The Ticket That Exploded (Burroughs, William S.) (7 page)

“The success of the nova mob depended on a blockade of the planet that allowed them to operate with impunity — This blockade was broken by partisan activity directed from the planet Saturn that cut the control lines of word and image laid down by the nova mob — So we moved in our agents and started to work keeping always in close touch with partisans — The selection of local personnel posed a most difficult problem — Frankly we found that most existing police agencies were hopelessly corrupt — The nova mob had seen to that — Paradoxically some of our best agents were recruited from the ranks of those
who are called criminals on this planet — In many instances we had to use agents inexperienced in police work — These were of course casualties and fuck-ups — You must understand that an undercover agent witnesses the most execrable cruelties while he waits helpless to intervene, sometimes for many years, before he can make a definitive arrest — So it is no wonder that green officers occasionally slip control when they finally do move in for the arrest — This condition, known as ‘arrest fever,’ can upset an entire operation — In one recent case, our man in Tangier suffered an attack of ‘arrest fever’ and detained everyone on his view screen including some of our undercover men — He was transferred to paper work in another area — Let me explain
how
we make an arrest — nova criminals are not three-dimensional organisms — (though they are quite definite organisms as we shall see) — but they need three-dimensional human agents to operate — The point at which the criminal controller intersects a three-dimensional human agent is known as ‘a coordinate point’ — And if there is one thing that carries over from one human host to another and established identity of the controller it is
habit:
idiosyncracies, vices, food preferences — (we were able to trace Hamburger Mary through her fondness for peanut butter) —a gesture, a special look, that is to say the
style
of the controller — A chain smoker will always operate through chain smokers, an addict through addicts — Now a single controller can operate through thousands of human agents, but he must have a line of coordinate points — Some move on junk lines through addicts of the earth, others move on lines of certain sexual practices and so
forth — It is only when we can block the controller out of all coordinate points available to him and flush him out from host cover that we can make a definitive arrest — Otherwise the criminal escapes to other coordinate” —

Question:
“Inspector Lee, i don’t quite understand what is meant by a ‘coordinate point’ — Could you make that a little clearer? —”

Answer:
“Certainly — You see these criminal controllers occupy human bodies — ghosts? phantoms? Not at all — very definite organisms indeed — True you can’t see them — Can you see a virus? — Well, the criminal controllers operate in very much the same manner as a virus — Now a virus in order to invade, damage and occupy the human organism must have a gimmick to get in — Once in the virus invades damages and occupies a certain area or organ in the body — known as the tissue of predilection — Hepatitis, for example, attacks the liver — Influenza the respiratory tract — Polio and rabies the central nervous system — In the same way a controller invades, damages and occupies some pattern or configuration of the human organism” —

Question:
“How do these controllers gain access to the human organism?”

Answer:
“I will give an example: the controllers who operate through addiction to opiates — that
is
who occupy and control addicts of the earth — Their point of entry is of course the drug itself — And they maintain this coordinate point through addiction” —

Question:
“What determines the choice of coordinate points? Why does one controller operate through addiction in preference to other channels?” —

Answer:
“He operates through addicts because he himself is an addict — A heavy metal addict from Uranus — What we call opium or junk is a very much diluted form of heavy metal addiction — Venusians usually operate through sexual practices — In short these controllers brought their vices and diseases from their planet of origin and infected the human hosts very much in the same way that the early colonizers infected so-called primitive populations” —

Question:
“Inspector Lee, how can one be sure that someone purporting to be a nova police officer is not an impostor?” —

Answer:
“It is not always easy, especially during this transitional period. There are imposters, ‘shake men,’ who haunt atomic installations and victimize atomic scientists in much the same way as spurious police officers extort money from sexual deviants in public lavatories — In one recent case a well-organized shake mob, purporting to represent the nova police, confiscated cyclotrons and other atomic equipment which they subsequently sold on the Uranian black market to support their heavy metal habits — They were arrested and sent away for the thousand year cure — Since then we have encountered a few sporadic cases — cranks, lunatics for the most part” —

Question:
“Inspector Lee, do you think that the nova mob can be defeated?” —

Answer:
“Yes — Their control machine has been disconnected by partisan activity —

“Now we can move in for some definitive arrests —

“‘Sammy the Butcher’ dissolved his dummy cover —
His burning metal eyes stabbed at the officer from the molten core of a hot blue planet — The officer moved back dissolving all connections with the Blue Planet, connections formed by the parasite dummy which had entered his body at birth, carefully prepared molds and association locks closed on empty space — Sammy’s eyes burned and sputtered incandescent blue and went out in a smell of metal — His last white-hot blast exploded in empty space — The officer picked up the microphone: ‘Sammy the Butcher’ arrested — ‘Paddy the Sting,’ arrested — ‘Hamburger Mary’ has defected — ‘Green Tony’ has surrendered — move in for the definitive arrest of ‘Mr Bradly Mr Martin’ also known as ‘Mr and Mrs D’ also known as ‘the Ugly Spirit’ —

“‘Sammy the Butcher’ dissolved his ranks of self-righteous millions and stabbed at the officer dripping Marilyn Monroe Planet — Locks closed on empty space lettering ‘My Fair Lady’— In three-dimensional terms ‘The Ugly Spirit’ and ‘Mrs D’ screamed through female blighted continent — So we turn over the Board Books and all the ugliness i had forgotten — criminal street — punitive legislation screaming for more association locks in electric chair and gas chamber — technical death over the land — white no-smell of death dripping nova — ‘the Ugly Spirit’ was flushed out of one host cover after the other — blanked out by our static and silence waves — Call the Old Doctor twice ‘Mr and Mrs D’ — He quiets you remember? — finished — no shelter — a handful of dust — Screaming, clawing for the nova switch ‘the Ugly Spirit’ was dragged from the planet — from all the pictures and words of ugliness that have been his place of
residence since he moved in on the New World — The officer with silent inflexible authority closed one coordinate point after another — Only this to say: Would you rather talk to the partisans ‘Mr and Mrs D’— Well? — No terms — This is definitive arrest — “Sammy the Butcher” has been taken — There are no guards capable protect you — Millions of voices in your dogs won’t do you a bit of good — voices fading — crumpled cloth bodies — Your name fading across newspapers of the earth — Madison Avenue machine is disconnected — Errand boy closing their errand boys — Won’t be much left — definitive arrest of the board as you listen, as the officer closes track — Self-righteous ugliness of their space program a joke — Written in symbols blighted America: $$$ — american scent of memory pictures — the idiot honky-tonks of Panhandle — humiliation outhouse and snarling ugliness of dying peoples — bourbon soaked legislators from ‘marijuana is deadlier than cocaine’ — board book symbol chains lynch mobs — the White Smoke pressure group relying on rectum suburbs and the no-smell of death — Control Avenue and Hollywood, look at the bread line — The Ugly Spirit retreated back to the ‘20s in servants and police and the dogs of H. J. Anslinger — into one battered host after another — Blanked out board instructions —Silence — Silence — Silence — Call the old money equipment information files of memory — Finished — No shelter — A hand falls across newspapers of the earth for the nova switch — Won’t do you a bit of good, collaborators with ugliness and degraded flesh — Traitors to all souls everywhere moved in on the New World — The Old Doctor cleaving
a heavy silent authority closed one coordinate point after another — The board is near right now — Fading voice terms? — This is definitive arrest through dying air — There are no guards now capable guide humiliations — Poisonous cloud, millions of dogs won’t do you a bit of good — parasites, crumpled cloth bodies — Your control books fading cross newspaper of the earth couldn’t form nova — Operation completed — planet out of danger — Proceed with the indicated alterations’ —

The Exhibition extended through many rooms and corridors — Booths spilled out into a composite garden formal sunken and terraced — Pools and canals reflected flower floats — (arrangements inextricably mixed with flower and garden pictures) —

In a room with metal walls magnetic mobiles under flickering blue light and smell of ozone — jointed metal youths danced in a shower of blue sparks, erections twisted together shivering metal orgasms — Sheets of magnetized calligraphs drew colored iron filings that fell in clouds of color from patterns pulsing to metal music, off on, on off — (The spectators clicked through a maze of turnstiles) — Great sheets of magnetized print held color and disintegrated in cold mineral silence as word dust falls from demagnetized patterns — Photomontage fragments backed with iron stuck to patterns and fell in swirls mixing with color dust to form new patterns, shimmering,
falling, magnetized, demagnetized to the flicker of blue cylinders pulsing neon tubes and globes — In metal booths brain waves wrote the flickering message passed back and forth, over and through shifting grills — The magnetic pencil caught in calligraphs of Brion Gysin wrote back into the brain metal patterns of silence and space — orgone accumulators flickering blue over swimming tanks where naked youths bathed in blue — sound and image flakes falling like luminous grey snow — falling softly from demagnetized patterns into blue silence — Metal heads reversed eyes felt tingling blue spark erections — Metal orgasms flickering rainbow colors — came in wet scenic railways of dream — Electrodes from the brain wrote out boys on roller skates in a shower of ruined suburbs — Naked youths bathed in blue against the pin-ball machine danced and clicked — Old fashion plates falling like luminous snow falling softly dark-haired light-haired clicked deeper and deeper into the blue silence — The light travel machine is a revolving park turns around the traveler spilling metal music and nitrous fumes — Pin-ball acuteness twisted shivering in metal — Metal birds buzzed off in blue light — Jissom cartwheels in glass and mirrors reflected masturbating afternoons — (Naked youths bathed in blue distance now) —Flicker cylinders spill sandwich booths music and laughter across the water — Roller skates twisted in metal arcades — Pools and canals reflected grey suits carrying umbrellas — flickering over swimming boys as the magnetic silver light popped sound and image flakes — color writing a composite garden — layers peel off red yellow blue pools reflecting translucent tentative beings with flower hula
hoops naked in blue twilight — metal youths shivering in stars and pool halls — In rooms flooded with sunlight panels of painting moved past each other on conveyor belts to music all the masters of the world past through each other in juxtapositions of light and color — Painting projected on screens mixed color and image — The Exhibition shaded into a vast amusement park with orchestras and rides and movie screens, stages and outdoor restaurants — All music and talk and sound recorded by a battery of tape recorders recording and playing back moving on conveyor belts and tracks and cable cars spilling the talk and metal music fountains and speech as the recorders moved from one exhibit to another — Vast mobile sculptures of music boxes and recorders wind chimes and movies of the exhibit reflected from ponds and canals and islands where restaurants enclosed in flicker cylinders spilled light and talk and music across the water — Plays on stage with permutating sections moved through each other Shakespeare, ancient Greek, ballet — Movies mix on screen half one half the other — plays in front of movie screen synchronized so that horses charge in and out of old Westerns — Characters walk in and out of the screen flickering different films on and off — Conversations recorded in movies taken during the exhibit appear on the screen until all the spectators are involved situations permutating and moving — (Since the recorders and movies of the exhibition are in constant operation it will be readily seen that any spectator appears on the screen sooner or later if not today then yesterday or tomorrow as the case may be in some connection — and repeat visitors of course —)

A writing machine that shifts one half one text and half the other through a page frame on conveyor belts — (The proportion of half one text half the other is important corresponding as it does to the two halves of the human organism) Shakespeare, Rimbaud, etc. permutating through page frames in constantly changing juxtaposition the machine spits out books and plays and poems — The spectators are invited to feed into the machine any pages of their own text in fifty-fifty juxtaposition with any author of their choice any pages of their choice and provided with the result in a few minutes.

You can say could give no information — dominion dwindling — We intersect on empty kingdom read to by a boy — Five times i made this dream — Consumed brandy neat, muttering in the last terrace of the garden — Light and shade departed have left no address — For i have known the body of a God bending his knees — Isn’t time is there left? — The bitter foliage my friend to give you? — an odor of deluge and courage to let go — In the open air a boy waiting — Smiles overtake someone walking — The questions drift down slowly out of an old dream — mountain wind caught in the door — the odor of drowned suns trailing her linen sweat in the final ape of history — Like i’d ask alterations but blue sky on our ticket that exploded — any case a great leisure in the stern circumstances — Remember i was the ship and we drown — window rotting at the far end of creeks — The door couldn’t reach flesh — naked dream beside you and the dreamer gone at dawn whisper — Put on a clean shirt and takes his way toward the sea —