Dr. Identity (21 page)

The student-thing was in rough shape. He didn’t process the question. Nor did he comprehend that the Igor was his professor for Novels Concerning Bullfrogs.

The major domo clipped the Igor from behind. He fell into a tower of cucumber finger sandwiches. The cashier screamed again.

“Those took me all morning to make!” the major domo shouted.

“You pushed me into them!” The Igor stood up, wiped a glob of mayonnaise from his eye, and slapped the major domo.

An old man sat alone at a table. Unfazed by the commotion, he quietly sipped a cup of exfoliating tea…

A bounty hunter in a Shazam outfit beelined Abraham Lincoln and tried to capture him in a big pillowcase. Lincoln cut his head off with the chainsword. He dropped the head in the pillowcase and swung it at the speed of a helicopter blade, battering the flock of somersaulting ninjas that pounced on him.

He let go of the pillowcase. It flew into the cloud of Media overhead and a handful of Papanazis dropped out of the sky.

“Nearly all men can stand adversity,” Lincoln said, “but if you want to test a man’s character, give him power.” He dropped the chainsword and started to remove weapons from his pockets with machinic proficiency and velocity.

He threw a living torpedo at an abominable snowman. The torpedo was a three-eyed hairless bat. It awoke in mid-air. Screeching, it hit the abominable snowman’s hairy chest and chewed out its heart.

He threw a contamination wad at a vigilante. The wad was a fist-sized chunk of slimy flesh. It hit the vigilante’s face and a skin disease spread across his body. In seconds his flesh shriveled and dissolved. The vigilante crumpled into a quivering, bloody lump.

He threw a vibronic eel at a vigilante’s ’gänger. The eel smacked its neck, wrapped around it and constricted…The ’gänger’s head popped off like a bottlecap.

He threw a tanglevine at a King Kong. The weapon looked like a large weed. It hit the giant ape’s knee, replicated, and spread across its body until it was completely enveloped. Then the tanglevine compressed back to its original size…A blast of simian blood and viscera showered the army. Two of its soldiers drowned.

He threw a psychoactive spike at a T-Rex. It hit the dinosaur in the temple and incited a hallucination. Suddenly the dinosaur believed it was a coffee pot. It sat down on its tail, squeezed its eyes shut, and tried its best to percolate…

Fusillade of bullets, heat rays, energy bolts, flechettes, shuriken, hypodermics, caltrops, grenades, mortars, throwing stars, fireballs, harpoons, bricks, javelins, rockets, missiles, coral snakes…

Abraham Lincoln leapt into the air, pirouetted, grabbed and spun around a street lamp, jackknifed over a King Kong that tried to bearhug him, and landed on the hood of a blown-up Buick. A velociraptor sprung at him. He caught it by the jaws and ripped its head in two.

Fusillade of bullets, heat rays, energy bolts, flechettes…

Lincoln leapt into the air…

“I’m talking to you young man,” the Igor said. “How many tardies do you have this semester?” He started towards the student-thing, who was balled up underneath a spice rack. The café’s major domo hit him on the back of the head with a soup spoon.

“Ouch!”

The Igor wrenched the spoon from his grip and wedged the spoon between his legs. The pudgy major domo squealed, grabbed his crotch and tipped over.

The cashier opened a safe in the wall and stared at the barcode inside until she had depleted the café’s savings funds. Then she ran out the back door.

“Thief,” whimpered the major domo.

The Igor grabbed St. Squarebone’s foot and pulled him out into the open. He kicked him in the stomach. “Did you at least do your reading for today? I was going to present a lecture on
The Wind in the Willows
and the theoretical Afterward that accompanies it. Are you prepared to discuss this text? Are you prepared to answer questions in regards to the syllogistic implications of the protagonist’s negative capability?”

“Please, Dr.…” St. Squarebone had regained his mental faculties. He knew who the Igor was now. But his throat had been burnt to a crisp; when the initial blast from the Smaug crash hit him, he inhaled a tongue of fire. He tried to beg for mercy. “Dr.…Dr.…”

“Dr. ’Blah. Dr. Blah Blah Blah.”

“I’m sorry,” the student-thing rasped. “But…the sorority…her ’gänger…She died.”

“Your turn.” Dr. ’Blah extracted a medieval crusader sword from his pocket. He hoisted the weapon over his head…and was stabbed in the calf with a fork by the major domo. It was a plastic fork and didn’t even puncture the fabric of his pants. But it stung. And it brought back memories.

The major domo became Gilbert Hemingway, Utensil Tyrant. Dr. ’Blah went ballistic. Screeching like a monkey, he swung the sword at the major domo as hard as he could, repeatedly, and missed his target every time. The major domo dodged the blows with ease.

In time Dr. ’Blah destroyed the café. Shards of glassware and cucumber chunks littered the floor, and the dessert carousel lay in ruins. St. Squarebone had retreated beneath the spice rack again. Exhausted, Dr. ’Blah caught his breath, apologized to the major domo, and ordered something cold to drink…

Outside the melee neared a climax. The Papanazi had swelled and expanded into a full-fledged hurricane that spanned blocks and blocks. Winds accelerated up to 80 mph, sweeping humans and ’gängers and Frankenstein monsters off of their feet and throwing the larger rainforest creatures into buildings. Dinosaurs roared and cracked their tails. King Kongs pounded their chests. Abominable snowmen and sasquatches tore their hair out. Lightning drilled the street. Abraham Lincoln hovered between heaven and earth on the thrusters of a Beetlesneak jetpack. The sky shone around him like a million suns, calling him on and on across the universe…

His body slipped into the Bizarro dimension of fasttime. Armed only with a hypersharp rapier, he annihilated the minions of the postcapitalist confederacy…The scene kicked off with a slashed jugular. Before the jugular bled dry, the scene had evolved into a histrionic spectacle of bouncing heads, twitching limbs, spurting gashes and intestinal fireworks…An unsuspecting Pig’s snout was hacked off and blue blood gushed out of the hole…An allosaurus’ stomach was slashed from the neck to the anus. Its skin opened up like a body bag and out dumped half a ton of whale blubber…D.C. Comics superheroes and villains diced into precise cubes of beef fondue…bouquets of blood and flesh-confetti…soaking technologies…sledgehammer of sparks…thunder, lightning…smell of cooked meat…exploding eyeballs…exploding light bulbs…exploding windows and demolished brick walls…Barbarella yawps…whirlwinds of dark ninja hoods and gees…hairdos tousling into anonymity…rumble of thunder…rhizome of lightning…black-and-white flashbulbs of digitized ultraviolence…close-up on Lincoln’s sharp, bearded visage and the purposeful gleam in his bright…white…irisless eyes…

The major domo attempted to chew off Dr. ’Blah’s ear. Dr. ’Blah elbowed him in the stomach and punched him in the nose, breaking it. The major domo staggered backwards. Focusing, Dr. ’Blah swung at him with the heavy sword in a 360 degree circle.

He made contact. The major domo fell into two spurting halves.

The old man finished his exfoliating tea, dabbed the corners of his mouth with a handkerchief, and toppled onto the floor, dead of natural causes.

St. Squarebone reeled out of the café. He tripped and fell into the gutter again. Bones sprung into the air. A stream of blood and viscera doused him. He gagged, vomited. He pushed himself out of the carnage.

For a moment he thought he had died and gone to Hell. The street was on fire. The sky was a blizzard of electric insects. Corpses of humans everywhere. Corpses of androids everywhere. Corpses of fictional and extinct beasts everywhere.

“St. Squarebone!”

Moaning, the student-thing staggered down the flaming street. Dr. ’Blah ordered him to stop. He kept going.

Dr. ’Blah squinted, breathed…He cocked the sword and hurled it.

It slammed into the student-thing’s back. Blood sprayed out of St. Squarebone’s mouth as he wheeled onto his face and snapped his neck.

Abraham Lincoln joined Dr. ’Blah outside the cucumber café. They looked at each other and walked over to St. Squarebone. The boy was dead. The President-thing put his hand on the plaquedemic’s shoulder.

“Nice to see you join in the fight,” Dr. Identity said, tearing off its mask.

Dr. ’Blah stared down at the corpse. “Too many tardies.”

19

DEATH OF A SALESMAN – 1ST PERSON (IDENTITY)

He once told me about the day he purchased me…

The door-to-door salesman was a replica of Willy Loman as portrayed by the actor Dustin Hoffman in the 1985 film version of Arthur Miller’s play. When he opened the door he wondered if the disguise was intentional or coincidental. Did the salesman know he was a plaquedemic? Did he know he was a plaquedemic of a particular brand? Did he know he was a plaquedemic of a particular brand who would recognize a replica of Willy Loman as portrayed by the actor Dustin Hoffman in the film version of Arthur Miller’s play when he saw one? What were the chances? Was somebody he knew lurking beneath the disguise? Was it even a disguise? Perhaps this was Dustin Hoffman’s great-great-great-etc.-grandson. But what were the chances of the grandson looking exactly like his great-great-great-etc.-grandfather? And what were the chances of him dressing up like a character that his great-great-great-etc.-grandfather played in a film? And what were the chances that his real life profession was the same profession owned by the character in his fictional life?

“Can I help you?” the plaquedemic asked.

“No,” said the Loman. He smiled. “But I can help you, sir.” He looked down at the guitar case in his grasp. It was bigger than him. “Do you want my help?”

“Not really.”

“Okay. Bye.” He made no effort to leave.

They stared at each other for half a minute. “Wait. Come in.”

“Thank you.” The salesman stepped inside.

The plaquedemic looked the salesman up and down. “I didn’t know door-to-door salesmen still existed.”

“How do you know I’m a door-to-door salesman?”

“There’s a sign on your hat that says so.” He pointed at it.

“Oh.”

“So you still exist, I guess.”

“I do. But it’s a secret. Don’t tell anybody.”

The plaquedemic gnawed introspectively on a pinky finger. “Do I know you?”

“I don’t think so. Maybe. Certainly. But maybe not. I’m certain the answer is maybe not.”

“What are you, Willy Loman?”

“Willy Loman?”

“What’s going on out there?” yelled the plaquedemic’s wife-thing from the kitchenette.

“Nothing!”

He told the salesman they would have to forgo trivialities. “Sell me something. Try anyway. I’m broke.” He disliked salesmen. He disliked the very idea of salesmen and probably wouldn’t buy anything on that condition alone. But confrontation wasn’t his specialty. And he had an overactive sense of empathy. He knew the salesman’s pain. He would have felt too guilty if he sent him away without giving him a chance. Yet he deeply resented the salesman for invading his life and tampering with his emotional spectrum. He wanted to hug him. He wanted to strangle him.

The salesman bowed. “I understand. Trivialities, however, are the game’s name. I’m sorry.” He pushed his way passed the plaquedemic and glided into the kitchenette where the wife-thing was petting and doting over a Bundt cake. She shrieked at the sight of the stranger and dropped the cake on the floor. She accused him of frightening her. But she was quickly won over by his humorous dialogue. The salesman took her hand and stroked it. He asked her name and said it was very pretty. She blushed. He eased her onto the dining table, removed her apron, slipped off her panties and unzipped his trousers.

He stuck his cock in her hole…

The plaquedemic waited patiently for them to finish in the doorway of the kitchenette. A few times he asked, “Are you finished yet?” The wife-thing ignored him. The salesman dutifully replied, “One moment, please.”

Afterwards the men retired to the living cube loveseat. The salesman cleared off a coffee table and set his guitar case atop it. He patted the case. “Inside is the answer.”

“The answer?”

“That’s correct.”

“What answer?”

“
The
answer?”

“To what?”

“
It
.”

Their voices were dim. But I could hear them talking…

The salesman explained that he could piece me together in several minutes. Then it was simply a matter of filling out a questionnaire and jacking the plaquedemic’s psyche into mine for programming. The process was psychosomatic. My mind would be formatted according to the technology of his desireggggand then so would my body. “You can create anything,” the salesman assured him, “as long as you understand that, whatever it is, its actions will belong to you by signed contract.” He asked the salesman if that was really true. The salesman said, “No. Not really. The fact is you can’t create anything. There are certain existential rules and regulations that must be taken into consideration. And it has to look exactly like you. If you want it to look differently, you have to alter your own image first. The rest of what I said is true, though. Mostly.”

The plaquedemic expressed some concern about price. The salesman squeezed his knee and assured him I was perfectly affordable. Even if I wasn’t affordable it would be a tragedy not to buy me.

“Tragedy?” he said.

“When the feeling’s gone and you can’t go on,” said the salesman.

“I’m broke.”

“Nobody’s broke.”

“Everybody’s broke.”

“Are you sure? Can you prove it in a court of Law?”

“Nobody can prove anything in a court of Law.”

“Indeed.”

The plaquedemic couldn’t say no. The salesman lifted a finger. Implanted into the tip of it was a small yellow smiley face wearing mirrorshades. He told his customer to grimace for the camera.

Five seconds later the plaquedemic’s debt transcended comprehension. But there was a chance the debt would be paid off in only two generations if his children and his children’s children worked hard enough. A third generation might be necessary. He had been reticent to have kids despite the wife-thing’s constant pleading and crying about being childless. This afternoon they would have a talk about making her a young mother-thing.