Cheering for the Rockets
A Jerry Cornelius Story
“Computers et it.” Mo was admiring. He had found some more glue. “The Original Insect et it. Millennium insect. Ultimate bug. Munch munch. Bug et everything. Chomp. Chomp. Chomp. Et the time. Et the dosh. Et the info. Et the control. Et the entire lousy dream. The house of floss. It all went so quickly. Gobbled up our world and all its civilisation and what do we have to show for it?”
“Some very picturesque ruins,” she pointed out. “Heritage sites. Buy now while they’re cheap. Especially here at the centre of our common civilisation! Imagine the possibilities. Yes. Yummy.”
“Yum, yum, yum,” said Jerry.
“Yummy. That’s so right,” said Trixie.
“Fuck all,” said Mo. “I mean fuck off.”
“How?” Jillian swung like a ship at anchor. Then she remembered who she was. She sighed, as if making steam, and continued her stately progress across the floor. Mo traipsed in her wake.
“Lies,” said the general.
Jerry whacked at the old soldier’s head with a sympathetic slapstick. “Those aren’t lice. They’re locusts.”
4. NO
“To maintain our low degree of vigilance we had to adopt the airy notion either that nobody was preparing for war or else (since almost everybody was) that the coming war could not touch us. We necessarily chose the latter self-deception.”
—Philip Wylie, Generation of Vipers
“...The news out of Jonesboro, Ark., last week was a monstrous anomaly: a boundary had been crossed that should not have been. It was a violation terrible enough to warrant waking the Presidentof the U.S. at midnight on his visit to Africa, robbing him of sleep till daylight.”
—TIME, April 6, 1998
“It is our goal to teach every school child in Texas to read.”
—George W. Bush Election Commercial
‘FAID-BIN-ANTAR’ TOUCHED HIS cup to the samovar and his servant turned the silver tap. Amber tea fell into the bowl. Listening with delight to the sounds it made, the old sheikhh seemed to read meaning into it. His delicate, aquiline face was full of controlled emotion. Behind the RayBans his eyes held a thousand agonies.
Brushing rapidly at his heavy sleeve, he stared through the tall ornamental window to his virtual garden where Felix Martin’s head, its bushy brows shading uncertain eyes, continued to present his show. His body had been buried for twelve days. His ratings were enormous. The virtual fountain continued to pump. The antique electronics flickered and warped, mellow eccentricities. Sepia light washed over Jerry’s body, giving it strange angles, unusual beauty. Jerry was flattered. He was surprised the generator had lasted this long.
