Shadow of the Mothaship Page 2
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Shadow of the Mothaship=======================
It's the untethering of my parents' house that's on my plate today. The flyingof a kite on a windy Toronto Hallowe'en day and the suspension of worry for ashiny moment.
And sail surface isn't even a problemette when it comes to my parents' home --the thing is a three-storey bat whose narrow wings contain the trolleycar-shapedbedrooms and storages. Mum and Dad built it themselves while I tottered in thedriveway, sucking a filthy shred of blanket, and as I contemplate it today withhands on hips from the front yard, I am there on that day:
Dad is nailgunning strips of plywood into a frame, Mum stands where I am now,hands on her hips (and I take my hands from my hips hastily, shove them deep inpockets). She squints and shouts directions. Then they both grab rolls of scrimand stapleguns and stretch it loosely across the frames, and fast-bond pipes andprefab fixtures into place. Mum harnesses up the big tanks of foam and aims theblower at the scrim, giving it five fat coats, then she drops the blower and sheand Dad grab spatulas and tease zillions of curlicues and baroque stuccoes fromthe surface, painting it with catsup, chutney, good whiskey and bad wine, amassive canvas covered by centimetres until they declare it ready and Mumswitches tanks, loads up with fix-bath and mists it with the salty spray. Tenminutes later, and the house is hard and they get to work unloading the U-Haulin the drive.
And now I'm twenty-two again, and I will untether that house and fly it in thestiff breeze that ruffles my hair affectionately.
#
Firstly and most foremost, I need to wait for the man. I hate to wait. But todayit's waiting and harsh and dull, dull, dull.
So I wait for the man, Stude the Dude and the gentle clip-clop of Tilly's hooveson the traction-nubbed foam of my Chestnut Ave.
My nose is pressed against the window in the bat's crotch, fingers dug into thehump of fatty foam that runs around its perimeter, fog patches covering the rimeof ground-in filth that I've allowed to accumulate on my parents' spotlesswi
ndows.
Where the frick is Stude?
#
The man has cometh. Clop-clip, clip-clop, Stude the Dude, as long as a danglingbooger, and his clapped-out nag Tilly, and the big foam cart with its stacks ofcrates and barrels and boxes, ready to do the deal.
"Maxes!" he says, and I *know* I'm getting taken today -- he looks genuinelyglad to see me.
"Stude, nice day, how's it?" I say, as cas and cool as I can, which isn't, very.
"Fine day! Straight up fine day to be alive and awaiting judgment!" Hepower-chugs from the perpetual coffee thermos at his side.
"Fine day," I echo.
"Fine, fine day." Like he's not in any hurry to get down to the deal, and I knowit's a contest, and the first one to wheel gets taken.
I snort and go "Yuh-huh." It's almost cheating, since I should've had somethingelse nice to say, but Stude gives me a conversational Get-Out-Of-Jail-Free.
"Good night to tricky treat."
I concede defeat. "I need some stuff, Stude."
Give it to him, he doesn't gloat. Just hauls again from Mr Coffee and poocheshis lips and nods.
"Need, uh, spool of monofilament, three klicks, safety insulated. Four litres offix bath. Litre, litre and a half of solvent."
"Yeah, okay. Got a permit for the solvent?"
"If I had a permit, Stude, I'd go and buy it at the fricken store. Don't pull mydick."
"Just askin'. Whyfor the solvent? Anything illegal?"
"Just a project, Stude. Nothing to worry."
"What kinda project?"
"Art project. Fun-fricken-tastic. You'll love it."
"'Cause you know, they tag the shit with buckyballs now, one molecule in amillion with a serial number and a checksum. You do something stupid, I getchopped."
I hadn't known. Didn't matter, my parents' house was legally mine, while theywere up confabbing with their alien buds on the mothaship. "No worries."
"That'll be, uh, sixty-eight cents."
"Thirty."
"Sixty, firm."
"Fifty-four."
"Fifty-eight."
"Take it in trade?"
"Fricken Maxes! Tradesies? You're wastin' my time, lookin' for bootleg solvent,looking for trade and no cash? Get fucked, Maxes."
He starts to haw-up Tilly and I go, "Wait-wait-wait, I got some good stuff.Everything must go, moving sale, you know?"
He looks really pissed and I know it hard now, I'm gonna get *taken*. I hand himup my bag, and he does a fast-paw through the junk. "What's this?" he asks.
"Old video game. Atari. Shoot up the space aliens. Really, really antisocial.Needs a display, but I don't got it anymore." I'd sold it the month before on abored day, and used the eight cents to buy good seats behind home plate at theSkydome and thus killed an entire afternoon before Judgment Day.
There are some of the artyfarty "freestyle" kitchen utensils Mum used to sellfor real cash until Dad founded his Process for Lasting Happiness and she foundherself able to pursue "real art." There are paper books and pictures andassorted other crap.
Stude clucks and shakes his head. "If I just gave you the monofil and thefix-bath for this shit, it'd be a favour. Look, I can *get* real money forsolvent. I *pay* real money for solvent. This just don't cut it."
"I'll get more, just hang a sec."
He haws-up Tilly but reigns her in slow, and I dash back to my place and fill aduffel with anything I lay hands to, and run out, dragging it behind me,catching the cart before it turns the corner. "Here, here, take this too."
Stude dumps it out in front of him and kicks at the pile. "This is just crap,Maxes. There's lots of it, sure, but it's still crap."
"I need it, Stude, I really need some solvent. You already *got* all my goodstuff."
He shakes his head, sad, and says, "Go ask Tilly."
"Ask?"
"Tilly. Ask her."
Stude likes to humiliate you a little before he does you a favour. The word is*capricious*, he told me once.
So I go to his smelly old horse and whisper in her hairy ear and hold my breathas I put my ear next to the rotten jumbo-chiclets she uses for teeth. "She saysyou should do it," I say. "And she says you're an asshole for making me ask her.She says horses can't talk."
"Yeah, okay," and he tosses me the goods.
#
With stage one blessedly behind me, I'm ready for stage two. I take the nozzleof the solvent aerosol and run a drizzle along the fatty roll of the windowsillsand then pop them out as the fix bath runs away and the windows fly free andshatter on the street below.
Then it's time to lighten the ballast. With kicks and grunts and a mantra of"Out, out, out," I toss everything in the house out, savouring each crash,taking care to leave a clear path between the house and the street.
On the third floor, I find Dad's cardigan, the one Mum gave him one anniversary,and put it on. She carved it herself from foam and fixed it with some flexible,dirt-shedding bath, so by the time I'm done with the third floor, my arms andchest are black with dust, and the sweater is still glowing with eeriecleanliness.
I know Dad wouldn't want me to wear his sweater now. They say that on themothaship, the bugouts have ways to watch each and every one of us, and maybeMum and Dad are there, watching me, and so I wipe my nose on the sleeve.
#
When the ballast is done, phase three begins. I go to work outside of the house,spritzing a line of solvent at the point where the foam meets the ground, untilit's all disconnected.
And then I got to kick myself for an asshole. A strand of armoured fibre-optic,a steel water pipe, and the ceramic gas line hold it all down, totallyimpervious to solvent.
Somewhere, in a toolbox that I ditched out the second floor window, is a big oldsteel meat-cleaver, and now I hunt for it, prying apart the piles of crap with abroomstick, feeling every inch the post-apocalyptic scrounger.
I finally locate it, hanging out of arm's reach from my neighbour Linus's rosetrellis. I shake the trellis until it falls, missing my foot, which I jerk awayand swear at.
#
The fibre cleaves with a single stroke. The gas line takes twenty or more, eachstroke clanging off the ceramic and sending the blade back alarmingly at myface. Finally it gives, and the sides splinter and a great jet of gas whooshesout, then stops.
I could kick myself for an asshole. Praise the bugouts for civil engineers whomade self-sealing pipes. I eye the water line warily and flip open my comm, dialinto the city, and touch-tone my way through a near-sexy woman reading menusuntil I find out that the water, too, self-seals.
Whang, whang, whang, and I'm soaked and blinded by the water that bursts free,and *I could kick myself for an asshole!*
The house, now truly untethered, catches a gust of wind and lifts itself a fewmetres off the ground, body-checking me on my ass. I do a basketball jump andcatch the solvent-melted corner, drag it down to earth, long-arm for the fixbath and slop it where the corner meets the driveway, bonding it there untilphase four is ready.
#
I bond one end of monofilament to the front right corner of the house, then letit unwind, covered in eraser-pink safety goop, until I'm standing in my desertedChestnut Ave. I spray a dent in the middle of the road with my solvent, plunkthe reel into it, bond it, then rush back to the house and unbond that last onecorner.
I hit the suck button on the reel and the house slowly drags its way to thestreet, leaving a gap like a broken tooth in the carefully groomed smile of myChestnut Ave.
The wind fluffs at the house, making it settle/unsettle like a nervous hen andso I give it line by teasing the spit button on the reel until it's a hundredmetres away. Then I reel it in and out, timing it with the gusts until, in asudden magnificent second, it catches and sails up-and-up-and-up and I'm africken genius.
#
It's nearly four and my beautiful kite is a dancing bird in the sky before thegood little kiddies of my Chestnut Ave start to trickle home from their days ofdenial, playing at normalcy in the face o
f Judgment.
Linus is the first one home, and he nearly decapitates himself on the taut lineas he cruises past on his bicycle. He slews to a stop and stares unbelieving atme, at the airborne house, at the gap where he had a neighbour.
"Maxes Fuentes Shumacher! What is this?"
"Flying a kite, Linus. Just flyin' a kite. Nice day for it, yeah?"
"This," he says, then sputters. Linus is a big devotee of Dad's Process forLasting Happiness, and I can actually watch him try to come up with somescripture to cover the situation while he gulps back mouthsful of bile. "This isan Irresponsible Wrong, Maxes. You are being a Feckless Filthy. This is an abuseof property, a Lashing Out at a Figure in Absentia. You are endangering others,endangering aircraft and people and property below that. I insist that youRight-Make this now, this instant."
"Yeah, uh-huh, yeah." And I squint up at my kite, the sun coming down behind itnow, and it's just a dot in the big orange fire. The wind's more biting thanfriendly. I pull the foam sweater a little closer, and do up one of the buttonsin the middle.
"Maxes!" Linus shouts, his happiness dissipating. "You have thirty seconds toget that down here, or I will Right-Make it myself."
I didn't live with my dad for twenty years without picking up someProcess-speak. "You seem to be Ego-Squeezing here, Lin. This Blame-Saying is aBarrier to Joy, bud, and the mark of a Weekend Happyman. Why don't you go watchsome TV or something?"
He ignores me and makes a big show of flipping open his comm and starting atimer running on it.
Man, my kite is a work of art. Megafun.
"Time's up, Feckless Filthy," Linus says, and snakes out and punches the suckbutton on my monofilament reel. It whizzes and line starts disappearing into itsguts.
"You can't bring down a kite *that* way, frickface. It'll crash." Which it does,losing all its airworthiness in one hot second and plummeting like a house.
It tears up some trees down Chestnut, and I hear a Rice Crispies bowl ofsnap-crackle-pops from further away. I use a shear to clip the line and it zapsaway, like a hyperactive snake.
"Moron," I say to Linus. The good kiddies of Chestnut Ave are now trickling homein twos and threes and looking at the gap in the smile with looks of such bovinestupidity that I stalk away in disgust, leaving the reel bonded to the middle ofthe road forever.
I build a little fort out of a couch and some cushions, slop fix bath over thejoints so they're permanent, and hide in it, shivering.
#
Tricky-treaters didn't come knocking on my pillow-fort last night. That's fineby me. I slept well.
I rise with the sun and the dew and the aches of a cold night on a mattress ofclothes and towels.
I flip open my comm, and there's a half-doz clippings my agent's found in thenight. Five are about the bugouts; I ignore those. One is about the kite.
It crashed around Highway 7 and the 400 in Vaughan, bouncing and skidding.Traffic was light, and though there were a few fender-benders, nothing seriouswent down. The city dispatched a couple-three guys to go out with solvent andmelt the thing, but by the time they arrived, an errant breeze had lofted itagain, and it flew another seventy kay, until it crossed the antidebris field atJean Paul Aristide International in Barrie.
I'm hungry. I'm cold. My teeth are beshitted with scum. Linus comes trippingNoel Coward out of his front door and I feel like kicking his ass. He sees mestaring at him.
"Did you have a good night, Maxes?"
"Spiff, strictly nift. Eat shit and die."
He tsks and shakes his head and gets on his bicycle. He works down at Yonge andBloor, in the big Process HQ. His dad was my dad's lieutenant, and since theyboth went to the confab on the mothaship (along with all the other grownups onmy Chestnut Ave), he's sort of in charge. Shit-eating prick. He lisps a littlewhen he talks, and he's soft and pudgy, not like Dad, who could orate like aRoman tyrant and had a washboard for a gut.
I hope he gets hit by a semi.
#
I pass the morning with my comm, till I come to the pict of Mum and Dad andtheir Process buds on the jetway to the shuttle at Aristide, ascending to theheavens as humanity's reps. They're both naked and arm-in-arm and as chaste asJohn and Yoko, and my eyes fill up with tears. I crawl back into my fort andsleep and dream about buzzing Chestnut Ave in a shuttle with a payload ofsolvent, melting down all the houses into trickles that disappear into thesewers.
#
I wake for the second time that day to the sound of a gas engine, a rarity onChestnut Ave and the surrounding North Toronto environs. It's a truck, from thecity, the kind they used to use to take away the trash before the pneuma wasfinished -- Dad pointed out how it was a Point of Excellence, the plans for thesubterranean pneuma, and his acolytes quietly saw to it. Three men in coverallsand reflective vests ride on the back. It pulls up into my drive, and my commchimes.
It's a text-only message, signed and key-crypted from Linus, on Processletterhead. The first thing it does is flash a big message about how by readingit, I have logged my understanding of its contents and it is now officiallyserved to me, as per blah blah blah. Legal doc.
I scroll down, just skimming. "-- non compis mentis -- anti-social destructionof property -- reckless endangerment of innocent life -- violation of terms --sad duty of the Trustees --" and by the time I'm finished the message, I'mdisinherited. Cut off from the Process trust fund. Property stripped. Subpoenaedto a competency hearing.
The driver of the truck has been waiting for me to finish the note. He makes eyecontact with me, I make eye contact with him. The other two hop out and startthrowing my piles of ballast into the back of the truck.
I take my bicycle from the shed out back, kick my way through the piles of crap,and ride off into the sunset.
#
For Christmas I hang some tinsel from my handlebars and put a silver star on thebig hex-nut that holds the headset to the front forks.
Tony the Tiger thinks that's pretty funny. He stopped into my sickroom thismorning as I lay flat on my back on my grimy, sweaty futon, one arm outflung,hand resting on the twisted wreckage of my front wheel. He stood in the doorway,grinning from striped shirt to flaming red moustache, and barked "Hah!" at me.
Which is his prerogative, since this is his place I'm staying at, here in adecaying Rosedale mansion gone to spectacular Addams Family ruin, this is wherehe took me in when I returned on my bike from the ghosttown of Niagara Falls,where I'd built a nest of crap from the wax-museums and snow-globe stores untilthe kitsch of it all squeezed my head too hard and I rode home, to a Torontoutterly unlike the one I'd left behind. I'd been so stunned by it all that Itotally missed the crater at Queen and Brock, barreling along at forty kay, andI'd gone down like a preacher's daughter, smashing my poor knee and my poor biketo equally dismal fragments.
"Hah!" I bark back at Tony the Tiger. "Merry happy, dude."
"You, too."
Which it is, more or less, for us ragtags who live on Tony the Tiger's paternalinstincts and jumbo survivalist-sized boxes of Corn Flakes.
And now it's the crack of noon, and my navel is thoroughly contemplated, and myadoring public awaits, so it's time to struggle down bravely and feed my face.
I've got a robe, it used to be white, and plush, with a hood. The hood's stillthere, but the robe itself is the sweat-mat grey of everything in Tony theTiger's dominion. I pull it on and grope for my cane. I look down at the bruiseysoccerball where my knee used to be and gingerly snap on the brace that Tonyfabbed up for me out of foam and velcro. Then it's time to stand up.
"Fricken-mother-shit-jesus-fuck!" I shout and drown out my knee's howls ofprotest.
"Y'okay?" floats Tony's voice up the stairs.
"Peachy keen!" I holler back and start my twenty-two-year-old old-fogey shuffledown the stairs: step, drag.
On the ground-floor landing, someone's used aerosol glitter to silver thesandbags that we use to soak up bullets randomly fired into our door. It's awonderful life.
I check myself out in the mir
ror. I'm skinny and haunted and stubbly and gamey.Num.
There's a pair of size-nine Kodiaks in a puddle of melting slush and someone'sdainty wet sock-prints headed for the kitchen. Daisy Duke's home for theholidays. Off to the kitchen for me.
And there she is, a vision of brave perseverance in the face of uncooperativeclimate. She's five-six average; not-thin, not-fat average; eyes an averagehazel; tits, two; arms, two; legs, two; and skin the colour of Toronto's winter,sun-deprived-white with a polluted grey tinge. My angel of mercy.
She leaps out of her chair and is under my arm supporting me before I know it."Maxes, hi," she says, drawing out the "hi" like an innuendo.
"Daisy Duke, as I live and breathe," I say, and she's got the same mix of sweatand fun-smell coming off her hair as when she sat with me while I shouted andraved about my knee for a week after coming to Tony the Tiger's.
She puts me down in her chair as gently as an air-traffic controller. She givesmy knee a look of professional displeasure, as though it were swollen and uglybecause it wanted to piss her off. "Lookin' down and out there, Maxes. Been to adoctor yet?"
Tony the Tiger, sitting on the stove, head ducked under the exhaust hood, stuffshis face with a caramel corn and snorts. "The boy won't go. I tell him to go,but he won't go. What to do?"
I feel like I should be pissed at him for nagging me, but I can't work it up.Dad's gone, taken away with all the other Process-heads on the mothaship, whichvanished as quickly as it had appeared. The riots started immediately. ProcessHQ at Yonge and Bloor was magnificently torched, followed by the worldwidefranchises. Presumably, we'd been Judged, and found wanting. Only a matter oftime, now.
So I can't get pissed at Tony for playing fatherly. I kind of even like it.
And besides, now that hospitals are turf, I'm as likely to get kakked as cured,especially when they find out that dear ole Dad was the bull-goose Process-head.Thanks, Pop.
"That right? Won't go take your medicine, Maxes?" She can do this eye-twinklething, turn it off and on at will, and when she does, it's like there's nothingaverage about her at all.
"I'm too pretty to make it in there."
Daisy turns to Tony and they do this leaders-of-the-commune meaningful-glancething that makes me apeshit. "Maybe we could get a doc to come