BRAINPAN FALLOUT: 25- SUCKING/PENETRATING MOUTH-PARTS

©Ernest Hogan 2014

A bug is a thing with sucking/penetrating mouth-parts.

The Kafka virus transforms the President a giant cockroach. Secret service agents go into mouth-frothing, tongue-biting convulsions, bleeding into their ear-pieces. The First Lady rushes in, seeing her chance to indulge in insect-style mating without violating her religious beliefs, her mouth waters in anticipation of a life-long supply of semen from one copulation, and the sweet taste of testosterone-soaked brain tissue. She envies her husband's sucking/penetrating mouth-parts.

A bug is an electronic listening device.

How does a computer virus change a human into a cockroach? I asked, from dusty corner of my brain into the Undernet.

"Simple," said a saguaro, "have the static blast from switching off the computer trigger a programmed chain-reaction DNA reconstruction."

A bug is a virus.

I didn't like being exiled to cyberspace like this. The good stuff was all happening in the real world. The street can be virtual reality for people who have lives.

"Don't bug me, man," my father often said.

A big advantage of Cope, our new, recombinate opiate/coca drug is that it depresses the will to resist while increasing energy and consciousness. Users become busy, productive zombies.  Things go better with Cope.

Giant insects were once popular sci-fi monsters.

FLASH!  THIS IS CALIFIA.  DON'T WORRY.  WE'RE TRACKING YOU.  CAN'T REALLY SAY MUCH.  NEVER KNOW WHO'S LISTENING ON UNDERNET. 

Super-viruses are the boogiemen of the Information Age.

THOSE DAMN SAGUAROS OR WHATEVER -- THEY KEPT FADING IN AND OUT AROUND ME. 

Finally I asked, "Just what are you?"

"Your brain is incapable of processing that information."

"But I've got this chip in it!"

"Sorry.  Still not enough power."

"But I gotta know!  It's killing me!"

"Very well.  The fact is, we are the natives, and you are the aliens."

"Uh . . . uh . . ."

"See.  We told you."

A message from my body: Vampiko sticks her tongue in my ear, then says, "It won't be long now, mon amour."

Another feed from Washington: The Speaker of the House scans the latest Wired as he eats his usual breakfast of pit-bull pituitary glands with milk and sugar when three doberman-sized lizards crash through a window.

NEXT WEEK:  SOMETIMES THE STATIC IS THE SIGNAL

BRAINPAN FALLOUT: 24- SHOWTIME ON THE UNDERNET

©Ernest Hogan 2014

"THE ZONE HAS BEEN SECURED," said an amplified voice full of static and the accent of artificial intelligence.  "ALL LEGAL AUTHORITIES HAVE BEEN ENCRYPTED OUT.  TEMPORARY AUTONOMY HAS BEEN ACHIEVED – REPEAT: TEMPORARY AUTONOMY HAS BEEN ACHIEVED."

There was applause. Strange applause. Full of static and electronic distortion.

I squinted past the floodlights, and could barely make out the crowd that filled Global Delights past the legal capacity that night. It was not the usual tittie bar crowd. Mostly, men -- but some women -- all a little overdressed for the occasion. A lot of them were quite mechanical, looking like awkward robots. Robots?

"And now, we present, for your actual and virtual examination," said Vampiko, "Flash Gomez,"  more weird applause -- data blasted my brain: organized crime, virtual reality remotes . . . "human host and test vector for Project Brainboost's fantastic Krell chip!"

More applause. I suddenly knew that I was being examined by televoodooists, narcotraficantes, insect trusters, reptile conspirators, plutonium smugglers, black-market hypothalamus dealers, genetic drug engineers, border brujos, system scammers, hackers (and most were not the stereotypical white-nerd-from-a-moneyed-family), freelance info & bio virus farmers, mafia, yakuza, and triad representatives, some of which were attending the event in cyberspace.

"Isn't he cute?" said Lalaita, pinching my stubbled cheek.

"Are there any questions for Flash?" Vampiko asked.

The crowd erupted like a salivating, multi-headed monster; a wall of words came at me, more static than signal.

"Are there any harmful side effects?"

"Is it faster than the latest available computer systems?"

"Do you feel more than human?"

"Could it make the brain obsolete?"

The Krell chip latched onto my vocal apparatus and fired off high-speed answers that sounded as if I was speaking in tongues, shoving me aside into the nether reaches of my grey matter and the cyberplace called the Undernet, where I was suddenly aware of underworld stock market prices for hit men, genetically-engineered drugs, electronic money-laundering systems, government and corporate secrets . . . all kinds of stuff that people didn't dare talk about on Internet. I was also aware of things like:

A feed off a deencrypted White House monitor: The President, disturbed at the tiny insect images on his latest comeback strategy speech, flicks off his maximum-security laptop, then gasps . . .

NEXTWEEK: SUCKING/PENETRATING MOUTH-PARTS

CHICANONAUTICA SEES MEDIA AND MESSAGES IN NEW MEXICO

We've got media and messages in New Mexico in Chicanonautica over at La Bloga.

Not to mention Marshall McLuhan:

And yerberia ads:

Protest!

A sheriff in trouble!

Marijuana!

CORTEZ ON JUPITER -- NEW EDITION, NEW COVER

Would you look at that cover? And the new edition is now available for pre-order for Kindle. More to come. Stay tuned!

CORTEZ ON JUPITER ALERT

This morning I unpublished -- and believe me, it felt weird -- my novel Cortez on Jupiter. My self-published ebook version will no longer be available from either Kindle or Smashwords. The reason for this is that a new, improved version will soon be available from Digital Parchment. This will include a soft-cover edition. I will release details as soon as I get them. Meanwhile, as they used to say back in the ancient days of electronic media, stay tuned . . .

BRAINPAN FALLOUT: 23- GLOBAL DELIGHTS FOR FUN AND PROFIT

©Ernest Hogan 2014

"What?" I said reaching up for Vampiko's drum-tight implant-enhanced breasts.

She pulled them out of my reach. "Please. We're on soon. You'll smear my makeup."

"We're going on? Wait a minute." I looked around through the smoke, saw figures, human, saguaro, and other -- some with cellular phones, others with automatic weapons.  "Where are we?"

She giggled, not quite hiding her fangs with her dainty, white fingers with nails like red piranha teeth. "Don't you recognize it? This is my work. Global Delights."

"Oh yeah, the tittie bar." Some of the human figures were hard-bodied females, with almost nothing on.

"Why, Flash, you vulgar muchacho," a familiar voice said. "This place is far more than a mere tittie bar."

There he/she was. Lalaita. Doc Burnout's lover boy. All dolled up in a Kiss of the Spider Woman get-up that hid his male genitalia and gave full view of her brand-new breasts that were standing high and perky like fresh implants the size of bowling balls.

"My God," I found myself saying.

Lalaita purred and gave them a stereo squeeze with soft, well-manicured hands with knuckles that were just a little too big to pass for feminine. "Ay, you like my new chichonas?  They've already come in handy. They cop feels, but they never dream of looking inside."

The Krell chip made some connections too fast for me to follow. I was almost expecting Obeah X15's lady Califia Johnson to show up. But then that would be a bit much.

A phone rang. "No, she's not here. She's still in Nigeria."

I shuddered.

Vampiko pulled me to my feet. "Come, mon cher.  We have to go on stage."

"Here?  But I don't have any tits!"

She ran a delicate fingertip along the X-shaped scar on my face. "Yes, but you have something else, dear, something that a lot of people want."

Lalaita did a rapid-fire tongue-click. "You dos! This is no time for the getting romantic! We have work to do."

I could barely stand. They each took an arm and practically had to carry me, which took some doing since I'm a good head taller than both of them.

Music started -- corny Latin jazz to the plastic beat of Asian pop. The lights blinded me. The crowd growled like a hungry monster.

NEXT WEEK:  SHOWTIME ON THE UNDERNET 

BRAINPAN FALLOUT: 22- WE HAVE LIFTOFF

©Ernest Hogan 2014

We have liftoff -- Houston, Houston, do you read? Floating. Spaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaace Patrol! In the middle of Burnout's van -- You're ten thousand light years -- The light's so bright -- Seek out new life and new civilizations -- The space -- getting bigger, brighter. One small step for a man. All this information -- such a happy little chip! My mind is going, Dave. Cockroaches, Nigerians, Mayans, reptiles, saguaros, lots of saguaros, everywhere -- one thing, monsters, monsters from the id. Why dress like a saguaro anyway? We will control all that you see and hear. Got to ask them about it -- Can you hear me, Major Tom? I can't follow it all -- Your minds!  This is the Undernet. Your stupid, stupid minds! Brainpan fallout all over the place.

Fade to blinding white before I can lock into an old-fashioned Swinging Sixties style look-Ma-I'm-blowing-my-mind-again freeze frame scream.

Mom shakes her head and smiles as a beatifically as the Virgin of Guadalupe. Dad hands me a still-beating human heart. Obie and Doc argue over what to say to me. Califia sends another message from Nigeria, "Believe it all, but trust no one." Lalaita flashes his/her brand new, fresh-from-the-Columbian-mad-scientist's-lab breasts. Vampiko licks her lips, bares her fangs, and whispers, "I love you, Flash, to the year 2000 and beyond."

I got the impression that I was surrounded by saguaros, so what the hell, I asked, "Why do you wear those stupid saguaro suits?"

They all made a twittering, inhuman noise. I eventually recognized it as a peculiar kind of laugher.

"What's so funny?"

They conferred a while, then one said, "These are not suits. We are naked."

I tried to scream, but the blinding light dimmed down to a fuzzy near blackness.

I clicked my heels together three times and said, "There's no place like home."

My eyes opened. I was on a couch that reeked of assorted bodily excretions, in a dim, smoke-filled room. 

"It worked," said a woman.

"Nothing like pure adrenalin in the carotid artery to wake a body up," said a man.

It was the blonde and the asian/native/hispanoid from the limo I rode in a millions of years ago this morning.

Vampiko flitted out of the smokey shadows, and said, "We're on soon, mon amour!"

NEXT WEEK:  GLOBAL DELIGHTS FOR FUN AND PROFIT

CHICANONAUTICA FLIES ACROSS THE BORDER, 1928-STYLE

This time on Chicanonautica, over at La Bloga, I take a look at the narcotraficante pulp novel, Rex Lee On the Border Patrol by Thomson Burtis.

The book made this song go through my head:

It also reminded me of this narcorrido and pelicula :

And this radioactive paranoia flick that was based on a novel about heroin smuggling:

But then again:

BRAINPAN FALLOUT: 21- PARKING LOT TRAUMA

©Ernest Hogan 2014

Out in the parking lot, an unmarked helicopter was hovering over Doc Burnout's van, shining a spotlight on it, looking cornball sci-fi as all hell.

"Stay away from it!" screamed Obeah X15. "Looks like a trap!"

It looked  that way to me, too, only I wasn't the one in control of my brain at that particular moment. The Krell chip had detected the sweet electromagnetic signature of running computers, and had me zeroing in on full-out attack mode.

The rear hatch was open and waiting like the horizontally-hinged mandibles of a sacrifice-starved mechanical spider-goddess. I dived in like a willing partner in my own oblivion. The helicopter turned off its spotlight, and the doors slammed shut, leaving me in the cool, dim illumination of the monitor screens and light-emitting diodes of Doc's onboard information system.

The chip purred with delight.

I nearly snapped my neck trying to look at all the screens at once. So much information; so little time --- not to mention neurons.

The faint sound of Doc crying "Stop you thieves!" was drowned out by the roar of the van starting up. There was no driver. The dashboard displays flickered while the wheel and pedals worked themselves.

I didn't have time to wonder how it was possible. The damned chip had me bouncing around trying to absorb as much of the ambient information as possible. Between that and the shifting g-forces of the van's random trajectory, I was expecting to be bashed to a bloody pulp as my eyes and ears caught scattered bytes of precious information:

Do not attempt to adjust your input -- large cockroaches infest the White House and Congress -- all sources deny everything -- cover-up is suspected -- Pornography and viruses on the information highway -- organized crime to blame -- writer researching parallels between CIA mind-control technology and Haitian voodoo dies of drug overdose -- The Surgeon General warns that cerebral implants may be hazardous to your health -- Extinction of the saguaro cactus no longer considered imminent -- sightings in non-desert regions and urban areas -- Virtual reality has been found to have similar marijuana-like side-effects -- even after short term usage --  Law enforcement has discovered new plant-based drugs -- outlaw genetic engineering suspected -- we are controlling transmission --

Then the light leaking in through the windshield and portholes got a little brighter. Suddenly, there were no g-forces. I was floating. Weightless.  

NEXT WEEK:  WE HAVE LIFTOFF