THE FUTURE Agghh! Part 12

The Rick Gallen Chronicles: Part 1, The Spinkoni Moratorium

After a cheap but nutritionally questionable breakfast, Rick Gallen drove to work in his white state-provided car, which looked and handled oddly like the Zaporozhets produced in Soviet Ukraine. The winter sun shone bleakly on the expressway from ResidentialAreaClassQType3a-ville to Glorious Capital City of The Rulers who are Benevolent and Glorious and of Such (formerly Salt Lake City, henceforth referred to as Glorious Capital City), and it seemed even brighter than usual due to the absence of traffic. At this hour the only cars on the road were like Rick’s, driven by people willing to wake up at unChaldorean hours to get to their jobs early and slowly repay whatever monumental debts they had incurred as a result of being undesirable to the government. A steady stream of government limousines methodically made its way on the road away from Glorious Capital City, no doubt transporting many drunk and hungover officials of the Chaldorean Chaldorean’s Party, still reeling from the state-sponsored hedonism of the previous night. (The Party’s parties were known of throughout the FDPUSA; while most comrades were not allowed to attend, the were given the privilege of paying for them).

But Rick didn’t pay attention. His mind kept drifting back to the strange dream he’d had. “I know it was a dream,” he thought in a most cliched fashion, “but it all seemed so real. I mean, how could it be that AIEEEEE-” He swerved to miss one of the giant potholes that the Chaldorean government both denied the existence of and claimed to have placed on the roads as part of a strategic oversight plan that was too extensive to explain to every Chaldorean comrade. The Zaporozhet-esque car shot off the road into a salt embankment, very nearly crashing into one of the many gigantic saltfrost mining platforms that dotted the landscape. There was no damage to the car or even to his person, but Rick blacked out nonetheless.

Rick Gallen, archaeological adventurer, was in Akron, OH. And there was some sort of quarantine. And there was someone from the UNSD who he knew, Kate was her name, and there were IVY agents, and even the president of Chaldor, who’s name was Childor. And there was some lamp that he wasn’t supposed to open, and he’d had this dream before. Kate was his taxwoman, and Childor was what he called Choldor when he was drunk. Suddenly, he had a glimpse of his “horrible purportment,” an idea totally not ripped off from Dune. That dream was going to happen, maybe not in the exact way that he envisioned it, but something frightening was on the horizon, and he had the starring role. When times were down and toughs were up, there was only one man they could count on....Rick Gallen! (Rick’s dreams were often voiced by the late Don LaFontaine when he was experiencing internal bleeding.)

As Rick awoke, Mr. LaFontaine’s voice receding into his mind, he could see the sheen of a gold-plated ambulance heavily making its way towards him. Someone on the mining platform must have seen him and made a call. Rick entire body ached, so it took him a minute to get his wallet out, and begin extracting the 40 chaldors that the EMTs usually requested to “make sure nothing, you know, unfortunate happens on the ride back to the hospital.”
“Yeah,” the other one would say, “We’re very accident-prone when not properly motivated,” as he absentmindedly stabbed Rick’s pillow, “One time Louie here drives over a mattress or some other piece of junk. Whatever. Next thing you know, our patient’s kidneys are being sold on the ‘market’ for 85 big ones.”
“What a terrible accident” Louie said as he drove, “Oh dear. Is that a mattress? Wouldn’t want to drive over it...” Needless to say, Rick never again went out of his house without bribe money for the EMTs, not to mention the secret police or the union of industrial hat manufacturers (they could cripple a man with only a fedora).

But then Rick remembered. The government had a contract with the molemen to mine saltfrost. And molemen can’t see anything, let alone a compact white car driving into the middle of an immense expanse of even whiter salt. So, who called the ambulance? A sense of dread seeped into Rick, all the way down to his tippy-toes, but luckily his flight response had kicked in, and he was already trudging across the salt flat on his bruised legs. Don’t look back, he thought, that will only slow you down more, but then he heard the first explosion and spun around just in time to see the “ambulance” fire a second missile at the mining platform. The force from the second fireball threw Rick to the ground, and he blacked out again.

["The Rick Gallen Chronicles: Part 2, The Dame Wore Leggings" will arrive shortly]

(OP: Nate, September 28 2008)