Pop Apocalypse: A Possible Satire by Lee Konstantinou

Author:Lee Konstantinou
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Fiction, General
ISBN: 9780061715372
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2009-04-28T04:00:00+00:00

PART IV

THE RIOT ZONE

The markets are not kind to

Eliot when they reopen. Three factors have conspired to destroy

Eliot’s Reputation: these factors are the topic of discussion in Karl

Vlasic’s swanky midtown Manhattan office, a vast space dedicated

to glass tables and leather chairs and bearskin rugs, its main media-

wall broken up into hundreds of square tiles upon which established

channels or nonlinear television feeds play, each ready to expand to

a more viewable size should Karl choose to focus on it, but all of

which are presently muted so that Karl can carefully and ruthlessly

destroy whatever complex molecules of dignity Eliot might be trying

to preserve. Three sausagelike fingers, hairy in a creepy way, stand

erect, waiting to be ticked off by the squatter and hairier thumb of

Karl’s other hand. Karl makes hacking and wheezing noises, viscosity

coiled within his throat, hidden biological gears and pulleys adjusting

themselves in anticipation of the onslaught to follow.

“Try to keep up with me, here, El. First, your little drug-induced

romp through the Getty Center—what the tabloids have taken to

calling your ‘Near Suicide’—and that weirdly aggressive kiss-thing

with Sarah and the ‘Nut Blow’ was broadcast more or less live across

the world, and has been viewed—let me get the figure up on my tab—

five hundred twelve million times as of right now—by approximately

thirty five million people. You’ve gone viral, El.”

Eliot tries to pay attention to what Karl is saying, but a horrible

sluggishness still clouds his mind, a lingering consequence of the Hy-

perphainein B. The days following the Getty Center party come back

to him only in fragments, short declarative sentences of memory. The

Secret Service processed and released him. Father shipped him back

to New York. Karl, the fi rst fi nally to break communications silence,

left a message ordering him here.

“Second, responding to your new infamy, several girls have sur-

faced in the tabloid press in Spain who claim to have had special

relations with you. Several of these are girls who, if you had slept with

them here in the US, would be considered underage. No sex videos

have surfaced yet, so we’re lucky for now. All the more reason to abol-

ish this country’s draconian statutory rape laws, you say, and I’m all

with you there, believe me, but you have to understand that those

age-consent restrictions reflect the values of the people, and markets have

a way of giving people what they want, and so, this allegations-of-

sex-with-sixteen-year-olds thing, you understand, is playing very, very

well in heartland communities. And if you’re unclear, what I just said,

about this playing ‘very, very well’: that’s called irony. It is, in fact, not

playing well at all. You are so ‘completely fucked’ right now, as you

might put it, that words escape me.”

Karl takes a personal moment to utter a few wet disgusting

throat-clearing noises. Behind him, downtown, the Freedom Tower

turns on its red, white, and blue fl oodlights for the evening.

“Now, third, and this is the best part: There is this man named

Samir Bhavsar who says he has a one-week press license with your

biometric signature on it. This Samir Bhavsar is selling left and right

pictures he took of one Eliot Vanderthorpe on his way to, get this,

Berkeley, California.

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