Generation A (7 page)

ZACK

“What’s your name, then?”

“Call me Lisa.”

“Hello, Lisa. I’m assuming that right now I’m being watched by a hundred different cameras?”

“You are correct in assuming something like that.”

“Then I think I’ll make myself more . . .
comfortable
.” I’d noticed I’d been garbed in a pair of white cotton underwear that I thought unusual because it had absolutely no logos or branding or any other indication of where it was from. Regardless, I decided to smoulder for the scrumptious Lisa. Nobody can resist Zack in his smouldering mode.

“Zack, I think you need to know that I am actually a composite personality generated by fifteen different scientists feeding text, data and voice information into the system’s central character generator. I’m not actually a woman.”

Fuck
. How embarrassing. “Very funny.”

“We’re not very funny people. We’re all work and no play.”

“Then could you maybe change your voice? I don’t want to lie here thinking, even for one second, that there’s a possibility of you being hot.”

“How does this sound?” Lisa’s voice morphed into that of Ronald Reagan.

“Better.”

“Well then, Zack, I’d like you to think of me as a friend.”

How can you argue with Ronald Reagan? It’s like crushing baby chicks with gumboots; no wonder he ruled the planet for eight years. “Thanks.”

“No problem.”

“The food here blows.”

“Yes, it’s unfortunate-looking, but take solace in knowing that you’re helping science. You’re a
hero
, Zack.”

“I’m no hero. What happens next?”

“Oh, we’ll need more blood, but you’re young and healthy.”

“What do you mean
more
blood?” I searched my arms and legs, looking for needle evidence.

“Don’t worry, Zack. Our new blood-removal techniques are invisible and painless.”

“How comforting.” I stood up and walked over to the table to poke the green gel rhomboid on my plate. I took a small taste: a broccoli smoothie. “How long am I here for?”

“A few weeks, maybe.”

“I’ll go nuts.”

Ronald Reagan said, “You’ll be helping your country, Zack. I know we can all count on you.”

“At least get me a TV.”

“No TV, Zack, sorry.”

“Some games, then. Magazines . . . a Mac . . . maybe even some books.”

“I’m afraid we can’t let you have any information in your room that might skew your mood.”

“Not even logos on the furniture and toilet, I noticed.”

Silence.

“So I sit in a room and do nothing for a month?”

“Let’s speak again soon, Zack. I enjoyed meeting you.”

“Thanks ever so much, Ronald.”

“I feel good about you, Zack.”

I looked around me and said, “You know what, I’m going to lie back down on the bed here so that you guys can spray your CIA sleepy gas in my face.”

I lay down, and for the first time since the sting, I began to think clearly about my recent past. I thought of Charles and his webcam . . .
crap
. Well, I guess the world knows everything about Zack there is to see. To cope with this realization, I chose nature’s ultimate ego-preservation tool: I decided not to give a shit.
∗

But in my Level-4 containment facility beneath the surface of North Carolina, I was going crazy.
To jack off or not to jack off?
Later.

I said to Ronald, “Drain my veins completely, for all I care. Good night. Or good day. Or good whatever-it-is in the real world.”

The jellied cubes began to taste better and better as the weeks progressed. And then, one day, I was evicted without ceremony. They asked me to pick out a few garments from among those lying inside a lost-and-found cupboard—a witness relocation cupboard? No idea. I chose some vintage Gulf War camouflage pants and a wife-beater like my favourite avatar in MarineWarp3: The Blessing.
Best. Battle. Game. Ever.
They then took me to a tarmac and a waiting C-141 Starlifter transport plane. It looked like it came from a garage sale picked clean by early birds: it was scuffed, pitted and greasy. Its interior smelled like a Salvation Army thrift shop—all it needed was mismatched cutlery and a spew-stained stuffed animal.

During the flight I asked what was supposed to happen now: was I free? Was I to be a long-term lab rat? Could I lead a normal life? None of the military types were willing to give me any answers.

We landed at Oskaloosa Municipal Airport, and the temperature was around the freezing mark, even though the month before we’d had record heat. Nobody met me at the airport—I thought my cheap bastard Uncle Jay could have at least called me a cab. When I got to the bottom of an aluminum gangplank, the plane’s door slammed and within a minute it was airborne, leaving me marooned at the haunted airstrip. When I was little, the place was practically choking with planes all day, and I remember my father stealing a pair of Ray-Bans from the dashboard of a BASF Crop Protection van. These days, there’s grass busting through cracks in the tarmac, and as I walked towards the road I saw a coyote skedaddle across the runway’s south end.

I caught a ride home with a Mexican who made me sing along to mariachi songs. The bed of his truck was filled with bags of onions. In my tragic Spanish, I tried to make conversation, but the most I could understand was that onions are cheap to grow and require little pollination. He then sold me a bag of magic mushrooms for ten bucks. Good old fungi: take
that
, you delinquent fucking
bees
.

Of course, no one in the system had told me that, while I was locked up, my cheeky little getting-stung video had become a global number one hit. My humble cornfield was the most Google-mapped location of all time. My cock and balls drawing in the corn had become a popular tattoo. I was humbled: creativity, you are nectar.

Maybe a quarter-mile away from the farm, I saw the first souvenir stand: a mobile home with some folding card tables out front, manned by an astonishingly fat woman wrapped in a blue shipping blanket and cuddling a pug. She was so odd-looking that I didn’t register the T-shirts at first: enlarged screen snaps of me naked.
What the . . . ?

There was another stand, then another, and then a small improvised community of people who’d been camping in tents like the farm was Live Aid 1985. There were also tailgate-partying tourists along the roadside who reminded me of the crowds who used to go to the old space shuttle launches in Florida. Nobody was paying any attention to my Mexican’s truck or to me.

At the lane that leads to my place, a pair of armed guards stood before a long, man-high helix of razor wire. I hopped out of the truck and walked up to them, but before a word came out of my mouth, the crowd spotted me—I felt like Kurt Cobain, returned from the dead. The guards panicked and were unable to quickly open the razor wire gate, and so I, Zack, got my first taste of fame. I liked it.

A woman old enough to be my mother asked me to sign an envelope for her. My first autograph! So I did, and then she asked if I could lick the envelope shut. A weird request, but I did, and she ran away happy, but others were visibly pissed off. I asked a comely young lady what I’d done wrong, and she said, “She wanted your DNA, bozo—and so do I!” My mind was blossoming with ideas on how to provide her with a sample when the guards finally cut the razor wire and yanked me inside—but
only
me, no DNA enthusiasts.

The first thing I noticed was that my aging wood barn had been disassembled and the planks stacked like cordwood. Numbers had been spray-painted on their edges, meaning I’m not sure what. It reminded me of the X’s spray-painted onto New Orleans Katrina houses.

My house itself was unlocked, and every item inside had been arranged into rows and piles, and numbered with Sharpies. Many of the items were in plastic zip-lock bags—even an ancient pizza flyer I remembered throwing out the morning of the sting. Fucking hell—to put everything back in place was a task that seemed beyond me. Having said that, my place had never looked so neat and clean.

I sat down on a chair wrapped in a thick, clear plastic condom. I was hungry. Would there be food in the cupboard? I found forty-eight of those meals-in-a-can things senior citizens love. Oh
joy
. I decided that the first thing I’d do as a free citizen would be to go to the bank, take out some money, go find an apple and pay whatever they asked for it. I wanted my teeth to make something go
crunch
.

Drinking a chocolate Boost, I walked into the guest room (in truth, the room in which I kept my barbells and dead elliptical training machine) and saw a pile of U.S. Postal Service bags of mail. Holy fuck! I went to one of them and pulled out a letter at random. It was from a grandmother in Michigan who had written a poem about bees. She’d enclosed a memory stick of the poem set to music. I quickly learned that fan mail was incredibly fun and yet incredibly boring at the same time.

I was halfway through my third Boost and my tenth letter when my cellphone rang. I’d forgotten I even owned one. The ring tone was “Africa” by Toto: Uncle Jay.

“Numbnuts, you were supposed to be home
tomorrow
, not today.”

“I don’t even know what day today is.”

“It’s Saturday.”

“Who told you I was supposed to be home tomorrow?”

“The woman from the Centers for Disease Control.”

Note the absence of a greeting. Uncle Jay is warmth personified.

“I’m fine, Uncle Jay. How are you?”

“Smartass.”

I asked, “So what happens now?”

“What do you mean?”

“What am I supposed to do now? Hang out all day with my Wii?” Not farming—that’s for sure. A letter from Monsanto Corn had informed me that there were still unrepentant gene traces on the property.

“How about growing something other than corn?”

“Corn still runs the state. You know that’s not going to happen.”

“You’ve got a point,” Jay said. “It seems to me that you now have the best thing and the worst thing in the world at the very same time.”

“What would that be?”

“Too much free time.”

“I’ve just had a month of free time, and I never want any again.”

On the table was a stack of Wellbutrin SR Post-it notes. As I stared at them, I realized how much I’d missed logos and brands.

“You’re not contagious or anything, are you?”

“Fuck off, Jay.”

“Language.” Then he said to me, “If I see you on one TV talk show, or if you post anything weird on the Internet, or if I see any fame-whoring, you’re cut off. Fame is only going to cause trouble.”

“Gotcha.”

Being on TV is fun. Producers love me because I don’t put on the brakes the way most people do. What I’m thinking and feeling is what I say. Producers also love quietly stealing my food litter from trash bins: DNA trophies.

Q)

Do you think the bee was attacking you?

A)

I don’t think bees attack people.

Q)

Were you into insects as a child?

A)

Sure. In second grade Justin di Marco said I was chicken shit and wouldn’t eat a dead fire ant. Screw him, so I ate a
live
one.

Q)

What did it taste like?

A)

Crunchy. Salty. I mean, there’s not much difference between eating lobster and eating a bug. One’s just bigger is all. I think of flying insects as sky lobster.

Q)

You run a farm by yourself. That’s a lot of work.

A)

Yes and no. In general, I’m too lazy to hold down the Shift key when I type, but when it comes to my plants, I think of them as art.

Q)

Like the big hoo-hoo you cut out of your cornfield?

A)

Exactly.

Q)

Are you superstitious? Getting stung must have made you a little bit so.