Jan 31
2011

...CONTINUED

I saw something big coming out of the darkness to my right, like a wall closing the platform off from the rest of the room. The lights behind the platform dimmed, and I had to go up one more step to stay out of its way. The wall thing was black and smooth, and when it locked into place, I couldn't tell the difference between looking at that and looking out into the dark room behind it. Was there a room? The thought made me dizzy. My balance was off. I forgot to drink before showing up.

The Dude waved his hand, and the wall lit up. A picture came on, and I realized the Dude had a TV the size of a stadium JumboTron facing his throne.

The Dude pointed at something on the screen, and a window came up in front of us. The screen was his computer monitor. We were in some operating system I didn't recognize, and a line of text appeared at the top of the window.

Order incoming #Hollyfeld

I looked at the Dude. "What is this, something about dispatch? I don't get it."

The Dude pointed again, and I followed his finger with my eyes. I went up the last step to see the whole screen. I was on the platform, standing right next to the Dude's throne, and at the top of the window, I saw the name of the program, Human Acquisitory Notification System.

Someone's voice from the Dude's speakers was soft and slow. "Well, well, well... Hans." More information appeared on the screen.

#Hollyfeld order[78D6A] complete.
!dispatch #winston "Bring Hollyfeld 1 banana."
!dispatch.instructions "Just starting to get brown spots."

Another clip played. "Now witness the firepower of this fully armed and operational battle station." The Dude seemed to be waiting for something. Nothing happened.

"What?"

The Dude used the controls on his armrest, and more Ghostbusters played, with a phone ringing in the background. "Janine, someone with your qualifications would have no trouble finding a top-flight job in either the food service or housekeeping industries. You gonna answer that?"

I knew what the next words were. "I've quit better jobs than this." And I meant it. The Dude's speakers didn't answer. I reread where the screen said to dispatch Winston, and I figured it out. "Oh, it's trying to text me. Sorry. I don't have my phone."

He punched the buttons on the armrest again. "Everything that has transpired has done so according to my design."

I tried to figure out what was going on. "So, somewhere Roger just typed that in, and it sent me..."

In another recording, someone made a buzzer sound with their mouth. "Sorry Hans, wrong guess. Would you like to go for Double Jeopardy where the scores can really change?"

"Then who--"

The Dude played a deep voice. "Sentient programs. They can move in and out of any software still hard wired to their system."

"The computer in dispatch?"

"We have only bits and pieces of information, but what we know for certain is that at some point in the early 21st century, all of mankind was united in celebration. We marveled at our own magnificence as we gave birth to A.I."

I stood next to the chair, and tried to put together everything I knew. "You're talking about SkyNet, your big project?" Harry was never as organized as whoever sent me those messages. Even Roger couldn't be that boring without help. "HANS" always felt like it was treating me like a machine. I just never thought that might be because it already was one.

The Dude nodded and pressed one button. "A singular consciousness that spawned an entire race of machines."

"Dude, it's named after Terminator. How can you think that's a good idea?"

He played more of Ghostbusters. "After the First World War, Shandor decided that society was too sick to survive. And he wasn't alone, he had close to a thousand followers when he died." He waved his hand at the screen. I looked back at the giant TV, and my spine tensed up. There was a picture up there. It was low quality and blurry, but I recognized the same picture Acid Burn showed me of our band.

My hands made fists. "What the fuck?"

"What I really need is a droid that understands the binary language of moisture vaporators." He was switching clips so fast, I stopped paying attention. "Your hate has made you powerful." I was counting on that. Then he replayed himself from before. "Anyway, Peter, what we'd like to do is put you into position to have as many as... four people... working right underneath you." The clip kept going this time. "This is a big promotion, Pete." "It's huge."

I looked up at the screen. "Four people... or programs like Hans?"

He made small gestures in the air, and the computer responded by flipping through more pictures, more shows we did.

"Why are you showing me this stuff? What does any of this have to do with the band?"

With a few button presses, the speakers tried to answer that. "Man, I see in Fight Club the strongest and smartest men who've ever lived. I see all this potential, and I see it squandered." He pointed at the screen, his bony finger reminding me of the image of death.

I felt a chill. "You're talking about Casimir, aren't you?"

Another clip played. "He had a plan, and it started to make sense in a Tyler sort of way."

The Dude was showing me with the pictures that he had a connection to Effective Disorder. He had our poster up in his house. Was it even a coincidence that Acid Burn was a fan? Harry got hired for this project at one of our shows, and Casimir told him to go along with it, setting this whole thing in motion.

Under the big black hood, I pictured the face of a dead man I tried so hard to forget, but the feeling Casimir was capable of anything never really went away. I could never convince myself his death wasn't all some kind of trick, and he had a beard when we were in the band, so seeing only a chin told me nothing.

"Casimir?" My heart was pounding. I believed in my childhood hero again, and everything finally made sense. I reached out and pulled off the hood.

It wasn't him. The guy in the chair was a few years younger than us and didn't look familiar at all.

He was just some dude.

He curled up in a fetal position on one side of his chair, and I heard his real voice for the first time. "Tyler's not here. Tyler went away. Tyler's gone." He was frantic, talking more to himself than me.

I didn't know what I was doing anymore. The world made no sense again.

The picture still up on the giant screen was taken from the back of the audience at one of our shows. Near the camera, trying to smile, was a younger version of the Dude without his hood, his face showing the kind of intensity I remembered seeing a lot of in those days.

"You're a fan?" I didn't know what to do with that information. I wanted to run for the door I came in through, but the giant screen was in my way, with the picture of a faraway stage and four blurry guys that used to inspire people.

The Dude winced when I reached down and put his hood back over his head, and his weak voice came out of the pile of black cloth. "I just want to say, sir, that we're both enormous -- on a personal level, Branded, especially the early episodes, has been a source of, uh, inspiration..." He sat up. His hood was crooked, and I could see his eyes. He reached for the armrest and played another clip of chanting. "His name is Robert Paulson. His name is Robert Paulson."

That was my friend he was talking about, like he was just some character from a movie. "Stop it! You're not..." My anger was spent. I didn't have the strength.

Then a message came up on the computer screen.

Reaching end of time allotted for this meeting
Return to work in B4

The Dude cued another clip and looked up at me. "This is the world as it exists today." He was so lost.

"You don't run the programs, do you?" I looked up at the message on the screen. "You're not the one I need to worry about. They're in charge of you, just like everyone else." The messages from Hans were generated by a computer program sending me on deliveries, part of some system that kept us all working hard all the time. That was who I needed to stop.

The Dude played something else. "You'd have made a pretty good cowboy yourself, Hans."

"Why are you calling me Hans?"

The speakers repeated themselves. "Anyway, Peter, what we'd like to do is put you into position to have as many as..."

"Oh, fuck me." I got it, and the Dude stopped the playback. "You want me to be the new Hans, take over that dispatch office and tell your other people what to do."

The Dude nodded shyly and fixed his hood. His face disappeared. He was offering me a job that would be a violation of all the things I used to stand for, but it would have computer access, something Tinkerbell hinted she would give me anything I wanted to get her hands on. I wouldn't have to drive all over town all day based on what some computer told me to do, and I could probably get enough information to take the whole system down.

Harry said Hans was his special assignment until they took it away from him. He also said Casimir wanted him to keep an eye on the company.

I used a line from Ghostbusters, from the character of Winston who the Dude calls me anyway, to accept. "If there's a steady paycheck in it, I'll believe anything you say."

I want so hard to believe that I might still somehow be doing what Casimir wanted, that he was right when he told Harry it was better to have one of our guys on the inside.

The Dude stood up. A voice from the speakers gave me congratulations, I guess. "You are in command now, Admiral Piett."

I nodded. "Okay." The giant screen retracted, and I went out the way I came.

That screen, man. The Super Bowl's coming up, and that room would be the place to have a party. I almost want to break back in there, but I have a promotion to focus on. As soon as I take over from Roger, I'll be able to take on the real source of power that's behind everything around me.

Editor's note: so, with Winston having "defeated" another boss and leveling up in life, it seems like a logical place to open access to another level of the pages in which he tells his story.