Originally run as "Novelty Theater" in the Transistor.
| -fiction-
By Allen Richardson and Jim Richardson ... Good to see you! Welcome to Novelty Theater, home of only the freshest quality amusements. Tune in every other week and thrill to the latest one-off or series-of-miniseries. Programming may include such topics as follow below. Thank you, and please keep it down in the mezzanine. Thank you. Thank you. The Magic Hat -fictional miniseries in which a magical hat brings people closer together through the healing power of whimsy. Set in charming smallish northlandic city on the edge of a bloodthirsty industrial empire. 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 The Contradiction Conundrum -Nearly indecipherable experimental writing which celebrates Duluth through sheer description in long hallucinatory rants. The Product is Satisfaction - Endless array of advertising slogans for nonexistent products that kids love and moms trust such as CrackWax Brand WaxCrack, ‘Hey Liberal' brand conscience-soothing products including a car-bra made of hemp designed for Hummers and SUV's, hammock made of licorice, soup sandwich. 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 Stereotypes on Parade - Includes riffing on Minnesotan politeness with true story of four cars pulling up to four way stop at same time and all the drivers encouraging all the others to go first: elapsed time: 45 seconds. Also features regular puns about people who work in organic food industry, ex.- ‘I'll see you Gluten-free Crackers later.' - 1 - 2 Lightning in a Bottle - Two brothers with delusions of grandeur accidentally burn political capital by writing new column with incredibly pretentious title. ‘The Long Slide' - set in Duluth of near future as time travel barrier begins to shred. Wacky hijinks ensue as extremely polite residents of charming northlandic city on the edge of a bloodthirsty industrial empire deal with unexpected effects of unstable spacetime continuum. First episode includes family dog evolved into angelic jellyfish by irresponsible use of timestream. 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5 Apocalipstick - Romantic follies of Richardson brothers, all names changed to protect the ‘innocent.' First column includes bloodcurdling tale of how Allen steps in dating-game bear trap within three minutes of having moved to Duluth. Jim's unbelievably turbulent romantic history dominates rest of series. The Activity - Real life reports from insider accounts of Duluth's Homeland Security agents as they wish for a higher level of international intrigue. First installment features unsuccessful penetration of Duluth's Reggae Dance Hall scene while on the trail of serial ragamuffin ‘Mr. B.' - 1 - 2 The Thin Veneer - Local politicians portrayed as superheroes and villans. 1 - 2 - 3 F.Y.O.A .- Absolutely insufferable overuse of in-jokes designed to foster cliquishness and feelings of resentment and inadequacy. (Teaser - The O.A. in ‘F.Y.O.A.' stands for ‘Own Ass') Lets All Blame Paul - Bi-weekly reports from new grassroots non-profit LABP which seeks to assign all blame for everything bad in Duluth, MN to notorious local scallywag Paul Lundgren. 1 - 2 The Fury of Abraxas Xerxes Agamemmnon, food critic at large - (no description available) 1 Menno Zwonk, Amish Outlaw - (no description available) 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5 The Flying Islands of Lake Superior 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 Bait and Tackle - Jim and Al antagonize conservatives while disregarding their own bloodpressure and cholesterol levels. ‘I see Cute Kittens' - Horror series about successful organic foods co-op that moves into new building, unaware that its built on top of cute kitten graveyard. Dial ‘C' for Content - New ‘reality' series in which subject matter is chosen by vote, raffle and treasure hunt. In partnership with perfectduluthday.com . Dear Attorney General Gonzales, I hope this letter finds you well. I'm writing to express my concern that my talents are being wasted here in Duluth. I was assigned here by my division manager Agent Glarbenheizner to investigate the theft of the world's largest Groucho Marx Nose from Duluth's famous Museum of Gigantic Novelties. The initially suspected involvement of The Clown Liberation Front proved fruitless and I have therefore asked to be re-assigned. Agent Glarbenheizner has refused on numerous occasions to forward my request to Homeland Security Supreme Leader Tom Ridge and now I believe I must take my case to the very top. Mr. Attorney General, your compassionate stand on torture has made you the envy of humanitarians everywhere. My commitment to the War on Terror is absolute as my record clearly shows. Mr. Attorney General, I'll be blunt: there is nothing happening in Duluth. Duluth is secure from the threat of international terror. My abilities as a Homeland Security agent are frankly being underutilized here in the Northland. There is nothing going on here but art, art, art! Did you know they have rock and roll shows on passenger trains in the Northland? As far as I can tell people up here do nothing but paint and fish. She reminisced about the microclimates of the hillside in Duluth, MN. The way swirls and tendrils of warm and cold air intermixed, and caressed you in the heave and flow of cold air rushing down the hillside, always with the undertow of warm air rising. Colliding wavefronts of air spun vaporous yins and yangs. The arc of her face scribed a glyph of atmospheric pressure plotted against time. She was Gaia, and the Moon too; all of it. She sipped cosmos in the local bar. No one foresaw that Saturn would eclipse the Earth in a epoch of empyrean catastrophe. Comatose moons came loose from their orbits, and a new Sun strode the canceled tides. The temple at Delphi came down that day for its failure to predict this most obvious resolution of the myth. Apollonian agents swarmed the underworld, spotlights illuminating a karmic sting. The Fury of Abraxas Xerxes Agammemnon, Food Critic at Large (Thick Scottish accent) The eatery was full of travelers and pagans from many strange lands. A band of unruly musicians made a barbarous offering to some god whose language was foreign to me. The tavern wench was a comely lass who asked what I should like to feed my belly. I saw they had something called ‘Pizza Athena' and I was thankful for the omen. The Goddess would protect me. I ordered their largest. I enjoyed a frosty mug of ale while I waited. As the magnificent pizza pie was delivered to my table, I was suddenly beset upon by three knaves who meant harm to my person and to my dinner. “Fill your hand with steel!” I bellowed, drawing my battlescarred broadsword in my right hand and two slices of hot Athena with my left. As I dispatched the first rogue with my ancient blade and took the first bite of juicy cheese pie, I thought to myself,”Athena be praised! Artichoke hearts are truly the vegetable of victory! Excelsior!” The twins emerged from a frothy portal of unnatural fog. Titantic steel structures loomed around them, giant Transformer factories in the fog and Bizarro-trainyards like an industrial nest of cyclopean duneworms. Highways overhead in the obscuring mist, they make their way to the monuments. The lake is like glass at first, then choppy past the line. Water provides so many textures to the eye, she thought, as her raised-arm profile delineated the geography of a sunken Atlantis. At noon the shipwrecks were reflected in the sky, dreamily sailing above the waves, until the sun arced below the event horizon. The Scientist-Shamans of UMD's Quantum Memory Acceleration Project detected incoming turbulence which would result in the wild coupling of previously disconnected systems. They referred to the emergence of unpredictable possibilities and forms which pushed a wave of syncronicity ahead of it as “novelty”. The Project Manager, an accomplished sorceress and PhD of Functional Anomalistics, was deep in trance mediated by vocal techniques and the uber-psychedlic DMT. As her Tibetan bell began to chime in rhythm with the experimental apparutus known as Bodisatva 12, The Morphogenetic Field Technician compiling the pressure readings recommended that the Novelty Horn be sounded. Signaling the imminent occurrence of a local timestream anomaly, the Horn was greeted with jaded amusement by Duluths residents. A pack of timeskaters pushed off from High on Lake Avenue, hoping to catch a wicked current of erratic time which would produce a type of cyclic speed in which the skater reverberates off their own immediate past. Those who had the gift for falling forward off their boards without actually wiping out claimed they could see through the vail. Said one timepunker, pumped and buzzing off the rush of slippery lastingness, “Its indisputable, irrefutable uncomputable and irreducible. Zap! Zap!” New Item 14 is a quality fresh with a smooth performance and hearty man sized nutty crunch which really satisfies. This exciting new product is a unit the whole family can enjoy. This inexpressibly wholesome item comes from your friends at Item Manufacturers Inc., makers of OmniCram UniCream and the UniCream OmniPump for Men. University of Minnesota Duluth Quantum Memory Acceleration Project: Dr. Ecclesia Hummingbird interfaced with the well of probability tracked by the Bodisatva 12 unit. Her beautiful and otherworldy chant entangled the laboratory's geometry as her brass Tibetan bell chimed in time with the static harmonic whistling of the B12. The Novelty Wave was spiking locally in Duluth, MN and surrounding region. Dr. Hummingbird's back was to the other scientists as she stared into the lens of the latest in the Bodisatva series. The Morphogenetic Field Technician appeared pensive. He acted as Dr. Hummingbird's lifeline as she dove into the fabric of the Memory: “Wave is rising. Pressure approaching limits of currently available data. I think she's got a bite on the line.' Smiling now...She cues the M-Tech via a pressure pad on her glove. He administers the remaining sacrament with a push of a button, flooding her frontal lobe with DMT and lighting up her pineal gland like the star on a Christmas tree. The realization that time exhibits fluctuations similar to weather patterns had long since been accepted by the populations of timestorm prone areas. Alert systems such as Duluth's Novelty Horn were a booming industry. Trousers stiffen, paint brushes are dipped. The strobing effect which precedes ‘The Long Slide' has become a sort of natural sign for many of the cultural phenomena which arose in response to the anomaly. Kids in hotrods head for any lump in the road where they can catch air. Pizza makers spin their dough with fervent panache as the unstable time makes seemingly impossible feats doable, if you have the touch. Premature ejaculators with good timesense turned their one thrust into series, and then cascades, multiple orgasm no longer the sole province of the female. Last year's grassroots campaign to identify the perfect scapegoat in Duluth, MN has led to some exciting announcements - a grant has been provided by The Denunciation Society to fund a fully-staffed non-profit with the goal of organizing the persecution. Zenith City, say hello to your new all-purpose object of derision and scorn, local weirdo Paul Lundgren! Paul has distinguished himself on countless occasions and has even taken a leadership role in his own chapter of Let's All Blame Paul, or L.A.B.P. “It's about time people got wise to the true extent of my villainy,” Lundgren remarked. “Plus, by starting my own chapter of L.A.B.P., I'll win the admiration of those who loathe me and get a L.A.B.P. beltbuckle to boot.” Ha Ha! Paul Lundgren never said those things! Whee! Kids! There's an exciting new item now available for your consumption! Here's an item that's just for kids that kids are getting excited about. This exciting new item is full of satisfying activities and quality values which ensure a wholesome all-day entertaining product that moms can trust but only the kids can ‘Rock the Product!' Yeah! Subject 23 was distinctive among the female subjects for not having suffered any significant sexual abuse, aside from a couple of lewd passes by much older men at age 14 or so. The subject has an excellent body, long red hair, a pretty and interesting face, a slightly nasal voice that turns very pretty and full when laughing. Her preference for sun-dresses made her a vision in the white hot sun of Austin Texas, 1992. Part of her allure was her self-possessed knowledge that she drove men wild, so that when she chatted him up in the park, she had practically laid him already. Years later she felt pity for him. He had spent so much time dissembling before her that she barely knew who he was. All she knew was that he regretted ever meeting her. Meanwhile, she had converted to Christianity. I contracted the Image Sickness in college. Image Sickness is a psionic disorder that affects huge swaths of spectacle society but is most tragic when it strikes self-proclaimed hipsters and would-be revolutionaries. Artists of all kinds including rockers, painters and writers are routinely plagued by Image Sickness. It is a disease willingly accepted by scenesters everywhere and is possibly a degraded imitation of true celebrity. A generation raised in a hall of mirrors will naturally produce a high number of people who project holographic glamour tulpas. But don't get swallowed by your cover-story like some B-grade cold war spook. You don't have to be dead to be a ghost. Irrefutable Evidence That I: Am Stupid. You have to make it idiot-proof because the public is stupid ... certainly when I'm a member of the public, which is most of the time, I am stupid. Zeus suffered from several venereal diseases, none of which ever stopped anyone from sleeping with him, and he always told them about it all first. He also had an immortal case of dandruff and a hairy back. But no one was ever scared off by those things. He was never scared off by anything either. Not Hera's genital warts, nor Callisto's funny boobs, nor Io's abrasive demeanor. He was like a kid on Christmas morning with every one of them. Then, people stopped believing in him. The Duluth Aquarium was scandalized when a local writer who shall remain nameless* ate a whole box of laxatives and went diving in the tanks. Later he claimed he did it for fish rights. *Paul Lundgren. What it feels like to be a lawn. Oh, a dog pooped on me ... but I'm nominally part of nature, so ... I guess I'm okay with it. A business venture that is doomed to fail: The new solar-powered “backdoor buddy” “This is ridiculous. You guys are setting me up and your story is preposterous.” “Well, yes, we are setting you up. But that doesn't change the fact that we actually caught you breaking the law. But you're quite right. If we hadn't caught you we would've fabricated the evidence.” Sounds of a rough search from the other rooms in the house could be heard in the kitchen where two men are sitting across a modest table. The older man has a badge and an automatic pistol in front of him. Between the men are three human skulls and a bong. “We've got you dead to rights, if you'll forgive the pun, on three counts of importing human remains without a license. And you can spare me any talk of rights or freedom of religion or any of that. Your failure to disclose the contents of the crate allows us to search your house, where we've found this handsome bong of yours. Whether we find your stash is irrelevant. You know enough to know that we can charge you with as much or as little as we damn well please. But the reason you're not in handcuffs is because we need someone of your background to accompany us in our investigation of serious ritual crime in Duluth. We are authorized to blackmail you and believe me that's the politest of the persuasive techniques at our disposal. Another thing to consider is that you are indeed in a good cop, bad cop scenario. I am an accomplished occultist of a system so complex it fills me with contempt for your white boy jungle magick. But at one level, we speak the same language. My co-worker who is ransacking your house is a liaison from a very different department. He thinks you're a race traitor, a dope-fiend, a communist, a pedophile, a terrorist, a Satanist and a homosexual when really a couple of those are exaggerations, am I right?
A group of four people, probably related, are sitting in a booth at a popular Canal Park eatery. “I don't think they're calling it ‘time travel.' It's an anomaly they say.” “Mom, check it. I can see your hair going from gray to dyed from here. Look at this potato wedge.” The youth displays a piece of cheese slathered potato on the end of a fork. It was clear to all present that this perfectly solid piece of mundane matter was shedding flowing visual effects depicting the spuds growth, harvest and cooking. “That's life in Duluth since the Timespill of '09. But watch this, Aunt Trudy. Potatoes are one thing; true synchronicity is usually not perceptible to people who aren't tripping. Look, you can see an ore boat slipping through the canal….” Waves of rolling geometry unfolded as the gigantic ore boat passed across their visual field, a pattern of light and shadow pulsing asymmetrically as the iron bulk of the ship slid under the raised lift bridge. The young man remembered having been a child during the lift bridge centennial. Suddenly three people quit talking and hung up their cell phones at the same time causing a seemingly spontaneous hush of silence. The big ship gathered their attention and everyone privately had the feeling they were watching a glacier slide past 10,000 years ago in the exact same spot. They were silent as the mile high wall of ice overtook them. “Waiter? Yes, we'd like to see a dessert menu.” A personal account- I've consumed this product on several occasions. This very enjoyable item is a quality value that really lasts. It was a full, rich all day deep down fresh that really satisfies. Before I used this exciting product I was a blotchy, smelly fetishist with knobby knees. Now I can really feel fresh and confident about my smooth handling and performance. I've got a nutty crunch and my whole family can feel the confidence! Thank you Product! A spot appeared on the sun, which grew larger, until it became obvious it was the shadow of a flying man backlit by the sun. It was City Councilor-at-Large Donny Ness, the omnipotent, time-traveling, solar-powered extraterrestrial on final approach. Coming in like a cruise missile, he touched terra before us like a feather, eyes glowing red and then normal as he powered down. “I'm for whatever's best for Duluth,” he said humbly but confidently. The crowd went wild. Third District Councilor Russ Stewart uncurled from his upside-down perch in the dark rafters. His dark, scallop-edged cape flared out as he dropped to the floor and landed in a crouch, hands on a) a throwing blade nestled in his utility belt, and b.) an unidentified hand-made high-tech weapon, probably a compressed gas-delivery device. “We're going to pass this legislation,” he said. Small wispy island chain clouds sail over the crest of the hillside. They flow out to where the land meets the lake, and then pile up against a layer of warm air from the far shore, which caps the lake transparently like a safety seal. The little clouds rack up against the barrier for a while, then drain away towards Canada. Thick molasses sheet of clouds sluices over the hillside into the lake, filling the basin of cold air with zero viz. It's like an iced mocha in here. Tendrils of clouds like broken tips of jellyfish tentacles scraped off in the tide. As if trying to rejoin their host, they eerily wend uphill after the rain, crawling up the humid streets like ghostly komodo dragons. They ride a rising tide of cool air, an invisible river of it flows into the basin through the streambeds, on the backs of the streams. As the level of cold air rises and sloshes around, the tendrils snake over the ridge like noodles leaving a bowl. Waveform cloud, pink in the setting sun, covers the whole sky like a tattered banner. The lake turns pink. Punctuated by white half-moon, edges soft through the warm hazy cloud, baby blue background peeks through the negative space. Most Revered Attorney General of these United States of Christ, Incorporated: Your Aptitude, it is I your humble field agent of Homeland Security serving the Empire loyally here in America's Northland. Sir, I must reiterate that this region is secure from the threat of international terror's reach and my talents are being wasted. I had a disoriented young man tell me he was a thought criminal and that he harbored negative feelings for the administration's policies. Sir, this man is to date this biggest menace to national security that I've uncovered here. The only car chase I've seen was two weirdos running down a steep street after their white Chevy Corsica's parking brake slipped. I think I'm losing my mind. All I do is drink coffee and stare out at the lake. So haunting…I… Ever since I found this magical hat, it's been one fanciful misadventure after another. A whimsical unicorn and a talking Pez dispenser have taken me on a miraculous journey of discovery to a wondrous fantasyland. I learned that just being yourself is a magical experience and that we all have a magic hat deep inside us, some of us deeper than others. Each member of this family was defended by their friends, reviled by their enemies, and deeply loved – with certain reservations – by their fellow family members. Group hugs were out. Temporary truces were the order of the day, forming and reforming amid the rancor. They held over fierce winds and deep chasms, but they were temporary. Corinthian columns of magnificent splendor were continually built upon cracked foundations. So according to you, god put me here, on this quickly deteriorating world, with the charge to do the best I can for essentially no reward in THIS life, with only a promise of something better, right after I die ? And I just have to believe it? And according to you, if I don't believe it, I'm going to be in a world of pain for eternity? According to you, if I think - by dint of the reason your god gave me – if I think that it's all a bunch of hooey, and that you are a dupe, a sucker, a mug, a victim, a fool, that you are a bore and a waste of my time - because I'm busy doing more actual good in the world than you, because I'm greener and I vote better? And I'm still going to hell? Hell, which is doled out like a threat to me, but which holds as much weight for me as fairyland, or your heaven filled with harps? I'm going to hell? You are my hell. Because I don't care what god told you, but god told me not to listen to you and to close this door right now in your f-ing face. Get off my property or I'm calling the cops. I'm throwing the baby Jesus out with the bathwater. I approached the gentlemen in a quizzical way. He stank of cheese. ‘Wisconsin' I thought. All of a sudden a person from Minnesota did something polite. I had a sudden urge to rape cattle as befits my Texas heritage. UMD's Quantum Memory Acceleration Project has released a study entitled Future Echo: An Assessment of Timestream Stability in the Northland. A non-local effect has been discovered wherein all biological life in areas of temporal instability such as the Duluth region can inherit genes from their descendents in the future. The human population is particularly prone to the high mutation rate because of the sheer number of choices people can make. Since the future stands on the present but is just as real, it feeds back and causes you to evolve from your decisions in ways that are almost totally unpredictable. The type of pizza you order for lunch may determine who your offspring mates with 60 generations from now. People are adapting to environmental conditions that do not yet exist, genomes racing to integrate genes spawned from unimaginable selection pressures. Some individuals seem to be reaching the limitations of being human as quantum fluctuations bleed backwards through time from the other side of the species barrier, not mere functional adaptations, but mutations which demonstrate such structural flourish that nature's inherent creativity can no longer be denied. And some people seem to have no future, their dreams haunted by the unnerving quantum hiss of their bloodline's termination. The law was closing in on Menno Zwonk and his two hysterically screaming cronies. Zwonks' traditional white shirt was streaked with sweat, bulging shoulder-holster strapped across his enormous chest and shoulders. His ham-sized farmer's hands gripped the wheel of the stolen garbage truck which straddled the two lanes of the High Bridge as they rocketed towards their rendezvous with destiny. The fugitive Amishman wore the grim look of a man with nothing to lose, his henchmen shrieking as Minnesota troopers raced up both lanes from the Duluth side as Wisconsin troopers followed suit from the rear. Bales of stolen hay were flying apart from the top of the overstuffed garbage truck; each of the truck's dumpster-lifting hydraulic arms held two mooing, bleeding heifer moo cows speared gorily to the front of the truck, held fast by the partially raised mechanical prongs. Their heist had gone terribly wrong. That cheese-eating Wisconsin farmer had come out blasting after they'd raided his barn. Zwonk had laid him out with his .45 and speared himself four cows as they fled the scene. They needed the hay to feed the latest batch of fighting ostriches they were raising for the Twin Harbors' insatiable lust for ostrich and emu bloodsport. “Open fire you useless son of a pickpocket!” Zwonk bellowed. Tears streaming down his musclebound neck, neurotic would-be criminal Jiminy Christmas fired his .38 revolver out the window towards the approaching cops. The tiny gun misfired in his over-sized hand, cylinder falling out and disappearing into the wind. He wailed like Lucille Ball, turning towards Zwonk in despair. “You gotta get rid of the beef!” hollered the diminutive Slapdash Flapdoodle, the third man of the crew. “I'm ain't getting' rid of the beef!” “You gotta get rid of the beef!” “I ain't getting' rid of the beef!” “Mennnoo!” Flapdoodle squealed as their head-on collision with the two Minnesota patrol cars seemed imminent. “Bah!” Zwonk spat as he punched the brakes and released the lever to lower the garbage truck's mechanical arms. The four cows went sailing through the air and through the windshields of the oncoming Minnesota troopers' patrol car which pinwheeled ridiculously as the garbage truck sailed between them on two wheels. Eyes gleaming beneath the brim of his black hat, Zwonk watched in the rear view mirror as the Wisconsin troopers collided with their cow-filled counterparts in steel and bovine mayhem. A cow mooed in agony. “That was too close,” thought Zwonk as he sneered at his worthless accomplices. “If only they weren't so good with the birds, I'd dump these losers in the lake. We need a new caper. Something bolder than just raising giant two-legged birds for combat in the Northland. I wonder…” The Duluth Aquarium caught his eye in the near distance. “Hmmmm….”
Yeah, you like that, don't you, receptive partner? What's my name? Say my name. I'm going to give it to you, receptive partner. I'm going to give it to you good. Yeah. Take it, receptive partner. Take it. Yes, oh yes, now that you mention it I do enjoy being penetrated in that manner. Your name is Buford. The Ramthans established tentative footholds throughout their solar system on various moons and planets. But one by one, impacts and environmental catastrophes took their toll. Their home planet was the first to go, then the colonies slowly winked out. The Zeta Reticulans, for instance, had a perfectly good planet that floated through a molecular cloud, poisoning everyone. The Alpha Centurions couldn't stop killing each other and finally pulled their own plug. They left behind a rich legacy of art and letters. The good folks of Geddi Prime had a rather advanced civilization that cusped the dawn of colonizing their solar system. But their planet received a staggering impact that shattered it through and through. The largest pieces managed to re-cohere somewhat, but it was a fiery conflagration of lava and undreamed of, Godforsaken earthquakes. Eventually the planet appeared to be a fully solid body again. But it was streaked with ridges, furrows, and cracks, where once it had exploded. The Geddi Prime people, amazingly, survived in some small measure, like bacteria surviving an antibiotic. But they were decimated and never the same. They petered out a few million years later. The Betans of Arp 51 had almost evolved beyond war when their planet exploded for no scientifically accepted reason. The resulting asteroid bombardment wiped out the generous Thetan people on the next planet over. When the Googol race of Hyphon-2 expanded their base of operations at lightspeed, it took 3 millennia to colonize the nearest three stars, and 5 eons to reach the galactic core, painstakingly hopping the planets, having colonial wars, surviving smaller catastrophes and epidemics. It took a mere twenty-five hundred years to wipe them out with a lucky galactic synchronization beam, an unknown danger for which there is no defense. A wide enough path of destruction obviates the survival benefits of a wide range. He assembled a holographic map of her body by subliminally projecting Newtonian gridlines over the drop and curve of her breast, the archway of her back, the gentle pouch of her uterus, the swoop of her hip, the triangle of her pubis. Her body mimetized the landscape of hills, forests, and swirling water. She metastasized into a topographic simalcrum of the apotheosis of his subconscious mind. I Wish They All Could Be Minnesota Girls Now, I'm not saying there aren't beautiful Minnesota girls of color aplenty. I have seen them, and loved them, every one of their attractive smiles and brown-eyed glances. And they are legitimate loving creatures of God's good plenty. But oh, the Nordic girls. Their angular faces of almost severe beauty, every one of them chiseled from marble, beautiful parallelograms of faces, crystallinear jaws and cheekbones demarcating geometrical facets, like a diamond. Their overall exuberant fitness, the way they'd just as soon do extreme sports, scramble up a snow bank, or screw in a canoe, hearty girls with high-spirited appetites and endurance. And the Norweigan ass, by which you shall know them. Cue my man Freddie: “Oh, the Lord has blessed me tonight with beautiful ladies!” The Fall of the “Monkey Suit People” Hunters With a race of beings that looks a lot like guys in gorilla suits, the only footage ever produced was simply too unbelievable. “What we are suggesting, gentlemen, is a race of protohumans: an elusive North American ape, which for reasons unknown to science, have chosen to clothe themselves in commercially available gorilla costumes. This makes their very existence impossible to prove, even with the finest photographic or video equipment in existence. We furthermore contend that these elusive creatures, as an adaptive strategy, have simply out-hoaxed the debunkers.” Metal mayhem befell quaint tourist city of Duluth when two oar boats engaged in a Mexican standoff and attempted to go under the lift bridge at the same time from opposite directions The captain of the Yörk Johnson got carried away and the drunken skipper of the Sven Dongmeyer tooted his horn in an unfriendly manner. The bridge navigator had left his pimply faced teen nephew in charge of the lift bridge while he ran out for a fish taco. The shearing forces and torque reached astronomical proportions. The grinding noise could be heard as far away as Cloquet, like the whole town was at the dentist. The canal jammed up like an impacted colon. Luckily, Plucky the tugboat was on the job – Uh oh, here comes Plucky 's arch-nemesis Crabby , and before you know it they were pushing the snarled knot from both ends and it twisted up like a towering blazing doobie of iron, nearly scraping the underside of the lift bridge, burly sailors jumping from all sides and screaming like little girls. History has erased the name of the hapless city councilor who recommended pounding the mess free by repeatedly dropping the lift bridge onto it like a trash compactor. Come see Duluth's biggest tourist attraction, “The Tangled Mass.” Who could have guessed that a hapless submarine was passing underneath at the time, and became trapped under the entombing wreckage, the seaman's air slowly running out and their communications fried so they had no way of contacting surface Duluth and warning them of increased alien giant squid activity. Items and products of all assortments are available with a deep down fresh that leaves your whole family feeling confident and secure. Exciting activities which really satisfy are about bringing people together with a nutty crunch the whole family can enjoy. Try the new The Accu-Vag Anu-Shield to prevent those targeting mixups that she finds so uncomfortable. Tired of protesting your innocence after those delicate negotiations have broken down? How many times has your surveillance plane of love veered into the no-fly zone of that special someone? Promotional offer includes free tube of Anu-Slam with complimentary Anu-Slam pump. Some assembly required. Atop the lift bridge, First District City Councilor Laurie Johnson deflected bullets and a piece of shrapnel with her bulletproof bracelets. The mad scientist and Councilor-at-Large Jim Stauber piloted a one-man hoverbike at ramming speed, guns chugging away. Johnson's superhuman athletic prowess enabled her to dodge & weave & flip and leap up towards the sled, lasso arcing through the air, lashing Stauber to the bike and using her momentum to swing and smash him into the structure. The maneuver traced a figure eight in the air. It owed as much to ballet as to an act of violence. Stauber and the bike plunged into the heaving, choppy waters of the channel as Laurie took to the air. Her shimmering, mythological homeland beckoned. But great Hera! There goes the Troublealert! Mayor Bergson has been possessed and is unleashing his full array of mind-powers on the downtown area! He's shattered all the glass in the Tech Village, blown all the manhole covers off with jets of steam, and shoppers, tourists, and local scenesters are running everywhere, panicked and screaming with nosebleeds, right into traffic! Don't you give me all that crap about the collective unconscious erupting into the waking world, young man. Oh, you better believe you're embedded in a system of mythological processes. It's a little late to be making offerings to THIS vengeful deity. If I hear one more word about “autonomous archetypes” I'm gonna get pre-historical on your ass. The Flying Islands of Lake Superior The clouds sailed by like sounding whales. Sleepy UFOs buzzed lazily between them. The flying islands of Lake Superior came into view from the bow of the watercraft, shimmering like mirages. The fauna of the flying islands had been established by waves of naturalists as identical to the surrounding region: black bears, moose, beavers, lynx, deer. Sasquatches filled the woods and watched from the shadows, just out of sight, coordinating their movements with expert birdcalls and other animal sounds. The time was drawing close when they would make their presence known to humanity, but for now they were content to roam the woods of the land and of the flying islands in secret. Cut the engine as the craft pulls up to the vicinity of the flying island, bristling beneath with stalactites. Several longer ones brush the surface of the gently lapping water. It has been theorized that all islands formed this way, with stalactites from flying islands growing down into the water and taking root in the silt. For reasons unknown by science, only Lake Superior retained a portion of its original inventory of flying islands. The team of naturalists deployed their mountain climbing gear and scaled a stalactite as long as a bus, hauling themselves over the edge to the surface of the island. They set up camp in a steep ravine about ten minutes inland. From here they would coordinate their cataloging efforts. Sasquatches peered from the heavy timbers and thick leaf bowers, as always assessing the movements and intentions of the human intruders. From a ridgetop, one of the naturalists spied another flying island coming into view through the mist, then another. They plowed gracefully through the fluid fog, wavefronts of air splitting the low-lying clouds into tendrils which curled around and over them, snaking through the stalactites beneath, wrapping up the treetops like presents. A UFO flew between the islands tracing an S-curve. As the naturalists mounted equipment on tripods to record and measure this unusual confluence of three flying islands, the sasquatches responded to a warning birdcall from a sentry and retreated further inland to their caves and hidden grottos, reacting to some unseen stimulus of danger. The islands circled each other in the vortex of wind and subtly plunging atmospheric pressure created by their proximity. The instruments of the naturalists beeped and whirred and hummed, lights blinking, dials whirring. One of their number was an amateur geologist and detected the telltale signs of unusually large copper and magnetite deposits. His instruments indicted a small ambient charge was building. He took note of a preternatural stillness as the subliminal absence of the sasquatches made itself felt, and as atmospheric ions reversed their charges. The flying islands continued their maudlin ballet, transfixed in each other's orbit. The small watercraft of the naturalists, tied to the tip of a dripping stalagtite, was jostled by subtle movements from beneath the water. Slowly, it was engulfed by ten huge tentacles of an alien giant squid, which pulled it down under the surface leaving nothing but an oil slick and a flotsam and jetsam of clothing articles and a bobbing thermos. The stage was set. Time without end my eternal foe you return to lacerate the flesh of these meat-bound angels. When you were the Prince of Ten Thousand Cuts I drove you into the Earth. I found you harvesting souls among the Aztecs who called you simply “Chipped Obsidian”. And now you're back again and you've left a trail you knew I would follow. You slice your way across reality mutilating everything and everywhere you move. You think you have the advantage in this time- you wish to be known as “The Glass King”. I'm tired of this game, to be the plaything of gods. But I have a new name as well. No longer do they whisper about “The Clever Man” or “John-of-Iron”. Now they call me “The Industrial Kid” and when I find you I'm going to show you why. Ghost Submarines of Lake Superior Ghost submarines sail dreamily through the air above the snow white waters. Great white lampreys slithered deep in search of a new host. Somewhere there was a somnolent fifty-foot sturgeon, or relic mosasaur. Somewhere a heaving monster will receive these teeth tonight. A small, pale research sub slowly motors past, blinking lights like a UFO. Above the surface it is yellow but here, self-illumined with phosphorescent search beams, it resembled a large, deep-sea creature.No one knows how the alien giant squids came to earth, or how long they have been here. Did they swim silently through the depths of space in a grand, horrible procession from their home world? Was earth their destination, or did it merely wander unluckily into their path as they traversed the solar byways? Get away from me magic hat! I don't like you any more! I don't like you magic hat! What did you do to Mr. Unicorn? This is wrong magic hat this is wrong! There was a type of paste with a red cap and applicator that was clearly flavored to be eaten by children. Dried Elmer's glue was also standard. It had the delicious quality of retaining a glob of liquid glue inside a dried shell thus being a sort of do-it-yourself jelly do-nut you could enjoy the day after squirting into your desk. If there was a reason not to eat dried globs of glue left by other kids it wasn't on my mind, you know what I'm saying. I think they changed the formula to discourage it from being eaten, at which time I moved on to erasers and crayons. Chamber of Commerce CEO David Ross, a monstrous vatgrown head with psychic powers, had a jet engine strapped to his ass for a chair. He had just diabolically destroyed the entire Vista Fleet, which bobbed in pieces around the oilsoaked harbor. His assrocket throttled up into a higher gear and he sped away, accelerating to Mach One by the time he reached Split Rock Lighthouse. He soared out over the lake laughing with glee, ESP radar showing no bogeys in pursuit, untouchable in his getaway. Those writers he'd trussed up in twisted little traps had kept the City Council at bay, just long enough... Now the heroes will spend their energies cleaning up the mess I made of that harbor, as I destroyed evidence of my wider associations… Duluth City Councilor-at- Large Donny Ness touched down on the Lakewalk rock beach, cape swirling about in the gusty summer breezes. Russ Stewart was there shrouded in cloak and cowl, scrying the viewscreen of a handheld tracking device, as dark and brooding as the Third District he represented. Ness called as he walked up, “Got anything there?” Stewart's viewscreen snapped shut in exasperation. “You tell me. You're the one with telescopic vision. He's not hard to miss.” Ness squinted and looked out across the horizon. “Oh yeah. He's just about over the deepest part of the lake. Going fast, too. Geez.” Ness looked around. Stewart had vanished. Ah well. He knew Stewart would do what he thought was right. But – Ness squinted again – David Ross was receding fast. Ness knelt down on the rock beach and looked around. He picked a couple rocks flat rocks up and compared them. Both were palm sized and round, but one was rounder, smoother, and had a little scoop to it. He chose that one. He stood up, took aim, pulled his arm back, and skipped that rock all the way across the lake at Mach 6, hitting Ross right in the assrocket, which sent him crashing and skittering at the speed of sound across the pounding, punishing waters. He'd be lucky to survive, if Ness hadn't been prepared to immediately go rescue him, Ness also having the ability to fly in Mach multiples. But suddenly, Laurie Johnson, City Councilbeing from the First District and Amazon warrior princess, flew over and landed. She was closely followed by the Fifth District's Russ Stover, whose flame-generating abilities enabled him to fly. Also joining them was Greg Gilbert, the surgery-and-steroids-enhanced supersoldier from the Second Council District, who came bounding and flipping over fences and stairs long-jumping the sculpture garden and high-jumping the train tracks to get to them. “Ness! Look out! The Duluth City Council of Earth X is attacking!” Duluth, Minnesota: Desert City of Sand The greenhouse effect and a creeping polar shift conspire with catastrophic results. Duluth's weather undergoes a radical change as the lake dries up. It's 100 years in the future and Duluth is a city on a dune in an arid desert. The populace has adapted and go snowmobiling, skiing, and snowboarding all over the crests of sand. The top of the lift bridge will soon be completely engulfed by the marching giant sand dune that sits atop Canal Park. It slopes away into the yawning chasm of arid sand and heat mirages as far as the eye can see. Ore boats swamped in waves of sand like fallen monoliths, pitching and yawing imperceptibly over the centuries, scoured out by the abrasive winds. Camel caravans make their way among them, trading goods with local tribes. Like a mythical Cassandra, he was cursed with a kind of linguistic virus that mired his communication with certain unintended effects. He simply could not tell when he was speaking plainly or when he was saying the most outrageous things possible. As well he failed to be able to distinguish between the unintended saying of outrageous things, and the saying of perfectly innocuous things that people took outrageously. He could recite a grocery list and people behaved as if he was staunchly advocating the most horrible crimes. It made him respect the archetypal Cassandra's headaches of never being believed. Like everything she said maybe could have been actual crazy blather, except that it accidentally made those impossible things she spoke of come true. She wasn't a prophet who was never believed, so much as a crazy god. And he was not so much a sleepwalking inciter of riots, or Buddistic heretical seditionist, as a blithe captive in a language he didn't understand. UMD's Quantum Memory Acceleration Project. Dr. Hummingbird is sipping juice after the experimental probing of Duluth's temporal fabric. “We were wrong. Wrong about everything. We must revise our ontological categories in regards to the nature of the timespill and the perception of Duluth's anomalous time by the people.” Her support team waited for her to continue. “If we accept at face value the appearance of extradimensional entities where the tear is the deepest, then we are forced to consider either that sanity shreds under such pressure or that these systems actually represent themselves as conscious. Well, whether the future is collapsing into the present or not our course is clear.” She produced an ancient Chinese coin and flipped it into the air off her thumb. It hung in the air and rotated in space before the amused scientists. “Let's hit the casino. Drinks are on me and I feel lucky.”
Atlantean Cities of Lake Superior Melting glaciers are blamed as Lake Superior outgrows its borders and floods the countryside. The city of Superior is completely drowned. Only the top of Duluth's hillside remains, with the waves of Lake Superior lapping at 4th Street. Park Point, Canal Park, the lift bridge, downtown, the West Side, and both hospitals are lost to the surging tide. Duluth becomes the Venice of the Northland, with people poling boats around over 3rd Street. Scuba-diving archeologists compete with treasure hunters for the historical plunder of downtown and the government buildings. As the water keeps rising, it crests the hillside floods Hermantown. Duluthians escape by building hanging structures from the antenna farm, an archipelago of dangling buildings connected by rope bridges, ore boats docked for supplies and hookers. Duluth becomes a true zenith city, a city in the sky. Its reflection in the waters of Lake Superior displaces the true drowned city beneath the waves, fair Duluth, now a Northlandic Atlantis.
The sky is white with heat and sun. Desert voice in Duluth calls people to prayer. Superior Street swamped with sand. Snowmobiles jump around humps of sand up and down the streets and alleys. The lakewalk is still pretty intact, walk there in your robes over the silent, still highways, now filled in and buried by the front of the advancing dunes. It provides an excellent view of Sand Lake, the desert that is the former site of Lake Superior. 100 years ago, icicles hung from cars like fangs. But in desert Duluth, the skyscrapers of frozen steam rolling off the waters have been replaced by colossal sandstorms rolling off the arid wastes. Instead of stately ships, camel caravans come into view on the horizon. Abandoned ore boats, half submerged or more, toss in centuries-long slo-motion waves of sand. Some are stuck through the heads of dunes like scimitars, casting long moonshadows across the cool nighttime desert. During the day the temperature soars well past 100 degrees, and the hollow steel ships ring with the heat and howl like sounding whales in the shifting sands and scouring winds. top The Lake Superior Submarine Fleet had been launched some forty years ago, although under such strict cover of secrecy that this essentially remained a rumor. The submerged fleet plowed beneath the mirrored waves, among the dark currents, lonely sonar sounding forlorn pings in the search for the unknown. Several undersea menaces had had been averted in dramatic encounters with the Lake Superior Submarine Fleet in missions whose details would never see the light of day, just like the poor officers of the Bjorn Glarbenheizner who went down in a punctured sub just to be sure that the alien giant squid lashed to the hull stayed good and dead. Or the brave members of the Fighting Muskie , cannibalized on one of Lake Superior's flying islands by a Sasquatch. Or the trumpeted martyrs of the Bong II who rammed minisub after minisub of graverobbing shipwreck pirates until the torpedoes burst in their bays. The quantum physicists go up against the nanotech crowd in a turf war. “You're polluting the quantum environment with your nanolevel interference!” “Well, you don't own space-time, now do ya? No, as a matter of fact we own it, and we will sue you til you're blue in the face for the unlawful use of our products as evidenced by your complaint.” Reality is tested in federal court. Feynman diagrams are presented as evidence. Huge devices like neutron detectors and mechanical random number generators are forklifted through the halls of justice, informed by real-time data from the surrounding ring of a perfectly centered tunnel system, a 26-mile particle accelerator and atom smasher. But what they don't know is that their own concentrated technologies, the very wheels of justice itself, are bad for the environment. Very bad. Reality distorts as rigorous double-blind physics experiments begin yielding completely contrary results at different times. A matriculation of astronomers converts to astrology by year's end. The lawsuit drags on and on. Legal standards begin to change along with the bending grades and perspectives. Precedent becomes fluid. The law becomes philosophy and science becomes magic. By the end of the trial, the entire natural order of the world has been destroyed. But justice is served. The man with three medical bracelets and a mangy seeing eye dog, the narcoleptic tourette's syndrome sufferer, is a spy. His glaucoma is so bad though, the only time he can see good enough to spy is when he's smoking mad reefer. “Ass! Do you have the microfilm? Ass! Man am I tired - narcolepsy you know - just need to catch a nap here ... zzz ... Ass! Down boy!! Hey do you know where I can score some good nugs man? My glaucoma is killin' me - it's the pressure behind my eyes man! Ass!” He passes out. The hotel clerk fumbles through the man's medical bracelets for a number, anything, finds a phone number and dials it at the lobby desk. It is the narcolept agent's cell phone and it rings on his hip, waking him. “Hello? Ass! Ah, thank you, mate! Down boy! My eyes! Ass! No, Barky! I just need to rest my eyes for a Ass! You know somewhere I could take a nap? Ass! Ass! Ass! Hey, didn't you say you could score me some buds? Down, Jenkins! I've got to take a long trip. Ass!” In this way he would be given free hotel rooms and often score good medicinal weed which would enable him to gather intelligence. Sasquatch anthropologist Lars Johnson wrote in his field journal: “December 20 th : They think of me now as a kind of family pet. Big Mo definitely doesn't like me but is kept in check by Virginia and Daisy, who groom me, share food and make lewd sexual motions. Big Mo is just as likely to kick me as he exits the cave, which could be fatal. Eating habits have only slightly changed since last month's relative plenty. But with the exhausting of the den of mice in the woodpile of the abandoned cabin, Virginia is just as likely to be cooking up bark.” Sasquatch Anthropologist
Ghost Submarines of Lake Superior
UMD Quantum Memory Acceleration Project Flying Scorpions The Great Wall of Duluth, Minnesota A development firm builds a wall of giant skyscraper-condos right on the lake, completely destroying the view from everywhere in town. There is a deluge of lawsuits from outraged property owners and other citizens. These lawsuits are smacked down like mosquitoes for being “anti-development and anti-jobs.” Said City Councilperson Green Lantern, “Those skyscrapers are sure to generate a lot of tax revenue, that's why we waived the usual strict standards for the environmental impact statement.” Meanwhile, vegetation dies across the hillside, starved for light in the shadow of the colossal death towers. Serotonin levels are at an all time low as Seasonal Affect Disorder cripples the city. Many of the citizens dwelling in the tower shadows mutate into near-sightless Mole People, dying eyes barely responsive to light. Now they navigate the dark using infrared impressions, subhuman sounds akin to bat squeaks, and bizarre electromagnetic senses attuned to the piezoelectric fields of the hillside. The renegade ore boat captain of the Crammenfjorder rallies the crew. “Lads, the citizens of Duluth are counting on some crazy group of bastards to do what's right. I say we are those bastards!” A mighty cheer goes up. Crewmen rappel down the front of the ship to apply the war paint. The Crammenfjorder gets a headstart from the far side of Lake Superior, engines screaming. Emerging from a wall of fog at ramming speed with a bone white death's head emblazoned across the bow, the outlaw ore boat plows through the base of a towering condo. The crew had unknowingly broken the ore boat speed record in their zeal and thirst for vengeance. Impossibly, the ore boat emerges from the other side of the mortally wounded tower and continues up the hillside as the neurotransmitter-depleted residents look on in quiet shock. Houses and businesses are destroyed as the out of control ship careens all the way up to 9 th street before arcing back down in a terrible trajectory. Slipping sideways on the icy streets, pulped cars, and houses, the massive Crammenfjorder takes out whole neighborhoods like a huge spinning unpiloted snowboard from hell. Some crew member is blasting bumping techno beats from the bridge as the meteoric thousand-foot ore boat sheds streams of shattered debris from all sides. The captain cries out for the anchor to be dropped and it ejaculates from the front of the ship, sinking into the blacktop and raking a jagged scar across the hillside, pulling up sewer lines which spray putrescent filth in 360 degrees. Finally the anchor catches with a jarring snap and the ass end of the ship swings into another garish tower causing a catastrophic domino effect of collapsing condos chock full of people from the cities. (It would later emerge that the developers did not mind the demolition of their poorly engineered mega-project as they were overinsured and made out handily on the destruction.) When the dust settles, the dented, torn and steaming ore boat totters atop a heap of debris, a length of skywalk strewn across the bow and the sound of groaning iron filling the pause. The sun pierces the haze and causes the pasty white residents to shriek in agony and clutch their eyes. In a double display of irony, it then clouds over immediately to the seeming relief of the misshapen Duluthians. “My god,” says the horrified captain surveying the carnage. “We're too late. Our families are gone - there's no one left but the Mole People of Duluth...” It's not what it looks like, Timmy. Mr.Unicorn was out to get us, don't you see? We gotta stick together Timmy now more than ever. You gotta believe me. Soon they're gonna be callin' you Tim and there won't be any more Magic Hat don't you get it!?! You're not gonna understand some of the things I have to do but you just have to stick with me… I did it for us Timmy - I did it so we can be FREEEEEEEEEEEEEE!… I'm sorry you feel that way about it, Timmy. The Flying Islands of Lake Superior Giant UFOs disguise themselves as flying islands by sitting still for ten thousand years and just letting geology grow over them. Then they take off and drift about like somnolent nations of wildlife, deer and bramble, sasquatch and pine. The sasquatch, by all appearances, pilot the islands with trance-induced, complex group activities of some kind. Lazy UFOs in the haze. The three flying islands careened monolithically in slow motion. Two of them grazed edges in an island-trembling collision, then again. Trees and cliff rock pulverized to powder in the slowly building explosive grinding. The sasquatch known as Big Mo was terrified and ran a few steps screaming and trembling. Lars the sasquatch anthropologist saw his chance. He still had his old rusty grappling hook and rope in his satchel, the three items he was able to relocate and repair after the sasquatch family confiscated his belongings and began to think of him as their pet. He ran towards the shattering edges of the islands grinding like gears, wrestling the bulky hook and rope out of the satchel as he ran, negotiating the tumbling rocks and falling trees. Big Mo could have recaptured him in a second, but stood transfixed and terrified by the sight of the edge of the island violently merging with another landscape. There are those people who you love beyond reason, knowing you will never be together. There was a woman in college who was so foxy, I couldn't even masturbate about her. I couldn't even take advantage of myself. It was like the masturbatory circuits became overwhelmed. It simply did not compute. I got nothing but an error message. The file wouldn't upload. My own fantasy-fevered brain was like “You're kiddin' right?” Olaf had been a little edgy since all the reports on strange activity in Duluth's underground infrastructure. Twenty foot squid reported in the tunnels by utility workers. And the Mole People who only came out at night and had a thriving alternative economy under the city streets. Some of his best friends were Mole People but still they unnerved him. He walks to the liquor store nervously eyeing the storm drains and manhole covers. He is so relieved when he gets home he cracks open a brewsky and fails to see the now hideously evil magic hat make its way into his crib until that creepy bassline starts up and then the drums kick in. “I'm the Magic Hat, I'm rollin' where it's at, if ya don't see me comin' then I'll leave ya flat, I used to be good like a hatty should, now I'm bumpin' bitches off the road like Karen Silkwood.” Ruthless. The Grandmas came sniffing around like truffle hogs, looking for grandkids. Among them is an eighth-level jujitsu blackbelt granny from Currituck, North Carolina. She knows so much but at 85 her body is infirm. As she has aged, her moves have become tighter and she knows how to use everything she's got. A carload of thugs are trailing her in Florida as she leaves the beach for a bridge game. She has been made as an easy target and she realizes their intent to mug her even before they stop the car. She gauges when to cross the street to the hotel room to best avoid them. But sure enough they pull up behind her and get out, four beefy roughs. They approach and she slices one man's wrist laterally with her thin kozuka blade. He is screaming and spraying blood all over his comrades, who pull the plug and beat it. Granny saunters back to the hotel and orders a mint julep. “Sorry I'm late, ladies.” The Lake Superior Submarine Fleet was as varied as the private investors who funded it. Grim arms merchant and ruthless businessman Vlad Bubkas captained the sleek black “ Calamari with Red Sauce ” with a crew of 42. Making up in maneuverability what it lacked in muscle, the crew of the Calamari rarely spoke. Brooding like their dark haired captain, they lived to position their deadly craft into the mouths of alien giant squids- the one vantage point where they were vulnerable to the explosive tipped harpoons. The obvious contrast was the raucous crew of the flamboyantly gay Starship Fabulous , a hot pink 200 man nuclear sub obtained from the former Soviet Union by a consortium of US Naval personnel who been dismissed because of their sexual preference. There were countless smaller research subs, most lightly armed if at all. The stately Marthaler clan, a family of furniture magnates, had commissioned a 75 man attack sub with hard wood floors and soft European earthtones in it's luxurious but affordable interior. There were grumblings among some of the older crews that there were too many hangers-on, new jacks and pretenders. Captain Flaughtery of the Wee Leprechaun and his first mate O'Dougal , in their cups over a game of billiards down at nautical themed pub Squiddies, could be heard in their lament. “Now every trust fund kid and lottery winner runs out and buys a submarine. Subs are the new sports car, the new yacht, the new vacation home. One tour around the Lake and you're a frigging squidhunter!” “I thought we were a frigging secret society not a fashion show. Is this what happened to the masons?” There was a running bet on whether Donald Trump, Martha Stewart or Paris Hilton would be the first to have a submarine based TV show on Fox. “Yeh, what about the red hats then?” came a voice at the bar. All the chatter died down. “Yeh, that's what I thought.” The big Amishman got off his barstool with a mug in his hand and stared down all challengers. “Those grannies may have been new at squidhunting, might've had more experience playin' bridge and drinkin' mint juleps but they knew how ta die alright, I wager. A toast to the fightin' grannies of the cruiser class attack sub Bea Arthur who went down in a tangle of tentacles when they shoulda hightailed it outta there. “ They had learned the hard way that squids hunt in packs. GPS software plus mortgage deals in every targeting system. During a pitched battle a window pops up: “Your trial subscription has expired.” “Not now, dammit! Not now! The highest tech machine gun has bugs that are proving hard to wipe out. On occasion it won't fire because its server doesn't recognize the bullets' ISP. A single mis-key and the thing freezes up and has to be rebooted. Instead of “Medic!” one hears tortured cries across the battlefield of “IT! IT!” Nanobombs with quantum shrapnel that blow apart your atomic bonds. Suddenly all the iron and carbon in your body turns to lead, sulfur, and barium, literally in a flash as photons are given off in the reaction. But they're bad for the environment and so the peaceniks who oppose their use get spied on and picked up in anti-terrorism raids with no recourse to justice and shipped overseas to countries that allow torture, while the architects of more than three 9/11s worth of innocent deaths in the name of fighting terrorism remain above reproach. Irony bombs that harness the interaction of the mind with the substrate of reality to cause the most unexpected events possible. They explode ideas about what bombs are like, dog. The couple now had to decide whether to kill it or nurture it. “Perhaps we should nurture it,” said the man. “No, I'm just kidding. I wanted you to think I was turning into a homosexual. Of course we must kill it.” “I also think we should kill it,” said the woman. “I'm reporting you for witchcraft,” said the man The psychogeography student got off the bus in the middle of the block. It was still dark in the early morning and, having been dropped off at random, the neighborhood was unfamiliar. She slowly sauntered over to the street lamp and played with the settings until she found one she liked- a rich vermillion color bathed the houses and cars. There were three houses which were flying the flag of autonomy. They'd been temporarily converted into psychic environments designed to elicit certain emotional ranges and experiences. She walked by them getting a sense for the interior although knowing that each one would have its surprises. She kept going until she reached the open manhole with decorative reflective cones around it. Faintly the beat could be heard from inside. Starting down the ladder she absentmindedly thought about coming back to the house with the melancholy deep blue motif. It was too nice a night to turn in just yet and she wanted to stroll the subterranean street market down in the tunnels, maybe do some dancing. A shadow passes across the full moon. A flying island is briefly arcing over Duluth as part of it's wide orbit above Lake Superior. She catches a glimpse of a bonfire on the island accompanied by the sounds of distant drums and laughter as the island disappears into a cloud bank over the lake. Humming quietly she disappears beneath the street. If she was afraid of the Mole People of Duluth it didn't show on her face. Alien Giant Squids of Lake Superior “Trudy, this is the first time that the authorities have admitted the tunnel-squid hunt even took place much less allowed it to be televised. The teams are really getting excited and we'll meet them, but first let's have a look at these squids. Hans?” “Thanks Chip. We all know that Lake Superior has its share of invasive species but here's what we didn't know until recently- quaint tourist city Duluth, Minnesota and the shipping lanes in the area are plagued by a pernicious breed of giant squid. Yes, you heard me, GIANT squids so huge that some of them can occasionally pull down a thousand foot ore-boat.” “Oh my, do they eat people?” “They sure do, Trudy, but scientists think they actually prefer to eat metal so an ore boat full of taconite is like a giant twinky to them. I guess that would make the sailors like little sprinkles. The existence of these squids had been denied by the authorities until recently this incident -- this image on the screen from two months ago of an adolescent giant squid which became entangled in Duluth's famous lift bridge. Chip, while local legend is full of tales of spearhunting and harpooning giant squids from kayaks and ice floes, the conventional wisdom is that you'd need a submarine to tangle with one of the big boys. Well, that's not the size squid they'll be hunting today. No, today the hunters will be under Duluth in the steam tunnels and sewers which are infested with juvenile squids. These squids get around in any environment and while the young ones are not nearly as indestructible as the mature squids, they are still super-intelligent and quite capable of taking out a whole hunting team. Trudy, Chip, back to you.” “Our first team of competitors is a four man one woman hunting group representing a coalition from the First Nations. They like to get up close and personal with these squids using primarily harpoons and on one memorable occasion, just a knife. Think about that Trudy- ten tentacles and a beak that can bite through a tank against one knife. Incredible.” “Next up are Buzz Ramrod of Ramrod Auto Parts and his sons Torque, Buck, Flex and Chunky. They're going to be looking for some payback after son Bulk was tragically eaten on last years hunt and with Buzz's unsuccessful run for City Council he says he ‘just feels like killing something'. And they've got the firepower to do it.” “Late entrants Menno Zwonk and cronies have already entered the tunnels because of an ongoing misunderstanding with state and federal law enforcement. Team Zwonk's charismatic leader, an outlaw Amish gunfighter, is widely known to have the best emu burgers in the region. Menno Zwonk has a way with animals, plays beautiful music with firearms of all kinds and he's hell on wheels with a barbeque. This is one team to keep your eyes on.” “And finally the Mole People of Duluth have put up a team. Of course they have a personal stake in all this as they have to live down there. Here we see the team getting ready. Of course the Mole People have no sources of light like the other teams for obvious reasons. They wear those special goggles up here on the surface. And who's the big fellow on their team? My goodness, Chip, this man of mystery looks over nine feet tall. If that matted hair and big feet are any indication maybe it's a good thing he's wearing that motorcycle helmet. Chip, there goes the horn and the teams are clamoring down that manhole. We'll be right back after a word from our sponsors.” They had joked after Bush's second election victory that Duluth should become it's own country. Now in the third year of President Giuliani's first term Duluth seemed farther away than ever from the insanity to the south. It was the fucking dark ages down there from the sound of it. While it upset some people to openly refer to Duluth as secessionist, it was his opinion that those folks were reacting out of fear. Yearning for the safety of the past, afraid of how fast the changes were overtaking everything. But most Duluthians handled the catastrophes which had afflicted the nation and the world by becoming more decent, even more polite at the same time as the mothercountry seemed in danger of coming apart. The hideous carnage in the gulf continued unabated. Saudi Arabia and Pakistan both fallen to extremists. The bottom of America had dropped out when the Iranians had responded to US and Israeli air strikes by sinking two American aircraft carriers in the Gulf with Russian missiles designed to do exactly that. So called mini-nukes peppered Iran and that was it. Everyone felt it, like threading a giant goddamn needle or something. It was the global loss of consensus, a crossing into a new historical age. A terrifying fluidity is upon us now. While the war raged many Americans simply disavowed their government in unparalleled numbers. Those who favored the war were more belligerent and irrational than ever. Oil prices had skyrocketed. The market now traded oil in Euros, a change which had shocked Americans even more than watching those aircraft carriers sink. And the unthinkable had happened- the American definition of patriotism began to reflect a growing understanding that the people and the corporations were not on the same side. But it was the breakup of the international space station that had really freaked everybody out. He still remembers the head of NASA explaining solemnly “…the amount of debris now in orbit will prevent future space travel indefinitely…” We're trapped. Trapped by our floating garbage. Like humans were a disease and now we were quarantined. Forever. It brought about a great melancholy for peace loving people everywhere. Divine or extraterrestrial intervention seemed unlikely. Car traffic in Duluth is way down. People are walking everywhere, taking their time, talking to each other. He remembers how shocked they all were when the AquaRave, held in the belly of an ore boat, was boarded by the Coast Guard and they didn't bust it up. They had a great time. I think one of ‘em fell in love. Good for him. Tales of The Sasquatch Anthropologist Lars Johnson, sasquatch anthropologist, alone and fighting back tears in the local bar. He stumbles outside and down the street against the wind. He is purposeless and adrift. Later we find him back in the deep Minnesota woods with all his gear, desperately searching for sasquatch sign: bent saplings, footprints, scat. Nothing. For a moment he thinks he has found footprints but they are just the body prints of a bounding baby deer, separated from its mother. He comes upon them again and realizes he is stumbling in circles. He slumps in the snow, crying openly in his sealed scent-suppressing hunting suit. Crunch of snow behind him in the dark. He whirls about to face the sight of a ten foot sasquatch – incredibly, it is Big Mo. The huge male gives Lars a look that combines both frustration and relief. Covering the distance with a single stride, Big Mo scoops Lars up and takes him to a remote and treacherous cave in a cliff face, thickly obscured by trees. Spirited inside, Lars is greeted happily by Daisy and Virginia , who greet him like you'd greet a naughty dog who nonetheless has returned and you are glad. Lars too cried tears of joy and settled in for a long winter. He relished the unprecedented opportunity for science which so perfectly meshed with his self-actualization. From this cave, prevented from venturing far, he would create the rosetta stone of sasquatch anthropology. But would his notes ever be found? Thick molasses sheet of clouds sluices over the hillside into the lake, filling the basin of cold air with zero viz. “It's like an iced mocha in here,” thought Professor Marrow, strolling his dock and smoking a joint. “It is a town controlled by the dynamics of fluids. First you have the lake, making its own weather with its hidden, subsurface vortices, currents, tides, and boundary layers. Next you have the clouds, which converge above Duluth from three directions: they flow over the hill from the Minnesota side, they sluice in over Superior from the Wisconsin side, and a third front floats in over the lake. Clouds from each direction have been formed under completely different meteorological circumstances and have completely different characters. When these wavefronts of fluid air collide over the mysterious great lake, the effect can be bewildering, frightening, or dazzling. Sunlight adds another dimension, lighting up some cloud surfaces while others fall into shadow. Sunshowers are common and rainbows spring into being with frequency, although their appearance can be strange, often bisected or truncated by the play of cloud cover and shadow.” A typical scene occurs to him: the lake at dusk, covered by smooth, gently undulating waves of gray fog. White, quick moving high mountains of cumulus sail in from Superior, shot through with a middle layer of dark island clouds sliding in from over the hillside. Meanwhile the sun sets behind the hill, cutting half the scene with a warm lathe of light, sharp shadows falling over the lightly wooded hillside. A flock of 60 Canadian geese honks by overhead. A short span of rainbow is seen between cloud layers. An ore boat lies at anchor in the harbor, partially visible in the lake fog like the ghost of the Edmund Fitzgerald. The Flying Hotels of Lake Superior The Flying Islands of Lake Superior were sources of controversy for the northland. Long enshrouded in myth and legend, the islands radiated anomalies that throw off radar so they can follow the fog fronts and remain largely invisible and difficult to track even through satellite technology. It was their very elusiveness which made them so beloved by environmentalists, so mysterious to scientists and so highly coveted by the barons of industry. Many believed that they contained UFO's within them who floated in lazy circles for reasons beyond our comprehension. The scientific community thought this was balderdash and cited evidence which contradicted this dearly held popular notion. One particularly large island appeared to have an active volcano, hardly consistent with an extraterrestrial craft at its center. But the scientific community had nothing but unsatisfying longwinded theory to account for the islands defiance of gravity. The idea that the islands had wills of their own was hard to dispel. When it was revealed that there were plans to mine the islands now that ore boats were being fitted with anti-gravity hulls the public outcry was tremendous. The legal status of the islands was a ferocious legal circus involving multiple mining companies, hospitality industries, the Native tribes of Minnesota, the department of the interior, coalitions of green groups and even Canada. The mining plans were temporarily stalled, but plans to put a hotel on the island of Manja moved forward. B+M developers of Duluth got the contract and 15 months later it was open for business. Heralded as a lucrative source of income for the debt straddled city, everyone remembers the day Manja broke its wide orbit over Lake Superior and began a tight arc high above Duluth. By five O'clock every TV camera in town was tracking the island. “Bjorn Trouserman here with KDLH, I'm speaking live with Rick Plimpton, manager of the Manja Island hotel and resort. Rick, any concern about this anomalous orbit?” “None at all, Bjorn, we'reeahah…!” The picture goes black and the town gasps as the island of Manja dips hard to one side, dumping the 10 story four star hotel and resort off the edge where it plummets end over end and destroys the lift bridge for the fifth time that year. Frozen Airmen of Lake Superior From the journal of Lars Johnson, sasquatch anthropologist: “November 14 th , Grand Marais area, deep North shore: I was following Big Mo as best as I can manage. Mo is impatient with me as one would be impatient with any clumsy, loud, whiny pup. He was just trying to be stealthy after all which is the way of the sasquatch and I blew it. I am still shocked and disappointed at his frequent sudden outbursts of violence however. He is still a wild animal, after all, in addition to being fully human. There is only one sasquatch proverb, but it haunts me -- ‘Leaves rustle.' It seems so simple, and yet they are so upset when I do not seem to fully understand it. “I had fallen a mile behind as usual since we started on these training missions - I like to think of them of them as my sasquatch training. Mo led me in with strategic calls and other noises til I pinpointed his location on a cliff face overlooking the lake. With crampon and pickax I rappelled down to this hidden icy fissure of rock, a giant testament to the forces of the frost-heave cycle, the lake audible beneath you in the dark crevasse. And it was there he shared with me the secret of the sasquatch. There in that remote, hidden, all but inaccessible place, I came upon one of the greatest anthropological mysteries in the world. The sasquatch have been retrieving, one by one, the scattered and frozen bodies of the lost men of Squadron 23. 5:58 pm Wednesday June 28. The sociopathic Buddist, dressed in white, walks into the Great Lakes Aquarium. A teenage employee at the service desk. “We're closing…” The adolescent's last thought is that what he had thought was an umbrella is more like a cricket bat with rectangular obsidian razors embedded in it - an Aztec macquatl, which Cortez said could decapitate a horse. Sub-basement level 1: the public never sees this top secret lab for experimentation on aquatic monstrosities. Androids with dead mannequin eyes efficiently go about their business among the gigantic tanks which enclose a central work space. An alien giant squid is splayed obscenely along a transparent tank wall. Menno Zwonk the Amish gunfighter, his handler Agent X, and a genetic engineer in a lab coat are walking in front of a long, motorized cart operated by Jiminy Christmas. Slapdash Flapdoodle is alongside the cart steadying the seven foot long, foot-and-a-half thick, white lamprey in a giant sealed test tube. Zwonk brazenly sports a chain gun, as used by Jesse Ventura in Predator - less of a gun than a bullet hose. Zwonk's barrel chest is draped in gun belts. Christmas and Flapdoodle both wear expressions of horror as they move towards the elevator. Flapdoodle casts a quick glance over his shoulder out of idle curiosity. He sees the Buddist, soaking red wet, throw a whirling metal shape straight towards them, a Congolese throwing knife (a giant three-pointed throwing star with a handle for whipping it through the air really hard). Flapdoodle hits the deck. The engineer in the coat continues walking forward with his fingers interlaced even as his head leaves his body and the Congolese throwing knife embeds itself in the elevator door. Zwonk and Agent X are showered with blood. X lunges for the elevator. Before Zwonk can turn around and fire the chain gun, another Congolese throwing knife hits the test tube and ricochets off wildly. The tube spins and starts to roll off the cart, cracks spreading from the impact point, water spraying out. X madly clasps the handle of the knife in the elevator door and attempts to pull it out, knowing it will jam the door. Zwonk opens up with the chain gun. The sociopathic Buddist assailant is nowhere to be seen - Zwonk mows down all the androids, their cheesy smiling faces exploding under the withering fire, banks of lab equipment destroyed in the barrage. Flapdoodle and Christmas are crawling towards the elevator when the test tube shatters and the hideous lamprey slithers out, flopping off the cart mouth first towards the musclebound Slapdash Flapdoodle. An ex-wrestler, he manages to grasp the slippery, thrashing jawless beast by holding it tight to his chest, its nauseating slick touch like an erotic nightmare for the insecure henchman. Shells from the chain gun rain down on him as a mammoth sturgeon tank explodes. X manages to dislodge the circular knife and pushes the elevator button. Zwonk lets up on the chain gun. “Quit yer mewlin', boy,” he tells Slapdash whose enormous strength is taxed by the huge lamprey. Slapdash weeps softly as the lamprey makes gurgling and sucking sounds. Various papers churned up by the chain gun drift to the ground. “It's the Buddist,” X says, his voice full of fear. “He's after the fish.” The elevator door opens. X immediately piles in. “Get that wee beastie in there,” Zwonk growls at his two openly crying cronies while he continues to cover the lab. They awkwardly maneuver the thrashing creature into the elevator. “Handle it,” X tells Zwonk. “Oh, I'll handle it alright.” He opens up on the giant squid tank, which cracks ominously, and backs into the elevator. The giant squid bursts through the compromised tank as the elevator door closes and he pulls the smoking barrel of the chain gun up to fit it inside. They go up one floor to the basement; doors open again. Huffing and puffing, they drag the flapping lamprey through a basement corridor to Zwonk's garbage truck in the loading bay. Police cruisers appear from both directions. Zwonk leans out the window and chews them up with the chain gun until the barrel spins empty. Duluth P.D. swarms the aquarium after the crew's escape. They find a 200-foot long squid weighing 15 tons hanging from the 2 story high water wall in the entrance stuffing its maw with a corporate underwriter. The news catches every horrible moment as the squid erupts from the building, seemingly impervious to the police's guns, and slinks into the canal. Fitgers Complex, Duluth, mid-evening, early autumn. Tourists point at the blight in the sky, an orbiting solar-sail platform which served as a billboard for MeatCo Industries' advertisements projected onto the atmosphere. Different slogans scroll by such as ‘Quality Fresh for Kids' and ‘The Product is Satisfaction' above the company logo. The Meat, Dairy, Munitions, Lobbying, Mining, Robotics, Rocketry, Agriculture, Biotech, Pharmaceutical, Corrections, Construction, Home Loan, Music, Cinema, Satellite and Telecommunications firm had taken advantage of sweet heart tax breaks and relocated its headquarters to Duluth, essentially purchasing the entire debt-straddled city. The company had recently been in the news again for inadvertently destroying the international space station during the launch of their latest series of orbiting billboards, the resulting debris rendering space travel impossible for the foreseeable future. Lake Superior. Captain Flapjack McGillicutty of the MeatCo submarine Customer Service was hot on the trail of particularly mean spirited giant squid. He had tactical support from the rest of the MeatCo fleet - Everyday Freshness and Quality Satisfaction were on the left flank Exciting Product and Hometown Values on the right. They'd been able to drive it off from its pack and corral it towards Duluth. This was a tightly scripted MeatCo propaganda effort. After their enemies' crippling attack had very publicly freed an alien giant squid from the MeatCo Great Lakes Aquarium and exposed the existence of the submarine fleet, MeatCo was frantic to engineer the perception that their subs existed to fight the squid menace, at best a partial truth. They had to offset the now rampant suspicion that the squids had been created by MeatCo. The fast moving giant squid, enraged at being herded by stinging mini-torpedoes, comes launching up out of the water and smashes into the venerable Fitger's hotel and shopping complex, it s massive tentacles punishing the building, some breaking in doors and windows looking for people to satisfy its blood frenzy. All five Meatco submarines surface in formation and open fire on the squid with cannon and rockets, further damaging Fitgers. Embedded reporter and anchorwoman Trudy Glarbenheizner says from the Newscopter “Looks like MeatCo is here to save the d…what the?” The 1000ft. renegade flying ore boat Crammenfjorder appears next to the puny helicopter, the massive flying freighter unleashing a full barrage of guided missiles designed for boring into flying islands before exploding. The squid shakes as missiles burrow deep into its hideous flesh, the explosions blowing off three tentacles ands knocking over the Fitger's smokestack. The rest of the missiles seek out the MeatCo subs. The Customer Service rocks violently and the crew on the bridge is thrown aft. “Dive! Dive! Dive! …” “Captain, the fleets reporting in… Everyday Freshness is taking on water, Quality Satisfaction is still serviceable…no word from Hometown Values , sir.” A train's whistle fills the air, then the sound of drums. It's the return Crazy Train, Duluth's groundbreaking live music and drunken shenanigans aboard a train event. But somehow all the rockers are armed to the teeth and shooting wildly at the squid and many appearing to fire without any rhyme or reason whatsoever. The bands keep playing as two hundred shitfaced lunatics with grenade launchers and machine guns light up the lakewalk. The confused and wounded giant squid attempts to slink back into the water, greedily grasping tens of screaming patrons and clients from Fitgers. A deftly aimed missile from the Crammenfjorder hits the squid squarely in the top of its head, killing it in a blast that sends the people encoiled in it's tentacles flying in every direction and knocking over the two story stairwell connecting Fitgers to the lakewalk which blocks the traintrack and derails the Crazy Train very slowly, sounds of laughter, mayhem and carnage from inside as the bands and beer tumble. Frantic news aboard the Customer Service “Sir! We're being attacked from the rear by the rebel sub fleet!” “Tell Satisfaction and Freshness to maneuver around and…” A man's voice over the intercom. “Hi everybody, this is Rear Admiral Cher of the Starship Fabulous , Northern armada of the Lake Superior Submarine Fleet. I'm afraid I have to ask you boys to surrender. Now, I know its going to be hard, but I promise we'll get through it together, sugar.” Zwonk strides like a king through Emu You, his sprawling emu and ostrich barbecue restaurant that fronted his monstrous animal bloodsport operation. Toughnecks of all stripes from all over Superior Wisconsin had answered his call for body workers and hard men. A motley assortment of motorcycles and pick up trucks were parked in both lots outside the building and down the street on both sides. The smell of cooking meat filled the air, booths, tables and barstools of patrons hoisting the glasses to him like he was a mafia don. The dance floor is jumpin, hard living ladies shaking their money makers and enjoying delicious ostrich burgers with bacon and a side of fries. Zwonk slipped out back to the barn to take care of some business for some preferred customers who have ordered the boiled hippo. He closes the barn door behind him as he enters the Noah's Ark of rare animals and big game. He passes the stables of various large, exotic, dangerous, and/or illegal animals on his way to the hippo tanks; bonobo, polar-grizzly hybrid, komodo dragon, koala, anaconda. The anaconda looks peaked so he tosses it a koala bear. A loose porcupine scurries past. Zwonk kicks at it. He goes to the tank of the big male hippo while sharpening his machete. He clamps it between his teeth and jumps in. Before the deadly behemoth realizes what is happening, Zwonk has grabbed him by the balls and castrated the beast. Enraged into a frenzy the creature pivots on a dime and charges Zwonk who barely flops over the edge of the tank. The animal knashes its tusks and strains against the metal walls of the custom enclosure which doubles as a giant stovetop. Zwonk lights the kindling and starts a roaring fire under the hippo tank. He rolls the hippo testicles into the fire. “Aye, I wasn't about to let these tasty wee morsels get away. Serengeti oysters they calls them; when they pop, they're done.” He gathers his condiments, and once they split, downs the giant gonads with salt and ketchup and a sprig of parsley as the bellowing animal boiled. He radioed Slapdash Flapdoodle to get the winch, hoist and chainsaw ready. He went down to the kill pit and informed his customers, a table of State Troopers he had an arrangement with, that their order wouldn't be long now. The State Troopers discuss Zwonk among themselves. “I remember the day Zwonk beat that kid near to death with an electric eel.” “And then he made sushi rolls out of the eel.” “That was cold…” “And the time he held that guy's face in the stingray tank...” Psychogeographers of the Northland Mouth of the Amnicon River in Wisconsin. A nondescript man is parked by the roadside in an older car. A nondescript man pulls up in a newer car with a canoe on its roof and parks behind him. They get out, greet and exchange courtesys, assemble their gear and launch into the river. Five minutes pass in which they do not speak. The canoe owner breaks the silence. “I funnel you 900 million dollars in illicit pilfered MeatCo funds and the most you can do strap dildos to androids and pass an ordinance turning all churches in Duluth into haunted houses? Only 15% of the city loyal to an agenda of maximum novelty? Let's look at the numbers…Catwalks across rooftops are up by 10%...interconnected tunnel systems up by 10…Acceptance of absurd architectectutral projects up 20%...these are below projections…I take you have an explanation? “You're cherry picking your statistics. 80% of the population also believes we have successfully seceded from the union. But it's not enough that we are ascendant neo-situationists without compare? It's not enough that we bust ass every day? Who randomized the bus system with a series of ballot initiatives supported by ad buys and bribes? Who installed controls on every streetlight in town with free supplies stolen by hardware store employees? Who converted the skijumps into roller coasters, and added two-way ramps for catching major air to the highways? Who installed bungee cords and trampolines on every street corner, rooftop, and bridge? Who built the central bicycle-skateboard hub with paths radiating through the city? Who maintains the gigantic banners unfurled from the spires of the antenna farm on the hill, and hung under all the bridges from here to Two Harbors? Who gave anti-squid gun turrets to the citizenry? Who tied super-strong weather balloons to cop cars, making them float above the citizenry? Who got a giant block of cheese delivered to the DECC, filling it? Who do you think was responsible for having 500 crates of groucho marx glasses and noses delivered to every classroom in town in a day that will live forever under the name ‘Pandemonium Day'? Who do you think instigated the cool-aid rebellion of PS 23? Who projects slides, cinema, screen savers, and holographic projections of the evolution of life every night on every building in the downtown area? Who has the most comprehensive flash mob list in the world? Who are the darlings of the Northland blogeratti? Who is responsible for the record-breaking snowshoe conga line? Who subverted and hacked Meatco's customers accounts so that now you get credited for hateful anti-Meatco sloganeering? Who organizes all these bacchanalian festivals, including a dozen squid harpooning holidays? Who has launched a dozen new Zeppelin bars and restaurants? Who forced the price of champagne down to record lows and had champagne fountains installed in City Hall? Who controls the soft drug trade, including pot, caffeine, nicotine, and chocolate? Who got skateboards and snowboards to every dog in Duluth? Who do you think taught raccoons how to make fire? And who do you think has been rebuilding the lift bridge in ever-wilder configurations with an all volunteer crew? We are situationist terrorists. We are very committed. I'm sorry your margin reports aren't glowing this quarter, but when exactly do I have time to take an accounting class after I've been deconstructing the city all day? I do have a life you know, and after four ten-hour days smashing the state, I'm ready for my three-day weekend and some three-martini lunches, you got me, G?” “Okay. I will funnel four billion dollars into your account. Keep up the good work.” THE FLYING ISLANDS OF LAKE SUPERIOR The Flying Islands of Lake Superior were sources of controversy for the northland ever since they blew in from the lake. Instantly enshrouded in myth and legend from the moment of their discovery, the islands radiated anomalies that threw off radar and created their own fog fronts, and so remained largely invisible and difficult to track even through sattelite technology. It was their very elusiveness which made them so beloved by environmentalists, so mysterious to scientists and so highly coveted by the barons of industry. Their orbits contained beautiful chaotic attractors that allowed for significant variation and deviation without resulting in collisions. The mathematicians were having quite a time keeping up with it all. Many believed that the islands contained UFOs within them which floated in these lazy epicyclic circles for reasons -- and at timescales -- beyond our comprehension. The scientific community thought this was balderdash and cited evidence which contradicted this dearly held popular notion. One particularly large island appeared to have an active volcano, hardly consistent with an extraterrestrial craft at its center, although the public advocates complained that it could be a wounded one. But the scientific community had nothing but unsatisfying longwinded theory to account for the islands' defiance of gravity. The idea that the islands had wills of their own was hard to dispel. Ecclesia set about an initial survey of the flying island phenomenon. She charters a series of small planes and helicopters through the University and compiles extensive notes. It is discovered that while most of the flying islands contain ecosystems that mimic the Lake Superior region, some appear to have been mixed in from elsewhere. From the dictated notes of Ecclesia Hummingbird, toward a multimedia presentation: “…However the possibility exists that different ecosystems may have evolved independently for whatever reason. Flying islands are still so new that no one knows anything about their origins whatsoever beyond mere superficial guesses. Being naturally undetected for so long… I propose that their detection coincides with some loss of equilibrium in their orbital systems, causing their epicycles to become deranged, and scootching the whole arrangement over the town. Islands fly in, typically at altitudes of about 50-100 feet, but many remain in upper orbital tiers around 10,000 feet. Shapes mostly roughly circular; elongated shapes are common however and there is just as much variability on the whole as you see in real islands, i.e. fractal coastlines etc., etc. Some are almost like airborne mountains, although just as many have somewhat flat terrain. Size averages out at a few hundred yards in diameter, although a handful are known to be quite large, more on the order of square miles. Some however are only rubble, more like stepping stones. There are a couple of flying archipelagoes that seem to reflect slow motion disintegrations or explosions, like Arpian galaxies. Most island terrain in general looks like the north shore of Lake Superior with wooded, rocky landscapes cut through with streams and wildlife, moss, lichen. Most islands really fit that vibe. I saw deer. I saw rabbits. I saw squirrels and porcupine and some bear tracks. Is it possible that the flying islands represent pieces of the north shore that have taken off? Most islands feature stalactites on their underbellies that drip and glisten with moisture. Our closest examination of these stalactites by helicopter revealed precious little, but I suppose they could have been screwed into the ground at some point. It will take more money and some rappelling gear to make a clearer assessment. But then again, some anomalies defy the pattern and demand another explanation. Perhaps we are dealing with multiple phenomena here that only appear to be of a piece. Some ecosystems seem out of place here for instance. The prairie island was the first of these we discovered. A generally flat island of gently rolling topography, about 60 feet by 100 feet, doing 2 knots at 7,000 feet. It was covered with nothing but tall prairie grasses and wildflowers. The snowscape island was another mid-sized island in this category, unsettlingly out of season. The snow lay in sculpted, Aeolian arrangements reminiscent of a Zen sand garden, large rocks protruding like islands or strange attractors. Then there are the islands which contain alien ecosystems, akin to more exotic corners of the globe. There is the desert island, several hundred yards across at 500 feet altitude. We choppered down in the middle of it on a sunny day and you'd have thought we landed in Saudi Arabia. Heat waves coming off the sand and such. That one appeared to have an oasis in the southernmost corner but we were short on fuel and time and had to take off before we could investigate further. The terrible thing about it all is that there is still no way to track one of these things and basically no way to know if you will ever set foot there again. Transponders are useless. These are truly paradises in which you must live timelessly, because when it comes time to leave, you may be leaving forever. I swear I saw a lion on a large savannah island near the upper limits of their altitude range. That must mean there's gazelle and everything. A pity the island disappeared from radar as soon as we flew out over open water, it would be a one-of-a-kind research project but all for we know it will never be happened upon again. It vanished visually a moment later into a sheet of cloud mist, which is a trait shared by many of the islands that makes them impossible to see even with spy satellites: they continually off gas steam from hidden fissures and so spend most days enveloped in a vapor indistinguishable from normal fogs or clouds. So really the only way to track them is catalog them, attempt to calculate their orbits ahead of time, and then try and meet them somewhere along the proscribed trajectory. This presents problems in that the orbital epicycles are shuffling in a slow randomization process that, while reasonably stable for a time, may chaotically transform the next day. So long term, it's hopeless; it's like using the rhythm method.” Flying Ore Boats of Duluth, MN The renegade flying ore boat Crammenfjorder , presumed lost, emerges out of the quick moving high cloud masses. It appears unfazed by repeated lightning strikes. Crammenfjorder cruising through the storm in slow motion, search beam scything through the eerily light rain and low fog. This front blew in over the hills and is on its way to savage Wisconsin. The lightning bolts flash brilliant purple in crazy arrangements of charge dispersal. Crammenfjorder backlit in the sky over twinkling lights of the quaint city. The Lake Superior Submarine Fleet The Mole People sub never shows and the Bea Arthur is late. Luminescent alien giant squids writhe through the gloom beneath the shipping lanes, their undersea trajectories mapped in advance by the sacrifices of the research subs. The squids rush headlong into a deathtrap of hanging electrified bathyspheres, sealed diving bells deployed from above, dangling by cables and airhoses from a line of small surface vessels, crescent moon on the water stretched tight like reptile skin. The squids momentarily stall as a school, curl up against the shocking wall or net of submersibles. As the squid pack reorients, angry submarines emerge from the darkness like hungry sperm whales. They sprout tethered remote weapons platforms that have snaked in close. The submarines strike, remote platforms firing hypersonic undersea rockets that create their own frictionless vacuum in the water, traveling many times the speed of sound. The initial assault peppers the curling, robust squids with explosive bursts. Torpedoes fire from the bodies of the submarines and plow into the Cthullian mass of tentacles. The alien monsters are getting chewed up by the explosives but meaner too. The bathyspheres are largely spared although one or two get knocked around pretty good by the squids. A couple of these wounded bathyspheres are hit glancingly by the explosives and sever from their lines. They drop sparking into the deep, trailing air bubbles, their doomed pilots pressed against the porthole eye, receding faces frozen in horror. Flying Islands of the Northland Months later, Hummingbird cradles Monroe's lifeless bloody body in his M-tech pressure suit shredded by the shrapnel of the last flyover. The anti-aircraft stations that had been erected strategically across the flying island were smoldering. The F-42 Stealth Fighters crisscrossed the sky in demonic patterns of impossible speed, raking the refugee camps and setting the forests alight. Cries of agony and mourning echoed through the high wind. Menno Zwonk the Amish outlaw, his chain gun empty, sits crosslegged on a boulder gently stroking a bunny. The howls of the sasquatches could be heard from the island's interior. A zeppelin at anchor, trailing behind the island, has been punctured by an incendiary missile and finally breaks free, spinning deflated and destroyed off into the air. Hummingbird shouts after Oswald as he continues his slow progression towards the edge. Still fully enclosed in his suit, he'd been obscured by the mist in his helmet like a ghost for as long as anyone could remember. His left arm is gone, the tattered sleeve flapping in the wind, the pale light shining through the bullet holes in his chest and abdomen. High in the sky the flying ore boat Crammenfjorder explodes, hopelessly outmatched by the military's flying destroyers and battleships. The massive flying ore boat doesn't plummet but breaks apart into jagged sections which float apart in a way that absurdly reminds Hummingbird of a baby's mobile. Members of the crew going flying in every direction, arcing through the air leaving trails of smoke as they disappear below her line of vision. A meteoric piece of wreckage the size of a bus comes pinwheeling through the air and plows into Oswald who is brutally enfolded into the flaming mass. The jagged metal barrels across the pasture leaving a trench behind it and stopping just short of Hummingbird and Monroe. The remaining pair of F-22's from the squadron of pilots at the National Guard base who had rebelled and sided with the breakaway Duluthians against the US Government and MeatCo Industries went down, their outdated F-22's no match for the combined might of the US Air Force. Towering cliffs of cloud strata sailed by in alluvial canyon formations, crisscrossed by drifting jet trails, oily smoke, and the stench of death. Lars Johnson, Sasquatch Anthropologist Depressed and impotent with women, I sprang to life like an overexcited dog for Daisy, the lusty teen bigfoot. Her horrified father Big Mo, who never grew accustomed to having an anthropologist as a pet, considered these innocent behavior patterns as something like bestiality crossed with a Lolita complex. The painful memory returns of the night I found Big Mo sobbing about it at the foot of the cliff. The cliff sheds boulders over the decades like stone tears, and they lay about with strange, misshapen trees growing around them in different stages. Poor Big Mo was beside himself with revulsion and dismay. I am less than dirt to him and he barely tolerates me. I am a necessary evil, an unwanted pet which became important to his wife and daughter, despite his fury at being overridden in this family matter. It was a matter of survival to him. I was costing him resources and competitive fitness. I had so many needs and his family was already stretched thin, the wilderness budget of the sasquatch economy being what it is. I wasn't worth a piece of bark to him. And yet Daisy fed me pine nuts. I have lost at least 20 pounds during this whole ordeal, unquestionably the most grueling year of my life. The upside is that the sasquatch seem to be breeding faster than they can die, if Daisy and her new mate The Professor are any indication. Sasquatch lovemaking is a marvel of science, running the full breadth from animal mating presentations to the deepest human tenderness during the act. Someday I shall write the Kinsey Report of sasquatch anthropology. In the springtime the lively sounds filled the air at all hours. Big Mo, who clamped down on the more public displays, had only driven it deeper into the sonorous caves of the area. My green nightvision view reveals him covering his ears and rolling over in his bed of leaves. He knows soon he will be a grandfather with more mouths to feed. He is worried sick about it and holds his stomach, gently rocking back and forth. Who is going to provide for that baby? It sure isn't The Professor, an enormously tall but skinny spaced-out bigfoot who couldn't find a fieldmouse in a woodpile. No, the burden fell directly on Big Mo's enormous shoulders. He let out a deep sigh, unselfconsciously like a dog. Duluth, MN Anarchic City of Violence Duluth is rent by the unrest of a terrible civil war. Militias, mercenaries, civilian police forces and warlords vie for domination of the city's people and resources. Human rights are a joke as the populace is punished by all sides for perceived allegiances to the wrong factions. Tens of thousands are shot up, blown up, chopped up, raped, and thrown off of tall buildings. Helicopter gunships swirl through the city as men wielding heavy machine guns lean out the doors and strafe farmer's markets, schoolyards, and churchgoers. Bodies dangle in nooses from the lift bridge, now a gruesome and terrible monument to public execution and revenge killing. Ore boats burn in the harbor with concentrated oily smoke. The storm drains are stuffed with corpses and overflow with blood draining to the lake. The world ignores the genocide in the remote Northland as nations squabble and sit on their hands. At UMD, Monroe continues his review of Ecclesia's illicit forays into alternate Duluths. He puts on the headset and loads the virtual reality recording as the session begins. Cut to seeing a totally different geography through Ecclesia's eyes, floating above it in the sealed pressure suit of interdimensional exploration. Bees have evolved into the dominant species and the entire hillside is a gargantuan honeycombed hive structure. Hugging the terrain like a carpet, the hive is an expansive rolling topography. It is miles wide at the base with a mound fifty stories high at the presumed center, somewhere analogous to Lake Avenue and Superior Street, although it is difficult to get a sense of scale in the complete absence of familiar landmarks, and the disorienting effect of the resonant buzzing and all the bees in the air. Different nodes develop as the hive system spreads its control of the landscape, on the march like a glacier. The shoreline is hard to distinguish; the bees live right up against the water and build high out over it like genius architects. I believe there may be a colossal colony of wasps in Superior. I hypothesize that the action of the bees has altered the environment. The weather changes with the tremendous heat they generate; winter means nothing to them and has softened due to bee activity across the globe. That buzzing noise is deafening. Suddenly I am stung -- there is a bee is my pressure suit! OW! I am stung again!! Oh no!! OW!! Stung again!!! How many bees are in here!?! I have to get the hell out of there before these little bastards swarm my ass!!! EJECT!!! EJECT!!!! The session ends. Monroe takes off the headset. Welts grow on his body where Ecclesia was stung. Jetski Raiders of the Northland Fifty pirate raiders on jetskis swarm the 800-foot ore boat. The jetskis are black with little death's head flags. Like army ants bringing down a deer, they board the ship with grappling hooks and overpower the crew. The pirates sink the jetskis with rocket launchers from the Captain's promenade, then sail the ore boat into the canal. They ram the lift bridge when it refuses to open because they tooted their horn in a saucy manner. Hopelessly jammed up with the industrial-scale collision of boat and bridge, the canal draws the general populace, people of all races, creeds, nationalities, genotypes and body types, as well as gawkers, rubberneckers and other crash fetishists. The towering ore boat, now bent at a twisted angle, was smashed up on the walkway a little bit, and everyone poked and prodded it as a couple of cops tried to keep order. There is a startling sudden motion and noise among the ship: its self-unloading cranes are firing up and swinging out over the crowd. The pirate captain comes over the loudspeaker: “Attention people of Duluth: this has been an action of the guerilla Dadaist underground!” The conveyor belts in the cranes start dumping the cargo right on top of the multitudes: 300 tons of corn bran. One of the cranes was seriously misaligned in the impact and most of its load is shooting into the water. A SWAT team swarms the cockeyed ship and finds no one: the crew has succumbed to the Stockholm syndrome and absconded with the pirates, climbing out through the tangled steel girders of the lift bridge and into the welcoming arms of sympathizers on the Park Point side. The canal is now a giant bowl of corn pudding. The guerilla group's blog states the mission was a total success, and they have a lot more members now. Police report fifty jetskis stolen in the past two weeks. “So long, consensus reality; things ain't what they used to be,” grunted Menno Zwonk, Amish big-game hunter and outlaw gunfighter. The concrete tunnels under the Rose Garden were ankle-deep with running water that smelled obviously of total shit. The ceiling was only four feet high most of the time so he had to scuttle back and forth like a crab. He was armed to the teeth and muttering under his breath as he cleared the tunnels: “Extinction is a great blessing for any species. It is my own twisted form of ancestor worship. How else can you live in this world of sorrow? Is that not reason enough to hate every creature on god's green earth? I've stomped Irish leprecauns. I like my harp seal stuffed with kolrabi and left to marinate in a hole for three days in the juice of their wee babies. I tracked down the last flying squirrel and killed it, stuffed with fruit bat and garnished with mango. The great geneticists are saving the genomes of endangered species and when they're cloned and brought back to life I'll kill them again. If I could hunt their avatars holographically I would. In my dreams I hunt the avatars of the dinosaurs. I burn for the race memory of when humans were at the mercy of nature. I see no reason why my species shouldn't hold nature in contempt for thousands of years. Frankly I'm just clearing room for more dangerous predators to come. If they can be killed, they should be killed. Like these wee beasties here…” He lets fly several high-caliber automatic bursts into the ten-foot juvenile giant squid in the junction, the pale glow of his dim headlight shuddering slightly as recoil jolts his body. Every fifth round is a tracer that lights up Zwonk's goggle lenses with slashes of incandescent yellow. The lake level falls catastrophically and the port industry is destroyed. No longer a tourist destination, the economy desiccates and Duluth dries up like an old husk. At night in the old lakebed, archaeologists walk among the shipwrecks, half buried in sunbaked silt. As they bed down in their tents, ghosts of ships at anchor float 100 feet over t |