulder was mine. I stuck out my thumb, just to feel All-American. I didn’t really want a ride, and I’m not sure what I would have said had someone stopped to offer me one.

Nobody stopped. I can’t say I was surprised. And me being so pretty and all. Sometimes I like to stand in front of the mirror and stroke my hair, imagining myself as a pinup from the ‘50s. But don’t go telling anyone that, or I’ll blow your fucking skull apart.

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Finally, after hours of walking, with the pissing bridge and the textile mill and the strip malls well behind me, I came upon a fabulous sight. There in front of me was a little beach. That might not even be the right word for it, actually. It was an inlet or one corner of a lake or something. Rocky sand led up to its shores, and it really wasn’t much of anything at all.

But you couldn’t tell that by looking at the faces of the kids around it. Kids are precious, ain’t they? They had a sparkle in their eye that day, as if this beach were all they cared about on the whole entire Earth. I wouldn’t have blamed them if it was.

I suddenly realized I was receiving quite a few stares in my direction. It wasn’t for my taut physique; that’s for certain. Actually, I thought at first they must know my face from the evening news. For a moment I felt fear, which is ridiculous now that I think of it. After all,
I
had the gun. Who cared if they recognized me?

Then I realized there would be no recognizing the clean-cut man in those photos on television. My clothing was ripped and my facial hair was unkempt. I looked rather like a bum, and come to think of it, I guess I
was
a bum.

Of course, to you that means I’m also unfit for living. Time to take the old dog out back and put it out of its misery. Pa, grab your rifle. It takes one fucked-up society to look at someone down on his luck and see a villain. One fucked-up society indeed. And I used to be one of you.

Yup, it really bothers me. I used to sidestep the panhandlers as though they were shit on the sidewalk.

Those are days I am not proud of.

So I was taking their stares, and I didn’t care. It was a beautiful blue-gelatin day, and the sand reflected the sunlight. The birds were chirping, the water lapping.

A man with his nose painted white with sun block sold ice cream and frozen candy bars from an insulated chest. There might have been fifty people there that day, about half of them under the age of twelve. There were a couple of old-timers, real grizzled-like. There were also some teenagers necking and jostling for blanket
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room. The adults scoffed at them, and it was difficult to judge whether they were scoffing at the necking or at the loud music streaming from their radios.

To the right, a softball sailed lazily through the air. Two kids—I took them to be brothers—were having a catch. They were close to the same age, but it was clear that one of them had by far the better arm—the blond. He liked to show it off by tossing the ball high in the air. The other boy was pretty good at catching it, too. Sometimes the sun would get in his eyes and the ball would skip off his forearm or chest. It pained him for a moment, and then he was at it again. “Here’s my curve ball,” he shouted before letting off a toss not unlike any of the others I had seen him throw. It was one of a thousand games of catch they had shared, I was sure. The ice cream man still shouted his mating call.

“Ice cream bars. Candy bars. Three dollars. Frozen candy bars. .” Three dollars. What a rip-off. I decided to take a swim. I walked toward the shoreline and removed my shirt and shoes. I delicately, stealthily, removed my gun and wrapped it in the shirt, placing all of the items about ten feet from the water’s edge.

The lake was very refreshing. I felt for a moment that I was in Mother Earth’s womb, ingesting her goodness through some large umbilical cord. I felt the breeze hit the back of my neck, which was now wet. It was scintillating.

From this vantage point, the whole human race didn’t seem so friggin’ bad after all. All of the mind-numbing hours spent waiting in line, taking orders, being pushed through the crosswalk—none of that seemed to matter anymore. I knew I had crossed a plane and that I would soon understand the state of things well beyond my years on Earth.

Even then I was feeling ideas I had never felt before. And I do mean it like I wrote it. I was
feeling
ideas. That’s the only way to describe it. All of the ass-clenching we are taught here on Earth fades away, and emotion is the new prom queen. It’s like nothing else you’ve ever experienced. The trick is to learn to harness and control those emotions—to feel your way through
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life like a blind man does a hallway.

An insect landed on my forearm. Rather than swat it away as I would have in the past, I allowed it to roam. I wanted to see what it would do, where it would go. It enjoyed the landscape for a minute or two, and then it lifted its wings and fluttered off into oblivion, leaving my arm unaffected by its presence. There was a real lesson in that, and I found myself admiring that tiny bug more than I ever had any human other than my wife.

Sometimes I wonder at night what it must be like to be normal. You know the type. They are born at seven and a half pounds and don’t need to be delivered through the trap door up top. They just slide right out like buttered shrimp. Some kids even need to have bones broken to get their shoulders through. It’s true.

Especially before the C-section went and got so popular.

What a way to enter the world. “Sorry, kid, you’re too big.” Crack!

Normal people have a talent like baseball or painting. They go to the Prom
with
someone! They play lacrosse in college. Normal people get jobs in normal fields and have two children, all healthy. If God’s feeling pissed, maybe one of them will sport a cowlick. They are respected to the grave and beyond. Normal people eat corn-based cereal.

Now, to me, there’s nothing normal about any of this. It’s a life of clones laughing fake laughs. But the world is programmed their way, which makes it difficult for the rest of us to navigate. So we all look deviant in comparison, with our punk hairdos or our careers in speech therapy or whatever the case might be. Me? I chose population control—the good kind. I’m a border collie. I looked toward the shore. Two children were wandering near the water’s edge. The ball players.

Curious little fuckers. And they were nearing my goods. Why’d they have to go and do that? It was such a very perfect and special day. I was enjoying nature, humanity. It made for a rare and lovely mix on this occasion, something that happens very infrequently indeed. And then those kids had to stop doing what
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they were doing and go play with the ugly man’s smelly clothes.I could see their mother calling to them. It was a slow, unconcerned call. After all, it was the ugly man’s clothes, not the clothes of an executive. This man was lucky just to
have
clothes. He probably stole them. So what’s the harm? Well, those clothes were more than just clothes. They were feelings. They were symbols of a man’s place in the world. I still existed, damn it, and those kids were not about to deny me that.

I began to jog toward the shore.

When I was just thirty feet from the children, the mother noticed me. She stood. She screamed. And I don’t mean in that “Get away from the man’s clothing” wimpy voice. She screamed as if her life depended on it. Little did she know, it did.

“Franklin! Andrew! Get over here!” At first the shouting was directed at her sons. This was probably done out of politeness, to make it look as though she was concerned with her children’s actions rather than my own. As I got closer, though, reality shined through her awful facade. Maybe she just saw the anger on my face and feared for her kids.

“Get away from my children! They’re just playing. Get back!” She was up off her blanket now and running toward me. Damn, she was a crazy bitch!

It didn’t take long for her to close the distance, as she was only thirty feet from me to begin with. But that was far enough. Yes, sir, in the end, those few seconds were plenty long enough.

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I grabbed my shirt from the blond boy’s hand. It was light and unfettered. I looked down to the sand and saw my shoes and nothing else. There was no sign of my weapon. I went to my hands and knees and froze in place. The mother circled the three of us frantically, unsure what to do. Suddenly, I had a strange feeling.

My eyes looked up very slowly.

There in front of me was a very small person holding what in
his
hands looked to be a very large gun. I will never forget that moment—and it was just a moment—for as long as I live. The child had a hand in the fate of the world. Fortunately for me, it was an uneducated and not too nimble hand.

I leaped forward at the dark-haired brat and took his forearm in my grasp. I shook his arm, and the gun fell loose to the ground. The mother had me by the other arm and screamed at the top of her lungs. What pipes she had! Mercy!

The whole scenario played out in slow motion, and the people around us were only now starting to react. Interestingly, the closer people happened to be to the action, the more slowly they appeared to move.

I waved Jill’s pistol in the air in an effort to keep the people away. I felt the need for space, for breathing room. As I waved more frantically, the screaming grew more intense. People didn’t know how to react, and were trapped somewhere between running and standing very, very still. It was quite a sight to behold in and of itself.

The only comparable feeling I can think of is that instant when you are at the apex of the first hill on a roller coaster. For a moment the world stands still—

shiny and serene—and then you hear a buzz or a click or you feel a drop in your gut, and it’s all over. I enjoyed those moments thoroughly as a child, much like I was enjoying the moment on the beach. The difference is, now
I
decided when the coaster cars would fall, when
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time would resume. But all good things must end.

I lowered my weapon and began taking shots.

One: The bullet buzzed by an obese man. How could I miss?! Two: I hit a woman in the leg. What good would that do for me, her, or the world at large? Three: Finally! I nailed a guy—half-drunk and far too good-looking for his own good—right in the chest. His front end exploded, and he went down in a heap of ugly.

Gonna need some iodine for that one, slugger. Four: I drilled a woman in a blue swimsuit. Her legs were laden with cellulite. She was ready for a diet. She wouldn’t need one where she was going. She was about to catch a ferry across the River Styx.

I was running toward the road by this time. I tried to reload, but found this to be a difficult task when fleeing. People with guns aren’t supposed to be fleeing, I suppose. That’s the whole idea behind guns.

I wanted more, felt there was more to be done.

I flung my arm back violently and took a random shot, hitting nothing but hot sand, I imagine. I wasn’t actually watching, but I can only assume from the lack of intense screaming that the bullet missed any serious mark. I had to be careful now. I didn’t know when I’d have time to reload, and there was only one bullet remaining to be fired. I had to conserve it. Conservation is good.

Conservation is my job. Conservation of resources, of waste, of energy. Mostly conservation of waste. I’m here to conserve and preserve, actually. The people and the integrity of our planet. You don’t always need to visit the Amazon to save the Earth.

Sometimes you need only go to the beach. And, hey, who doesn’t like the beach? Stupid insects and whiny kids and cold water and sunburn. All of my memories seemed clouded now. Where was the good in the world? Is this all there was? My warm memories of humanity were fading as I delved deeper into my new era. I had exited my larval stage and was ready to spread my wings, but what was waiting for me beyond the world of the cocoon? Would I like it? Would
it
like
me
?