Philip K. Dick is Dead, Alas by Michael Bishop

Author:Michael Bishop [Bishop, Michael]
Language: eng, eng
Format: epub
Tags: SF
ISBN: 0-586-20151-3
Publisher: Grafton Books
Published: 1987-12-31T16:00:00+00:00

15

APING JOHN WAYNE’S walk, Twitchell, minus his beret, ambled through West Georgia Commons mall. In Gangway Books, he spoke briefly with the young woman at the register, then strolled on up the concourse to a video-game arcade called the Barrel of Fun. He entered this noisy place through a paneled opening that looked like the mouth of a big wooden barrel lying on its side.

Where are you, my gooky gook gook? Twitchell sang in his head. Come to Daddy, do.

It was dark in the game room. Purple and amber lights from the video screens fractured the shadows, but the kids standing at the consoles—truants? dropouts?—were mere cutouts, not recognizable people. Twitchell had to make two circuits around the room to find Le Boi Loan.

Lone Boy was standing in a nervous stoop at a game called Phun Ky Cong. Twitchell, the father of two teenage boys, smiled; he had played this baby himself. It was a big favorite of the kids. Or, at least, it had been a year or two ago. You used your joystick to move a figure called Grady Grunt through the Tunnels of Cu Chi in pursuit of a Viet Minh guerrilla named Phun Ky Cong. Whenever you got Grady close enough, you pressed your button and blasted away at Cong’s narrow ass with a flamethrower.

It wasn’t all that easy. Cong was always trying to maneuver Grady into a pitfall lined with bamboo stakes or directly beneath a tunnel opening through which Cong and his VC buddies could drop a skull-cracking rock. If that weren’t enough, Twitchell recalled, you had to fry five Phun Ky Congs before Grady could advance to the next video stage, an even more labyrinthine and treacherous level of the Cu Chi tunnels.

Twitchell stood at Loan’s shoulder, watching. From the upright boxes all around them burped peculiar noises: Pop-pop-pop! Blippa-blip-blippa! Ka-pow-pow-pow! As always, the sound effects made Twitchell nervous, and as soon as Lone Boy had positioned Grady in a good place to barbecue Cong, he put his hand on the little guy’s shoulder. “How’s it goin’, sharpshooter?”

Lone Boy’s hands came off the box’s controls. He whirled, his eyes showing a lot of white. “Hey, you shithead, I’m on my fuckin’ lunch hour!”

Twitchell said, “I’m sure you are, Loan.” Such defensiveness, such empty bravado. The poor gook’s scared to death. On Lone Boy’s screen, the Cong figure, unhampered, dug a tunnel under Grady Grunt, causing Grady to plummet into a net that closed around him like a string bag around an onion. A peppy little dirge played. The game was over. Lone Boy had lost.

Lone Boy glanced at the Phun Ky Cong console. “Fuck it all to hell! You cost me my goddamn quarter!”

“I’m trying to save you something worth a helluva lot more than that. The respect of a very fine lady.”

“You’re gonna give me another quarter, dork.”

“Hey, man, a Green Beret gives no quarter.” Twitchell strong-armed the feisty Lone Boy to a corner of the Barrel of Fun where the two forlorn pinball machines stood.

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