Predator Press
[Mr. I]
"Cancel ... my ... subscription ... to ...
Highlights!" LOBO wheezed.
An then he fell over dead.
***
"'Highlights', huh?" I says. "Doesn't he subscribe to The Economist, U.S News, Scientific American, and World Report too?"
"He probably forgot," says Ethan, lighting his pipe. "He just gets those to make the mailman think he's smart."
I added them to my list. "And what about
'PETA' magazine?"
"Already cancelled. Did it when he found out that steel wool doesn't come from robot sheep."
I crossed off '
PETA subscription'.
"How’s the eulogy coming?"
The eulogy was a sore spot. "You know, Ethan? I don't appreciate you risking me getting brain damage by pulling me prematurely out of a coma because none of
you jerks wanted to wax enthusiastic about that asshole ."
"We figured brain damage could only help."
***
The funeral plans were overly-complex.
For starters, we hadda find a tuxedo for a guy that never wore anything beyond Reeboks, jeans, and T-shirts bearing bumper-sticker humor. LOBO thought that "I'm With Stupid" was both a prolific literary insight to contemporary American genius, and a credit to the fashion world.
"It won't look natural at all," complained Phoebe.
"We could add some audio of him snoring," I suggested sarcastically.
***
Fortuitously, Ethan had bought shit-tons of life insurance, and were all going to the funeral in limos.
Solid
gold limos.
I got sidetracked from writing the eulogy because I was just too busy coming out of a coma: everyone else, it seems, was too busy
shopping. So even as I was groggily wheelchaired out of the hospital, I was already 'behind the eight ball' so to speak.
I drew out the scribbled Wal-Mart receipt, and rehearsed what I had so far.
"Brethren, we are gathered here today to celebrate the death of a habeas-corpus, as thyith frolicked with Hebrew Psalm found in The Hebrew Top 40 with hip Psalm-spinmeister Luke ‘97, yadda, yadda, yadda, Thank you for shopping at Wal-mart, Amen."
They just stared at me.
"Any questions?" I asked.
Long, awkward, dead silence.
"That's
terrible," Phoebe says finally, grabbing the receipt.
"I know. But Kmart wanted four bucks for the same light bulbs."
"I mean this eulogy!" she glared.
"Yeah," says Ethan. "Jesus Christ! Can’t you ‘punch it up’ a little? You're writing an idiot's
eulogy, not a Kevin Costner vehicle."
"
C'mon," I says, annoyed. "The only reason we're even here
making this spectacle is 'cuz you made us 1.3 million apiece with that crafty life insurance scam."
"Life Insurance
Plan," Ethan corrected.
"Well," I says, taking the receipt back from Phoebe. "Any ideas?" Pencil tip to the paper, I stood alertly ready to jot all the profound new suggestions they would be completely unable to supply.
"He's probably never kicked a puppy," piped Sapphire after a long pause.
"... kicked ... a ... puppy ..." I wrote.
Phoebe was mortified. "This is what you call 'honoring the
dead'?"
Ethan took Phoebe's hand in a comforting manner. "Honey," he says soothingly. "It's
LOBO. No stripper in her right
mind would do a funeral. It's completely
tasteless--"
"This goddamn limo is
huge!" yelled Beautiful White Stallion.
"--so we're doing the next-best thing by
pretending to honor him," Ethan finished, scowling a the asshole horse.
"We're getting the insurance checks at the service?" I asked.
Ethan nodded. "I figured that was the only way I could get you guys to go."
An they all did the Sign of the Cross --belly, forehead, left shoulder, right shoulder-- with any nearby appendage available; the
Twister game was in double-overtime.
"You think he's in Hell?" asks Sapphire.
"Jesus, lets
hope so." Ethan says. Seeing the suddenly long faces, he tried to brighten things up a bit. "So you're
rich now, people. What are you gonna do with all that dough?"
"Well, I'm totally sick of workin' for crazies," I breathe. "I've got an application in as a producer for Phil Specter."
"Good move," he says.
"What about you?" I ask, kinda reflexively
He frowned in serious thought, shrugging. "Well, me an Dayle got this beachfront property in Rio we've been looking at. I think I'm ready to lay out on a beach for a while. What about you, Sapphire?"
"Well, I'm getting a boob job from
Ferrari for starters."
"Italy is really beautiful this time of year," Ethan approved. Everyone 'splitting the country' for a while was probably a good idea.
Phoebe was
pissed. "Goddamn it people!" she demanded. "LOBO is
dead. Can't we be serious for a day to pay our respects to the deceased?"
Ethan laughed. "Pay our respects to a guy who refused to send a fax on anything but bond paper?
"Or the self-proclaimed veteran of World Wars One, Two, Five, L, and
pi?" I added.
"Or the only man ever arrested for wanton and reckless abuse of the Dewey Decimal System?" asked Sapphire.
"Is that a true story?" asked Phoebe.
"Supposedly," says Ethan. "I heard his mom tell it once."
"I thought LOBO was an orphan," inquired Sapphire.
"Well, that's what his parents tell everyone."
"Alright," Beautiful White Stallion demanded.
"Who shit on the floor?"
***
Phil, new mother of nine, was finally up and about. Hungry, she cautiously wandered out of the fireplace, following human voices.
She was disappointed to find only a radio.
But a little more "snooping" revealed something else entirely.
Stomach growling, she followed her nose to a rather large pile of headless animal crackers under the foot of a small human bed.
And just beyond that,
white sneakers, tapping non-rhythmically to the radio music.
She investigated further. There was
another smell about.
Familiar.
When LOBO finally spotted Phil, he gently snatched her under the bed with him.
"Jesus Christ Phil, are you trying to get us all
killed!?"
Phil purred.
***
LOBO, Phil, and all of Phil's progeny sat under the bed eating animal crackers and Cheetos as LOBO watched vigilantly from under the bed.
"Didn't you hear all that shooting, Phil?" he asked finally.
Drowsy, Phil yawned contentedly, revealing a bright orange tongue.
"Well, maybe it was fireworks. Was it July Fourth
already?" He peeked at the door. "Have the French surrendered again recently?".
His eye's locked with Phil's, searching deeply in vain for
Frenchitudinal Probability in the world's newest deadbeat dad.
"No matter really," he says finaly in reassurance. "Four million drunken assholes with explosives can't be wrong."
LOBO watched as a kitten --LOBO named her 'Bob'--cuddled up on Phil's belly to start nursing, pulling at her fur with tiny little paws.
"God Phil," LOBO shook his head. "You don't know
shit about fatherhood,
do you?"
***
When the supply of animal cracker heads ran out, it was another three days before LOBO got hungry enough to sneak into the kitchen and steal Mr. I's Cheetos.
The operation went off
flawlessly; he darted back, zigzagging to avoid being an easy target for the multitude of assassins --probably ninjas-- who seemed to possess limitless ammunition.
It took six hours to come up with the plan, and about sixteen seconds to execute. Despite the seemingly deafening crackle of the Cheeto bag, no shots were fired; LOBO figured maybe he caught them all just napping. Or maybe he was just too fast and agile for them to aim at; he
was after all, wearing some really expensive athletic shoes that were endorsed by some Irish guy named
Shack-Eel-O'neil.
LOBO's free throws plummeted, an he got kicked out of the NBA.
But he
definitely liked the shoes.
After some brief self-congratulation, he stuck to a strict ration of four Cheetos a day.
At that pace, he figured, he could stay under the bed for fifty-six days.
So after arranging fifty-six small piles of Cheetos, he returned to his silent vigil, patiently listening for the S.W.A.T. team to show up and rescue him.
Unfortunately, the smell of decapitated animal crackers and fifty-six small piles of Cheetos turns out to be irresistible to the average hungry and blind newborn kitten, and one by one they wandered in. Cats --instinctual carnivorous hunters-- prefer
live prey, and had little interest in already-decapitated animal crackers. LOBO found himself alternately grabbing kittens from wandering out into the gunfire and trying to prevent them from scarfing up his meager stash of the
felis domesticus' natural enemy: the Cheeto.
In a pinch, he supposed, he could always eat the
cats if he had to.
But he figured the odds of Mr. Insanity having chop sticks around to be fairly slim.
***
And LOBO may have
never come out were it not for that radio.
But when he heard the news story about a bibliophile purchasing a complete 17th-century collection Shakespeare’s works, he absolutely
flipped.
"What the
fuck?!" he says, alarming the cats as he climbed out from under the bed. "I've never even
heard of this guy's blog!" Dusting himself off, he scolded Phil. "Goddamn liberals! See what happens when you have bibliophiles roamin free in the streets?"
Streaming obscenities, he steeled himself to search for the grizzly, rotting, bullet-riddled remains of Mr. Insanity: perhaps some gloating over the dead would cheer him up.
While not finding any bodies, he was
wholly unprepared for what he found on the kitchen table.
On top of a stack of life insurance policies was a folded newspaper.
And inside a penciled circle, he found the obituary of David Curr.
"You bastards!" he cried, falling to his knees, sobbing. "He was so young! And so
good-looking ... !"
***
Robot LOBO stood in line at the Pearly Gates, confused.
Eons of processing mortals had provided that the procedure was fairly efficient, and Saint Peter had grown pretty blasé to the whole thing.
"No, Agnes," he said into his headset, looking into a small white box on his desk. "I got a spinach pie from
Trader Joe's."
He tapped his pen on the desk. "Yes,
spinach," he replied after a pause.
He leaned back in the chair, rolling his eyes. "No Agnes, I do not wish them smoten for putting spinach in my pie. It's how I
wanted it."
Another pause. "Yes Agnes, I've heard of cherries and blueberries. It just so happens that Trader Joe's makes a pretty darn decent spinach pie," he replied into the air. "The chicken pot pie is good
too--"
Biting his lip, he glanced at his appointment list, and then up at the clock. "Agnes, you guys go ahead and order Panazzo's. I've got a full itinerary today what with the World Cup and all."
Rubbing between his closed eyes with two fingers, he motioned with a pen in his other hand. "Next," he sighed, looking up.
It took Robot LOBO a few seconds to realize he was being addressed. He approached the desk with a nervous reverence.
"Please have a seat," said Saint Peter rather automatically.
"Thank you sir," said Robot LOBO.
"Name?"
"LOBO."
Saint Peter's eyebrows furrowed. "Odd. You're not on the list." Turning slightly, he tapped some keys on the keyboard. "Hm.
Nothing." He eyed Robot LOBO closely. "How did you die?" he asked finally.
"I have no idea, sir."
"Did Phoebe wax you? I bet Gabriel fifty bucks Phoebe would wax you."
"I don't know sir," Robot LOBO repeated.
"Hang on a second, okay?" In his chair, he swiveled his back to Robot LOBO. "Agnes?" he asked, pressing the headset into his ear. "I've got LOBO here, and he's not on my list. I've got his account up, but it's still beeping like he was still
sinning ...."
A pause.
"No Agnes, he can't be streaming obscenities right now. He's sitting right in front of me, not saying a word."
"Uh, sir," Robot LOBO interjected timidly. "I'm an android
based on LOBO."
Another pause. "No, Agnes, I really
don't think Trader Joe's would have 'pork chop pies'." He scratches his head. "I doubt there's any such thing, actually--"
Saint Peter spun in his chair, and started clocking Robot LOBO.
"You're an android," he says, all serious as he removes his headset.
Now,
this android, upgraded to V2.1, has
seen some freakin’ creepy Christopher Walken movies, and
Holy Freakin' Jesus, Robot LOBO was losing hydraulic fluid into his main recycling capacitor.
["
Losin' hydraulic fluid into his main recycling capacitor" is a rather rare
Predator Press Technical Term: the
Main Recycling Capacitor is sci-fi technology as yet incomprehensible to our feeble human minds;
losin hydraulic fluid in it is the equivalent of needing to change your shorts after gettin glared at by Christopher Walken if you were a robot. It's all scientific.]
Saint Peter's eyebrows furrowed. He leaned back in the chair, and interlocked his fingers behind his head.
He had the look of 'being onto someone's bullshit'.
"So," begins Saint Peter. "You're essentially a clone of someone that never had a soul in the
first place." He grinned.
Jesus Christ, he thought,
This could get me a few thousand years of vacation!
"Actually," interjected Robot LOBO, "It took a
lot of programming to come up with and develop a robot completely devoid of a soul. Bill Gates invested eight million dollars in it, in a collaborative venture with RDO." He paused politely. "In fact, I'm one of the prototypes."
"Bill Gates," Saint Peter laughed. "What a dumb ass." He spun the monitor at Robot LOBO, and Robot LOBO saw the
Apple trademark.
Oh my God I am so screwed, he thought.
