Emperor of Gondwanaland (9 page)

Once in the office, Mutt booted up his machine. He had been doing something interesting last evening, hadn’t he? Oh, yeah, that Gondwanaland thing—

Before his butt hit the chair, someone was IM-ing him. Oh, shit, Kicklighter wanted to see him in his office. Mutt got up to visit his boss.

He ran into Gifford in the hall. Unrepentant yet visibly hurting, Gifford managed a sickly grin. “Missed a swinging time last night, my friend. After her fifth Jell-O shot, Cody got up on stage at Captains. Took two bouncers to get her down, but not before she managed to earn over a hundred bucks.”

Mutt winced. This was more information than he needed about the extracurricular activities of his jealous coworker. How would it be possible now to work on projects side-by-side with her, without conjuring up visions of her drunkenly shedding her clothing?

Suddenly this hip-young-urban-wastrel shtick, the whole life-is-fucked-so-let’s-get-fucked-up play-acting that Mutt and his friends had been indulging in for so long looked incredibly boring and tedious and counterproductive, possibly even the greased chute delivering one’s ass to eternal damnation. Mutt knew with absurd certainty that he could no longer indulge in such a wasteful lifestyle. Something inside him had shifted irrevocably, some emotional tipping point had been reached.

But what was he going to do with his life instead?

Making a halfhearted neutral comment to Gifford—no point in turning into some kind of zealous lecturing missionary asshole Gifford would tune out anyway—Mutt continued through the cube farm.

Dan Kicklighter, the middle-aged editor of
PharmaNotes
, resembled the captain of a lobster trawler, bearded, burly, and generally disheveled, as if continually battling some invisible perfect storm. He had worked at a dozen magazines in his career, everything from
Atlantic Monthly
to
Screw
. A gambling habit that oscillated from moderate—a dozen scratch-ticket purchases a day—to severe—funding an Atlantic City spree with money the bank rightly regarded as a year’s worth of mortgage payments—had determined the jagged progression of his resume. Right now, after some serious rehab, he occupied one of the higher posts of his career.

“Matthew, come in. I just want you to know that I’m going to be away for the next four days. Big industry conference in Boston. With a little detour to Foxwoods Casino on either side. But that’s just between you and me.”

Kicklighter was up-front about his addiction, at least with his subordinates, and claimed that he was now cured to the point where he could indulge himself recreationally, like any casual bettor.

“I’m putting you in charge while I’m gone. I know it’s a lot of responsibility, but I think you’re up to it. This is a crucial week, and I’m counting on you to produce an issue we can all be proud of.”

There were three assistant editors at
PharmaNotes
, so this advancement was not insignificant. But Mutt cringed at the temporary promotion. He just wanted to stay in his little miserable niche and not have anybody notice him. Yet what could he do? Deny the assignment? Wasn’t such an honor the kind of thing he was supposed to be shooting for, next step up the ladder and all that shit? Cody would’ve killed for such a nomination.

“Uh, fine, Dan. Thank you. I’ll do my best.”

“That’s what I’m counting on. Here, take this list of targets you need to hit before Monday. It’s broken down into ten-minute activity blocks. Say, have you heard the odds on the Knicks game this weekend?”

Back in his cube, Mutt threw down the heavy sheaf of paper with disgust. He just knew he’d have to work through the weekend.

Before he had gotten through the tasks associated with the first ten-minute block, Cody appeared.

“So, all your ass-kissing finally paid off. Well, I want you to know that you haven’t fooled everyone here. Not by a long shot.”

Before Mutt could protest his lack of ambition, Cody was gone. Her angry strut conjured up images of pole-dancing in Mutt’s traitorous imagination.

A short time later, Melba sauntered in and poised one haunch on the corner of Mutt’s desk.

“Hey, big guy, got any plans for Friday night?”

“Yeah. Thanks to Kicklighter, I’ll be ruining my eyesight right here at my desk.”

Melba did not seem put off by Mutt’s sour brusqueness. “Well, that’s too bad. But I’m sure there’ll be some other night we can, ah, hook up.”

Once Melba left, Mutt tried to resume work. But he just couldn’t focus.

So he brought up the Gondwanaland page.

Who was going to tell him he couldn’t? Kicklighter was probably already out the office and halfway to the roulette wheels.

Below the spinning foreign globe was a block of text followed by some hot-button links: imperial lineage, customs, natural history, political history, art, forums, and so forth. Mutt began to read the main text.

For the past ten thousand years of recorded history, Gondwanaland’s imperial plurocracy has ensured the material well-being as well as the physical, spiritual, and intellectual freedom of its citizens. Since the immemorial era of Fergasse I, when the walled communities of the Only Land—prominentia Lyskander, Port Shallow, Vybergum, and Turnbuckle—emerged from the state of siege imposed by the roving packs of scalewargs and amphidonts, banding together into a network of trade and discourse, right up until the current reign of Golusty IV, the ascent of the united peoples of Gondwanaland has been unimpeded by war or dissent, despite a profusion of beliefs, creeds, philosophical paradigms, and social arrangements. A steady accumulation of scientific knowledge from the perspicacious and diligent researchers at our many technotoria, combined with the practical entrepreneurship of the ingeniator class, has led to a mastery of the forces of nature, resulting in such now-essential inventions as the strato-carriage, storm-dispeller, object-box, and meta-palp.

The grateful citizens of Gondwanaland can assume— with a surety they feel when they contemplate the regular rising of the Innermost Moon—that the future will only continue this happy progression.

Fascinated, Mutt continued to scan the introductory text on the main page, before beginning to bop around the site. What he discovered on these dependent pages were numerous intriguing photos of exotic scenes—cities, people, buildings, landscapes, artworks—and many more descriptive and explanatory passages that amounted to a self-consistent and utterly convincing portrait of an alien world.

“The Defeat of the Last ’Warg”; a recipe for bluebunny with groundnut sauce; The
Adventures of Calinok Cannikin
, by Ahleucha Mamarosa; Jibril III’s tornado-struck coronation; the deadly glacier apes; the first landing on the Outermost Moon; the Immaculate Epidemic; the Street of Lanternmoths in Scordatura; the voices of children singing the songs of Mourners Day; the Teetering Needle in the Broken Desert; sunlight on the slate roofs of Saurelle; the latest fashion photographs of Yardley Legg—

Mutt’s head was spinning and the clock icon on his screen read noon. Man, people thought Tolkien was an obsessive perfectionist dreamer! Whoever had put this site together was a goddamn fantasy genius! The backstory to Gondwanaland possessed the kind of organic cohesiveness that admitted of the random and contradictory. Why hadn’t the citizens of Balamuth ever realized that they were sitting on a vein of pure allurium until a sheepherder named Thunn Pumpelly fell into that sinkhole? They just hadn’t! A hundred other circumstantial incidents and anecdotes contributed to the warp and woof of Gondwanaland, until in Mutt’s mind the whole invention assumed the heft and sheen of a length of richly embroidered silk.

Mutt wondered momentarily whether the whole elaborate hoax was the work of a single creator, or a group effort. Perhaps the name or names of the perps was hidden in some kind of Easter egg—

The one link Mutt hadn’t yet explored led to the forums. Now he went there.

He faced a choice of dozens of boards on different topics, all listing thousands of archived posts. He arbitrarily chose one—imperial news—and read a few recent posts in chronological order.

Anybody heard any reports since Restday from the Liminal Palace on G4’s health?

—IceApell3

The last update from the Remediator General said G4 was still in serious condition. Something about not responding to the infusion of nurse-hemomites.

—LenaFromBamford

Looks like we could be having an Imperial Search soon then. I hope the Cabal of Assessors has their equipment in good working order. When was the last IS? 9950, right?

—Gillyflower87

Aren’t we all being a little premature? Golusty IV isn’t dead yet!

—IlonaG

Mutt was baffled, even somehow a little pissed off, by the intensity of the role-playing on display here. These people—assuming the posts indeed originated from disparate individuals—were really into this micronation game, more like Renaissance Faire head-cases and Civil War reenactors than the art-student goofballs Mutt had envisioned as the people responsible for the Gondwanaland site. Still, their fervent loyalty to their fantasy world offered Mutt a wistful, appealing alternative to his own anomie.

Impulsively, Mutt launched his own post.

From everything I’ve seen, Golusty IV seems like a very fine emperor and a good person. I hope he gets better.

—MuttsterPrime

He quit his browser and brought up his word processor.

Then he resumed trying to fit his life into ten-minute boxes.

Kicklighter returned from the Boston trip looking as if he had spent the entire time wrestling rabid tigers. Evidently, his cure had not been totally effective. His vaunted invulnerability to the seductions of Native American-sponsored games of chance plainly featured chinks. An office pool was immediately begun centered on his probable date of firing by the publisher, Henry Huntsman. Ironically, Kicklighter himself placed a wager.

But all these waves of office scandal washed over Mutt without leaving any impression at all. Likewise, his dealings with his former friends and rivals had no impact on his abstracted equilibrium. Gifford’s unceasing invitations to get wasted, Cody’s sneers and jibes, Melba’s purring attempts at seduction—none of these registered. Oh, Mutt continued to perform his job in a semicompetent, offhanded way. But most of the time his head was in Gondwanaland.

With his new best IM buddy, Ilona Grobes.

Ilona Grobes—IlonaG—had posted the well-mannered, respectful comment about not hastening Golusty IV into his grave. Upon reading Mutt’s similarly themed post, she had contacted him directtly.

MuttsterPrime, that was a sensitive and compassionate sentiment. I’m glad you’re not so thrilled by the prospect of an IS like most of these vark-heads that you forget the human dimension of this drama. I don’t recognize your name from any of the boards. What clade do you belong to?

—IlonaG

That question left Mutt scratching his head. He debated telling Ilona to cut the fantasy crap and just talk straight to him. But in the end he decided to go along with the play-acting.

Ilona, is my clade really so important? I’d like to think that we can relate to each other on an interpersonal level without such official designations coming between us.

—MuttsterPrime

When Ilona’s reply came, Mutt was relieved to see that his strategy of conforming to her game-playing had paid off.

How true! I never thought to hear from another Sloatist on this board! I only asked because I didn’t want to give offense if you were an ultra-Yersinian. But it’s so refreshing to dispense with such outdated formalities. Tell me some more about yourself.

—IlonaG

Not much to tell really. I’m an assistant editor at a magazine, and it sucks.

—MuttsterPrime

I’m afraid you’ve lost me there, Muttster. Why would a repository for excess grain need even one professional scurrilator, much less an assistant? And how can a condition or inanimate object “suck”? Where do you live? It must be someplace rather isolated, with its own dialect. Perhaps the Ludovici Flats?

—IlonaG

Mutt stood up a moment and looked toward the distant window in the far-off wall of the cube farm, seeing a slice of the towers of Manhattan and thereby confirming the reality of his surroundings. This woman was playing some serious games with his head. He sat back down.