Codename Prague (11 page)

“Ticket, please,” droned the flight attendant as a new tranzbubble ballooned from a fissure in the slingpad. At full capacity the exterior of the tranzbubble solidified while a viscous lounge chair and a montage of gel-screens formed on the interior.

“Ticket, please,” the flight attendant repeated. Prague scowled at his
pillbox hat and said, “Tickets don’t exist. Tickets haven’t existed for thousands of years.”

“Yessir.” The flight attendant scanned his eyes. “Name: Vincent Prague. Codename: Vincent Prague. Title: Special Agent Anvil-in-Chief. Race: Noir Amerikan. Gender: Meta Male. Height: 6 Feet 8 Inches. Date of Birth: Unspecified. Eye Color: Transparent. Destination City: Prague, Former Czech Republik. Destination Slingpad: Prague Orange-45x. Tranzbubble Flavor: Extra Spicy Chicken Wings with Extra Blue Cheese and No Celery. Tranzbubble Blood Type: 18-Year-Old Single Malt Isle of Skye.” Registering the flavor and blood type, the tranzbubble modified itself accordingly. “Did you know your name plagiarizes your destination? May I ask why you’re going to Prague? What’s in Prague that you can’t find here?”

A bellowing arrival flew overhead and crashed into a knot of razorsharp antennae. Flourish of strings and percussion…The Anvil-in-Chief smiled. “I’m on a quest narrative, but I anticipate deviating from traditional quest patterns. I’ve already experienced several curious deviations. In any case, I’m the anti-hero. Protagonist and antagonist. Man and doppelgänger. One and the same.”

The flight attendant made a sour face. “No reason to get smart, Mr Prague. Or literal, for that matter. I was only making small talk. Have you flown with us before?”

“Just aim this fucker and throw me across the pond. Don’t forget my briefcase. Do the right thing, Mookie. Kill me and I’m coming back to getcha.” A door in the tranzbubble irised open, he climbed in, and the door irised closed. The flight attendant retrieved his briefcase and placed it against the skin of the tranzbubble, which assimilated it. Then he scurried behind the slingatron’s main control panel. He punched a big button. He fiddled with joysticks. He manipulated a plume of holographic image-swathes, locking the tranzbubble into place. He confirmed and reconfirmed the destination coordinates. And he crossed his fingers for luck.

Smell of vulcanized rubber. Sound of an elastic grunt, of a clanking trebuchet…

…of the wind in the willows…

…In the air, Prague watched six movies simultaneously on amoebic gel-screens while eating the inner walls of the tranzbubble and drinking its blood from an aortic valve. Like all movies, they fell headlong into the scikungfi genre, deploying other genres in small amounts either for artistic effekts or to (unsuccessfully) convey a sense of narrative depth. One movie in particular caught his eye, a remake of a stage adaptation of a commercial in which an
artiste
wearing an aluminum Vincent Prague mask loomed over a box of sentient detergent that emptied itself into a washing machine and set the timer. “You don’t need Vincent Prague to wash your clothes,” said the voice-over. “Speckled Enzymes
will do it for you.” Featured on the box cover was the image of another
artiste
in a Prague mask. He leaned against a ninety-sixth generation Camaro with an ostentatious whale fin. It was this whale fin that became a focal character in the subsequent stage adaptation of the commercial. Directed by the late method playwright Lofton Gitt in the early “Shiny Demon” period of his career, the play’s title underwent a torturous evolution as a result of Gitt’s chronic indecisiveness, but also because whenever producers decided they liked a title, he considered it a Tier One order of business to fuck with their sense of complacency.
Whale Fin Goes Hogwild!!!
was the final title authorized by Gitt during his lifetime, although it was posthumously revised on numerous occasions (
Whale Fin Goes Extremely Hogwild!!!
,
Whale Fin Fucking Kills the Whole Goddamned World!!!
,
Whale Fin vs. Special Agent Prague
,
Vrooom!!!
,
The Queequeg Factor
,
W Is for Whale Fin
, etc.) by the playwright’s many offspring and heirs. The script of the stageplay remained fixed, however, until its appropriation by the machinery of Hollywood cinema. Pop filmmaker Buddy Napoleon went in a different direction, shifting the focus away from the antagonism of the Camaro’s whale fin to that of an impish vigilante (a.k.a. The Undeniable Essence) hired to kill Vincent Prague by the Ministry of Applied Pressure. Napoleon reduced the whale fin’s role to a thirty second symbolic encounter with a “Walrus Man” who attempted to sexually abuse the automotive accessory but was apprehended by the BILWM (Bureau of Investigators against Lascivious “Walrus Men”) before any serious damage could be done. But the scene that the Anvil-in-Chief now watched had nothing to do with whale fins, “Walrus Men,” the BILWM, a vigilante, or even Prague himself. It was a conversation between an alien with an exobrain in a bubble helmet and a Julie Andrews simulacrum whose apparel and personality fluctuated between Mary Poppins, Maria Von Trapp, and Victoria Grant.

“I come in peace,” synthesized the alien.

“Like in that Dolph Lundgren film?” asked Maria Von Trapp. “Who names a film
I Come in Peace
? That’s an assertion, not a title.”

“What is Dolph Lundgren?”

“Only, like, the biggest badass that ever lived,” said Mary Poppins.

“He’s hot as balls, too,” added Victoria Grant.

The alien removed its bubble and began to cough. For a moment it appeared as if it would suffocate, but it acclimatized. “What species of balls heat up to the degree that they are worthy of being deployed in the aforementioned simile?”

“What simile?” asked Maria Von Trapp.

“The one you used in that sentence. That one.”

“Dolph Lundgren is a simile?” wondered Victoria Grant.

“Of a sort, I suppose,” said Mary Poppins. “
The
Amerikan Heretic Dictionary of Exegesized Poltergeists
explains that a simile is ‘an instance of one thing representing (i.e.
standing for
) another thing, as in the context of a literary work.’ That’s the first definition, mind you. Whatever the case, we must think about this issue in terms of representation, i.e., what is it that Mr Lundgren
stands for
? Swedish pride? Cold War dick-swinging? Aryan wish-fulfillment? Mankind in general? All this is assuming Mr Lundgren is preceded by a
like
or
as.
Otherwise the man is sheer metaphor.”

Electricity skimmed across the cerebral cortex of the alien’s exobrain. “According to our records, Dolph Lundgren has been dead for over 8,000 years.”

“Are you calling me a liar?” asked Maria Von Trapp.

“Is that question intended for me or one of your other personalities?” replied the alien.

“Spit spot.”

A troupe of burlesques poured onto the gel-screen and everybody danced the Time Warp. Then the Julie Andrews simulacrum attacked the alien with a Xingyiquan crotch shot. It chased the move with an earsplitting Kwisatz Haderach weirding word. The alien’s head exploded like a corn stalk, tendrils of gore spraying from its neck…

Prague sighed. The Julie Andrews didn’t work for him—a poorly written character, he thought, and miscast to the hilt. Regarding the movie as a whole, it wasn’t the first shitty cinematic depiction of his life, and it wouldn’t be the last: at least 100 shitty Vincent Prague-inspired movies had been made in the last five years alone.

He waved a hand and the wall assimilated the gel-screens. He drank the tranzbubble’s alcoholic blood in silence until it knocked him out.

He awoke to the sound of the flight attendant’s voice: “Mr Prague. Wake up, Mr Prague. I might have tossed you a little to the left. Please don’t be angry. Please don’t come back from the dead and hurt me…”

11

Araby (Re)viz[it]ed

The anguish and anger that marked its gaze fluctuated with its vision.

—I’ll fix it, said the monster’s companion. I promise.

—My prototypes weren’t blind, replied the monster. There are no lilies on my brow.
Scheiße!

—You’re not blind. You’re just not working properly. But you’re new. Give yourself time to adjust.

A man with no arms and legs crawled out of a hole in the wall. He said:

—Welcome to Araby. My name’s Rardion! But most citizens call me Mike.

The greeter came closer, moving across the floor on his stomach like an inchworm. He wore a striped onesie.

—Can I be of service? May I assist you in some peculiar way?

The monster flinched and said:

—
Pee
-culiar.

—Don’t be afraid, said the monster’s companion, squeezing its elbow. This is normal. When you enter a bazaar, you must expect to be accosted. You must expect to be accosted when you enter anything, anywhere. Granted, the greeter lacks extremities. But that’s not unheard of. People have lacked extremities for eons.

The monster’s companion removed his sungoggles.

—Ah! chirped the greeter. He rolled onto his back. Dr Teufelsdröchk! I didn’t recognize you!

—It’s bright out.

—
Willkommen zurück!
We’ve just received a fresh batch of artichokes, I’m told. Straight from Algiers!

—Extraordinary. This is my monster. It is a psychocoporeal fusion of John Keats and Adolph Hitler. I call it The Sans Merci. It’s a working title. But I suspect the title may stick.

The greeter rolled his head and frowned at The Sans Merci.

—Pardon us.

The doktor sidestepped the greeter, shepherded the monster through a security gate…and experienced an epiphany.

—I know the function of bald people, he said. They signify what planets look like from afar. Thus they symbolize the distance between A and B. Hence they are unceasing reminders of cosmic vastness and the certainty of Blank Space.

Illogical epiphanies were chronic phenomena in Araby, the owners of which had rigged the bazaar with ceiling fans that continually sprinkled Total Rekall dust onto shoppers, prompting them to either remember fond but forgotten experiences or, more commonly, extract meaning from nothingness. The owners sought to manufacture an illusory sense of intelligence and imagination in shoppers. This, in turn, would lead to a heightened sense of selfhood. And a heightened sense of selfhood would generate a greater desire to consume Araby’s various wares. It worked, for the most part, although sometimes shoppers devolved into mere
artiste
-like creatures, fleeing the bazaar in order to construct their own unrealized self-portraits on the canvas of life. But once a shopper left the premises, s/he ceased to fetishize
Künstlerroman
narratives and exhibit Joycean conduct.

The Total Rekall dust had no effekt on The Sans Merci.

—Artichokes, mumbled Dr Teufelsdröchk. Why would that stump think I wanted artichokes? Artichokes are for plebes and antisophisticants. Artichokes are the scum of the vegetable world. Artichokes are assholes that have been yanked inside-out.

—You said artichoke five times in a row.

—People repeat things. People let you down, too. Nothing more.

They sat on a T-Bar that lifted and ferried them across the skyscape of Araby to its neurorganic produce section. Dr Teufelsdröchk expounded on the benefits of neurorganic produce along the way. How it filled the gap between body and psyche. How it filtered the stream of consciousness. How it massaged the soft interstices of the brain…The Sans Merci ignored him. It stroked its mustache and stared at the commerce below. Hawkers in colorful cloaks whispered back and forth, up and down the aisles. Thin, brown, empty-handed women disappeared into red curtains and reappeared carrying buckets of wet celluloid. Piles of merchandise everywhere. And looming grandfather clocks. And long wooden platforms. And crackling torches. And, for added effekt, hundreds of drunken James Joyce androids whose mustaches, the monster surmised, were identical to its own…

—I hate this place, said Dr Teufelsdröchk. Joyce was nothing but a spud-eater. But they have the best fruits and vegetables in Prague. In the entire European landfill, I’d argue.

A shopper three T-Bars ahead slipped and fell. Two strongmen caught him in a bed sheet and cheerfully threw him in the air, twice, before letting him go.

The Sans Merci said:

—My buttocks ail me. Where are the gondolas?

—They fetishize Lo-Tech here. As everywhere. It’s the nature of the postreal world.

—Why?

—Less glitz. More gusto.

The T-Bar descended to the floor and they got off. Dr Teufelsdröchk smoothed the wrinkles from his corduroy slacks and had another epiphany.

—I remember when I was in the fourth grade, he said dreamily. The haters fed me goulash. I gagged and smelled the breath of God. It was at this moment that I realized, for the first time, that I was
not
God.

He twitched.

—This way.

As they wandered down the aisles, The Sans Merci had to fight the urge to goosestep. It wasn’t easy. His boots seemed to be alive, angry. Possessed. They leapt out in front of him like cats whose tails had been stepped on.

Dr Teufelsdröchk commended the monster’s efforts and lectured it:

—One can think and look like a Nazi, but one must not act like a Nazi. Not in public life. This is a Brave New World, remember. Better to traipse from here to there like a lovelorn poet, as if the floor beneath your feet is a bed of roses and you are a virgin chasing after the summer breeze. Consider the opening words of Keats’ “To Autumn”: “Seasons of mist and mellow fruitfulness!” Convert that sentence into your gait. Become one with Keats—but keep the Führer close at hand…