Dead Planet XX

Dead Planet XX

I felt the sensation of immense speed.

Darkness was again all around me—droid-deep & wet as the liquid vats that nourished me underground for a year in Tyrell’s laboratory.

My consciousness was moving fast—speeding onward faster & faster. Except things were accelerating backwards—not forwards.

I didn’t need the Predictress to help me—like she’d helped Deckard. I could delve into the past—in fact I was already there. I’d never left—the Past & I were One.

I saw Mars again—back before the Shadow Effect disappeared all the Martian inhabitants. The Martian civilization was extremely advanced in some ways—but excessively primitive in other ways. It was like the Mayans who could see into the future—inventing the Zero to do the Zeitvernichtung Effect. Inventing their two-geared clock-wheel calendar—precisely predicting the 2012 endgame.

I saw Mars again—how calm & cool & familiar it was again. Where had I been? What happened to my race? Who were these humans looking at me now? I’ve frozen time—they’re immobile for now. Colonialized by Earth—the ancient Martian pyramids had their own pilots. How easily it was to envision & actualize the future—with the help of the vast jungle pharmocopia & Lost Knowledge of the planet. I remembered now. My father—a modern patient cosmopolitan Tikal shamanic priest. Who could stop time—and see into the future. Did he see me now?

I turned the pyramid on—it hummed like a perfect toy. It was if a thousand years were just a pause—for the entertainment of a young Tikal prince.

The pyramid moved—it slid gently & silently up out of the red sands of Mars. The star patterns were familiar—I saw Venus the Flying Serpent far away down to my left. I was the new pilot now—and it was time to get down to business.

The Mayan-Martian connection. How had it been lost—what were these humans doing here on Mars. Deep in the pyramid—the gyroscopes of time tilted. I dialed open the door—and there was Deckard.

He was a strange one—and yet I wouldn’t be here without him. This melancholy bounty hunter—who suddenly had a crisis of consciousness.

His guilt over retiring so many droids—then falling in love with Rachel. He was tall & gaunt—standing there in the pilot’s cockpit chamber. Suspended in time—like the rest.


I sensed it—the inevitable cargo cult nostalgia. Deckard, Tyrell & the close group of scientists—they were the future of the race, of course. We Mayan-Martians were gone now—we phased in & out the way all civilizations do.

Tyrell and TerraCorp—the vanguard of the New Capitalism Interplanetary Dynasty. Their Japanese Warlords & POMO BP Barons—they were extending far beyond what we Mayan-Martians were able to achieve.

They were already past—the post-Gulag Asteroid Archipelago Stage. The Oort Cloud Belt beckoned to them—out past the Plutonic limits of our solar system. Out past the dimensional shield—of the Known Universe.

It was sad—but true. Our ancient Mayan-Martian technology—had reached its limits. Our R&D was different than these clever Earthmen. It was more organic—and belonged to another age. The Age of New World grown old—and then the Jungle closing in on the Ruins left behind.

My race was gone—our technology lagged behind our insights. We were good psychic-stonemasons—good at levitating limestone & granite blocks. To build our pyramids—and send them thru space. We were the ultimate stone age / space age astronauts—at least for awhile.

Our mathematical wizards—spanned time with precise predictions. Imbedding in stele & pyramids—the proper 13-month yearly clockwork compass of the solar system spheres.

Since we could levitate matter & count time so accurately—why didn’t we go the Western technology route? Steel, gunpowder, railroads, petroleum, internal combustion engines, cars, jets, space ships?

We looked down on what our artists—considered to be profane to the Mother Planet. When levitation was cleaner—and the 13-month calendar gave the right coordinates for levitating pyramids to Mars? Why fuck around—with the Cortez cortex crowd?

That’s what impressed me—I suppose the most. Although I was growing tired again—this time-space distortion I could hold in my hand only so long. Time would continue to flow backwards without me—spilling out into the universe faster than the speed of light. Creating an interval of space—around it within it thru it. This brief déjà vu flashback—which Deckard & Tyrell had created for me.

I let the pyramid—settle silently & gently back into its ancient footprint in the sands. I was more humanoid & Nexus droid now—than Martian could ever be. It would be useless—and serve no point to revive the past & old forgotten memories.

It would be inopportune of me—to impose my past on this little group of young development personnel. It would, well—be better off for all of us. To now erase my Martian memory. To forget once again—my Mayan past.

I let all of my past life go—the great pyramid ship obeyed my orders. It shuddered briefly—the control room reverted to the examination room again. Deckard opened his eyes—Tyrell woke up from his trance. The Nexus squad—looked around.

I was back once again—standing there. Next to Deckard—in the pyramid. Deckard’s better half. His kept Droidboy—his moody otherworldly companion.

Dead Planet XIX

Dead Planet XIX

The kid & I found ourselves in a dim corridor. We worked our way cautiously deeper into the pyramid complex—another door dialed open for us. We looked at each other—I told the kid I’d go in front now.

Another Martian door dialed open—I’d just walked thru it when it suddenly dialed shut. Leaving me alone in what seemed to be—a small examination room. Then things got dark—and darker still.

I must’ve passed out or something. The next thing I knew I was on this examination table—Tyrell’s voice was talking smoothly thru the chamber walls. At least it sounded like Tyrell—emotionless, cool & precise as usual.
“I am sending signals into different parts of your brain—the cortex, the medulla oblongata, the brain stem. I’m studying your neural flow. You’ve been Nexus-trained by the kid—you can enter REM time spontaneously. Without any alpha-wave feedback gear—hooking you up now. Please enter your REM dreamtime now, Deckard. Please, do it for me.”

I was surprised by Tyrell’s hint of humaneness—I’d never heard him say please to anybody. So that calmed me down a little bit—enough to relax & get into a semitrance. The precursor trance—like the kid taught me. I drifted off into REM dreamtime quickly—without going thru the usual biofeedback cycles. The alpha, beta & delta rhythms—and all that. I closed down the periphery of my nervous system—as I went inward into my extrasensory sensations.

Dr. Tyrell said: “Now then, Deckard. There are energy connections leading to the kid—or should I say the young man in the other room. They are abnormally strong—the energy density involved is greater than the total mass-energy value of the entire universe. There is only one conclusion to be faced.”

I didn’t understand what Tyrell meant—so I tensed my muscles & tried to get up. I couldn’t move—I was paralyzed.

“Listen to me closely, Deckard,” Tyrell’s voice came soothingly—thru the darkened chamber into my trance state. I began to feel more—REM calm & precisely there & not here.

“This Martian pyramid is false—and all existence within it is illusionary,” Tyrell said. “You are an entity from a superior manifestation of reality now. Someone or something—a Deceiver—is projecting a four-dimensional energy-form thru your nervous system—to force you to create this false-reality around yourself. Based on your memories.”

What else could I do—but stay in the semi-trance dream state & simply listen to Tyrell opine on & on? It was like Tyrell was picking up—where the kid left off. The kid really didn’t train me—he simply let my dreaming synch with his. Who knows how much mind-melding went on between us. I taught the kid how to be more human—and he taught me how to be more Nexus. Whatever that means.

“This false projection is based on your memories. The reason I say your memories is that otherwise I wouldn’t be present in this dream I’m helping you to wake up from. I’m obviously a dream-element arising from your unconsciousness—not something the Deceiver would have chosen to put in this dream now at this moment. By tracing the nerve paths the outside force is using to create this illusion—I can neutralize it. And then we can get down to business.”

I tried waking up from the dreamtime—I always tried that because there’s usually a slight panic reaction to the Fabulation Effect. It was like fabulating that I was like being chased by someone or something in a dream—and not being able to run away from it. .

Everything was in slow-motion—I’d have this strange fatigue, a heaviness entering my limbs. A surge of slowness was running thru me—but then I’d been suffering from that since we left Hellas. The Nexus dreamtime was very strong—it sucked me into it with a will of its own it seemed like.

This is, I suppose, where the kid came in. Tyrell pressed a button on the control panel—and there was a low hum in the walls. I felt the activity in my other brain—the Nexus droid brain of the kid. The energy was surging thru me—into the kid’s head. A distorter trigger clicked in—without any conscious cue. The kid’s mind & mine—became one.

Tyrell was the chief Nexus One—for the Tyrell Corporation. Was he still on Mars—or on Titan. It really didn’t make any difference—the Voice I heard might not be him either—how was I to know.

“This Martian pyramid you chose to enter—it’s a good choice. Before you entered it—the interior was entirely argon and other inert gasses. We air conditioned it especially for you—the remnants of the martian civilization have been almost entirely preserved.”

“You’ll find the engineering skills of the pyramid pilots to be simply miraculous—my team of exo-archeologists barely scratched the surface. Our Nexus droid, your companion—is reporting back controlled radioactivity from the interior of this pyramid.”

In my mind’s eye I saw Tyrell’s team of scientists—glide over the Martian Amazonis Planitia. They passed smoothly over a stretch of red-grey lifeless ocean—over a peninsula of land as flat & red as the rest of the Amazonis plains.

“The material of these pyramids is an artificial form of matter—composed of locked positron-electron pairs. The Brownian motion of the atoms itself—produced their energy light and heat. A nearly inexhaustible supply.”

“The outer layers of the pyramids were designed to shed the excess as harmless radiation. We’ve found inside these megalithic structures—the remains of part of an artificial gravity mechanism. Used to stabalize—the planet during interstellar flight. The main energy centers—are probably off-planet as are the distorter engines.”

I became aware of somebody else in the room—besides Tyrell. A Zoid-A technician and a Predictress.
Besides them I sensed the rest of Tyrell’s team—scientists from high-energy physics departments, xeno-archeology and neurospsychology staff as well. All were equipped with heavy armor—electromagnetically shielded to block deadly X-rays. And the archeologist robotools were floating left & right—photographing something in the room.

“My seismic teams have already been used—to analyze the echo-reflection data from the machines at the pyramid’s core. Autopsy scanning—showed no dead Martian bodies.”

For the first time I heard the kid inside my head: “The future is about to blur in two minutes, right after Tyrell finishes making his speech.

“Is there something I should do?” I sent back.

“No way to tell—it may come as a result of your being there in the examination room.”

“It’s fairly obvious that the Martians were killed instantaneously by something. That’s why we needed a Predictress with the team. Her inner eye didn’t see mass—it was linked by cause and effect. Predictress droids cannot predict the decay of radioactive atoms—since one atom won’t effect anything in the environment. But they can predict the behavior of other sensitive droids.”

Tyrell alluded that the kid & I were co-joined significantly. When our brains were in a relaxed state—posthypnotic suggestions may be triggered. I now had the same ability—to overcome the illusion of time in more than one direction. Once I lived with the kid long enough—my brain became convinced subconsciously that it could reach backwards as well as forwards. Thus Tyrell could use us both—not only to envision the future, but summon up a vision of the Martian past.

“I’m seeing…millions of years in the past…Martian men & women, happy. They’re alert. They’re intelligent and very humanoid. The Martian sky is jet-black—something is happening. Half the solar system—has been swallowed up by a solar flare.”

Then everything became blurred.

“Tyrell! We’re getting strange readings here. Time-space just suffered a deflection from its normal metric.”

“I’m dead,” I said to the kid. “My memories of myself are gone—I’ve just synched with the dead Martians.”

The version of me back in Hellas Town—remembers me dying roughly a minute ago. My droid future memory of being a Martian—died with the Martians. I’m assuming a parallel time-continuum.

Some sort of alternate reality—created the moment I was attuned to the primordial Martian mindset. My conclusion was that—this was being done for my benefit—to demonstrate something to me.

“Is there any reason not to attempt the second phase of the experiment?” I heard Tyrell ask one of the scientists. “The results of Phase One have been fruitful—beyond all expectation.”

“We’d like to examine Deckard for side effects. If he made mental contact with the Martians—then its important to discover which is the primary and which was created by his Nexus telepathy,” the scientist said.

The exo-psychologist said: “You’re assuming a doppelganger principle? If one second of time is removed from the past-to-future manifestation of the Martian mind—it will distort its mass-energy to manifest a different, parallel personality? Once set in motion—that particular Martian mindset must continue.”

“I’m now= physicist,” Tyrell said. “I don’t know the volume of space described by Deckard’s memory of this Martian pyramidal space. We can perform all sorts of synch-tests to find out if our mass-energy calculations are correct.”

“The Martians are gone,” I said bleakly.

“In any case, we have one fact,” said Tyrell. “The Martian time-space contact we had momentarily—was created from someone’s else’s memories, not Deckard’s. Someone with a great deal more energy at his disposal than Deckard. I’d like to try the same battery of tests on the kid—and see if he remembers the imaginary character Deckard perceived. Whose identity—is now a part of the Deckard-Droid team.”

“There’s no time,” the Predictress said. “Deckard must help us form the connection again. That is what I see happening—I can tune into his droid other half. The kid and Deckard are already one—I can read the Nexus droid readings thru Deckard’s mind.”

“Working thru your neurohypnotic unit,” I said. “I’m going to try to strengthen the Zoid synch between me & the location I’m perceiving—this pyramid. I can’t force a Martian contact myself—I can’t perceive the location you want to perceive. But I sense biofeedback from your neurohypnotic unit—its functions are similar to a lie detector’s. It’s invasive rather than merely passive—and as I move nearer to what the unit registers as a condition of greater nerve-flow in my brain centers, I will activate what the Predictress guides me to. Ready?”

“I’m blind as soon as you use your ability, Deckard. But I’m curious as to what is on the other side of the blind moment.”

The high energy physicist said: “It’s happening again. Massive distortion in time-space.”

“Everybody stand back,” said the Predictress.

Then, I felt my body levitate. It stood me up & then leveled me into my normal vertical position. My skin was blacked and mummified. All life & light left my body. By the time I was completely vertical—my figure became a shadow-shape. A smoky Martian-like form.

“I can’t maintain this projection across time for very long,” I said. It wasn’t my voice—it was coming from the shadow-thing that once had been a Martian.

“In one sense,” the Martian said. “I’m a Deckard double—and Earthman doppelganger.”

“How many of you are there?” asked Tyrell.

“Who Deckard?” the voice said. It was coming from far off—and yet very close. “I feel closer to the kid not Deckard,” the Martian said.

A silence filled the already silent room.

“The kid,” the Martian said. “He’s Martian himself.”

Dead Planet XVIII

Dead Planet XVIII

“He had been living
at the men’s co-op
(Serpent’s House)
six months now.”
—Samuel R. Delany,
Trouble on Triton:
An Ambiguous Heterotopia

Later on it came out that the kid’s first stop, after getting born outta the droid vats down in Mars Underground—had surprisingly been Triton. There in the Serpent’s House men’s co-op.

Which made sense in retrospect—since I doubt if Tyrell would have just dumped the kid straight outta Mars City into the Hellas Town Zoo.

The kid was simply too expensive a piece of droid merchandize to—to let it get manhandled that way. By the time I met him at the Hellas Café & began talking with the kid—he was already pretty klug to human ways. Serpent’s House was good for that—a men’s co-op = male nurturing & semi-authentic environment.

That explains why he was so fluent—and poised. At ease with himself—with me the burnt-out bounty hunter he struck up a conversation with that evening. It had all been prearranged—the kid meeting me. It pleased me in a way—that Tyrell was interested in me that much. My bounty hunter reputation—my marriage to Rachel. And now my burgeoning relationship—with the Nexus kid.

I didn’t have to give the kid a Voight-Kampff test—I didn’t suspect a thing at first. He seemed like just another run-of-the-mill typical bored kid—hustling the tourists to make a buck of two. Male or female—it didn’t seem to make any difference to him. He was already cosmopolitan & city-smart—like most young Martian male hustlers. He was smart-alecky—something that went naturally with the job description.

It wasn’t a primitive pick-up—like Heinlein’s “Citizen of the Galaxy.” I wasn’t some old beggar like Baslim the Cripple—workin’ the slave market on the spaceport side of the famous Plaza of Liberty facing the hill crowned by the still more famous Praesidium of the Sargon, capitol of the Nine Worlds.

Nor was the kid some half-naked waif in a filthy breechclout—like young Thorby who runs off with the Free Traders, a league of merchant princes. Living by his wits and fighting his way up from society’s lowest rung—up thru the many worlds of a hostile galaxy.

Miss Heinlein was such a drama queen—she could really spin those mock-heroic space operas, couldn’t she? A born SF Golden Age queen bee—outta Annapolis, into juvie-scifi lit and then on to bigger game.

No, the kid beside me—flyin’ the fast, low-flying hovercraft. He was much more complex than any “Have Spacesuit, Will Travel” kid—not outta Terra High School yet. The kid was as much or even more ‘my’ young sugar daddy—than I could or would ever be for him. He picked things up intuitively—like hovercraft flying, zoid-defense, para-dreamtime mapping. Tyrell surely would’ve been very proud of the kid—that is if Tyrell were still alive.

The kid was nosing the craft—down to the pyramid. He circled it once to get a feel for the landscape—picking out a landing spot free of debris and craters. He nailed it—in the ochre swirling dirt.

It was still night on Mars—we were both wearing night-vision goggles. We were still in the cloak-mode—perhaps our stealthy arrival had gone unseen? Unnoticed by the Snakemen & their Lizard creepazoid allies. Only time would tell—the pyramid might be able to protect us. If it weren’t full of snakes—and lizards, tho.

I undid my seatbelt, folded up the lookie-talkie in my jumpsuit leg pocket, zippered up & pushed the lever-door button up & open. I caught a whiff of the desert night air—cool, crisp and perfectly TerraCorp-air conditioned clean & breathable. We didn’t have to wear protective helmets or lug around oxygen backpacks.

I sat there listening to the night. So did the kid—alert to any kind of movement in the nearby mounds and deep crater shadows. The huge pyramid loomed up into the starry night—like it had for centuries there on the surface of the Red Planet. It reeked being ancient—like the Mayan Tikal.

Tikal the city Mayan capitol—that flourished during the classic, and late classic periods, (AD 300-900). Many of the massive buildings were still visible today—massive structures like the Martian pyramids. The carbon dating on the Martian temples—was of course much more ancient.

The kid led the way in front of me—scouting out the debris field before us. I’d trained him how to use a zoid-gun—at the Hellas field practice site. I set up some target practice—there on the roof of the Hellas Tower. Now’s when I needed a bodyguard the most—the kid’s reflexes were lightening fast compared to mine now.

The map-function on my visor—clicking down over my night-goggles. It was like an x-ray overlay of the pyramid—I could see the corridors & interior rooms. The memory base had all the usual stuff. The earlier color-coded 3-D interior MARSIS radar shots—how carefully the TTT intelligentsia had spent forever & a day. Comparing & contrasting many of the Martian pyramid interiors—with the previously posted MARSIS Phobos Google pics. They were identical—in many ways. In many ways—not the same.

These unearthly Martian “catscan” images were showing up on my vidscreen—they were like the MARSIS, SHARAD & MRO (Reconnaissance Orbiter) imagery. Detailing the pyramid’s interior—like they did with the Phobos stealthship moon-planetoid. As amazing as Phobos the thinking ancient alien spaceship orbiting Mars every 8 hours was—the ancient submerged Martian tetrahedral structures were just as or even more so mysteriously intriguing eye-openers to us.

When we got to the pyramid entrance door—it dialed open without uttering a password. No “Thousand and One Nights” choice key magical phase—no Cornel Wilde saying “Open Sesame!!!” Nobody at the gate on a great stallion—no Adele Jergens as Princess Armina. No Phil Silvers as Abdullah—no Philip Van Zandt as the Grand Wazir AbuHassan. No Rex Ingram as the menacing, looming Giant—like Sabu’s giant friend in “The Thief of Baghdad.”

The door just dialed open—that’s all. Without a word said—as if it had been expecting us. Martian doors dialed open that way—like a shutter dial in some old camera from back on Earth. Or the aperture ring on the lens on many older Terra models. It didn’t hiss open & shut—like Forbidden Planet & old time SF movies. It was deathly silent—it dialed open & then closed behind us.

Dead Planet XVII

Dead Planet XVII

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pzG6ydbHJL0&feature=related

"Take the controls, kid.”

The Amazonis Planitia wombdarkness—

It was sucking us deeper & deeper into the night—

Like it had been waiting for us—

I switched on the intercom—scanning ahead.

“So far so good. Keep it low. And fast.”

The kid was a natural-born pilot—

He could fly the hover-craft by the seat of his pants.

And he knew it too—he was good at it.

Hellas Town was far behind us—a long ways off.

When we were flying like this—it was like déjà vu.

As if we’d done this whole scenario before.

It’s hard to describe—the Nexus Effect thing. Knowing the kid was the only Nexus-9 droid on Mars now—gave a special nuance to him being with me. But he’d been special from the minute I met him—that first night in the Hellas Zoo.

Sitting around the outdoor café—chatting with him. He could speak perfect English—even tho I got the feeling he was ad-libbing it. Faking it word by word & sentence by sentence. Like he was paying attention to me & imitating how I spoke.

And then somehow fluently & knowingly becoming me—my Terra syntax, my hunter vocab-spiel, the way I was bored that summer night beneath the Martian sky. It was uncanny—definitely weird.

And it didn’t change—being around him. He didn’t let me know he was telepath at first—maybe that’s why. You know—have you ever met a person who’s good at taking up where you leave off. You’ll pause in the middle of a sentence—and they’ll finish it for you?

Probably that’s what Tyrell had planned—he had enough bodyguards down there anyway. He gave one to me. I don’t know how long the Nexus-9 droids lasted—but they didn’t go easy I’m sure. With their stealth tele=reflexes & übersetzung-intuition—I was certain that the liz-confrontation wasn’t very pretty.


The "reptilian" brain—it was inside me whether I wanted it or not. I could feel it—back there in the brain stem regions under my skull. The medulla & cerebellum—the alligator gar part of my being. The control stuff that made my heart beat, my guts digest stuff, my lungs breath automatically, my body do things that weren’t really voluntary.

That’s why brain stem injuries—were so fuckin’ devastating. Physical handicaps—living in shitty morgue of flesh—while the person was still able to think clearly. What a nightmare—the same identical trip all the other less developed species got stuck in. Eternally controlled—by the same functions across the board.

The kid flew us down low—skimming over craters, debris, ruins, rat-holes, mesas, deserts. I knew how the snakes worked—they were sneaky fuckers. They’d never been seen upsurface—they were too chickenshit. They were subterranean creatures—they hated the light. Even moonlight—sizzled their putrid lizard skins. They didn’t walk—they slithered.

I unbuckled my safety-belt—reached in back for the walkie-lookie book. It was a tablet-computer—small, concise, flat, thin as a sheet of paper. It had a touchie-feelie control panel—I kept all the Martian shit on it. I wanted the—I didn’t know what I wanted. Any diagrams of the Face—any cross-sections of the Pyramid. Something to go on…

“Something’s tracking us.”

The blue-glow panel warning lights—were lighting up the kid’s face. I had to fight it—falling into REM-time. The kid’s own internal gaydar—was as usual ahead of time. I felt myself getting sucked into his thoughts—they were super-intense.

Like some kind of weird methane vortex—writhing far down below in some sub-surface Saturnian methane storm. I had to concentrate real hard—he let me into his mind…

“We’ll lose it. Just keep your eyes on the coordinates. That’s the way. Get down lower.”

We were so low—I could reach out & touch the dunes themselves. Hop, skip, weave this way, swerve that way—the kid was good at it. I reached up and flicked on the void-zoid canon. It was set & charged to go. We’d probably only get one shot at it—the lizard disk stalking us smoothly in the night.

I dialed the channels—they were all dead. It figured—I hadn’t updated the hover-craft’s unit in a long time. For all I knew—we were being more than tracked. The main thing was flying low—the stealth-shields up. We had one advantage—the kid & I were on the same wavelength.

My guess was that Tyrell was super-smart—but not smart enough. He probably had a dozen of them—down there in the Martian Underground bunker. But he was too cold & intellectual—too much a genius to fall in love any of them. Humanoid-Nexus mind-melding—was one thing. But like I learned with Rachel—it’s a lot more of a two-way street than most people think.

“See that big shadow on the horizon—head for it.”

It must’ve been hard for Tyrell down there. Running his sprawling Ex-Empire—scheming, planning, collaborating with the Lizards, the TerraCorp execs, the Mirror Ones, the Oort Belt Cloud Menace. He didn’t have time like I did—to just live with one. To live with one—and fall in love with one.

It wasn’t a luxury—it was something I had to do. It was like I’d done it before—or maybe it was some kind of uncanny nostalgia for the future. Whatever it was it took a year to get used to it—this Nexus kid coming to me outta Mars. And I don’t mean just Tyrell’s underground city either—getting to know him was like jacking into a Krell mind-boost.

I thumbed quickly thru the walkie=lookie index—it would take 30 minutes to get to the pyramid. We were vulnerable until then—there wasn’t anything we could do except zigzag. Even then the snakes—would be zeroing in on us. I’d never seen a snake-disk—nobody had. Until it was too late. They’d probably intercepted Tyrell’s last call. I wasn’t worried about Tyrell tho—he’d make it to Titan.

Messing with the touchie=feelie screen—I came up with the Cydonia Mensae pyramid. Mesas, knobs, and smooth plains were already below us—a moderate amount of cratering & there. There’d been a lot of erosion—remnants of the earlier surface, knobs appearing modified by mass wasting & slumping, lots of freezing & thawing of old ground ice.

We passed several pedestal craters—the impact craters surrounded by ejecta blankets. Steep scarps—dropping hundreds of meters to the surface. The morphology & archeology of Cydonia Mensae hadn’t been explored much—it was off-limits.

The exo-archeologists & planetologists had been detoured—commandeered out to Titan developments & the rings quickly by TerraCorp. Tyrell did the heavy lifting—down in his Martian bunker with his Nexus team doing the retro-stuff. The kid was one of his pet experiments—who knows what went into the young pilot sitting next to me?

Tyrell got the past—TerraCorp supposedly got the future. Which was the Asteroid Archipelago—where most of the corporate funding was coming from. The costs were phenomenal—even the Eye on the $1 million dollar banknotes glowed in the dark.

“Annuit Cœptis” meant only one thing—“TerraCorp & Tyrell approves our undertakings.” And “Novus Ordo Seclorum”—what did that mean? It meant “New World Order of Late Capitalism."



An alchemical woodcut—17th Century. From a book on alchemy—showing an "Eye in the Sky" precursor to the Eye of Providence. Quo Modo Deum translating as “This is the way of God.” I studied the picture—it wavered on the screen. “Earth gods—or Martian gods,” I said to myself.

The lookie=talkie simply said: “Both.”

The interesting thing about this 10th-generation lookie=talkie iPad—was that it had an in-built authorial stream-of-consciousness function. It was self-aware of its lookie=talkie parameters. It was the kid—it was an early Nexus-device. One of Tyrell’s brainstorms—who knows what else he milked outta the Martian underworld?

The thing about voice-recognition with humans—it becomes easier with practice. Early replicant übersetzung-devices were slow—the human was the one who had to be trained. Trained to ennunciate words, vowels, consonants—slowly, distinctly & then spell-check on the screen.

It was the first rudimentary cybernetic mind-meld interaction—speech, robotics, syntax & semantics. It was a long ways—to get to the archetypal Anglo-Saxon “wordhorde” embedded in the English Language. In many ways it reinacted the linguistic Grendel Drive itself—the philoprogentive origins & dark depths of the Beowulfian legend-weapon weirding-ways connecting Terra to the lost Titan Archives.

The slow discovery by any space opera saga-master duplicates the word-recognition process. For example, the space master’s individual method can seem exciting.

But a moment comes in the middle age—when humans & even space masters feel they no longer control the method. They’ve become its prisoner. Then a long period of exo-ennui sets in—it seems to him or her that they’ve done everything before. They’re haunted by déjà vu denoument.

The same with the earlier über-Pad models. With the huge database that tablets had become aware of themselves with—this process familiarity became worse than unfavorable ones. For the favorable links with terrible patience—runrolled before the master’s eyes the unchanging pattern of the carpet. In other words—cybernetic boredom set in.

Could the lookie=talkie—ever become a standalone author? Could a computer be somehow trained—to be more or less unconscious? Dependent on the ability to forget—even their own databases when they were visible on the public screens?

So that the computer couldn’t remind the master—this or that word, phrase or theme originated ten years ago etc. The simile which came so unthinkingly to his keyboard a few weeks back—would be as fresh as a spring daisy. Free to be used—ad lib, spontaneously & extemporaneously.

The lookie-talkie talked back. It even played the violin & shed tears—when I felt sorry for myself. Like now it was playing a “Third Man” zither soundtrack—pretending it was down in the dank Viennese sewers.

Down below the advertisement kiosks—down where the shit-smelling tidal river flowed. Underneath the Four-Power occupation zones—places where the underground Martian police could literaly work underground along the enormous system of sewers.

I let my fingers do the walking—thru the early Viking orbiter frames. Frames 35A72, 70A11 & 70A13 showing the D&M Pyramid—located at 40.65N 9.55W. Later flyby much better enhanced closeups soon became available—NGF filered orthographic rectification of the whole pyramid were dancing on my screen.

Several secret exo-archeology expedictions—came & disappeared. They sent back some interesting pics—and then transmission stopped. Most of them ended up in the Martian Space Science Data Center—located underground with TerraCorp. Most of them offline—including even all the early exo-reports.

Fluvial deposition/erosion profiles, Aeolian landform reports—occasionally showed the top of the submerged pyramid & crescent-shaped sub-structures. Tyrell planetologists were still pouring over the data—yardangs modified by wind-borne particulates typically rounded off next to the pyramids. Many were so worn & abrased—they looked like upturned boat hulls.

Another type of aeolian landform that can be somewhat pyramidal in shape—were known as ventifacts. Martian ventifacts are normally formed from small rocks—exposed to the abrasive action of sand carried by the wind. Multifaceted Martian ventifacts are believed to have been produced as a result of movement of a rock—causing it to present different faces to the direction of the prevailing winds.

Large ventifacts can also exist—produced from boulders assuming a roughly pyramidal shape with three edges (dreikanters). These landforms present a long edge toward the prevailing winds—and a somewhat flat surface in the opposite direction. The leading edge is cut by abrasion of wind-borne particulates—the trailing surface apparently formed by deflation from locally reversed airflow. Mechanisms essentially the same as those that form yardangs.

The lookie-talkie said: “This is the interesting part, Deckard. The overall morphology of the D&M Pyramid, with its straight edges and flat surfaces in radial arrangement, is inconsistent with the morphology of all aeolian landforms. The nearby face shows no evidence of wind faceting, and there are no intervening objects between the face and the D&M Pyramid to deflect wind.”

“What else,” I asked.

“Also inconsistent is the presence of a flat faced protuberance at the front of the object, a flat surface that should not exist at the leading edge of wind cut features such as yardangs or ventifacts. It is reasonable to conclude that aeolian processes cannot have produced the D&M Pyramid due to the lack of a plausible mechanism of formatage amounts of rainfall in recent epochs. Additionally, the D&M Pyramid has no vent at its apex, and exhibits a symmetry unknown in volcanic landforms.”

“Interesting. What about intelligent design?”

“The hypothesis that the D&M Pyramid may be the product of intelligent design cannot be blindly accepted simply because there is no geomorphological explanation, but must be subjected to an objective analysis, especially due to its location on Mars, a place where life is not known to have existed.”

“Thus the Intelligence Hypothesis cannot be explored without first answering a preliminary question: What are the hallmarks of Martian architectures that distinguish them from landforms and how may they be objectively recognized and evaluated?”

“Did Tyrell achieve this?”

“The pyramid’s geometry inconsistent with known landforms and geomorphological processes? (i.e. the pyramid exhibits straight lines, curved lines having fixed radii, regular patterns, one or more axes of symmetry, and has the combination of these characteristics precluding geomorphology as a mechanism of origin.)”

1 The pyramid is aligned with the cardinal directions along with significant astronomical events.

2 The pyramid collocates with other objects that are also inconsistent with the surrounding geology. Such as other pyramids.

3 All these pyramids are geometrically aligned with each other.

4 The pyramid’s geometry expresses mathematically significant numbers, and the numbers seem to fit an identifiable pattern

“What about early exo-archeology surveys?”

“Early expeditions & surveys of this Martian sector came up with the characteristics listed above. But they cannot by themselves establish the pyramids as being the product of intelligent design. What was required was a totality of geometric relationships that, when viewed as a whole, precluded the likelihood of a natural origin.”

“A simple example of this sort of epistemological problem can be illustrated by imagining that one is exploring a terrestrial limestone cave. While it is possible that one may eventually encounter a stalagmite that vaguely resembles a human face—one will never encounter the Washington Monument in scale miniature. That degree of mathematical precision does not occur in nature in the Martian environment and from these materials—that can now be properly interpreted as being the product of intelligent design.”

“What about any digs, excavations, underground digital imagery probes beneath the surface?”

“Early exo-digs showed the D&M Pyramid had signs of being damaged on one side, perhaps by a meteoric impact or atomic blast.”

“Atomic blast—like during a warfighter situation?”

The screen went blank. Somebody or something was blocking the lookie-talkie trig-functions. Probably the snakes—they were zeroing in on the droid-box.

I had known pretty much all this about the enigmatic pyramids of Cydonia Mensae anyway—the objects weren’t just artificial. They were super-civilization things. Whatever logic and intentions of the architects were hidden though. At least for now. Bilateral symmetries provoked bio-metaphors—resembling living and/or humanoid design like the Martian Face.

Pretty soon ruined half-submerged tetrahedrons—were found scattered all over the Martian surface. Like icebergs—one-tenth above the desert, the rest down below. Many of them covered up like the Egyptian ruins—in the shifting sands of the Martian desert around Hellas Town & further north. I know—the kid & I had been there.

We’d taken an occasional TerraCorp scientist we’d met in the lounge—some bored college kid just outta college. Flying him outta Hellas Town—to take a look at them. Most were stunned—some were hushed. What a mock-Egypto pile of ancient ruins—the whole planet one big tragic wreck under the stars. But that was nothing—we told them. They’d take the next shuttle out toward Titan—so we usually never saw them again. Out there—that was where the real ruins were.

Carlotto monuments, tetrahedron temples—whatever you wanted to call them. You guessed it—most of them quintessentially tetrahedral. Hidden in key locations because they were geometrically embedded—in unique seven-spin tetrahedron ley-line symmetries.

I didn’t know much about hyperdimensional physics models. Academic research bored me—it was the gargantuan, incredibly riveting & faceted pyramids themselves—that always made me stand there in the Martian desert, looking up at them in awe.

Cydonia mysteries—the kind of stuff Rosetta Stones were made of. It made me nervous—I didn’t get off on all that Lost Knowledge stuff. It all was too imbued with Martian Library of Thebes chiaroscuro—shadows & shades of Homer’s Iliad & the Odyssey. The problem was that all the King’s exo-planetologists & all the King’s science & technology. Couldn't put Mars back together again.

Dead Planet XIVI

Dead Planet XVI

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YaR5wVL9x2I&feature=related

“Stream of what?”
—Graham Greene,
The Third Man

Tyrell popped up on the vidscreen.

“Are you alone?”

“Yes, Dr. Tyrell. How are you today, sir?”

I lied. I wasn’t alone. The kid was sleeping in bed. Knowing him—he probably could hear the conversation. Subliminally anyway.

“I’ve got a request, Mr. Deckard.”

“Yes?”

Static wiggled across the screen.

“I need your bounty hunter services.”

A foreboding evil faint-violet zigzag began slithering across the screen like a snake. I could almost smell the ozone. Something was wrong. Tyrell’s voice was tense.

“I need your bounty hunter services badly.”

“I’m retired.”

“I’ll make it worth your while, Deckard.”

“I’m retired, Tyrell. I don’t retire droids anymore.”

Tyrell turned briefly to somebody off-screen. There was a hushed conversation. I heard the low thud of stun-guns in the background. More static. He turned back to me.

“Look, Deckard. We’ve got a problem down here.”

“Yes?”

“The lizards have offed my droid-bodyguards. You’re the only one with a Nexus-9 droid up there now. My staff & I are teleporting to Titan any minute now.”

“What is it you want me to do?”

“You & JJ your Nexus kid. The exo-creepazoids will be after you next. We’ve got an exo-war on our hands. They’ve taken over Mars Underground.”

More static. I heard some atomic void-zoid rumblings in the background. Metal screeching against metal. Loud banging against the bunker doors. Tyrell’s empire was crumbling down there. For some reason, I’d been expecting it. You can only deal with the exo-creeps so long—and then they go for the jugular. They can’t help it—it’s snake-brain genetic. How many of them were down there? Jaysus Christ. Just one lousy retired bounty-hunter—WTF could I do against an army of snakes? It was a viper’s nest down there. I shook my head. Tyrell with all his high-tech expertise & brains. So much for exo-diplomacy. And any kind of Earthman finesse.

“C’mon Tyrell. What do you want me to do?”

“Protect the kid. Use your hunter skills to hide him. He’s the only Nexus-9 we’ve got left now. Everything depends on that kid now. He’s our only hope.”

The vidscreen went blank.

I sat there in a cold sweat. Night was descending over Hellas Town. Phobos sailed overhead. Far down below the Amazonis Plains—a war was breaking out. A really nasty one. I turned around—the kid was standing next to me.

“Get my zoid-gun in the safe, kid.”

I pointed to the safe in the wall. He walked over to it, clicked the fake Picasso open & took out my shoulder-holster & zoid-weapon.

“Let’s get outta here.”

The kid already had his jumpsuit on—his desert boots too. We got to the hover-craft fast—quickly we were zooming low outta Hellas Town. The radar was clean—the air was cool.

I needed a drink. But there wasn’t any.

“Where we goin’?”

The kid slid down his night-vision glasses.

Amazonis desert dunes—skimmed down there below.

“To the pyramid.”

Dead Planet XV

Dead Planet XV

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g-DkoGvcEBw

“All reet! All reet!
So jeet your seat
Be fleet be fleet
Cool and discrete
Honey…”
—Alfred Bester,
“Fondly Fahrenheit”

It was the kid—the other me.

I was Deckard—he was a young male Rachel. The process was very interesting. The android-humanoid relationship. How it develops into love. I can see why Tyrell was so laissez-faire about the whole thing—pretty much letting the kid & me do whatever we wanted.

That was the whole purpose of our affair—to study how a Nexus-9 droidboy mind-melded & became more human. And how a human mind-melded & fell in love with a droid.

“All reet! All reet!”

It was a simple matter of projection. The more we got into it though—the more complex it got. The kid could do things I couldn’t do—he knew how to get me into REM sleep real fast. Skipping all the cycles leading into it—alpha, beta, delta. So that mind-melding thing—took on a whole new meaning during dreamtime. It was a two-way thing—not just a one-way street.

I’d never thought about it very much—even when I was giving droids the Voight-Kampff test. I knew how to read the test results—whether the droids were droids or not. I didn’t even have to do that—others could give the test just as well as me.

The Nexus-9 droids were more human—much more human than your usual plain vanilla replicants. Cyborg science had advanced a long ways—since my bounty hunter days. Ambiguity on many levels had been programmed in—or rather somehow left outta the works. WYSIWYG took on a new dimension—more spontaneous, ad lib, more extemporaneous.

I guess that’s why Tyrell set us up the way he did—with the kid in the Hellas Zoo. He wanted his new Nexus model to be different—more open-ended, more human. An expanded replicant repertoire—more ambitiously ambiguous. A looser lifestyle robotics—that went far beyond Asimov’s basic robot rules. How to design it—an android Outsider?

Lots of astute textbooks had been written about projection—mostly only human projection tho. Even alien contact had pretty much stayed primitive—exo-projection was terra incognito. But what if the projection went both ways—what kind of android-humanoid Doppelganger Effect would take place? Would it be a sudden gestalt—or maybe a process? A kind of exo-evolution—or a steep learning curve. What, in other words, were the parameters & limits of such a thing?

“Reet! Reet! So jeet your seat!!!”

If a droid-human mind-meld thing was actually a two-way rapprochement —would there be a bleeding détente or slow seepage between the two parties? That they didn’t know about—something subconscious or unconscious?

Tech-psych engineers postulated that impulses— could translate unconsciously or subliminally or subtextually. So that things like human paranoia or joy could maybe—meld over to the droid? My hang-ups by externalizing them—became the kid’s sicknesses too? That the kid could end up indirectly or by implication—struggling with some of my pet-peeves and weaknesses.

Like my crisis of consciousness—the reason I got outta the bounty hunter racket in the first place. I got sick of it—especially with the opera singer droid. She was more gifted, talented & professional—than any human diva could be.

And then there was Rachel—how we skipped outta LA. I lost her after the Gulp Apocalypse—the Redneck Riviera zombies got to her. But that’s another story—it’s the reason I ended up here on Mars actually.

The kid knew all this—thru telepathic projection. I don’t know how it works—funny how droids are more into it than us humans. I suspect Tyrell did some reverse-genetic engineering—with the ancient Martians. Their DNA was all over the place—down in the circular ruins of Mars City far below.

I could go down the list—as far as the other ones are concerned. There’s so many of them—I’ve lost count. The kid told me once—what his planetary star system philoprogenitive heredity was like. Antares II, Alpha Aurigae, Acrux IV, Pollux IX, Rigel Centaurus—all of them colder than a witch’s tit.

Multiple-aptitude androids like the kid—were walking, talking, living Pandora’s Boxes from one end of the galaxy to the other. WTF did I know about these things—exo-genetics, exo-transplants, exo-this & exo-that?

All I knew is that I loved the kid—and maybe he loved me too. I dunno—Mars is an ancient world—and love is an old, old story. Part of being human, I suppose—is knowing it’s finite. You live, you die—you make money, you put some in the bank, you spend it, you lose it, then you say goodbye. If droids can learn that—well, they’re on their way to the human condition, aren’t they?

“Be fleet be fleet, cool and discreet, honey!”

The way I looked at it—my relationship with the kid deepened after that first year. Well, how can I put it? It’s him—he’s the one. He’s the me—that things really happen to. Before I met this Nexus droid—it was lonely here in Hellas Town. Living alone all the way up here—in this dumpy penthouse on top of the Hellas skyscraper.

The Hellas Towers used to be a very expensive, swanky, cosmopolitan, state of the art Martian condo. But now, unfortunately, crummy Chandler-esque ennui—and PKD kipple debris & decay had set in. Dirt and soot fastened leech-like on the once gleaming plastic walls. Streets were ill-tended—the elevator didn’t work.

The virtually unbreakable titanium-plastic coating of Hellas Towers was still there—its imperishable colors basically as fresh & bright as the day they were hover-crafted into the construction site.

Nevertheless, they showed the van Vogt shabby streaks of slutty time—plastic after all lasts forever. But it gets dingy & cracked—lonely in the cold hard Martian night darkness. The plastic skyscraper and tower of the future—still seemed somewhat brightly colored, pristine, semi-elegant.

But worn-out and old too—like so many Raymond Chandler’s film noir cityscapes. Like those old prominent ritzy LA mansions he wrote about—in the once exclusive Bunker Hill neighborhood that slowly fell into disrepair & cheap low-rent rooming houses.

There’s a certain run-down, neo-noir, urban-esque planetary cityscape—eternally imprisoned in time & always threatening to its inhabitants. Pervasive on all planets—like Big Sleep Planets and Kiss Me, Deadly worlds. Murder, My Sweet cityscapes—transposed straight outta detective fiction tradition. Stark & naked—Titan moons embedded with pulp fiction Grade-B murder movie nuances.

Planets get worn-out—just like LA neighborhoods. Chandler could feel it—all the way from the future. A kind of nostalgia for the future—even before it got here. But it was there in the future—and sometimes it could bleed back into the past. Like Tourneur with his “Out of the Past”—it catches up with you one way or another.

These depressing ghetto-reality Martian zones—they contained not only the narrative and characters of human decay. Mars was no different—Hellas Towers was like the LA decaying neighborhoods back on Earth. That’s where I found myself in time—sandwiched somewhere in between LA and Hellas Town. It had its own storyline—I was a part of the Text.

The penthouse at the top of the now shabby Hellas Towers—used to belong to an important TerraCorp executive. Then a suit owned it for awhile who worked for Tyrell—before disappearing underground and never being seen again. A series of owners came & went—as the TerraCorp development fleets moved outward to Titan & the rings of Saturn. Pretty soon only exiles, riffraff & gangsters took over Hellas—I fit in nicely with the moiling mob.

Now the Towers was in a state of disrepair—the lobby was boarded up & the elevator hadn’t worked since I moved in a couple of years ago. The elevator used to work—it got me to the top. But it got jerky and slow toward the end—stranding me between floors a couple of times. Kinda like that weird elevator in “Eraserhead” (1976)—the one Henry Spencer too up to his shabby apartment.

I didn’t mind Hellas Town at all though—I simply parked my hover-craft up on the roof. Plenty of privacy that way—nobody coming bugging me. No bums or creeps—knocking on my door. Not bad for an old bounty hunter’s lair—a guy who treasured his privacy & only wanted to be left alone.

I strolled thru Hellas Town—I’d browse thru the pawn shops. Go thru the junk stores—rummage around the ruins. Nostalgically caught up with that strange sort of nostalgia for the future I was talkin’ about—a future that had already come & gone. Keeping all its secrets & memories to itself—except for the funky architecture that didn’t mind being dumpy & used-up. Worn-out & tired—like the Martian Face pyramids out in the desert.

The fact was that Hellas Town—was a ghost town. Things had either moved subsurface—or off to the Asteroid Archipelago development & mining zones managed by Tyrell and TerraCorp. And then further out to Titan—and the methane sea oil rigs down below on the surface of Saturn.

The rings of Saturn—left over from earlier pre-Terran mining operations. And then, of course, even further out. Past Neptune, Uranus, Pluto—exploring the Oort Belt Cloud.

Leaving Hellas Town upsurface—abandoned & pretty much a ghost mall. Like all those empty shopping plazas and strip-malls back on earth. After the Last Depression—and the Gulf Apocalypse. TerraCorp got its start back then—doing work for BP & Exxon—in Alaska, the Gulf of Mexico & Lake Michigan. A lucrative planetary development thing—a good corporate upscale conglomerate organization to make your executive mark on the whole Exo-Exploration thing.

A few joints & antique shops were my favorite haunts—lots of things for sale could be found here & there in Hellas Town. Martian memorabilia and Earth mementos—they were kinda like my hobbies. I collected old star maps, Ace paperback double-novels—van Vogt space opera novels and blue Titan china teacups.

I was plagued with these stupid vain attempts at making—even foreign, alien, android matters somehow relevant & meaningful to me. The older I got—the more nostalgic I became. My mind was like a greedy sponge for earth knick-knack stuff—an eight-limbed many-suckered octopus for Martian antiques.

The kid & I would fly out—to archeological sites in the Amazonis Plains desert. Abandoned by exo-archeologists—for richer finds on Titan & the Saturnian moons. The whole solar system was a big junk yard—full of cosmic debris & ruined civilizations.

Mars itself had been a troubled planet—bypassed in favor of the Asteroid Gold Rush migration. That’s when the business mentality of Tyrell & TerraCorp—really kicked in for serious business. All the best exo-archeologists & scientists began working for TTT & its outsource exploration squads.

Much of what they discovered quickly got covered-up—for corporate competitive purposes. Interplanetary copyrighting exo-tech was high priority—later they’d back-engineer the stuff downward & let some of it dribble out for the masses.

I lived simply—here in the Martian backwater zone. Who knows what Tyrell Corp was doing down-under—where the Krell exo-civilization was being resurrected. As far as I was concerned—modern Martian maturity meant only one thing. Getting on with my life & getting ready to die. Doing it with a little class—maybe a small modicum of gracefulness.

I lived, I allowed myself to live—so that the kid could spin-out his teenage douchedroid fantasies. Letting him flow thru me at night—with his android super-science accommodation online. His ongoing humanoid mind-meld thing—was okay with me. I was pretty-much laissez-faire about the whole thing. Living with the kid—like he was becoming me.

We didn’t talk much about it—but he probably had some kind of built-in timeline like I did. I was older than him—so I pretty much expected what was gonna happen. I knew I was doomed to die sometime—that utterly & inevitably oblivion would be mine. I was stoic & resigned about it—I was actually pretty lucky to get as far as I did.

Whatever fleeting moments I had left—well, little by little I’d been turning them over to the kid. Since Nexus-9 droids weren’t eternal I assumed—we both were kinda stoic about it all. What can I say?

Hopefully the kid would go on doing what I did—enjoying my Martian reprieve, perversely distorting time, subverting my memories, transgressing and magnifying them this way and that. A bricolage of being myself—and being him.

I would go on being myself for awhile longer—then maybe afterwards thru my Nexus boytoy android friend. His memory was phenomenal—could he encompass all of me and mind-meld me like some piece of nostalgic Martian memorabilia?

Would some tedious plucking of Phobos zither strings—bring me back in his memory for a moment or two some day in the future? Some skanky whiff from the Hellas Town sewers—remind him of my bad breath in the morning?

Probably not—if it was gonna happen, probably it would happen more like during REM sleep dreaming. Some kind of point-counterpoint fugue—but who really knows how a young droid-mind works? Or an old droid bounty hunter’s worn-out brain like mine?

A ka-plunk in some Martian Amazonis desert pond—ripples spreading out from the tattered ruins of my Terra incognito mindscape? Would I ever feel again— the stirrings that once made me feel so human and vulnerable?

For this young male Nexus kid—during some fading mauve sunset? Standing nude out there—by a pyramid surrounded by the red sands of Mars?

Dead Planet XIV

Dead Planet XIV

“It’s Borges—
the other one,
that things
happen to”
—Jorge Luis Borges,
“Borges and I”

DroidBoy got us outta there.

Outta Hell City—and back to Hellas Town upsurface.

No one saw us slip outta Mars City Underground—back to the Martian surface. Back up to Hellas Towers—back up into the Borgesian circular ruined night. Leaving behind Old Mars nightmare down below—for his magic realism OtherWorld.

Leaving the contaminated Tyrell City down below—where telepathic leprosy was rampant. The fetid holocaust underground devoted to Death down there—Tyrell with his face the color of ashes. The unrelenting sub-surface exo-Zend foreigners—and lurking, skulking alien entrepreneurs unhonored by mankind, yet tolerated for their super-science.

I didn’t even wake up—I just sort of phased outta REM sleep. Back into the normal rhythms— my so-so, so-what, bourgeois existence. Cycling my way slowly back thru—alpha, beta, delta sleep. Whatever unconquerable cosmic plan they were plotting down there—strangling the future with old has-been Magellanic slime sleights & cynical interplanetary, otherworldly coldness.

The kid put his head on my shoulder—unconsciously I wrapped by arms around him. That tomblike Tyrell niche down there— where the kid was conceived & born. His all-knowing Count Frankenstein father could fuckin’ keep it—all that crummy rotting ancient Lost Knowledge twisting its way back into Time.

All that alien forbidden exo-shit—rotting forever down there. Draped on the underground walls—like rotting baroque curtains in some ruined crummy high castle or forgotten Egypto-ArtDeco exo-temple. Dust of stoic, taciturn gone centuries—clinging to the dank receding shadows. The cosmic dreck of dead creepy cosmographies—dredged up by Tyrell & his Krell Team to be doomsday déjà vu zeitgeist once again…

Smile like you mean it—the Krell circular ruins far below seemed to say.

Tyrell & TerraCorp had realized with great bitterness—that nothing could be expected from the human species inhabiting the solar system. The outside intruders weren’t much better—they had no affection or even a single degree of sympathy for solar sector human beings.

The aliens & exo-creepazoids were basically vampires from outer space—they lived thru us, their preexistence totally illusionary. Completely dependent on the genius of Tyrell’s brain—the Droidic magic recall technology was the corporate world’s only hope.

The aliens & exo-creeps lived in REM dreamtime—like all human beings did when they dreamed. But REM dreamtime was also their psychic prison—there was no Gulag escape or grand exit strategy from Hell. They did Tyrell’s bidding—great Martian Mephistopheles magician that he was. But even Tyrell had his limitations—that’s why he created the half-human Nexus-9 DroidBoy to be his Earthman intermediary.

Smile like you mean it—Tyrell said to his son.

The kid shrugged—he could care less. He was genetically flawed—and he knew it. He had a built-in lifespan—but nobody knew how long. It was Russian roulette—every day of his life. Bad biology—had made him all too human & yet not human enough.

Too young & foolish to know why he existed—too vain & smart to ever wanna go back to Big Daddy ever again. Tall, lanky, taciturn—at times intractable. High Balkan cheek-bones—a disconcerting way of zeroing in on only one thing. Down there—where humanoids know all about it. Where clairvoyance was like Coca-Cola—something to be bought & sold. Marketed & managed—consumed & thrown away.

I slowed him down a little bit—especially during REM dreamtime. I forestalled some kind of imminent clairvoyant disaster—intuitively I sensed something wrong. I was dumb as a doorknob—when it came to ESPN-ESP. If I were gifted—I would’ve cleaned up at the tracks & got outta the bounty hunter racket a lot sooner.

The kid was bound to burn himself out fast enough—if I didn’t hold him back a little bit. My own naïve stupidity—and low intelligence dragged him down like an albatross or anchor around his neck.

The learning curves he put me thru—mostly at night when I was REM skating on thin ice. I slowed him down a lot—he had to keep a third eye on me. The kid had to save me more than once—from falling thru & drowning in the Zoid depths.

There was more to creepazoidal consciousness—than I thought. I thought all that Lovecraft-stuff was just bullshit—but then the Martian dreams began. Mysterious dream-worlds with disturbing names—a pantheon of ancient alien gods. Exo-beings such as Cthulhu and Azathoth—and weird eldritch planets haunting our own. Lovecraft must have been in a nest of them—seguing in & out of New England towns like Arkham with its Miskatonic University.

Struggling & wrestling with the kid—gave me something to do. My so-called Terra life was pretty much shot—long before I got outta Earth’s ruined orbit and to ancient Mars. Why retire back Earthside in that toxic Apocalypto hellhole—that radioactive dump full of fuckin’ Corexit zombies everywhere? There’d be no end to it—all I’d be doing was retiring the Living Dead zombie creeps instead of runaway droids.

From the minute I met the kid—some kinda ultra-neon light started blinkin’ on & off. Like some old Bijou film palace marquee—with the latest flick for me to watch. “El Distructo Zero Hour”—as if that was anything new to me.

Usually I’d always get a seat in the Bijou ghost-mall balcony—sitting alone up there going thru a couple of REM movies. One would suck me into the other—so real they weren’t even movies anymore. Before I met the kid—I sorta phased outta one dream flick into another. Sometimes there’s be a chance intermission—and I’d realize I’d been living Sunset Blvd or The Big Sleep without knowing it.

It took a Nexus-9 droidboy—to get me to be more lucid and alive in the flicks. Until then there’d been no Brechtian dream alienation-effect for me—I simply took dreaming for granted.

The kid taught me the difference between—dream Entfremdung & dream Verfremdung. Entfremdung was an alienating condition—Verfremdung was a method of making that condition clear to dreamers. Not afterwards—but spontaneously within the dream movie itself.

It was an improvement over the van Vogt Null-A technique—there wasn’t any need to set one’s alarm clock every 90 minutes. To wake up & remember the Cthulhuesque or Azathothian underworld. It was Verfemdung Lite—alienation despite the Zoid Zone.

It held the kid back some—him holding me tight so I wouldn’t fall thru. In return, I shared things with him—like getting him to dig sad crimson Martian sunsets. Teaching him the unbearable lucidity—of restless young human insomnia.

Taking him outta Hellas Town on weekend hover-craft trips—out across the Amazonis night dotted with ruined plains far down below. Checkin’ out the Pyramid Face ruins—helping him to squander his young male strength just pleasing me.

The strength of his young male douchedroid delirium sometimes—abandoning the maze & labyrinthine mirror house inside his stale old droid dreams. Getting into the real marvavilloso task at hand—the silent Zen-contemplation of the ancient planet Mars. The Phobos moonship zipping by—high overhead in the nightsky above.

Getting both our minds—synching more closely. Him off his Tyrell past—me off my Terra memories. Focusing on us more & more instead—bowed down & broken by the planetary gods. Me uttering to him—
the only real words I knew how to pronounce.

The meaningless ancient wordless words—of my beating all-too-human troubled Terran heart. My love for him—that painstaking love that had overcome me. Salving the guilt of my bounty hunter past—during those brilliant Martian desert nights. Helping the kid to live his life—his way and not Tyrell’s way.

Stroking his double pulmonary arteries—down there with my forefinger. Such inspection pleasing him—making him feel proud. Staying up for dayz & nightz—deliberately not sleeping for long periods of time. Letting his heart feel how to be more human. Feeling it turn inside-out just for me—and not Tyrell below or the fuckin’ planetary gods above.

Stroking his Michelangelo physique—in the shadows of ancient pyramid ruins, No longer a droid-vat stippling kid—but instead an upsurface young adult. Getting to know the way human love—that can count the countless hairs on a guy’s body. The way human love can X-ray—a fully grown man all the way to the bone. Past his quivering REM eyelids—all the way down deep into his glowing-in-dark exo-skeleton. Night after night—I dreamed this kid more awake.

It’s an old story—gnostic conglomerates & ancient cosmogonies creaming the Milky Way. How many dark handsome angels—oozing squirting outta the groins of dark Greater Magellanic Clouds? How many young cute Alpha Centauri Adams—does it take to make an Eden? Young Martian guyz—with big adolescent Adam’s apples. Going spaz from one end of the galaxy—all the way to the other?

The galaxy I grew up in—the solar system that was my home. The Planet that was my Home World—the Apocalypto Nova that destroyed it all?

I threw myself at his feet—how many Wizard Apprentice droidboyz could I fall in love with? Before the Altair, Adebaran , Alpha Centauri gods grew jealous—destroying me in my greedy dread-inspiring love to be more than merely human?

One evening I was totally exhausted—near some ruined circular Martian temple we’d landed at nearby to explore. I finally fell asleep in a zero-grav hammock next to him—out there in some abandoned Amazonis deserted place. In my REM dreaming man’s dream—I dreamed the kid awake once again. He was calling my name—from inside the pyramid.

The consecrated period of Martian time long ago—it was beginning to recede ahead of time again very quickly. Subverting & transgressing all the arcane secrets of the kid’s inner universe—reaching backwards & stretching forward into Zoid-zeit realms of the future. Apparently he was the only Nexus-9 droid in existence—the other ones were waiting in the distant Martian past & Oort Cloud Belt future?

This was no big deal secret to anybody—his Tyrell inheritance & vat-birth beginnings were dream-memories from way back before I first met him. Under the pretext of android pedagogical love—the sorcerer’s apprentice became more like me. A lousy two-bit bounty hunter all for himself—taking in & keeping my own personal droid doppelganger kid.

The kid I knew would probably leave me soon—the important thing was that we both helped each other to understand. Eventually, inevitably, erotically—we’d become one. But Hellas Town wouldn’t last forever—sooner or later all the lost leagues from its past would catch up with it. All the impenetrable secrets of the ruins—bleaching the sun downstream somewhere in lost Martian time.

The kid would sooner or later forget me. Overcome by some uncanny zip-lock preprogrammed erasure ticket—the twilight circularity would continue with identical droid-human love affairs further on down downstream. I’d see him on the vidscreen someday—faces telling faces about a magical youth in a temple on Titan who can levitate. A youth who could walk on the Rings of Saturn—and not be methane-singed or burned.

I’d worry about the kid sometimes—whatever truths or lies he’d discover about himself in the future. That he was nothing new really—that a droidboy army of phantasm-drones were waiting subsurface. Created by Tyrell—trained by TerraCorp.

Conceived organ by organ—neuron by neuron. In vast underground Martian vats—submarine greenhouses of dreamtime slime. Taught a little love & private eye craft in Hellas—learned by him above-surface with me. Learning to smile—like they meant it. Thru a vast thousand—and one Martian nights.

And then strangely enough—the most amazing thing would happen. Exactly as Mars was finally cataclysmically destroyed—by powerful concentric rings of mega-holocaust atomic rays. The Red Planet Mars—becoming a brief crown of crumbling cinders. As the Golden Age—of Solar Space Exploration came to a close. In that flash-second, I had this final déjà vu dream-image—ahead of time & space by many light years.

I realized with a certain flashback humiliation & terror—that for all magical & practical purposes I’d been mistaken. The kid wasn’t just a droidboy fantasma—actually I was one too. I was but a mere Terran apparition—some droidboy from the future was dreaming me even as I spoke…

Dead Planet XIII

Dead Planet XIII

“Gosseyn stared somberly
out of the curving corner
window of his hotel room.
From its thirty-story
vantage point, he could
see the city of the Machine
spread out below him.”
—A. E. van Vogt,
The World of Null-A

Well, the funny thing is—I ended up down there anyway. Deep down there in the Tyrell Corp headquarters boardroom. In the sub-Mars bunker zone anyway. What a fuckin' joke...

Like Dr. Tyrell said—my droidboy Lover knew the quickest way down there. Into the Martian Sub-City far below Hellas Town. And that’s when the kid took me—as soon as I fell asleep.

Smack-dab in the middle of the Tyrell boardroom—with all the TTT suits & off-planet creepazoids. Just like I thought would happen—I was fucked.

You can’t trust douchedroid boytoys—they’ll play dumb on you & then they’ll end up getting what they want anyway. What’s the use—once you’ve gone Droid, there’s no turnin’ back.

The kid waited until I was asleep in bed—working my way down thru alpha, beta, delta & all the other brain waves. Most humans did it that way. Sci-writer A. E. van Vogt knew that—he’d time it. The dream cycles just right. He knew how long it took to start dreaming. Ninety minutes…

Usually it takes 90 minutes to get into R.E.M. sleep. When your eyelids start jiggling & dancin’—that means you’re dreaming. Well, van Vogt set the alarm on his nightstand clock—so that he’d wake up during those REM cycles. He’d write them down in a dream journal—then he’d set the alarm & go back to sleep again. It’s simple enough—he discusses it in him memoirs.

That’s how van Vogt dreamed up so many unique, kinky, fragmented scenarios in his novels. Like Slan and World of Null-A—they were more like dream-journal adventure stories. It’s what gives his Astounding Science Fiction early stories like “Black Destroyer” so much eerie, oneric action & otherworldly atmosphere. Dreamtime storylines…

Van Vogt’s novels opened up the same effect—kicking in the Golden Age of Sci-Fi back in the ‘40s & ‘50s. No wonder so many juvenile Sci-fi fans got turned on by van Vogt’s swerve—he was “jacked-in” long before CyberPunk fiction. Long before Gibson’s Necromancer—captured the Internet generation.

I didn’t have to do that—it didn’t take me 90 minutes to get there. I dreamt instantaneously—and lucidly thanks to my droidboy lover. Droids don’t need all that alpha-beta-delta wave jazz—they can jump into REM just like that. The kid was good at it—instead of taking 90-minutes, he mind-melded & jacked me into dreamtime right away.

“Pretty neat, huh?” the kid said.

So like Tyrell wanted to meet me—after all I was an authority on online Nexus-9 performance by then. Plus I was pretty cynical & realistic—since I’d been a droid bounty-hunter back there on Earth.

It was more than cool. The Tyrell Headquarters—was this chic LA nightclub like The Cockatoo Lounge in Tarantino’s Charlie Brown. Cool, dark, lots of chrome & leather. A mirrored bar—with the usual suave bartender. All of it relaxed and air-conditioned—like a calm rendezvous with your girlfriend.

Except it was 700 stories beneath the surface—the hum of Krell back-engineered high-tech & rumbling invisible machinery in the background. The kid took me into an intimate backroom—that’s where the suits were waiting for us.

Tyrell was just finishing up an interview with a tall menacing Bill Gates drone—in his Microsoft Zoot-Suit with his gang of Venusian bodyguards. All women of course—cloned after Jan Sterling for some reason. They looked bored & slutty—like in Billy Wilder’s Ace in the Hole.

Slumpin’ down the rickety wooden stairs—on the outside of the dumpy café. Swooped up by nefarious Kirk Douglas—in some swank convertible. Kept around for his big newspaper story—the one about the poor sucker dying back there in the guts of the dark fuckin’ cave somewhere.

That’s how REM dreamtime imagination works—it never seems completely real. There’s always a little bit of magic realism involved—kinda like Borges’ seminal Spanish translation of Faulkner’s Wild Palms. That single one translation of Faulkner—kick-starting the whole real marvavilloso americano thing. The new South American “Boomer” fabulation genre. All the way from Buenos Aires, Argentina—to Havana, Cuba. And into the future…

Whatever that means…

So that whenever the kid—got inside my head. Well, there was always a little auteur cineaste aura to everything I saw and did. Not as bad as Severo Sarduy's Cobra—a little more like Borges’ Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius. That’s what the Martian City down there reminded me of—that weird Borges Circular City story I read back when I was a kid on Earth. Before the Gulf Apocalypse…

So that when I talk about it—and describe it. About what happens down there—well, take it with a little bit of cinematic skepticism and cheesy Lo real marvavilloso americano. The baroque marvavilloso in a dream—it begins unmistakably when suddenly & unexpected you find yourself in a strange intensity and singularity.

It already presupposes a suspension in belief—as if that’s a big deal when you’re dreaming. Most people accept the reality of their ongoing dream without question—unless they’re trained to know the difference. To know you’re dreaming & still dig it—that’s the trick of magic dream realism.

There’s this swerve—this baroque shift into timeless liquidity. When everything seems fait accompli—with its own logical precision. But there’s always a little bit of stealthy swerve to it—something that incorporates metropolis marvavilloso thinking. Even if its from the far future…

Or paradoxically from the ancient past as well—the immediate, spontaneous magic dream-text being more realistic than any realist text could be. Baroque magic realismo turns into itself—like two mirrors bending backwards away from each other. One has to constantly refocus—to keep from being destroyed by Oort Cloud muck & galactic oozing mucous.

The muck & mucous is you—on the marvavilloso downslide moving thru REM time. The kid walked me thru it—at least he was good for something. He’d learned the gamut of human reactions pretty good—he could guess where the nature & limits of the knowable were for me. It helped to have a cute young hustler—being one’s guide as we tripped & transgressed supernatural boundaries down thru the usual ho-hum undesignated typologies of the fantastic unreal. The baroque subway…

I needed a little young male beauty—to offset some of the grotesque stratagems of the skanky hypertext imagination. That’s why Tyrell picked a bounty-hunter like me with literary leanings—I was a quick study for carnival sideshow scams and unresolved antinomies. Martian mythology was full of that kind of shit—like the myths & legends of the Aztecs, Mayans and Inca exiles.

Certain French directors got pretty close—like Jacques Tourneur in the voodoo flick I Walked With a Zombie. The same his The Cat People—and Out of the Past. Even more so with Night of the Demon (1957)—aka "Curse of the Demon. That opening scene with the doomed professor—driving thru the tunnel of dark trees late at night to the Magician’s mansion. That’s how I felt as we descended—quickly down into the depths of Mars.

The idea of alien terror can be both—rejuvenating and overwhelming. Everybody needs a guide down thru that kind of real marvavilloso americano stuff—whether he’s a young Virgil in Dante’s Inferno or a handsome Heurtebise in Cocteau’s Orphée.

The kid was my guide—I looked over at him. Driving the Mercedes dream-limo. He was my chauffeur down into Martian Hell. A couple of young doubles—were escorting us goin’ over 100. They were driving sleek black BMW motorcycles alongside us. Wearing mean beat-up leather jackets—and black leather boots. With dark thick goggles—and baroque Zoid rayguns under their belts.

What else? What else could get me down there—quick and just like that? It was just like Tyrell said—the kid knew the fastest way to get me down there. And that’s what he did—despite all my fuckin’ moanin’ & bitchin’.

“Smile like you mean it,” the kid said, as we entered the nightclub boardroom…

After Tyrell dismissed the Gates gang—the doors dialed shut & clicked. We were alone—and yet we weren’t alone.

Tyrell was telepathic, of course—I came to expect that kind of thing during these dreamtime episodes. It was better for business that way—no secrets, no special deals, no blackmail bullshit. Even the fuckin’ greatly feared Venusian Jacuzzi organizations appreciated it—the telepath-business angle.

So did the Exo-terrestrials—invisibly crowding the room. Earthmen at first thought—they needed tons of translators. Big mistake—translation was automatic. It’s hard to describe it—other than what you see is what you get. Exo-eidetic anyway.

It happens when you’re dreaming. That’s where the Nexus-9 droids came in—they were good at longdistance surveillance and distance exo-viewing. The kid was designed for that. He needed some private dick training tho—hook him up with Deckard they said. He’s a slough-off miscreant and neo-Martian misanthropes—but WTF he’s the best. They usually dug me up outta retirement—for that kinda shit.

Private dicks like me—were dime a dozen. The romantic dayz of Hugh Marlowe & Mike Hammer were long gone. There was that weird extraterrestrial nostalgia tho—a kind of Chandler-esque ache for LA noir. It kinda leaked outta the putrid past—into the crummy future.

A kind of van Vogt decadent voluptuousness—to the kipple decay of old Earth metropolises. Sterling Hayden in Concrete Jungle. Tarantino in Charley Brown. A kind of Kiss Me, Deadly swerve—a weird Mickey Spillane / A. I. Bezzerides melancholy echo of what might have been, what could have been, what really was when Null-A kicked in…

I looked over at the kid—he was in the wise-ass, pouty hustler mode. He usually played hard-to-get that way—when he was up-tight & didn’t know what was comin’ down. I leaned over against him—he leaned back. It was dim in there—Tyrell motioned for us to sit down at the table.

Tyrell zipped thru my mind—like the Yellow Pages. Lookin’ for something—but he didn’t find it. The kid had trained me in my sleep—to be kinda tricky. I knew they needed me for something—it wasn’t that I had something they wanted. It was just the opposite usually. They needed my newly acquired droidboy quasi-human skill—to get a job done. I knew that—the kid knew that. Tyrell knew that…

It was like a nest of vipers—down there beneath the surface. A Martian Termite City of thriving Terra-incognito mobs & no-good slimy Venusian-gangsters. Saturnian sluts lurked in the shadows—Titan transsexuals and Uranian queers were eyeballing the kid. Sizing him up—Nexus-9 droids were hot stuff.

The worst scum of the skanky solar system was down there—wheelin’ & dealin’ like all the other Late Capitalism sub-space dynasties in for the take. Lookin’ for cool deals and planning ahead. For the next fuckin’ Asteroid Archipelago Job—ready to suck up the apocalypto-profits & anything big coming down.

It wasn’t pretty—whatever it was. Nouveau riche barons were never polite—there was too much to gain & everything to lose. Planets didn’t self-destruct—their terraforming was closely managed. Developed by the best end-job raconteurs—it was just business.

Their motto was simple: “Smile like you mean it.”

The Terran Space Fleet was already mapping out war-game scenarios—EVE programmers & flight technicians—were already testing out the cyborg paradigms & psych-perimeters. The cyberpunk Neuromancer generation—that was the first test group. Now the galactic game-planners—were managing the next stage of it.

The Golden Age Sci-Fi Meta-Fiction…

I tried centering myself calmly & aloofly. Like I wasn’t really there—like it was just a fuckin’ wetdream in a house I once grew up in. On a street—where I was a kid. Way back when—way back when my juvie sci-fi imagination first kicked in. Back when I was a dumb teenage Heinlein punk—Have Earthboy Suit, Will Travel, baby…

I kinda smiled—like I meant it.

I felt the kid’s foot—nudge me under the boardroom table. He had a smile on his face too. It made me feel like he was on my side. I don’t think he like Big Daddy Tyrell—or being back down subsurface. Those stinkin’ fuckin’ droid-vats gave him the heebie-jeebies—the tubes he grew up in.

Lots of cyborg eyeballs were paying close attention to us—it made me feel nervous and expectant. I almost popped myself outta REM time to get away—but the kid kept me in there.

Those Nexus-9 boytoys had nerves like steel—did he still love me way down here? With Big Daddy in control—and the Replicant suits shuffling their feet. WTF did Tyrell want anyway? I don’t think the kid knew either—he had his Zoid gun ready tho.

“The Martian Archipelago?” Tyrell asked.

Not so much a question—more like an image.

The kid shrugged & dozed off. He wasn’t impressed by the Martian bargain basement routine down here. He had bad memories from all that time—wasted in the droid vats floating around in the virtual void.

“You mean the Asteroid Belt,” I tried to say. “That’s what we call it now anyway. I never heard it called the Martian Archipelago, tho, Doctor Tyrell?”

It was getting late—and I had this image projected by the kid into my sub-cortex. The last crimson rays of a Martian sunset—sliding down thru the Venetian blinds. Back upsurface—in our Hellas City condo. I was still nervous about this whole Tyrell thing—the recessed vidscreens in the walls all around us. Flickering silently—with tele-images comin’ outta nowhere into my head.

The Martian Archipelago? Jesus Christ—was that next? Where does Tyrell come up with this crap? I thought it was gonna be—some kind of fuckin’ shit about his douchebag droid-son.

Shacking up with me—both of us training each other. To be more human—to be more droid. To be Martian exo-lovers. The philoprogenitive planetary thing—extraterrestrial romance. Something the Desperate Solar Suburban Housewives out there—would go for?

But of course—it was business not sitcom shit. All the mining techs & engineers out there in the asteroid belt. It was a fuckin’ goldmine—for military-industrial wetdream development come true.

That’s why Hellas City existed—it was a Jump-Off Zone to the Asteroid Archipelago. The big bucks were out there just waiting—heavy metals, valuable ores, undreamed of riches. All exposed & easily accessible—for Like the rings of Saturn—it was there for the taking. It was like a gold mine—floating out there inside-out & ready for the stealth-freighters to haul the shit away

Plus gold… gold, silver, diamonds, emeralds, sapphires, rubies. All the precious inner guts of whatever planet had been there. Easy pickings for research & development. The droid-mining ships—the whole new Baron dynasties. Lucrative as sin—opening up fast.

TerraCorp was in on it obviously—they’d blow up a planet just to get the natural resources. Plus every thing else—all the way down to the dead star core. Tyrell & TerraCorp had plans—TTT development plans. Managing the terraform meta-job—all the way out to the Oort Cloud Belt. Ah yes, the Zoid Zone…

The kid next to me was already dozing off. It was like talking to myself—without myself there anymore. That was one thing about Nexus-9 droidboyz—they never suffered from insomnia. Neurotic human bullshit—didn’t bug them. It was like Zonk all of a sudden—and they’d be outta there.

Which only meant one thing—the Tyrell interview was over. Already the nightclub interior was fading fast—Tyrell didn’t seem to mind. I guess he found out what he wanted to know—or knew how to come back inside my mind if he needed too.

Tyrell smiled ironically—like he meant it.

I knew he didn’t—the rest the TTT gang didn’t like it. I didn’t know anything about the stupid Martian Archipelago—I didn’t want to. Other than get the fuck outta there—if they were gonna blow it up?

Oh well, what did I know? And what did the kid know either—what does any droid kid know? The kid was just another fuckin’ droidboy—grown-up without any love or affection. No mother to love him—not even arms to hold him or a breast to feed him.

No wonder the kid—hated Tyrell and Mars. He’d been grown coldly & aloofly in a droid-vat—and then turned loose upsurface in a zoo parking lot. Left to fend for himself—victimized by the worse scum of Hellas Town.

Fuck the Tyrell connect thing…

The same thing with the worrisome interview with his father. And the hint in the back of my mind—that something else was comin’ down.

I felt the kid pull me back to Hellas Tower—outta Tyrell dreamtime. Back into time—back into the highrise condo that had been his only home…

Dead Planet XII

Dead Planet XII

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OL2NPg7KE6s&feature=related

“The next day my dearest
obsessive desire of which
I was quite unaware, given
my pathological character,
was suddenly fulfilled in all
its horror. Dr. Eldon Tyrell
gave me a videoscreen call
from the ancient evil Martian
Underground City down below.”
—Romain Gary, “Hocus Bogus”

''Rick Deckard, I've got good news for you. The special Nexus 9 droidboy you met in the Hellas Park Zoo. The one named JJ—that you’ve been living with for a year. He’ll be your Escort—down into the Sub-Mars Bunker City. I wish to interview you.”

It took a second for the pin to drop. “The Martian City Underground? But I thought it was off-limits to us humans. I saw it on the vidscreen news.''

''Listen, Deckard. Hellas City is just a fake City—the real Martian City is down here below. The new Tyrell Corporate Headquarters is totally sub-surface—and you know why. It’s down here over 700-stories deep. Prepare to expand your intellectual horizons a little bit, sir. The Nexus droid knows the fastest way to get you here.”

Tyrell sounded far away—his image on the telescreen was fuzzy and full of static. Tyrell was actually here on Mars? Jaysus christ—I thought he was back on Earth—or out there on Titan? And now Tyrell wanted me to journey downward into the subterranean guts of the Red Planet—just to see him? How did I rate such red carpet treatment? Tyrell Corp ran everything—all the way out past Saturn into the Oort Cloud Belt.

I breathed in deep—with all the strength my lungs could give me. I closed my eyes—and took a big sigh. Was I gonna be punished—or executed for taking in the droid kid? Was Tyrell really the father of JJ—like those dreams he had in the droid vats way down below? Big Daddy Tyrell peering into the droid vat—and smiling at the kid? I didn’t like the way the whole thing sounded—it was like I was being setup again.

“C’mon, let’s go,” the kid said to me cooly. He already had on his Saturn snake-skin bomber jacket. And some soft desert droid-boots—I’d never seen him wear before. He had that young hustler smirk on his face again—like he knew something really big that I didn’t know.

I had this weird feeling. Like I was somehow caught up in medias res—suddenly embedded in some sort of cheap lurid Pulp Fiction novel. The kind they used to read back there on Earth in the Fifties—those crummy little funny Ace paperback double novels. Published back-to-back—and upside-down facing each other.

That’s how I felt—some kind of fuckin’ trapped protagonist in a weird Pseudo-Forbidden Planet hocus-pocus space opera novel. Without a fuckin’ clue—clueless as Mike Hammer in some skanky Mickey Spillane film noir murder mystery.

Clueless as some Raymond Chandler private dick—fuckin’ around in an old mildewed flick like The Big Sleep or worse yet Farewell, My Lovely. Except it wasn’t nostalgic LA back in the ‘40s—and it wasn’t neo-noir New York City back before the Apocalypse. It was Murder, My Sweet Now—and this was mean fuckin’ Mars. I didn’t trust anybody—especially now.

''I refuse! Are you off your rocker?” I grabbed him by the shoulder & shook him. “You think I’m fuckin’ crazy or something?”

He just stood there—smiling at me.

“C’mon, so what if Tyrell is your father? What are they gonna do to me down there anyway? Give me a fuckin’ Voight-Kampff Test—to see if I’m human?”

The kid shrugged—he lit up an electronic cigarette.

“They’ll probably get me down there Underground—with all those fuckin’ Tyrell Corporation creeps. And grill me about everything—and blame me for you being my kept boy. A goddamn stinkin’ interview? With the fuckin’ Tyrell Nexus Wizard himself? Fuck that, no way Jose. They’ll just stick us both in one those droid-vats again—to shut us up. And let us rot to death—in our own fuckin’ piss & shit down there!!!”

''Listen, Rick, drop the act, will you? You're not a bounty hunter anymore, so don’t sweat it. All those droids you offed—it was just your job that’s all. The LAPD kept you around—paid you pretty good. Because you were good at it. It was just politics.''

''Politics!? Moi?''

''Calm down. You aren’t a bounty hunter anymore. You would’ve offed me if you were. You knew I was droid—from the minute you picked he up at the Zoo. You’re the only one that knew what I really was—a new Nexus 9 droid model boytoy.”

“I must be a psychiatric case—after fallin’ for you. I should’ve know better—droids are only trouble. It’s gotta be droid karma—boomeranging back at me. For all those poor droids I retired—WTF am I gonna do now?”

“You’re not a psychiatric case, Rick. You’re a good LA detective, that’s all. You’ve got an intuitive sense—for a lotta things. Like mind-melding and stuff like that. Big Daddy Tyrell has been following you all along—see this camcorder Third Eye of mine? Embedded here in my forehead—up above my bushy eyebrows? The security services have got a file on you. It's all in there. You like chicken droids that’s all—no big deal with that.”

I almost fainted. They knew.

It wasn't BP Apocalypse or Martian Black Market or Hellas nightclubs or horror of Pinochet or Palin. It was chicken.

Tyrell Corporation Psychotechnicians were sometimes complete bastards. I felt the kid’s forehead—covering it up.

''I don't want them to see me!''

“That’s okay, I’ve got another pair of them—down here on my double-whammy.”

''What?''

''That’s right, all I can tell you is all the corporate execs & their wives—they know real good who you are & what you did. You get 10 stars, Rickie boy.”

“What people are you talikin’ about?”

“All the Elite—Martian TPTB & their Nexus offspring.”

“Fuck me. Some madman has written this looney-tune script. It’s not real—it can’t be so.”

''That someone else wrote your life—or else helped them write it down.''

This was a terrible blow to my gutter-press mentality. I was cracking up—I was really cracking up. I felt myself splitting in two—half of me a hunch-backed Nortre Dame freak. The other half humping myself and laughing about it. There’s nothing so absolutely horrifying—as knowing that my wounded dignity and pride were quickly going down the shitter.

''You mean I wasn't me? Wasn't me? Wasn't me? So who the fuck was I then?''

''Raymond Queneau. Louis Aragon. People are saying you don’t exist & never did exist.''

I was suffocating. My authorial well-being and private dick identity—felt like a fuckin’ flat tire. What gumshoe self-esteem was so bruised—that I swore I’d never get down on my queer homosexual knees again. Whether for a Nexus droid—or some lousy piece of “Earthboyz are Easy” whitetrash riffraff.

I started figuring in my head—how many times I’d slaughtered JJ’s exquistely pouty lips with my greedy kisses shamelessly gnawing his puffy lower lip as the kid lost it two or three or four times on those Lost Weekends on the wiggling obscene waterbed?

A hundred Nexus boytoy wads—without a second thought about trying to save my LAPD honor…

''Alright then. This so-called droid master-journalist or whoever invented me—he’s gotta be the one to blame for everything I did to you. I thought it was all about havin’ a good time—now I feel guilty as sin but what can I do? Take your daddy Tyrell a bouquet to console him—down there in the Hellas Mars Underworld Bunker. Shit, what have I done?''

''Don't overdo it, Rick. You have stay in character—be a cool cop. That’s what you do best—bounty hunters are sharp cookies.''

''What character?''

''Yours.''

I don't know why I suddenly thought of Robbie the Robot in Forbidden Planet. It filled me with real Krell fear & loathing. Despair with a capital D for Doom.

“They’ve got powerful droid brain surgeons down there. They’ll probably transplant my stupid fuckin’ brain—into a fuckin’ chimpanzie politician or naked ape janitor or something. I bet they got plans down there for yours truly.”

It was a wellknown fact that Tyrell Corporation could do anything they wanted. They could turn you into fuckin’ slimy slug—or a Kafka cockroach any time they wanted. They were good at doin’ the Gogol Effect—turning a guy into a Nose. Or ratchet you up real tight—and metamorphose a guy into an embarrassing Roth-like breast. A tit with legs—all dressed up & nobody to blow.

''You have your own following already, Rick.''

''What following?''

''You're a YouFuck TV celebrity—you’re on all the vidscreen porno stations & murder mystery shows. Every droid you made love to—and then calmly offed. It was all recorded by the Ganymede Gestapo—in case they needed to pressure you a little bit. Or if you balked—doing your job like a good private dick. You’re a droid dick walking Chandler character—even Mickey Spillane liked your stye.”

“Well, thanks. But flattery won’t get cha anywhere, kid. C'mon, now. Tell me will ya? What’s all this leadin’ up to anyway?”

It’s true—I may have been a pretty good Earthman private dectective—maybe even the best. I’ll admit I was at one time an awkward bugger, a blogosphere bastard & even a louche Poughkeepsie pimp.

But I did try to maintain a certain vain aura—and really tried to keep it up as best I could. It's what we in the detective business—call tough guy integrity and street smart suavity. It's the best kind of advertising. You can't buy it—but it it really sells books. Philip Marlowe had it—so did Mike Hammer...
.
I could hear myself saying, somewhere far away, for it was surely someboy much smarter & wiser than me saying:

''In Argentina they’ve got Borges who is the most powerful Magic Realist in the country—the most fabulous Fabulist in the Land. You can pick up any of his books—turn to any page you wasn’t. And Bingo—you’re sucked into his bag of tricks. Mirror mazes and labyriths forever. Circular cities of the dead—dying doubles creating you instead. In Mississippi they’ve got Faulkner—with all his despicable Delta tricks. With guyz like Snopes and Pop Eye—realer than warm spit & twice as mean as Nixon. Once you read one of their gutter-press novels—you’re hooked for life as long as there’s Light in August & decent whiskey in Yoknapatawpha County.

And so there I was—standing there in my Hellas City condo living room. Doing the best I could—keeping up the evasive fantasy of being somebody who really wasn’t there. I was suddenly the man who wasn’t there or her or anywhere. I wasn’t even sure I was a man anymore—I’d never given myself a Voight-Kampff Test. It didn’t work that way—you can’t use the same questions on yourself that you use on droid suspect interviewees. I knew all the questions anyway—all the fake answers that droid gangsters used. Tyrell probably had a unique set—just for bounty hunters like me. Maybe I was a droid—I honestly didn’t care anymore. I felt betrayed…

I thought of hiring a lawyer—they were cheap & easy to be had on Mars. With most of Earth in sludge & cinders—the Planetary Bar Association was desperate for business elsewhere. The vidscreen yellow pages were full of them—even more specialized than back when they hogged up most of the yellow business pages in the Terra Phonebook.

I picked Slim, Slam, Thank You Ma’am—because I knew they were good at divorce cases. Even tho my love affair with the Nexus kid—probably didn’t qualifiy me in the Martian DOMA category. I knew accusations could come roosting at homeat any time—but WTF. Tyrell corporate attorneys would make mincemeat outta any excuse I dreamed up,

Then I chose Snide, Sneer & Smirk—the best Martian attorneys this side of the North Polor Caps. They inspired confidence in me—because I'd never met them and they’d never met me. Even tho Tyrell Corp would probably buy them off—even before I could say Boo.

Finally I gave up—after all, I hadn't been charged with anything. Droid molestation wasn’t on the books—most legal beaver stalwart punters were pretty submersible characters anyway. They worked for the Mars Mob—and took kickbacks from the Titan Gang. I couldn’t have touched them—with a ten foot pole. Tyrell, TerraCorp & the Ganymede Syndicate—ran the whole Solar System racket anyway.

Even if I found a decent lawyer—they’d probably tell me I didn’t need an attorney. What I needed was a psychiatrist—or a quick subversive submarine craft run for the Oort Belt Cloud Sea and hide my sorry ass out there where nobody could find me.

It was getting on my nerves—with all these stories I kept inventing in my head to get outta this Twilight Zone I was in. Why cover it all up or even try—I’d been videotaped doin’ the dirty every possible way imaginable. There was still a lot of interplanetary prejudice and droid discrimination goin’ on even in the twenty-first century.

Android incestuous miscegenation—between father and droid daughter had already taken place. That’s how my loverboy JJ got born—pure and perfect cyborg incest and replicant guilty sexual relationships. Tyrell risked opening up a pandora’s box—all his own with his droid daughters and Nexus neices. It was like the Snopes legacy in Yoknapatawpha Country—except with Tyrell it was interplanetary philoprogentive playing-around.

I felt cornered—about being taken down into the depths of the Martian Underground. I felt trapped in a state of galactic inauthenticity—already I could hear the electric scalpels slicing up my brainstem salami. Cruel reality was on the prowl—and Martian morality was at the end of the tunnel. At one point I contemplated a louche Uranian lobotomy—in a desperate attempt to cheat Tyrell judgment.

I didn’t wanna be known. All I wanted was a clostety life—with my young droid lover in hidden corner of the universe. Surrounded by unimagined aliens who didn’t care who I was—who managed to ignore human beings as detestable no-nothings from some entirely unknown boring backwater world. Yawn.

Writing about all this—makes me feel awfully nervous. I’m afraid of Tyrell Corporation—and the whole Necon Outer Space Empire of Terran Late Capitalsim. His Excellency the Minister of the Evil Dark Oort Cloud Belt—makes me quiver in fear. All Evil Dark Oort Clouds—end up right inside you. It’s dark enough in there—without the Oort Cloud darkness squeezin’ in.

At eight that night, Tyrell called up on the vidscreen.

“You’ve decided not to let me interview you, Rick?”

“Well, Mr. Tyrell. I was hoping for some Immunity. Excuse me—I mean Anonymity.”

''I thought so—that’s okay. Say hello to my son, won’t you?”

“Of course, Mr. Tyrell. Whatever you say.”

“Genetics is kinda like a crapshoot, Mr. Deckard.”

“Yes, sir. It’s quite a seminal matter, isn’t it?”

“Let me know if I can ever help you two out.”

I said goodbye—in a cold sweat all over.

I couldn't belive I got off the hook so easy.

I felt like telling Tyrell that I’d jerk off from then on.

I’d never mess around with his Nexus son again.

I heard my pretty boy snoring in the bedroom…

What a tempest—in a Titan teapot!!!