Dr. Identity Read online

  Mr. Bogarty 2 momentarily forgot about ties. Its eyes functioned in realspace and 3D at the same time and the swinging tongue disoriented it. Then the android’s focus returned to its tie and the tie’s lack of stylistic gumption, at least in comparison with the tie wrapped around the neck of the android at its side. It bit its lip, staring at the rival fashion statement out of the corners of two white, bulbous eyes.

  “It’s a fine unit,” declared Mr. Bogarty 2 in a defeated tone.

  The ’gänger didn’t hear it.

  “I say. It’s a fine unit.”

  The ’gänger turned and regarded Mr. Bogarty 2. “Sexuality is not part of my program. I’m sorry.”

  Something snapped in Mr. Bogarty 2. It started talking in Voodoospeak as if possessed. It uttered a mélange of deep, robotic sounds. Then it toppled backwards. Its eyes popped out of its head on springs and all of its limbs broke into furious convulsions.

  Ignoring the death throes, the ’gänger picked up Mr. Bogarty 2’s briefcase and coolly exited the slideway…

  “Good morning, Herr Kincain,” said a receptionist to the ’gänger on its approach to the front desk. A giant cockroach, the receptionist had a Betty Davis head sticking out of its midsection. The head was black-and-white except for the bright red lipstick smeared over its lips. An old-fashioned switchboard hung on the wall—a tangle of wires, buttons and levers. The receptionist used her legs to fiddle with the contraption as she played greeter and answered phone calls.

  Herr Kincain smiled at the receptionist without saying anything. On the radio the voice of an irate newscaster was in the middle of a diatribe: “They have no use-value! They’re not scientists. They’re not lawyers. They’re not fucking psychologists. They’re not even anthropologists. They’re goddamned English professors! Philologists. The lowest form of plaquedemic, in this pundit’s opinion, next to the philosopher and the historian. It’s no wonder they’re committing holocausts everywhere they go. They serve no postcapitalist purpose. They believe in nothing but their novels and their punctuation marks…”

  “That’s a lovely tie, Herr Kincain,” the receptionist noted as the android waited for an elevator.

  Herr Kincain glanced down at the tie. “A lovely tie,” it echoed.

  Twenty minutes later a bell chimed and the elevator doors creaked open.

  A wave of bodies spilled out of the cabin and washed over Herr Kincain. Holding the briefcase tightly, it struggled to maintain balance and stay on its feet. But the wave was too powerful. It lost its footing, tumbled over, and got trampled.

  The last thing it saw before passing out: the elevator conductor’s smiling pinhead, which loomed over him and began to inflate like a balloon…

  Shrieking, the receptionist leapt over the front desk and scuttled towards the body of Herr Kincain.

  The elevator conductor snatched the briefcase and ducked back into the cabin. He pressed the button for the 3,002nd floor, massaging the skin of the briefcase like the thighs of an expensive hooker…

  The elevator stopped at the 3rd floor. Two neozooters stepped on. They were having a conversation in Donaldduckspeak.

  As the doors closed, a bandit wearing a Zorro mask and cape leapt onto the elevator and punched out all three occupants. He pushed the emergency button and robbed them of their wallets, jewelry and eyeballs…

  A special report cut off the elevator Muzak. “Pardon the interruption, citizens of Bliptown. The Bullsheet News Institute offers the following update on recent holocausts committed by the now infamous Corndog plaquedemics: they are still on the loose and acting like sons of bitches. The Winkenweirder camp has increased the bounty on their heads from one to three lifetime memberships at Littleoldladyville on the condition that these additional memberships are assigned to alternate personalities only. Bring the doctors in dead or alive and you, too, can be a psychotically satisfied shopper.”

  The bandit tore out the last pair of eyeballs and stuffed them in his satchel. He stood up, threw the satchel over his shoulder, turned to leave…and saw the briefcase. Giggling, he grabbed it, exited the elevator, and ran at top speed down a long hallway. At the end was a tall window. He wore hightop jetshoes and the resonance of his giggling increased with his speed as he bowled over the businesspeople that fastwalked across the hallway from one office to another.

  He accelerated to 60 mph by the time he exploded through the window.

  Every hour was rush hour in Bliptown and the flyways were a deafening maze of propulsion. The bandit sailor-dived a mile down, playfully dodging traffic, then clicked together the heels of his jetshoes. They morphed into manta rays. The rays’ wings parachuted open, broke his fall, flipped him upright and held him steady. The bandit’s Zorro cape split up the back, unleashing a set of tremendous, fake-looking Condor wings. He had recently stolen the wings from the set of the film Condorman VII: Condorman vs. The Greatest American Hero, which was being shot near his luxury conapt in Bliptown’s Vagina Light district. Tucking the briefcase into his armpit, he flapped the wings at a hummingbird’s speed and zipped away…

  He landed on a rooftop featuring a cheap, outdoor massage parlor. There was also a golfing range, a small square of Astroturf on which arcane men and ’gängers wearing Hawaiian shirts and white pants stood shoulder-to-shoulder trying to hit balls as hard as they could. For the most part, they whiffed and hit each other: half of them clutched their bodies and moaned in pain. Every now and then, though, a golfer made contact and sent a ball sailing into the depths of Bliptown’s mechanical dystopiascape…

  The bandit descended onto a small landing strip. His jetshoes morphed back into hightops and his wings caved into his cape. He let the briefcase fall out of his armpit and caught it by the handle. Cracking his neck, he strode towards the massage parlor. It was busy but there were two open massage tables. Behind them two naked, airbrushed female ’gängers waited patiently to rub him down and jerk him off.

  A tabloid bug landed on his shoulder. “Heard the latest news? Dr. Identity is actually a highly intelligent ostrich in disguise. And the bird has fleas!”

  The bandit glared at the bug, a common housefly except for a set of thick, chapped human lips that lay in front of it like two pink slugs sleeping one atop the other. The lips frothed with mucous. What appeared to be a salamander leg stuck out of their jagged crease. The fly’s speaking voice belonged to a veteran stage actor. “There’s more,” it continued. “Dr. ——— teaches his student-things that a split infinitive is a verb afflicted with schizophrenia. He also believes verbs have feelings and should be nurtured accordingly. Nouns, on the other hand, are lifeless, unempathetic organisms, he says.”

  Frowning, the bandit flicked the bug in the lips. The bug cried out as it tumbled away and tried to steady itself with long, oily wings. It landed on its back, legs flailing.

  The bandit stomped on it.

  His muscles tensed and he dropped the briefcase. The bug’s stinger had slid through the sole of his jetshoe, piercing his foot and injecting him with a microtoxin that produced a mortal desire to buy a copy of The Daily Assfuck. The microtoxin didn’t agree with his genetic makeup and also produced an unfortunate side effect: nipples sprouted all over his body. A few of the nipples were accompanied by breasts, one of which formed on his cheek and began to lactate.

  The bandit had been a sociopath. The nipples rendered him a psychotic. He shed his clothes and wings and began to tear the nipples from his body, scratching and ripping them off with his nails. His body became a sprinkler of blood and milk. The golfers stopped swinging their clubs and stared quizzically at him. So did several masseuses and loitering cow-pigeons.

  He staggered towards the edge of the roof, bounded along the rim, and toppled over…

  The massage parlor and golfing range sat atop a vidbuilding. Currently one of its megascreens showed a reenactment of the holocaust in which Dr. Identity murdered Voss Winkenweirder. The bandit’s silhouette was a black tear that streamed down the vast cheek of the megascr
een…

  The reenactment was a live performance. The director yelled cut and broke into view. The camera zoomed into his headggggwhich flaunted a Broom Hilda hairdo and scores of broken blood vessels. “Holocaust at Littleoldladyville! The plaquedemics are striking again, folks, at this very moment. This time they mean business!” The camera cut to a nosebleeder view of a gnat-sized Dr. Identity tearing apart various gnat-sized Babettas and BEMs. The scene dithered as the Papanazi filming it picked his nose.

  The director’s face reappeared. “We’re prepared to bring this live holocaust to you right now, live squared, even as it unfolds,” he boomed. “Places everybody! Places!” The camera zoomed out and the greenscreen on the set assumed the background of Littleoldladyville as the actors who had been reenacting the Winkenweirder-related holocaust changed costumes and darted back and forth in preparation for the new, realtime enactment. Ten seconds later the director’s voice bellowed, “Hacktion!!!” Most of the actors were still squirming into BEM suits and screwing on Babetta heads. But the actor playing Dr. Identity attacked anyway, barraging them with rubber throwing stars and knives…

  The briefcase lay on the rooftop for over an hour. Either nobody noticed it or nobody cared about it.

  A cow-pigeon lurched over. Tentatively the bird stuck out its tongue and licked the skin of the briefcase. It tasted all right. The bird pecked at the briefcase, trying to bore a hole in it, but the skin was too thick, so it tried to pick the lock with its talons. When that failed it clamped the handle with its beak, emitted a muffled Mooooooo!, and clumsily fluttered into the sky.

  While cumbersome and goofy-looking, cow-pigeons were fast, given enough space to accelerate. Some ornithologists and amateur birdwatchers referred to them as the cheetahs of the sky, clocking them at over 70 mph on occasion. This particular cow-pigeon, however, was old and had a bum wing: its speed topped out at 7 mph. It seemed to be swimming underwater as it loped across the unfriendly skies of Bliptown, vehicles and alaristrians threatening its life at every turn.

  A few balls of excrement escaped the cow-pigeon. Most of them smashed into windshields and caused gruesome accidents, but one managed to make the long journey to the street, landing on the head of a Kevin Bacon clone. It was a human—and a public anomaly. Shortly after the real movie star’s death, a community of Hungarian scientists, who, in addition to teaching neurobiology at Johannes Yobbery University, had also presided over the European branch of the Kevin Bacon Fan Club, decided to clone the actor in an effort to keep the dream alive, as it were. Unable to stop at one, they cloned thousands. People started to worry. For a time there seemed to be more Kevin Bacons (and Kevin Bacon ’gängers) in the world than actual non-Kevin Bacon life forms. A holocaust ensued and the Bacons were almost entirely liquidated. Now a near extinct species, they were hardly ever seen in public, preferring to live amongst themselves in remote subterranean Batcaves.

  Man or machine, the Kevin Bacons came in many guises and ages, depending upon the character in the film they were patterned after. This one was a Footloose Bacon, the most popular model: Staticelectric hairdo, wife-thing-beater T-shirt, skintight Wranglers and cowboy boots. He had been telling off a street performer. The street performer boasted a cheap Dr. Identity mask and may or may not have been an actual ’gänger. Using flashy, poorly executed Karate Kid moves, it pretended to kill strangers as they passed by. An out-of-control swan kick accidentally connected with Kevin Bacon’s shoulder. Infuriated, the clone threatened to sue the street performer, shaking his fists, performing angry dance moves, and reciting lines from Footloose in his defense, his favorite line being, “The music is on my side.”

  Then the cow-pigeon’s shit tagged him.

  The force of the blow nailed the Bacon’s body a few inches into the street. His neck broke on impact and he slumped over and died. The street performer poked at the corpse with his toes. Satisfied, he removed his mask and exposed a Tremors Bacon…

  The cow-pigeon loped on…After a while it grew tired and landed on the upside of an airworm that was stopped at a traffic light. A Smaug Turbo GT tore across an overhead flyway. A throng of rampant Papanazi tailed it…

  The cow-pigeon lay its head down on the briefcase. It fell asleep and dreamt that it was young again, with strong wings, a full mane of hair, lively udders and a bright white grin…

  Taking a sharp turn, the airworm twisted onto its side. The bird and the briefcase slid off.

  The bird never woke up.

  The briefcase landed in the back seat of a convertible Beauford with streamers of crepe paper and strings of empty beer cans flowing in its train. A newly married husband and wife-thing sat in the front seat. The husband fumbled with the knobs of the car’s vintage Blaupunkt radio, trying to find a station that played Hee-Haw. But the same thing was on every channel: “Holocausts are sparking up in multiple…sectors at the same time…Either the plaquedemics are cytokinetic organisms…who are splitting apart like…mitotic cells or…they have developed the capacity to move from place to place…at the speed of light, unleashing their queer brand of Terror…Half the population of Bliptown…is dead…clinically insane…or seriously concerned about their psychosomatic welfare. Local…military…forces…are…in the process…of smashing down the city walls…and allowing…the fictional monsters…who inhabit the surrounding…rainforests to…invade our…great metropolis…It may be Bliptown’s only chance…”

  “Goddamn this thing!” The husband punched the radio, breaking off one of its knobs.

  “That’s mature,” said the wife-thing.

  “Mind your hole!”

  Casting her hair over her shoulder, the wife-thing noticed the briefcase. She unfastened her belt, climbed halfway over the seat and fumbled for it. It was almost out of reach. Her backside nudged the husband.

  “Move your fat ass!”

  Finally she got hold of the briefcase, sat back down and put it in her lap. She eyed the husband. “What’s this?”

  The husband eyed her back. “That’s my briefcase, bitch!” he shouted. Keeping one hand on the wheel, he tried to confiscate it.

  The wife-thing held on tight. “What’s this? What’s this? What’s this?” she kept saying. The Beauford bounced and shook as the couple struggled.

  The husband slammed on the brakes. The wife-thing’s head smacked into the glove compartment, crushing her veil and breaking her nose. Blood poured from her nostrils. She bawled and gurgled. The husband yanked the briefcase out of her grasp and lifted it over his head, victorious…

  A carpmobile rear-ended the Beauford. Both vehicles exploded. The briefcase was projected six blocks away on a spout of fire.

  The fire died out. The briefcase lost altitude and plummeted, plummeted, plummeted…Three minutes later it receded into a deep, abandoned alleyway that functioned both as a landfill and a graveyard for citizens who couldn’t afford to incinerate, cryogenize or reincarnate their loved ones. Piles of rotten, steaming humans and ’gängers and garbage stretched as far as the eye could see…

  The briefcase landed on a scavenging armadillo, crushing it. The skin of the briefcase was burnt and damaged. But its lock remained tightly fastened.

  Nearby an old Truetone television set came to life. Behind the lines of static that played jazz on its screen was a clip of Dr. Identity using a samurai sword to cut the heads off of a gang of Dr. Identity lookalikes. The clip moved in slowtime and played over and over and over…

  An hour later, talk show host Fibb Defibrillator pushed his fingers into the static and opened it like a curtain. A blinding grin leapt out of his golden bust. “Good afternoon. I’m Fibb Defibrillator. It doesn’t get much worse than this, folks. Dr. Identity and his cowardly plaquedemic Real McCoy continue to take advantage of the good people of Bliptown with unabashed determination. I’m here to tell you that something must be done soon. If they remain on the lam, no doubt the Media, the Law, and ultimately the General Public will tire of them. Their dirty deeds will go unchecked, and no matter what
they do, they will exist as invisible ghosts on the megascreen of history…”

  16

  SCHIZOVERSE, PART 2 – 1ST PERSON (IDENTITY)

  “Dr. Identity. I’m talking to you.”

  I prodded the stripper’s breasts with my index finger. She stood there patiently as I studied the protrusions. The absence of nipples perplexed me. Even I had nipples.

  “The narrative of my life is out of my hands, I said.”

  I nodded gravely at the stripper. Smoke leaked out of my nostrils. “I heard you.”

  “Did you? I’m curious.”

  “Drink your drink.” Emotion flooded into the stripper’s face. Her brow wrinkled as a surreptitious Id took her from behind.

  I looked at Dr. ’Blah. “Your lack of nipples concerns me as well. Why do you insist on walking around with that lack? Why can’t you put on a costume like real people?”

  He lapped at his martini. “Costumes are for the birds. Real people are for the birds. Birds are for the birds.”

  I puffed on my cigar. The cigar yelped. I told it to pipe down. “Very funny,” the cigar replied. I dropped it on the floor and stomped on it. Liquid ash sprayed out of either side of my boot sole.

  The head of an Id standing behind Dr. ’Blah exploded. I couldn’t determine if the head had been weaponized or went off of its own volition. Body shrapnel peppered Dr. ’Blah’s scalp and shoulders. The shrapnel slid down his neck and then went up in smoke. He didn’t seem to notice.

  “I miss my student-things. Why did I forsake plaquedemia? Why? Why?”

  “One why will suffice.” I removed another cigar from my mirrorblazer. I strangled it to death before putting it in my mouth. “How long is this pity party going to last? Will it ever end? What can I do to make it end?”

  “For starters, you can turn yourself in and tell the Pigs I had nothing to do with anything. I know I’ll still be held responsible. But maybe then the Law won’t torture me to death. A clean death is all I ask for. A soldier’s death.”