Emperor of Gondwanaland (8 page)

“What … what are we going to do?”

“The very first thing is to tend to the children. With their smaller masses, they’re much more vulnerable. Luckily, we’ve come prepared. Principal Crumley, do you have plenty of orange juice?”

“Orange juice?”

“We’ve got to administer potassium iodide right away. It’s in pill form.”

“Oh, I see. Yes, of course, we’ve got lots of juice.”

“Very well, then. Can you assemble all the children in the gym?”

“Right away!”

Principal Crumley got on the speakers. Shortly after, we were heading toward the gym, just slightiy in advance of the noisy, excited kids.

“I’ll leave it to you to brief your staff, principal. Please stress the need for absolute compliance with our orders, and the need to maintain a closed environment here, at least until the blocking agents have been administered.”

“Of course. They’re good people. There won’t be any trouble.”

“We’re holding you fully responsible,” Burr said menacingly.

Soon we had a table set up at one end of the gym, quarts of OJ and Dixie cups on top. The kids had been formed into a single line that wound back and forth, youngest up front. Their initial excitement was giving way to mild unease, as they witnessed the somber expressions on the faces of their teachers, who formed a knot around a whispering Principal Crumley.

Fiona opened her satchel and reached inside. One by one, she took out several bottles of ominous-looking pills and set them on the table.

Over-the-counter multivitamins. A kid could never get enough vitamins.

From the knot of teachers we suddenly heard a raised shaky male voice. “But what about us!”

The three of us cast a withering glance at the teachers, and they shamefully shuffled their feet. There were no more outbursts.

With Burr setting up doses of juice and Fiona putting pills into individual foil hors d’oeuvres liners, we began to immunize the kids against trusting their government.

The line moved slowly along. Some of the kids had begun to sniffle and weep. I felt sad for them, but knew they’d appreciate this when they grew up.

Everything was going according to plan until Fiona spoke to Burr.

“I need some more juice, Agent Naranja.”

“Say please.”

“Please.”

Burr leered. “Pretty please.”

Fiona was silent. She looked to me. Not over-hopeful, I nodded.

She squeezed the words out. “Pretty please.”

“Pretty please with sugar on top.”

Fiona exploded. “Fuck you!”

“I wish you would,” Burr said calmly.

Then he pulled the fire alarm on the wall behind him.

“Oh, mother …” I ventured over the shrill noise.

Principal Crumley and some of the teachers were advancing on us.

“We’ve got to split,” I said softly.

“Not me,” Burr said. “I’m staying right here.” He collapsed to the floor and went limp.

Fiona tugged at my arm. “Let’s go.” I looked at Fiona. I looked at Burr. “No. It’s all of us or no one. Help me with him.”

“You sentimental jerk,” said Fiona. But she went and grabbed Burr’s wrists. I took his ankles, and we lifted most of him, though his ass dragged.

“What’s the trouble?” said Principal Crumley, wringing his hands.

“The radiation’s got to him. He took a bad dose at Chernobyl—”

A beefy phys-ed type blocked our way.

“I don’t think you jokers are for real—”

Fiona kicked him in the ankle. He yelped, bent down to rub it, and she kneed him in the jaw.

While his comrades clustered around the stricken teacher and tried to calm the shrieking kids, we bumped a silent and complacent Burr down the corridor and out the door.

“Toss him in the back!” Fiona said, and we did.

It was only after we had ditched the Lincoln, transferred Burr to the back seat of the Toyota, loaded its trunk with a few possessions, and were on the interstate heading south out of town, that the cause of our rapid departure spoke.

“Why’d you do it?”

I thought about it. “Remember when we were six, and you got me real mad and I threw that rock at you and it hit you in the head and you fell down unconscious?”

“Yeah …”

“I owed you one.”

“But now the score’s even, right?” said Fiona.

“Right.”

“Right.”

And the three of us drove away.

One of my favorite Steely Dan songs is “Any World (That I’m Welcome To),” in which the narrator fantasizes about slipping through time and space and alternate dimensions to a more hospitable clime, some realm that consorts better with his temperament. This dream of fleeing to a personal Utopia is a powerful one, rich enough for endless variations. Here’s my take on the theme, with a reminder at the end that “in dreams begin responsibilities.”

The Emperor of Gondwanaland

Hey, Mutt! It’s playtime, let’s go!”

Mutt Spindler raised his gaze above the flat-screen monitor that dominated his desk. The screen displayed Pagemaker layouts for next month’s issue of
PharmaNotes
, a trade publication for the drug industry. Mutt had the cankerous misfortune to be assistant editor of
PharmaNotes
, a job he had held for the last three quietly miserable years.

In the entrance to his cubicle stood Gifford, Cody, and Melba, three of Mutt’s coworkers. Gifford sported a giant foam finger avowing his allegiance to whatever sports team was currently high in the standings of whatever season it chanced to be. Cody had a silver hip flask raised to her lips, imbibing a liquid that Mutt could be fairly certain did not issue from the Poland Springs cooler. Melba had already undone her formerly decorous shirt several buttons upward from the hem and knotted it, exposing a belly that reminded Mutt of a slab of Godiva chocolate.

Mutt pictured with facile vividness the events of the evening that would ensue, should he choose to accept Gifford’s invitation. His projections were based on numerous past such experiences. Heavy alcohol consumption and possible ingestion of illicit stimulants, followed by slurred, senseless conversation conducted at eardrum- piercing volume to overcome whatever jagged ambient noise was passing itself off as music these days. Some hypnagogic, sensory- impaired dancing with one strange woman or another, leading in all likelihood to a meaningless hookup, the details of which would be impossible to recall in the morning, resulting in hypochondriacal worries and vacillating commitments to get one kind of STD test or another. And of course the leftover brain damage and fraying of neurological wiring would ensure that the demands of the office would be transformed from their usual simple hellishness to torture of an excruciating variety undreamed of by even, say, a team of Catholic school nuns and the unlamented Uday Hussein.

Gifford could sense his cautious friend wavering toward abstinence. “C’mon, Mutt! We’re gonna hit Slamdunk’s first, then Black Rainbow. And we’ll finish up at Captains Curvaceous.”

Mention of the last-named club, a strip joint where Mutt had once managed to drop over five hundred dollars of his tiny Christmas bonus while simultaneously acquiring a black eye and a chipped tooth, caused a shiver to surf his spine.

“Uh, thanks, guys, for thinking of me. But I just can’t swing it. If I don’t get this special ad section squared away by tonight, we’ll miss the printer’s deadlines.”

Cody pocketed her flask and grabbed Gifford’s arm. “Oh, leave the little drudge alone, Giff. It’s obvious he’s so in love with his job. Haven’t you seen his lip-prints on the screen?”

Mutt was hurt and insulted. Was it his fault that he had been promoted to assistant editor over Cody? He wanted to say something in his defense, but couldn’t think of a comeback that wouldn’t sound whiny. And then the window closed on any possible repartee.

Gifford unself-consciously scratched his butt with his foam finger. “Okay, pal, maybe next time. Let’s shake a tail, ladies.”

Melba winked at Mutt as she walked away. “Gonna miss you, lover-boy.”

Then the trio was gone.

Mutt hung his head in his hands. Why had he ever slept with Melba? Sleeping with coworkers was insane. Yet he had done it. The affair was over now, but the awkward repercussions lingered. Another black mark on his karma.

Refocusing on the screen, Mutt tried hard to proof the text floating before him. “Epigenetix-brand sequencers guarantee faster throughput …” The words and pictures blurred into a jittery multicolored fog like a mosh pit full of amoebas. Was he crying? For Christ’s sake, why the hell was he crying? Just because he had to hold down a suck-ass job he hated just to pay his grad-school loans, had no steady woman, hadn’t been snow-boarding in two years, had put on five pounds since the summer, and experienced an undeniable yet shameful thrill when contemplating the purchase of a new necktie!

Mutt knuckled the moisture from his eyes and mentally kicked his own ass for being a big baby. This wasn’t a bad life, and plenty of people had it worse. Time to pull up his socks and buckle down and all that other self-improvement shit.

But not right now. Right now, Mutt needed a break. He hadn’t lied to Gifford and the others, he had to finish this job tonight. But he could take fifteen minutes to websurf his way to some amusing site that would lift his spirits.

And that was how Mutt discovered Gondwanaland.

In retrospect, after the passage of time had erased his computer’s logs, the exact chain of links leading to Gondwanaland was hard to reconfigure. He had started looking for new recordings by his favorite group, Dead End Universe. That had led somehow to a history of pirate radio stations. And from there it was a short jump to micronations.

Fascinated, Mutt lost all track of time as he read about this concept that was totally new to him.

Micronations—also known as cybernations, fantasy countries, or ephemeral states—were odd blends of real-world rebellious politics, virtual artsy-fartsy projects, and elaborate spoofs. Essentially, a micronation was any assemblage of persons regarding themselves as a sovereign country, yet not recognized by international entities such as the United Nations. Sometimes micronations were associated with real physical territory. The Cocos Islands had once been ruled as a fiefdom by the Clunies-Ross family. Sarawak was once the province of the White Rajas, as the Brooke clan had styled themselves.

With the advent of the Internet, the number of micronations had exploded. There were now dozens of imaginary online countries predicated on different philosophies, exemplifying scores of different governmental systems, each of them more or less seriously arguing that they were totally within their rights to issue passports, currency, and stamps, and to designate ministers, nobility, and bureaucratic minions.

Mutt had always enjoyed fantasy sports in college. Imaginary leagues, imaginary rosters, imaginary games … Something about being totally in charge of a small universe had appealed to him, as an antidote to his lack of control over the important factors and forces that batted his own life around. He had spent a lot of time playing
The Sims
, too. The concept of cybernations seemed like a logical extension of those pursuits, an appealing refuge from the harsh realities of career and relationships.

The site Mutt had ended up on was a gateway to a whole host of online countries. The Aerican Empire, the Kingdom of Talossa, the Global State of Waveland, the Kingdom of Redonda, Uzbekistan—

And Gondwanaland.

Memories of an introductory geoscience course came back to Mutt. Gondwanaland was the supercontinent that had existed hundreds of millions of years ago, before splitting and drifting apart into the configuration of separate continental land forms familiar today.

Mutt clicked on the Gondwanaland button.

The page built itself rapidly on his screen. The animated image of a spinning globe dominated. Sure enough, the globe featured only a single huge continent, marked with interior divisions into states and featuring the weird names of cities.

Mutt was about to scan some of the text on the page when his eye fell on the blinking time readout in the corner of the screen.

Holy shit! Nine-thirty! He’d be here till midnight unless he busted his ass.

Reluctantly abandoning the Gondwanaland page and its impossible globe, Mutt returned to his work.

Which still sucked.

Maybe worse.

The next day Mutt was almost as tired as if he had gone out with Gifford and the gang. But at least his head wasn’t throbbing and his mouth didn’t taste as if he had French-kissed a hyena. Proofing the advertorial section had taken until eleven forty-five, and by the time he had ridden the subway home, eaten some leftover General Gao’s chicken, watched Letterman’s Top Ten and fallen asleep, it had been well into the small hours of the morning. When his alarm went off at seven-thirty, he thrashed about in confusion like a drowning man, dragged from some engrossing dream that instantly evaporated from memory.