Neon Necropolis. Vol 0: For VIP

Neon Necropolis

Vol 0: For VIP

By Vincent O’Thorn

Smashwords Edition

ISBN 9781370294077

Copyright © 2018 by Vincent O’Thorn

All rights reserved.

This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review or scholarly journal.

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Decoding from binary code: Vincent O'Thorn

Translation into human language: Anastasia Mousy Isupova

Canvas: Prozerpina DeSorel

Index

1987

Act I

The Best Employee of the Month

Enter the Depth

Act II

4 | Demise

13 | Dreamweb

23 | HOLES

Entract I

Act III

25 | Hallowed Be Thy Acorns

33 | Something

37 | American Harakiri

Entracte II

Act IV

40 | Twisted Soul Asylum

47 | Archive

57 | Mu

Penthouse

Everything is true, he said. Everything anybody has ever thought.

― Philip K. Dick, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?

1987

Heavy crimson portieres were slide apart, lifting a swarm of dusts, spreading a smell reminiscent of a small street in Thailand, where people cook everything that crawls, flies and what you can chew. And it doesn’t matter how long ago it was crawling. The searchlights awoke and cut the tangible darkness, pointing at a tall thin actor, who was standing in perishable depths of the scene. He raised his right hand. In his tenacious long fingers was clamped a small acorn. His other hand was wearing a little scary doll, depicting a girl in a T-shirt with an incomprehensible Latin inscription. He looked at the acorn, squinting dark deep-set eyes contrasting with a face covered with white makeup. To be or not to be - this phrase forced itself on, but the staging implied something else, and a person reminiscent of the French mime threw the acorn into the auditorium. Silence broke to pieces from a fierce applause. There was no liveliness in them. Rather, aggression and thirst to see the culmination of this performance, which would smoothly collapse into the deep of the denouement.

The whole troupe appeared near the mime. Someone looked the same peculiar, someone was very usual, as if he had just walked into his boring office, and, unexpectedly for himself, got to the show. Perhaps it was so. There was a clear place on the stage for each of them. They all arrived, slowly filling the voids and waving to the auditorium, which stayed cold. The last who went to the scene was a large man. A mask with a long pointed nose was on his face and he was dressed in something what reminded a long medical coat with large black buttons. A cart with cheerful jingle was rolled next to him. The big-nosed one brought with himself a certain parallelepiped, which was covered with a blue fabric.

The company of actors surrounded the cube, but none of those present did not remove the material, and did not even touch the cargo, as if there was some special time for this.

'The last time’, muttered the big-nosed, as he approached the mime. ‘They’ve ruined everything.’

His voice was rough, calm, almost without intonations, as if the machine was talking. A complete alternative to his interlocutor, who abruptly jabbered with the emotions in response.

'But how? But why? Oh, woe to us. And what will we do!?’

‘There are always options. Remember our friends. They live in the center. They will help us.’

‘Oh! Do they have such an opportunity?’

‘They have more than an opportunity.’

‘So ... we'll need a courier!

‘For what? I do not understand you.’

‘We will exchange a lot! We will sell a lot! They have more than an opportunity! We have more than necessity!’

‘You're right. I have ideas in my mind. And now we have to start.’

They turned to the audience.

‘Mesdames et Messieurs!!!’

‘Ladies and Gentlemen.’

‘We welcome you in our renovated theater!’

‘Now you can watch our performances on TV.’

‘Most likely, you do it right now! You can purchase VHS...’ he stopped short and looked thoughtfully at his colleague, ‘Do you feel?’

‘What exactly?’

‘It smells of smoke…’

‘Don't be distracted. We can’t spoil the performance.’

The mime shrugged and turned his attention back to the hall.

‘So! We start!’

He leaned toward to the cargo on the cart and slowly began to lift the piece of fabric. The impatience in the auditorium grew. The air filled with a loud whisper. One moment and the fabric was thrown off with a spectacular gesture under the universal Whoa!. But the view was too strange... Too strange and even vile for just to be a part of reality.

The smell of smoke intensified.

~ Act I ~

The Best Employee of the Month

Quick awakening.

Melanie sprang up what pretty frightened the other passengers, who, like her, went to the sleeping area from the office center. After calming the old lady, who was sitting next to her and decided that the bus was attacked, the girl flopped onto the sitting. The gazes of strangers were largely disappeared and of course it was for the best - she needed to drive a couple more stops. And only then Melanie could leave the hell of public transport, creep to her apartment, take a snack sandwiches with peanut butter and more peanut butter, and take a shower. After such a dream, the shower needed reinforced. But the girl could not remember what was under the blue fabric.

I shouldn't to sleep on the bus. My district is not the most criminal, but this city is not Garden of Eden. Sometimes it seems that everything is rotten right through here. Neither the mayor, the governor, law enforcement agencies, special services, nor this vile rain can clean the decaying streets. Dirt falls apart, leaving a void. But you still have to work somehow. And it becomes more complicated with each damn day. Maybe I should be a designer or doing a handmade stuff, work from home, like all normal girls of my age? So, on the other hand, no one forced me. And now what? Give up? Mom, Dad, courier service is not for me. And okay, if I carried pizza, but work for Snow in the Summer company - this is a good line in the resume. The great one.

Snow in the Summer has always been number one in city courier services. Only VIP-clients and only with special cargoes. The work was infinitely far from pushing spam into mailboxes, spreading newspapers and milk in mornings. The company’s couriers made their way through any traffic jams, bad weather, fences and packs of dogs. One Melanie's friend carried a parcel through the forest to some hermit. After that she was talking everyone at least a week about how she had been hiding from a bear. And, in the end, also from the half-mad hermit, who arranged the shooting. Of course, she was compensated for her troubles with a fine bonus.

The firm Snow in the Summer was created by the ancestors of Melanie in the 1930s. There were some rumors that the forerunner of the modern company was a kind of special service in pre-revolutionary Russia. One noble family had once moved from that country and started from scratch in a new place and evolved to the present scale. By the truth the work really was dangerous. They did not take everyone, and the criteria were not clear even to the majority of those who had already been in the staff. It was necessary to pass several tests when applying for a job. Some of them were quite ordinary, some resembled a shamanic rite of initiation. In general, nothing terrible. However, Melanie's father did not think so. He was initially against the daughter's entry into the family business, but the mother said that the daughter should to continue the business of her family, how it always happened.

Now, I am the best employee of the month. I deliver snow in the summer. In any weather. Even to the devil himself ... Or how was it in a slogan?

Arguments to take their child to work for loving parents were two. First, she perfectly passed all tests. Secondly, she could not get into any other position in any other company, as the corporate culture was an unbearable torment for her, which was confirmed by practice. In all manifestations of this very culture. She was rescued from chants and hymns and sent to the office to the most loyal supervisor, who, by the way, was helping her to get more complex and expensive orders, in secret from her parents. Melanie suspected that they were really aware about it, but scandal to the best employee of her firm would be complete delirium, and Melanie was the really best, and not just held the honor board as the stereotypical children of the leadership. In addition, she would have been tortured by her conscience if her favorite supervisor, who looked like an actor from the sixties, were fired because of her mistakes, so she had to fall over backward every time. And every time successfully.

The bus reached the stop that Melanie needed. Leaping to her feet, she left a vehicle. The same glaring glance of the old lady was her accompany. The old one, probably, will chat to everyone, that she at least neutralize the terrorist in broad daylight. No one would condemn such vigilance. And for Melanie it was preferable than someone who would have tried to steal her bag with a valuable cargo.

I should have had to take a work car or pick it up tomorrow. But now it's too late. I'll look sharp on it.

The girl patted her luggage. Her future fee and luxury vacation pleasantly protruded from her bag. Nine little packages for especially important persons. Everybody was there in the past, but every time it became сuriouser and curiouser.

Melanie bought herself an apartment that occupied the entire second floor of the house, which looked like decoration of the noir detective. She could afford something better, like a house near a lake, or something in the center, but the point was not in luxury, but in the fact that all dreams come true. By the way, the furniture was