Planet Fever (6 page)

In the end, however, the ventriloquist learns he is but a stooge for a company testing out its new mind-control device. The device had been planted within the dummy, which needs a human conduit to allow it to work.

The ventriloquist becomes aware he himself is the conduit through which his audience becomes brainwashed into purchasing a new brand of mouthwash.

The climax of the film occurs when he performs “his” now popular act, and during the performance he breaks character and directly notifies the audience of what is going on. The crowd believes his speech to be a new part of his show, and laughs more so. Finally, aware of his predicament, he smashes the dummy into pieces. The audience boos him and collectively leaves.

The final shot of Fillono’s film is, in my opinion far more expressive than the end of my story. He leaves us with a slow zoom-out of the ventriloquist, sitting under a lone spotlight, into a wide-shot of him gazing into the vast empty venue in desolate silence.

The film was projected in a dozen or so art house theaters and garnered critical acclaim.

My short story netted me $250 from the underground publication
Buck Naked Truth
.

The last piece I had been working on during my time with Moroni—to the best of my recollection—was called “Undercover Repart: General of Inane to Make Bold Move.” I remember that, because I knew I needed to fix the spelling of “Report,” but I hadn’t been able to get around to it for reasons which will be mentioned later. It was to be Moroni’s tell-all speech in which he was going to give us the unadulterated, unabridged and mind-blowing account of his real identity and the actuality of his intentions.

“Everything is in place … for a declaration of war on them by us—the human race … SCREW YOU ALL!” That is how the repart—I mean report—ends.

I WAS
in my stand-up tent, flipping through my report. I didn’t like how the piece ended. As a matter of fact, the work on the whole sucked. I felt as though nothing had really been accomplished, and the entire year had been blown accomplishing that nothingness.

Was I akin to Fillono’s Telepathic Ventriloquist? A mere “yes-man” acting as a bestooged conduit for use by manipulative higher forces?

Probably.

A mind-storm erupted on the scale of a psychic
el niño.
A diligent revision of my work-in-progress was in order. With this revision
I took
my own liberties
and added
my very own thoughts
to the piece.

For one, I made the fact quite lucid that Moroni was an insane man. I implemented myself into the piece as
a spy, in the guise of a writer
who works for some unknown (or undisclosed) agency, sent to investigate and report on the activities of the man known as Moroni.

Secondly, I made myself out to be the hero, saving the planet from Moroni’s underhanded madness.

And lastly, a love interest was introduced. I was, after all, beg-inning to feel lonesome and in need of female contact.

“Ah, Mr. Bikaver … I see and I lurk, you are going about your work.” Moroni staggered into my tent with a bottle of wine in one hand and an attaché in the other. He pushed the bottle into my chest and sat down in a fold-out camping chair across from me. “May I check upon wh-what—may I read your stuff?”

I took a big pull off the wine and handed him the papers. He opened up the attaché case, brandished a bottle of Schnapps, closed the case, uncapped the Schnapps and got to reading.

For about an hour he read; every now and then he laughed aloud or clapped together his hands, exclaiming “bravo!” and sipping from his bottle.

In the meantime, I polished off the entire bottle of wine; it was smooth, dry and bitter.

He finished reading as he finished the Schnapps. “Exemplary. I couldn’t have penned it better myself. Every word is true, through-and-through and through you!” He leaned back in the chair,examined the empty bottle, then set it on the ground. “You have graduated from the academy of Free Thought and Will Champions—with honors, of course…. However, Mr. Bikaver, after tonight you will no longer be able to spy on me. Our tenure of merriment ends upon this eve, and it will not be a pleasant scene. First, we will be disbanded when a rude raid by an N(aI)IS Black Ops Really-Big-Brothers Attack Squad transpires. What is the N(aI)IS, you wonder? Here is a detailed account of them I have been saving to give to you on this very night. You must re-write it
pronto
as fictional code within this—your novel-in-progress—then burn the original.” He opened up the attaché case again and slid a dossier across the table. It looked like pages of extensive governmental bureaucratic documents. My stomach was beginning to ache.

“Second, you will be knocked senseless when one of these commandos rams the butt of his rifle to the back of your head. This, of course will have given you partial amnesia, whereupon you will have remembered very little about the past year, but you will have slowly regained your memory of your identity—particularly of who you were prior to the faithful day you met up with me. Of course, you will still have your written works. To you, however, these works will be hazy aide memoirs you had written when you were a confused drunk. If you’ll excuse me, I must now prepare for my finale speech.”

He stood, bowed, winked then trotted toward the door of the tent. He paused and abruptly turned back to face me. “Oh—does ‘A-to-Z-all-ways’ mean anything to you?”

“Huh?”

He shrugged his shoulders then exited the tent.

I sat there—bewildered—and gazed at the empty wine bottle.

THE TROUPE
of vagrants (including Mackie, the Lonesome Bulldog) had assembled and awaited Moroni’s apparently last opus. Moroni had pulled out all the stops for this one—his grand finale speech. A stage with a podium was assembled. On both sides of the platform were amplifiers stacked to fifteen feet. A video camera and lighting faced the stage. A white, news-like van with a satellite dish propped on top was parked in the back.

Moroni was in the van.

The lights came up as circus music boomed through the amps. Moroni’s voice, in the manner of a vaudevillian stage host, cut in: “Ladies and Gentlemen—allow the madness to proceed, as Froward Moroni gives his End-Of-the-World (as we know it)wrap up!”

Pre-recorded, canned stadium applause nearly blew out the speakers, as well as our eardrums.

Moroni exited the van and strolled to the stage like an exaggerated nobleman. He had clad himself in a highly decorated World-War II four-starred General’s regalia like George S. Patton.

He gripped the podium and waited for the pre-recorded applause to die down.

“This time I have gone too far!” his voice echoed from the speakers. “Filing a declaration of war against the New (and Improved) Interstellar Syndicate at this point is akin to riding into battle on a mule and wielding nothing but a fork against a Roman legion. The New (and Improved) Interstellar Syndicate (or N(aI)IS) is a subversive, high-powered clandestine group who controls the planet earth as well as its moon, owns land on Venus, Mars, various moons of Saturn and has interest in a small section of the Andromeda galaxy. These nameless, faceless yet affluent and powerful barons are attempting to expand their market into the Milky Way. Our planet is to be their founding base of investment. As of right now, this entity owns all the rights to all the airwaves, brainwaves, thoughts, subliminal circuits, dream-making production companies, fantasy material, impromptu daydream clubs, blueprints for the American Dream, Antarctica, condos in Cabo, and a plush getaway retreat in Barrow, Alaska.

“I am not who you think I am. As a matter of fact, I am as treasonous as the N(aI)IS, for I have been working on all of your brains, in order to ‘free them up.’ During the year we have been together, you all have had new thought parameters installed, your subliminal circuits counterfeited and your subconscious wetware reprogrammed. Unbeknownst to yourselves, you are all now ‘free-agents’, able to entertain free thought and free will as you please. Too bad after tonight all of your memories will be, in some way or another, altered so that you will have mostly forgotten our tenure together. Do not be afraid, soldiers—you are free now. You will again hear my voice in the future….”

Moroni stared out to all of us. Some wiped tears from their bleary eyes, while others, like myself stood dumbfounded and on the verge of a fit of nervous laughter.

“And now it is time….” The speakers began to reverberate. The lights began to glow. Moroni’s voice permeated throughout an intergalactic expanse of space. I could perceive his voice saturate itself into my own mind.

“I, FROWARD MORONI OF THE F.T.W.C. DO HEREBY DECLARE ALL-OUT INTERSTELLAR WAR ON THE INSURGENT ENTITY KNOWN AS THE NEW (and IMPROVED) INTERSTELLAR SYNDICATE ON THE GROUNDS OF GALACTIC TREASON AND FOR ATTEMPTING TO TAKE CONTROL OF THE INALIENABLE RIGHTS OF ALL THE SENSES OF ALL SENTIENT BEINGS … COME ON, BABY…. TAKE ME ON, AND SCREW YOU ALL!”

He raised both his fists into the air. A huge explosion ensued, cutting out the electricity, leaving us all in the dark.

Complete silence, aside from the conversation of a few crickets and the flap of the tents in a slight breeze, trailed.

From a distance began a low rumbling noise, building in volume. For a few moments we stood and heard the subtle, mechanical symphony grow into a robust orchestration of what we soon learned was a small armada of dark-colored helicopters.

As the choppers encircled our camp, smoke bombs landed on us. Sheer chaos followed. Through the smoke I witnessed the vague silhouettes of the perpetrators, running at us from all directions. Men wearing three-piece-suits and gas masks, wielding submachine guns. Aside from Mackie the Lonesome Bulldog (who barked and snatched at pant legs and got kicked around like a large soccer ball) and Lustra Love-Joy (who writhed and undulated in some sort of
trance-sexual
dance), we all remained still, benumbed with astonishment. I was a pair of stunned eyeballs embedded in a dense flesh statue. The well-dressed commandos ran around smashing and burning anything and everything into bits. The amps, lights, van windows, tents, campers, Fillono’s 16mm camera, the stage, podium, Champ’s sculptures: all destroyed with reckless abandon.

“Where is Moroni?” a gas-masked voice abruptly interrupted.

“Huh?”

I believe one of his associates rammed the butt of his gun into the back of my head, rendering me unconscious.