Chapter 24:

Hasta Luego Losahs!

Percussive Maintenance

Missy | Sept 5 1998: 1921 ICT | Buy N Save SuperCenter: Abandoned Store/Supply Room(10.767297034230596, 106.69437357772742) |District 3

The internet café bordered a large, empty warehouse. The NatSels used it as their headquarters. Teenage vagabonds of all ethnicities worked around the warehouse, violating tech and plotting in band T-shirts and military surplus jackets. The warehouse itself was sparse and spartan, save the toys and tools of adolescent terrorists. But its digital signature made it a fortress and a cavern. Signal jammers, redundant systems, hunter-seeker algorithms. It would take even a gold star Mitsuki Haiku several minutes to get a signal out. And one tried.

The two leaders of the Natural Selectors stood near the center.

The twenty-one-year-old Filipino ganger, Mark D. Pillar, stood with his beer gut popping out of his trench coat, his round face framed by a Yankees cap. Alongside him was his taller, bone-skinny colleague, the twenty-four-year-old Canadian, Phill E. Busta.

They were arguing with Lisa and Ludvig.

“I don’t really give two shits about your ideas, and you don’t either,” Ludvig said in a flat yet commanding voice. “I’ll help you play your games. So pay me.”

Sitting in opposite French high-backed chairs, stolen from a now-deceased Vietnamese noble family, sat the sedated forms of Anh and Kente. They were unconventionally strapped to the chairs with the limbless Mitsuki Haiku, once known as “Sakura.” Her smiling form lay between the two, her arms and legs bolted to the chairs and used as restraints. Anh was locked in an embrace, Kente between her legs.

Kente woke first. He immediately tried to get out, then, realizing he was trapped, took stock of his surroundings. He whispered the name of his Haiku unit, who knew better than to say anything lest the guards notice.

His eyes found the unit strapped to a large explosive. The avatar put a finger to her lips as he looked at her. He nodded.

Anh’s awakening was significantly less quiet.

Upon coming to, her eyes caught the smiling face of the Haiku android. She gasped and, at the sight of Kente, struggled against the restraints, which only squeezed harder.

“Anh-sama, please,” Missy whispered in a low voice.

“Subaru!” Anh called out, looking around the room.

“Quiet!” Subaru muttered frantically.

Anh turned to her right, past the smiling limbless Haiku, and saw Subaru bathed in golden light. His eyes flashed bright gold as he worked frantically, tweezers in one hand, a knife in the other. He was not bound.

Anh hissed at him. “What are you doing with that rice? Get over here. Help us out.”

“Can’t,” Subaru dismissed the plea. “It has to be right.”

“He’s trapped,” Missy explained.

Subaru wiped sweat from his brow with a shaky hand as his tweezers grabbed another grain of rice from the large pile. He spoke in broken fragments as he adjusted each grain.

“Gold chip. Choleric, melancholic dual chip. Produces obsessive compulsion. Have to get it right. Can’t leave until I do.”

Outside of Anh’s sight, Subaru fixed another grain into a perfect line, then adjusted the others.

“Code breaks when I finish. Used against dissidents. Vorkuta. Prisoners categorizing snowflakes with tweezers. This room is climate-controlled. I can finish. I’ll be safe. I can finish.”

There was no actual evidence of this, but Subaru spoke to convince himself, and succeeded.

Anh shouted at him as if that might somehow snap him out of it. One such shout caused him to drop a grain.

Subaru whimpered and shook, his head in his hands, before readjusting the line.

“Hai. HaiHai. HaiHai.”

Sakura, now known as Freaku-3, chortled her ascension and compliance, as that was all she could do. What first sounded like laughter rose in volume, becoming a siren.

Missy attempted to send a signal to her, pleading. It only raised the volume.

Mark and Phill turned their attention from the two Americans and walked toward the chairs, fingers ready on their submachine guns. Ludvig squeezed Lisa’s hand before following them.

“So, finally awake, are we?” Mark said, gesturing as the Haiku stopped chortling.

Phill walked over to Subaru.

“You make quick work, magic man. But you know, I was thinking, this pattern just doesn’t pop enough. Where’s the pizzazz? Where’s the style? Where’s that confidence like when you narc’d our electronics store?”

Phill sent a combat boot into Subaru’s face, shattering his visor. Another stomp scattered the rice pattern across the floor.

Subaru, cut by shattered glass, desperately tried to return to arranging the grains. Phill kicked his hand away and stepped on it.

“Y’know what I think, my dude? You’re just too damn brainy for a boring-ass challenge like this. We need some real shit.”

He released Subaru’s hand and opened a bag of long-grain rice and brown rice, tipping them into the pile.

Subaru frantically got to work as Phill giggled his airy, high-pitched laugh.

Mark joined with a chortle. Ludvig shook his head and instead focused his tools on the explosive and the Missy unit.

“How much do you think Saito would give us for these, bro?” Mark asked, nodding at the captives. “For this dude, probably a fair amount. For the girl, about three-fiddy.”

“Yeah, tragedy of patriarchal societies. A woman only makes two-thirds what a man does.”

“Deleuze speaks of this.”

“No, he fuckin’ doesn’t.”

“He does. Chapter fourteen of Anti-Oedipus. The part about banging your mom.”

Ludvig finished his adjustments and closed his laptop.

“Not to interrupt your discussion, but I am finished.”

“Yeah, man. Check’s in the mail.”

Ludvig held up his Manead and stared Mark in the eye. “Singapore dollars. In my wife’s hands. Now.”

Mark muttered something about Germans not taking a joke while fishing out a cash box. “Phill, get your ass over here and help.”

Kente locked eyes with Ludvig as he walked toward them carrying a broken-in boombox and a disco ball.

“No, no, Mr. Watanabe. I know what you want to say. ‘Why are you working for teenage nihilists?’ It is below me. I agree. But you should not use others for a cheap escape plot, ja?”

He set the disco ball between Anh and Kente.

“I need to get my girl out of here, and you aren’t the only one here who can track computers,” Anh said, trying to hop out of the chair.

The restraints tightened. She managed to tip the chair over, falling to the side. She struggled to writhe free.

Ludvig righted the chair and barked something at Phill, who brought over a syringe.

“It is not fair to drag others into your consequences, Mr. Watanabe. But here, she does not need to be conscious for this.”

Ludvig jabbed the needle into Anh. Her eyes went wide as she fell into a daze.

“Start the rave already, Kraut!” Phill called out.

In the back, Mark showed the cash box to Lisa, who counted every bill before stuffing it into her purse.

“All right, boys and girls. It’s time for the d-d-d-dance hits at Club 69 with DJ Phill E. Busta. We’re playing the Billboard-smashing, rave-bashing nu-metal hit ‘Dance Macabre’ by Blud Puddel. Club remix!”

Phill struck a pose and pressed a remote. Ludvig stepped back.

The growls of the nu-metal singer fought against bubblegum pop beats. The disco ball glowed yellow. Kente tried to look away but was forced to stare by Sakura Haiku’s detached thigh.

“Hai. Hai. Hai.”

Dance and dance with the corpses on the floor.
Now dance, motherfuckers, till you can’t dance anymore.
I’m losing my miiind.
It’s the dance of death.
One body, two body, three body, five.
Dance till there’s nothing left.

“Let’s get this party started right!” Phill shouted.

Ludvig pointed a laser at Sakura Haiku. “Hai!”

The restraints released. Kente’s chair opened its legs.

Kente bolted toward Phill, then froze. His hips began to gyrate, shoulders moving in rhythm. His feet could only step in time, circling the disco ball.

Phill laughed and mock-danced. “Just get into the groove. Both of you.”

Anh moaned weakly as her limbs began to move. Her face remained frozen as she danced in sync with Kente.

Mark and Lisa approached the spectacle.

“How long will this last?” Mark asked. “Do we need a guard?”

“You heard about the Studio 89 ‘Boogie Nights’ incident, ja?” Ludvig asked.

At his command, Missy recited:

Project Straussberg, also known as “Boogie Nights,” used broken Pan Engines for alternative crowd-control. The studio was bathed in yellow light from a failing Choleric Engine, forcing perpetual dance. The incident ended three days later when the studio burned down with all occupants inside.

“Most entertaining,” Mark said.

Lisa turned pale. “Darling, we need to get the hell out of here.”

“I couldn’t agree more,” Mark said. “Hasta luego, losers.”

He clapped Ludvig’s shoulder. “Thanks for the help, big man.”

Ludvig brushed his hand away. “Good luck. Hope it doesn’t bite your ass.”

“Now as for you, lil’ Missy,” Mark said.

“You are not an authorized speaker. Please obtain admin permission,” Missy replied flatly.

“Oh, this is something you want to do,” Phill said, flipping switches on the bomb.

A hard drive clicked into her port.

“Pay your master’s ransom. Start sifting primes. A thousand dollars in bit-gold and you all live.”

Mark placed the bomb beside Subaru and Missy. “Start at 420.”

𒁖 𒅓𒅓𒅓𒅓𒅓𒅓𒅓𒅓𒅓𒅓𒅓𒅓𒅓𒅓𒅓𒅓𒅓𒅓𒅓 𒆸