Kris Saknussem by Anonymous

Author:Anonymous
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Zinepal

His first assignment was VictorianLand, which had started off as the place to savor the romance of gas jets, electricity experiments, mesmerism and ballooning. Progressively it had concentrated more on the Dickensian underbelly of London—namely the festering, writhing, squalid dens of thieves and screevers, magsmen, whores and hunchbacks. The sophisticated ventilation system pumped out the rich odors of coffin ships and pig boats while a special mouthwash gave the fishwives and the prostitute characters breath like toasted herring. You could hobnob with costermongers, skulking street arabs and urchins of all descriptions. Cauliflowered-ear prizefighters would leer at you from the doorways of gin palaces—or try to drag you in to some exciting attraction like badger baiting—while in the “opium” dens, dream-like shadows moved, stirring up the stinking air.

Hear the colorful street cries of sellers of hare and kidney pies! liquidplexposters at the ticket consoles promised. Thrill to the authentic charm of imbeciles and cripples ringing bells!

Everything was a precise replica—from the rosewood-framed mirrors to the hot grog served in the music halls. All the “actors” had been specially trained in such skills as fat-boiling, fell mongering, glue rendering, tripe scraping and dog skinning. Strolling down the manure-laden cobblestone lanes, watching a gang of ruffians bludgeon a legless organ-grinder, Ruger was disgusted and impressed.

His probationary training assignment officially installed him in the simulated version of VictorianLand, which meant that the so-called “guests” were in fact fellow employees. But what he found particularly puzzling was that one of the tactics the training sessions alluded to was the undisclosed integration of the simulated version with the authentic version so that all employees would stay at peak form. He thus was actually unsure where he was working—or with whom. He was given a cover story—two in fact, one for his London 19th Century persona (to give to real customers)—the other for his “real” self, should conversations start up with other staff (in case their real job was as a Familiar). Employees were encouraged to contribute to the latter, on the premise that the more they believed in what they said, the more convincing they’d be. Ruger posed first as a Bone Grubber and then a Blind Beggar, and over a month came to know the Baked Potato Man, who was a woman named Bonny, a struggling student—and Old Sarah the Hurdy-Gurdy Player who was also a woman but who’d once been a man named Brian, who’d started out his career in show business as one of the Hefty Harpooners at the Burbank Angling Club. “How ironic,” he told Ruger. “To have been born a woman trapped in a well-hung man’s body.”

Another acquaintance was The Fantoccini Man, the master of a horse-drawn carriage that housed a marionette theater, featuring a hornpipe-dancing sailor and a Scottish lass doing the Highland Fling. The Fantoccini Man was supposed to be a chubby Italian named Giuseppe, but was actually a recovering alcoholic named Jim Fletcher who wore a fat suit and who’d once been the Senior Animator on the Wilde and Woolly Fun Hour.

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