Ceramic DM – Summer 2005
Round 3, Final Match
By RangerWickett
Open email. Soundtrack: Prince’s “Lament for Di” (1997)
Dear Chou,
I’m sad to hear that the Supermarket warden denied your request for sanity trial. They’re morons. I’d talk to the police, but they looked like they wanted to put me away too when I told them my fiance was the devil, and that he had threatened to poison me and ruin my career as a model if I didn’t marry him. To make matters worse, they pushed back the trial a few more months, so he’s out on bail, free to do whatever he wants. The police are incompetent. All they told me was that the people in charge of Red Market were putting pressure on them to keep Mickey out of jail “for a little while longer.” The private investigator I hired to follow Mickey said he lost him.
I think something bad is coming, Chou. The netnet is still frozen in some places, the news is busy talking about how all sorts of infrastructure is slowed down, and now with Mickey vanishing, I’m scared.
I promise I’ll find a way to get you out, alright? Right now, I’m hoping that if I can raise public awareness about you, it will help your case. I’ve sent out a letter explaining your situation (though I left out some of the stranger stuff with Mickey), and I’ve asked all my friends to send the letter on to at least ten friends each, and them each on to another ten. I’ve also got the $10,000 you said you needed to get your belongings out of the safety deposit box, but wouldn’t it be easier for me to give it directly to your security contractor, instead of trying to get it to you in the Supermarket? Either way, I trust you.
Chou, you were my savior. Even if you are a little addled in the head – and who can blame you, being stuck in that asylum – you’re the most honest person I know. These letters between us have made this one of the happiest times of my life. I know you’re suffering there, but whenever I print out one of your letters and clasp it to my bosom, I feel warmth knowing that you love me. And warmth is especially important now.
I’ve arranged for a special shipment of organic peaches, since I heard that there’s been some hiccups in the normal deliveries. I hope they’re enough to tide you over. Oh, and . . . heheh, I’ve attached some photos of myself. I hope they keep you warm until I’m able to see you again.
Winks and Love,
Jessica
I opened the pics with a faint smile. They were promotional shots from Jessica’s latest
Chicks with Guns movie, and she looked as gorgeous as Helen of Troy, if Helen of Troy was covered in sweat and armed to the teeth with the latest high tech firepower.
I hadn’t seen a movie in two and a half years.
Months had passed since I had driven off the devilish Mickey O’Malley, manager of the Toco Hill Red Market, whose evil plan of hypercommunism would have reduced the world to homogeneity. My reward had been to return to the Supermaket, along with all the former employees of Red Market. Lunatics all of them, probably in no small part to working under O’Malley.
For the first time in several weeks, I made my way to my father’s reflecting garden at the virtual North Korean embassy. The trees and lake were frozen, covered in the digital ice that had lingered on the netnet since January, when my roommate El-Hadje had sabotaged the Atlanta network to cover his escape from the Supermarket.
“Chou,” my father said, “what darkness have you brought to my already bleak world today?”
He stood on a bridge over a frozen brook, running his gloved hands across the icy wood. I knew he blamed me for much of what had happened, though he only had rumors of the truth.
“I don’t have any bad news,” I said, more than a little irritated. “I came to spar.”
Like so many times in the two years since I had been institutionalized, my father and I sparred quietly in the digital construct of his garden. I listened to the angry metal remix of the Starcraft VII end credits, and my every punch and kick was fueled by two years of pent-up frustration and a desire to get out.
My father’s final blow sent me into the air and down onto the hard surface of the lake. The ice did not even crack with the impact. Fallen leaves were frozen beneath me, unable to die, trapped in an endless winter.
I stood and bowed to my father. He did not seem to notice.
“Chou, it is not enough that you bring me no bad news. There is nothing beautiful left in my world. Look, all is ice, snow, pale and white. Even in the real garden, the plants do not flourish, the flowers do not blossom. You are my son, but simply being my son – for neither good nor ill – is not enough.”
“Why not?” His words stung me.
He thought for a moment, then said, “It’s just not. There is so much more to this world, Chou. Why should I settle for what is merely good enough?”
He walked away from the lake.
“Goodbye, son,” he said, and then he logged off.
I left as well, muting my payback rock which felt so hollow now. Sitting in the virtual waiting room of the Starcraft arena, I clenched my fists, trying to press all my anger down.
I could feel freedom, just outside my grasp. I might be able to bribe the doctors to sane me, but no doubt O’Malley would have bribed them with more. I could try to escape, but security was up with the new crowd of inmates, and even if I succeeded I’d be a fugitive. I still had my netnet, and the Batwarden looked favorably on me because he couldn’t pin down which Batman villain I most resembled. I had a gorgeous woman who loved me waiting for me outside, and the frustrating presence of my fat, waddling new roommate keeping me from enjoying decent online time on the inside.
Hausten “Lame Duck” Von Mallard cleared his throat on cue, reminding me I was not alone in the real world.
“You are verking? Getting music,
ja?”
“No,” I said, logging off and glaring at him. “I’m not working anymore.”
“Vhy not?”
“’Cause I gotta go to work.” I stowed my netnet, tied on my apron, and headed out the door, leaving Von Mallard to the book he was reading,
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings.
I wanted out now more than ever.
* * *
Lee-Chin, affectionately known as Iron Chef Murder, was serving free samples to customers in the produce section. I nibbled on one of the peaches Jessica had given me, waiting for a lull so I could talk with her. She was as pleasant as you could expect for someone who had made an entire elderly community into unwilling cannibals. I hear the dessert had been delicious, though.
“Oh, Chou! How are you?” She grinned, one of her eyes half-closed with a tic. “Have some lunch.”
I took the offered tiny plate of fish and rice, and started to eat with the tiny plastic spoon, like the one used for sampling ice cream. I ate, trying to ignore the lingering stares from the various inmate-employees who knew I was responsible for their transfer from Red Market. The store was crowded just with all the new workers, and with the customers it felt like an overloaded server. Everyone was on edge, and nothing was getting done.
After a few bites, I grimaced.
“This isn’t organic,” I said. “Lee-Chin, I thought we had an agreement. Nobody here’s going to get better if they keep eating the crap Batwarden feeds us.”
“I’m sorry,” she said, her eye twitching. “The organic shipment didn’t come today. But this is all canned food. Not nearly as perishable.”
I frowned and was about to walk away when I caught the smell of roses and overheard a faint tune I recognized as Will Smith’s “Getting’ Jiggy Wit It.” Against my will, I felt a tug below my gut, a bit of longing as I remembered the time when, in the dark, a strange prickly woman had pressed me down and forced me to accept a mission to kill the devil. My assassin days were long over, but I had long wondered who the woman had been.
I turned, trying to find the music, finally spotting a
young black woman, her hair woven with vines into a trellis of strange shapes, almost as if her hair had a life of its own. She was listening to headphones, pulling chemically-treated lettuce from the produce refrigerator. She smiled and looked at me, and for a moment I thought her hair moved on its own. My attention was distracted by her strange hair, and it took me a moment to realize when she broke into a run and fled.
I gave chase, following her down the employee-only hallways, lined with freezers and crates of drugged fruit. She dodged around a dumbfounded janitor, then hurled two heads of lettuce at me before ducking around a corner. The first head of lettuce struck the floor and cracked open, spewing forth a green gas, thick with the cloying scent of roses. The second struck me in the leg and grabbed me with leaves lined with thorns. I held my breath and swung my leg into the wall, cracking the second head of lettuce, which released another sickly sweet burst of green vapor.
Coughing, I staggered back down the hallway, until I found clean air. When I looked back, the woman was gone, but the janitor lay dead, his hands clutching his throat. An expression of shock was on his face, but his eyes were quickly dissolving, and roses sprouted from the sockets.
My playlist switched over to a love song by Chirnabog, that demon from
Fantasia. I caught motion in the corner of my eye behind me, and I turned to see a young boy, staring at me with a smirk.
“Get out of here,” I said. “It’s not safe. Stupid kid. Don’t you know you should never go into an ‘Employees Only’ area?”
I bent down and pulled thorns out of my leg from where the lettuce had struck me, expecting the boy to head back out into the main store. Instead he walked past me, toward the lingering cloud of floral death.
“Stop!” I said. “It’s poisonous.”
On the boy’s back, something shimmered darkly, and for a moment I thought I saw a
giant bug clinging to his shoulders, whispering into the boy’s ear. Before I could stop him, the boy walked through the gas, and after a few seconds of violent shaking, he fell to the round, gagging and whimpering.
I ran forward, covering my mouth, and grabbed the boy’s leg to pull him out of the mist. My eyes burned, but I spotted something dark scuttling away down the hall. The boy began to cough, and I dragged both of us to safety.
“Chou,” a voice whispered from beyond the mist, “I knew you could see me. And I am
certainly watching you. It will only be a matter of time before your oh-so-organic antidotes run out, and then you will work for me. You have powers you do not realize, powers that will be quite useful to me.
“But,” the voice continued, “I’d much rather work with you as equals. Come to me through the mist. I know you have great strength, that this world is not so real to you as it is to others. You will be safe. Come to me, and I can free you.”
I looked down at the boy. His skin was blistered with vines, his eyes tinged green with toxin, but he was alive. I snorted mockingly.
“Don’t tempt me,” I said.
“Too late,” the voice said.
The green mist had faded, sucked away by the Supermarket’s air conditioning. There was nothing in the hallway beyond the mist. No thorn woman, and no evil bug.
I might have been going mad. The organic food might have been losing out to the overwhelming strength of the hallucinogens in the Supermarket’s cleaning solution. But I could not believe what I had seen was a hallucination. There was only one to whom I could turn for help now.
* * *
Tim Curry was singing “I Can Make You a Man” from the Rocky Horror Reunion Tour as I made my way down the alley on Peachtree Street on the netnet. The road was slick, and the alley was deep, but not deep enough. Before I had walked this way and had found a hidden forest. Now I found only the brick wall of the back of the playhouse theater.
“Damn,” I muttered. “Where is that stupid co-”
A cluck from behind me cut me off. I turned and saw the rooster, hovering three feet off the ground. “Chou, you have come. Took you long enough. Follow me.”
The rooster vanished, and I shook my fist at it. “How am I supposed to follow when you disappear?”
“Location is all about perception,” said the rooster, and I felt a tap on my shoulder. I turned to look, and saw that the brick wall had disappeared. The rooster clucked and floated away, leading me into the forest.
“Enough with the mentor Morpheus crap,” I said. “Ever since I ran into you, I’ve been seeing things in the real world that shouldn’t happen, but that I know aren’t hallucinations.”
“And how do you know that?”
“Yeah,” I said, sneering, “I know I have no proof. But I don’t sound crazy, do I?”
“How should I know?” the rooster said. “I’ve never heard you sing.”
Neither one of us said anything for a moment, and then I broke the silence.
“What? Now? Do you want me to sing?”
“Are you afraid?” the rooster asked. It watched me with the intense gaze of a sage.
I didn’t reply.
“Very well,” the rooster said. “You
are insane, because you work at a Supermarket. You’re less insane than some, but as long as you stay where you are, you’ll never be free.”
“Obviously I am insane, because I thought a talking rooster would have something more important to say.”
The rooster sighed. “The world is built on people’s beliefs and perceptions. You have a special power in that you
don’t believe that. You think the world just is, so the beliefs of others can’t affect you. That’s why you haven’t gone crazy, despite the fact that everyone expects an asylum inmate to be insane. Everyone’s a little insane, because they let other people influence who they are.”
“What are you saying?”
“Working at a Supermarket is a crappy job. Stay there, and whether you believe it or not, you’ll be shaped into the same level of mediocrity the customers expect. You’ll become the same as everyone else – faceless, dreamless, hopeless. Just the way a communist would want you to be.”
“Uh huh.” I shrugged. “You’re still not explaining why I keep seeing animals all over the place.”
“Well, this is hard, because you don’t believe the world changes to perceptions. But perhaps you’ll accept that
perceptions change based on perception.”
I waited.
“Stand on your head, Chou,” the rooster said. “Should be easy for a martial artist like yourself.”
I started to stand on my head, asking, “What is this for?”
“When you turn the world on its head, everything is upside down and backwards. In genetics they’re called restriction enzymes – palindromic strings of base pairs that turn genes on or off. In the netnet, coding works the same way, with palindromic strings of ones and zeroes. Restriction coding always looks the same way, even upside down, but read the code backward, and. . . .”
Just then I got my balance, my weight supported by my hands and head. The forest around me was obscured with a flickering cascade of snow, through which I could barely make out what looked like the exterior of the Supermarket. I had not seen it since I had first been committed two years ago. The encoding was very realistic, but there were glitches,
huge hexagonal polyhedrons sitting in the open where there should have been a field of grass.
“What’s this?” I asked.
“That’s the code when you read it backward. That is what you so foolishly call ‘the real world.’ If you wanted right now, you could cross your eyes and pop into ‘the real world.’ It’s like Terra, and we’re on Gaia, practically identical, but, well, a wee bit different where it counts.”
The rooster shoved me in the leg, and I lost my balance, tumbling to the ground. I cursed and stood up, swiping at the rooster. It vanished and reappeared a few feet to the side.
“I didn’t want you running off yet,” the rooster said. “That’s why you can see these strange creatures. For a moment your mind wandered, and something unconscious read the code backward, revealing something that should not have been there. Mickey O’Malley, your ‘devil’? He was possessing the boy you rescued. He’s that little bug you saw.”
“It wasn’t a little bug,” I muttered.
“Sorry, what was that? I had feathers in my ears.”
I tried twisting my head and leaning sideways so I could get upside down again, but it wasn’t working. I grumbled. I had always been good at video games, good at playing around with the netnet if not really understanding it. I didn’t care why it worked, but if what the rooster was saying was true, I could get out and go to Jessica.
Solemnly, the rooster said, “You want to see the woman you love. I tell you now, it’s not safe. El-Hadje is still threatening the two worlds with his digital sorcery, and O’Malley only hasn’t killed you yet because he thinks he could use someone with your natural talent.”
“What do I do, then?”
“You have to stop El-Hadje first. At O’Malley’s directive, your Nigerian friend has stopped all shipment of organic food to the Supermarket. You may have a greater task ahead of you, but if you cannot restore the shipment, you’ll end up in the big supermarket in the sky.”
“What were those objects I saw in the ‘real world?’”
The rooster, floating, turned upside down and squinted at nothing. “Planar gates. El-Hadje must have hacked the local network. I imagine that’s how the druid was able to get into the Supermarket. Hm. This could be useful.”
“El-Hadje is in Savannah,” I said. “Even if I do believe what you’re saying, and I got out of the asylum, I’d have to get to Savannah before I could deal with him.”
The rooster chuckled. “You can get to Savannah easily enough on the netnet. Cross over then. You have more free reign on this side.”
“And what am I supposed to do?” I asked. “Kill him? I’m no assassin.”
“No, you’re not. At least not in this story. But you’d better hurry. Whatever O’Malley’s planning, it’s going to come to a head soon. To defeat him and El-Hadje you will need powerful magic, things primordial from the earliest days of the netnet.”
The rooster began to fade out, and the forest started to reboot as a different location.
“Wait,” I said. “If the netnet is code, and the real world is just that code reversed, then where’s the
real real world?”
The rooster was gone, and I was standing in a virtual recreation of some historical house in Savannah. Plato’s The Cave: the Musical began to play, and I skipped to the next track angrily. A commercial ditty from the early days of Wendy’s started to play, and I started to wonder if the rooster had tinkered with my playlist.
One brief search later, and I had the address of El-Hadje’s new place of employment. The digital storefront of the Chatham Street Wendy’s was cluttered with delivery options and offers for recipes. I remembered coming here once before when I needed to buy an obscure music track. The site had not been user-friendly, but at least here, out of Atlanta, not everything was covered with ice.
I did not truly believe I would be able to get free, but I had no other options worth trying, so I stood on my head and saw the view shift to the real world. Cars were streaming through the drive-thru, the drone employees of the fast food chain having already prepared appropriate food as soon as the car’s computer alerted them that it was headed their way.
I crossed my eyes, and fell over onto the parking lot. I stood, stared in through the window, and saw El-Hadje standing behind the register. Flexing my hands for a fight, I pressed open the door and walked into the restaurant.
The line was short, but I waited patiently. I had escaped the asylum. I did not mind if a few Big Bacon Classics barred the way to my ultimate goal.
“El-Hadje,” I said when it was my turn to order.
“Yes?” he had the same half-eager, half-confused grin I remembered.
“So pleasant to see you again, old friend.”
He squinted, nodded, and said, “Yes.
Il-shihatra shadammu arlan.”
The register and counter exploded outward like a grenade had gone off, spraying debris through the dining room. I covered my face to block the shrapnel, and while I was looking away, El-Hadje kicked me in the stomach, his long legged-strike knocking me off my feet.
“Big ice time. Make big money, yes?”
I wiped blood from my mouth and rolled out of the way of his next kick, then used the waiting line railing to pull myself up as I lashed out with my foot at the tall Nigerian’s face. It connected and knocked him back, and I flipped across the railing. Customers cried out in terror and fled.
“Why are you doing it?” I asked. “Just the money?”
El-Hadje smiled teeth and shrugged, obviously not understanding me. He was easily a foot and a half taller than me, and his kicks kept me back, though he never got any more strong hits in. I backed away, using tables as cover. I grabbed a chair and tried to hurl it at El-Hadje, but he rushed while I was turning to throw, and his kick knocked me into one of the booths.
He grabbed the same chair I was going to use and lifted it to smash down on me, but I rolled out of the seat and under the table, then scrambled past El-Hadje’s legs. He swung the chair down at me anyway, but I dodged. When I came to my feet, I had a table, covered with hastily-abandoned dinner, between us.
“Turn off the ice,” I said. “You’re ruining Atlanta.”
El-Hadje laughed. “No. You, ah . . . you say, not in Atlanta, yes? You no ice?”
He had a point. I had gotten out of Atlanta, had left the ice behind. I could go on living my own life, and Jessica could get out of Atlanta too. We’d be free together.
I glanced out the window and saw it was starting to snow. El-Hadje had been muttering under his breath while I had been stuck thinking about escaping. Thunder rumbled, shaking the building, and El-Hadje smiled an entirely different sort of grin than I had ever seen on his face.
“This is going to hurt, isn’t it?” I said.
He narrowed his eyes at me and snarled, “Yes.”
I cartwheeled sideways and crossed my eyes, just as the room filled with an intensely bright flash of light. My skin felt like it was boiling for a second, but then I was upside down, seeing and existing back on the netnet, and the lightning stroke El-Hadje had conjured crackled through empty space on the real world. By the time I finished my cartwheel and landed upright on my feet in the real world, the lightning had faded.
El-Hadje was laughing, looking to the blackened spot in the center of the Wendy’s where he thought he had disintegrated me. He did not see me now, but I doubted I could defeat him, and even if I could kill him, I’d have no way to reverse what he had done to the netnet. Indeed, it seemed likely that he was planning to expand the ice beyond merely Atlanta.
The rooster had said I would need powerful old magic to defeat El-Hadje. I wracked my mind, trying to think of something, and then I remembered Jessica’s plan on getting me out: a chain letter. I slipped back into the netnet to compose one.
A moment later, El-Hadje’s maniacal laughter over his victory was interrupted by the beeping that indicated he had gotten a new message. I’d had to trade the Neal Stephenson and William Gibson duet “Glossololia Blues” to get the letter translated in a hurry into Nigerian, but it read something like this:
Dear sir or madam,
Some people say words have power. Let your words be your wings, to carry you to greatness in your life. The more people you tell, the more power will reach you.
Send this letter to twelve people in the next minute, and you’ll gain great wealth and a promotion, plus love and a free trip to CyberDisneyland. If you don’t, all your personal files and supernatural powers will be transferred to the person who sent you this letter, including any abilities you might have to influence weather in either the real world or the netnet.
This really works!
Beth VanAldersberg sent along this letter to her writing circle, and her next short story was published. She ended up marrying her editor at CyberDisneyland after winning a million dollars in a celebrity boxing match against Mickey Mouse.
I watched, balanced on my head in the netnet as El-Hadje logged on through his wireless connection to read the letter. As soon as he was online, I crossed my eyes and returned to the real world so he wouldn’t see me. His body was squinting, his expression increasingly confused. I gave him about fifteen seconds to read the letter, and then I kicked him in the groin. He cried out in pain and fell over, twitching as the pain forced him out of the netnet.
“Does that hurt, a**hole?” I asked, grinning.
“Yes,” he whimpered.
“Vhat is going on?” a voice asked across realities. “You shouldn’t svear, Chou.”
My body suddenly began to tingle, and I fell upward into the netnet. I rolled over and realized I was back in the alley on Peachtree Street, and that I was being poked by Von Mallard. I tried to transfer back to the Savannah node, but Von Mallard shook me.
“Hurry Chou. Ze Batvarden is coming.”
I cursed again and logged off, hoping that El-Hadje wasn’t able to recover enough to send out a dozen emails. I was dazed, not sure whether I had ever been in the real world, or if it had all been a trick of the netnet. I hit the emergency button the netnet and it leapt magnetically to the ceiling, flattening out of sight.
The door burst open and in strode the Batwarden, flanked by two supervisors.
He growled at us, “Senwan, Von Mallard, get your uniforms on. Half the inmates have gone crazy. Crazier than usual. Craziest, perhaps. They’re nuts, and we’re taking them off duty. You two need to get out there and man the registers. Damn. If only it’d rain. We’ve got too many customers to handle.”
It was very difficult to keep my pasted-on smile in place, but finally the Batwarden, Pam, and Jill left, and I was able to grumble, as was my god-given right. Just as I was mumbling in Korean about how much I hated comic books, a jolt ran through me, and I felt as if something had struck me.
“Hausten,” I said, “I got it. We’re saved, in more ways than one.”
“Vell, I guess zat’s good to hear,” he said, adjusting his apron. “Chou? You ever vant to run away?”
I grinned. “Used to. But not anymore. I’ve got a better way out now.”
One quick email later, and I was out the door. There were customers to serve. Got to pay my way, y’know?
* * *
The front service area was pandemonium. A hundred customers, two cashiers, with dozens of inmates wandering the aisles, too many to be reigned in by the orderlies and supervisors. Something had happened – too many chemicals in the food, perhaps – and all the employees except me and Hausten had gone out of control, trapped in dementia. I suspected Hausten had been stealing my organic peaches, but that was the least of my worries.
As each customer came by, I handed them a free c-stick of music, programmed with Los Lobos’ medley “Wicked Rain/Across 110th Street,” lying to them that if they played it on their way home, they’d get a refund. Through the thick walls of the Supermarket, I slowly heard the trembling hint of an approaching storm. The ritual to rewrite the weather of Atlanta was powerful, needing to performed in many places at once, but I now knew how El-Hadje had frozen the city, and I knew how to fix it.
My coworkers were starting to rebel, pulling food down from the shelves, claiming they were infested with bugs. Even Hausten started to panic as the angry lines of customers backed up and we ran out of umbrellas and the fresh toasted sub station’s toaster broke and our supervisors hid in their offices to avoid the complaints of the customers.
Then the storm let loose its fury upon the Supermarket, and customers began to flee, fearful of buying groceries only to have them be soaked in the storm. No new cars of college students or mini-vans of soccer moms arrived, and slowly, over the course of an hour that wore the letters off the cashier station keys and left my throat hoarse from thanking the customers for shopping with us, the store emptied. Soon, all who were left were Hausten, myself, our hiding supervisors, and our lunatic co-workers.
Our co-workers wandered like zombies, mindlessly shopping, harmless as long as you stayed away.
“I zink ve should lock up before anyvone else comes in,” Von Mallard said.
“Yeah, but I need your help. We’ve got to make it back to the loading dock. I’m expecting a shipment.”
Hausten wavered, uncertain. I glared at him and said, “Now,” causing the storm overhead to crackle with thunder as an assistance.
He nodded and huddled close to me, following as I made a path through the frozen foods section, across to the seafood section, past produce, and then between cheese and pre-packaged lunchmeat to reach the loading dock. Along the way I had to trip and kick a few of my co-workers, but we made it through safely.
I tossed Hausten an organic peach and we both chewed as we worked to unlock the secured loading dock doors.
“Chou, vhy are you in zees asylum?”
“I pirated every song,
ever. Any requests?”
“Freebird?”
I nodded, and quickly downloaded a copy to the Supermarket speaker system.
“What about you?” I asked.
“I am ze reincarnation of Hitler. Zey say zat like it’s a bad zing.”
We pushed the loading dock door open, revealing the silver sheet of rain that lay between us and freedom. Nothing happened, and Von Mallard glared at me. I was suddenly nervous, wondering if perhaps O’Malley had learned of my plan.
I heard an engine outside in the rain, and then through the curtain of the storm, a supply truck appeared, reversing into the dock. The driver’s side door opened, and out stepped Jessica. She sprinted through the rain and leapt into my arms, kissing me.
“I did just like you said, Chou. All the organic wine in all the storehouses in Atlanta. Oh, Chou, the ice, it’s vanishing. The rain is wiping it away.”
I took a moment to look at her, drenched in a white t-shirt, a dashing smile perfected by a career bent toward being beautiful. I kissed her, then held her tightly for a moment, my first touch of real freedom.
I pointed at the wine. “Quickly. We’ve got to pour this into the water system.”
“What for?” Jessica asked.
“I’m going to turn water to organic wine, then set off the sprinklers. O’Malley has poisoned the minds of all the inmates here, and I intend to free them.”
“But is that safe? Aren’t they insane?”
“From a certain point of view,” I said. “Look, Jess. I’ve been stuck here for two years for trying to share music with everyone. They thought that was insane. But what’s really insane is working for a piece of s**t job like this. I
have done some bad things while I’ve been here, and I want to put it right before I leave. I want to share one last thing with the people here before I leave.”
She looked at me, nervous. “What?”
“I vill help,” Von Mallard said stiffly.
I hesitated. I had forgotten he was there, and had thought he would have run off. But I nodded. “Let’s hurry.”
As we worked, I kept glancing at Jessica, and she at me. Finally the last of the wine was poured, the system sealed, and we were ready to turn on the sprinklers. There was an operating office near the loading dock, where everything in the store was controlled, from the intercom to the sprinklers to the lights.
I walked in and was about to turn on the sprinkler when the door swung shut behind me. I spun and looked through the window, seeing Von Mallard holding Jessica by her arm. The fat German man grinned and straightened proudly.
“Please allow me to introduce myself. I’m a man of vealth and taste. Pleased to meet you. Hope you guess my name.”
“Chou!” Jessica cried.
From behind Von Mallard’s back, a giant black bug crawled up, its claws digging into the man’s flesh. The bug whispered into Von Mallard’s ear, and he nodded.
“I vill still have my bride. Ze victory is mine, Chou Senwan.”
He started to back away, pulling Jessica with him, and I screamed at him as Jessica screamed for my help. I punched at the reinforced glass, at the steel door, but I was trapped. Von Mallard laughed and turned away.
I turned and punched the button to turn on the intercom, then thumbed the sprinkler button.
Crimson spray, the organic wine of heaven, poured forth from the sprinklers of the Supermarket, cascading like the cleansing rain of heaven upon the inmates of the Supermarket Asylum. All across the store, their numbing insanity washed away, and the inmates began to dance as music played, the karaoke version of Johnny Cash’s “Thing Called Love.”
Six-foot-six, he stood on the ground,
He weighed two hundred and thirty-five pounds,
But I saw that giant of a man brought down to his knees by love.
Jessica struggled and pulled her arm free from Von Mallard, and she lent her voice to the song.
He was the kind of a man who would gamble on luck,
Look you in the eye and never back up,
But I saw him cryin' like a little whipped pup because of love.
Von Mallard, guided by the evil of O’Malley, tried to grab Jessica again, but she spun and kicked him in the crotch, bringing him to his knees. Jessica ran to the door to the office and together we managed to force it open. I embraced her, both of us drenched in wine.
When we looked for Von Mallard O’Malley, he was gone.
* * *
Finally, after the madness had been swept away and we were certain Von Mallard had been driven off, I opened the doors to the asylum, and made one last announcement.
“By the grace of one good rooster, you’re all as sane as anyone else in this crazy world. Believe me, I know.”
The store was fully cleaned out by the time Jessica and I danced our way through the front doors, accompanied by “The Zydeico Nutcracker Suite.” The rain had stopped, and a rainbow spread across the sky, across the very wall of the Supermarket itself. Jessica and I laughed, whirling under the blue sky of freedom, dancing and cartwheeling until we could barely hear the music blasting out from the doors of the place that had been my prison for two long years.
I grabbed Jessica at her waist, spun her in the air, and gently placed her on the ground in a headstand. As the last notes crescendoed,
I leapt over her, and we both disappeared, carrying our freedom to another world.
* * *
In the virtual garden of the North Korean embassy, Ambassador Senwan looked out at
the thawed lake, scattered with fallen leaves. The heavens were reflected in its surface, and for a moment the old man thought he saw his son’s face, accompanied by some white woman. He frowned for a moment, then relaxed and chuckled.
The lake was beautiful. In its presence he could afford to not be unhappy, just for a while.
Part Three: Supermarket Messiah
The End
* * *
Epilogue
Months later . . .
“Lame Duck” Von Mallard had been running for a long time, but all the running had not helped him shed his weight. He was scared now. Though he had finally made his way back to his homeland of Germany, and though the voice in his head whispered that he would be able to create a fourth Reich, he was afraid. Someone was following him.
“Chou,” he muttered. “Vho else could it be? But how could zis be? ”
His heart pounding from the strain of running,
Von Mallard staggered past a billboard, pointing the way to the airport. He could have taken the train, but that would cost money, leaving a trace that Chou could follow. It was so hard to keep ahead of Chou now that El-Hadje’s gates had been destroyed.
The devil was on the run. Someone was following him, and he was afraid to look back.
Chou stepped out from behind the billboard, smiling and watching the sluggish man’s frightened flight.
“Honey,” Jessica said, placing a hand on his chest and pulling herself against his back, “when you said we’d visit Europe, I thought it’d be pleasure, not business.”
He turned in his wife’s arms and kissed her. “This isn’t pleasure for you? I kinda enjoy watching him running scared.”
She nuzzled his face and smiled. “Just kick his a** and get it over with.”
“Nah,” Chou said. “I’m not the violent type. I just need to keep tabs on him to make sure he doesn’t try anything. Come on, let’s get some Berlinners.”
Chou grabbed Jessica at her waist, and they teleported away, leaving music in their wake.
Once they were gone, a rooster stepped out of the shadows and shook its wings. “Thought they’d never leave.”
The rooster set a quick pace, following the devil into the sunset.
