Ottawa Blues
by Derik Smith
-PR fandom, year twelve.
I remember that White_Tiger returned from the border
skirmishes with Canada a hero that year, it was right after the New Years, he
looked so much older, but there was a new spring in his step- and God in his
eyes.
"We need to restart the PROA" he said.
The PROA had been shutdown
with the onset of the wars. Government privatized all the FTP space for their
Turing experiments.
"We need to restart the PROA, people need something to
believe in."
And he spoke with God in his eyes, and I
believed.
Our first top was SoumerLauft- a suburb of what was left
of Atlanta. We would find what was left of Joe Rovang there. His house was a
squat Colonial in what used to be a good neighborhood. Peeling brown paint
revealed the black beneath it, a memory of the blackout
WT knocked on his
door. No one answered.
"Are you sure this is the place?"
"He's been
holed up here since Ottawa, ran for President a few times in a write-in
campaign... he won Puerto Rico 2 years ago."
WT knocked again.
"GO
AWAY!" the voice was slurred and cracking, as if it hadn't been used in many
years. How long since he'd talked to another human being?
"Aw, fuck this."
White_Tiger produced a 44 from under his coat and shot the lock three times.
"We're coming in Irving!" He kicked in the door.
"'We're coming in
Irving'? Is that like 'We're coming in shooting'?"
"Shut up
Derik."
"k."
The inside of the house was empty. Completely. not a
stick of furniture, no light fixtures, no sign of habitation- only the washed
out silhouettes of missing picture frames.
"Rovang!" he bellowed. "Show
yourself!"
I pointed mutely to a digital cable thicker than a man's wrist
running from the stripped kitchen down the stairs.
WT nodded, and we
descended.
"What now fearless leader?"
A steel door blocked us at
the bottom of the stairway.
"We knock." and he did so.
A tiny viewport
opened in the door, and two eyes stared out, the left one constantly wandering
in other directions than the right. "Go away."
"We just want to talk to
you Joe. Open the door."
"No, you want to hurt me."
"Fuck this."
White_Tiger pulled out his gun and pointed it at Rovang through the viewport.
"open the goddamn door or I'll blow your brains out."
His good eye fixed on
the gun barrel nervously. "Y-you won't kill me. You need me."
"You're
right." he fired, the sound was unbelievably loud in the confined recesses of
the stairway.
"Arugh!" Rovang screamed on the other side of the door. "You
fucking shot my ear!!"
WT punched Rovang through the viewport and reached
though, unbolting the door. "chickenshit. Get Rovang something for his
ear."
By the time I returned with a towel, they were deep in conversation,
and Rovang was telling him off.
"...no way man, never again. I'm OVER I
tell you- OVER."
"You're not over until the show's over. 20 years,
remember?"
"No way man, no way. I have my guide, my baby, I don't need a
website again, not after Ottawa."
"We're getting the PROA back
together."
"We're on a mission from God." I piped up. They both looked at
me blankly. "ooook. Here, use this for an ice pack."
Rovang gritted his
teeth. "Just, GO man, there's nothing left. PROA is over."
WT's voice
dropped, barely above a whisper. "Tell me about Bulk."
Rovang's eyes glazed
over. "Farkus Bulkmeyer, Asthmatic with a dust allergy, he's known Skull
since kindergarden, they've been lovers since third grade..." he looked up,
suddenly aware of our presence. "it's all in the tapes, you just have to read
between the lines." He gestured to a small pile of beta videocassettes and
RDVD's on the bookshelf.
"Is that all of them?" WT asked sharply.
"Yeah,
every PR episode ever made, accurate as of last week, all 5 movies, 2 TV
miniseries, original pilot, live show, non-continuity Christmas specials, and
a bootleg video of the Broadway Musical."
"And your guide?"
"Right
here." He ejected 2 matching golden CD's from the drive on his desktop
machine. "You know, PR has some eerie parallels with recent global
history."
"Really." he said disinterestedly while eying the CD's
hungrily.
"Yeah, See, I think the border war with Canada is a parallel for
Zedd's takeover of Rita's operations- with Yassar Arafat as Zedd
naturally..."
"Naturally."
"I'm working on a universal theory of
everything relating back to PR, I mean, we live in a Fractal universe, it
stands to reason that if I could understand PR completely, perfectly, I'd be
able to extrapolate and understand the entire universe... I mean- for all
intents and purposes, there's no reason I wouldn't be God!"
"I can think of
one reason." White_Tiger reached into his coat.
Two hours later, the
smoldering wreckage of the brown Colonial behind us, White_Tiger made a check
on his list. "You're certain you got it all?"
"Everything, the tapes, the
RDVD, the guide. Everything you need."
"Not quite everything." He lit up
a cigar.
"Who's next on the list?" I asked.
White_Tiger puffed a bit
before answering. "Ray Calderon"
It began to rain.
The
End
