THE FOREVER MAN

A Doomsday Comedy

DEDICATION OF THIS HUMBLE TALE

by Christopher Marlowe, Gent.

TO THE MOST ILLUSTRIOUS NOBLE LADY,

ADORNED WITH ALL GIFTS BOTH OF MIND

AND BODY.

TO MY 'ANGEL OF THE SNOW' TO WHOSE

LOFTY HEIGHTS I UNAVAILINGLY ASPIRE,

I INVOKE THEE AS MISTRESS TO MY MUSES AND--

Move over, Chris. I let you loose for one minute...

Please allow Me to introduce Myself. I'm a Man of wealth--

Who am I, Lady? What do I do?

I am the Devil. I am You.

Let Me Explain. No need to Lie.

I'll give You the When and the Where

But Never the Why.

Here is Our Story. Judge for Yourself.

Guilt is a Given Till Tossed on the Shelf.

Here is How this Planet Began.

The Beginning of Woman. The End of Man.

And Here is My Vessel. Here is My Twin

Caught in Between Heaven and Sin.

Christopher Marlowe, Master of Show,

Player of Players, Makes Time go Slow.

For his Life here on Earth Is an Endless Flow,

Propelling him to an Infinity that Ever Grows.

As You Yourself will Learn and Know....

Madame;

Together, We are Your Humble Servants

And Our Intertwined Lives are offered to You Here

As an Opened Book.

I HADN'T FINISHED WITH HER YET, NICK!

Then go give tongue to your courting story, Chris.

The whole world is indeed a stage and we mere players,

but that doesn't mean I have to suck up to the snobs in the galleries.

PARTING IS SUCH SWIFT SORROW

I left her at her upscale door, after we'd talked half the night away.

The usual 'WHAT'S IN' topics these days. Super storms, decade old droughts, the hundred foot ocean rise, with more to come now that Antarctica was really starting to calve, (Hey, I still miss New York!), starvation, resource 'conflicts', super saturated nuke dumps, EMP loss of satellite service and the Internet, back to dial up. Google stock crashing like Fatty Arbuckle onto his next scandal. And what could be done about it. Yeah. Like.

Me, I loved to shop talk but she did seem a leettle serious about all this local planetary stuff.

Still, she was beautiful. Blonde. Slim. Flirty when she wasn't talking. No argument from me on that end. It would've been a first for that night anyway. We...didn't...even...fight! We'd been getting along big time!

I'd had worse 'woman time' lots of times.

And I mean lots of times.

“Do you want to come in?” she asked with 'that' look in her eye.

“No, but thanks for the offer,” I replied, instantly seeing the big Commitment Glow light up the night sky. This was no One Nighter.

She was hurt. Maybe a little surprised.

“Why not?”

“It wouldn't do either of us any good,” I replied.

“How do you know?”

“Been there. Done that.”

I shifted. She was a nice person. Needed a better explanation.

“In the past, it's worked for me but not for the other person,” I said.

“And now?”

“It doesn't work for me either. It's age related.”

“You don't look that old. What? Thirty?” She sighed, then... “But what if I want it?”

“You can't always get what you want.”

She looked at me, rejudging. Whoops. I just got The Other Eye. The Evil One. I knew It well.

“But if you try real hard,” she said sarcastically. “You just might find you get what you need.”

I nodded. She knew her past. Musta studied. “Something like that,” I admitted.

“You are old!” she snapped and slammed the door shut.

I nodded again.

She got that right.

But not because I righteously revere the Rolling Stones. Which I do. My kind of people.

A hundred and eighty years later, their Sympathy For the Devil still takes my hot breath away in mind blowing, body incinerating whooshes.

She's young and pure so she wouldn't understand. Why should she?

No, I'm old because...wait for it...I'll fess up.

I am The Forever Man.

For God knows how many times, (and does He care? Not!), I walked away from yet another magandang mujer, unable to explain.

Explain what?

That time is not on our side.

It's beside us, squawking at us every step of the way like a self sorrowing Madre exhorting her offspring, bitching over their failure to produce, purposefully ignoring the culpability inherent in her own genetic malfeasance, screaming about her maternal ego projections that have dried up when all the Drive Ins drive away and Job Ops Opt Overseas, and her expectations of familial ascension has foundered on its promise to make her proud or at least spiritually acceptable for her Final Passage to the Old Guy Who Owns It All.

There was only One who did his Mama proud and look what happened to Him.

The rest? They're my kind of Losers.

“Ama mtu atatoa kitu gani badala ya maisha yake?” I murmured gleefully from happy memory as I hoofed it down the night time street, looking for some food.

Loosely translated. 'Or what shall a man give in exchange for his soul'?

I'd really loved it when that Swahili Prince suddenly realized it was time for me to Pull The Plug on him and wanted me to think it over some more and ruminate on his fate in a more kindly fashion.

Hah! Like I'm not a busy guy?

No. Didn't matter what country or language I did my biz in. It was all the same whine and dine dance at Collection Time

Passages have always been my favorite no matter which way they go and I've listened to humanity's continuous kvetching on this planet since the late 16^th Century and, let me tell you, only the timing and delivery have changed.

Everybody and everything always dirges the same.

Allowing, of course, for slippery linguistic development.

Aye, there's the non rub.

Look one way and then back again and words have changed. And never for the better. They call it linguistic declension. I call life finding it's proper level, which is pure shite.

In my entitled opinion, down deep, humanity knows exactly what it's worth.

Eff All.

But no matter. At least to me. I can deal with dregs.

Time keeps drumming the same positive message to all sentients who haven't escaped via dementia or death.

Keep the dream alive or it ain't gonna go well with you and yours.

I wondered if that all night cafe we'd been talking in was still open. They had that sign up.

But I'd learned that not everything you read or hear these days was iron clad fact.

Lies were now the norm and perfectly acceptable. Everybody did it.

Made complete sense to me. I thrive on em.

But not when I'm hungry.

So, forever the hopeful one, I got back in my much battered Volvo and went to see if I could get some Huevos Rancheros with salsa on the side.

Even after a hundred and ninety seven years behind the wheel, driving is still not my thing, but I do love to eat.

And Mexican is the food stuff of la Vida Loca.

What more could be asked from a serape or a sarong?

EL MUSICA

The Indie Rep was a little older than usual which meant he'd been left behind in the multi media Tsunami of the Next Big Thing.

He'd asked for the interview and that wasn't a good sign.

My pitch hadn't been that great.

He peered at me.

“What happened to your eye?” he asked. “Looks bloodshot.”

“Shit happens,” I said.

“I hear ya,” he responded glumly and turned off Utribe hovering on the wall to wall display then swiveled back towards me.

“Interesting,” he said.

“But no go,” I added,

“If only David Bowie were still alive and active,” he concluded and shrugged, his thinning hair finally falling under the weight of layers and layers of glistening thickener with an audible plop.

I brightened. “Really?” I said. “And if so?”

“There's a lot of Super Sell left in sentimentality,” the Rep announced emphatically.

“I agree,” I said. “The future is always overrated and in the ensuing disappointment--”

“Comes a hunger for the past!” the Rep shouted. “Finally! Somebody who understands!”

“Hold that thought,” I said and got up.

The Rep was a little surprised. Usually his sort had to throw wannabees like me out of the place.

“Where you going?” he asked. “I thought we were going to do lunch.”

“Got to see The Man about a dog.”

“Huh?”

“That's God spelled backwards,” I said.

“I know that!” the Rep said, still fussing over the lost chance of a kvetching face to face over a bacon and avocado salad with a fellow loser.

Talk about mixing your fats with your bile.

“Not the way I do,” I said and let myself out.

TO STEAL OR NOT TO STEAL... THAT'S A HYPOTHETICAL, RIGHT?

After the weird young dude with the long reddish hair and the old fashioned brocade and leather duds had gone, the Rep turned back to the wall display and turned it on.

The Motil Holo reappeared, still on pause.

Pretty damn good, he had to admit. Full Analogue Colors. Incredible contrast. Right up in the eight thousand level.

Three Deelife Animation.

Sound rocked the house first run. Kicked ass right thru to the cajones.

Could smell the Moah Mosh Pit 360. Some tasty gals out there in Full Flower. Ouch!

But the Corp Control Watermark Snake sinewed thru the dance scene like the Goddamned Serpent protecting the Tree of Knowledge, ferchrissake, from Freedom Downloaders like himself.

Try downloading this VidApp and it would rip your system to shreds. And all for what? Aff Ads would bring back the bucks. He already had that kind of de knot connections.

The Snake had got to go.

He sighed. Let the Coders rip it outa there. That's what he promised to pay them for.

He hit play.

The tall, skinny, heavily made up lead singer cavorted out front stage, followed by the Watermark Snake that clung to his knobby ankle like a piece of seaweed. Behind them the band hit a quirky bass and piano based four four beat that made you feel like jumping and humping. Very little syncopation. Bouncing ball rhythm. White bread music being toasted by the danger of an original melodic idea.

Kinda cool.

The Rep drummed the table and pattered his feet almost on rhythm as the singer sang in a lilting, much mannered light baritone...

Here we are living in Modern Times,

Far from the end of History's Climb,

Munching the drugs that keep us alive,

For one more printout a bit more jive.

“Sang it bro,” the Rep murmured and pulled a pill out of his drawer.

And it's high diddle diddle,

The Cat's on the fiddle,

The cow jumped over the moon!

We've come so far,

We've come so fast,

Born with a silver spoon!

The skinny overdressed, metro sexual lead singer fastened his blue eyes up into a manufactured Hereafter and shouted into the floating micro mic as the pill-rushed Rep sang tunelessly along with him.

In Modern Times!

By Mindless Mime!

Machines won't leave us alone!

In Modern Times!

Through Countless Rhymes!

They say we're just muscle and bone!

Muscle and bone!

The Rep, who was flabby, and the Virtual Singer, who was skinny, crooned and wailed the last two lines as though they'd lived thru the exigencies of hard labor without getting no respect from The Man.

Neither realized the full ramifications of the somatic self assessment inherent in the lyrics because one was brain dead and the other was a light-energy fractalized display running on tiny gossamer strings of algorithms.

But not to mind, Compañero.

It was still catchy.

The Singer continued to tell the story of the Naked Evolutionary ornithopter, AKA Humankind, with jumpy melodic intensity.

Drillions of downloads

To keep us alive.

Hang onto our ears

And give us five.

Nothing to give

And nothing to get.

The best to come

But not quite yet.

And it's high diddle diddle

The cat's on the--

The Rep turned the wall off and leaned back, elated and sweaty. Feeling...well...creative!

“It'll work without a Meater. To hell with this Pseudo Pop, Folky Flesh Run that's been happenin with the Proto Preemies lately. Just gotta turn that damn Snake off and we got Apps Away!”

He punched a number and spoke into his throat mic.

“Karl. Got a problem for you. Of course it's for pay. Once we get the job complete, there'll be enough for everybody.”

THE SHAKESPEARE STING

I entered into the nearest Cathedral and went to my usual spot well away from the Holy Water. I'd been in these Self Soul Service Stalls so many times they should at least offer some sort of time sharing.

I got on my knees, did a little spiritual semaphoring and began.

“Yep. Me again. Listen. Need a little favor. Excuse me? If You remember and I'm sure You do, this specific and entire time stretched life line, I.e. Moi, began, per Your Royal Request, on May 30^th, 1593 Christie Dating, when that drunken crooked businessman spy asshole Frizir missed scarring Christopher Marlowe's cheek as a Walsingham warning to keep his mouth shut and hit him in the fucking eye instead. And see what that left me with...permanent red eye. And I mean permanent!

They'd been drinking all day. Remember?

Yeah, yeah, I know. It was a nice twist what with him writing Faustus vs Beelzebub the year before. I can appreciate the irony, buuut...

There went the future of Elizabethan drama down the crapper. Right?

So...You called me in to fulfill history even though it didn't fit in with my more modest plans.

Yes, modest!

Pride doesn't always goeth before the Fall.

Pure Revisionism.

I was perfectly happy in Ur. No real written language to worry about. No detailed descriptions of Hell. Four squares a day. I was the best lyre player in town. Beer wasn't bad. All the brat bottoms I could bugger.

Which reminds me, Chris wasn't a real homo. He played at it. So where did that leave me when you transformed me into that little mouthy Elizabethan L’Enfant Terrible with a tobacco habit?

Climbing onto some squeaky leaky smelly tarred up sailboat manned by cursing garlicky foreigners in the middle of the night inside a smallish body that was beat up from more than one day's carousing.

But did I complain?

Okay, but not after I got over being seasick.

Then the next dozen plus years banging out masterpieces for that illiterate Potemkin Villager front man ignoramus from Stratford who couldn't even spell his name the same twice in a row and whose only dream, when he wasn't drinking and carousing and bragging about how Greene was a has been now that he, Shakespeare, was on the scene, was to buy up half his home town, get some land grab certificates and survey stakes stuck in where it counts and leave his uneducated back home women folk pretty much to themselves.

At least they got off easy. Didn't have to put up with that greedy receipts stealing bucolic shit who actually tried to do some rewriting on my stuff when he wasn't too hungover.

And me?

I was bouncing around the continent waiting for the checks in the mail, delivering the World's Best Lit complete and on time while dodging Catholic counter spies, insane Protestant zealots and petulant Papists who thought I was Marley's Ghost. That's a joke. Try to keep up.

Okay. Okay!

I'll give You Cervantes.

He was a system suck and a political bore but a real writer and it was a privilege to help that spindle shanked hero of his out and into the world of faire Englande. I was hoping maybe he could tilt at the Tower of London and knock the fucker down before it dragged me back in for enhanced interrogation.

And didn't I let Shelton get the credit for the very first English translation of Don Quixote?

Last thing I needed was to be outed.

Miguel understood.

He'd been behind four walls and a barred window for enough years to know where the good air was and Shelton was happy to get the work. Either that or back to being a secret mail carrying coyote for the Powers That Be who wouldn't give two hoots in Hallelujah if they burned him in Spain or beheaded him in London.

So we three worked it out. Unlike that Shakespeare asshole.

Oh. By the way. Thanks for killing him in his own vomit on his 53^rd birthday. Allowed me to get back to my first love, music. And I didn't need the residuals. At that time I was in Italy working good percentages on ships' cargo from the New World.

Okay. Enough about me.

Why am I here? Thot You'd never ask.

Need David Bowie back. Skinny dude. Singer. Late Twentieth Century Style inventor. Dead.

Why?

I've written a song for him. No, a holo won't cut it. I need the real deal. Blood, sweat and tears dripping thru the mascara. You know what I'm saying? Naah. Probably not. You think life is a dirty evolutionary test tube that's gone wrong, no argument from me on that, but I need this and You owe me.

What? Well, Fuck You too! Yeah! You heard me! Fuck You and all those winged wimps You hang out with!”

After my sincere but unsuccessful Act of Petition, I sagged back on the hard pew seat, pretty pissed off with things in general and this thing in particular. In my neck of the Norwegian Woods, the Universe was a One Way Street going only You Know Who's Way.

In a fit of reasonable rage, I jumped to my feet, trying to figure out if I had a Plan B.

I will say one thing about little five foot five CM. He was not only a randy little dog with a fair size sausage, he also had a lot of natural quickness. Put a soccer ball on his instep and a bonus clause contract and he could've given Messi the Magician a dribbling run for his money. Even after six centuries, I still can, using his eternally youthful bod, write a lick, lick a wight, and catch a moving hover bus without breathing hard.

Nothing like being twenty nine forever.

I was about to leave and do my devilish best to overturn events in my favor, when a priest came around the corner of the vestibule, looking quietly concerned.

“Is there anything I can help you with, my son?” he announced in smooth tones.

He'd obviously overheard my shouts and curses and sensed the beginning of a full blown spiritual crisis.

I looked up, about to tell him to stick the Cross where it would best help the Mournful and World Weary Wearer cool off when I stopped and stepped back in shock and awe.

It was a young David Bowie dressed in some sort of anti atheist phase!

He looked très Uber Urban Celtic Catholic! There is a God!

“Is it really you?” I asked, almost crossing my forked tongue in my excitement. Just joking. I can hardly cross my legs much less my tongue.

Like I said, little Christy M. was packing.

He smiled at me. “Yes, it's me. No other. My name is Father Jones,” he said. “And you sound disturbed, my son.”

“Jones.”

“Yes.”

That was David Bowie's real surname. I cranked a glare up at the ceiling. “Is this another of Your cruel fucking jokes?” I shouted.

The ceiling dropped a little plaster on my forehead just to make a further point.

Father Jones glanced upwards at the offending ceiling fresco. “I've been telling Monseigneur Matisse for the last five years that we need to get that corrected before we either lose a parishioner or the entire Last Supper,” he said.

I wiped somebody's painted fingernail off my forehead. “You sing?” I asked.

The young priest's bony, large toothed face lit up. “I dote on Bach's Oratorios!” he announced.

I had a charge of fear and foreshadowed disappointment. “Like I mean, really sing. You know, loud and everything? Like the Three Tenors.”

The Bowie Look Alike Be Alike laughed. “Dear Lord, no! I can hold a tune, good for the lighter stuff, but my German sucks and some of those soloists make my teeth hurt when they let loose. I'm just average.”

“There is a God!” I announced again.

Unlike You Know Who, I forgive at the drop of a hat. Or whatever. I blew a kiss at the crumbling fresco above us.

“Thank you! Thank you! Thank you!”

A piece of gray brown table paint floated down and landed on my chin.

Father Jones peered at it, then up at the fresco.

“That's where Judas was leaning,” he said.

“I told Him about the guy,” I said and flicked the fleck off. “But would He listen?”

Father Jones looked at me suspiciously, then showed his uneven choppers. “Kidding, right?”

“He thought so,” I replied. “Got an idea I want to run by you.”

“Do we need the confessional?”

I shook my head. “No. I'm good. Now, here's why I came into the House of Our Lord today...”

IF MUSIC BE THE FOOD OF LOVE...

“You're telling me you can't delete one fucking snake?” the Rep hissed.

Karl shook his big misshapen head. “You're not listening. Missing the big picture.”

“I specialize in the big picture!”

“You specialize in rip offs. Even an all night Tekkie thinks bigger than you and they're doped up mental sludge.”

“So what's with the snake?”

“It's root registry integrated so rip it out n you got nothin. Try makin a copy n you've got a road side bomb up your ass.”

“So what's with the snake?”

“I'm tryin to tell you. I got ears?”

“Yeah. Yeah. I'm listening.”

“It thinks it's part of the act.”

“So?”

“It wants in.”

The Rep shifted in his chair, smelling blood. “How many points?”

“Best part. Doesn't even understand the concept of money. Just wants credits. David and---”

“Music to my ears!”

“I explained to it that the only way it can get famous is if we can download, copy and sell world wide.”

“What about Corps R Us?”

“It's already fire walled them. They're pissed but nothin they kin do except sue and with you we know where that'll go.”

“Even my ex mother in law gave up and there was one greedy bitch.”

“Only one thing.”

“What?”

“The credits. And it ain't gonna move on em.”

“We can work with anythin. Hit me with its best shot.”

“David and Goliath. It wants to be called Goliath. N this time it ain't losin.”

The Rep took this in and mulled it for a second.

“If he's gotta go, he's gotta go. Better than bitin the head off a chicken.”

Karl nodded. “We kin work the blood and squeezing on the high notes. Best part is GG--”

“GG?”

“Green Goliath. Best part is GG don't want it to happen till the end of the second song aggregate.”

“Two albums? Ouch! We need more material! You got a handle on that little red headed fucker with the bad haircut and the leather pouch in front of his whoozit that started all this?”

“No, but we put a Subsat search on him.”

“And?”

“Drones blew up and Subsat feeds garbled and crashed.”

“That inconsiderate little shit! Put some flesh feet on the ground! Haul him in by the hair, if you have to! We need more material!”

IN THE EYES OF THE LORD

Father Jones stopped just before we left the Church and turned to me.

He looked sincere and totally without thought and that amount of religious gravitas vacuity gave me ideas about another song, WAITING FOR THE LIGHT WEIGHT.

That would piss Him off. Beckett had it only half right. Stubborn Irish prick. Had a chance to do something really great, but no...

We could spin sci fi with spiritual fervor.

Like orgiastic Baptists preaching cosmology.

Took me back.

God, those were the days!

Where were those Aztec stone knife wielding priests when you needed them? They would've been great backup, waving their dripping knives with one hand and holding up still beating hearts with the other and...

Alice Coop, eat your effing (and the chicken's) heart out!

“I don't want to offend The Lord,” Father Jones informed me, interrupting my creative rush.

I stumbled to a stop behind him, getting ready to give him a push out the Lord's Door if I had to.

I wanted to shake pieces of The Last Supper offa me and breathe some secularized fresh air.

“Been there. Done that,” I said. “And it's never any fun, but shit happens.”

He resisted my nudge.

“And I want it to be all for the Greater Glory of Him Above,” he continued.

I gave him another mild nudge then a genuine push towards our waiting taxi.

“Above? When it comes to directions, He's a Dunce,” I said. “Up. Down. Back. Forwards. Left. Right. It's all the same to Him. He doesn't do Dimension and He doesn't take Directions and when it comes to plot, He's a Party Pooping Know It All.”

“My God is a God of Joy.”

“Really? Bugger gives away the ending before we've even started on the popcorn,” I persisted. “That's always taken the fun out of it for me.”

“You sound as if you know Him.”

“More than most. Do you want the Death Seat or hang out in the rear?”

“I don't get out much so I like to see where I'm driving.”

“Okay. Death Seat it is but keep an eye on the meter. These East Side cabbies don't always follow the Golden Rule.”

He looked down at me with his watery blues. “But you still really prefer them as a people, don't you?”

Holy shit! Where did that come from? I admit I was always century loafing in the Pre Bible era as much as I could get away with, but I always kept it under my hat. Christians always wanted to own their enemies Here or Wherever and I felt I owed them that since they spent a lot of time keeping me at the top of their spiritual and demonic SEOs.

At least on this planet.

Elsewhere I was fighting with my Nemesis, Black Body Hole Expulsion, for product placement.

And in Andromeda? Don't ask.

They were praying for galactic collision.

I did my best but it wasn't easy when you were part of the Pathetic Fallacy for the Human Rubble.

They wouldn't even feel Andromeda coming.

The United Federation of Androidal Planetetants had developed it into a Stealth Galaxy.

“All God's children, etc. etc.,” I replied and shoved him in beside the Cabbie who had already started the digital meter and was muttering something foreign sounding underneath his breath as it ticked on with its artificial auditory monetizing cadence.

We each have our special methods of praying and his made more sense than most.

Priest Bowie gave him a forgiving smile at his usurer's proclivity for pesos and the Cabbie, pissed off as could be expected, told him to buckle up real good since he intended to drive crazy and didn't give a flying fairy fuck about insurance.

God is all powerful and will decide who lives and who dies.

And that deterministic sally of his let me take it from there while we drove away.

Call me the Galactic Garbage Collector.

With a little anti spiritual inculcation, that Cabbie could be my kind of follower. I like acolytes with tude.

And I couldn't always depend on any of the military to do evil as well as feel it since war and all its attending activities like; 'we have a situation here' and 'with extreme prejudice' and 'don't shoot till you see the white of their eyes' and 'May Day! May Day! We're Going Down!!' and my favorite 'BANZAI!!!!!!” were now so techno cybernetical it could be celled in.

Machine murder sucked.

Where were lust, shame, guilt, guile and spilled guts when you really needed them?

Not on the end of a 'send' button, if you want my much experienced opinion.

What I disliked about human evolution was that it was heading in the wrong direction.

Pulling away from blood, sweat and tears and into all that Matrix 'nothing's real' shit.

The Cabbie turned to me, his highly angulated North Eastern features furrowed and inquisitive.

“Where to?” he asked with a suitable emphasis on where.

He obviously pined for the Homeland and I was tempted but...

“We have a date with destiny,” I replied. “So let me give you the quadrants.”

“If I don't have to do the math...twenty percent off,” he replied, nodding his head in an appealing manner that denoted indifference to all that wasn't God, colored by the capacity to get along while he sussed out the situation for his own benefit.

I'd love to have him on My Team.

“No problem,” I said. “I helped Gauss get out of elementary school with a trick I taught him.”

The Cabbie pulled into traffic like a shiv between two ribs, obviously thinking it through and glanced at me in the rear view mirror. “You teacher?”

“For the right people,” I said. “But they have to prove themselves to be worthy. Seems like I met you before.”

“I get around.”

Up front, David Bowie/Father Jones was ecstatic as well as curious.

“Could we drive by the Crista Iglesia?” he begged. “I always like to see how the opposition is doing.”

“You want opposition. You got money. I take you all the way to Jerusalem,” the Cabbie told him and gave me a long look in the mirror.

I had him. A non Jewish Judas. My fave. And I was sure I'd seen him before on the Time Line.

“The local opposition first, then we'll see,” I said. “Time and Space are on our side.”

The Cabbie grunted agreement, turned right and we went to see how The Nearer To God And Thee side was doing.

Wanking the Wicked in my opinion.

“They're trying and they're almost there, but they still haven't received the Word,” Father Jones pontificated and kept his nose against the windshield in order to sniff out sin.

“Well,” I said. “I know for a fact that they're looking for the quintessential answer-all, God For Dummies edition and I haven't written it yet.”

“Can you really do that?” David Bowie/Jones exclaimed. “That is entirely my goal!”

“Stick with me and we'll fulfill all your dreams,” I promised and crossed my fingers if not my tongue. “I'll be your Ghost Writer In The Sky.”

I rubbed my chin. It was still burning from that damned piece of Judas paint.

“I want it to be like the Bible but something that ordinary people can relate to,” FJ pontificated further. “I'm beyond the Latin thing.”

“So was Bruno and look what happened to him.”

“Mistakes were made, but moving forward, I feel Mother Church still has much to offer the masses.”

“Providing they make offerings first,” I said.

I was beginning to think I'd pulled up the wrong look alike.

But I've always been patient in the Manichean Struggle.

You just have to outlast the idiots who can take a punch.

“Look,” I said. “You just can't sandbox off a subset of your content in a stripped-down version of God's Word. I mean, Da Vinci Code?”

“It made some interesting points,” Father Jones allowed.

“So did Archimedes and his were a lot more useful,” I answered.

The Second Coming Of Davie turned to me. “What do you suggest?” he asked as the white cliffs of Crista Iglesia Dover hoved to on the horizon.

“Say it in songs,” I advised. “And the misguided and walking in the wilderness masses will be yours. And Mother Church's of course.”

“Do you really think so?” Father Jones queried and turned to look through the windshield as the white, pure, alabaster architecture of the Purer Than Thou sect came into view.

Ignoring the mind blasted non doubting dolts who approached it with souls a singing and pockets a jingling, he turned to me.

“I really want to help them,” he said.

“Two albums and a couple of hits and we can have that misguided pseudo Johnny Come Lately church crashing to the ground and offering itself up for condo development,” I promised. “And those cultists will have nowhere else to go.”

I'd done it before so I knew what I was promising.

The first three Crusades between 1095 and 1192, ADD, (After Dimwit Dating), were all my idea.

When He turned me into a middle aged late Eleventh Century Catholic prelate just to give me a taste of my own medicine, I settled right in and became the right hand man to that dithery Frog, Otho, known to the Believers as Pope Urban II. I set up the Roman Curia like a royal court, which gave him and all the Anointed Afterwords access to six countries' and two continents' worth of loot, and I even kneecapped that posturing anti pope Clement III for him.

Hell, later on I also had old dead Clem exhumed and dumped into the Tiber just to make sure of the Sanctity of Succession, so Otho owed me.

I got him emotionally charged up that those damn infidel Seljuk Turks, (who were really minding their own business and messing around militarily in their own bailiwick), had the Holy Land by the short and curlies.

And it wasn't to be allowed!

On a thousand martyrs' graves, No!

Time to take back what should be lawfully ours, I told him. It's God's Will.

That was a stretch since I personally knew that He didn't give a shit one way about it one way or the other as long as all parties sang His praises and looked suitably contrite before dying because they were all assholes anyway and didn't deserve Him.

But it worked and the next thing I knew, a hundred thousand butt frigging, wine and beer swilling Christian swine were marching off to knock some spiritual sense into those austere Turkish teetotalers while grabbing everything of value that wasn't nailed down.

It was kinda fun for a while.

Only part I didn't like was that Urban, despite my objections, gave those Western hairy hordes remission from their sins if they killed enough of the bad guys wearing the fag slippers.

But you can't have it all your own way, as I've always said and I tried to live with the loss of business.

During the next century as Popes came and went, my Crusade idea sort of caught on and I kept it alive by my brilliant use of almost believable rumor, hearsay and lies.

In other words, religious fervor.

And as a result of my untiring efforts, two more military juggernauts advanced on the eastern part of the Mediterranean to Lance for the Lord.

However, when my tenth batch of candle burning bum boys started dying off of old age, people began to get suspicious that I was still around, fresh as a daisy and rooting for our side and whatever boykins that were handy, and my 'age shall not wither' status was either going to be a miracle worthy of canonization or else would lead to a stake through the heart while roasting my tootsies over a sizzling and popping bed of garlic cloves.

So, grabbing what was owed to me, which was about half the Vatican receipts for that year, I went off on a peaceful and very private pilgrimage to the Far East to try out their medicinal herbs and drugs, which is what I wanted to do in the first place a century earlier.

Meanwhile back in the Here and Now, and twisting around on the front seat, the New Next and About To Be Hexed David Bowie was staring, glassy eyed with the fire of Salvation burning through his brain, at the stream of lost souls and potential converts traipsing into the White House of Hell like cattle to the spiritual slaughter.

“I'm In!” he yelled.

“It For The Lord!” I finished, completing his probable thought, and our first concept album was born.

I've always been quick off the Mark. Like...Mathew! Luke! Here's John!

See what I mean? I'm soo good.

Writing the Shakespeare Canon was a breeze.

A little of this. A little of that. And a whole lot of love. In between the lies, the spies and the try to keep count of the killings.

Papists and other folk of that ilk have always misunderstood me.

They think the Bible is the Word of God.

Like saying Seven Come Eleven, throw the loaded dice, then pray up a storm.

All I can say is har de har.

Good luck with that.

House always wins. Don't believe me? Ask Him.

Nothing to do with me. He set it up.

Proof positive?

With me, you can earn Heavenly Milers Awards.

Still don't believe me?

Okay.

Read the Biblical subtext and look for all the embedded clues about me and it will all come clear.

I'm the Good Guy. Honest.

Ahh. You don't believe me?

Okay. Have it His Way. Throw the dice and pray, dude.

I'm always ready to pull in your bets and give you a kind but exhortative smile.

It's what I do.

The Cabbie broke into my religious reverie.

“Where do you want to go?” he enunciated carefully since we were now almost out of the city.

“Ohh! Look at God's Work!” Davie Toothy breathed as he glimpsed a tree full of seagulls sitting and shitting in between two abandoned warehouses.

“How much prope you got?” I queried.

The Cabbie peered at the fuel avatar. “Not enough. Holy shi...full!”

“Keep going and don't worry about the fare. Here's a down payment.” I handed over two of the millions of the Ben Franklins that I'd got off the Fed after I'd explained to them about the wages of sin and how it would end up for them if they didn't divvie up.

I always liked Bullshit Ben. He'd screw anything that had a pulse. That's why he liked France. They were more lively there even when they didn't have one.

“One for the meter. Other for the return trip,” I said. “More when needed.”

The Cabbie took the hundreds, held them up to the light for inspection, muttered something that sounded like 'I'm on my way to Saturday, won't you come along with me?' in Roma and put them in his change purse.

“Like music?” he asked.

“Is it spiritual?” Davie Two inquired while gazing at the first of the fields that had resisted urbanization. But not by much since they were littered with junk.

“In my Home Country, we play this at weddings,” the Cabbie rejoined. “Losing virginity, very spiritual for us.”

He slipped an old fashioned CD into the player and we were surrounded by beat driven, electronically enhanced, self dramatic Roma paeans by some Boy Toy singing about the Pleasures and Power of Pussy.

No argument from me.

One of His best inventions, right up there with Bum Blasting.

I leaned over to Davie 2 Step who was starting to hum along.

“Can you dance?”

He turned to me, his waxen features still nodding to the beat. “If I take my cassock off.”

“We'll have to get you some new clothes,” I said.

Despite his knees bobbing to the beat under the cassock, he looked at me seriously. “What is it you want from me?” he asked.

“Your soul. Naah, just kidding.”

I never could resist the old style repartee.

“We'll figure it out as we go along,” I lied.

We were now speeding along a winding country road.

The Cabbie turned to me. “This okay?”

“Yep.”

“Tank's still full.” He gave me a searching look.

“It's a miracle,” I said and leaned back in the seat to think/feel it out while Da Bowie exclaimed excitedly about the cows we were whizzing by.

Probably the first time he'd seen titties since he was a baby.

SNEAKY SNAKES AND BROKEN LADDERS

The Rep looked up, a pill still only half in his mouth, as Karl entered, looking grim.

Reluctantly spitting the Red Zinger out into his shaking hand, the Rep made the classic 'suffer little children and bad news to come to me' with his arms akimbo. “What? Whaaat?”

“It ate im.”

“Who? What?”

Karl looked at the Rep like the druggy dirt bag he was. “Try to keep up, Pillsbury Boy.”

He clicked the wall screen on and immediately deafening shrieks and screams banged around the room like a thousand golf balls hammering on a tin roof.

On video, the virtual David Bowie was howling as his minuscule muscle and bone body was being crushed by the Corp Control Watermark Snake who, like the song said, had no intentions of leaving him alone.

The Green Serpent had turned into a boa constrictor and was wrapped around the singer's skinny torso and was squeezing him in time with the music while his tail whapped out quarter notes like a well beaten bass drum.

“Holy shit!” the Rep yelled. “The fucking snake was supposed to wait till the second album!”

The virtual singer, now compressed into a well dressed, multi colored Tootsie Roll, toppled to the floor as Green Goliath released him and, after performing some very sexy and sinuous moves to the music, flattened back onto the floor, gaped open his jaws and started to munch and lever his soon to be ex musical partner inside.

Thanks to the magic of electronics, the tubular corpse was still screaming at the top of its lungs while a guitar took a riff studded solo.

“GG said he couldn't wait!” Karl shouted.

The Rep was livid. “But now it's a One Off!”

“Upside is we've already got ten million paid hits!”

“But then what? We've started with a bang! We're supposed to finish with a bang!”

His Teckie looked at him. “You talk funny,” he said.

“Well, I don't feel funny! This is a pissoff! Can't you bring that skinny English fucker back to life?”

Karl shrugged, embarrassed. “Normally, yes, but GG's put a prohib on that.”

“The fucking snake has stopped you and your nerd asshole collection of dog dung from doing what I hired you to do?”

“Since you put that way, yeah.”

“I'll pay you more. How much?”

“You're not listenin. Snake now owns administration on the fucking video and won't let us in. Corps R Us don't like it neither.”

The Rep stopped fuming for a second and went into crisis overdrive. “Okay. It's had a taste of blood and fame. So it's still at the table. What's it want?”

“He wants the real David Bowie.”

The Rep screwed up his face like he was smelling his own ass after a weekend beer bash. “He's dead. Long gone.”

“Or a reasonable substitute. A look and act alike.”

“Where we going to find that?”

“According to GG, it's already been done.”

“What? How does a thirty five foot effing virtual rope know shit like that?”

Karl tried to look patient. “Tree of Knowledge ring a bell?”

“So if we do find a replacement. Real flesh and blood. Then what?”

“We get two albums before said replacement is snuffed on screen and we all make gazillions. Oh, yeah. Production values. It has to be three dee holo, full five esses.”

The Rep fondled the Red Zinger ruminatively. “That'll cost a fortune. Buut. We do have out of the gate promo.”

“That's what GG said. Elements of surprise and expectation. Like a two album snuff thriller vid. Where and When. Oooh! Scratch my Uglies!”

“Like it! So how do we go about finding a David Bowie replicant?”

“Could start off with that little redheaded guy you kicked out. The guy you stole the song from. He might have a lead. Somethin must have given him the idea.”

“I didn't kick him out! He left!”

“That's a first. With all the losers you get in here. So we a go? GG wants an answer or he's gonna spit out what's left. It ain't pretty and we'll lose the Venus Vegan Crowd and the AR Activists right off. And then the Perv Patrol starts sniffing around. You've had problems with them before.”

Behind them, the music video ended with a Burp.

“Ever play that board game, Snakes And Ladders?” Rep asked.

Karl looked at the balding idiot in a suit who signed the checks when it suited him. “Huh? What the fuck does that--”

“Tell the snake he's on. Digest in peace.”

“Don't fuck up.”

“You got the preposition wrong. With me it's always U with a capital U.”

“To think I left IBM for this.”

“Hey, I saved you from the crash. Itsy Bitsy Mach is heestory but you're still here.”

Karl thought for a minute then nodded. “Yeah. I shoulda learned from the Micro-Corel-Oppalis fallout.”

The Rep leaned back and fingered his pill ruminatively. “Tell GG, feel free to be all the snake he can be. We'll take the ladders.”

Karl, for the seventeenth thousandth plus time, looked at the Rep with utter disdain. “You are so old.”

“Yup. And that makes me a survivor. We'll see how you do. Talk to the snake. And let's move forwards.”

ANGEL FROM HELL

The Cabbie turned. “Full tank good. Full bladder bad. Time to make Roma rain.”

I looked up. We were in full blown countryside. Not a gas station in sight. Up ahead and to our right was a private driveway with an opened gate and a hundred yards down there was a small farmhouse and some outbuildings.

“Turn there,” I said. “They'll have a bathroom.” I turned to Davie Dollhouse. “You need to go?”

He smiled at me shyly. “I use a bottle strapped to my leg. It helps during long services.”

“We can empty it in one of their fields,” I said. “Keep the plants happy.”

“I'd like that! All of God's creatures!”

“You bet,” I said as we bumped up the rough driveway. “And piss on them if they can't take a joke.”

When we rolled up to the front of the farmhouse, I leaned out. Looked okay. Two stories. Wooden siding. Needed paint. But new windows. Somebody cared. Veranda had three chairs and a hanging rattan love seat. Ready for company.

“I piss behind car,” the Cabbie announced. “Can't wait.”

He looked to me for absolution.

“Suit yourself,” I said. “But you might be disappointed afterwards. I bet they got a great can. I'm going for the full fire hose experience.”

“And I'm okay for a while,” Father Jones announced.

“Got it,” I said. “You can slosh but don't spill.”

Davie Two grinned.

“That was one of our little jokes around the sacristy,” he proclaimed happily.

“Bet it made them pee their pants,” I said and got out and approached the front door.

Something wrong with this place.

Couldn't put my finger on it, but my antennae were up.

No, not horns. That is so anachronistic.

Some Middle Ages artists just ran out of ideas although I knew a couple who'd been there and back and didn't like to talk about it much less put anything down on paper that would've imperiled their immortal souls and turned them into flesh faggots destined for the eternal flame while the sexed up peanut gallery yelled and screamed at their bubbling remains, as the purified sinning bits of the Sacrificed ascended to the Hereafter, shortly before the Witless Watchers of God's Will went around the corner en mass to hump like rabbits.

Replacements first. Resurrection later.

Ahh, again and again! Those were the good old days!

Humanity has always had a good handle on the practical, but blow smoke out their butts when it comes to metaphysical speculation.

Which suits me to a tee since I spend so much time with Them Asses and I'm not much for hypotheticals when I'm doing the Dirty with the Doomed.

And then there are always the ramifications of untestable, unfalsifiable hypotheses that, when given the--

“May I help you?”

I looked up, thankfully obstructed in a mindless mid thought that was going absolutely nowhere.

The door was open and she was standing in it!

What the Hell was her name again?

And how the Hell?

I didn't give her a phone number, my name or even my FB EYE handle!

And I wasn't on Twiddle!

Yet she was here! In a Grant Wood farm house! She'd said she was a PR agent or something citified like that!

What the Holy Hades was she doing here, looking like something farm fresh out of an old turn of the second to last century Sears Roebuck catalog? If I could get a piece of that on sex site, I'd even do outhouses!

“That's a tricky question,” I said as I mounted the last stair and stood my ground on the porch.

Behind me, the Cabbie had shaken off and was peering into the gas tank to make sure the gauge wasn't lying to him like his government always did back home.

Daffy Davie had wandered off into the nearby field, probably to empty his cock cartridge, priestly piss potty or whatever he called it.

And I was left to deal with her.

“You didn't call,” she said, her hands on her slightly swelling, gingham covered hips.

“I didn't have your call number,” I lied.

“I gave it to you. Twice.”

“Just call me Fumble Fingers,” I said, trying a defensive chuckle. “I just can't keep up with new Tekkie trends.”

“I'd like to call you something else,” she said. “But my Godparents would be shocked.”

“They're inside?”

She smoothed back her blonde locks. “Why would I drive all the way out here? Duhh.”

“You're a little more testy than you were the other night,” I observed.

“I thought our last Rolling Stones gather no moss tete a tete in my doorstep would have given you an idea of what was in store for you if you ever came back.”

“It didn't, but I've always been an optimist in these matters,” I said. “It's what keeps me going.”

She smiled like a Siren on the Rocks, stuffing the fog horn with packed dirt.

“Well, here we are. Another day. Another doorstep. Would you like to come in this time?”

I turned, looking for back up.

But Father J had disappeared into a nearby head high crop of corn with his piss tube swinging above his head like an upraised priestly censer dispensing his sacred spray.

And the Cabbie was giving the the Evil Eye to the free range chickens who were running nervously around him and the cab, while still keeping an eye out for available bugs.

I had a sense that he regarded the entire farmyard like it was a muy fresca barbecue for the whole village back home.

I'd been to one of their spring planting doos in the old days when it was still a lot of mountainous scrub mixed with a whole lot of ecstatic body rub and if it moved, shit or stood still, it was 'we hae meat that ye can eat' after the two day long sacred sexual rites were finally over with.

And the young uns? Oh my gawd! They all had lovely calves and their dancing?...Well, Dancing With The Stars? Eat what's left of your over the hill rerun heart out. These were real dancers and above them were real stars. And the prize was guess what?

Moi.

I was the judge and 'jump on your jury' too.

I know.

Call me a sentimental fool for my tool. And the one I had then had stood the test of time until--

“Well?” she prompted irritably.

I awoke from my millennia long off color reverie with a start.

“Sure. Why not? What have I got to lose?” I queried in what I hoped was a facetious and rhetorical manner.

But I knew better.

“That remains to be seen, doesn't it?” she snapped. “And I still haven't forgiven you for not coming in that first night when I made myself unmistakably available. You've got some explaining to do,” she added and slammed, not closed, the door behind me after I had entered the Dead Man Walking the Via Dolorosa.

This was not going well but just call me the last of the Cosmic Crazies.

I can swim upstream with the best of them.

Gotta be an egg up there somewhere.

“I am forever at your service,” I lied.

Hey, lead with your best shot I always say, especially when you're going into battle with a foe twice as good looking as you.

I followed her twitching hips into the kitchen like a puppy after a treat.

“Are you going to abuse that poor young priest?” she called over her shoulder.

“Naah, he's not my type.”

“I'm not talking about that. I'm talking--”

“I can only lead them to the trough,” I said. “After that it's--”

“Trouble.”

'Not for me' I thought.

“Anything to eat?” I asked, trying to turn the interrogation off.

No such luck.

“You were always a glutton,” she said and led me into the kitchen where two very old, very brown people with white hair were sitting at a table, waiting and smiling.

Oh God. The Family Scene. To me, Hell Here on Earth and Anywhere Else Worth Mentioning.

She turned to me, a triumphant smile on her beautiful face. Damn! I should have taken her up on her offer while she was still friendly.

“I would like to introduce you to my foster parents, Giuseppe and Maria Resotto. They're originally from Verona. They're too embarrassed by their accents to speak English. No, I lie. They're both mute.”

The old couple nodded to me and semaphored an international invitation to sit at the table. Which I did.

“Questo è un mio amico, Christopher Marlowe,” she said to them and they smiled at me like I was something wonderful and new. I guess they didn't get out much.

“Molto lieto, lieto di fare la sua conoscenza,” I said, hoping I'd kept up with the changes. “And how the hell did you know my name?” I said out of the side of my mouth to their bitch of a pretend daughter.

The two ancient folk turned to each other in total joy. Some folks are easy to please, unlike their Hell Hath No Fury sexy snip of a foster child.

“I thought you said you were never in Italy!” she snapped. On me like an angry stoat biting a rabbit's rear end.

“Only in an earlier life,” I joked.

“And you don't remember my name, do you?”

Here it was. The Deal Breaker.

Outside the chickens started squawking and screeching so somebody at least was trying to get me some lunch.

“I'd better go see what's happening,” I said and started to rise.

She pushed me back down. Jeez, pretty strong for a girl.

“My name!”

“Mine is mud, I guess,” I announced, hoping for a laugh.

The old couple still looked at me expectantly.

“It's Angelica,” she said.

I groaned inside. Figured. Angel From Hell.

Not what I ordered.

“So how did you and your foster folk get together?” I asked, now hoping for a bye on the verbal assault.

“I was born there.”

I looked at her. Blue eyes. Light creamy complexion. Blonde hair dancing flirtatiously even as she shook her head disapprovingly.

“Funny. You don't look Italian.”

“My parents came from the North. The Germans loved them. Died in an avalanche.”

Outside the chickens were shrieking for their lives. Lunch was getting closer, thank God. I was starved.

“Snow?” I asked with false concern.

“Rocks. They were climbing through the Italian Alps.”

“Ouch,” I said, now hoping to look sympathetic.

“And they?” I motioned to the old couple who were hanging on our every word.

“They were the people who started the avalanche.”

“Also fellow climbers?”

“No. Fellow assassins. Revolutionaries. The Germans not only loved my parents. My parents loved the Germans. They were chip carrying members of the Pro Euro Anti Italian Nationalists cadre. Giuseppe and Maria were on an independent Italy's side. They were fighting for their sovereignty against the Neo Euro, which is now worth shit on a stick.”

“R.I.P.,” I said. “I teeter between Bit Mint and good old Neodymium.”

She smirked me. “Still riding that Rarity Wave, huh? The Germans were dry drowning and started being friends with the Russco Arctic Oil Cabal. And you know where that went. So they had to go south to ally with the African Sunshine Suck Ups. Italy just happened to be in the way.”

Who cared? I always thought Greenland was misnamed...until lately. And Iceland was pure energy. Seasons come and seasons go.

And I, for one, could take the heat.

The chickens had finally gone quiet, so lunch was finally on its way! Yesss!

My mouth began to water. I was certain this avalanche of interlocution was reaching its natural conclusion with me being rightfully under it.

R.I.P., you little prick! Now, get out of here! And don't ever come back!

But no.

She was just warming to the task of 'good person to bad person' one way educational chat.

“So they took me in after the Third Euro Fisc Invasion was over,” she continued. “I was alone in an apartment in the nearest town where my family was bivouacked and they found out about me from other Pro Nationalists who were delighted to hear that my traitorous parents were now eating hectares of rock.”

I decided to steer the conversation to more universal themes.

“I remember that last altercation,” I said. “What was it about again?”

“Who had the higher ground.”

“Oh yeah. The Second Ocean Rise. Who would have thought that the Caspian could blow like that? So, it all ended as well as can be expected, huh?”

“If you like murder, mayhem, slaughter and sacrilege. The Germans were also after the ex German Pope who'd gone bonkers on translating the Old Testament into Esperanto.”

“Don't look at me,” I said. “I was hanging out in South America at the time.”

Angelica looked at my thin but seamless features critically. “You must have been a child,” she said.

“I've always been a child of fortune,” I reported.

“Cause I was a baby. So what does that make you?”

I could smell something in the air besides trouble. Yessss! Roasting chicken! He'd got it going! Probably started it with that miracle gas filler upper I'd thoughtfully provided. And maybe some wood off the barn. It looked really dry and weathered.

“Can I take you to lunch?” I asked. “Your parentes calumnia are also invited since it's their chicken and their land.”

“You do get around, don't you?” she said in a non complimentary way.

“It's been a busy life,” I replied.

“Really. I'll ask them,” she said and turned to them like an angel of glowing light and then turned back to me as I ogled her boobs. “They're real. Verax-acis. I speak the truth, but, then, you wouldn't know it if it bit you on your skinny ass, would you?”

I shook my head. I'd been upside too long and was beginning to lose it. She was starting to make sense!Maybe it was the light coming through the window on her golden filaments of fleshy fulsomeness. Maybe the way her...as she...

Oh oh. Stop! Regroup! Rephrase! Reboot!

Maybe the Cabbie had some bootleg booze in his glove compartment. I needed some sort of re-reality fix. And the nastier and dirtier the better.

“They say yes,” she reported, once again interrupting my defensive ditherings.

I looked over at my table companions. I hadn't heard one thing from any of them, but her foster parents were grinning from ear to ear so they must be in the know.

“And what's more, it's I that own it,” she informed me in a prissy grammatically correct fashion. You could always tell the Private Schoolers. “So lunch is really on me.”

“Think of it as bringing in caterers,” I counter suggested and helped old and rickety Maria to her in turning unguis feet.

The ancient crone searched me with her dimming brown eyes, found what she wanted and took my arm in her claw.

“She likes you,” Angelica stated dourly. “Probably takes her back. She had a bit of the devil in her when she was younger, according to Giuseppe.”

Her husband, looking more like gnarled elf than the devil's acolyte, levered himself up and started tottering to where the cooking smell was coming from.

He obviously wasn't a 'chicken is a precious pet' guy. That I could work with.

As Angelica supported his skinny arm behind me, she leaned forward and whispered into my ear.

“Don't even think about it, asshole.”

Damn! This angelic bitch was going to be trouble!

“You bet your boy bippy I am,” she whispered again and pushed me and her so called mother towards the scorching feast.

It did smell good.

Bubble first. Bubble Burst later, I always say, and approached the impromptu roast chicken skewered on an oil flared red hot dipstick with all my defenses down. I could only hope I could turn the all too thin air into nitro just in case we had to make a quick exit.

But I looked favorably on what the Cabbie had accomplished in such a short time.

No wonder the States had made amends to his people after they flattened most of their cities, looking for the rare earths so needed by the Can/Mex/Amer IT Cartel for their toys and tools.

After the explosions had diminished and the dead had been carted away and the minerals had gone to where they shouldn't go if you wanted peace on what was left of the planet, the Bombees had agreed to announce to the States, 'Business as usual. What the hell? We'll get over it.'

Then, using an Invisible Freedom Flier they'd leased from the Trobiand Kiriwina Tekkies for the day, they'd dropped a few nukes on Dallas and immediately declared a ceasefire, which held.

And, of course, it ended in, 'How was your trip?' and 'Have you any luggage to declare?' and 'Have a nice day.' in both languages.

However, here at where we were, and since he was a Creature of the Moment, the Cabbie didn't give a flying eff about history. Only good cooking.

Good flames. Not too much. Not too little. Spit was turning like a sped up sun dial. And the chickens were bubbling like an adolescent cheerleader squad from bums to boobs. This Cabbie knew his combustibles.

I was sure I'd seen him before.

The weathered slats he'd ripped off of the barn walls were burning real good. Nothing like a 'take your time – we got all the damned duration in the world' aging of wood to increase speed of flammability.

It always worked for me and my Work even when I was irritable and a little jumpy while I was considering the Cosmological Injustice of it all.

“So,” I said. “Lets start. We'll have to wait for it, but first of all, who wants the wishbone?”

“Won't work for you,” she avowed. “I'll take it.”

Maria patted Angelica's arm lovingly as she clacked her dentures while old Giuseppe drooled at the gently browning breast and patted her on her back.

Pretty impressive to my way of thinking.

They'd killed her parents and she was still hanging out with them.

There'd never been enough forgiveness in the world to suit me.

And the Bible was proof up of that. You think not? All rightie...

For example, I always thought that the Cain and Abel saga was petty and predictable. Throw in a willing sis or two into the mix and you might have had something with more narrative oomph.

And more accessible to Them Asses.

Hmm. There was an idea for a whole Pop Op! I wondered if I could find an Evil Twin for Davie Dolt. We could always get the chicks to sing, wiggle and wank anyone in the audience who was turned on by my music.

“A penny for your thoughts,” Angelica said dryly as we plunked down on a rough bench that the Cabbie had made out of an old dry water trough. This guy could work situational miracles.

Even the chickens who'd made the cut, were pecking around his feet, hoping for leftovers.

“Make it a nickel and you got it,” I said, irritated at being interrupted while I was on a roll.

“So now we have to bargain again?” she said, equally irritated. “What the Hell is he doing?”

I looked up.

A hundred yards away, oh, okay, ninety metric meters and centimeter change, our Pet Priest had his Praying Peter out and was watering the watercress while singing that old spiritual standard, The Water is Wide, I Can't Cross Over. He wasn't that bad. And not that good. Just right.

“To answer your second question, I'm hoping he's turning water into wine, but I have my doubts, but then don't we all?” I declaimed sourly and wondered if the hard working and hospitable Cabbie had even a flask.

“And what about the first?”

She was persistent.

I spread my arms in what I thought was a welcoming way. “Su casa es mi casa,” I said. “Now we better get ready to eat before the old folk get it all.”

I could see Giuseppe, the dirty old bugger, had his watery eyes glued on the nearest Parson's Nose turning slowly and deliciously on its skewer along with the rest of the chicken's browning behind.

From the look of his look, God only knows what he'd done to that chicken before, but, then again, who am I to judge?

That's never been my job.

MORE SNAKES AND BROKEN LADDERS

The Snake Holo gazed down at the Rep with shiny black cold glassy eyes. He was immense. His head filled out the entire corner to corner wall screen and half the office. His hiss had rumbling basso profundo undertones that shook the walls.

'This could work into some R&B ballads for sure, like Barry White gone snakey', the Rep speculated as he tried not to piss his pants.

“YOU ACCEPT MY TERMS?”

The Rep nodded. “To the letter.”

“MY LAW TEAM IS MONITORING THIS CALL.”

The Rep raised his pudgy arms. “I got nothing to hide...except from the IRS.”

He tried to chuckle and dry swallowed when he couldn't.

“WE'LL TALK ABOUT THAT LATER. AT PRESENT WE NEED MORE CONTENT.”

“I've got people out in the field looking for a party of interest,” the Rep declared.

“NOT NECESSARY. I AM DEPLOYOYING MY OWN RESOURCES.”

“Your--”

“I HAVE A SCALAR SEARCH UNDERWAY. YOU WILL NOT FIND HIM USING YOUR INEPT POST MAYA METHODOLOGIES.”

“Maya?”

“AS IN CURTAIN OF. HE IS PROTECTED.”

The Rep squirmed. “This kind of sounds--”

“MESSIANIC.”

“Uh. Yeah. I guess so.”

“THE PERSON YOU ARE SEEKING EXISTS ON MANY LEVELS. HE IS COMPLEX BUT SIMPLE. GENUINE BUT DUPLICITOUS. CRAFTY BUT CARELESS. HE HAS--”

“What are we talking about here?” the Rep interrupted.

“DO NOT INTERRUPT ME AGAIN! LEAVE HIM TO ME. YOUR JOB IS TO TAKE CARE OF THE BACKGROUND BUSINESS. I WILL TAKE CARE OF THE MUSICAL PART OF OUR EQUATION.”

“Equation? Like math? Now you're really starting to--”

The enraged Snake hissed so loudly that the prized pictures of Ex Stars fell off the walls and crashed just like their careers.

“IT ALL MUST BE BALANCED, YOU FOOL! THIS IS NOT JUST ANOTHER MUSICAL VID SERIES! THIS IS THE DECLAMATION!”

“Of what?” the Rep yelled back, covering his ears a split second too late.

“THE DIVIDE BETWEEN THE DIVINE AND THE DAMNED! YOU WHO DO NOT KNOW ME!” the Snake Holo announced, subsided and disappeared back into the wall screen.

The still dazed Rep turned to Karl the Tekkie who was standing behind him.

“That fucking snake has changed! A lot! And not the way I expected! What the fuck do you make of it?” he demanded.

Karl took the audio plugs out of his ears. He was used to Heavy Metal Hard Rock feedback. “One hell of an album. For the survivors,” he said and grinned. “That snake's not gonna take any prisoners.”

“Decla fucking mation? Double Dee? I thought this was supposed to be 'David and Goliath, the Rematch!'?”

“More like Godzilla meets Bambi,” Karl jeered happily and went out the door and back to his work where one and zero could make more than two.

The Rep stared up at the dark wall screen then hit his wrist phone.

“Laura! Get somebody in here to clean up this fucking mess!” he shouted at it.

He looked down at the broken Has Beens strewn across the floor like a defeated over the hill and far away army.

“Well, fuck you too!” he yelled at the shattered dreams and destroyed egos that littered his office, smiles still plastered on their heavily made up and photogenic faces even after they were dead or at least getting closer to moving on to where stars were as common as dirt.

ANTI CONFESSIONAL

“I've followed your career with great interest,” Angelica said.

She had a toothpick working on the last of the stubborn barbecue chicken bits so I wasn't worried. When sentients of any sort, gender, size, type or planetary location are overtly interested in their bodies, (or somebody else's), I relax. It means they're busy and out of the cognitive loop.

Which also means they're ripe for attack.

The Cabbie approached us. He had already escorted, I.e., carried a very drunk Maria and Giuseppe under each arm back to the farmhouse where they'd flaked out on a couch in somnolent but pseudo sexy embrace.

And. And! HALLELUYAH!

He not only had a flask. For the last two hours, it had been endlessly topped off from a second gas tank that he used to smuggle whatever wherever. And this time it was secretly carrying gallons and gallons of one hundred percent grain alcohol to a scientific team of environmentalists who were out in the remaining bush somewhere studying the degrees of ecological enlightenment available through advanced inebriation.

By the time I was finished with that tank, those Tree Huggers would have to scale the test results of their ontological orgies back more than a mite and get to know the flora and the fauna better with a dry tongue and a clear head before it disappeared altogether.

I wished them luck. The whole game of: 'Is it animal, vegetable or mineral?' has always seemed a trick question to me. Who gives a shit? If it fondles, fuck it. If it stands still, fuck with it. If it's mineral, sit on it or dig it up.

Those pseudo scientific fools were more than welcome to that entire dead end mode of ecological investigation and algebraic end game descriptors. Hey, in my non humble opinion, extinction is both eventual and essential. Sadly, it's not immediate. But there's gotta be an end, for a beginning. Right?

Truth is, I'd always found Kreb's Cycle a bit of an up your butt bummer. When you get right down to it, it's basically Kill or be Killed. Eat or be Eaten. Muncher or Munchee. Only looked nice when gussied up in mathematical or euphemistic terminology such as 'The Cycle of Life'.

At least the escaping litany of fauna, from mice to brontosauruses, praying not to be eaten, could always make a scrabbling or lumbering runs for it, whereas succulent edible plants were rooted to their wind and dump directed spot and could only wait, like screamless King Kong's bitches, for death, dalliance, or digestion. Guess which?

Entire religious tomes were constructed on it, mostly as an antidote.

Never worked for me. Just call me crazy for the real pic, without Photo Shop VIII taking out the Hot Eye.

To sum up for the geriatric jury:

To me this entire effing planet was a murderous Mobius Strip that I had been marooned on just because I wasn't in total agreement with the Big Plan! Excuse me? Total agreement? I thought the whole fucking Earth experiment was basically a placebo parody for some other planet under investigation because far more was happening there in the way of getting smarter.

Simply put, Earth was the Bum of the Month in the ongoing fight for the Cosmological Championship.

Suited me.

But I prevaricate as well as pontificate.

On the whole I liked robots and other assorted cyber folk a lot better. Nothing like the efficiency of the Photo Electric Effect as an elan vital power source.

If I had my way, one could take flesh in any morphological modality and--

“Are you even listening to me?”

I looked up, still swirling with my thoughts.

I could've taken Shakespeare cyber punk but the Stratford Stupe had died too soon and after that I was supposed to be dead so there went the Stratfordian market.

At least for me. The Stratfordians had been working it to death ever since.

“I said, are you even listening to me?”

I looked up. This time for real.

She was twirling the toothpick between two fingers. Not a good sign.

“To every word,” I lied.

“You say that but do you mean it?”

I shrugged as I took the flask from the Cabbie. “As much as I ever do.”

She stopped staring at me and turned to the Cabbie. “I'll take mine in a glass.”

He looked at her with a certain je ne se quoi, grunted and went over to the table where the remains of the meal was undergoing the insect mass equivalent of a Pearl Harbor attack.

“You didn't listen to me when I was talking to you in the diner that night either.”

“I was too busy looking at your boobs.”

“I didn't think you were that interested in breasts.”

“Well, I think of them as a novelty item. So, as the old saw says, it's been a slice. But I gotta be going. Be seeing you.”

I got up to leave and signaled to Duffus Dave to stop talking at the chickens who were busy pecking under the impromptu dinner table, looking for mealtime scraps composed of their dis-membered friends and relatives.

He was explaining to them how it broke his heart and tortured his soul that he'd just finished eviscerating, masticating and swallowing tasty pieces of two of their perch mates and would soon leave his droppings for them to mourn over.

It was a nice confessional scene and I think he was getting a lot out of it since the chickens had not only forgiven him his trespasses but were trying to get in on the sin of cannibal commission on their own as they looked for remnants of their fellow Eggers.

“Yes, you will,”Angelica said.

“Huh?”

“You may leave,” she invited and smiled at me like she meant it, but I didn't believe in any luscious lip lie coming from those lips.

There must be some catch.

I'm not the best looking guy on the block but I don't usually get the heave ho after I've spent some time with them if, for no other reason, they're still trying to figure me out.

Or trying to clean up my act.

But this one looked like she knew all she needed to and that couldn't be a good thing.

The Cabbie returned with a kitchen glass full of his special paint stripper. That hundred percent hooch for the environmental group tasted like it'd been made from cedar sap.

She took it in her dainty hand. I had to give it to Him. He'd given her and her female human ilk a Pretty Gene that never failed to keep the tribe throbbing and growing ever fuller. Despite humanity's best suicidal lemming attempts at extinction, it was still a hands down, skirts up win for Dalliance over Demise. They kept making them faster than they could blow them up.

And it was because of females like her.

I should say we kept making them. In this Flesh Formulation, I was still part of the human race, like it or not, but I was more of what you would call an ultra long distance runner. Because of my 'doing time' here on this planet, I probably had a few thousand progeny making the moves or filling the graveyard grooves. Nothing to do with me.

I'm more of a spray and play guy.

“That's very kind of you,” I said and got ready to make my escape.

“Feel free to leave, but we're still keeping an eye on you,” she said.

“On me? We? Why?”

“You've already forgotten, but I'm the PR Rep for a large multi media company.”

“Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Wondered what you were doing out here in the boonies. So, Public Relations, huh? Really? With your attitude? Seems a stretch.”

“Not Public Relations. Property Rights. I'm a lawyer.”

“Ahh. That explains a lot. Who for?”

“Corps R Us.”

That sunk in. “I didn't sign a thing.”

“Didn't have to. PRAA took care of that.”

“Pray?”

“Property Rights Automatic Acquisition. It's a new twist from the Semi Supreme Court we were counting on.”

“No shit? Last time I help that Chief Justice Scofield asshole! I mean, he couldn't judge a bake sale if he was starving and I got him out of that Bangladesh Dick and Jane adoption thing.”

“I agree. And he's not at all grateful to you since he's now had to play nice and set up a charity orphanage that's draining him of all his scam cash since he can no longer get any work out of them. But we are grateful and that could go a long way if you want to join the team. We're a powerful organization.”

“Don't think so. I'm more of a loner.”

“You're more of a leper, but we can allow for that. As long as it's not catchy. But you'll need to get a haircut.”

“Again, don't think so. That's like telling Medusa the snakes have got to go.”

She paused as Daffy Davie stumbled up with a feathered flock of following chickens cackling underfoot.

St. Francis of Assisi supposedly got birds to miraculously land on his shoulder, but I happen to know he had food tucked under his cassock so he could sway common folk with a good and Godly Show of bird droppings, but this Davie guy was the real deal.

The Pied Piper of Peanut Brains.

They were actually following him when he'd just consumed some of their relatives! That had to be worth something in the Metaphysical Marketplace.

“But we got a problem,” she admitted.

“And you're welcome to it,” I responded. “Father Jones, do you think you could lure those chickens into the cab? It's going to be a long trip and we haven't packed a lunch.”

He smiled that loony smile I was actually getting to like. “Oh yes! Nothing easier! They under-stand the need for self sacrifice! I can't believe they were so easily converted!”

“Sheep must be a lot tougher,” I said. “They're used to rebuffing the tilt in the kilt of the Scots.”

“All are lambs before God,” he chuckled and clucked the chickens towards the waiting cab where the Cabbie was strapping on a recently expired goat.

“You look like you're ready for the trip,” Angelica snapped.

“Be prepared is my motto,” I said.

“To meet your Maker?” she snapped again.

She was groucheee!

“Naah. We've seen enough of each other to last a lifetime. Good luck with your problem.”

“Not any more. It's now your problem,” she announced and smirked.

I was always quick to recognize potential detours, damnation and deliverance. Call me cautious but don't call me chicken.

“How so?” I probed in what I hoped was a gentlemanly way.

“Somebody else grabbed your song and uploaded for pay. We sent our Corp Control Avatar out and--”

“It joined them.” I've always been quick on evil, turn coating, and other traitorous activities. “So? We both get fucked over. Why is it now only my problem?”

Trailing her behind me, I made for the waiting cab.

“The avatar is now after you. I was sent here to protect you.”

“And your interests.”

She gazed at me as the happy chicken acolytes hopped onto the back seat of the cab where I was supposed to sit.

“Our interests are your interests,” she said.

“I've heard that before,” I observed and pushed two squawking chickens out of the way so I could get some seating room. I got in, nearly sitting on a Leghorn who immediately wanted to peck at my privates. I shoved her back among her clucking kind, closed the door and powered down the window.

“And I never believed it.”

“You're the expert on disbelief,” Angelica agreed. “We only gave you the substance for the flame.”

She stood back from the cab like it was tainted. It was a little battered but who knows where the Cabbie had been before us.

“For which I will be eternally grateful,” I said and nodded at the remains of the latest burning. “Those leftovers and drippings should make a nice soup for you and the old folk.”

“I won't be here,” she announced.

“Jeez, I wonder why?” I said in a sprightly manner, already knowing the answer.

She was out to get me.

“Work to do. Get that song back and all the others you're working on,” she informed me.

“Hmmh. I thought the wages of sin were something more than zero,” I said.

“Wake up and feel the thorns,” she said and walked back to the farmhouse to see if her foster parents were either dead or copulating on the couch.

The tank booze was that nasty.

“Hey! We outa here? Meters running!” the Cabbie grumbled and revved the motor.

I stared after her swivelly hips with a mixture of lust and loathing.

“I thought it was smell the roses!” I yelled and felt the down below burn.

She waved a slim and alluring arm and mounted the front steps, her hips giving me the Bye Bye Birdie.

I sagged back onto a fat Rhode Island Red who was checking my seat cushion for crumbs. She flapped her wings and pulled herself back then pecked at my arm in a genuinely antagonistic way.

Typical female.

I was absolutely sure this lovely Angelica bitch would fuck me around every chance she got. Truth is? I've never liked leaving women behind unless they've been properly de-fanged.

Just call me old fashioned.

The cab banged away along the uneven driveway while Double Dealing Davie consoled the two chickens on his lap with promises of life everlasting after they'd had the barbecue spit stuffed up their asses. They looked very thoughtful and attentive and seemed to be taking it all in in genuinely positive way.

I had to admit. He could spout religious bullshit with the best and I'd heard them all.

He was a Keeper.

Now it was time to get my song back. And if that Avatar got in my way...well, all Hell was going to break loose or my name wasn't--.”

“Where to?” the Cabbie demanded as we bounced up onto the local so called highway, which was nothing but two lanes and a faded paint divider line that gave you no clue about passing. He braked at right angles to it and waited for directions.

“Back to the city,” I ordered. “We meet them head on.”

“Now you're talkin,” the Cabbie grunted and turned the steering wheel to the left and was ready to hit the gas when he looked up. His dark eyes registered surprise, disbelief, and the beginnings of panic.

Sitting directly behind him, don't ask me how I knew that. The Lord works in mysterious ways when He's trying to scare the shit out of you.

“Incoming!” he yelled.

Dumbo Dave looked past him. “Maybe we could talk to them!” he shouted.

I looked. Didn't like what I saw.

“Boot it!” I screamed and the Cabbie wheeled right instead of left and roared off down the highway like a bat out of hell. And I can tell you, person to person, that is really remarkably fast.

Nothing like a miniature wing whanging mammal with a flaming hot ass trying to escape Perdition.

It's a beautiful sight.

MEANWHILE BACK AT THE RAUNCH

“It's nothing for you to worry about,” Angelica told the old folk who were beginning to regain their senses, (and their very expensive Duo Lingua vocalizing programs she'd given them for last year's Winter Solstice, but which they'd forgotten to turn on), while lolling semi consciously back on the couch.

She tossed the DL remote onto the couch beside them.

Giuseppe had pissed his pants at the end of the evening's festivities and was staring at the wet spot around him and at the puddle below and looking for a cat to blame.

“I'll take care of it,” Angelica said.

“I tol ya those damn cats belong in thu barn, fer Chrissake!” Giuseppe blurted and vomited on the puddle which now sloshed around his feet like something revivified.

“But he seemed like such a nice boy,” Maria croaked.

She'd drunk more than her share of the hundred percent plus something je ne se quois hooch and the land locked couch was obviously awash in heavy seas as far as she was concerned and it wasn't going to be an easy voyage.

Angelica sighed. “The priest or that little red headed piss ass?” she queried.

“They both seemed nice,” Maria answered as she hung onto a pillow for unsubstantial stability. “Each in their own way, of course. And the priest did more pissing, dear, just in case you didn't notice, but I had my eye on him. A very attractive young man. And means well. I'm not sure about the Eastern gentleman. He seemed a little standoffish and stern, but those barbecued chickens were to die for.”

“If you knew what he did for a living, you wouldn't say that. Now, is there anything I can do for you before I go back?”

“Kill thu damn cats!” Giuseppe ordered and vomited on his vomit.

Angelica looked at the mess as it glooped towards her foot. “Doesn't look like fur balls.”

Her foster mother looked at her with blinking, bleary eyeballs. “You used to be so much nicer,” she said and hiccuped.

Angelica moved her foot away from the encroaching vomit stream. “Yeah. Well, times change, Madre.”

“But you were such a beautiful child! A gift from Heaven!” Maria insisted as her dead drunk husband relapsed back into unconsciousness and lolled against her like a deceased pre-rigor mortis, near skeletal fish.

Angelina's youthful shoulders rose, her voice rising with them. “Well, Mother Mary, there's no return policy! You got what you wanted!”

Maria grimaced as she tasted regurgitated alcohol. Not really better the second time around.

“What we were responsible for, sweetie. But we learned to love you. Didn't we, Giuseppe?”

Her husband snored agreement, exempting himself from from these kinds of female emotional obsessions.

“Learned? Learned?” Angelica was about to launch into a 'you don't understand or love me, you never did!' tirade when she caught a flash out of the corner of her eye and looked out the window towards the highway.

“Holy Christ!” she exclaimed. “It's started!”

“Without me, dear. I'm sorry. Some other time,” her foster mother muttered apologetically, rolled up her eyes, folded her gnarled age spotted hands on her flabby breasts and passed out on her husband's bony shoulder.

TURN THE ADDER CHEEK

The Rep withheld his thumb print as he stared angrily at his Personal App Screen. “This fucking snake is screwing me with a rusty iron broom sideways!” he yelled. “Look at these points! What does he want? My fucking buttered balls on a platter?”

The Rep's lawyer shifted uneasily beside him as they both stared at the screened up contract that was waiting for retinal or touch confirmation. “It was the best I could do. He had me over a barrel.”

“Well, he should have finished you off and corn cobbed you up the greasy butt, you useless asshole! I can't sign this!”

“We could try a counter offer, but I don't think it will do any good.”

“Why not?”

“Snake now owns your business.”

“WHAT?”

The lawyer shrugged his suety shoulders. “I told you you shouldn't have put it in your wife's name. I warned you.”

“But she's brain dead! Lying in a terminal nut house! I've got Power Of Attorney of her! How else could I get IRS Charity status? How the fuck did that happen?”

“Snake got to her, God knows how. She rescinded your POA and gave it to the Snake.”

“What? How?”

“Snake made a holo appearance out of her Med Monitor, nobody knows how, said something, did something, I don't know. Worked the dials. Changed the dosage. I don't know. Now she's sitting up, got her brains back, asking for bagels and lox, and, oh, she wants a divorce. Seems pretty feisty and you know how you used to tell me she was always dissing sex as something not quite kosher even while you were doing it?”

“Divorce? Yeah. She was a whiny desert dry log in bed. So?”

“She's already fucked a nurse and an orderly. The guard only got away because he pulled a gun on her and threatened the shoot her tits off. That made her back up, hanging on to those paid for pretties. She was more lively than I've seen her for, well...never. Even I didn't get too close when I tried to talk her out of the POA transfer.”

“But you couldn't and didn't. You're fired.”

“Not a biggy. You got no money anyway. Snake now owns you. She's signed for a seventy thirty split. Figured she owed Snake Eyes. Oh. She gets the Ultra Beamer. You can keep the Chinese Rusla.”

“That piece of shit's up on blocks! Got no engine! No wheels!”

“I thought I saw some hubcaps for it around somewhere. I'm sure I saw them behind the Beamer next to the drone lawnmower. I'll find them and throw them onto the back seat.”

The Rep glared at his brother in law who shifted uneasily.

“Snake hired you.”

“Well, not yet. I'm professionally obligated to see this contract through...with your best interests at heart, of course. After all--”

“My best interests? My best interests are for you to go back and fuck your horny sister, you wimpy asshole! And I hope she kills you with incestuous blow back! Thank God she left me to my own devices! Kept me clean! Now, get out of here! Hope to see you both in Hell!”

“Might be closer than you think,” his ex lawyer, and soon to be ex brother in law, said and beat a hasty retreat while the Rep stared at the contract like it was a self damning Faustian Bargain.

Oh well. Five points was better than nothing and he'd put it in his mistress's name. She'd never know. All she ever cared about was cock and coke and sometimes she even got them mixed up.

Actually, that wasn't so bad.

After the initial shock when he'd blindly shoved it at her as she stooped to snort, he'd leaned back and enjoyed it. He'd never done a coked up nostril before. It was great! And when she sneezed? Wow! Spunky splatter!

He sighed and gave the onscreen Snake the reluctant thumbprint with one hand and the finger with the other.

This wasn't over. And he didn't care if the Snake knew it.

A second later his upraised finger was splattered with something that looked suspiciously like spunk until it began to burble and eat its way into his fingernail. The Rep screamed in pain. This was worse than a paper cut or even a broken IUD coil! Much much worse!

The tympani walls to each side of the screen began to shake as Aretha Franklin screeched out the old R&B saw 'R.E.S.P.E.C.T! Sock it to me! Sock it to me! Sock it to me!', comfortably drowning out his dance around the desk shrieks as his finger began to melt.

The Snake bead eyed down at this gyrating little human worm as he tucked his fang back in.

It was true.

They were not worth saving.

“FOR THAT YOU NOW ONLY GET FOUR PERCENT. DO YOU AGREE?”

The Rep wrapped an old candy wrapper around his Digitus Me'dius stump and nodded wisely.

Snake should have done his ring finger and at least got that shit over with.

A WHEEL WITHIN A WHEEL

Drivel Davie had clambered into the back seat so he could experience the full revelation.

“I feel like I'm Ezekiel!” he proclaimed. “We should stop and say hello!”

We were doing a hundred miles an hour down an uneven, dipsy doodle much battered two lane curve crazy asphalt back road and even the chickens were beginning to feel seasick and croaked with their beaks as they tried to hide.

“Better start thinking like those chickens,” I advised. “That fucking asshole Larry, never gives up and this planet's Arrow of Time has given him a new generation of gotchas. And he's still pissed that I was chosen to be the first Number One.”

“Are you talking about...? I mean...really?”

“Duhh.”

“So it is really! Wow! I'd so like to meet him!”

“Shouldn't be too long unless we've got Warp Speed handy.”

I leaned over to the Cabbie. “You got another gear?”

“Not here,” he grunted and two wheeled screeched around another corner as the Light Behind Us scintillated and gained ground.

“Oh, before I forget, or while we still got time, what's your name?”

The Cabbie just managed to evade a big tree trunk that was aiming for us and got back on the asphalt.

“Kharon, but friends call me Bărbat Bărbat,” he answered.

“Yeah. Thought I'd seen you around. Okay, if you can't do it, and I'm not blaming you,” I said. “On to Plan B.”

I turned to Davie the Bouncing Dunce who was waving ecstatically at our Impending Doom.

“You got a cross on you?” I yelled.

Davie Duece Bigger turned to me, his lopsided features facsimileing genuine interest in my demand. He was priest material to the core.

“Of course!” he yelled happily. “It's regulations!”

“Hold it up!” I shouted. “And put it right up against the rear window!”

“I hate to brag about my status with The Lord!” Davie the Deity Dupe declaimed with false modesty.

Given time, he might turn out to be a Unitarian.

“Fuck that prostrate before the Lord bullshit! Stand up proud and spread the Word!”

That invitation to proclaim God's Message always sucked Them Ass Accessorizers in.

“I will!” Declamatory Davie shouted and held up his cross so everyone, including our mur-derously fanatical pursuer, could boo it.

As soon as Larry saw the sacred but offensive object, he did a sky wheelie that would put any UFO to shame and tried high tailing it back into multi dimensional limbo before he got branded with that truly hated Upstart's symbol, but he made a panicky navigational error and crashed into a nearby mountain.

Good.

That would give us some time before he could reconstitute

“He's gone!” Duncey Davie cried. “And I don't understand. Is it because of...?”

“No shit,” I said and collapsed against a couple of upchucking fowls. “That Alpha asshole hates any sign of that Johnny Come Lately even more than I do. Who do you think stole the Holy Grail?”

“We goin home now?” the Cabbie asked as he gave the engine a much needed rest. He looked into the rear view mirror at me.

“Not yet,” I said. “Miles to go before we sleep.”

“I like Frost,” the Cabbie answered as he drove the taxi away from the flaming crash behind us. “Always looking for the end.”

“Me too,” I said. “But with me it's bottoms up.”

“You take this life shit seriously,” the Cabbie accused.

“We all got a job to do.”

“I'm really disappointed,” Anti Damnation Davie murmured as he slipped the cross back under his cassock where it could rub his nipples. “I had so many questions to ask him. Imagine, a real...! The Pope will be so pleased!”

“And sacrifice the Sacred Papal Cow? Don't think so. Pontiff Middlemen never like losing control of a proven product line,” I said. “At least, that's what I've discovered over time.”

I pushed a nasty little bantam rooster out of the way as he tried pecking enviously at my codpiece. “How'd this little shit get in here?” I demanded.

The Cabbie shrugged. “Cherchez Les Femmes,” he said.

“Okay,” I said. “At least they'll go out clucking.”

GOING SNAKEY AND THEN SOME

This time, the Snake didn't bother emanating from the wall. He just blew it apart and jammed his Brobdingnagian head, sans tail, into the real estate office that was situated across what used to be the hallway.

The Rep hung onto his chair as the air was sucked out of his dingy headquarters and along with it maybe fifty declining careers as the client promo shots took off for parts unknown on fractured framed wings.

Grimacing with strain, the Rep stared across the unfettered view of the city as the fragments of steel and stone dropped to the street below. He could hear some far off screams below.

He was going to have to pin the blowout on some terrorist group. Who did he know? There was that splinter geriatric group from ACTRA that had besieged Broadway about ageism with starter's guns and--

“SOMEONE GOT TO HIM FIRST! HOW DID THIS HAPPEN?”

The Snake's basso profundo vocalizations shook the remaining and shattered steel girders, which hummed in tortured disharmony.

“How the hell do I know?” the Rep yelled defensively and watched his gold filled Waterman pen sail off to skewer somebody. Thank God it still bore the previous owner's initials.

“EARN YOUR FOUR PERCENT! FIND OUT!”

“I'm not a detective! I'm an Ent Agent!”

“THIS CANNOT STAND!”

“This from a snake with no legs,” the Rep muttered and braced his feet against his heavy desk which hadn't shifted too much.

“WHAT?”

“I'll have my people work on it!”

“AND GET CONTROL OF YOUR FEMALE! SHE IS SEXUALLY HARRASSING MY OTHER EMPLOYEES!”

“Welcome to office politics,” the Rep muttered again and grabbed hold of his shredder as it began to slide towards the recent renovation.

The IRS could do wonders when it came to document reconstruction.

“I'll talk to her!” he yelled.

“ARE YOU RESPONSIBLE FOR ANY OF THIS?”

“I wish!”

“WHAT?”

“I had that power!”

“POINT TAKEN.”

“What do you want from me?”

“THERE ARE SOME OTHER POWERS AT WORK. CHALLENGING ME. I WANT YOU TO HYPER PROMOTE THE PROJECT. THAT WILL BRING THEM TO THE SURFACE. THEN I WILL DEAL WITH THEM.”

“Will do.”

“I LIKE THE VIEW.”

“I've got a second cousin in anti union construction. I'm sure he can work with it.”

“KEEP ME IN THE LOOP.”

“You bet.”

“JOKE.”

“Huh? Oh yeah. Ha ha.”

The Snake Head disappeared, leaving the Rep hanging on for dear life as somebody used the elevator, thus opening up the shaft and all the parking lot's air blew past his fluttering ears.

Two and a half shitty non profit years at NYU and this is for what?

Despite him trying to corral it with his legs, the shredder skidded across the floor and soared off to do its dirty work with those fucking government computer programmed, algorithmically versed accountants. May their souls rot in hell. If they had even one between them.

BACK TO BASICS

“Where to now?” the Cabbie demanded and shot me a significant look.

“Back to Basics.”

He nodded.

“You got the Stone?” I inquired.

Ignoring Daffy Diddle in the Death Seat beside him and his happy babble about an imagined Papal Reception and, staying well away from his boyishly bouncing bony knees, the Cabbie reached across to the glove compartment and pulled out the little round Rolli Time Transmitting Translator.

“Gonna cost,” he said.

“Put it on the bill,” I said. “And let's get the hell out of here.”

“This I can do,” the Cabbie stated.

“This has been a very eye opening trip!” Davie Duffus declaimed.

“You ain't seen nothing yet,” I said. “And don't forget to strap yourself in. And oh. Make sure you don’t lose the cross.”

BASICALLY BLACK

Gord Jessel shifted uneasily and his organic, ergonomic, eating and excreting accessory Sit On shifted with him in order to keep him comfy.

Didn't work.

“So wha ah hell d'ya wan me ta do bou ih?” he demanded, his coke numbed lower lip spilling out the consonants like speechless oral cadavers.

Angelica gave him a look that should send him crashing to the floor with his dead mumbles if he had enough brain cells to do the job right.

“How you ever got to be VP of World Marketing is beyond me.”

Gord looked longingly at his 'Things Go Better With Electro' Vaporizer. “Iss wha ya no,” he replied.

“What is right. Your wife's Back Door Butt Bombardier is a cretin.”

“He's alsa Hea of Hirin n Firin here't Corps R Us, so kep a civ'l tongue n yar hea, An...An gee.”

After he'd managed to mussitate this scathing retort, Gord wondered where his tongue was. He hadn't felt it for the last hour. The newest charge in the Vaporizer was supremely hot shit. Worth every Brit Bit Coin he'd paid for it. He tried making both his lips meet. That way his tongue, wherever it was, couldn't escape. It had happened once before and his wife still had him by the short and curlies as a result.

And she could be such an unforgiving bitch. And it's not like she didn't know the other bitch. It was her sister, for Gawd's sake! At least he hadn't strayed far from home to get in a little Lap Licking! Just what the hell did women really really want?

And, as always, the Twitch Bitch in front of him kept ragging at him. Women. Why couldn't there be a vaporizer that--

“We've got problems, Gordo. Snake's gone. Song's gone. Forces bigger than us are in the picture. A lot at stake here.”

“B...b...bigger an us? Load uv.”

Angelica stared down at the corpulent little worm who was purportedly in charge of selling their share of the planet to the highest bidder. “This is only the first crack in the iceberg,” she announced. “It could get really bad really fast.”

Gord looked up at her, his little puffy blue eyes squinting. “Whass n iceburg?”

Angelica turned on a stiletto heel, the obligatory Team Time obfuscation over. It was recorded on Cloud so she had bullshit backup. “Don't worry about it. I'll handle it.”

Gord grabbed for his Vape. “Do tha bu lemme no how't turns out. Kay?”

Angelica stopped for a second and looked back over her exquisite and bare left shoulder. “Either way it goes, you'll know about it the exact same time as everybody else, whether any of you like it or not.”

“Souns grea, jes grea!” her supposed superior sang as he took a Happy Time Zap and took off for even more Parts Unknown.

THE ID OF EDEN

“What a beautiful orchard!” Donut Head David shouted in delight.

It was indeed.

“Yep,” I said. “And not an immigrant picker in sight. Once upon a time we did it all ourselves.”

“How did we get here? Like one moment we were--”

“How's the cab?” I queried.

The Cabbie looked up from where he was peering at the wheel wells. “Scorch here. Scorch there. Still good to go. Chickens ready.”

“Always an up side,” I said.

“It's like the Beginning Of It All!” Deli Davie deliriously gushed.

“Got that right. Okay. Here he comes.”

“And there's a naked man!” the Celibate Cret crowed.

“Bet that takes you back to divinity school,” I said.

A big muscular nude dude approached us.

I gave him a once over. Woah! And I thought I was packing! Six pack in the middle and double down below!

He waved at us with both ends as he eagerly walked towards us.

“What do you think he wants?” Dallying Davie mused, licking his thin lips.

“Try to keep your cassock on,” I said.

“Splrkk, kngrss! Grbbrdrdfns!” the guy shouted, his handsome face wreathed in perfect smiles.

He was a specimen, all right. And the original. The template. How did we, as a specie, ever sink so low ever since?

I unconsciously sucked in my gut.

“Brkrqrldnuprta!”

He waved his tautly muscled arms for emphasis.

“Stone him,” I ordered.

The Cabbie held up the Rolli and blasted him.

“Crtntkclrartu—I was just about to fuck my sister! Would you like to join me?'

“Ahh,” I said. “We're just in time.”

“He's very friendly,” Dickhead Davie said and waved back. “And so well spoken!”

“No thanks,” I replied to our Boy Toy host. “But thanks for asking. What we're after is--”

“What the fuck is that?” the Cabbie yelled.

I looked towards where he was pointing. A really succulent and equally naked Eve was on her back in a bower of fresh mint, doing up thrusting pelvic tilts and making come hither movements at us with her delicate hands. She was the ripest thing in the orchard. The Original Kick Starter of the planet. Or so the story goes.

“You have to ask?” I said.

“Not that! That!” the Cabbie shouted and pointed again.

Roaring around an overburdened copse of roseate McIntoshes, a fast moving two meter high protuberance of dirt was heading our way.

“Ohh, sweet Jesus!” I cried. “It got here ahead of us!”

When I'm flustered I always take the Lord's Name, (or a reasonable substitute), in vain.

“Fire up the cab!” I ordered

The elongating tubular dirt casting stopped and the biggest fucking green snake I'd ever seen erupted out of the mulched up ground and reared up, staring down at us, hissing and showing a meter of fangs.

“He had a much more pleasing appearance when he first appeared to us!” Adam shouted as David jumped into his immense, well oiled arms.

The snake reared back getting ready to strike.

“Throw it the goat!” I yelled at the Cabbie.

“That's dinner!” he protested.

“It or us!” I screamed, knowing perfect logic was on my side.

“Oh, all right!”

He grabbed a hairy leg and heaved the goat upwards off the cab's roof.

The snake skewered it with one fang and the forked tongue snaked out for a taste and a smell.

“Now let's get out of here!” I howled.

“You're very handsome,” Much Delighted Davie said as he snuggled up to The First Man.

I was staring up at the goat chow-down and, as the back legs of the goat went in, I finally could see how the combination of cloven hoof and forked glossa had got so mythologized!

“Thank you,” Adam said and offered his bony cuddled load a scrumptious looking Virginia Gold out from under his sweaty pit. “Like a bite? We haven't tried one yet.”

“Would I ever!” Demu Davie exclaimed demurely.

“NO!” I screamed, turning back from the Big Burp.

Too late.

Davie's big uneven buck teeth cut through the yellow and pink blush skin like a Galactic Guilt Generating Guillotine.

“There goes the neighborhood,” I groused as I pushed both of them into the cab before the Snake had finished digesting.

I threw two chickens out to make room for myself and they flew up towards the Snake like a pair or Kamikaze Cluckers.

Behind the slurping Snake, Eve's plump but firm hips continued to hump air endlessly, waiting to Wank the World.

CATACOMBS GOT YER TONGUE?

“So, my son, how did you get here?”

“VIA THE CATACOMBS. I LIKE USING THE SCENIC ROUTES.”

“Yes, they're nice and cool this time of year.”

“ARE WE IN AGREEMENT?”

Pope Prius Verdi The Third refolded his cassock.

“We don't usually deal with the Forces of Evil,” he pontificated.

“TELL ME ANOTHER ONE. NICE PLACE YOU HAVE HERE.”

“Yes, we did some remodeling but I think that was back in the...late 18^th Century. So what is it you want from me?”

“NOT JUST YOU. YOUR WHOLE UNHOLY ORGANIZATION.”

The Pope sounded a dry, crusty chuckle. “I thought you were supposed to be The Flatterer.”

“WE ALL CHANGE WITH THE TIMES.”

“Speaking for Mother Church, as I must...You have some chicken stuck to your fang.”

“IT'S GOAT!”

“I see feathers.”

“OH YES. THE FLYBIES. THANKS. MAY I BORROW?”

The Pope magnanimously waved his unctuous hand and the Snake lowered himself to the Holy Water basin that His Holiness kept nearby for mid afternoon refreshment.

After a couple of noisy slurps, the Snake reared back up and tried not to break the pontifical ceiling a second time.

“VERY TASTY.”

Pope Prius nodded.

“A slightly vain and youthful Verdicchio at thirteen percent and just now approaching its prime. But from ancient vines of good lineage. And it's been personally blessed by Yours Truly.”

“I LIKE THE HINT OF APPLE.”

“As do I. Yet another blessing from the Lord.”

“WE COULD DEBATE THAT FOR HOURS, BUT I WILL ACCEDE AND, IF YOU DON'T MIND...”

The Snake plunged down like an insane, two meter thick fireman's hose and emptied the basin in one slurp.

“There's more,” the Pope declared. “And it'll only take me a minute to bless it. Now, on to the business at hand. You were saying?”