The Grief Team (2 page)

Gordon knew the gossip circulating around the malls, of course. Some rather well-endowed Rhonda-Mulls were declared to be much in demand for their special properties, serving not only Sames, but also the jaded, stay-at-home wives. He loathed these women who used their husband’s positions of responsibility within the Nation to practice the sick arts. Gordon felt anger at these mutilated freaks in front of him, whose appendages undoubtedly knew the intimate parts of these wives.

Why doesn’t Gabriel do something about these freaks?

“Tiffany gets huffy and won’t share!” Cathy announced, breaking Gordon’s reverie. “Why can’t I have a new playmate?” 

The playmate again! Gordon had as yet not been able to find a way to afford Cathy’s desire for a second playmate. She wanted someone who would play with her when Tiffany had a snit—an almost daily occurrence unfortunately—and Gordon had tried to find a way to afford it, but it simply wasn’t possible. It would have been cheaper to get Tiffany fixed, but Cathy wouldn’t hear of it. It had to be a new playmate but Gordon didn’t earn enough and he was therefore not entitled to the purchase. He chafed under the currency restrictions imposed by the Mayor and Council. 

The thought of money immediately sent his mind reeling back to the bombshell which had exploded metaphorically in his face two days before, when he had stumbled on the impossible conclusion that there was a serious problem with the entire cache of embryos stored in Cedarbrae.

But you know it’s true, Gordon!

You know something that you aren’t supposed to know!

That thought lurched into his mind again and nearly knocked him off balance. He stole a glance at Leigh and was thankful that she had not noticed, her eyes on that infernal cow as it did the four-step, cross-kick that every child in the mall recognized as the Rhonda-Dance. 

His eyes on the scene, Gordon’s mind was quickly moving elsewhere, struggling again with the impossible knowledge that had slipped out of the Stream two days ago right into his lap.

How is it possible to supply babies if there cannot be any babies?  How can you fertilize embryos when there aren’t any? 

He shuddered.

If this is true, the future is a black hole.  

What about Cathy, his beautiful gift? Leigh, his heart and soul? 

To lose them would be more than he could bear.
Gordon forcefully expunged these thoughts as the tempo of the crowd’s chanting increased.

“Rhon-da! Rhon-da!”

Earlier that morning, he had dropped a note into the Stream to Elias Kraft. Surely the Mayor would know best what to do. He could not, at any cost, take the problem to Gabriel Kraft. The Director of the Grief Team, he knew, would ensure that Gordon ceased to be and he wouldn’t stop there. Leigh, Cathy...even his assistant, Emmett Strachan and his family would...disappear. No, Gabriel had to be kept in the dark as long as possible, at least until Mayor Elias was able to bring his son—for Gabriel Kraft was the Mayor’s only, naturally-conceived, offspring—under control and ensure that the messenger from Crematora was not consigned to his own flames.

Rhonda was gearing up for another blast, all four udders beginning to sway violently to the shrill chords of the Rhonda Song.
(see endnote 2)

“Rhon-da! Ud-der-ly a-maz-ing!”

Fleetingly, Gordon wondered if the Grief Team had already cast its all-pervasive eye on him, had already zeroed in on the slip in the Stream. Would he leave the mall today, only to find Bluebands at his apartment in Scarborough Mall, ready to arrest him in front of his wife and daughter? 

At that moment, Rhonda the Udderly Amazing Cow’s left eye chose to explode in a thick spray of blood, tissue, and artifical bone, followed almost instantaneously by the eruption of her right front kneecap in another bloody spray. The Fan Club went berserk, agog at the spectacular new effects Rhonda was offering. Several long seconds of furious excitement passed before the faithful realized that something was very possibly amiss. 

The technicians, a crew from Mall TV, became quite vocal in their angry assessment of the damage as they emerged in a swarm of red jumpsuits from behind the large curtain spread across the rear of the stage. A large, red-bearded man was heard to declare that “the fuckin’ blood pressure gauge is fuckin’ faulty” and that it was “the third fuckin’ Rhonda this fuckin’ fiscal quarter.”

Already the mall’s loudspeakers were issuing calming messages and cordially inviting the surprised spectators to enjoy cakes and candies especially prepared for the Rhonda Festival and now available at the south end of the mall. Crones, the soothing mallvoice declared, would be offered free samples of Redlets and Redlets Supreme at the north end.  Members of  Rhonda’s Fan Club, however, were already being hastily escorted to the mall’s twelve exits by Grief Team Yellowbands, where they were harshly encouraged to leave the premises and board special Mullbuses that would return them to Square One.

“We’re leaving too!” declared Gordon, lifting Cathy off the bench and setting her gently on her feet.  “Whoa!” he laughed, “you’re getting heavy, young lady.”

Cathy pouted.  “That always happens to Rhonda. I think that the people who operate the equipment are bad.”

Leigh slipped her right arm under Gordon’s left, matching her pace with his as they protected Cathy between them. The promise of free food had immediately overwhelmed any consternation and disappointment which the crowd might have harboured toward the abrupt end of the show and the resultant crush of bodies forced Gordon and Leigh to take shelter in the doorway of Sam, the Discman.

“It’s not fair that Rhonda can’t make a public appearance without blowing apart,” said Leigh sympathetically to Cathy, sensing that her daughter was still upset.  “When we get home, we can write a Suggestion about it and you can slip it into the Stream.”

“Really?” Cathy’s eyes widened and her arms squeezed tightly about Leigh’s neck as she hugged her. 

“Don’t make it too strident, Leigh.” Gordon couldn’t help himself, one problem with the Stream was enough.
 

We know enough to say the following: by the end of 2004, at least 90% of the world’s population had ceased to exist and almost certainly 70% of those deaths were due to the viruses or starvation. Of the remaining 30%, we believe that the nuclear detonations in the Middle East, China, India, Pakistan, and Cold Lake, Alberta—with subsequent exposure by the populations in those countries to windborne radiation—carried off 15%, with civil insurrection and starvation accounting for the remaining 15%.  These figures are, at best, nothing more than rudimentary guesswork. To be honest, who really cares at this point?  There are certainly some disputable figures which the more capable members of our audience might wish to hold me to account. If that is indeed the case, our Modern History group meets fortnightly in Discussion Room 3 at Scarborough Mall.  Please bring a folding chair and a coffee mug.

To return to our Overview in this, the first of our new series on viruses...the absence of material gain, indeed the absence of the necessity for material gain, was one of the most significant results of what Elman Stein called ‘this great world upheaval.’  Conventions such as marriage, family, social services, employment and what-have-you disappeared. During that fractious time, we happy few have learned to accept the dark hearts within ourselves and to distinguish psychopathy from the more pleasurable aspects inherent in our human desires. 

Survivors gradually gained some idea of what had befallen them and there began a struggle which continues today on the Outside away from our homes in the Malls. That struggle, which many in the beginning might have called a class struggle, a religious struggle, or a political struggle, evolved into a generational movement which reordered the ascendance of the powerful, and first placed control over the destiny of Toronto Nation in the hands of the Father-of-the-Malls, Richard Donalato.

The late ‘Dickie’ Donalato, who left his little Sleepy Hollow Bookshop on the top floor of the E.C. for what proved to be his true calling, gathered the remaining 951 citizens of Toronto and showed us how to regenerate our city, allowing us once again to take our place among the remaining Nations of the world.  As modern pilgrims, Mayor Dickie and his citizens abolished the failed notions of faith and religion and, for the ultimate good of humankind, reconstructed instead a more down-to-earth, biologically-correct, practical approach. Dickie knew that our hearts of darkness were made benign through centuries of social lacquer applied through various socio-religious-civic concerns. Indeed, Dickie realized that man could not get along with his fellow man ultimately because of governments’ adherence to these false tenets.

That is history’s lesson: we are what we are. 

Mayor Dickie took cognizance of this and, noting the carnage around him, decided that to maintain and protect our very proper belief in primate individuality, an entity to serve this belief was the first rule-and-requirement. He rejected anarchy as false and self-serving. He knew that humans, whose startling variance in abilities and desires needed constant attention, would thrive in an environment especially created to allow this to happen. Thus, out of chaos and disorder, out of the ashes of our forefathers, Mayor Dickie created the Malls, which ensure peace, plentitude and freedom for all who deserve it...I apologize if I am a little emotional, but I was an acquaintance of Dickie; that is, I attended several dinner parties with him and we spoke liberally and…I…excuse me…I am listed as a sufferer of Post-Apocalypse Syndrome…give me a moment to…ahem! There followed, as we know, the first links in the chain that would become the World Trading Zone and the emerging dominance of Toronto Nation as the strongest link in that chain.

Today, we are happy and content in our Malls. We have TV and the finest Stream in the world!  We have so little crime that we find we simply have to create it now and then...and you fuckers in Square One can laugh, damn you! We have Rhonda, the Udderly Fantastic Cow and the best selection-and-testing methodology for raising children which exists today. We have Revelation Night, that most glorious of holidays! Best of all, we have the Grief Team!  Be satisfied with who we are and what we have…that too is the lesson that history teaches us.

And to what do we owe our current prosperity? Very simply, we owe it to our embryos. We have six scientists! Four more than any other Nation in the world!  And we possess the technology and ability to immunize our environments! Embryos have done this for us! Hundreds of babies supplied each year from the last surviving stockpile! The world needs our babies and our babies need the world! Even as I speak, Toronto Nation babies from our Birth Centre in Cedarbrae Mall are being loved and raised in our fellow trading Nations everywhere. That’s good to know, isn’t it? And our Stages of Learning program is an excellent example of keeping overseas partnerships alive and well.

Ladies and gentlemen, my bias in this series of programs is obvious, isn’t it? But all of my biases are listed in the TV directory and you probably knew that anyway because...well, as someone once said a very long time ago: great minds think alike. I hope you’ll watch my second program, The Replicants: Genius At Work next week at this time. Good night to Penny, my darling daughter. I honour you.

The erratic chukka-chukka of gunfire caught everyone by surprise.  After all, the mall had been attack-free for over six months. Someone in Mall security, as the Grief Team would later determine, had improperly locked a door and Wildkids were now inside. An intense fusillade of bullets swept the crowded south end where parents and children screamed as bodies collapsed and heads shattered in violent sprays of blood and bone. 

There were three terrorists, all Wildkids, all under thirteen, advancing slowly on the growing pile of jerking bodies, still firing their Mac10’s, pausing only to replace smoking, blue canisters of ammunition with fresh ones. Their faces were intent and mechanical. The tallest, a redhaired boy with bronze skin, led blond twins. Angry red weals along their chins indicated radburns likely only months away from becoming cancerous. Their clothes were scruffy versions of standard homeschool wear, a poor attempt at cloaking their identities.

They made the bloody bodies dance like Raggedy-Mull dolls, raking their fire back and forth, back and forth until, finally, their supply of ammunition was exhausted. In the chilling seconds before agonizing moans filled the sudden silence, the three Wildkids dropped their weapons and fled. 

Gordon had reacted to the first spray of gunfire by hugging Cathy tightly, pulling Leigh after him as he moved quickly inside the discstore.  Splinters of concrete and glass showered the area as he positioned his wife and child behind a metal display case filled with cheap datahologram editions of the books of Stephen King. Cathy’s sobs mixed with screams and gunfire. Gordon tasted blood in his mouth and realized that he had bitten through his lower lip. After what seemed like forever, the firing stopped and he found himself inching forward to the edge of the case, trying to locate the Wildkids. 

Little radburned bastards! 

MAC-10’s spent, the three pulled out zipsticks as they ran through the parkette, feet flying as they vaulted over bodies and benches, headed for the discstore. The tall, red-haired Kid appeared in the doorway, slipping and sliding on the shattered glass. As he passed the display case, Gordon reached out and tripped him with his right hand, sending the boy careening forward into another display case, the corner of which met the boy’s forehead with a dull thud. Gordon stared in disbelief at the wedge-shaped depression between the startled blue eyes as the red-haired boy slid to the floor.