by Monk, New York City, NY, USA
As its guest book reads like a who's who of global atrocity-makers, disposal of dead bodies has become a premier feature at the Palma de Baía. Oakland's foremost hotel has an experienced staff of morticians, equipped with forensic-baffling equipment that would give the CIA a mile-long erection. That, and the hotel's love affair with municipal law enforcement, makes the three dead women on Cecilio Goncz's living room a nuisance instead of a felony. From the balcony, I watch the men in papery silver jumpsuits strip the corpses naked, and clumsily dump them into transparent bodybags filled with some sort of icy green fluid, vapor rising sickly. They throw the giant bladders onto gurneys, and trundle out of the room with all the gravity of errant bellhops.
Goncz's prisoner slumps over her crucifixion, long passed out from shock. Hands pinned to her thigh, she looks like a supplicant, bowed in prayer; though I can't imagine to what. Her breath is audibly ragged to even my cheap recorder's amplifier, some twenty feet away and separated by a pane of artificial diamond. Mr Goncz hasn't caught on that I recorded his initial encounter with the assassins, and as he is busy making calls from the bedroom, I have no plan on stopping. I see him in the distance, hands flailing wildly, livetattoos above his eyes dancing through a dozen languages, always the same message: Only God Can Judge Me. When he gets like this, his tone takes an undulating quality: loud one word, quiet the next. It's impossible for my little recorder to make any sense of it.
I observed the first such call upon my arrival in NoCal. I waited at Pivens Aerospace Center for five hours, bleary-eyed from intra-orbital flight, assured by Mr Goncz's assistant that a driver would be there for me shortly. When one finally did, it was the assistant himself, in a rental car. I was told in hushed, cautious tones that the driver, Silvio, had been picked up that morning by agents of the Carter Center. By that afternoon, he'd been tried for war crimes in Los Angeles, and by that evening, publicly sentenced at West Hollywood's Sunset Plaza. Shipped off to Angel Island for some time with the Big Chair: fifty years of sensory deprivation compressed into ten minutes, courtesy of a hack directly into the parietal lobe. Survivors tend to wear diapers, and have trouble producing complete sentences. Mr Goncz spent the bulk of that day screaming at the phantoms on the other end of his communicator, at his assistant, and finally at me: the Piece-of-Shit-Reporter-From-Chicago.
Three days later, Goncz's assistant disappeared.
Another cycle was wasted on Goncz's rant, blasted to his peers across the globe in every medium available. He was unsure if Glen had just run off, been killed by one of his long-standing enemies, or defected to Los Angeles in exchange for leniency. Goncz's greatest fear is still the Simone J. Carter Center for Peace and Justice. Based out of the Watts Refuge, its agents span the globe, wrangling expats back to the Republic of Los Angeles, where their trials have a circus atmosphere: defendants paraded about in bright orange jumpsuits, barefoot, shaven, starved, ball-gagged and drugged; the proceedings little more than a high-verbal horsewhipping before the inevitable sentence, always the same: the Big Chair at Angel Island. The prospect of which sends Goncz into nervous fits, making hour-long calls to anonymous power-brokers, demanding midnight assurances that his position is secure, and the vulture-beaked specter of retribution is well at bay. As he has pointed out, his once-vast wealth is heavily invested in the Northern Republic of California's reconstruction. His belief is that he is insulated from his enemies.
That assessment may have undergone a dramatic turn with today's events.
Assurances aside, it seems to me that Cecilio Goncz's life has become defined by a series of concentric circles, himself at the center. As each surrounding ring is worn down, his response becomes more frantic. I'm concerned that this has yet to translate as violence towards me. My host has a long, documented history of ending interviews at knife-point. Since my arrival, two of his closest companions have disappeared, and now, these assassins. By my own reckoning, I'm bad luck, writ large in neon. What Mr Goncz is thinking is beyond me.
But as he comes from the bedroom, pistol in hand, it is of rising priority that I find out.
Showing posts with label punishment. Show all posts
Showing posts with label punishment. Show all posts
10.14.2007
8.27.2007
King of the Californias Pt IV
by Monk, New York City, NY, USA
A softknife isn't much more than a floppy length of plastic, malleable enough to tie in a bow until contact with electricity, when it goes rigid as aircraft-grade aluminum. At ease, the human body generates about 120 watts, and since electro-sensitive plastics aren't detectable by anything short of costly tight-bandwidth spectrometers, the softknife has become modern upgrade to the common prison shank. It’s not actually surprising, then, that Cecilio Goncz sneaked one past the Palma de Baís’s security. What's dazzling is that he got an actual chrome-and-ceramic pistol into his room, and used it expertly on the invaders who crashed midway through our interview.
From the balcony, I have a reasonable view of the suite’s living room, where Goncz confronts his attackers in the brutally forthright manner that death-proofed him against rival Los Angeles warlords. Three black-cloaked forms litter the floor, haloed by evaporating pools of their own vital fluids, decompiled by the expensive self-cleaning rug. Goncz stands over a fourth figure, bowed on its knees, hands pinned to a single thigh by the softknife, pistol to the throat. Goncz leans in, his lips moving. The lightning bolt livetattoos above his eyes flicker red and black, pale nictitating membranes blinking out of sync with his actual eyelids.
Distant bomb blasts over East Oakland remind me I was left outside for reasons apart from safety. Separated by a door of synthetic, grown diamond, I have a moment for contemplation. It is an important moment in my project. I have only gotten this far with Mr Goncz by being passive. History is littered with men like me, who maybe thought too much, pushed too hard at the wrong moment, and abruptly discovered just how disposable they were. Modesty has worked to my advantage thus far. So long as I balance my subject's monstrous past with my own clinical detachment, the project can continue apace. But as much as I want to remain in his good graces, I know this thing will never develop without some initiative. Scripted questions and canned answers won't get me my Pulitzer. Minor risks, I reason, will take me further than the safe route I've taken. I adjust the acoustics on my recorder, set it to use the balcony door as an amplifier, and am soon listening to my subject’s conversation.
“...did you find me?” he asks.
The survivor makes a moaning sound. I realize at that moment those aren’t black cloaks. They’re hijabs. Goncz’s attackers are women. When the survivor doesn’t make any meaningful sound, he twists the softknife. She shrieks.
“I’m asking nicely,” Goncz says evenly. “You can make this last five seconds or five weeks. I have all the time in the world to get an answer out of you.”
She shakes her head violently, mumbling rapidly under her breath. I adjust the volume. She’s praying.
Goncz clicks his tongue and shrugs. “Fine. Okay. I’m just going to leave you here to think it over for a little bit then, okay? Let me know when you want to have a conversation like a grown-up.” He presses the softknife to its hilt, effectively nailing her to the floor through her hands and thigh.
The soundproofing of the room is all that shields the rest of the hotel from the cries: piercing crescendo, tapering to gurgling sobs. Almost blows out my eardrums. I reduce the volume on the recorder. Loud enough still to hear Goncz smack his lips as he leans forward, kisses her lovingly on the veiled forehead. I see him pocket the gun, start sifting through his attackers’ bodies.
Hundreds of miles away, Los Angeles’ provisional government continues trying war criminals as they trickle in from the international manhunt, handing out lifetime sentences as soon as they step into the courtroom. They’ve imported thousands of counselors, therapists, medical groups, and health systems from mainland America to compensate victims of some of the most brutal human rights violations in modern history. Half of Los Angeles’s national budget is set to build a permanent healthcare apparatus to repatriate and normalize freed factory slaves, crippled Hollywood gladiators, and brutalized rape camp survivors. The women inside could have been any of these. Whatever their beef, they came to Goncz for justice, and leave this life disappointed. I watch Cecilio Goncz pick through their remains.
The ghosts of Los Angeles find no peace here in Oakland, a place where exiled kings dance atop crystal castles, and weak men sit at their feet, chronicling safely behind the wall of journalistic neutrality. The recorder's still going, animal grunts from the survivor as she desperately tries to un-skewer herself. Goncz whistles the tune from a children's show that was on in the background of our early interview. I'm sweating. At some point, I've squeezed the recorder tight enough to draw blood. Set it aside.
My project is mutating. I've lost my balance, fallen directly into Goncz's narrative, trapped as witness to another of his horrible secrets. Wondering how much longer I can hold out.
Before he discovers mine.
A softknife isn't much more than a floppy length of plastic, malleable enough to tie in a bow until contact with electricity, when it goes rigid as aircraft-grade aluminum. At ease, the human body generates about 120 watts, and since electro-sensitive plastics aren't detectable by anything short of costly tight-bandwidth spectrometers, the softknife has become modern upgrade to the common prison shank. It’s not actually surprising, then, that Cecilio Goncz sneaked one past the Palma de Baís’s security. What's dazzling is that he got an actual chrome-and-ceramic pistol into his room, and used it expertly on the invaders who crashed midway through our interview.
From the balcony, I have a reasonable view of the suite’s living room, where Goncz confronts his attackers in the brutally forthright manner that death-proofed him against rival Los Angeles warlords. Three black-cloaked forms litter the floor, haloed by evaporating pools of their own vital fluids, decompiled by the expensive self-cleaning rug. Goncz stands over a fourth figure, bowed on its knees, hands pinned to a single thigh by the softknife, pistol to the throat. Goncz leans in, his lips moving. The lightning bolt livetattoos above his eyes flicker red and black, pale nictitating membranes blinking out of sync with his actual eyelids.
Distant bomb blasts over East Oakland remind me I was left outside for reasons apart from safety. Separated by a door of synthetic, grown diamond, I have a moment for contemplation. It is an important moment in my project. I have only gotten this far with Mr Goncz by being passive. History is littered with men like me, who maybe thought too much, pushed too hard at the wrong moment, and abruptly discovered just how disposable they were. Modesty has worked to my advantage thus far. So long as I balance my subject's monstrous past with my own clinical detachment, the project can continue apace. But as much as I want to remain in his good graces, I know this thing will never develop without some initiative. Scripted questions and canned answers won't get me my Pulitzer. Minor risks, I reason, will take me further than the safe route I've taken. I adjust the acoustics on my recorder, set it to use the balcony door as an amplifier, and am soon listening to my subject’s conversation.
“...did you find me?” he asks.
The survivor makes a moaning sound. I realize at that moment those aren’t black cloaks. They’re hijabs. Goncz’s attackers are women. When the survivor doesn’t make any meaningful sound, he twists the softknife. She shrieks.
“I’m asking nicely,” Goncz says evenly. “You can make this last five seconds or five weeks. I have all the time in the world to get an answer out of you.”
She shakes her head violently, mumbling rapidly under her breath. I adjust the volume. She’s praying.
Goncz clicks his tongue and shrugs. “Fine. Okay. I’m just going to leave you here to think it over for a little bit then, okay? Let me know when you want to have a conversation like a grown-up.” He presses the softknife to its hilt, effectively nailing her to the floor through her hands and thigh.
The soundproofing of the room is all that shields the rest of the hotel from the cries: piercing crescendo, tapering to gurgling sobs. Almost blows out my eardrums. I reduce the volume on the recorder. Loud enough still to hear Goncz smack his lips as he leans forward, kisses her lovingly on the veiled forehead. I see him pocket the gun, start sifting through his attackers’ bodies.
Hundreds of miles away, Los Angeles’ provisional government continues trying war criminals as they trickle in from the international manhunt, handing out lifetime sentences as soon as they step into the courtroom. They’ve imported thousands of counselors, therapists, medical groups, and health systems from mainland America to compensate victims of some of the most brutal human rights violations in modern history. Half of Los Angeles’s national budget is set to build a permanent healthcare apparatus to repatriate and normalize freed factory slaves, crippled Hollywood gladiators, and brutalized rape camp survivors. The women inside could have been any of these. Whatever their beef, they came to Goncz for justice, and leave this life disappointed. I watch Cecilio Goncz pick through their remains.
The ghosts of Los Angeles find no peace here in Oakland, a place where exiled kings dance atop crystal castles, and weak men sit at their feet, chronicling safely behind the wall of journalistic neutrality. The recorder's still going, animal grunts from the survivor as she desperately tries to un-skewer herself. Goncz whistles the tune from a children's show that was on in the background of our early interview. I'm sweating. At some point, I've squeezed the recorder tight enough to draw blood. Set it aside.
My project is mutating. I've lost my balance, fallen directly into Goncz's narrative, trapped as witness to another of his horrible secrets. Wondering how much longer I can hold out.
Before he discovers mine.
7.17.2007
The Deegan Pt. II
by Monk, New York City, NY, USA
A standard paingun is about the size and shape of an old billy club. Non-lethal, barring occasional heart attacks from the sudden, intense sensation of full-body burning caused by a 94GHz millimeter wave. It is the standard peacetime sidearm of the NYPD, powered by a fuel cell that nominally offers up to five days' juice, 2,356 yard range, and a networked targeting system plugged into the old ATHENA surveillance satellite for around-the-corner shooting and nighttime auto-targeting. It's a beast of a weapon, ruggedized for melee as well, with an enforced ceramic frame, integral shock baton function, and retractable bayonette.
Unfortunately for Detective Anton Choudry, those little beauties are tagged and tracked every time they're checked out of the 50th Precinct's weapon locker. So, for his purposes, he relies on the fallback: a twenty-four year old version with cracked plastic casing held together with duct tape. Thing's got the form factor of an old assault rifle and uses disposable batteries that have to be replaced every time it's fired, like a shotgun. It's also about as conspicuous as a samurai sword. He'd use the less obvious slugthrower he keeps as a throwaway piece, but he's saving it for an unspecified special occasion. Ballistic weapons are even harder to come by these days than disposable weapon batteries.
From the undercover police van, he spots his guy coming out of the Deegan Motel, dressed in dirty white kaftan, bright red Rocketeer™ boots, and one of those animated dragon belts everyone under 30 seems to be wearing. Bailey Avenue hasn't had more than three street lights since the mid-1990s, so the broad four-lane street is sort of ideal for an ambush, lined on the west side by a century of carbon monoxide-poisoned trees and the Henry Hudson Parkway, on the east by burnt-out old warehouses, a few trucks, and the two-story Deegan. Choudry's target tugs his robes a little bit to get them across his widening gut. He's gotten all the right body modifications, marking himself with blood red skin and goat horns jutting from his forehead. Very recognizable, Les Diables Nordiques, but not necessarily the smartest gang. All bodymods have drawbacks. Grafting external bone, for instance, increases sensitivity around the modified area, like a new piercing.
So when Choudry hits him with the paingun, it's like pouring lemon juice and saltwater onto fresh third-degree burns.
Guy doesn't even scream, just makes a gurgling sound before hitting the cracked pavement, clawing at his face until skin comes off. Choudry jogs across the street, kicks the guy in the face a few times to stop his thrashing, throws him over his shoulder, and takes him back to the police van. Loads a stimulant into the handcuffs, checks that the remote works, then snaps it onto the guy's wrist, looping the other hand to the van's back door.
Choudry sits back for a second, staring at his prisoner. 'This is the guy who killed you, Pete,' he thinks, reaching absently for the soundbox in his pocket, musing what blackout, the final mystery high, feels like. Consoled that he hasn't tried it yet, absently wondering if it's the last line to cross before he's beyond salvage.
"Okay," he croaks, fumbling at the tiny black remote, jolting the guy with a stimulant through his handcuffs. "Wake up, dickbag. We've got some talking to do."
When the guy rouses, his worldview has narrowed to the barrel of a gun. Choudry knows he's got his attention. "Remember me?"
"Oui."
"Then you remember my partner," Choudry smirks.
The guy nods. "Nous n'avons pas voulu dire pour n'importe quoi mauvais de se produire—"
"We're well past good intentions, jackoff. Pete's dead, you pulled the trigger, and you and I both know that as of right now, you're never going to see the inside of a courtroom. Your boss is lubricated like the fucking space elevator," Choudry says. His voice shakes. He's more surprised by that than anything. The guy gets very quiet, stares at the paingun. Choudry continues. "So here's how it's going to go. All Pete's accounts are mine now, you understand? Whatever you were paying him to keep out of your little thing in Melrose, you pay me now. Double. Once for me, once for my partner."
"Ce qui?" the guy spits. "Merde! Ce n'est pas juste!"
Choudry kicks him in the face. The guy spits teeth onto the van floor.
"Double, you understand me? Or I kick that fucking door open with you cuffed to it and go for a little drive," Choudry says. The guy nods mournfully, and Choudry smiles. Not for Peter Singh, who was a liar and a douche. But for the upgrade he's planning on the soundbox singing to him quietly from his pocket.
A standard paingun is about the size and shape of an old billy club. Non-lethal, barring occasional heart attacks from the sudden, intense sensation of full-body burning caused by a 94GHz millimeter wave. It is the standard peacetime sidearm of the NYPD, powered by a fuel cell that nominally offers up to five days' juice, 2,356 yard range, and a networked targeting system plugged into the old ATHENA surveillance satellite for around-the-corner shooting and nighttime auto-targeting. It's a beast of a weapon, ruggedized for melee as well, with an enforced ceramic frame, integral shock baton function, and retractable bayonette.
Unfortunately for Detective Anton Choudry, those little beauties are tagged and tracked every time they're checked out of the 50th Precinct's weapon locker. So, for his purposes, he relies on the fallback: a twenty-four year old version with cracked plastic casing held together with duct tape. Thing's got the form factor of an old assault rifle and uses disposable batteries that have to be replaced every time it's fired, like a shotgun. It's also about as conspicuous as a samurai sword. He'd use the less obvious slugthrower he keeps as a throwaway piece, but he's saving it for an unspecified special occasion. Ballistic weapons are even harder to come by these days than disposable weapon batteries.
From the undercover police van, he spots his guy coming out of the Deegan Motel, dressed in dirty white kaftan, bright red Rocketeer™ boots, and one of those animated dragon belts everyone under 30 seems to be wearing. Bailey Avenue hasn't had more than three street lights since the mid-1990s, so the broad four-lane street is sort of ideal for an ambush, lined on the west side by a century of carbon monoxide-poisoned trees and the Henry Hudson Parkway, on the east by burnt-out old warehouses, a few trucks, and the two-story Deegan. Choudry's target tugs his robes a little bit to get them across his widening gut. He's gotten all the right body modifications, marking himself with blood red skin and goat horns jutting from his forehead. Very recognizable, Les Diables Nordiques, but not necessarily the smartest gang. All bodymods have drawbacks. Grafting external bone, for instance, increases sensitivity around the modified area, like a new piercing.
So when Choudry hits him with the paingun, it's like pouring lemon juice and saltwater onto fresh third-degree burns.
Guy doesn't even scream, just makes a gurgling sound before hitting the cracked pavement, clawing at his face until skin comes off. Choudry jogs across the street, kicks the guy in the face a few times to stop his thrashing, throws him over his shoulder, and takes him back to the police van. Loads a stimulant into the handcuffs, checks that the remote works, then snaps it onto the guy's wrist, looping the other hand to the van's back door.
Choudry sits back for a second, staring at his prisoner. 'This is the guy who killed you, Pete,' he thinks, reaching absently for the soundbox in his pocket, musing what blackout, the final mystery high, feels like. Consoled that he hasn't tried it yet, absently wondering if it's the last line to cross before he's beyond salvage.
"Okay," he croaks, fumbling at the tiny black remote, jolting the guy with a stimulant through his handcuffs. "Wake up, dickbag. We've got some talking to do."
When the guy rouses, his worldview has narrowed to the barrel of a gun. Choudry knows he's got his attention. "Remember me?"
"Oui."
"Then you remember my partner," Choudry smirks.
The guy nods. "Nous n'avons pas voulu dire pour n'importe quoi mauvais de se produire—"
"We're well past good intentions, jackoff. Pete's dead, you pulled the trigger, and you and I both know that as of right now, you're never going to see the inside of a courtroom. Your boss is lubricated like the fucking space elevator," Choudry says. His voice shakes. He's more surprised by that than anything. The guy gets very quiet, stares at the paingun. Choudry continues. "So here's how it's going to go. All Pete's accounts are mine now, you understand? Whatever you were paying him to keep out of your little thing in Melrose, you pay me now. Double. Once for me, once for my partner."
"Ce qui?" the guy spits. "Merde! Ce n'est pas juste!"
Choudry kicks him in the face. The guy spits teeth onto the van floor.
"Double, you understand me? Or I kick that fucking door open with you cuffed to it and go for a little drive," Choudry says. The guy nods mournfully, and Choudry smiles. Not for Peter Singh, who was a liar and a douche. But for the upgrade he's planning on the soundbox singing to him quietly from his pocket.
7.11.2007
W. 228th Street, between Kingsbridge Avenue + Broadway
by Monk, New York City, NY, USA
With a kind of smoldering magnesium heat, Tiny Schwarzbaum is reminded once again why he hates pairing. It's not Big Bug he hates, pumping data from the TacWomb in the precinct basement. Tiny's never met his partner. As far as he knows, Big Bug is just some crippled shlub floating in a saline tub with nutrient feed in one arm, catheter up his putz, and sensor machines from the NYPD's Unified Tactical Platform where his face and shoulders should be. The poor bastard's whole world is a network of unmanned aerial drones, broad-spectrum scanners strapped to stationary balloons, and a time-share with the Port Authority for the antique Anti-Terror Hazard & Espionage Net Assessment satellite in geosynchronous orbit above the city. Somewhere in the maze of bacterially-grown circuits and artificial neurons that make up his prosthetic upper body, is the pairing mechanism that let's poor Big Bug communicate with Schwarzbaum. So how can he hate? Big Bug is just a messenger.
What six-foot-seven Schwarzbaum hates is the crawling sensation every time his partner squirts strategic goo through the ether: feeling of ticks and fleas at the back of his skull. For instance, Schwarzbaum feels fairly John Wayne-ish standing over his eighth kill of the afternoon, the middle of this big old abandoned mattress factory on W. 228th Street. Then Big Bug shoots him an overhead infra-red scan indicating the guy he actually came for is huddled behind an nearby aluminum door, with a heat source Big Bug announces as a Magnetic Accelerator Cannon. All of Schwarzbaum's three-hundred and eighty-four pounds of swagger evaporates into the creepy crawlies. Roughly then, the hate starts pumping, and his brain starts shutting down in segments, starting with Patience, then Self-Control.
"Such a way to make a living," he mutters, flexing the segmented metal of his prostheses around the the aluminum door's hinges.
By then, Big Bug drops a kind of siren alert that the MAC is powering up, and while he may mean well, it goes off like an instant migraine. Schwarzbaum, kraken of the fighting 50th Precinct's (nearly) vestigial Vice Squad, quite literally staggers. The segmented chrome tentacles where his arms should be writhe like garden snakes. Pairing doesn't give him eloquence to express himself meaningfully to Big Bug. Instead, he remembers what it was like to have hands, envisions callused hairy mitts clearly, and has them fold neatly into two great 'fuck yous', which he sends tumbling down the pipeline. Big Bug responds with something like bruise-colored lights. Schwarzbaum tightens his shiny tentacles around the door, and pulls.
And there is Mitty Baptiste, narcotics chief of Jesus Christ's Ecstatic Army of Truth, foxholed behind a desk that looks like some kind of military surplus salvage, the MAC's tripod planted neatly at its center. Schwarzbaum is stupid with hate at this point, and doesn't waste time with peaceable parlay. Baptiste's JCEAoT has run enough rainbow-colored powders through the Bronx's under-12 demographic to fuel a continuous hallucination through the next millennium. His addled minions have torched the Bronx's oldest masjid, three Mormon temples, a Sikh community center, and the regal old Catholic Church up by Castle Hill. The more mature members of his militia (which is to say, the ones who have survived Baptiste's unique cocktail of religious frenzy and low-grade chemical run-off) have turned to running numbers, hacking Federal data trunks, identity invasion, prostitution, organ-theft, and racketeering. The Organized Crime Task Force has tagged Baptiste as the kind of virulent human plague New York City can no longer tolerate.
But worse, he hasn't split his profits with the proper authorities at the 50th Precinct.
Meaning whatever gripes Tiny Schwarzbaum has about pairing will have to wait until he's got Mitty Baptiste by the throat.
And squeezes.
With a kind of smoldering magnesium heat, Tiny Schwarzbaum is reminded once again why he hates pairing. It's not Big Bug he hates, pumping data from the TacWomb in the precinct basement. Tiny's never met his partner. As far as he knows, Big Bug is just some crippled shlub floating in a saline tub with nutrient feed in one arm, catheter up his putz, and sensor machines from the NYPD's Unified Tactical Platform where his face and shoulders should be. The poor bastard's whole world is a network of unmanned aerial drones, broad-spectrum scanners strapped to stationary balloons, and a time-share with the Port Authority for the antique Anti-Terror Hazard & Espionage Net Assessment satellite in geosynchronous orbit above the city. Somewhere in the maze of bacterially-grown circuits and artificial neurons that make up his prosthetic upper body, is the pairing mechanism that let's poor Big Bug communicate with Schwarzbaum. So how can he hate? Big Bug is just a messenger.
What six-foot-seven Schwarzbaum hates is the crawling sensation every time his partner squirts strategic goo through the ether: feeling of ticks and fleas at the back of his skull. For instance, Schwarzbaum feels fairly John Wayne-ish standing over his eighth kill of the afternoon, the middle of this big old abandoned mattress factory on W. 228th Street. Then Big Bug shoots him an overhead infra-red scan indicating the guy he actually came for is huddled behind an nearby aluminum door, with a heat source Big Bug announces as a Magnetic Accelerator Cannon. All of Schwarzbaum's three-hundred and eighty-four pounds of swagger evaporates into the creepy crawlies. Roughly then, the hate starts pumping, and his brain starts shutting down in segments, starting with Patience, then Self-Control.
"Such a way to make a living," he mutters, flexing the segmented metal of his prostheses around the the aluminum door's hinges.
By then, Big Bug drops a kind of siren alert that the MAC is powering up, and while he may mean well, it goes off like an instant migraine. Schwarzbaum, kraken of the fighting 50th Precinct's (nearly) vestigial Vice Squad, quite literally staggers. The segmented chrome tentacles where his arms should be writhe like garden snakes. Pairing doesn't give him eloquence to express himself meaningfully to Big Bug. Instead, he remembers what it was like to have hands, envisions callused hairy mitts clearly, and has them fold neatly into two great 'fuck yous', which he sends tumbling down the pipeline. Big Bug responds with something like bruise-colored lights. Schwarzbaum tightens his shiny tentacles around the door, and pulls.
And there is Mitty Baptiste, narcotics chief of Jesus Christ's Ecstatic Army of Truth, foxholed behind a desk that looks like some kind of military surplus salvage, the MAC's tripod planted neatly at its center. Schwarzbaum is stupid with hate at this point, and doesn't waste time with peaceable parlay. Baptiste's JCEAoT has run enough rainbow-colored powders through the Bronx's under-12 demographic to fuel a continuous hallucination through the next millennium. His addled minions have torched the Bronx's oldest masjid, three Mormon temples, a Sikh community center, and the regal old Catholic Church up by Castle Hill. The more mature members of his militia (which is to say, the ones who have survived Baptiste's unique cocktail of religious frenzy and low-grade chemical run-off) have turned to running numbers, hacking Federal data trunks, identity invasion, prostitution, organ-theft, and racketeering. The Organized Crime Task Force has tagged Baptiste as the kind of virulent human plague New York City can no longer tolerate.
But worse, he hasn't split his profits with the proper authorities at the 50th Precinct.
Meaning whatever gripes Tiny Schwarzbaum has about pairing will have to wait until he's got Mitty Baptiste by the throat.
And squeezes.
6.29.2007
The Deegan Pt. I
by Monk, New York City, NY, USA
Inside the cockroach-shaped van, Anton Choudry brushes coconut burfi crumbs off his chest, licks his fingertips, and swishes cold tea between his cheeks to wash away the copper taste of bile. He’s six hours without a hit, and the DTs are crashing hard. His upper lip smells like ghee and stale sweat, thinning hair feels greasy and brittle, and his wrinkled white suit is a roadmap of New York marked with food and sweat stains, Albany starred by a hole in his lapel, where he nodded off and let a cigarette eat through the cheap linen. Thirty pounds ago, the outfit wrapped his athletic build perfectly. Now, it resembles a circus tent, pants held up by suspenders, untucked shirt reaching to his knees. His pant cuffs are tattered and black from dragging the streets. The roof of his mouth feels like sandpaper. He moistens it with the rest of his tea, slug of condensed milk looking up at him like dead larva from the bottom of the paper cup. Absently, he takes the soundbox from his breast pocket, rolls the little powder blue cube around in his palm, and marvels at its chipped, dirty surface. Earbuds and a tattered lanyard dangle, meant to hang the thing around his neck. 'Like a noose,' he thinks, not completely inaccurate. One side is devoted to a touch-sensitive screen big enough for his boney thumb to cycle through highs and check the device’s settings. There's a moment of panic when he sees the battery's almost flat, but remembers his shift is nearly up, and there’s a charger in his car.
This particular soundbox is not cheap, made in a San Jose sweatshop, surgically embedded in some poor bastard's musculature, and muled across the continent to the Rotten Apple, where it is prohibited by no less than fourteen different agencies. Anton’s favorite setting, rock3rblue, rewires his brain for nothing but endorphin production. It’s an ultra-caffeinated non-stop brainless rush. He can go three days without sleep, run a thirty-mile marathon, rescue a busload of children from a burning orphanage, leap tall buildings in a single bound...and crash for a solid thirty-six hours after each hit. NASA is less volatile, but he couldn’t feel his fingertips for two days after the last hit, and didn’t find the sensation of weightlessness particularly appealing. There’s beepboxxx, which some people on the street call sexk1tten, but he’s too embarrassed by cum stains on the front of his pants to experiment while on duty. That leaves Aiaia, the one high he hasn’t tried. The little blue and green icon beckons from the soundbox, but he’s heard nothing of it on the street. It’s a mystery high, and Anton’s just not desperate enough to leave the safety of rock3rblue, just yet. He could download new, recognizable highs from that one Latvian site, but it would leave fingerprints on his financial records.
It would also be admitting he is an addict. And cops are not addicts. Cops are hardworking civil servants who put their lives on the line every day. They may occasionally overindulge, but they are not addicts. Not when they are on duty, and especially not when they are staking out the archeological curiosity that is the Deegan Motel, gone through many incarnations, but clinging today to its essence as a cheap two-story whorehouse. Choudry’s undercover police van is stuffed mostly with surveillance equipment, but there is a bunk for late nights like this, moon rising above the ragged Bronx skyline. No sleep for Choudry, though. No rock3rblue, either, as Captain Mammoud has called down Internal Affairs on his least favorite detective. There has long been an unspoken acknowledgment of Choudry’s condition, and for a time the Captain was tolerant. But with his partner dead, the 50th Precinct's Vice Squad has whittled down to Choudry, Vincent Scutieri, Jean-Pierre Ngekwe, Philip Proudhawk, Tiny Schwarzbaum, and the ghost of Peter Singh. The Captain needs every officer he can get, but isn’t stupid or frenzied enough to keep a quasi-functional flophead walking the streets with a paingun. He’s tired of Choudry’s antics. Old Pete’s death is the last straw.
Internal Affairs tossed Choudry’s locker twice this week, and have an appointment to interview him in the morning. Altered soundbox neurology may not show up on urinalysis, but Choudry is pretty sure a two-day hangover qualifies him for the court-ordered EKG where it does. They pinched Tony Vasili over in Robbery/Homicide for that. Before him, O’Brien in Anti-Terror. Too many times, Choudry has witnessed people go to jail or die for being stupid. Not him. So for now, he bombs the DTs with forty cups of intensely sugared tea, fluorescent orange power drinks that taste like boiled styrofoam, and a weird vitamin concoction bought off a mad Nigerian on 217th Street.
Anton Choudry is vibrating.
He praises himself shamelessly for once again dodging Internal Affairs’ traps, tucking his precious soundbox back into the nest of his breast pocket, fumbling at his paingun, and waiting for his partner's killer to step out of the Deegan into the cold Bronx night.
Inside the cockroach-shaped van, Anton Choudry brushes coconut burfi crumbs off his chest, licks his fingertips, and swishes cold tea between his cheeks to wash away the copper taste of bile. He’s six hours without a hit, and the DTs are crashing hard. His upper lip smells like ghee and stale sweat, thinning hair feels greasy and brittle, and his wrinkled white suit is a roadmap of New York marked with food and sweat stains, Albany starred by a hole in his lapel, where he nodded off and let a cigarette eat through the cheap linen. Thirty pounds ago, the outfit wrapped his athletic build perfectly. Now, it resembles a circus tent, pants held up by suspenders, untucked shirt reaching to his knees. His pant cuffs are tattered and black from dragging the streets. The roof of his mouth feels like sandpaper. He moistens it with the rest of his tea, slug of condensed milk looking up at him like dead larva from the bottom of the paper cup. Absently, he takes the soundbox from his breast pocket, rolls the little powder blue cube around in his palm, and marvels at its chipped, dirty surface. Earbuds and a tattered lanyard dangle, meant to hang the thing around his neck. 'Like a noose,' he thinks, not completely inaccurate. One side is devoted to a touch-sensitive screen big enough for his boney thumb to cycle through highs and check the device’s settings. There's a moment of panic when he sees the battery's almost flat, but remembers his shift is nearly up, and there’s a charger in his car.
This particular soundbox is not cheap, made in a San Jose sweatshop, surgically embedded in some poor bastard's musculature, and muled across the continent to the Rotten Apple, where it is prohibited by no less than fourteen different agencies. Anton’s favorite setting, rock3rblue, rewires his brain for nothing but endorphin production. It’s an ultra-caffeinated non-stop brainless rush. He can go three days without sleep, run a thirty-mile marathon, rescue a busload of children from a burning orphanage, leap tall buildings in a single bound...and crash for a solid thirty-six hours after each hit. NASA is less volatile, but he couldn’t feel his fingertips for two days after the last hit, and didn’t find the sensation of weightlessness particularly appealing. There’s beepboxxx, which some people on the street call sexk1tten, but he’s too embarrassed by cum stains on the front of his pants to experiment while on duty. That leaves Aiaia, the one high he hasn’t tried. The little blue and green icon beckons from the soundbox, but he’s heard nothing of it on the street. It’s a mystery high, and Anton’s just not desperate enough to leave the safety of rock3rblue, just yet. He could download new, recognizable highs from that one Latvian site, but it would leave fingerprints on his financial records.
It would also be admitting he is an addict. And cops are not addicts. Cops are hardworking civil servants who put their lives on the line every day. They may occasionally overindulge, but they are not addicts. Not when they are on duty, and especially not when they are staking out the archeological curiosity that is the Deegan Motel, gone through many incarnations, but clinging today to its essence as a cheap two-story whorehouse. Choudry’s undercover police van is stuffed mostly with surveillance equipment, but there is a bunk for late nights like this, moon rising above the ragged Bronx skyline. No sleep for Choudry, though. No rock3rblue, either, as Captain Mammoud has called down Internal Affairs on his least favorite detective. There has long been an unspoken acknowledgment of Choudry’s condition, and for a time the Captain was tolerant. But with his partner dead, the 50th Precinct's Vice Squad has whittled down to Choudry, Vincent Scutieri, Jean-Pierre Ngekwe, Philip Proudhawk, Tiny Schwarzbaum, and the ghost of Peter Singh. The Captain needs every officer he can get, but isn’t stupid or frenzied enough to keep a quasi-functional flophead walking the streets with a paingun. He’s tired of Choudry’s antics. Old Pete’s death is the last straw.
Internal Affairs tossed Choudry’s locker twice this week, and have an appointment to interview him in the morning. Altered soundbox neurology may not show up on urinalysis, but Choudry is pretty sure a two-day hangover qualifies him for the court-ordered EKG where it does. They pinched Tony Vasili over in Robbery/Homicide for that. Before him, O’Brien in Anti-Terror. Too many times, Choudry has witnessed people go to jail or die for being stupid. Not him. So for now, he bombs the DTs with forty cups of intensely sugared tea, fluorescent orange power drinks that taste like boiled styrofoam, and a weird vitamin concoction bought off a mad Nigerian on 217th Street.
Anton Choudry is vibrating.
He praises himself shamelessly for once again dodging Internal Affairs’ traps, tucking his precious soundbox back into the nest of his breast pocket, fumbling at his paingun, and waiting for his partner's killer to step out of the Deegan into the cold Bronx night.
6.25.2007
The Little Nothing
by Monk, New York City, NY, USA
White. Sterile. No roof, no walls, no floors. No shadows. Make a sound. Hear anything? Of course not: no acoustics. You look nervous, Ben. Don’t. We’re not there yet. This is just a test. Plugged into your parietal lobe, running a line into your implant. The real deal takes way more power than I have in this little box. No, for a full-on semiotic transplant, you’re going to sit in the Big Chair down in Valley Stream, and they’re going to plug you right into the Nassau County grid, along with the rest of the recalcitrant douchebags who can’t seem to stop shitting in society’s mouth.
You’re sweating, Ben.
That's okay.
I’d be scared, too. I mean, this little corner of eternity’s hardly scenic, and you’re slotted for a good thirty years. Where do you sleep? Oh, Ben, you really don’t get it, yet, do you? The whole point to this is you don’t sleep. Don’t eat, don’t talk, don’t hear, don’t listen. It’s just you and the the long white nothing. The Little Bardo, they call it. No sleep. What’s sleep when we’re technically plugged into your REM mode, anyway? No, you’re doing your full thirty wide awake. The Nassau County grid dumps into the National Readjustment Processor down in Quantico, where your personality will sit in happy reconstructed nothing for the entire stretch of your bid.
It could be worse, Ben. In the old days, they filled the Little Bardo with all sorts of terrible stuff. The best bits from the Bible, used to scare you to sleep at night. Fire and brimstone. Punishment, y’know? Retribution. No one really came out of that in one piece, though. Lot of catatonic freaks. Couldn’t control their piss function. Terrible smell. Lots of screaming. Then they tried to pamper them with a Heaven meme. That worked like bunk. I mean, for half you rotten sons-of-bitches, Heaven is raping kittens and stabbing nuns. Ever see a smiling coma victim? I hear half the Federal budget that year went to buying clean sheets, just to cover up the number of wet dreams you freaks had. So, then they came to this. Nothing. Nada. Nirvana, baby, for thirty years. The Little Bardo. Time to think, right?
Ben, if you have to goe to the bathroom, just ask. On the floor like that, someone’s going to have to mop up after you. Not very considerate is it?
What? How are you going to receive visitors? Your mother? Ben, look at me. Does this place look like it’s got the facilities to hold your toxic miserable ass for thirty actual years? We’re going in through the parietal lobe, champ. That controls time sense. You’re going to be in and out of here in twenty minutes.
White. Sterile. No roof, no walls, no floors. No shadows. Make a sound. Hear anything? Of course not: no acoustics. You look nervous, Ben. Don’t. We’re not there yet. This is just a test. Plugged into your parietal lobe, running a line into your implant. The real deal takes way more power than I have in this little box. No, for a full-on semiotic transplant, you’re going to sit in the Big Chair down in Valley Stream, and they’re going to plug you right into the Nassau County grid, along with the rest of the recalcitrant douchebags who can’t seem to stop shitting in society’s mouth.
You’re sweating, Ben.
That's okay.
I’d be scared, too. I mean, this little corner of eternity’s hardly scenic, and you’re slotted for a good thirty years. Where do you sleep? Oh, Ben, you really don’t get it, yet, do you? The whole point to this is you don’t sleep. Don’t eat, don’t talk, don’t hear, don’t listen. It’s just you and the the long white nothing. The Little Bardo, they call it. No sleep. What’s sleep when we’re technically plugged into your REM mode, anyway? No, you’re doing your full thirty wide awake. The Nassau County grid dumps into the National Readjustment Processor down in Quantico, where your personality will sit in happy reconstructed nothing for the entire stretch of your bid.
It could be worse, Ben. In the old days, they filled the Little Bardo with all sorts of terrible stuff. The best bits from the Bible, used to scare you to sleep at night. Fire and brimstone. Punishment, y’know? Retribution. No one really came out of that in one piece, though. Lot of catatonic freaks. Couldn’t control their piss function. Terrible smell. Lots of screaming. Then they tried to pamper them with a Heaven meme. That worked like bunk. I mean, for half you rotten sons-of-bitches, Heaven is raping kittens and stabbing nuns. Ever see a smiling coma victim? I hear half the Federal budget that year went to buying clean sheets, just to cover up the number of wet dreams you freaks had. So, then they came to this. Nothing. Nada. Nirvana, baby, for thirty years. The Little Bardo. Time to think, right?
Ben, if you have to goe to the bathroom, just ask. On the floor like that, someone’s going to have to mop up after you. Not very considerate is it?
What? How are you going to receive visitors? Your mother? Ben, look at me. Does this place look like it’s got the facilities to hold your toxic miserable ass for thirty actual years? We’re going in through the parietal lobe, champ. That controls time sense. You’re going to be in and out of here in twenty minutes.
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