Codename Prague (22 page)

Prague floated rightside-up. He didn’t say anything. He pulled the trigger of the gun.
Click…click…click…click…click…

“Fine. Be that way. Here is another ‘explanation.’” Cdre Rabelais paced back and forth, moving between sharp fits of slowtime and fasttime. He produced a kind of sign language that looked like the motions of a marionette puppeteer with his balls in a sling. Then he returned to a position of semi-attention. Static continued to garble the screens on both parties’ ends.

“Do you understand now?” said Rabelais.

…
click…click…click…

The Commodore used thumbs and fingers to make an O-shape through which he peered at Prague with one eye. “What about now?”

…
click
…
click
…

“Most unfortunate. Well. Let me put it to you this way…It was revealed to the Ministry of Applied Pressure that you possessed a code capable of inciting the next evolutionary stage of postreal mankind. The MAP had been searching for this code for decades. We found it in your toilet one night on a routine check of your feces. We crack open everybody’s toilets, every night, and check their feces when they sleep. The code had never appeared in your physiology before. Was it something you ate? Had you been bitten by an alien or a vampire? Had you injected yourself with experimental cleaning products? No matter. There was the code. Now we had to unlock it.”

…click………click…

“Based on research performed by some of the top Phildickian minds in the Amerikanized world, we inserted you into carefully prescribed and constructed social and spatial matrices. It was hoped that over time your interaction within these matrices would release the code inside of you and set mankind on a new and improved track. Hence your visit to Prague, etc. That the names of these matrices coincided with your own name was as coincidental as it was inevitable. The MAP is still determining if the mission succeeded, failed, or both. Desire and the socius are still being assessed. There were setbacks.
Cats
and your sudden and irrational preoccupation with ekphrasis
—
we foresaw these eventualities with perfect clarity. And we knew you would chase that monster to Hong Kong. But some of your actions were completely unexpected. The postcard you purchased in Deutschtown, for instance. The breakfast you ate on your sixth day in Singapore. Losing your briefcase. Brushing your teeth for an extra sixteen seconds on the evening of August 14. The dream about the yak. A lethargic rate of blinking on at least four occasions. So forth. You truly baffled us, Vincent, especially when we discovered the multivalence of your code, or rather, your unbridled selfhood. Moreover, the utter randomness of your actions was a shock to the Department of Precognition and Mythopoetic Inscription; layoffs have been rampant since the proverbial sleeper has awakened. You know how it is. Our surveillance systems are four dimensional. We perceive every citizen as a spacetime worm
—
the slithering pathway of your life from birth to death. But no spacetime worm is an island. There are margins of error. Glitches and aberrations invariably crop up. We can see you and we know what you’ve done and what you’ll do…more or less. Sometimes a sound of thunder cracks open the sky and a butterfly effekt fucks everything up. What can I say? Chaos is a dirty bitch. In any event, I hope this brief exegesis has provided you with at least a modicum of comfort. Any chance you’ll come back to earth and turn yourself in for decognitive estrangement? The MAP would prefer to lick this plate clean. Rest assured, your code has been extracted and projected to the far corners of existence, but one likes to be sure that there are no residual kernels in the cornhusk. Some codes are like livers: leave a piece behind after you rip the sonofobitch out and it grows right back.”

Prague stopped firing the gun.

He let go of the gun and it floated away.

Cdre Rabelais nodded. “I didn’t think so. Well. I suppose if we really wanted you to come home, we’d zip out there and put you in a sack. But you’ve been through enough. For now.”

Crackle of static. Hum of turbines.

“My Ab-Crab
^®
is dead,” blurted Prague. He pulled up his shirt.

“Yes,” said Rabelais.

“I’m going to let the corpse decompose inside of me.” He touched the soft brown skin of his stomach.

“That’s a good idea,” said Rabelais.

“Eventually the sordid flakes of the apparatus will disappear into my flesh.”

“Or you’ll crap it out. Everything comes out in the wash.”

Prague said, “Expletive.”

Rabelais clutched his chest and staggered backwards. He smiled. “Do you know what your problem is? Do you, Mr Prague? You’re too sane. Excessive sanity is not a handsome trait. Nor is it utilitarian. One’s psyche needs to be off kilter in order to survive and excel in this world. Pull that stick of logic and causality out of your ass. You’ll feel better. That’s what all this is about, isn’t it? You feel sad. You feel dejected and oppressed. Wildman. Nomad. You feel…
human
.”

“Sir, you wanted to see me?” Another SAMSA appeared. Rabelais set him on fire with a spray can and a Zippo. A gored janitor crawled from beneath a pile of bodies and started to clean the office. Screaming, Rabelais stomped on him…

The line went dead.

Prague kicked the screen away, then closed his eyes and let himself glide down the corridor as the freighter moved closer and closer to nowhere.

^[20]
   See note 19.

CODENAME PRAGUE

About the Author

D. Harlan Wilson is an award-winning novelist, short story writer, literary critic, screenwriter, editor and English professor.
Codename Prague
marks the second installment of the scikungfi trilogy, the first of which is
Dr. Identity, or, Farewell to Plaquedemia
, recipient of the Wonderland Book Award in 2008. Visit Wilson online at www.dharlanwilson.com and dharlanwilson.blogspot.com.