The hobo state was also home to a large number of communists.
“Everyone is downstairs.”
Will and Quetzalcoatl walked into what appeared to have once been the break room of the bookstore. Will continued straight through the room, to a set of stairs leading down to the basement. Quetzalcoatl followed, admiring the asymmetrical distress of the room. There was a broken table, a ratty couch, two microwaves blinking different hours, and a corkboard still covered in safety notices and employee incentives dated three years ago.
Due to this acute and totally precedented fascination with the disarray of the room, Quetzalcoatl’s skull collided violently with the drop-ceiling above the stairway.
“Watch your head,” said Will.
Quetzalcoatl responded to Will’s advice by collapsing and falling down the stairs.
“Oh shit.”
Will ran down the stairs after Quetzalcoatl, only reaching him after the former Aztec god’s body had stopped tumbling and lay on the cold concrete floor of the basement.
“Mr. Sausage King!” said Will, lifting Quetzalcoatl into a sitting position. “Mr. Sausage King… are you alright?”
Quetzalcoatl stood up slowly and dusted himself off.
“Please,” said Quetzalcoatl, shaking his head and getting his bearings, “call me Quinn.”
“You’ve got a nasty bruise on your head, Quinn,” said Will. “And I doubt the fall… helped remedy the situation. Are you sure you’re okay?”
“Biscuits and gravy, colonel,” said Quetzalcoatl. “Biscuits and gravy.”
“Wonderful,” replied his host, trusting entirely the medical assessment of the crazy man with potential head trauma. “Then I’d like you to meet some of our members.”
From the shadows of the dimly lit basement emerged a trio of amorphous shapes. Stepping into said dimly lit light, they revealed themselves to be three nearly identical, amorphous men. Judging by the flannel and the facial hair, Quetzalcoatl assumed they were all liberal arts majors.
“Quinn,” said Will, “meet Bill, Syl, and Phil. They are the senior most advocates of our… aggregate of minds.”
“Bawdy jewelry, gentlemen,” said Quetzalcoatl, curtsying.
“Bill, Syl, Phil,” continued Will, “I’d like you to meat Quill—I mean Quinn. I… discovered him this afternoon, lecturing to a family of more… conventionally minded folks. The exchange took a slightly… violent turn, but that, my fellow fellows, is precisely why I recruited him. Our collective has been… less than forthcoming with any… tangible results.”
“How” asked Syl, “can one expect to grasp an idea, though? By definition, our… assemblage is one of… minds and ideas, not actions.”
“Do not be snide,” said Phil. “You know full well the… intent of Will’s statement. Let the man continue with his introduction.”
“Of course, Phil” said Syl, “my apologies, Will.”
“It’s all right, Syl,” said Will. “And thank you, Phil, but, truly, who am I to… commandeer anyone’s right to speak as they see fit.”
“Please, Will,” said Syl, “continue.”
“As you wish,” said Will, turning his attention to Quetzalcoatl. “As I have previously mentioned to you, Quinn, the… machinations of our group have been somewhat… less than effective, all things considered. While we by no means harbor doubts that an idea can change the world… can save it from itself, even… we have come to realize that said idea requires… implementation… of a sort we are incapable of. Our ideas, sadly, must be converted into action… into a… result that can be seen, touched, tasted… into something less ethereal, that is, if it is to have any hope of being reflected within society at large.”
“And that,” said Phil, “is our failing.”
“We are not able to… instill our ideas,” continued Bill, “upon the common man. Our… designs are too many, our scope is too vast. We have, so far, been unable to… distill these notions into a single plan, a single stratagem.”
“And it is my hope that you, Quinn,” said Will, “with your… unique perspective on the world… will be able to… descry the more visceral components of our ideas… and effect them to the varied masses.”
“Are you sure,” asked Syl of Will, in front of Bill and Phil, “that he is up to the task? That any one person could truly hope to…”
“Up, up and away, ladies,” interrupted Quetzalcoatl, holding up his hand and bowing his head. “I’ll fuck your mothers.”
The leaders of the clandestine cabal of philosophers smiled almost giddily, taking tremendous satisfaction from the statement.
Quetzalcoatl broke out laughing.
Twenty-Three: For Science!
“Do we have results on subject 37-E yet, Dr. Ramos?”
“Same results as subjects 37-A through 37-D, Dr. Meola. It broke free from its restraints, damaged the holding cell door, assaulted three interns, then killed the intervening security guards and wore their entrails as clothing.”
“Only three this time?” he asked, writing the number on his clipboard. “Either this one is slower than the others or the interns are finally getting smarter.”
“There were only three interns left, Dr. Meola.”
“Oh.”
“This subject seems especially vicious, actually. Faster, stronger, smarter than the others.”
“Smarter?”
“It, uh…” Dr. Ramos cleared his throat. “It talked, Tony.”
“Talked? It shouldn’t be able to… What did it say?”
“It, uh, well… it said, ‘I’m a pretty, pretty princess,’ while dancing around in the guards’ intestines. It managed to fashion them into a, uh, dress.”
“I’m sorry?”
“It also shaped the damaged shackles into what Judy said appeared to be a tiara.”
“Judy?”
“One of the interns. You’ll see her at lunch. She’ll be the one with half a face.”
“Well,” said Dr. Meola, “this is certainly less than heartening, Dr. Ramos. I’m beginning to think we may have to scrap the program entirely.”
“Maybe man wasn’t meant to play god after all, Tony.”
The two doctors looked at one another with grave repentance on their faces.
They immediately started cracking up.
“Seriously, though,” continued Dr. Ramos, catching his breath and wiping a tear from his eye, “it probably wasn’t the best idea cross-breeding a werewolf and an atomic mutant, engineering it to be excessively belligerent, starving it, and then insulting its mother repeatedly.”
“No, probably not,” said Dr. Meola. “Hindsight and all that.” He sighed. “Might as well get George over here and have him put it down. We’ll perform the autopsy after lunch and then bury it with the others.”
“Yes, sir.”
Dr. Ramos began walking to his desk to make the call.
“Dr. Ramos,” said Dr. Meola, “before you do that… you want to get Alexi drunk and make him wrestle it?”
“Oh, hell yes.”
Twenty-Four: The Exposition in the Machine
After Starbucks obliterated the internet in its bidding war with Walmart, society tried its damnedest to maintain some kind of a hold on the economy, while simultaneously rediscovering the basics of social interaction.
Society failed.
Oddly enough, this collapse of commerce and basic human decency was not considered an apocalypse. The resulting riots, the swift and drastic increase in crime, the burning down of Sweden and Norway and the ensuing Torrent War, however, ended the world for the fifth time.
Some historians lumped the whole string of events together, but some historians were idiots.
“I can’t believe you rented your own body out to the spirit world,” said Chester A. Arthur XVII.