wildcat

The Accomplice's birthday.

I made it to the bar driven by the Gin, my bladder, and a bag of dreams; flanked on either side by C, S, and the Pride Cowboy. Our arrival was heralded by angels, of course, but not New Age nancies with wings -- I'm talking Old Testament, flaming swords, divine justice angels. Angels with frank ideas about capital punishment. They would have slaughtered the crowd to announce us but, honey, let's be honest. It's no fun grinding someone beneath your heel if they're already dead. The others arrived shortly thereafter, having branched off on another quest (Which we shall call, "Dan Had To Go To The Bank"), and court was held on expansive leather seats to the corner. Now, initially there were other people sitting over there but quickly the heat, the very heat of us overwhelmed them and they inched away to leave us the space. I CAN NOT HELP THAT WE COME OFF AS ROYAL, Russian, perhaps ("Ra-Ra-Rasputin, Russia's greatest love machine...").

The music was fair to middling, danceable even if the DJ had a slice of pizza congealing in one hand while he pumped the air vigourously with the other (we're not talking the music of the spheres here), the dance floor was both sweaty and inexplicable like a dream you had once, where the scale is all wrong. The two servers, Blue-Hair and the Kid, were pretty on the ball even if the Kid had a sizeable black eye that invited much discussion among the court -- we do require our little passing fancies, after all. The Sundry came and went, offered thumbs down by B (in various numbers and configurations but, as far as gladiator movies went, nobody was walking out this Pit alive). We were callous and strange. The DJ kept calling out to the crowd, using the wrong name (or the official name for the place for the moment) because they have no good sense to simply reduce it to its platonic ideals ("The Gay Bar" at worst and "Disco Heaven" at best), D.A.N.C.E. pounded, S and the Cowboy discussing its implications for their Burning Man experience ("We heard it when we were on our way to get married -- witnessed by a penguin..."), our numbers began to dwindle as the musical numbers (terribly uncoordinated, subpar Bollywood) stretched out past their best-before date.

And then there was the street meat interlude. There is always that period of time, just coming out of the bar, safe in the pickled sanctity of your corpse against decay should you immediately die on the spot, when you feel warm regardless of how cold it is. We shuffled past the bar stars and bar flies revealed by lamplight to Mister Tube-Steak, as one does, as one must, apparently, dragged on by things like necessity and chance (and me, of course, with no easy hotline to get the Japanese Asset on the phone and shout prophecies at her!).

I had a veggie dog that was a dream of mustard and sauerkraut. I don't recall immediately whether or not it was really even cooked, having the pallid excuse for colour that veggie dogs have. This was not our most exquisite hour, talking as we did of wieners. Feel free to splice in dialogue from all those terrible twelve-year-old boys snickering movies you may or may not have on hand. Afterward we were fired as if from a gun for Parts Away, and began the slow dispersal of the drunk and disaffected, like gunpowder, like oil in water, like all that bad cliches that swirl in the basin of your mouth at three-thirty in the morning, Bukowski on the radio in your brain, GIVE UP, GIVE UP, GIVE UP GOOD SIR.

The robot is cute and little girls love it. They go heart-shaped over it, over him, thanks to a crack team of designers and engineers. He has plastic eyes that sparkled, almost teary, never mind that he's got the emotional range of your common sociopath. The button nose in particular tested well. Little girls demand their mummies and daddies purchase the robot for them, slotting cards into vending machines and waiting for the coiled metal arms to discharge one of the robots from within the vacuum-sealed womb.

"Hi," says the robot as he stands in front of a little girl on the plaza, her father hopping from foot to foot a comfortable meter away so that his little baby can meet her robot. He's jacked up on coffee and wishing his ex-wife would show up already to take the kid and her weird bastard machine off his hands. He has things to do. He's got a date tonight. Family time's great and he loves his little girl but he's allowed to have his own life, right? Right. "Hi," says the robot to the little girl and he leans forward, plastic joints clicking arthritically as he goes, to hug her. The little girl giggles, as one does when one is hugged manically by a robot that feels like plastic wrapped around gelatin, wobbling as it goes, with the click-click-click of a mouth opening and shutting. She hugs the robot back, arms around that detailed spine.

"Oh, daddy! I love him!"

"Great, honey." Her father checks his phone again, no calls and his ex-wife is a full half-hour late. She'll bitch about having to deal with the robot, which probably has exhaustive cleaning procedures attached to it -- the booklet remains sealed in an envelope on the back of the robot's head -- but she's going to have to deal with it, because it was the only way to keep Pumpkin quiet while they wait.

"I love you too," says the robot and for the first time her father actually turns his head to look -- there's something about that tone of voice, perfectly pristine and modulated and good lord, it's still hugging her and...and... "I'm hungry," the robot says.

"Pumpkin!"

You have to understand, dozens of engineers have worked long hours to ensure the speed and dexterity of the robot, because coordinated movement that look natural is important for creating that meaningful bond between robot and child. Pumpkin's father has no hope of stopping it, even from this close, because Pumpkin doesn't fight. She's struck by the hug-euphoria and the drugs secreted through special fingertip pores. She's giggling still, and he lunges for them as the robot opens up as a mouth, hidden seam opening, as one whole mouth, and take her into himself -- itself! -- and begins to digest. It will be able to make another of itself in under five minutes, it will bud off quite easily, and they will have the father's credit cards within seven minutes.

The vending machine will be empty within fifteen minutes.

Theodore's roommate took to pranking him with the omni-ventriloquism trick he'd developed, which got old quite quickly. Imagine sitting in the kitchen, at the table, finishing a crossword puzzle that makes you feel woefully inadequate. Imagine having every object in the room abruptly start to mutter at you as if under their breath; the blue tea kettle your sister gave you for Christmas. The microwave. The block of cheese that your roommate still hasn't put in the fridge since he used it last night. Imagine all these pinprick voices referring to your indiscretions, your secret fears, the ugliness of your individual body parts. This was Theodore's life now, rubbing his temples while his shoes demeaned the smell of his toes and the crossword called him names. The pencil, well, the pencil made terribly unfunny Freudian references. This was all Lyle's doing with his ability to throw his voice about simultaneously. As a result, Theodore felt it best to execute him. There would be no time to practice the weird technique with Lyle nursing a major chest wound and a disgorged heart leaking rotten blood onto the bathroom floor. Unable to think of a suitably ironic means of death, Theodore bludgeoned him with a frying pan -- a frying pan that pleaded with him for its life as he brought it up and down -- while he screamed "I can't hear you." The whole thing was a bit embarrassing in retrospect, but Theodore could, afterward, walk into a room crowded with knick-knacks and antiques without being concerned they'd make reference to his hairline.