Chapter Nine
the subtitle for which the author earlier had a really great idea that he has since forgotten, having neglected to write it down
Here you stand, not at all concealed behind a large potted monstera. watching the assassin churn through who knows how many surveyor of the month cutscenes. You left the two corporate spokesweasels back at Burning to the Ground Hickory Farms, suing each other over the parts of speech each (as they say in Rhymoton) claimed the other was copyright violating by using in his sentences. The Coke folk, as they say in Rhymoton, had filed for copyrights on all use of predicates, backdated to the invention of the predicate, while the Hickory Farms people claimed all possessives and prepositional phrases, controlling all forms of denoting ownership of one thing by another, and thus preventing the Coke people from being able to register their predicate claims.
In the midst of all the sueage and counter-sueage, you’d grabbed every last medallion of summer sausage, swiped the spicy mustard from the spokesweasel’s hand, and made for the parking lot.
Once there, you noticed a distinct lack of any cars whatsoever. Plenty of people wandering the lot with their purchases, wondering where they’d parked, but not a single car. Indeed there seemed no way for a car to enter or exit the place. There were, however, several ways back into the non-Muto Mall, and you availed yourself of a second-floor one before absconding with a fake plant and winding your way back down to the arcade.
Now you’re chomping on summer sausage as you watch a world record-in-progress from behind the fronds of the monstera.
“Do you really think you’re fooling anyone with that disguise?” the assassin says, keeping his eyes on the screen and his hands on the controls. “Even if the monstera did manage to conceal you, I could smell the summer sausage before you even entered the arcade.”
“Would you like a piece?” you say.
“Sure,” says the assassin, and opens his mouth while you put a medallion on his tongue like it’s some sort of meat-based communion ritual.
“The body of… who-knows-what,” you say solemnly.
“Chinchilla, by the taste of it,” says the assassin. “Loads of other scraps.”
He opens his mouth again, and you pop in another medallion, keeping your eyes on his performance.
“You really shouldn’t have come back,” he says. “You might’ve given yourself a few more days if you’d only taken the head start.”
“So you’re still going through with it. Just for that, no mustard.”
“Of course I’m going through with it. Assassins assass. It’s our job.”
“But you didn’t give me much of a chance to pick up my letter, did you?”
“Would it have made any difference? When I found you, you weren’t even making an effort to go pick it up. Some poor chap went to all the trouble to mail you a letter with urgent stamped on it, probably in his own blood, and you decide that no, you’d rather play Shop Til You Drop.”
“This was not part of my original itinerary. I was taken unawares by the suction tube.” You give him a third medallion, then another for you.
“Even when you knew I was gunning for you, you couldn’t resist a little side trip to pick yourself up an inflatable girlfriend.”
“She wasn’t for me. I had to fulfill a promise.”
“Oh sure. The old ‘I had to fulfill a promise’ excuse. You don’t think the people at Spencer’s get that one all the time?”
Your eyes go big as his little eight-bit surveyor nearly misses a piece of really important data. “Careful now! That almost cost you the game. You’ve come too far to let miscalculated data do you in.”
“No matter the outcome I’m picking up my gun the instant it’s over and putting a bullet through you.”
“We’ll see,” you say. “We’ll see.”
You step away from the cabinet and walk from machine to machine, alerting the other patrons.
“Hey, everyone! Tedious Governmental Survey kill screen! Come see the Tedious Governmental Survey kills screen, only a few levels away!”
Before long a crowd has gathered around the assassin, many of them from across the arcade, abandoning Billy Mitchell VII’s attempt to hit the Donkey Kong kill screen playing with only his left hand, while simultaneously hitting the Pac-Man level-256 glitch-out with his right. But the sudden loss of adoring fans trips him up, and Mitchell mistimes a jump on the final Donkey Kong pie board, as the author called it when he was a kid, and ruins his game seconds before he would’ve beat two of his ancestor’s records at once.
“Dammit!” And his black-dyed mullet sways along with his great-great-to-the-power-of-great grandad’s American flag necktie as he kicks the base of the cabinet. “Whoever is responsible will pay.”
Meanwhile, on the other side of the arcade, people from every corner of the mall have swarmed the assassin for the final Tedious Governmental Survey level. He only has to file the paperwork, right, right, jump, avoid the red tape, now just one last bureaucrat…
He jumps. The little eight-bit bureaucrat watches helplessly as the surveyor leaps overhead toward the waiting embrace of the final registration counter, but just as the collision detection is about to detect the victorious collision, brzrrrrp! the CRT collapses into a single scanline, then to a quickly fading point.
The assassin draws his pistol. The crowd parts.
CUT TO:
Billy Mitchell VII, mockingly waving the mains plug as the crowd looks on from either side like a Soul Train dance line between them.
The assassin takes aim and pulls the trigger. Click! Nothing. Again. Click, click…
Mitchell throws down the plug and lets out an intense roar. His Ki surges, his eyes turn green-blue, and his mullet goes rigid and turns Super Saiyan yellow.
Streaks of color flash by as he races toward the assassin. The assassin drops his gun and races toward Billy over the same colorful streaks. They jump, raise their fists and just as they’re about to collide…
We cut back topside. You’re racing the farthing toward the blip on your vector monitor. You smile, extend your hand over the side of the vehicle and unclench your fist, releasing every last bullet from the assassin’s gun into the vast dusty wastes.
The bustle of the gathering crowd had made it no trouble to swipe the assassin’s gun long enough to remove the bullets. And though you’d deprived yourself of the chance to witness history in the making, you felt it wise to exit stage up, as your grandad’s hero Snagglepuss was fond of saying. With no apparent way to leave through the parking deck, you’d soon begun to realize that the quickest way out might be to feign mutation, so you walked up to the first mall security guard you saw, pulled your jacket up over your head and began to flail your arms about. Next thing you knew, you were being siphoned up through a pneumatic tube, which deposited you a few yards from the mechano-farthing. Heavens to Murgatroyd.
Now you were coursing over the horizon back toward the pulsating blip on your monitor. You look over at the box of codependent inflatable brunette. It may just be your imagination, but she looks a bit fraught.
“Oh don’t worry. You couldn’t have found a more innocuous home. And if you’re the sort who fancies getting all dolled up in eveningwear, you’re in for a treat! Well, some of you is in for a treat. Not very much of you, come to think. And it ain’t much of a treat, to be honest. Know what—go ahead and worry.”
The blips are louder now, and before long you make visual contact. The sun glints off the solar concession umbrella and flashes over your eyes.
You roll up, pull the brake, leap out of the seat and present the box.
“What’s-‘is?”
“What do you mean? It’s the inflatable lady you asked for.”
“Jus wun?”
“You only wanted one!”
“Raht, raht, but I w’s kinda hopin’ own two’r three, git ‘em competin’ f’r my uhfeckshins like own Thuh Batchlir.”
I believe it was the great You who once said… dot, dot and dot.