I wrote this for a San Francisco Sketchfest Performance on January 19th, 2019, for The Worst 1st Chapter Ever reading at the request of Paul and Storm, famous songwriter performer dudes, breaking two of my steadfast rules, reading in public and writing something bad on purpose. Oh well…
Throwing Shade
By Christopher Moore
The Backwash dropped out of warp like one of those pellets drop out of an owl – the ones with desiccated mouse bones and fur and stuff –except the mouse bits were me and my support bot Scrote-9 and the 20 humanoid clone blanks in the hold that were going to expire before they could be imprinted and would melt into puddles of organic goo if we couldn’t find a buyer for them.
Scrote rubbed her deely-bobbers on the impulse console, pulling the Backwash into low orbit over a level 9 merch planet called Durex Magnum7 and I strapped into the shuttle pod.
“If I’m not back in two hours, come in blasting,” I told my faithful robot servant.
“Affirmative, rotting protein bag,” affirmed Scrote-9.
She’d been having trouble disguising her disdain for organic life forms lately and if she turned off the life support one more time I was going to have to do a memory wipe on her or chuck her into space while she was recharging like I had Scrotes one through eight.
As I closed the shuttle pod hatch, I made a note to look into a different model of droid-pal, but when I thought of all the Scrote corp chargers and accessories I had that wouldn’t fit any other company’s units, I deleted the note and sent a reserve notice for the Scrot10 when it came out.
Scrot-9 released the shuttle pod and it made a swoosh sound like one of the gas geysers of Mezazon 5, but which I couldn’t hear because there’s no motherfucking sound in space and because to counter the trauma of reentry and landing I had just pressed a neuro-derm against my neck and leaned against a plasteel screen as the neurochemicals, pheromones and nanobots combined to give me three minutes and fifty two seconds of the sights and sensation of being hate-fucked by Marie Antoinette on the hood of a vintage Citron Deux Cheveau.
(May cause nausea, rash, sudden death, loose stool, resurrection, nodes, nodules, lumps, bumps, boils, enlightenment, transcendence, sleeplessness, or existential dread.)
I came out of it with ringing in my ears, and echos of Marie Antionette calling me a disgusting little fuck-pig in German.
The German part always surprised me. And getting tangled in the hoop skirt. I’d talk to Zebo, my pharma-barista and see if he could pare that stuff out. But then I landed.
The space port was crawling with peepers, gazongas, dingleberries, wazoos, wafflepods and wankbots, all looking for a way off world before they dropped their last credits on some designer debauchery or a luxury illusion implant that would make everything they saw or touched appear to be made of gold. You’ll only survive a couple of weeks with one of those things in you, but the puddle of your own bloody shit you die in feels like you’re bathing in a warm golden dream.
I knew a quad-arm blue-skin called Jooz who worked the bar at the Bit Rot Club. We’d taken a turn around the Parvo system once in a Tachyon Mini with a case of lube and a 100 mics of LoveYouLongTime
(May cause hallucinations, delusions of grandeur, faith in humanity, the power of positive thinking, scaly elbows, infatuation, blisters, burps, and spontaneous combustion.)
that Zeno had scored off some rodent minors on world on a day pass from the asteroid mines. Me and Jooze had a connection – I might not see him for years, but when we got together sparks flew, especially if he forgot to take the pour spouts off his thumbs or I forgot to lower my body shield. You just don’t forget the four arms of a guy who’s swung you around the Parvos by your gizmos.
“What’s blasting, laser-tits,” ejaculated Jooz.
“That was a fashion stage,” I extorted. “Traded the lazers for some nano-armor.”
“You always were the cautious one. What’s your pleasure, like I don’t know?”
Jooze was sporting a micro-2skin that clung to a set of abs you could shred a Noberian turnip on. I’m a level 19 Sex Ninja, one of those dames who can tear out your root shakra, tie it in a knot, and show it to you while it’s still throbbing before you pass out, and I wanted to do it to Jooze right then, but I had a ticking clock and twenty-human spooge-cicles in my hold that were about to hit their sell-by date.
“Look handsome, I got twenty human spoog-cicles in my hold that are about to hit their sell-by date. Know anyone who can help me off-load them in the next couple of hours?”
“Yeah, I know a guy,” Jooze expectorated. He thumbed a doodad implanted in his wrist and said, “Call Wango. No, the other one. No, the other one. Yes, that one. > While his coms connected Jooz mixed something with gender fluid and blue fire in a tall beaker and slid it down the bar to a jort-porter.
“Hey, Wango, this is Jooze down at the Bit Rot. I got a hot pirate down here with twenty cold unprinted protein tubes about to go off and no place to put them. Interested?” Jooz turned to me. “Where’s your ship and what’s the scan signature.”
“She’s in low orbit. The Backwash.” I rattled off the scan numbers that identified the ship to spaceport traffic control. I waited. Jooz waited. I took to time to survey his four shapely shoulders. I wondered if he’d had the bite marks I’d left erased.
Yeah, I’ll tell her to wait,” Jooz said. “He’ll be here in an hour.”
“An hour?”
“Yeah, his partner has fecal alcohol syndrome”
“Fecal alcohol syndrome?”
“She’s shitfaced. He has to sober her up.”Just as well for you Plonka’s off her game. She’s the tougher negotiator. ”
“Good to know.” I took a seat and waited.
An hour later they came through the iris port of the Bit Rot. Wango was 120 kilos of hairy dude-flesh packed into a 100 kilo elastanium flight suit. He had a drunk’s nose that looked like a squirrel fucking a sweet potato on a matress of beef tripe. Plonka was petite, jacked, and her flight suit was fitted with so many retractable spikes she looked like she was a clone-bond of an elf and a porcupine. Her hair was shaped into dull titanium spikes with red tips. I couldn’t see her eyes behind a set of wrap-around holo specs. She’d be reading real time analytics of my voice patterns and pupil movement to detect any bluff I tried to run. This was going to be tricky.
I scratched a sub-dermal doohickey behind my ear and the scoozamator implanted under my occipital lobe fired 300 mics of toxic masculinity into my brain stem. (May cause overconfidence, heebie-jeebies, verbal leakage, threat sweat, blustering, jive, mansplaining, delusions, peen screams, callbacks and punk ass.)
The effect was about as subtle as white thong underwear after taco night, but after I stopped twitching I would have the ability to immediately understand anything a female meant to say — could state it back more clearly and louder — and any male in proximity would recognize it as my original thought. The Toxic Mask essentially bypassed my upper brain function so I was unreadable. If Wango was the decision maker, and I was betting he was, the analytics from Plonka’s holo specs would be useless.
“We’ll give you two K, per,” said Plonka, her voice was like a clown stomping an antique bicycle horn full of nightcrawlers.
“And you deliver,” Wango added.
“They’re worth 10 K minimum,” I replied.
“Fine,” squoke Plonka. “Find another buyer.”
“Nine,” I commanded. “Can’t take less.”
“Open your kimono, Shade,” said Wango. “You’re not fooling anyone.”
They both paused. Looked at each other. Plonko looked at the ceiling like she was reading something on her holo-specs then nodded. Wango started to reach into the collar of his flight suit.
I flipped my index nail back and shot Wango in his middle eye with my finger-blaster, spraying his brain matter across the two porters drinking at the bar behind him. Plonka went for a disrupter on her belt and I finger-blasted her until she was just a spiky moist spot on the floor.
I picked up her holo-specs and put them on.
“So no deal then?” inquired Jooz, reaching for a mop and some Windex.
“Aparently not,” I responded.
Plonka had been getting messages from a ship in orbit. I recognized the scan code as the Backwash. The last message read, “It’s done. Finish it.”
“He used your name,” Jooz said. “I didn’t tell him your name.”
“Yeah. I gotta jet, trouble in orbit,” I said. “Keep it shiny, sugar pecs.”
When I got back to the Backwash there were sparks shooting out of the warp gazongas and the navigation wazoo was a smoking heap on the bridge. Bits of what used to be Scrote-9 littered the ship from stem to stern. In the hold I found twenty – no, wait, 19 melted blobs of destroyed clone-blanks. The 20th table was empty. Ship’s log showed that someone had uploaded a DNA profile into the blank, which then woke up and took out Scrote-9 and trashed my ship.
“Computer, is the intruder still on board?” I asked the computer.
“Negative. Intruder took pod B be to unidentified ship. Was unable to track without nav systems.”
“Identify intruder.”
“Intruder was clone blank.”
“Identify uploaded DNA.”
“Scanning. Uploaded DNA profile belongs to Zebo Tantoni.”
Zeno. My pharmo-barista. Well, now I knew who I was after. And now I had to figure out why. As soon as I fixed my ship I’d find out. The part of his plan that went went wrong, killing me, would be his undoing.
But first I needed a three minute and 52 second vacation, so I pushed my last neuroderm against my neck and braced for the effects, because you haven’t lived until you’ve been swung around by the gizmos by an 18th Century Austrian princess wearing a strap on plastopeen.
