The Unwelcome Guest Plus Nin and Nan (11 page)

"No, the Emperor is many people. The true Emperor never appears in public. He has a series of doppelgängers appear for him, pretending to be him," said the bartender to Nin.

"The problem must be finding doppelgängers stupid enough," said Nan.
"Actually, that's not difficult. The plastic surgery required to duplicate them must be the most complicated part of the procedure," said Sam.
"Where's all this plastic surgery done, do you think?" asked Nin.
Nan and Sam looked at each other and answered simultaneously, "the Makil Health Care Center!"
"Yes. We need to go back there."
"To the cosmetic surgery wing?"
"Of course."
The receptionist looked at them as they approached the hospital's cosmetic surgery registration desk.
"May I help?" she asked with suspicion in her voice. Her gray hair was long, like a little girl's, but her face had given up childhood decades earlier. Her voice was raspy, like a lifelong, boozin', smokin' cabaret singer's. Sam halfexpected her to burst into Brecht and Weill's "Alabama Song."
"What procedure are you here for?"
"Do you guys do toe-lop-off-to-me's?" asked Nan. "The penis mutilators said you might."
"No. If you're here to cause trouble, I'll just call security now," she said, reaching for the phone.
"No!" yelled Nin. "Excuse us. Nan here sometimes loses site of our objectives. Actually, we would like to speak to someone in cloning."
"That's a restricted ward. Not just anyone can come and clone himself or herself."
"Of course not. Ridiculous. Clones of
us
? Good god, that'd be horrible. We're here to ask on behalf of Vice Admiral Dickless (by the way, your circumcision ward did fine work on the removal of his genitalia!) whether or not you can clone a heterosexual daughter for him. The press, as you know, has been merciless to his poor lesbian daughter."
"Poor?" screeched Nan. "Do you know how much money that family has? Enough to build a whole new ward for the hospital and a recreation center for the staff. That
is
what the Vice Admiral was talking about, wasn't he?"
"Yes, but that's not to be discussed!" scolded Sam, trying to come across as the boss. "We just need a quick tour of the facilities."
"Well, we don't have any guides..."
"Not to worry. We'll just discreetly show ourselves around. We won't get in the way. We'll only be a half-hour or so."
"Did you say a recreation center for staff?"
"No, we didn't. Sh!" said Sam, winking.
"Okay, then, but a half hour only. After that I have to call security. We're not supposed to allow any unauthorized visitors."
"Oh, we're authorized. The Vice Admiral is in such a hurry, though, that we had to forego the traditional red tape this time. He couldn't spare the extra two weeks."
"I know what you mean. Okay, go ahead then," she said, and she returned to her registration files.
"Quick! Come on," said Nin.
"Right behind you," said Nan.
They went in through the out door of a sealed-off area when an orderly left. They entered a hallway filled with display cases of clone models, and each model was the Emperor. They saw Bulked-up Muscleman Emperor, SuperTall Basketball Emperor, Darth Emperor, Sumo Emperor, Super-Sized Cranium Emperor, and, for the kids, Fashion Designer Emperor, Army Guy Emperor, Horse Groomer Emperor, Movie Star Emperor. And dozens more. Collect them and trade them with your friends! An entire culture of clones coming soon!
"Any deviation from the Pinocchibush agenda is damned unpatriotic," read a sign on the wall. "You either agree with Pinocchibush, or you are a heathen member of the axis of evil."
Another sign read: "One world, one culture, one mind: Pinocchibush's!"
They read the signs and were appropriately dumbfounded. The room was as quiet as a Cistercian blog.
"This is worse than the ward of toe-stirs," said Nan, finally breaking the silence.
"Or a jar of mixed penis," replied Sam, with a single chuckle.
"Assaulted jar," added Nin, nervously. They located the control center of the room, to which was attached a presumably-cloned brain of the Emperor.
"Okay—there's the brain. Nan, hand me the plastique."
"What if that's the
real
brain," said Sam, "and the rest are clones?"
"I think there'd be better security."
"You're probably right."
"I don't know," said Nan. "It looks like some of the emperors are male, others female, and still others androgynous or even hermaphroditic. Maybe this is the sort of advancement needed by society."
"What? You idiot!" answered Nin, placing the plastique at the brainstem. "A fascism of androgyny is still fascism. Approving of dictatorship just because your side would benefit is unconscionable. Remember how the Emperor solidified his power: by staging a mock terrorist attack on the cultural center of the empire. This way he could simultaneously silence dissident artists while setting the table for an imperialist expansionist war." Click!
"Okay," said Nan.
"Come on," said Nin. "We have ten minutes to get out of here."
From across the field beyond the parking lot, the explosion was beautiful, its plume reaching to heaven for purification and justification, which it received in its dissipation.
Fusty,
lis pendens
took my breath away. Would I get it back? That was hard to say.
Breathing had been made illegal in 2004. And canned Pinnochibush air smelled like a killing floor. Polyphemus Pinocchibush staring at a mirror at its own Gorgonish hair, the most evil emperor gormandizing there.
Millennium alimentary elementary aluminum laminates the luminous elimination of mellifluous lepidopterists who malign my line of neo-Malthusian malediction while claiming "butterfly" means "flutter by" rather than "butter excrement."
The banana moon fills the cold with emptiness. Driving west, I, my destruction left behind, find myself unfindable; I'll never understand myself, so my reason is gone.
I thought, by throwing myself into politics like Lennon I could stave it off a little. Even he only staved it off briefly.
I thought by focusing outward, my innards would heal themselves. However, what I've found is that, as polluted as I am, the outside is polluted more.
There are the realities of life. Learn them now and decide if you want to continue:
No one will ever really love you. They all have angles and games and needs and desires that pollute the purity of real love.
No one will ever really like you. Only when they have to seem like they do to further themselves in others' eyes will they bother to pretend.
No one will ever really tolerate you. Even your parents and spouse will wish you dead over continuing to have to deal with you. They'll love criminals and charlatans over you. Actually, they'll ascribe criminality and charlatanism to you while praising the integrity of the criminals and charlatans.
Pay them no mind. They want to destroy you, or, as I have said elsewhere, they want to
destory
you.
Here is their message: Hatehatehatehatehate...
I hope you are not overwhelmed by its complexity. They cloak it like Joseph, but it's still hatehatehatehatehate.
"Nan!" A voice. Nin's. "Come on, snap out of it!" And then, apparently to Sam, Nin said, "Nan's lost in reverie again."
"Oh, yeah?" Nan snatched a bugle out of a passer-by's hand and played about twenty notes of a boisterous call and then stopped.
"What are you doing?" asked Nin.
"There! Now I'm lost in 'Reveille'!"
"Isn't that a ghost town along the extraterrestrial highway near Area 51?" asked Sam.
"Nan's been lost there for years," laughed Nin, climbing up into the truck.
"Here," said Sam, "throw this in the CD player."
"What's this?"
"A book-on-CD about Area 51."
"Who roaded down?" asked Nan.
"I don't know. I snagged it in the hospital as we were walking through."
Nan opened the box, but the Area 51 CD was not inside. Instead, Nan found a CD entitled
Preventive Hysterectomy for Troublesome Female Toddlers
.
The CD argued that early hysterectomy, especially infant hysterectomy, prevented not only potential hygiene problems and infections—the same argument used for circumcision—but also prevented undesirable sexual behavior problems, including emotional upheaval due to hormonal imbalance. Of course, circumcision and excision, or female circumcision, are both prescribed as methods of preventing randiness and nymphomania and other sexual maladies. Thus, argued the CD, preventive hysterectomy was the best way to assure parents of having wellmannered and cooperative daughters.
"Hey," said Sam, after ten minutes. "What's that got to do with Area 51?"
"Maybe the aliens swapped the CDs," answered Nin.
"Maybe we should go back and blow up the rest of the hospital, too," said Nan.
"Are you kidding? We disabled it as much as we can. We now need to put some good distance between us and it," said Sam.
"And then on to the capitol!" said Nin.
"Yes!" agreed Sam.

"Why not?"
"Oh, come on, Nan. She's probably still pissed about
the Dom Perignon on her hotel tab."
"I bet she didn't remember not drinking it herself." "Maybe, but we need her."
"No, Sam.
You
might need her. I don't."
"Well, just apologize."
"No. I'm going down to the bar to find Nin. You let us
know when you're done."
Nan left the hotel room at the casino, amazed that
they were back there again. But they'd agreed. They'd
hoped Beth could be persuaded to worm her way into Pinocchibush's inner circle. There she could keep an eye on
things.
"I'm none the better for the wear and tear on my own
old clothes, so ye'd better be keeping to the center lane,"
said Beth to Sam. And so they talked about her role in an
elaborate play designed to humiliate and disgrace Pinocchibush, forcing him at the least to abdicate his throne as
had his father, Pinocchiclinton, whose nose grew out of his
pants. At least his father had not been an imperialist expansionist working in cahoots with oil companies. In Beth's hotel room, following her tirade and the ensuing reconciliation with Sam, the television came on, and
Pinocchibush's ubiquitous face appeared. Nin and Nan returned.
"The broodish attack on the Makil Health Care Center
this afternoon has resorted in one nambatory response on behalf of this excathedra: we have discovered oil in the hill country and must begin drilling immediately to finance our counter-insurrectsurgence effects, er, efforts. We expect
our neighbors to lower all braid terriers—"
The Emperor turned his head to the side to hear something shouted to him by someone off-camera—
—"er, trade barriers and open their arms to the flow of
our oil..."
"Yuck. What an image," said Sam.
"So he's using the attack as an excuse to mine public
lands," said Beth.
"Yeah—
our
public lands," said Nin. "We've got to stop
that madman!"
"Shh!" said Nan. "Taximeter cabriolets!"
"To thine taximeter cabriolets?" asked Beth, not understanding. She's braided her hair like a terrier, thought
Nin. We've got to change her hair before she enters the
capitol.
Crossing the river to the capitol, they were robbed by
crook trout. One seemed familiar to Nan. "Wasn't he in
Star Wars
? The country-and-western bad guy, Darth
Brooks?"
Nin, not listening, shrugged. All Nin wanted was for all
this to be over, to be home again, in the hill, watching satellite TV until boredom brought sleep.
Sam was rehearsing Beth in how to be a sleazy girl.
Nan didn't think she needed much coaching.
Nin went over strategy with Sam and Beth—how to
enter the capitol, where its weaknesses were, where to
penetrate it, and what to do when inside. Nan helped her with her mental sharpening—they played go and chess and skat, worked crosswords and acrostics, and listened to
Mozart.
Seduction wouldn't be enough to guarantee a scandal—Beth would have to "bobbitize" the Emperor, after a
fashion. Sam began working with her on musical scales
and jaw-strengthening exercises. Like a clarinetist, he
wanted to fortify her bite.
"No hands!" he'd yell at her. "Hold that note in your
teeth! No hands!"
Beth was happy to do her bit for the plan. Her family
had been prominent before Pinocchibush had himself coronated Emperor. In the old kingdom, Beth's family had
been haberdashers to the king's family. Beth's family's
outspokenness against the king's imperialistic plans to annex the poorer nations surrounding the kingdom met with
the ire of the king and a dismissal from all official business
in the new empire. Beth's maternal side of the family had
included three members of parliament, so the Emperor's
dissolution of parliament had similarly left that side of the
family disenfranchised.
Thus, Beth had stacks of money and an enormous chip
on her shoulder. She had been but five years old when her
family was kicked out of the inner circle, and she had
grown up fixating on her hatred of Pinocchibush. The Emperor's wrath was growing. He kept appearing
on TV, interrupting Nan's favorite TV show,
Daphne the
Diabetic Duck-billed Dinosaur
, for sillier and sillier reasons. "We have decided to curfew instead of many" was announced one day.
"You may be aware that we are not seeing you" was
heard as "Naziing you."
Airplanes were being inspected for their "fusel" age. Public mental health funding was no longer going to be
awarded to oxymorons.
Former wards of the court would be rewarded. The psalter was peppered with profound profanation. Anachronistic anarchists would be executed by hangfire.
All watchmakers were to be arrested under suspicion
of aiding and abetting on escaped cockfights.
"No clone could ever be that stupid," said Nin. "He's
got to be the real one. I know we can get to him at the TV
studio."

Jingle jangle. "Howdy, strangers. What brings you to Western Sitcom Town?" asked a sheriff.
Sam put on a Sam Spade accent and said, "We've got you dead to rights, law man. Where are you keeping the talking heads?"
"Oh. You want the talk show and news sets. Studio 13."
"Don't say a word about this to anyone, go it? Or you'll be sleepin' with the fish and chips. Got it?" Then Sam patted the sheriff's paunch and walked off, the others following.
"Why antagonize him? We could have blown it!" demanded Nan outside.
"No. He's used to making his will subservient to that of a superior. All we had to do was show him
we
were superior and he caved. It's easy. It's basic personality disruption."
"It's messing with people. Remember—you're not supposed to mess with people or you'll get hurt."
"Thanks, Televangelist."
"At least I have no guilt," said Nan.
"Oh, yeah? Where's the money, then?"
"Back up in the hills with the Indians," said Nan.
"Very funny. Anyway, that was no regular sheriff. It was just an android."
"He could be saying the same thing about you." "Sam, I think that was an authentic actor," said Beth. "There's no such thing, babe. They're all androids." "Oh, so you were saying
actors
make themselves subservient?"
Sam shrugged.
"Sheriffs?"
Sam shrugged again. "Both. Most people, as far as I can tell, are androids. That's how Pinocchibush took over so easily. They are easily duped."
"And we nuts bolted," said Nan.
"Beth, the Emperor is due to arrive in a half-hour. You go ahead, and we'll wait in the commissary."
Beth went ahead to Studio 13. Her fake ID stated that she was an intern.
Surprisingly, the Emperor's dressing room had been left unguarded. It took little effort for her to change into the guise of a chambermaid—they had heard that the Emperor favored them—and hide inside the wardrobe, waiting for his arrival.
Finally, after an eternity of nervous breathing, Beth relaxed, and the wardrobe opened.
The Emperor, as expected, was alone, and he took the bait. He was an odd man in intimacy, Beth discovered, and he wanted her upside down and astride his nose atop the divan. With a bite and a twirl, the Emperor's lower appendage was severed and his mouth duck-taped shut. She taped him to the divan and, with a second, unplanned bite, she bit off the other offending appendage in the middle of his face.
Both of these she took up and quickly flushed down the toilet. She washed her face, changed her clothes, climbed onto the veranda, reentered the building through another window and, before anything was noticed, she, Sam, Nin and Nan were leaving the commissary and walking towards their waiting vehicle. Beth was enjoying an egg salad sandwich that she had purchased from a vending machine in the commissary. The mustard washed the taste of Pinocchibush out of her mouth.
It was not the loss of the lower appendage that eventually proved Pinocchibush's undoing. Of course, rumors of the deed spread rapidly throughout the Empire, and the "Emperor without a Staff" became a pet joke in international diplomatic circles.
Actually, it was the loss of the other appendage that undid the Empire.
The people of the Empire had been able to tolerate their jackass of an emperor so long as they could easily tell when he was lying or if he was being truthful (and, to be fair, there had been a handful of occasions of the latter). What, however, they found intolerable, was not knowing. And without his growing appendage, his word became suspect, which was worse than being ridiculed for lying. One can deal with a liar. One cannot deal with a person who is unpredictable. Within a few weeks, members of the inner circle, now completely paranoid because they could no longer read the Emperor, conspired against him and had him poisoned in his bed. So many claims to leadership ensued that the Empire fell apart into its natural divisions, and life as it had been before once again resumed.
Nin and Nan returned to their hill, alarmed to see the road rebuilt and a new billboard being erected. For the moment, however, they decided not to do anything about it at all.