“It’s personal, Garrison. Personal voice, personal feelings — it’s all over the media already, and it’s only going to grow.”
“Grow.” A disgusted syllable.
“Don’t you see it happening? Haven’t you heard about cable television, dialing up any news you want, 24 hours a day? It’s personal, man. Your own personal alternative news. Besides that, pretty soon everyone’s going to have a computer.”
“A computer?” Garrison was squinting, trying to figure an angle. “My neighborhood, what people want is a video camera.”
“Okay, a video camera. A video camera or a computer, it’s the same phenomenon.” Warnings were going off in his head: You’re having too much fun with this. “The same, sure. Whether a person’s on camera or on the computer screen — in either case, they’re becoming part of the media. In either case, it’s not, ah, it’s not trained professionals gathering data and then putting what they select before the public.”
“What they select,” the guard said. “What they select, yeah, that’s all it is.”
“But not any more, Garrison. That’s not what’s happening with the new technology.” Kit wasn’t a cowboy, no — he liked to talk, and never more than when he had a worthwhile insight. “Now what’s starting to happen is, the public selects and produces its own news. Alternative press, it’s everywhere. It’s call-in radio, roundtable talk TV. And pretty soon everybody’s going to have a computer, and you can bet they’re going to be talking to each other too.
“Computer to computer, Garrison. Everybody’s going to have one, everybody’s going to put their story on it. One big electronic medium, and everybody’s going to be part of it.”
Off the Central Artery, the guard had picked up speed. As Kit waited for a response, the man actually beat a yellow light.
“Personal is all over the media, Garrison,” he said quietly. He flexed his thigh against his Nutshell Library. “It’s the future.”
“Viddich. Fuck you.”
Kit snorted.
“Fuck you. Really. That Grand Jury, those guys, they don’t care about your theories, Viddich. Computers and the media, who gives a fuck?”
Hardball was good, Kit figured. If the last round was hardball, that would get him ready for Leo.
“Don’t care what you did back in Minnesota, either.”
“Aw, Garrison. I knew I shouldn’t have told you.”
“You could have drunk all the blood west of the Mississippi, man. Not going to mean a thing. If you don’t have any friends in that Grand Jury, they’ll rip your balls out and hang ‘em up to dry.”
“Generally speaking,” Kit said, “people don’t try to frighten other people unless they’re frightened themselves.”
“Whoa. Viddich, myself, I’ll tell you. You ask me, I’d like to see your balls hung up to dry.”
Garrison whipped around a pothole fast enough to make the cab rock. “You know I hate to say this, Viddich. I hate to keep trying to help a bright-boy asshole like you. But our friends, man, they can still be your friends. Still.”
Kit’s turn to heave a sigh.
“You hear me, bright boy? Spite of all your bullshit, they can still be there for you. Our friends.”
“Like Forbes Croftall?”
“Fuck you.” Garrison braked hard. Kit rocked in his seat — was he bracing for a punch? — and discovered that they’d reached the site. The MTA work in progress. Outside the tinted cab window, across a flagged-off strip of waterfront cobblestones, there ranged head-high plywood walls. Support 4x4’s had been set close together, and between them ran a second layer of protection, crosshatched steel fencing. Razor wire wound along the top, shivering in the harbor winds.
“Why do I bother?” the guard was saying. “I told you, I told you — but nobody can tell a bright boy like you.”
Kit counted only two view holes in the plywood. The rest of the wall had been angrily grafitti’d, blood red, ripe black, and scraps of greasy sandwich wrappings fluttered from under the fence. Pedestrians hustled past with eyes averted. All the site needed was a skull-and-crossbones.
Garrison grabbed his arm. “Hey. Dicksuck.”
His grip hurt, but Kit didn’t try to pull free. Hardball. “Garrison,” he said. “Think about it. These friends of yours, they don’t care about you.”
The guard had grown older again, under his cap.
“You notice,” Kit said, “they didn’t send anybody higher up to come and get—”
“Harvard. Fucking rich-boy faggot Harvard.” He yanked up Kit’s bicep, the arm flopped from the elbow. “You think that impresses me? Think that scares me? Viddich, you couldn’t even begin to get what I’ve got. You couldn’t even dream about it. For starters I’ve got this truck here, can you dig it? I’ve got it free and clear.”
With his free hand Garrison smacked the steering wheel. In the thing’s leather sheathing one of the lace-holes popped.
“Let go of me, Garrison.”
“Free and clear, dicksuck. I’m not just talking a quadrophonic eight-track and a CB. I’m talking fucking four on the floor with enough power to hire out as a snowplow, and I even got the commercial license and insurance. All mine, I told you. All free and fucking clear.”
“Let go. Your boss is waiting for me.”
“Whoa, to-ugh guy. Hard co-re. You know what else I got, smart boy? Got two shotguns. Two excellent guns, right there behind your fucking head. Right there on a rack behind the curtain and Harvard here never even knew about it.”
Kit went on letting his arm hang, keeping his look unimpressed. He wasn’t about to turn his head.
“Plus my old man and me, we got six acres on a lake in New Hampshire. Six acres with fishing year-round. Any trouble comes after me, man, I’m up to my lake. Any of your college boy bullshit comes my way, I’m in my truck and I’m gone. I’m gone. Six acres. Plus my guns and my truck. That’s what I got, man, and that you don’t fuck with. You and your fucking rich boy Indian blood on the face bullshit, whoa — that bullshit means about as much to me as your computers in space sci-fi media bullshit. You just want to keep the woods beautiful for nutty faggot rich boys like yourself.
“What you got, Viddich, it don’t even touch what I got. Don’t even touch it, any of your bullshit. You ask me, the cash for this truck was the best money I ever made in my life.”
Cash, sure. Bribery was strictly a cash business.
“I got my truck, dicksuck. Got my truck and my guns and my place. You think you can get away from this shit, this city that’s falling right down into the shit? Think Harvard’ll save you? Harvard ain’t going to worry about some head case like you. You’re nobody. No friends. This newspaper of yours, you can roll it up tight and stick it up your ass for the good it’ll do you when this city goes down into the shit. Roll it tight and stick it up your ass. That’s your paper. That’s all you got. Me, I got my truck and my guns and my place. You — fuck you. You and this niggerdick up the ass you call a city. Fuck you! Fuck you all!”
*
Any time you want to tell a tourist, my basement boys and girls, take a look when our Scandie pseudo comes into The T. The T, you know the place. Uhh-nder the boardwalk, down by the se-ee-ee-ahhh (heavy breathing, get it?). Under the boardwalk and under construction: that’s The T. The club wants to be plywood partitions and steel fencing forever. Plenty of graffiti, plenty of leakage in the overhead pipes. Like dancing in the Elsinore dungeons, hey Scandie?
The T — that’s our scene, my hard cores. I’m a siren for our scene, remember, the voice of leathers and plastics everywhere. And The T, see, is about imitation. It’s an imitation wreck. And imitation, see, is our hard core. Our scene’s home sweet home.