“Looks like we’ll make the quota after all,” he said. “And then some. We’re off to Mimsey’s World of Adventure.”
In most commercial processes there is something which might be thought of as the Window of Illusory Desirability-as is well known by anyone who has bought a piece of apparently high-powered computer equipment, at what seems to be an unbelievably knock-down price, only to have the manufacturer roll out a vastly improved version, at a lower price, the very next day (ie anyone who has ever bought a piece of apparently high-powered computer equipment in their lives).
What the Window of Illusory Desirability boils down to, basically, is that when some product or service is becoming obsolescent, there is a window of opportunity when a drastically reduced price will still convince some suckers to buy it.
To take the classic example of buggy-whips: with the sup-plantation of horse-drawn carriages by the automobile, it’s not impossible to imagine the makers of such secondary articles as whips resorting, for a while, to increasingly desperate measures to sell the damn things. Two-for-one offers and the like-which of course resulted in the consumer merely ending up with two completely useless things instead of one.
Of course, the manufacture and selling of whips survives and thrives, now, in certain limited and specialist markets. And the allusion might be seen to be quite apposite in this current case.
During the collapse and consolidation of populations into corporate compound-blocks, the owners of any number of pieces of what had once been prime real-estate realised that what they owned would seen be effectively abandoned and worthless. During that Window of Illusory Desirability, however, they were able to sell off various tracts of land at what appeared to be a bargain price.
Amongst these was a theme park originally the property of a corporation once mighty indeed but long since subsumed into one branch or another of the GenTech Corporation.
In any case, the new owners redressed their acquisition at the minimum of expense-more or less just basically plastering the name Mimsey over every occurrence of the name of the previous owners, and tried to rake in as much cash as possible before the world around them finally collapsed.
In this they failed spectacularly, until coming up with a bright if not particularly original idea:
Rather in the same way that whips and so forth had come to change their nature-or at least, had changed the nature of the things they commonly hit-the Mimsey World of Adventure came to cater for a somewhat different market than for which it had first been intended.
The overregulated environments of the compound-blocks had no provision for what might be termed as adult entertainment-and only adults, these days, were allowed out into the dangers of the No-Go zone to look for it.
This led an entirely new dimension to the business of dressing people up in costumes.
And certainly to the uses to which animatronic rodents might be put.
Footage from the swarm of free-floating securicams that blanketed the Mimsey World of Adventure, hooked into the pattern-recognition routines of the security systems-and also, incidentally, gathered material for a wide range of Mimsey brand porno-disks-first showed the intruder as a warped and somewhat bulky but humanoid form blundering in a kind of shuffling lurch amongst the crowds on Bestiality Avenue.
This did not trigger an alert of any kind because there had been no reports, at this time, of the Mimsey World electro-wire perimeter having been breached. And besides, amongst a crowd of tourists, hookers and other performers variously cosmeticized and costumed, there was nothing inherently out of the ordinary about this figure at all.
Security tracking-systems picked this figure up again, with the first overt overtones of suspicion, in Panchakamara Street, in the shadow of the Wheel of Frottage, overturning a dog-burger stand, swatting the canine-costumed proprietor out of the way and attempting to gorge itself on the uncooked meat extruding from the patty-ejection tanks.
This, apparently, was not to the figure’s taste. It projectile vomited with such force as to knock several bystanders from their feet, then ran into the crowd-security tracking-systems now following it with some quite actual degree of alarm.
It might be noted that the creature did not seriously hurt anyone, in its erratic path through the Mimsey World crowds, until it reached the Grotto of Sanguinary Delights.
Possibly the nature and scent of the fluids involved here maddened it. Far more probably, it is because Mimsey World security staff had by now at last caught up with it, and at this point one attempted to take it down with a taser-discharge.
In any event, it was at this point the creature-now unquestionably a creature rather than a human figure of any kind-transformed in a blaze of light so bright that it knocked out several of the recording microcams. Those that survived, on the periphery of the blast, reported images of a shifting, hulking mass. There were vague suggestions of writhing tentacles, and far more definite suggestions of teeth and claws.
No two microcam reports-and certainly no two human reports, from those humans on the ground who remained alive-quite agreed as to the creature’s ultimate form. There seemed to be some aspect to its very shape in the world that rendered on areas of the human visual cortex as simply null.
Security-tracking now reported the creature pelting from the Grotto of Sanguinary Delights in a blur of speed almost impossible for the unassisted human eye to catch. While the crowds exploded apart, quite literally, at its passage, it was possible that there was no actively vicious intent, and that the creature was merely attempting to find some means of escape.
If this was so, it was particularly unfortunate that the path of intended escape lead directly to the House of Autoerotic Strangulation, one of the Mimsey World’s most popular and crowded attractions.
And from this point on the carnage had to be seen to be believed.
And you can see it now for only $79.99, on When Vacations Go Bad: Extreme. Press your red interactive button now.
Lenny and Karl, the SAPS paramedics, had truly died and gone to heaven. Phrases involving the words happy, pigs and shit came to mind-though it was probably more akin to a pair of vampires after an explosion in a slaughterhouse.
They had landed their Meat Wagon on the scene to find a number of SAPS units already there, but that didn’t matter. There were enough pickings for everybody. Forget about making the quota-they were well into bonuses and overtime here.
Frantic happy minutes were spent filling up their storage units to capacity. They didn’t even need to fill the cracks with limbs or other organs.
Market conditions, at the moment, were for some reason placing a premium on human heads-and there were more than enough of these available without so much as looking at the other small-time stuff twice.
Possibly they had become a little delirious, high on the fact of this totally unexpected and lucrative windfall, but when Karl had suggested checking out the House of Autoerotic Strangulation, Lenny had not argued too much.
“Code twenty-three,” Karl had said. “That means a Classified Test Subject on the loose from one of the Big Guys. I never seen anything like that. I bet it’d be a fuckin’ sight to see.”
“Yeah, right, Karl,” Lenny had said. “If we lived long enough to fuckin’ tell about it.”
“We won’t get close or anything,” Karl had assured him. “Close enough to get a look and then we just duck the fuck out.”
He became thoughtful.
“You never know, though. Maybe it’s filled up on whatever it eats. Maybe we could get a chance to pull it down ourselves. I can think of lots the Big Guys could do for two guys who manage to pull it down.”
At the time it had seemed, if not a plan, then at least something worth checking out just to see if it might be possible. Now, in the reeking chamber that had once been the House of Strangulation, Lenny just didn’t think so.