It has to do with national security, he typed. Mousing over Yellow. Can you tell me what kind of data you provided? Do you have a government clearance?
They don’t need that– it’s every credit card purchase. That sounds boring, she said. Do u like t? What is it exactly?
Jesus Christ bitch– is this fucking Linkedin? he typed, and erased it.
The elderly never dreamed that they were finding gold coins in the mailbox. That the mailbox was a beautiful nymph. As you got old your mind dried out into a thing that could only fear and suffer, he was learning. Until all you could do was yell at people on the phone.
His job had not resulted in a single arrest. Terror busts didn’t come from incall business. They came from FBI agents asking mentally challenged men if they’d like to participate in terror plots. Arresting them when they said yes. He had job security. Room for growth. He earned a pension. It could start paying out in 35 years. Why won’t u tell me, she said.
Never message a white woman with bright color hair, he remembered. Green means polyamorous. Pink means transsexual game designer. Blue means Type II bipolar disorder but even they can’t talk about anything but your fucking job. What if this guy’s right. Well how could I leave all this behind.
All right thank you for the call sir, he said. Please be assured that DHS takes these reports seriously, and your claims will be fully investigated. He went to unmatch the caller and hit the Fuck You Button on the girl before he realized he was turned around.
I did the right thing. What are the odds they find me. Whatever– I called them. I reported it. I used a burner phone. What will they get me for– corporate espionage?
I have to go back to work
I have to go back to work.
There’s a merger but I won’t even get fired.
Maybe they’ll hire another cute girl. So every pig in the office doesn’t have to get horny for poor Marcy fucking Pendergrass.
He had a dream about a dying seal in a black ocean with his mother’s face. At 4AM he woke up when his computer speakers blasted a Windows notification. Cheerful chimes. A mandatory update had auto-installed. It had enhanced opportunities to make in-app purchases with one click. Erased his Documents folder. His unfinished book.
He searched for support live chat. Waited for the chat window. Typed. Your fucking mandatory update erased my files–
Agent–
Live agent–
LIVE AGENT
Did you mean: I’d like to purchase a new Surface Pro, it said.
Hyper Elite Disrupter
In the morning he fished around in his trunk. He’d remembered something.
The now filthy tent tarp covered everything. It was twisted around his old maps and tire jack and half empty 10w40 motor oil bottles. Finally he got it clear. A package of athletic socks from his mother. A genuine Nike product. Red, white and blue in a distorted argyle pattern meant to look “technological”. The label said: Hyper Elite Disrupter.
His toes were swollen like tree fungus. Smelled like a mildewy basement. The snug new fabric felt like his feet were being dried with a young Japanese maiden’s hair.
He parked the car on the road by the old fence that said CUNT. Climbed up through the spindly black mustard until he could see the concrete platform with the rust color bunker doors over the hilltop. Concrete stairs down the hill. An old rail made of rusty pipes. He walked slowly. Half crouched. It made him hear helicopters from a Vietnam war movie. He kept his hands far from his pockets. But no one was looking.
When he got to the hatch he ducked down and banged on it. The sound startled sparrows.
No one answered for a minute. Then–
WHO GOES THERE. Kent’s voice, echoing up the chute.
It’s me. He said. I’m opening the hatch.
The hinges sounded like a witch squealing over baby meat. Hard to see down the ladder in the dark but he could make out Kent, pointing the Bushmaster.
Hey man– I come in peace.
Kent half lowered the gun. What can I do for you, he said. He sounded like he was talking across a long swimming pool.
Marcy, are you in there?
No one here but me, said Kent.
Where did she go?
I don’t owe you an explanation about anything, said Kent. We’ve seen what kind of person you are. You won’t last out there and you wouldn’t last in here.
OK man. Listen– you, and she, if you’re here, have to get out of here. They’re coming.
Coming? Who? Go where? “They” are wherever you’re going to–
OK you don’t have to come. Where’s Marcy.
You’re not taking anything that’s in here.
It’s not safe here, Kent. She’s not safe.
Safer here then out there.
Let’s ask her about that–
She doesn’t want to see you, said Kent.
She can tell me that herself.
You better get out of here, said Kent. Before I start seeing you as a threat.
He almost said something.
Instead he paused and reflected. Prayed for an instant. Like he’d been taught. All right man, he said. Have it your way. Walked away up into the weeds.
He lay in the grass on the hilltop for a very long time. Just looking down. Finches burbling. Low wet paper color clouds cooling his neck with mist. Then the sun broke out. Finally the metal squealed. The hatch door flew up. Kent’s head with the Mitt Romney gray at the temples inched up and up. Looking around cautiously. Like a marmot coming out of its hole in an old cartoon. Squinty eyes.
He shouldered the gun. Like Dusty told him. Pulled it just slightly away from his face until he could see a magnified head in the scope glass, shaking along with his hands. Weird light effects from the dirty lens dancing around the hair. A black shape like a sliver of moon slid around under the crosshairs. When he moved what felt like a millimeter the black slipped over his whole field of sight. Then when he got Kent’s face again a bright beam was hitting it and Kent’s eyes got startled and he was moving. Dropping out of view. Red means dead. He pulled. A sound like lightning hitting a house. Like a bomb going off.
His forehead was numb. The top of his nose. Like one minute after the best coke rail that ever existed. The crack still echoing in the hills as his ears began ringing. Suddenly his eye socket hurt so bad it was… it was… what was the word for it. He couldn’t remember. What is this feeling. Did I shoot myself. Did the bullet come out the wrong end and hit me. Am I retarded now….vibrating. His eye bones were vibrating. Now it felt like when your foot falls asleep. There was blood in his eye and his forehead by the eyebrow felt like a strong hand was pinching it. Someone was screaming. Inner ears shrieking with Tibetan bells. He couldn’t see.
When he looked up there was no one in the hatch and it was quiet except the screams. Over and over with big jagged breaths between. He smeared blood off his cheek. Pulled back on the cold gun bolt. A cartridge came flying out, just like it was supposed to. A new pointy bullet popped up and he levered up the bolt and pushed it forward and it stuck. He had to try a couple times. Finally he forced it hard and it went. He walked bowlegged to the cement steps down the hill, pointing the big black rifle at the grass in front of him, half crouched. Feeling like he had no knees. Screaming and screaming echoing up through the hatch. The finches quiet and he got to the ladder, put his shaking finger on the trigger, red means dead, pointed the gun down the chute and looked. Kent was twisted up twenty feet down with his skull gone. Scalp butterflied out with a tuft of white temple hair twitching. Blood pumping and pumping on the floor and on the Fuck Cunt Pussy painted walls like his brains were a wet towel being wrung out hard. He had a memory of running over a hostess Cherry Pie with his Huffy tire. He could smell it. Marcy, he said.