Fantastic Metropolis

It turns out that Ella’s phenomenal breasts were not, in fact, real. The certification from a council of thirteen respected Finnish physicians had, for a long time, been definitive proof of mammary authenticity. But Bengt had just told Plot the truth: the physicians had been bribed, tempted by Ella’s willingness to participate in activities whose deviance exceeded the imagination of even the most inventive hearsayer. As confirmation, Bengt had given Plot a core sample, procured that very night from an intoxicated Ella with a bioscope that Plot had given him in secret a few days before.

I went back to my room and took off my slippers and gently kissed my Octavia. Then I lay awake for the rest of the night and listened to the sea lions.

The next day I was pouring orange juice when the praetorians from the Department of Reality arrived. Ruddy men, mostly Americans, with high, crested helmets. They poured through the door after I complacently opened it, all of them breathing heavily and smelling of french-fry grease. Last of all came Plot, in his shabby little get-up. He sneered at me and tipped his hat.

The praetorians brought Ella out, one holding each of her arms. She walked dignified, wearing a miniature black fedora on the side of her head. News paps swarmed, strobing the room with their flashbulbs. Bengt followed, smiling.

“I’m finally free of you,” he said. “Of your thick gloating and your god damned selfishness.”

“My darling,” she said. “Why didn’t you just talk it out with me?”

They stared deeply into each other’s eyes. Bengt gulped, as if he had made a terrible mistake. He craned his neck towards her. The praetorians didn’t pull her back as she stretched towards him. The duo kissed, gently at first—then passionately, clicking into the deep tongue-soul interface they had achieved in the Wu-Krazer spot.

In the middle of the kiss, she grabbed his neck and jerked his Adam’s apple up and down. The guards tried to stop her but she elbowed them backwards with twelve gym-full years of strength. Hands free, she took Bengt’s neck in one hand and, with the other, hit his back.

He coughed with a sound like a zipper unzipping and she let him go. On the floor, shining in its blue carapace, was the throat fly.

“Take him, too,” she screamed. “He’s had it is whole career. He never told me but a faker knows a faker.”

They put Bengt in restraints. He said nothing. I wondered if he could still talk when the fly was out.

As the reality people were getting ready to leave, the chief praetorian asked Plot. “Should we check out the composer?”

“No,” said Plot, looking at me. “His music’s real. It’s not good enough to be fake.”

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Octavia and I sold the island. No one in the music world would talk to us. Even blind Zohar left without leaving a palmer number. I called an old friend at the Department of Parklands and he said that all government jobs were off limits for me. So Octie and I lived off of our savings in a small apartment two hundred floors above St. Paul’s ancient dome. She made sculptures out of broken instruments and I took too much confidence and tried to have intercourse with society girls. The trial lasted for years and we testified several times.

My final day at trial was the last time I saw Bengt. He was on the stand, smiling martyr for the new anti-reality movement, kowtowing with his glance to the few fans left in the courtroom stands, and after I spilled the beans on him he turned towards me and looked me in the eyes.

“Hoot!” He shouted, and laughed like it was funny. “Hoot! Hoot!”

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Brantley L. Bryant is a graduate student and freelance writer living in New York. He is currently working on an annotated version of James Branch Cabell’s novel Jurgen.