Archive for the ‘Rudi Dornemann’ Category
Parthenia Rook, episode IV: In the Hall of the Bonobo King
Tuesday, June 19th, 2007
INTERIOR, ONE OF THE INNUMERABLE CORRIDORS IN THE BONOBO KING’S SECRET SUBTERRANEAN LAIR
THE BONOBO KING, a chimpanzee in an expensive Italian suit, sans shoes, walks down the hallway, accompanied by two of his associates: DR MANDRILL, a blue-faced, red-nosed monkey in a white lab coat and HENCH, a shaggy gigantopithecus in stained overalls.
BONOBO KING: Brilliant work, Dr. Mandrill. The anti-gravity suit worked exactly as you said it would. Like being lifted up by the hands of angels. Perfect.
MANDRILL: Thank you, my liege. I trust the baby-bot and zombirazzi performed as expected?
BONOBO KING: They seem to have worked splendidly. After all, Hench got in and out of Fort Knox without any interference by the annoying Ms. Rook. Didn’t you, Hench?
HENCH: In-got.
MANDRILL: If it pleases your excellency, I have a boon to ask.
BONOBO KING: Ask away.
[They enter A GRAND DINING ROOM furnished in gold-crusted Louis XVI furniture.]
MANDRILL: From now on, I would like to be known as “Zaius.”
BONOBO KING [peeling a grape with his toes]: Zaius?
HENCH: Zay-us.
MANDRILL: Zaius.
BONOBO KING [through mouthful of pomegranate]: That’s ridiculous. Your name is Oscar. [Spits seeds.] It’s a perfectly nice name.
HENCH: Oss-car.
MANDRILL: But Zaius just sounds so much more…
[The Bobobo King gnaws on a pineapple.]
MANDRILL: …scientific.
BONOBO KING: Pfaugh! We’ve talked about this before. How those Planet of the Apes movies systematically misrepresent the glories of the coming pan-simian age…
MANDRILL: Isn’t it funny how “pan-simian” starts with the name of your genus.
[The Bonobo King freezes, his teeth just sinking into a kumquat, and stares coldly at his chief scientist.]
BONOBO KING: Exactly what part of “king” is it that you don’t understand, Oscar?
[Dr. Mandrill manages to return the stare for a few seconds before faltering and looking away.]
MANDRILL [quaveringly]: My apologies. I forgot myself.
BONOBO KING: Take that tone with me again, and I’ll ask that Gibbon sisters make sure that everyone else forgets you as well.
[Dr. Mandrill falls groveling at the king’s feet.]
HENCH: Pan-sim. I…
[His expression suggests he’s forgotten what he’s going to say next.]
BONOBO KING: Come on– [Burps.] Haven’t you got some new and even more nefarious devices to demonstrate? I believe you mentioned something about a giant robot that transforms into a robot giant?
MANDRILL: Oh, yes. I’ve worked up a few things I think you’ll enjoy quite a bit. And Parthenia Rook won’t enjoy at all. Heh. Heh-heh.
BONOBO KING: HA!
MANDRILL [maniacally]: Eee-hee, eee-hee, hee-hee-heeeeee!
HENCH [uncertainly]: HEH.
BONOBO KING [diabolically]: MWAHAHAHAA!
Before and After the Party
Thursday, June 14th, 2007
Clara said she would do the final tidying herself. The apartment’s cleaning cycle wouldn’t finish before six, and that left less than an hour to decorate before the guests arrived.
The living room sang a chime of agreement; dust mice scuttled back into the baseboards.
While Clara cleared coffee table clutter, previewed panoramas on the walls, and pushed chairs into configurations that opened the floor for dancing without blocking easy passage to and from the kitchen, the local sun belched a wave of X-rays.
Some radiation made it through the city shield, but microscopic machines in Clara’s blood repaired the damage almost as quickly as it occurred, re-knitting DNA and patching leaky cell membranes. She put her feet up on the hassock for a minute, drank a lemonade the kitchen gave her, then realized it was later than she thought, and jumped up to change clothes.
The apartment was ready in time — so was Clara — and the party was a great success. Richard was there, and Mary Maddox. The McClellans, the Spenders, the Rosseters — they were all there.
No one noticed when, sometime after ten, another storm of X-rays overwhelmed the shield and outstripped the nanomachines’ ability to heal. Clara just had time to feel a wave of nausea before relays clicked in the walls and everyone was loaded up to their virtual backups in computers miles underground.
Radiation baked the city and seared the dying bodies of its inhabitants. (Clara lay in the doorway to the kitchen, one hand extended toward Richard.) The little mouse robots were busy all night with the ashes.
At dawn, when all the levels were safe and green, tiny machines wafted through the city like smoke, rebuilding from memory everything right where it should be. Relays clicked and everyone was loaded back into new-built bodies.
Clara woke and stretched, watching dust drift through a blade of sunlight that came in past the curtain, dust which, the morning before, had been her eyes. She got up, and asked the house to buy her flowers. The house chimed in answer.