The Holy Brand

by J.R. Blackwell | Mar 11, 2006 | Story

Julius Bright wasn’t a designer, though he was often mistaken for one. Julius was the man who made designers, who launched and crushed careers. He had owned magazines, was the heir to an incredible fortune, a net star, an idol.

Twelve years ago, Julius Bright told me that I wouldn’t have any future as a designer. He did it in the nicest possible way. After a show he pulled me aside and told me that I had flair but no talent and that he didn’t want to say anything in front of the press because I was such a nice boy but if I continued to pursue this path eventually he would have to say something and he didn’t want me to work so hard without much to show for it.

So I quit, just because Julius told me too. I went into the business side of design, and I’ve been very happy there. When I look back on the faux bohemian that I was, I’m glad Julius pulled me aside.

Twelve years later, we met again, and this time he was the one with something to prove.

He met me outside an ugly warehouse on the edge of the city, little silver spheres swirling around his head. The Paparazzi-bots, taking pictures. It seemed like an odd place for Julius to meet me, not at all the stylish places I imagined him frequenting. He was dressed in a shining striped pink and yellow waistcoat.

“Tim! It’s been years!” he said, throwing his hands dramatically up in the air. I didn’t think he actually remembered me, I assume he played back his stored memory files. “I needed to talk to someone who could talk to the business side of things.” He said, leading me inside. “But also someone who understood design, like you do.”

I had no idea why he called me here, or what he needed from me. Sure, I loved design and could talk to businessmen, but I had a hard time believing that Julius Bright would have a hard time getting business to buy anything. His smile showed glittering teeth.

“What is one of the biggest problems the world of design faces?” He asked, leading me down a dark corridor.

I shrugged. “Consumer fatigue?”

“Oh Tim, you joker. No. The problem is with models, and the problem with models is their transience.” We came to a black curtained room with a long walkway. Julius leaped on the walkway and began to strut with long, angry steps. “A woman is only beautiful from fourteen to seventeen.” He paused and rested his silver cane against his lips. “Maybe seventeen is a bit old, but you see what I mean. Anyway, after that, she begins to rot. They’ve got such a short shelf life; it’s hard to build a career for them. They are flashes, beautiful lights that go out in an instant.” He hung his head. “There are other issues too, young girls aren’t very dependable, and the smart ones don’t really have their heart in it, they always leave to become engineers or something. Terrible losses, really.”

Julius opened his arms wide, smiling gaily. “But now we have options. Now we will have the ability to lengthen the career of a model. We can make perfect girls that will not change, girls we can control. They won’t get caught in scandals, unless you want them too, of course, and they can be relied upon. They’ll never leave to go to school, or eat too much, or die. “

I was about to ask what kind of girl would have all these features, but before I could speak, he began his monologue again.

“I know, the digital girl failed miserably years ago. The animated girl was fun and perfect, but she wasn’t real, and people like things they can touch, or pretend they could touch.”

“Now, now I can give you the flesh. We’ve grown the flesh based on the best girls in their prime. We’ve grown it and preserved it, a perfect plastic replica. You want tall? Her legs can be lengthened. You want longer hair? We can grow it in seconds.

And most importantly, we can brand them.” Julius clapped his hands, and sleek, slender, impossibly tall women, all naked, emerged from behind the black curtain and marched down the walkway, Dark hair, light hair, short, tall, milky white, coal black. Julius laughed and grabbed one on her shoulders. She lithely stepped close to him. “Here is our innocent.” He pointed to the other end of the walkway “Here is our counter culture heroine. Here is the slut. Here is the sleek lesbian, here is the exotic tropical. We can make them last, attach them to products based on image, and design for and around them. No more transience. What we have here is complete flexibility.

They are warm. Their eyes are wet. They will strut, smile and pose. They are fully programmable. We’ve been mixing them with models on the runway already, sneaking them in shows and no one has been the wiser. They aren’t girls though, make no mistake.” Julian leaned in close; conspiratorially “They are better.”

The Horsemen Of Carnaby Street

by Jared Axelrod | Jan 19, 2006 | Story

If you had asked Tyrone’s father why he kept horses, why he rode them with his three boys down Carnaby Street to South End and back, and why he never seemed to use a car, he would remove his Red Sox ballcap, run his hand over his coarse dreadlocks and proceeded to lecture you on the relative cost of equine upkeep versus the rising cost of gas per gallon. The crux of his argument was that expense is in the eye of the beholder, and a proper investment is worth a million shortcuts. Tyrone’s father was an economics professor; he lived for such questions.

Now that he was gone, Tyrone often wondered if his father knew something more than just relative costs and exact change. If those years of prospective financial reports had given him some sort of insight into the future. If he knew the Still would come. If he knew his boys would thread through the rusting hulks of abandoned cars and trucks, just as they had when there had been traffic.

“Is it ever gonna stop snowing?” Jamal, the youngest, asked.

“It’ll stop when you shut up for five minutes!” Curtis said, his horse and his body slouching behind.

Tyrone turned back to look at his younger brothers, unsure of what to tell them. He was enough of an adult to understand he should be grateful that the nuclear missile, detonating where it did, only spread the Still and the snow, and the worry of fallout had evaporated so quickly. That the electrics would work again one day, and the snow would stop. He was enough of an adult that he knew that.

But the parts of him that were still a child felt that three years was far too long a winter already, and Tyrone was afraid that he would live the rest of his life under snow and ice.

They were hauling this weeks supplies back from the Save-A-Lot down in South End. The store was shut down, but its immense parking lot had evolved into a type of barter market since the Still. Tyrone and his brothers were the only ones from Carnaby Street who could make it all the way down to South End, so they often loaded up their mounts with neighbors’ pots and knives and clocks with gears, to trade for canned vegetables and freshly caught pigeons.

“Catch up now, you morons,” Tyrone called back to his brothers. “Let’s not be out longer than we have to. Not good for the horses.” Not good for us, either, Tyrone thought. The weather was harsh that day and had forced them to take the Martin Luther King Highway. The MLK’s lack of surrounding buildings made them sitting ducks for any gang that wanted to pick them clean. The stunted trees that lined the MLK would not be enough cover for Tyrone’s brothers and horses–much less the haul–but an abandoned SUV could hide damn near a dozen highwaymen before they chose to strike.

“You spooked of the highwaymen, Ty?” Curtis called out, far too loud for caution. “You scared of the boogeyman, too?” He and Jamal laughed, an echoing bray that bounced off the icy metal and glass.

“P’raps hes gotta r’son to be skeered,” came a voice from behind a car. Tyrone cursed his luck and his brothers’ laughter, as a mess of ragged men and women slithered out from around the rusting vehicles. All carried the crude, haphazardly fashioned knives indicative of the highway-folk. Tyrone had heard that of some of the gangs uptown carried guns, but he doubted they used them much. Bullets were far too expensive to replace.

Keeping that notion in mind, Tyrone pulled out his own pistol and aimed it at the closest would-be robber. He tried very hard to keep it from shaking.

“Do you like my hat?” Tyrone asked the highwayman, staring down the barrel. “No? Not a Red Sox fan? I’m not much of one either, though my father was. Despite their losing streak. He was always so sure they would win the World Series one more time. Went to all their games, Dad did. As an investment, he called it. Though my mother always claimed it was more effort than they were worth.”

Tyrone had the entire gang’s attention now, if drawing the gun didn’t get it before. He cocked back the hammer with his thumb, surprised at how easy it was. “Some would argue that placing a bullet in your brainpan would be more effort than you’re worth. But I’m willing to look at it as an investment.”

“Y’gonna get’sall, horseman?,” the highwayman said through rotting teeth. His posture was strong, but his eyes weren’t. They worried back and forth.

“Curtis, how many are there?” Tyrone called out, not moving his eyes one bit.

“7…no, 2 more behind that truck.”

“Looks like I am,” Tyrone said. “Might even shoot you again when it’s all over. Unless you and yours decide to leave us alone, and then I get to save this clip for another day.”

“Can’t letcha guh. Not for free.”

“Fair enough,” Tyrone said, and shot the man right between the eyes.

Tyrone said his brothers’ names and reined his horse up, and the ragged gang scattered from beneath the powerful brown steed’s hooves. The three horsemen galloped back to Carnaby Street, full load in tow, aware that their “investment” would only last so long.

Tyrone’s father had always said that expense is in the eye of the beholder. When Tyrone caught the way his brothers now looked at him, he felt he understood. The adult in him figured that the expense was not too high, that their coldness would past, and the fear in Jamal’s eyes would one day leave. But he was still enough of a child to know it would be far too long before it did.

Tyrone wondered if it was enough to be able to walk down a path, even if the snow made it impossible to know where you were going.

This Year's Aristogiton

by Jared Axelrod | Dec 18, 2005 | Story | 0 comments

“Half-man, half-dinosaur!” A voice-over perfectly matched with the combination of human and tyrannosaurus genes that hovered above Zyi Izaiah Eizenberg’s holo snapped him awake. “The perfect candidate! He literally devours his opponents! Kennedy Rex wants what you want, and is not afraid to use his 4-foot long bone crushing jaws to get it!”

“You can’t believe the news today,” Zyi thought to himself, rubbing what sleep remained out of his eyes. “No one will ever take a Galactic Prime Minister seriously with those tiny little arms.” Then again, Zyi had heard that those diminutive appendages were apparently used for titillation during sex. The old boy may have shot in politics after all, depending on how quick his reflexes are.

Zyi smoothed out his old flight jacket so it looked less like he slept in it and strapped his goggles on. He had the holo set for a continual search on Kennedy Rex for purely research purposes; Zyi hadn’t counted on the man-lizard’s career being so boring that he’d fall asleep watching. Such was the inherent benefit and problem with having your political leaders grown from a lab: they had no real time to fuck up their careers. Not that it made Zyi’s job any harder, just more dull.

Zyi dialed his goggles for maximum visual pollution filter, blanking out pop-up displays and the sidewalk- and wall-embedded screens, leaving his only distractions the people in front of him and the cars on the street. Zyi had heard that the new implants don’t let you blank out that much, on the grounds that blanking out that much of the world made you unable to cope with the world around you. Which is why Zyi preferred his antique goggles. He liked to cope with the world as little as possible.

Boring as he was, Kennedy Rex was easy to find. When a six-hundred pound Prime Minister Candidate gave a press conference, there were only so many places it could happen. And a football stadium was out of the question. Not when the season had just started. The fans were already too used to the sense of blood, and, having camped out in the stadium for the duration of the season, they were eager for fresh meat. No, it would have to be outdoors. So Zyi took the mono to Fu Manchu Park, his goggles filtering out just about everything that would remind him of the era he was living in.

“See the Lizard King! Alive, alive, alive! ” Kennedy Rex’s press secretary was working up a good crowd. Early in her career she had speakers implanted in her chest, and those vocal mammories spewed forth sound bites in mesmerizing staccato. “Bear witness, folks, to the man, the monster, the future Prime Minister of the Galactic State! Forget what you think you know! Believe your eyes and your ears as this man, this monster takes your needs to heart! Truly, he is a symbol of the very times we live in!”

Kennedy made a benign gesture with his miniscule arms, but Zyi saw a look he recognized in the candidate’s eyes. A look of a predator, the look of hunger. Zyi had seen it enough on his own face.

Zyi closed his eyes and tried to recall the dream he always had, over and over, of a world he remembered but didn’t see anymore. He was pretty sure there were no mutant carnivorous reptile government leaders, but he wasn’t positive. The only thing he knew for sure was the job.

“I’ve got a question for the candidate!” Zyi shouted. “Do you know the times?”

Fire, holy vengeance, atomic blast, indignation. All these and several more erupted from Zyi’s raygun, leaving nothing more than a burned torso with emaciated arms and a cumbersome tail where the Possible Future Prime Minister once roared. Security was unsurprisingly useless, considering the might of the candidate. He was a part dinosaur, after all.

With the air thick with bar-be-qued lizard and the ozone of flash bulbs, Zyi removed his goggles and let the chaos flow over him.

Another job well done.