21st Century Bogatyr: Everything Was Fine Until It All Went Sideways

"The world is huge and there's nowhere to turn."

by Zvi Baranoff

You know, they really prefer that we don't drive at all, leaving all transport up to the all knowing over-brain. They passed all sorts of laws and instituted all sorts of regulations but…well...that's all fine and dandy for city folks in places where the web is all mostly effective and hardly ever breaks down.

Out here in the country and particularly in the mountains, there are some sketchy spots where it just is not so reliable in spite of all the promises from corporations and the government.

Even in the cities, things still fall apart on occasion. Everything just slides to a halt and most everyone sits around waiting for Bill Gates' Kids to show up with their cosmic screwdrivers and tuning forks and electronic gizmos to find the glitches and reboot the whatnot.

Hardly anyone knows how to just drive their cars without web assistance so when the inevitable happens all they can do is smoke dope and drink until the web is back up and functioning correctly. Me, I like to drive.

The road towards the coast snakes through the mountains. It is a bit of a white knuckle affair and I am fine with letting the car's computer handle this particular stretch of the drive, even though I generally prefer to actually steer the car myself. Admittedly, that's mostly just old habits, but the skill still comes in handy and there are times when being untethered is good for the soul. I took a nap and let the car drive these curves by itself. My soul, no doubt, would get its due later.

If there are no glitches or malfunctions the computer can get me down the road nearly twice as fast as I can drive it on my own. It's like riding a roller coaster with lots of switchbacks and some hairpin turns into the Redwood Forest and a tunnel through one particularly large mountain.

There is a checkpoint at the border and of course I breeze through the checkpoint, no problem. It is all automated. The surveillance machinery checks my computer log, weighs the vehicle, takes my temperature, scans the vehicle for any plant material, animals or insects. A sonar probe searches for hidden compartments.

Years ago there would have been a couple of California Agricultural Inspectors looking for fruits and vegetation.

Before getting to the coast, I once again alter the trip destination coordinates and switch back to manual control. I turned off the highway and onto a rutted dirt road.

A few miles up this rarely used path, in the security of an electronic dead zone and a thick patch of trees is the rendezvous point and Marcel and his boys are there waiting, as I expected them to be.

Marcel is connected and he was born into the business. His family has been running contraband as long as anyone can remember. Also, protection rackets and prostitution and Girl Scout Cookies and whatever else turns a buck.

His “boys” have been with him for as long as I have known Marcel which is at least a couple of decades, maybe a quarter of a century. Time flies whether you are having fun or not. I don't think I have heard twenty words from the two of them in all that flying and swirling time, not that I have spent any time hanging out. Just in and out for me.

The “boys” are there mostly for show, like gargoyles on the buttress of a cathedral, but armed. Marcel's reputation and family connections are mostly enough to guarantee his security and the security of his product, but you never know when some hotshot full of piss and vinegar will try to make a score or a name for himself so the boys have steady employment.

The boys are each built for the job, standing well over six and a half feet tall and wide enough for whatever. One is as pale as the other is dark.

The white guy has Aryan Nation tattoos up and down his arms and probably covering his torso, not that I have seen most of his bod. There is the SS tattoo on his neck. The black fellow has some of the longest dreadlocks I have ever seen and speaks with a slight Jamaican accent.

They met in prison and probably bonded lifting weights. They seem inseparable and also seem to communicate telepathically, if communication is what you want to call it. There is no way to know. It is all somewhat reptilian, not to denigrate snakes and crocodiles.

It is not like they have a whole lot to discuss either. Stand around and if there is a problem, fix it or break it as circumstances and mood dictate. They seem to like each other and their job as well, as much as they like anything.

I glide the car to a full stop, nodding to the boys as they separate enough to let me through. Decades of doing business like this and that's all the conversation that I have ever had with these two. That's plenty. That's just fine. That's the way it is.

I find Marcel in a somewhat more chatty mood than usual which is pretty irritating, but no point in showing irritation because there isn't a damn thing I can do about it. “It ain't like the old days,” he says to me after the ritual nodding and hand shaking and whatnot.

“Nah. It ain't.” That's my response. Frankly, I don't know what the fuck he is talking about, but I will let him prattle on. It's no skin off my nose and this is his operation. If he wants to prattle he will. There is still nothing I can do about it, and I do know which side of the bread my butter is on.

So, I take a yogic breath, and I listen to him drone and try to act interested and pay enough attention to see if there is anything this gangster has to say to me that is of any use to the actual work at hand. It really seems unlikely, but one never knows.

“In the old days, it was all weed. You moved one load after another…” What the fuck!?! What's with all the chattiness? He must have taken one of those pills that are so popular these days. What can he really know about the “old days” is what I am really thinking. I have grandkids older than this hotshot. I have hemorrhoids older than him.

By the time I was introduced to Marcel the game was practically over. The “old days” were long gone before he was even born. Shit. He is STILL wet behind the ears but he is connected by birth, born into the biz and he thinks he is somebody and for what it is all worth, at this stage of my life I am somewhat dependent on him and of course I resent it, and of course I do my best not to show it. Not showing resentment was becoming an increasingly difficult manifestation and magic trick with each passing breath.

When I was his age the weed was still coming up from Mexico and Columbia. Gangsters were bringing it through the border checkpoints in semi trucks. Fast boats were dropping loads in the Florida Keys and the Everglades. Planes were flying in and dropping loads at secret fields in Arkansas and Alabama.

I moved to an Arizona border town to be closer to the source. Somebody named Guido or Frank or Tony was the connect, the guy who the truckers worked for. He talked with a lot of dees and duhs and kind of gravely and had some visible scars and a nose that looked like it had been broken multiple times. He would drop the loads at the yoga studio. The sensei would sell the weed to me.

Anyway, I wasn't paying much attention to what that dick Marcel was saying and it was mostly background noise to my own drifting memories but somewhere in there I perceived a break in his rambling monologue and I stepped back into the the conversion and the present just long enough to interject my one concern - that the packages needed an extra wrap or two because of the new sniffer equipment that the rollers were now using.

So, I told Marcel what Bubba had told me and he got the “boys” to throw an extra couple of wraps on the packages before fitting them into the storage compartment so I could get the fuck out of there and get my act on the road. I Nameste oh so sincerely to Marcel, gave the muscles a nod and rolled back down the dirt road.

I needed to get out of the woods and jump on the hyperloop. Back in the day all that long distance running was on the Interstate highways but ground travel is now only for short distance and longer hops means down the tube and into the tentacles of the spider and the web. It's totally automated and mostly secure...first stop, Kansas City.

The hyperloop plays havoc on my entire being. The speed is mind boggling. Everything blurs. Once you are travelling over a thousand miles an hour or so, the stomach and the brain and the rest of the internal organs and soul and spirit and consciousness just can't really keep up. All you can do is hold on and hope to come out the other side in one piece, because you're moving along at a numbing speed and before you can say "Bob's your uncle" you are at your destination and checking yourself for vomit and internal damage and thanking the stars or cursing the universe for being born and living in this era.

The first few years of the hyperloop, cars were being tossed about like shit down a flush toilet, but they worked out most of the bugs and hardly anyone gets flushed and splattered anymore. Besides, what choice do we have?

Commercial flights are ancient history. Long distance private airplanes have all been grounded as well. The only things flying, pretty much, are police and military and drones and some short distance pleasure flights. The Interstate highway system is ancient history. The roads have been torn up and turned into "nature preserves" or strip mines or who knows but you can't drive long distances any more. So, crisscrossing the continent, it's the hyperloop or it just ain't happening.

So, I am somewhere in Northern Cali and then I blink and swallow some bile and shake it off somewhere in Missouri. I definitely need a drink. I am definitely going to have one soon, but first things first.

Kansas City was once famous for Barbecue and the Blues. Now it has a thriving nightlife of a whole different nature. Quasi Asian cuisine and one techno dancehall after another, all under the glow of bizarre and disorienting artificial lighting, compete toe to toe.

The Wan Phát Phúc Noodle stands on one corner and the Fuk Yoo Stir Fried Cat on the opposite corner, each with pulsating music and weird glowing lights.

The Fuk Yoo Stir Fried Cat is a spiffy, upscale pseudo Asian restaurant and discotheque. Of course, like pretty much everywhere else all the cooking is automated and the wait staff is all robotic, except maybe the maître d’ which is way humanoid so might actually be flesh and blood but I just am not sure and it really does not matter to me.

The maître d’ scans my biometrics, and "recognizes" me. He lets me in and nods me toward the back of the joint. I make my way through the crowded dance floor and the pulsating lights and the oh so suave good looking people and robots and quasi Chinese food and noise they call music these days.

The office, of course, is in the back of the place. Some things never change. I find the door to the office which has been electronically unlocked for me so I can drop my first package with the yuppie prick that runs the place. The Stir Fried Cat looks prosperous and it probably is, but the business out the backdoor is likely making more than the business that comes in the main entrance. The joint is a front.

This deal is all Marcel's. His product to his customer. I am just the delivery boy on this leg of the trip, making a nickel or so on the transaction.

I drop the box on the desk and the prick manager of this snotty upscale fake Chinese restaurant hands me a fake leather briefcase filled with, I presume, real Hong Kong Dollars or Euros or Mexican Pesos or something negotiable and gives me a fake smile and a hipster fake and limp handshake and I am really hating it all and am ready to get on to the rest of the trip which is my contacts and my profits and maybe some of it is at least a little less artificial.

I want out of Fuk Yoo Stir Fried Cat and as hungry as I am getting, I wouldn't eat the slop from there if you paid me and I was looking forward to a second lunch at the some Roadkill Café or such - somewhere in Chi-town, perhaps, around Maxwell Street, I think. Down the hyperloop once more and resurface in Indiana.

I glided my car into the elevator and rode up to the top of the parking facility. I found a parking cubicle and secured the car. I set the biometric lock and the electronic cloaking mechanism making it relatively secure from thieves, cops and other sorts of vermin. I relieved the handgun from under the seat and strapped it into my ankle holster.

With my cap pulled down and my jacket wrapped tight, I headed back to the streets of Chicago, about as prepared as one can be against the Chicago weather and local temperaments and ready to find some barbecue ribs and a cold cerveza. The snow is blowing sideways and I wrap the scarf just a little tighter and I am feeling like Winnie the Pooh or the Fool from the Tarot Card deck or like a cartoon character that's gone running off the cliff but hasn't looked down yet…

It starts out sounding similar to the flapping of a hummingbird's wings. And then, more like a field of bees, in growing intensity.

In almost no time the humming changed to the oogah-oogah sound that is surely the international warning to head to the nearest shelter and otherwise you are in for deep hurt.

I heard a hiss and I heard a thud and the blast from the sound cannon and I collapsed on the sidewalk. I didn't know whether to try to protect my ears or my gonads. My brains felt like jello vibrating in an earthquake in the middle of a London Blitzkrieg attack while the Titanic is sinking and the Hindenburg is going down in flames.

Twice before was twice too many times and I was sure that this third time wouldn't be any better. The first time, gangsters took a load off me and left me heaped on the side of the road...fortunately within crawling distance of a hospital. The second time, the Federales were wielding the hammer and I awoke where time is measured by calendars and not by minutes, hours or days of the week.

What's it feel like? Depending on your consistency, somewhere about halfway between losing control of one's bowels and falling into a black hole. For me, probably closer to the black hole end of that spectrum. If darkness can be bright and unbearable noise and even more unbearable silence can coexist, it happens at that moment right before you pass out.

It's a nonlethal weapon, they say. It hardly ever kills anyone, they say. Nope. Probably won't kill you. It just makes you wish you were dead. I closed my eyes and hoped for the best. I knew in my heart that even the best possibility at this point would probably be far less than good.