Schroedinger's Catwalk

Deux: Deus
My name is Nick Tremble. I've been narrating this story for a while, and it seems only fair that I properly introduce myself. Particularly since the next part concerns me.

I've been a model for The Splinter Agency for six years now (I specialize in formal wear), and I have two vices: J-Pop and spy novels. Especially the Agent Heracles stories. When I was ten, I built his jet cycle out of cardboard and a moldy sawhorse that was in my father's garage. It supported my weight for a good two minutes before collapsing... and jamming upwards between my legs, crushing one of my testicles. It had to be removed. It was during the bed-ridden recovery period that I started writing. And now here we are.

I entered the story as many people did--during the riot at the Book Suppository. I was in disguise--I'd recently done a popular spread in GQ and an appearance in Abercrombie's catalog, and I didn't want the attention when I was browsing through the mass-market paperbacks... I had spirit gum slathered around my mouth like a bukkake victim, and a shaggy mass of marmot fur that had been fashioned by top stylists into a fake beard. With a battered stetson and some thrift store clothes, I was downright repellant, which left me with more breathing room than most as the shoving began. But then the brightly-colored girl I know know as Joy was passing by me, and something seemed to erupt within the crowd.

It seemed to lurch forward like a wave crashing on the shore of the information desk, and then it collapsed into a thousand smaller battles... people were reverting to their feral instincts, I saw blood spatter on the fluorescent lights high above. I grabbed a small child who was separated from his loved ones and put him on my shoulders. I remembered an Agent Heracles story where an elaborate tuning fork was built by the madman du jour for the purposes of setting of a vibration whose sonic frequency had effects like these. But we didn't need doomsday devices to be capable of destroying each other.

A woman toppled back sideways, and I scooped her up into my arms. I was one of the only people in the store who hadn't come for the sake of the main event, and thus I didn't recognize Leslie X, who trembled uneasily against me. If I had, I would have been shocked at how young she looked. Her auburn hair seemed to pool in the nape of her neck in a way that I found quite fetching, though nothing was to ever come of it. In the moment, though, she felt warm and real in a way that everything else did not, and I found myself staring at the tight curves of her calf muscles where her hose had torn.

"Th... Thank you."

"This is insane. Nothing is worth this."

"I've been trying to tell them that all along." She didn't know yet that she'd be chronicling the days to come, that she would forge a story from the eyewitness testimonies, from the online footage and news reports--and from her own experience. A cavalcade of disconnected notes and secondary sources that would rival the Warren report in both complexity and anecdotal evidence. Consider Pepito Bismochevitz. Survivors of La Dia de DeGaulle differ so wildly in their accounts of that incident, Leslie X had no choice but to write in circular ambiguities, in her attempt to portray it. Were their two invaders, one of whom was the cat burglar, one of whom was a woman? Was there only one, or the other, and the cascading, tutti frutti smoke plumes merely confused perceptions? Was the invader, perhaps, neither but rather someone impersonating both in order to spread confusion amongst DeGaulle's ranks? All of these are possible.

What is known is what happened upon the arrival of Chocolate Fondue. Fondue had been adopted from a starving African nation by a pair of Berkeley graduates, post-hippies both, at the cusp of her teenage years--right around the time that I was receiving a scrotal incision. Her adoptive younger sister, a sharp-eyed girl named Libra, told Leslie X in a later interview that it was clear that her parents had adopted Fondue in an attack of moralizing and political posturing, and they had much more interest in their biological daughter. It wasn't long before Fondue grew tired of the atmosphere, and ran off to join the circus. She vanished for over a decade, only to re-appear as Kilgore DeGaulle's consiligieri. It was during that gap in history that she learned the deadly arts, became one of the thirteen true masters of tantric sex, and picked up her penchant for speaking only in rhyme.

Fondue and the invader squared off through the length of the long, rotating black-lit corridor behind the secure door. The figure didn't have Fondue's flexibility or her bloodlust, but they were able to hold their own across a good sixty-seven yards, until they entered the outer vault, where the invader's clear prize was kept in cryogenic stasis.

My removed testicle.

The invader managed to enter the key code that opened the cryotank, but Fondue was already upon them, her legs around their waist. As they hit the floor, their mouth opened, and that was when Fondue had them. Her jumpsuit was open and anipple was in the invader's mouth before they could take a breath. Fondue had, in 1996, received a pair of implants that had made her breast milk lethally poisoned, and her intense yoga control over her own body allowed her to lactate at will. The invader's body siezed, and they curled into a knot, their mouth encrusted with foam.

We didn't know this was occurring at the time, of course... we were huddled in the ubiquitous blankets given to a survivor of any ordeal, regardless of environmental temperature, and giving our accounts to the emergency personnel on the scene. The young boy was crying, because this was delaying his return home to play Katamari Damacy. Leslie X looked over at me. Her "Sexy librarian" archetype glasses were snapped along the frame, and it made her face droop a little, like she was on the verge of tears. She wasn't--she was in a state of shock, hanging onto my arm--her press-on nails creating untranslatable morse code on my arm, mumbling vaguely about offering autographs.

It was then, I freely admit, that I first concocted my scheme to use Leslie X to scam the Maryland Auction House. Their first edition "Heracles of A.T.H.E.N.S." would be on the block in one week, and I had to have it.

What I didn't count on was the actions of Kilgore DeGaulle, or of Joy, who was then dreaming outside the mall...