Mister Medicine finished roaring that he would cut off everyone’s body parts and poison all their blood, and finally Mister Smart moved into the light.
Mister Smart’s head was a gigantic papier-mâché skull which extended a foot above his real head and reached down onto his chest. It was nearly all brain case with a tiny bespectacled and goateed face underneath. The body was naked except for a four-foot-long pink penis, probably a cardboard shipping tube, from which dangled two deflated basketballs. Mister Smart chanted on and on about his plan to rape Mother Gaia to death.
Jesus, that’s parodized from an old 50 Cent hip-hop piece I must’ve heard back when W was president, Larry thought. Too bad 50 Cent can’t sue him for plagiarism or defamation or something.
In the next scene, Gaia despaired and the six Mizzes vowed to die defending her. Larry thought Miz Ocean was pretty cute but Miz Desert had the best voice. The six Mizzes plotted to seduce the human, temporal servants of the Misters. Each Mister apparently had a human being who was his Number One Guy; the Mizzes were going to take them all out for “fun in the bushes,” as Miz Prairie declared, “before the Misters exterminate all vegetation.” That must have been the comic relief because people laughed.
The next dance and song was, in Larry’s lowbrow opinion, the fun part of the evening. I’m sure that movie critic I used to date would use words like primal, erotic, transgressive, and body-positive, but I’m just a lowly Fed so I would say this is one great dirty show. If I had to live out in the woods pretending to be an Indian or a hippie, this would definitely be the high point of my week.
Each of the six human servants awoke the morning after the seduction to the weeping of the Miz, who then took the man or woman to meet Mother Gaia, before whom the servant fell down in adoration. When all six were in full adoration, Mother Gaia raised them up to form Daybreak, and her lover, Brother Sun, came to teach them how to make weapons for the Daybreak to come.
The servants of Mister Chemical, Mister Clock, Mister Gun, and Mister Electron danced with each other and copulated with various Mizzes to bring forth the Nanoswarm, a chorus of men costumed in lumpy gray and white rags. Mister Chemical’s servant teamed up with Mister Medicine’s servant to bring forth the thousand-headed Biotes, a chorus of women sharing one vast blanket-garment, with just their green-painted faces poking out. Debbie was one, and Larry thought it was her best work since The Three Billy Goats Gruff in second grade.
The Biotes vowed to kill the petroleum and all that came from it, the Whole Plaztatic World, by revealing its true nature and making it rot away into filth, and change it to nourishing food for all of Mother Gaia’s children.
Hunh. Well, I guess if you’re planning that your grandchildren will be cavemen, that’ll explain biotes to them.
Finally, Mister Atom’s servant came forward and proclaimed himself the protector of all. He would hurl eight mighty nuclear blows against the centers of the Plaztatic World. The first two would go amiss and leave California, the heart and center of Plaztatic World, as a broken and wounded place, but not destroy it to its utmost atoms, because so many good people lived there.
Holy crap, Larry thought. That’s why they backdated the tribe’s origins and claimed performances started so much earlier; in a few years this’ll be a successful prophecy.
Then, Mister Atom’s servant proclaimed, the next five nuclear weapons would be overwhelming and would smash down the Plaztatic World, but then in her compassion, Mother Gaia would choose to spare people of color in the Southern Hemisphere, so the fizzling of the Buenos Aires bomb would be a sign that she would never wholly sweep the face of the Earth again. The rainbow in the Noah story, Larry thought. “I love you so much that you really better not piss me off.”
The actors and the crowd went into a frenzied chant of so it was foretold, so it was to be, so it was, so we shall tell it, over and over, as the drums built up to a mighty crescendo and the dancers formed a circle around the Servant of Mister Atom.
If they win, soon no one will know that they made the “prophecy” up after the event. Anyone can clearly see California isn’t in great shape but it wasn’t completely destroyed; five huge bombs did go off; and the one in Buenos Aires fizzled, leaving Argentina basically okay. Just because Mother Gaia was such a sweet chick. Or maybe she just loved to tango.
The dance finished. The servant of Mister Atom proclaimed that he would fly to the moon, and from there, when he saw the Plaztatic World trying to come back into Mother Gaia’s sacred sphere, he would hurl his bolts against it. He would depend upon the People of Gaia’s Dawn to help him to watch, and sometimes to fight and die for Mother Gaia when he told them it was necessary.
Hunh.
No mistaking it. It claimed that they talked and worked with the Daybreak robot, or base, or whatever it was, on the moon. Thunderbolts from the moon wasn’t even a bad description for the caveman-grandchildren.
The rest of the play was a lengthy singing-and-dancing-and-fighting number. The servants and the Mizzes defeated the Misters with the help of Nanoswarm and Biotes. Mister Smart’s dick-and-balls prop was removed and ceremoniously paraded around while he cried out at the loss. Gaia buried him alive (because he could not be killed) and all the servants vowed to sit eternal vigils at Mister Smart’s tomb against his rising.
In a big erotic dance number, the Mizzes rewarded the servants by making children with them—Larry thought that the former servant of Mister Chemical, who got Miz Ocean, got one hell of a good deal. The unfortunate servant of Mister Atom had to be childless, so he said farewell, charging the People of Gaia’s Dawn with reducing the remaining population of the Earth to about ten million before ascending the ladder into the sky. I suspect that’s some cousin of the Indian Rope Trick, but it sure works well at a distance, by firelight.
This was the cue for the last big number, a dancing demonstration about how there were tens, and tens of tens, and tens of tens of tens, up finally to 8×109, the population before Daybreak, which had been cut down to 2×109, which now must be reduced to 107.
Jesus god. They’ve killed three-quarters of the people who were alive this time last year and the Servant of Mister Atom just told them to kill 199 out of every 200 that are left.
In all the celebratory cheering and whooping, Larry grasped Debbie’s arm and squeezed:
u right
She squeezed back:
we go now
He squeezed C.
Drifting through the crowd, agreeing with everyone who stopped them to say that it gave you so much to think about, they passed into the darkness outside the camp, and jogged away as quickly and quietly as they could. They were less than halfway up the ridge when they heard the angry cries behind them, and ran as if all hell were at their heels.