Codename Prague (2 page)

Not all prose springs from the intention to communicate—whether it be meaning, disease, magnified truculence, secrets manufactured specifically to be revealed, a market mysticism of betrayal, centuries-interrupted doom plots at last resumed, the innocent back of a monster, sham delights, applicable death-blows or the custom joinery of Trojan-viral prayer. Those who have drugged furniture, diabolified dialogue and sacrificed storyline in a desperate attempt to stray from current literature’s cheap, worn paradox and pre-explained heroes deliver a merciless cure, a dimly-lit liberation that leaves the reader with the final responsibility to walk away from this trash-catharsis and start using his or her brain, if only in miniature. Beyond this, the frenzied and exacting works of quantum pointillists such as Jeff Lint, Violaine and Eddie Gamete leave their stains at the high-tide mark of psychodimensional exploration where no one thinks to look.

Wilson’s propulsion from hydraulic misfortune to a rambunctious form of expression, his spirited attempts to wear the reader’s face for a hat, and the final, very public siege and arrest which exposed both him and his doll-filled basement to the American media, are now well-known. There is a thriving market—from which he does not profit—in t-shirts bearing the notorious mug-shot in which he is seen to have twelve eyes, all of them closed. The trial itself is better known for the sudden exhibition of Wilson’s “energy snake” than any meaningful discourse on literature. My hopes for an awakened interest in hypervortexal fiction came to an end with that childish display and the subsequent descent into flailing drop-kicks and hollering ushers. Since the debacle Wilson has been publicly defined as a snorting disaster-pig and his technical and creative gifts have been relegated to the realm of myth (or what Marshall Hurk has called “the secret place of honor”). It is hard to gauge how it has affected his personality, just as it is difficult to measure to the millimeter the distance traveled by a swarm. Certainly he could never sustain the half-mad state of nervous excitement he displayed in the courtroom. In recent
photographs he stares as if stunned by a blowfish.

Although Wilson will no doubt remain an enigma to some, as one who has made a tremendous contribution to the immense story of human violence, his work is sure to generate frantic evasion and nervous disdain amid the follower-filled timidity of modern scholarship, and a wide readership among the groundlessly triumphant, the conspicuously fanged and the seeking.

The public image of The Author—ramrod straight, unsurprised and studded with snails that make a popping sound when removed—has given way to the general impression of a force intent on using as many words as possible to say nothing we don’t already know. It’s a choice between those who were once alive or those who are now dead. Faced with an industry impermeable to talent, real creators will turn in another direction and aim at a heightened target, a unique emblem all bedecked with resinous blossoms and chained fruit. It may feel like a mixture of a stingray, a valentine and a nasty bump on the noggin. An abyss of treasure, detail-rich and explorable at every scale. For myself, I would ask a favor of everyone reading this introduction. If you’re going to write, write something interesting and original, or get the fuck out of the way.

—London 2009

00

Slowmo Scikungfi

After he assassinated the Nowhere Man, the Ministry of Applied Pressure told Vincent Prague to go to hell. Subsequently he was appointed to the position of Anvil-in-Chief, the catbird’s seat of special agents. “If he can off Nowhere, he can do anything,” was the Ministry’s belated logic.

Two MAP agents snuck into Prague’s conapt to deliver the news. They wore standard MAP attire: Casablanca fedoras, photoelectric razorshades, sharply defined beetledream suits. They raided the refrigerator, set up a system of wiretaps, and tiptoed into the bedroom. Prague slept naked atop the covers in a fetal curl. His lips quivered like divining rods.

“Wake up, Mr Prague,” barked an agent, chewing a piece of ginger broccoli. The other agent turned on the lights.

An alarm went off.

The alarm triggered an antigravity shockwave that lifted all bodies and objects not nailed to the floor into the air. Vincent Prague remained asleep. He didn’t wake up until an agent hurled a throwing star at the alarm, silencing it in a plume of blue sparks. The star had been rigged to disavow the room’s cavoritic conversion.

“Who’s there?” said Prague. He bumped into the ceiling. “The lights are on.”

The agents traded confused expressions. One droned, “Put us down, sir.”

Prague smiled a crooked smile. “The lights are on,” he reiterated.

Confusion slipped into consternation. The agents had never met Vincent Prague. But they knew of him. Skinny fella. Tall fella. Good killer. Shitty
attitude.

The agents’ names—SAMSA 066 and SAMSA 067—scrolled around the belts of their fedoras in a pulsing LED libretto. Hanging comfortably in the air, SAMSA 067 clenched his fists. His knuckles cracked like popcorn. SAMSA 066 grinned and rearranged the nub of his tie. “We’re trained for combat in non-gravitational spatialities,” he said. “Hard or easy, Mr Prague. Either way you’re coming with us.”

Prague scratched an armpit. “Non-gravitational spatialities? What’re you, my grandmother?”

“Hard, then,” said SAMSA 067. SAMSA 066 flexed his jaw. “Have it your way.”

Lack of gravity rendered the consequent scikungfi fight a decidedly slow motion affair. The agents converged on Prague, swinging their arms in wide circles and using floating pieces of furniture, books, bongs, televisions for leverage. They moved forward like unmanned zeppelins. Arms neatly folded behind his back, Prague waited for them to get closer. At one point he snatched a graphic novel that floated by and thumbed through it.

Half a minute later the agents were almost within reach. Antennae and fossorial legs sprouted from their beetledream suits as they prepared to strike. They could kill him if they saw fit. They could even cut him into pieces. The MAP would reanimate and stitch his body back together. Prague had already been reanimated twice, once after being gunned down by a rival assassin, the second time during a friendly water balloon fight that went sour and turned into a hydrochloric acid war. Briefly he adopted a third-time’s-a-charm sensibility. But reanimation was a messy, tiresome business; he couldn’t be bothered with it. And he hadn’t scikungfi fought in antigravity for years.

“I’ll give you dipshits first crack,” Prague said. “Be nice now. I’m still half asleep.”

SAMSA 066 attacked with a snap kick. Prague didn’t move, didn’t even flinch—he let the kick land on his jaw. His head ricocheted off his shoulder and bounced back into place as the agent leisurely somersaulted by…

SAMSA 067 lashed out with an antenna that crackled and fizzed with electricity. The antenna sliced through Prague’s flesh like butter, claiming his right ear lobe. Toiletbowl blue globules of Victory brand gin floated out of the wound.

Prague let it bleed.

“This is no way to treat a man in his birthday suit,” he said. Gripping the blade of a ceiling fan for support, he swung a knee into SAMSA 067’s groin. The agent squealed and slapped him across the face with an insect leg. Prague grabbed his balls and squeezed…The agent writhed, growled. They were eye to eye and his breath smelled of stale gasoline. Prague winced, released his balls and delivered two sharp fists to SAMSA 067’s chest. He pinwheeled away just as SAMSA 066, who had gained momentum by springing off a wall, returned for a second assault.

The agent pulled a Weird Science gat. Prague had seen the model before: a shiny steampunk raygun in quasinautical motif with radiator fins and Babbage bulbs. Brain-melting hardware. Possibly a zombification tube. Either effekt suited him. As a teenager, he and his friends spent most of their time shooting themselves in the heads with rayguns. Better than sex. Better than pharmaceuticals. Almost better than virtuality. It took some getting used to, and a few friends permanently lobotomized themselves—Timmy McFarlin accidentally suicided, morphing his thinkball into a mushroom omelet. But generally the boys acclimatized to the neuroviolence. Prague took a special liking to it. He couldn’t function unless he shot himself in the face with an aether oscillator for no less than ten seconds eight times a day. A few stints in rehab cleaned him up. He wished he could go back, though. He’d do it all over, just the same.

“Put your hands up, Mr Prague,” said SAMSA 066.

“And if he doesn’t answer?” said Prague.

“Let me see those hands, Thin Man,” said the SAMSA.

“And if he still doesn’t answer?” said Prague.

SAMSA 066 frowned philosophically. “I simply say…
Baby, oh baby, my sweet baby, you’re the one
…”

Prague shook his head. “You silly asshole. Nobody puts Baby in a corner.”

When the agent floated within range, Prague snatched the gun from his hand and nailed him on the forehead with the handle, shattering the LED screen of his fedora. He hurled the gun at SAMSA 067, who languished in a
ceiling corner. The weapon drifted end over end and innocuously bounced off of the agent’s hip.

As the agents struggled to rally, Prague took a time out to dress his wound. He swam down to the floor, pulled himself across shag carpet to a mini-fridge and removed a spare ear, custom-made for his physiology and DNA. He kept spares of most of his external body parts in the mini-fridge. He had three more ears, two extra noses, a chin, fingers and toes, eight sets of genitals (male and female), several eyeballs, several eyebrows, and a handful of mouths. All costly items, but nothing that couldn’t be negotiated by massive financial debt, ensuring that countless members of the postcapitalist universe were as good as Mr Potato Head.

In order to replace the sliced off lobe, Prague needed to hack off the remainder of his ear. He used a monofilament saw that cauterized the wound it made as the damaged ear curled off of his head like the skin of a pear. Teeth clenched, he held the replacement ear to the wound and waited for its minute, hungry roots to sink in…His brain became a worm farm. A torrent of flashbacks besieged him. A life passed before his eyes…He saw himself spit from the bearded mouth of a womb like a pinch of tobacco…He saw himself devouring a birthday cake and tearing through a jungle of crepe paper…He saw times tables, Sea Monkeys
^®
, superscreens, monoliths…Yul Brynner in
Westworld
. His face fell off to reveal…legion of soldiers with goat heads goosestepping down the streets of City City…There was a deep, unrecognized, unprecedented kiss. He could hear the kiss over the screaming of the worms…Subtitles formed beneath his feet. He wore a pharaohic graduation gown that metamorphosed into a seersucker lounge suit. The subtitles read:
Sha na na na, sha na na na na
…Prague sitting behind a desk. Prague observing a pencil. Prague clocking out. Prague sailor-diving into a lake of fire…robotic drill sergeants and starship troopers and Continental Ops…mosaic of warzones from different time periods. Scikungfi fighting from here to eternity…image of a dimly lit red lamp in a motel room. In the bathroom, a toilet flushed…vista of Nowhere. The man fell to his knees and burned like a scarecrow…

…the wound sealed over. Prague shook his head. Mnemonic vestiges broke apart, dissolved…He touched the ear. Tugged on it. No pain. No problem.

He stood.

Not only had the agents regained their composure, they were right behind him, reaching out for him. He could smell their oiled extremities.

Prague clapped his hands. The room flooded with gravitons.

Everything fell. The agents slammed into the floor like sacks of clay. SAMSA 067 was incapacitated by a television that landed on his head, cracking his skull. Heavy and dense as a boat anchor, the television was an old, refurbished ’59 Silvertone Suburbanite. SAMSA 066 dizzily got to his feet. Kinked legs folded back into his suit. He took off his razorshades. He looked at his partner. He looked at Prague.

“One of these days I’ll have to get a futuristic TV,” said the Anvil-in-Chief. “Thing is, I only buy vintage.”

SAMSA 066 blinked. “What happened?”

“It’s the clapper. New twist on an old hat. But you ain’t seen nut’n honey.” Prague clapped his hands again, twice.

Realtime slipped into fasttime.

SAMSA 066 had limited experience in fasttime. To become an agent of the Ministry of Applied Pressure, he endured countless hours of requisite irrealtime training. But that was long ago, and he had never been in a fasttime fight on the job. He resembled a crash test dummy in a windstorm as Prague rained blows all over his body and the agent twitched groaned flailed and Prague attacked with an arsenal of martial arts moves karate tae kwon do kung fu jeet kune do judo aikido escrima hapkido muay thai t’ai chi ninjutsu all the major styles were represented including a few esoteric forms vale tudo capoeira krav maga dim mak pankration mu tau shootboxing all reinforced by a staunch wuxia ethos and he concluded with a Mr Miyagi sandblaster followed closely by a token Bruceploitation punch and finally a
daikaiju
blaster which hit SAMSA 066 like a big rig in maximum overdrive and the agent’s ribcage fractured into hundreds of pieces the blow was so devastating and hideous and his body hit the floor and spun around and around and around and the agent squeaked
something and then everything was still and silent and peaceful for a second or two.

A vidphone rang like an Uzi.

Prague clapped fasttime back into realtime. The ring slowed down. He pushed an audio button on the vidphone console. “This is a recording,” he said, and hung up.

He surveyed the bedroom. What a mess. He was a neat freak with the vaguest touch of OCD and the
mise en scène
didn’t sit well with him. Leave it to the government to exacerbate a citizen’s god-given disorder.