04

INCOGNITO – FIRST PERSON (IDENTITY)

Dr. ——— suggested that we disguise ourselves. I agreed. We descended into the mechanical depths of Bliptown. The technetronic strata of strip malls reminded me of a futuristic version of Dante’s Inferno. I always wished I could read Inferno in the original Italian. For whatever reason Dr. ——— refused to download the language into my lexicon.

We landed in an alleyway outside of a ghost mall.

Landings weren’t Dr. ———’s forte. He came down and tripped over a Beesuppie (Brett Easton Ellis-Style Urban Professional) who had been taking a nap next to a dumpster. The Beesuppie was scratched and stained. He wore a limited edition Calloway Italian-knit golf shirt and Mondale Duego khaki pants and gray leather armadillo-skinned boat shoes. He bleated when Dr. ——— ran into him. He stumbled to his feet and groggily began to complain about his job and his wife and the taste of his breakfast.

I made a fist and struck the Beesuppie on top of the head. He crumbled. I removed his clothes and threw him into the dumpster.

“Here.” I tossed Dr. ——— the clothes.

I walked to the far side of the alleyway where a gang of other Beesuppies was taking a collective nap. I sized them up. I selected one. I hit him and removed his clothes: short-sleeve Gatsby mercerized shirt and white no-wrinkle Van Rotten dress pants with pink pinstripes and forgettable leather sandals.

Taking off my Saussurian suit felt good. I was tired of being preyed upon by other people’s fashion statements. The suit struggled in my grasp as I ushered it over to the dumpster and deposited it inside. It jumped out and tried to put itself back on me. I punched and kicked it and returned it to the dumpster. I placed the body of a Beesuppie atop the dumpster’s lid to insure the suit wouldn’t escape again.

I stood naked and watched Dr. ——— wriggle into the golf shirt and khakis and put on the boat shoes.

“The shoes are too tight,” he complained. “And my pants are wrinkled. And I hate the color of this shirt.”

“They’re fine. You look fine. Relax.”

“I don’t want to relax.” He adjusted and readjusted his shirt collar and waistband. “I need a belt.” He cursed loudly. “My voice hurts.” He cursed softly. “I need a doctor. I’m in agony.”

“Jesus. Hold on.” I put on the clothes…

He tried to shoo me away when I reached out for his neck. I told him to grow up. He told me to eat shit. I asked him why he was acting like a child. He said I had no business comparing him to a child as I was a machine and a monster and lacked the ability to conceive of human behavior in its primitive form not to mention its adult form. I told him not to be unfriendly. He told me that unfriendliness begets unfriendliness.

I clutched his windpipe.

He barked and gasped and ordered me to unhand him. I waited until my fingertips had secreted enough fluid…

“You son of a bitch,” Dr. ——— said. He rubbed his neck. “Now it feels worse.”

“No it doesn’t. Of course it doesn’t.”

A nearby Beesuppie pushed himself to his feet and drowsily began practicing his golf swing. He had on a Gila monster-skinned Crocodile Dundee hat and a buttondown flywing shirt and Damascus driving gloves and an Isle of Skye kilt and bleached white kneehigh socks. He didn’t have on shoes. Dr. ——— and I stared at him. He swung too hard. He got tangled up in his own limbs. He fell back down.

Dr. ——— said, “Corndog University wasn’t so horrible. The English department wasn’t so horrible. I’m the horrible one. I’m the asshole. If people don’t agree with me, if they don’t think the way I do and place value on the things I do, if they aren’t as good-looking as me—I condemn them. I sentence them to Worthlessness. Without due process.” He started to pace back and forth and quickly achieved an impressive speed for a human. “That’s why I don’t have any friends. That’s why you’re my only friend. My ’gänger. My Id. And what does my goddamn Id do? Fucking kills the whole world.”

“Isn’t that what Ids are supposed to do?”

He ignored me. “I’m going to miss that place. I really am. Dostoevsky—he wasn’t a bad man. A bit eccentric, but who isn’t? I liked Petunia, too, when they weren’t all over each other. We once had an excellent conversation about the short stories of Nikolai Gogol, and that android could make a mean cup of Kool-Aid. I often catch myself thinking about its Kool-Aid. I was just thinking about it a moment ago, in fact. I even liked Lucille. I liked her a little anyway. If nothing else she spruced up the social climate of the office. And Hemingway had his admirable qualities. He once allowed me to take an extra fork without saying a thing about it out of the goodness of his heart. I didn’t care much for the other faculty members with the exception of Dr. Shelley, but that’s just because she had nice tits and well-defined calves. Her face was another matter. The point is, I didn’t like my colleagues, but they didn’t bug me. They let me be for the most part. What more can a bastard like me ask from my fellow assholes? Hell, even my student-things had redeeming qualities. Some of them anyway. At least I didn’t want to kill myself every single time I taught a class. Only fifty percent of the time. Sixty percent at most. Things were adequate enough in that English department. They weren’t unbearable. Things are a lot worse in other departments, at other universities. A lot worse. I know this guy who teaches at Hogwash College. ’Gängers are illegal there! I couldn’t imagine teaching all of my classes by myself. I can’t believe this mess. I can’t believe you. You’ve ruined my life. You’ve ruined everything I’ve worked for. Do you know how much free time I had on my hands? It really wasn’t necessary for me to work more than ten hours a week, including teaching, the most unfortunate drawback of my profession. The rest of the time I could just dick around and read and write to my heart’s content. I spent eight years of my life in graduate school for nothing because of your goddamn antics. Are you proud of yourself you goddamn lunatic?” He stopped pacing and faced me.

I was silent.

Dr. ——— unleashed a long-winded pyrotechnic surge of obscenities. It was an admirable surge and exceptionally lyrical and my original invented several alluring neologisms. The persistent spray of spittle on my face was disagreeable. But I waited patiently for him to tire out.

“Are you finished?”

Sweat glistened on Dr. ———’s overlip and brow. He caught his breath and said, “Yes. For now at least. But you will admit you’ve been acting like a psychopath. You are a psychopath. Something’s wrong with your program. You need help. We need help.”

“We need to be alert,” I insisted. “And nothing is wrong with my program. How many times do I have to tell you? My program is a crystalline manifestation of…”

My ears sharpened into antennae as my radar picked up the newsflash. It emanated from an old Philco 84B Classic Cathedral radio somewhere inside the ghost mall. The cold black pupils engulfed the warm whites of my eyes. For a moment I went blind.

Dr. ——— knew the score. He just couldn’t hear it. “What’s the matter? What’re you receiving?”

“Quiet.”

My vision slowly faded back in as the whites recolonized the landscape of my eyeballs.

“Oops.” My ears returned to their normal state.

“Oops? Oops what? What is it? Oops what?”

I flexed the muscles in my abdomen. “It looks like I’ve made another little booboo. Yes indeed. Apparently I’ve managed to murder Voss Winkenweirder. According to the Papanazi, I took his life during my most recent killing spree. Of course he was incognito and I had no way of knowing who he was. Do you recall the flâneur I chopped in half? A fine disguise. He must have been wearing a mask, too. Oh well. Even if I had known it was him, I probably would have killed him anyway. Without question I would have killed him. At any rate, the whole world is after us. Dead or alive, we’re worth more than Winkenweirder’s paycheck for his last three films combined.”

Dr. ——— cleared his throat. “You killed…a movie star?”

“Apparently so. How about that? Not many humans can say they’ve killed a movie star, especially one of such notoriety. Not bad for a simulacrum.”

Once again Dr. ——— resorted to verbal pyrotechnics.

Sometimes it was legal to kill movie stars. Particularly if they appeared in a bad film or their acting lacked sufficient realspace credibility. The legality was recently established to encourage filmmakers and their entourages to produce quality artwork as opposed to the trash the last two centuries had seen them put out. Not so with Voss Winkenweirder. The actor invariably starred in superb films and his performances were always watertight. The unsubstantiated murder of such a hypercelebrity would not only guarantee our deaths. It would guarantee torture and very likely public disembowelment. Dr. ——— had good reason to be upset. Nonetheless I put an end to his hysterics with a firm backhand across the face that sent him spinning. I caught him and apologized. He stared at me dumbly. I told him I didn’t strike him to shut him up. I did it to safeguard his voice box. Then I explained how I actually enjoyed the aesthetic beauty of his foul-mouthed diatribes. They demonstrated an industrious use of the imagination.

“Thank you, Dr. Identity,” whispered Dr. ———.

I shrugged. “That’s what friends are for.”