“Some cases of shock can result in delirium,” suggested Fred Fine. “This can be serious if not properly treated.”
Mari was astonished, from what Sarah could see through the mask. “So this boy and I were going to elope that night in our costumes, but when we went up to his room to get his things, the hit men were there. But just then the other Terrorists rushed in to save us, and that’s how Tiny got shot. Then my father showed up! And he has a secret plan to help us. But it all depends on us pretending that I actually shot Tiny. Now that you know you can’t talk about it to anyone or you might be killed. In the meantime, I’m protecting myself with this.” She tipped the knapsack toward Mari and showed her the .38. Fred Fine, looking over her shoulder, saw it too and stepped back sharply.
All doubt was blown clear from Mari’s mind. She gasped and stumbled back a couple of steps, hand to breast. Fred Fine, keeping one nervous eye on Sarah, strode over to Mari and put his hand lightly on her shoulder.
“You’ll be just fine, ma’am. Just a routine case of shock. Maybe you should lie down for a bit.” But this had attracted the attention of the Terrorists. Seeing that Mari and Sarah’s gal-to-gal chat was finished, they closed in helpfully around Mari and assisted her to a reclining position. Fred Fine was shouldered out of the way but persisted on the edges of the group, giving advice on the treatment of shock.
Sarah left. Fred Fine watched her with something akin to awe.
MARCH
The social lounge of D24E had picture windows that looked out over the Death Vortex, over the puddle-stained pea-gravel roofs of the ghetto brownstones beyond it, across a trolley terminus webbed over with black power cables, and into a sleazy old commercial square often visited by AM students suffering from Plex Fever and lacking the wheels to go farther. Since the raising of the Plex with its clean, trendy stores, and the decay of the adjacent neighborhood, the square had degenerated meteorically and become a chaotic intersection lined with dangerous discos, greasy spoons, tiny weedlike businesses, fast-food joints with armed guards and vacant buildings covered with acres of graffiti-festooned plywood and smelling of rats and derelicts’ urine. The home office of the Big Wheel Petroleum Corporation had moved out some years ago to a Sunbelt location. It had retained ownership of its old twelve-story office building, and on its roof, thrust into the heavens on a dirty web of steel and wooden beams, the Big Wheel sign continued to beam out its pulsating message to everyone within five miles every evening. One of the five largest neon signs ever built, it was double-sided and square, a great block of lovely saturated cherry red with a twelve-spoked wagon wheel of azure and blinding white rotating eternally in the middle, underscored by heavy block letters saying BIG WHEEL that changed, letter by letter, from white to blue and back again, once every two revolutions. Despite the fact that the only things the corporation still owned in this area were eight gas stations, the building and the sign, some traditionalist in the corporate hierarchy made sure that the sign was perfectly maintained and that it went on every evening.
During the daytime the Big Wheel sign looked more or less like a billboard, unless you looked closely enough to catch the glinting of the miles of glass tubing bracketed to its surface. As night fell on the city, though, some mysterious hand, automatic or human, would throw the switch. Lights would dim for miles around and anchormen’s faces would bend as enough electricity to power Fargo at dinnertime was sent glowing and incandescing through the glass tracery to beam out the Big Wheel message to the city. This was a particularly impressive sight from the social lounges on the east side of the Plex, because the sign was less than a quarter mile away and stood as the only structure between it and the horizon. On cloudless nights, when the sky over the water was deep violet and the stars had not yet appeared, the Big Wheel sign as seen from the Plex would first glow orange as its tubes caught the light of the sunset. Then the sun would set, and the sign would sit, a dull inert square against the heavens, and the headlights of the cars below would flicker on and the weak lights of the discos and the diners would come to life. Just when the sign was growing difficult to make out, the switch would be thrown and the Big Wheel would blaze out of the East like the face of God, causing thousands of scholarly heads to snap around and thousands of conversations to stop for a moment. Although Plex people had few opportunities to purchase gasoline, and many did not even know what the sign was advertising, it had become the emblem of a university without emblems and was universally admired. Art students created series of paintings called, for example, “Thirty-eight views of the Big Wheel sign,” the Terrorists adopted it as their symbol and its illumination was used as the starting point for many parties. Even during the worst years of the energy crisis, practically no one at AM had protested against the idea of nightly beaming thousands of red-white-and-blue kilowatt-hours out into deep space while a hundred feet below derelicts lost their limbs to the cold.
The summit conference, the Meeting of Hearers, the Conclave of the Terrorist Superstars, was therefore held in the D24E lounge around sunset. About a dozen figures from various Terrorist factions came, including eight stereo hearers, two Big Wheel hearers, a laundry-machine hearer and a TV test-pattern hearer.
Hudson Rayburn, Tiny’s successor, got there last, and did not have a chair. So he went to the nearest room and walked in without knocking. The inhabitant was seated cross-legged on the bed, smoking a fluorescent red plastic bong and staring into a color-bar test pattern on a 21-inch TV. This was the wing of the TV test-pattern hearers, a variation which Rayburn’s group found questionable. There were some things you could say about test patterns, though.
“The entire spectrum,” observed Hudson Rayburn.
“Hail Roy G Biv,” quoth the hearer in his floor’s ritual greeting. Rayburn grabbed a chair, causing the toaster oven it was supporting to slide off onto the bed. “I must have this chair,” he said.
The hearer cocked his head and was motionless for several seconds, then spoke in a good-natured monotone. “Roy G Biv speaks with the voice of Ward Cleaver, a voice of great power. Yes. You are to take the chair. You are to bring it back, or I will not have a place for putting my toaster oven.”
“I will bring it back,” answered Rayburn, and carried it out.
The hosts of the meeting had set up a big projection TV on one wall of the lounge, and the representatives of the Roy G Biv faction stared at the test pattern. One of them, tonight’s emcee, spoke to the assembled Terrorists, glancing at the screen and pausing from time to time.
“The problem with the stereo-hearers is that everybody has stereos and so there are many different voices saying different things, and that is bad, because they cannot act together. Only a few have color TVs that can show Roy G Biv, and only some have cable, which carries Roy G Biv on Channel 34 all the time, so we are unified.”
“But there is only one Big Wheel. It is the most unified of all,” observed Hudson Rayburn, staring out at the Big Wheel, glinting orange in the setting sun.
There was silence for a minute or so. A stereo-hearer, holding a large ghetto blaster on his lap, spoke up. “Ah, but it can be seen from many windows. So it’s no better at all.”
“The same is true of the stereo,” said a laundry-machine hearer. “But there is only one dryer, the Seritech Super Big-Window 1500 in Laundry, which is numbered twenty-three and catches the reflection of the Astro-Nuke video game, and only a few can see it at a time, and I think it told me just the other day how we could steal it.”
“So what?” said Hudson Rayburn. “The dryer is just a little cousin of the Big Wheel. The Big Wheel is the Father of all Speakers. Two years ago, before there were any hearers, Fred and I—Fred was the founder of the Wild and Crazy Guys, he is now a bond analyst—we sat in our lounge during a power blackout and smoked much fine peyote. And we looked out over the city and it was totally dark except for a few headlights. And then the power came back on, like with no warning, out of nowhere, just like that, and instantly, the streets, buildings, sig
ns, everything, were there, and there is the Big Wheel hanging in space and god it just freaked our brains and we just sat there going ‘Whooo!’ and just being blown away and stuff! And then Big Wheel spoke to me! He spoke in the voice of Hannibal Smith on the A-Team and said, ‘Son, you should come out here every time there is a blackout. This is fun. And if you buy some more of that peyote, you’ll have more when you run out of what you have. Your fly is open and you should write to your mother, and I suggest that you drop that pre-calculus course before it saps your GPA and knocks you out of the running for law school.’ And it was all exactly right! I did just what he said, he’s been talking to me and my friends ever since, and he’s always given great advice. Any other Speakers are just related to the Big Wheel.”
There was another minute or two of silence. A stereo cult member finally said, “I just heard my favorite deejay from Youngstown. He says what we need is one hearer who can hear all the different speakers, who we can follow…”
“Stop! The time comes!” cried Hudson Rayburn. He ran to the window and knelt, putting his elbows on the sill and clasping his hands. Just as he came to rest, the Big Wheel sign blazed out of the violet sky like a neutron bomb, its light mixing with that of Roy G Biv to make the lounge glow with unnatural colors. There was a minute or two of stillness, and then several people spoke at once.
“Someone’s coming.”
“Our leader is here.”
“Let’s see what this guy has to say.”
Everyone now heard footsteps and a rhythmic slapping sound. The door opened and a tall thin scruffy figure strode in confidently. In one hand he was lugging a large old blue window fan which had a Go Big Red sticker stuck to its side. The grilles had been removed, exposing the blades, which had been painted bright colors, and as the man walked, the power cord slapped against the blades, making the sound that had alerted them. Wordlessly, he walked to the front of the group, put the fan up on the windowsill, drew the shades behind it to close off the view of the Big Wheel, and plugged it in. Another person had shut off Roy G Biv, and soon the room was mostly dark, inspiring a sleeping bat to wake up and flit around.
Once the fan was plugged in, they saw that its inside walls had been lined with deep purple black-light tubes, which caused the paint on the blades to glow fluorescently.
“Lo!” said the scruffy man, and rotated the fan’s control to LO. The glowing blades began to spin and a light breeze blew into their faces. Those few who still bore stereos set them on the floor, and all stared mesmerized into the Fan.
“My name is Dex Fresser,” said the new guy. “I am to tell you my story. Last semester, before Christmas break, I was at a big party on E31E. I was there to drink and smoke and stare down into the Big Wheel, which spoke to me regularly. At about midnight, Big Wheel spoke in the voice of the alien commander on my favorite video game. ‘Better go pee before you lose it,’ is what he said. So I went to pee. As I was standing in the bathroom peeing, the after-image of Big Wheel continued to hang in front of me, spinning on the wall over the urinal.
“I heard a noise and looked over toward the showers. There was a naked man with blood coming from his head. He was flopping around in the water. There was much steam, but the Go Big Red Fan blew the steam away, creeping toward him and making smoke and sparks of power. The alien commander spoke again, because I didn’t know what to do. ‘You’d better finish what you’re doing.’ it said, so I finished. Then I looked at the Fan again and the afterimage of the Big Wheel and the Fan became one in my sight and I knew that the Fan was the incarnation of the Big Wheel, come to lead us. I started for it, but it said, ‘Better unplug me first. I could kill you, as I killed this guy. He used to be my priest but he was too independent.’ So I unplugged Little Wheel and picked it up.
“It said, ‘Get me out of here. I am smoking and the firemen will think I set off the alarm.’ Yes, the fire alarm was ringing. So I took Little Wheel away and modified it as it told me, and today it told me I am to be your leader. Join me or your voices will become silent.”
They had all listened spellbound, and when he was done, they jumped up with cheers and whoops. Dex Fresser bowed, smiling, and then, hearing a command, whirled around. The Fan had almost crept its way off the windowsill, and he saved it with a swoop of the hand.
In the middle of the month, as the ridges of packed grey snow around the Plex were beginning to settle and melt, negotiations between the administration and the MegaUnion froze solid and all B-men, professors, clerical workers and librarians went on strike.
To detail the politics and posturings that led to this is nothing I’d like to do. Let’s just say that when negotiations had begun six months before, the Union had sworn in the names of God, Death and the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse that unless granted a number of wild, vast demands they would all perform hara-kiri in President Krupp’s bedroom. The administration negotiators had replied that before approaching to within a mile of the bargaining table they would prefer to drink gasoline, drop their grandchildren into volcanoes, convert the operation into a pasta factory and move it to Spokane.
Nothing unusual so far; all assumed that they would compromise from those positions. All except for the B-men, that is. After some minor compromising on both sides, the Crotobaltislavonian bloc, which was numerous enough to control the Union, apparently decided to stand their ground. As the clock ticked to within thirty minutes of the deadline, the Administration people just stared at them, while the other MegaUnion people watched with sweaty lunatic grins, waiting for the B-men to show signs of reason. But no.
Krupp came on the tube and said that American Megaversity could not afford its union, and that there was no choice but to let the strike proceed. The corridors vibrated with whooping and dancing for a few hours, and the strike was on.
As the second semester lurched and staggered onward, I noted that my friends had a greater tendency to drop by my suite at odd times, insist they didn’t want to bother me and sit around reading old magazines, examining my plants, leafing through cookbooks and so on. My suite was not exactly Grandma’s house, but it had become the closest thing they had to a home. After the strike began, I saw even more of them. Living in the Plex was tolerable when you could stay busy with school and keep reminding yourself that you were just a student, but it was a slough of despond when your purpose in life was to wait for May.
I threw a strike party for them. Sarah, Casimir, Hyacinth, Virgil and Ephraim made up the guest list, and Fred Fine happened to stop by so that he could watch a Dr. Who rerun on my TV. We all knew that Fred Fine was weird, but at this point only Virgil knew how weird. Only Virgil knew that an S & S player had died in the sewers during one of Fred Fine’s games, and that the young nerd-lord had simply disregarded it. The late Steven Wilson was still a Missing Person as far as the authorities were concerned.
Ephraim Klein was just as odd in his own way. We knew that his hated ex-roommate had died of a freak heart attack on the night of the Big Flush, but we didn’t know Ephraim had anything to do with it. We were not alarmed by his strange personality because it was useful in parties—he would allow no conversation to flag or fail.
Virgil sat in a corner, sipping Jack Daniels serenely and staring through the floor. Casimir stayed near Sarah, who stayed near Hyacinth. Other people stopped in from time to time, but I haven’t written them into the following transcript—which has been rearranged and guessed at quite a bit anyway.
HYACINTH.
The strike will get rid of Krupp. After that everything will be fine.
EPHRAIM.
How can you say that! You think the problem with this place is just S. S. Krupp?
BUD.
Sarah, how’s your forest coming along?
EPHRAIM.
Everywhere you look you see the society coming apart. How do you blame S. S. Krupp alone for that?
SARAH.
I haven’t done much with it lately. It’s just nice to have it there.
CASIMIR.
/> Do you really think the place is getting worse? I think you’re just seeing it more clearly now that classes are shut down.
HYACINTH.
You were in Professor Sharon’s office during the piano incident, weren’t you?
FRED FINE.
What do you propose we do, Ephraim?
EPHRAIM.
Blow it up.
CASIMIR.
Yeah, I was right there.
HYACINTH.
So for you this place has seemed terrible right from the beginning. You’ve got a different perspective.
SARAH.
Ephraim! What do you mean? How would it help anything to blow up the Big U?
EPHRAIM.
I didn’t say it would help, I said it would prevent further deterioration.
SARAH.
What could be more deteriorated than a destroyed Plex?
EPHRAIM.
Nothing! Get it?
SARAH.
You do have a point. This building, and the bureaucracy here, can drive people crazy—divorce them from reality so they don’t know what to do. Somehow the Plex has to go. But I don’t think it should be blown up.
FRED FINE.
Have you ever computed the explosive power necessary to destabilize the Plex?
EPHRAIM.
Of course not!
CASIMIR.
He’s talking to me. No, I haven’t.
HYACINTH.
Is that nerd as infatuated with you as he looks?
SARAH.
Uh…you mean Fred Fine?
HYACINTH.
Yeah.
SARAH.
I think so. Please, it’s too disgusting.