(08) Delia's Gone


The five Masters of Prax was an illusion created by Archer, who had split himself into multiple forms to avoid loneliness while he was appearing and disappearing in different places and times. He was an energy field which had no actual physical form, and he was crazy as a shithouse rat. He had forgotten that he was all five of the personalities, so that he talked to his split off parts, and they talked to him, as if they were separate beings.

The Masters of Prax made a lot of noise in the tunnel because they were exuberant about being embodied again. Bodies were impossible to take along on space travels, so they were only picked up on planets which supported them, which was why they were referred to by the slang term, "rentals." There was intense competition among the Masters for high powered and well designed rentals. Bethaus was considered a premium ride, which was why he was taken by Archer Prax as his ego identity.

"What the fricking hell?" Jukebox asked when he heard the commotion in the passageway, but there was no answer, there was just three men and two women, mixed into a cacophony of screams, laughter, fast talk and one Johnny Cash song:

"She was low down and trifling,
she was cold and mean,
kind of woman makes me want
to grab my submachine,
Delia's gone, one more round,
Delia's gone."

They came tripping into the chamber like a pub crawl at the last stop, the two women, stacked like a deck of cards in a republican casino, seemed to be high on something. Their pupils were unnaturally dilated and they clung to Archer, one on each arm. Behind them were two more males. One of them was quieter than the rest of the crowd, and seemed to be fascinated with his hands. He was dancing around, slowly, and his hands seemed to float by themselves, to the fascination of his intensely blue eyes. His body was tall and with Germanic features, his teeth bleached to a dazzling white.

The other male was the fast talker, and seemed to be not at all bothered by the lack of response of the German. "If you look at it with eyes you can't see it," he was saying. "You have to look at it with thinking. The eyes are okay for the job they're designed for but these bodies are primitive, designed for a split screen brain. You got a perception here that space is static and time moves across it. That's so they can operate on a linear plane, and track game or plant crops, that kind of animal shit."

"Silence!" Archer bellowed, and on cue, the other four instantly gave him the floor. He bowed slightly and smiled at Jukebox and Legggs. "These are my companions," he said. "We are the Masters of Prax."

"Masters and Mistresses," Legggs said.

This seemed to confuse Archer for a moment. He turned and looked at his four aspects and then said, "Ah! Yes. You have genders in your thinking. Don't worry, they're not any more human than I am so it's a moot point what kind of body they have. We're not carbon-based."

When he said this all five of them laughed uproariously, continuing until he silenced them with a raised hand. He wiped tears from his eyes and shook his head. "We don't normally come to the surface in rentals -- you call them bodies, we call them rentals -- but we've got an emergency. What we don't know how to do is drive a car, so we need you, Jukebox. You don't mind if I call you by your screen name do you? It's how we got to know you."

"Jukebox is just fine."

"What do you need with an anthropologist?" Legggs asked.

"We need help understanding certain human behaviors related to contemporary issues," Archer said. "Specifically, we have received information that the poppy fields in Afghanistan are being destroyed. What do you know about that?"

"Poppies are used to make opium," Legggs said, which isn't really so bad, but from that they make heroin, which is a painkiller. People take it and then they need it. They get addicted to it."

Suddenly the five Masters of Prax broke into uproarious laughter again, until they were again silenced by Archer's raising his hand and gesturing them into silence.

"How did this happen?"

"Heroin, along with aspirin, was produced for public consumption by the Bayer company," Legggs continued. "It was the first of the giant pharmaceutical companies. Aspirin became the most successful legal drug in the world, and heroin, the most successful illegal drug in the world. So many Americans got addicted to heroin while it was legal that there was a fearful reaction, and almost everything that people used to get high was made illegal. Alcohol was so popular that they had to make it legal again. But the war against drugs has targeted common plants, such as poppies and hemp, and they poison them from airplanes to try and kill them off."




Archer turned to his companions. "You see now why I wanted an anthropologist?" he asked. "They put things in context." The four nodded and glanced at each other. The German smirked.

"Was there something you wanted to share with the rest of us, Hans?"

"You know what I'm thinking," he said. "The irony of the situation. They kill the poppies from the air with poison and we kill them from the air with poison."

"Kill us with poison?" Jukebox asked. "Are you going to kill us with poison?"

"What good are you?" Speedy asked. The two women laughed aloud. Archer smiled and turned back to his new helpers.

"This is the only source of the opium poppy in the universe," he said. "It happens to be the most valuable trading commodity in all of Space. I'm afraid if humans pose a threat to it, we'll have to wipe them out."

"I see the irony now," Jukebox said. "What I don't see is why, if you don't even have bodies, what you want with drugs."

"It's what makes rentals so popular," one of the women said. The others nodded agreement.

"So," Legggs said, cautiously, "you're all on drugs right now?"

They all exploded into uproarious laughter again. Jukebox leaned close to her ear and whispered, "Now you see what it's like being with you, cupcake."

Posted: Fri - May 20, 2005 at 01:56 PM