4.3

Lipe's address is programmed into the memory bank of the Ahimsa's AI, and the thoughtful machine has already chauffeured us back to the Exodus Turnpike. Lipe keeps his hands on the wheel purely to accommodate the fussiness of the AI. But it's hopeless. The ever-present nanny state have finally realized that indoctrinating machines is a hell of a lot easier than indoctrinating people.

“Rear passenger. Your seat belt is not in its proper position,” the Ahimsa informs us, in its halting lobotomized monotone. “Place your seatbelt in the proper position.”

“Wow. Not even a please,” I say.

“I turned the please off,” Lipe explains. “I ain't want it to beg.”

“Rear passenger. Your seat belt is not in its proper position,” the Ahimsa reiterates. “Place your seatbelt in the proper position.”

My eyes dart up to the rearview mirror to check on Mouse in the back seat. Sure enough, he's reaching for his seat belt. “Hey,” I say to him. “Nah. Trust me. You don't wanna do that.”

“Samba, two cats,” says Mouse, off-put. But he arrests his movement long enough for me to intervene.

“Take this,” I say, handing him a free-floating buckle plug to insert into the appropriate slot. Lipe and I already have them in our seats up front. “That should quiet the authoritarian nightmare. Oh, and while I'm thinkin' about it... Mouse, buddy, if I say 'tuck and roll'? Open the car door and bail out, okay?”

“Bale of hay,” says Mouse.

“It might not even happen at all,” I say. “But if it does, I will shout 'tuck and roll'. And then, ya open yer door and ya bail out and ya make for the sidewalk. Lipe and I'll be doin' the same, don't you worry.”

Lipe lives out in the foothills at the north end of West Hashton. If only we were getting there faster. Highway 808 is stuffed to the gills with gridlocked cogs ratcheting their way through their morning commute. How many 8 AMs can a person spend on this freeway before they realize they've been driving in a circle this entire time? No, I need to stop projecting. I'm getting antsy inside this car, that's the real problem, and it's nobody's problem but mine.

“Ya gotta get me off this highway,” I say to Lipe.

“Sorry, man. Car's jus' followin' the GPS,” Lipe says, absolving himself of his obvious responsibility to his passengers.

“The wheel's literally in yer hands, my dude,” I remind him. “Turn it! Come on, Lipe! Fiat Street exit's comin' up. This early in the mornin', it'll probably be a shortcut.”

“No, it won't,” warns Lipe.

“What the Bob Dobbs are you talkin' about?” I demand, reaching for Lipe's steering wheel. “Fiat can't possibly be worse than this commuter crawl.”

“Mujo, no,” says Lipe, swatting ineffectually at my incoming hand.

“You better signal, dawg,” I insist. “'Cause this is happenin'.”

“Fine!” he says, decisively returning my invading hand to my side of the car. “But I'm tellin' ya! This ain't gonna be no shortcut!” Lipe guides the car down the exit ramp, and a moment later, we're bouncing across the irregular pavement of Fiat Street. But not for long. About a mile from our destination, we hit the next bottleneck. “Like I said,” Lipe groans, returning the car to auto-pilot so that he may wash his hands of this error.

Yes, there's a bunch of new construction in my neighborhood, and yes, traffic is stalled out in either direction while a team of hard-hat heroes nudge a crane into its proper position. Someone bought up the entire block here on Fiat and Houdounit, and then they bulldozed all the grass, the coffee shops, the capoeira dojo, and the theramin emporium. Now they're building only Dobbs knows what (though to be honest, I was, perhaps, stretching the truth when I characterized this particular construction project as new. The funny thing about living on a busy street is that the arrival of any additional business to said busy street is met not with curiosity on my part, but with sullen indignation. As though they're doing it to me, as opposed to doing it near me. Although I have robbed and vandalized this construction site on multiple occasions, I have not yet bothered to find out what it is that they are building). The front half of this enormous rectangular building is one and a half stories, while the back half is a vaulted four. From the street, it looks like the architectural bastard child of an Ivy League undergraduate dormitory and a barn that sells fireworks, the kind of mansion where clean cowboy hats are mandatory and spontaneous acts of casual cruelty are seen as the apex of comic genius. Worse still, there are massive screens mounted on the outside of the thing, screens twelve feet high and winged by fanning speaker stacks (that crane is installing one of those speaker stacks right now as I watch). Whatever it is they're planning to do in there, they have absolutely no intention of keeping it to themselves.

“What the Dobbs is that?” I ponder aloud.

Lipe cocks an eyebrow and squints. “I thought you was a detective. Ain't it yer self-appointed duty to know things 'bout this town?”

“Indeed it is. Consider this the first leg of my belated fact findin' mission,” I reply.

Lipe sighs, blinks. “It's a Mega-Boot.”

“A Mega-Boot? But who would build a Mega-Boot in Hashton?” I ask. And it is a question worth asking, because Hashton is a city known for diversity – ethnic, religious, class, and caste – and Mega-Boots are usually known for the opposite. “Is it Hippocampal Water Poloists? Or CIA Jesuit Marco Poloists? Or Neo-Luddite Crystal Groomers? Or Post-Lysergic Baby Boomers? Oh my Dobbs... what if it's the Cobra Snugglers?”

“Ya ain't much for real sleuthin', are ya?” Lipe replies.

“Consider this the second leg of my belated fact findin' mission.”

“Well, it's a Mega-Boot, so it's prolly bein' built by Crushluckian Crush-Claim investors,” says Lipe. “I'd wager there's somewhere between a 93% chance and a 105% chance that the Mega-Boot's bein' built by the very same people who worship inside a giant boot, and not some other religious group that you jus' made up on the spot.”

“Fantastic intel, Lipe,” I say, giving him a hearty pat on the shoulder. “It's good to know that I can always rely on yer penetratin' insight and ineffable judgement.”

“Edible garbagemen,” says Mouse, gazing out the window at the Boot-To-Be.

“Now, now, gentle Mouse! We do not cannibalize the members of other faiths, no matter how pernicious and invasive their attitudes might be,” I remind him. “Crushluckism is a multi-faceted religion with many denominations and many followers, each of which must be treated as an individual.”

“And some of them individuals is pearl-garglin' swine,” says Lipe. “Take it from a Crushluckian.”

“Indeed, fair Mouse. Our noble Lipe is of the Holy Order of the Gophers, perhaps the most secretive sect of the Crushluckians. His is a clandestine world of burrows and tunnels, not at all like the ostentatious goin's-on you see before ya here today,” I explain. “This Mega-Boot, as Lipe has so astutely observed, is likely the work of the Crushluckian Reclamation League – or the Crush-Claim, for short.”

“As in, keep an eye on yer belongin's, 'cause they may well crush and/or claim what's yers if you ain't lookin',” Lipe adds.

“Need I remind you, this great nation of our BeDeviled States of Merkaba was founded by pirates, and pirates prize two ideals above all others. The first bein' freedom. The second bein' greedom. And like any unsupervised child at the soda fountain, it is the divine prerogative of any self-respectin' Merkaban to blend the both of them into one cup,” I say. “Hence the Crush-Claim, the logical endpoint of a nation with more boundary issues than borders.”

“Pains me to say it, but the life and times of the anvil-dodgin' cobbler-messiah Yeswell Crushluck don't seem to matter much to these folks,” says Lipe. “The only part of the story they like is the part where Yeswell likes them more'n he likes anybody else, and they use that a-list status to justify all kinds of indecencies, large and small. I mean, ya see what they did here. They bought the land right out from under everybody's noses, bulldozed everythin', and replaced it with their Boot.”

“As far as the Crush-Claim's concerned, you're either in the Boot or out the Boot,” I explain.

“But don't let'em intimidate ya,” Lipe says to Mouse. “Yer better off outside the Boot, no matter how hard they try to stomp ya.”

This talk of stomping serves only to alarm the wayward traveler. “Be strong, Mouse!” I say, turning around in my seat to grab him by the shoulder. “They are terrifyin'! They are infuriatin'! But we cannot let them interfere with our vibe. The vibe must be protected at all costs.” Sitting back down in my seat, I say it again. “Lipe, the vibe must be protected at all costs. That means it is once again time for us to get creative.”

“Huh?” he says.

“Down there!” I say, indicating a narrow back-alley to our right.

“But that street goes away from my house, not towards it,” Lipe complains.

“Sometimes, when you're in too deep, the only way out is to get even deeper in,” I declare.

“Sure,” says Lipe. “But this ain't one of them times.”

“Ya had me at 'sure',” I say, grabbing the wheel.

The alleyway takes us down a short hill and it's about to dump us onto Brimstone Ave, a six-lane northbound road that ultimately tilts westward into the foothills. The Ahimsa's AI is idling at the intersection, waiting for the light to change, when I hear somebody scream.

“Give back them babies!”

“Tuck and roll!” I shriek, hoping that Mouse doesn't freeze.

Immediately, all three of us dive out of the car. And with not a moment to spare, because a thickset middle-aged man with an AR-15 has stepped in front of the Ahimsa and opened fire.

“Animal fondlers! Baby impalers! Socialist wage-thieves!” he screams from beneath an anvil-shaped helmet. Or at least, that's what I assume he's screaming. It's pretty hard to hear him over all the gunfire.

Of course, it's only a matter of seconds before this spray of bullets obliterates the Ahimsa's AI. Without Lipe's foot to rest upon the brake pedal, the car starts rolling forward down the hill and onto Brimstone Ave, which means rolling right up on top of our screeching assailant. Blinded by the anvil helmet that has fallen over his eyes, he fails to step out of the way of the Ahimsa, and it crushes his lower torso beneath its right front wheel.

Pretending to be bystanders, Lipe, Mouse, and I dust ourselves off and join the crowd of pedestrians who've gathered to watch this fellow die beneath the car. Lipe appears overwhelmed, his manly bosom become too heavy to carry, and he seems about to pitch forward onto the sidewalk. I rush to his side, beckoning for Mouse to do the same.

“We are yer strength, Lipe!” I announce, holding my weary friend upright. “We are yer strength! Do not succumb to the pressures of our perverted planet Malkiss! Stand tall, and fuck Malkiss! Fuck Malkiss right in its puckered geothermal vents!”

“How'm I...” gasps Lipe. “How'm I... how'm I s'posed to get to work?”

“Wrong! The more important question is: how're we supposed to get home?” I correct him. “The answer is: we'll walk. It's not that far. And regardin' yer future transportation challenges, Lipe, I must remind ya that you have performed many a favor for many a friend in need. There is somebody out there who will lend ya their vehicle in this moment of crisis. Of this I am certain.”

“But that was my car!” Lipe protests.

“And it was unarmored and vulnerable in a world of endless dangers. Yer chariot was not bulletproof and therefore could not protect you, and now, it is Mouse and I who must protect you, Lipe.”

“Are you bulletproof?” Lipe asks.

“Of course not. Now hit this pen,” I say, handing it over.

“Which one's that?” Lipe asks.

“I dunno,” I reply, and it's true, I just grabbed one at random without thinking. “Does it matter? They all get ya there.”

“Yes, it matters!” Lipe says, handing the pen back to me.

I offer the pen to Mouse instead, but the gentle alien is too deep in shock to acknowledge my gesture. I holster the pen and throw my comforting arm around him, as we three hastily depart the gathering crowd of salivating disaster tourists. “I can see you're disturbed by this turn of events, partner. But if you're gonna survive more than a day in these BeDeviled States of Merkaba, you're gonna have to get accustomed to our local patterns of worship. Now, was that man's wild and reckless behavior a deviation from the established norm? Not exactly. After all, what is divinity but raw electricity cracklin' through us at its greatest possible amperage? And what are we mortals but overloaded little resistors desperately attemptin' to maintain our structural integrity in the face of our creepin' but inevitable ecstatic annihilation? Ya see, Mouse, the cosmos has but one test for us and that test is stress. And does the stress test wreck our vessels? It most certainly does, time and time again. But when the cracks run deep enough to rend us apart, we have essentially two options left available to us: kintsugi or kamikaze. Our golden-hearted Felipe? He's a shinin' example of the former. That sputterin' heap we're leavin' behind? The sad cautionary tale of the latter.”