Chp 1: Unauthorized Affliction
Three Rivers, One SharKat!, and Zero Hope for Civil Political Discourse
Previously on Pirates of Appalachia… In the unincorporated wilds of Appalachia, Mama told the tale of the pirates that roamed the rivers of Appalachia and forbade her son, Kohl, from accessing his inheritance—a treasure map kept in a mason jar. She has big dreams for him: to go to the fabulous city of Pittsburgh….
MagicInternetMoney.com Forward Slash Arena
Independent City of Pittsburgh
Wednesday, October 23, 0026 P.C., 6:07 P.M.
~ Sixteen days to the conclusion of election season
Pittsburgh gubernatorial candidate Adam Patterson just received the diagnosis—cancer. The adorable, slightly senile and fully mute golden retriever with her head on his foot confirmed as much. It was the climax to a rather nauseating diagnostic procedure, beginning with a stiff crotch sniffing and ending with Chelsea scooting her butt across the ground until she’d encircled the patient in a fecal halo. Flopping to the floor and licking herself, negative; playing dead with her head on your foot, ya gotz the cancer. After her original owner went to work in the digital mines, Adam adopted Chelsea as a political tool. After four rounds of remodeling to appear more electable, he’d garnered only an additional sixteen retweets, twenty-six new Instagram followers, and three hundred Likes across platforms, resulting in a net voting gain of only 314,159. But after snapping a few selfies with Chelsea, he’d wheeled in over three million voting credits overnight! Between her breathtaking ability as an influencer, eerie silence, and cancer-detecting spidey-sense, she captured his imagination and quickly became his most trusted confidante. Now, before the penultimate debate, she was telling him he had an unauthorized affliction.
“Three minutes and you’re on,” Harv, Adam’s campaign manager, said, peeking through the curtain like he was about to unveil the man behind Oz. “You know The Hawk is going to make a big entrance, so be sure to ham up the Babyface act. Maybe ride Chelsea? The audience will eat that up.”
Adam pulled the saddle out of his gym bag, his face cemented in an uneven, companionable smile.
“Remember to stick to the Method. No matter what The Hawk or the umpire says—ridicule, talking point. Ridicule, talking point. Ridicule, talking point. Repeat repeat repeat!”
Stretching, Adam tried to forget what the hound-head on his foot signified. He was prepared for the debate. He’d gotten a good pump at the gym and his pectoral muscles were so swollen they could be used as flotation devices. Considering how well his pecs polled, he squirmed into his tightest mustard yellow leotard. It was ripped at the shoulders, but it had brought him luck during the notorious Canonsburg Debate Debacle when he’d narrowly won the match after an opportune piece of scaffolding crushed his opponent. He still managed to lose the election; in fact, he’d managed to lose every election and was now oh-for-seventeen. But Harv kept pushing him forward—kept believing in him even though he wasn’t sure he believed in anything anymore. Every lost election felt as empty as the loss he felt within himself. If only Mother and Father would send him the sign he’d been waiting for since he’d left the Church of the Everlasting Wander.
“Okay, ninety seconds, champ,” said Harv, his toothless gums bared. At three-foot-two, he was short even by Crispy standards, but his discolored, leathery skin had the twice-fried appearance that gave his people the “crispy” moniker. He wore a camouflage-patterned suit that looked like it had been cut at the elbows and knees to fit him—Adam figured it was the latest in Crispy fashion—and when he spoke Adam pictured a World War II general rallying the troops before certain slaughter. “Now, give it to me! What are you going to say if they ask you about the war with the Xioddarm?”
“My opponent is as smart as poop in a bucket, but not as useful! What Pittsburgh needs is another line of credit to build another stadium. Last year alone, Pittsburghians spent 73 percent of their debt on sports and prostitution. If we want to continue accumulating debt at that rate, we need a new stadium with more legroom and reclining seats.”
“Great, champ! And what about The Hawk’s plan to give everyone a next-gen iAm tablet with the tax payout?
“What a disastrous, dumbpendous idea!” Adam jeered, his meticulously sculpted faux cheekbones blushing a soft red, which, juxtaposed against his pasty, almost unnaturally white skin and the PermaTwinkleTM glistening in his brown eyes, made him resemble a randy Santa Claus who’d come down the chimney a bit prematurely. “The Hawk is trying to kill us—nay, he’s not content with killing us. First, he wants to sodomize our way of life and stab our quality of living in the face! Pittsburgh cannot survive without new 5D superscreen televisions. How can we understand anything about the world if we don’t see it on a screen? And everyone already has an iAm—it’s a constitutional right!”
“Abso-fuckin-tutely it is! And don’t forget, in a pinch call The Hawk a puny puppet of big pharma. That insult polls well.”
Adam nodded and stroked Chelsea’s ear. Somehow, she always smelled like dog biscuits even though he had never given her one. He wondered what cancer smelled like—blood, sweat, maybe nightmare farts? Maybe something exotic, like stinky foot cheese or spicy noodle soup. It had to be colon cancer. He’d been having stomach troubles and been using the phrase “pain in the ass” with unusual frequency lately. He imagined his body wilting, his sculpting melting away in radiation treatments, his corpse mummified in bureaucratic red tape. It filled him with a dread he could no longer show in his eyes and an uncertainty forever imprisoned in the brick of his cheeks. Dog biscuits—suddenly it was so obvious. Cancer smells like dog biscuits.
“And your talking point on scuttling more commuter shafts?”
Chelsea jerked as if she’d been shocked by defibrillators. Bolting upright, she locked eyes with Adam and let loose a howl that could have originated in every heart ever broken. Adam was so stunned his jaw dropped the full half-inch his molding would allow. If not surgically fixed in position, his eyes would have grown wide, maybe even bulged. She speaks—the dog speaks! Chelsea had never so much as barked, growled, whimpered, or snored in the eight years he’d owned her. And now, not only was she speaking, she was lamenting the prospects of further travel restrictions.
“Travel is divine.” The words of his sermon twenty years prior streamed through his mind as if he were once again standing at the pulpit in his aquamarine robe. Back when people called him Father, when he had a purpose, when the world made sense. Before his descent into politics. “Why else would Mother and Father have had Their people wander the deserts and mountains and prairies and coasts for seventy-three years, seven months and thirteen days? After all, it was that journey that gave us our name—the Church of the Everlasting Wander….”
Alas, his words had fallen on deaf ears. Following the Trumpocalypse, people in the cities became so afraid of traveling through the unincorporated areas that road construction was halted in favor of Muskutter shafts. Within a couple years, the roads and highways leading in and out of Pittsburgh were in disrepair and choked with broken-down vehicles, trash, farmers markets, and sprawling tent cities. Meanwhile, cement shafts snaked through the highrises and out into the world, ferrying commuters to and from the city one pod at a time. It was so slow and miserable only adventurers and masochistic fools ventured outside the city to vacation. Still, Adam had persisted, believing it his calling to resurrect the short-term home-sharing economy. But then the final obstruction metastasized with the election of Poopé Hal Fishman and the Anti-Exodus Act he ushered into place, which eliminated most air travel and blocked further shaft erection. The holiest man alive committing such a sacrilegious act shook Adam’s faith so violently he renounced his belief and buried himself in politics, painting over everything he had known until he could barely remember what he had been.
Now, both the Babyface and Heel parties intended to decommission a third of the shafts, but they disagreed on how the savings should be spent. The Heel Party wanted to divert the funds to build more DroneStrike arcades, but the Babyface Party wanted to give all twelve million citizens Pet Coal and superscreen TVs. It was the key point of Adam’s campaign, one that Harv said could win him the election. In his distant past, he would’ve been horrified by the situation—now, he went along with whatever the party wanted because he didn’t want to be called a party pooper.
But Chelsea’s voice plunged the clogged drain to his soul, stirring long-stagnant sentiments and passions. Was it a sign? Were Mother and Father calling out to him? Was the cancer Their way of digging beneath the layers of political polish and reaching out to him on a cellular level?
Adam patted Chelsea’s head, but only once, as he was uncertain of the religious ramifications of scratching behind her ear. This is no time to lose focus, he told himself. You’ll forget everything Harv has taught you. Standing, he flexed his biceps in an attempt to clear his head, which, come to think of it, may be where the cancer was growing—he had been experiencing a large number of earworms recently, most prominently the oldie “Beautiful” by Christina Aguilera. No, focus! What was that insult he wanted me to remember? Pungent puppet of big pharma! Wait, no, it was puny pirate of pig dharma, right? Shit, he’d forgotten everything fifteen sections before taking the ring! He looked in the mirror, relieved to see the same expertly crafted expression of confidence and affability despite his growing uncertainty. He took a deep breath—through the nose, swallow—then exhaled out the mouth. Sliding the wheeled sawhorse beneath Chelsea’s belly, he mounted the canine. Her back caved and her legs bowed, but the sawhorse helped support Adam’s weight and kept her upright. Thankfully, she voiced no complaint. A good sign, considering recent events.
“Champ, uh, I’m no good with words or personal hygiene,” said Harv, his expression contorting into an unflattering tangle of fury and constipation. The strange malleability of his face and the hard-boiled personality emanating from his munchkin body had the dual effect of motivating and making Adam queasy. Still, out of all the campaign managers he’d had, Harv was the only one he’d ever felt a personal connection with. “But I want you to know that I think you can make a difference. Why, you’re the most intelligent, caring sumbitch I’ve ever known. The city would be lucky to have you as Guber. And those superscreens—why, they’d be a sight to behold. But you can be a little on the sensitive side. It’s like my harlette of a wife Brown says, the States were lost as soon as people lost their sense of humor. So, you know, have a good time out there and try not to take yourself too seriously.”
Make a difference? Since when did politicians make a difference? Were Mother and Father calling out through Harv as well? Adam popped a pec at him as means of acknowledgment, then lightly clicked his heels against Chelsea’s haunches—“Giddyup.”
The wheels of the sawhorse squealed as they brushed through the curtain, and Candidate Patterson glided into the arena upon his golden steed. The heart-pounding tune of “Eye of the Tiger” greeted him, blasting through the stadium so triumphantly it rattled the steel entrance ramp leading to the ring. The blinding flashes of iAms snapping pictures rolled through the audience like rivers of lightning, and the air swirled into tornado-strength winds generated from the hordes of selfie drone propellers. At any second, Adam half-expected a house to fall on him. It was the largest, most raucous crowd he’d ever performed in front of—ever seen, for that matter. Faces, drones, holographic text boxes, and all manner of fanatical cray-cray swarmed around him. He felt simultaneously invisible and hated, unimportant and prosecuted, like he could scream and no one hear him, sniffle, and every one turn against him. It was as if his social media feeds had sprung to life, and they were far more unwieldy, far more powerful, infinitely more dangerous, than he had ever imagined. Despite how swollen his pectorals were, the spectacle left him deflated and confused. His notions of grandeur, of making a difference, of a divine calling, were flushed away. Acid squirted up the back of his throat, and his vision swam. To keep from vomiting, he focused on the holographic text boxes bobbing around him like cardboard signs—
“Superscreen Paterson is SUPER!”
“We want Pet Coal!”
“Hawk 3:16 just whooped ur ass!”
“A river shark ate my baby!”
One thing Adam was sure of—he wasn’t in Canonsburg anymore.
As Chelsea struggled the final ten feet to the ring, her legs slapping at the ramp like oars, Adam tried to regain his bearings. Sure, he’d never seen an audience this big, but he’d performed in front of more hostile crowds, the type who’d throw objects heavy enough to knock over scaffolding. And besides, he looked good. From his eyebrows, so artistically crafted a tad more raised than average but not enough to indicate shock (it took three surgeries to get them right), to his medium-sized nose with its soft tip set so it couldn’t possibly upturn into a haughty pose, to his dimpled and smoothed and re-dimpled chin that reminded voters of a plumber’s butt crack—everything about him was ready to be pictured from every angle. And his pecs—ah, were they glorious! Flexing and bobbing and lathered in two extra layers of baby oil. You can do this, he told himself as he dismounted his cancer-detecting companion. Just remember the script. What was that insult again? Punny puppy of cig karma—yeah, that’s it! Looney carrot of big mama!
He hoisted Chelsea onto the mat, rolled the sawhorse next to the ring, and ducked through the ropes and into the ring. His entrance music abruptly cut off, and the arena fell dark. A moment later, the blistering electric guitar of AC/DC’s “Back in Black” thundered overhead. The partisan Heel crowd erupted as Candidate Michael Hawk burst onto the entrance ramp, pyrotechnics blazing at his sides. He was a scrawny pup—just nineteen years old—wearing red Speedos and a white tank top. The bronze skin on his chest and back was marred with thick patches of violet acne—an authorized but utterly unseemly affliction. The Heel Party had yet to refresh his image, leaving him with nostrils so large Adam’s attack ads pictured them as black holes sucking Pet Coal out of the hands of children. But, boy, did he know how to work a crowd! He strutted and twirled down the ramp, fist-bumping his followers and taunting Babyface fans. In one stroke of theatrical genius, he stopped to lick the head of a baby wearing an “Are you my daddy?” onesie. But despite his antics, there was only one thing the crowd came to see—the lump of dynamite in his swimwear.
Entering the ring and leaping onto the second turnbuckle, The Hawk gyrated his hips and shook his bulge at the crowd, eliciting a ruckus response that intensified when he jumped down and customarily slapped his opponent with his dynamite-shaking hand. Adam stood his ground, but the blow was so hard it left a nearly perfect handprint in the gelatinous outer layer of his molding.
“Itttttt’s tiiiiiiiiimmme!” the MC growled, stepping into the center of the squared circle. “Let’s get ready to de-baaa-aaaaa-aaaaa-aaa-ate!”
The crowd unleashed a deafening roar. Adam rubbed his jaw, his expression amiable as ever.
Extending his arm toward Adam, the MC continued—“In this corner, representing the Babyface Party, with an utterly defeated record of zero-for-seventeen, Adam ‘Pec Pops’ Patterson…”
Adam cupped his hand around his ear and unleashed a series of pectoral flexes that could best be described as awkward.
“And in this corner, the notorious jagoff, the granny-slappin’, butt-sniffin’, bloody fucking legend himself… a member of the number one esports clan in the Independent City of Pittsburgh. Representing the Heel Party, Michael ‘The Hawk’ Hawk!”
The reaction for The Hawk was at least double what it was for Adam, no doubt aided by the enthusiasm and superlative adjectives with which the MC introduced him. Maybe the crowd was more hostile than Adam had thought.
With considerably less enthusiasm, the MC added, “Our umpire for the debate is… Li’l Peter McCarthy.”
Umpire Peter McCarthy stepped to the microphone, eyeing Chelsea warily. He was a handsome Crispy, standing a tad below four feet tall, with ruddy hair and a thick, curly beard framing his square face. His green eyes were large and intelligent, and thus clearly disinterested in the proceedings. Besides his diminutive stature, the only thing distinctly Crispy about him was his nose, which looked like it had been broken so many times it could be used as a Rorschach test. He reached for the microphone, but it hadn’t adjusted it for him, and as he tried to lower it, it went limp and bonked him on the head.
“You look like a cool penguin’s retarded cousin!” The Hawk crowed, chopping down with both hands and thrusting his crotch into the back of Peter’s head in a move referred to online as #ExplodingTheDynamite.
Laughter rolled through the audience.
Mother and Father, he was a natural!
Scowling at The Hawk, Umpire McCarthy seemed to be the only person unimpressed with his antics. “Shall we begin?” he asked, peevishly. “Candidate Hawk, the first question is to you. The city recently missed its thirtieth consecutive mortgage payment and is now facing foreclosure. Its majority debtholders—including the Chinese Communist Party of Timu, AmeriChase Bank, and Oprah, to name a few—are demanding payment. What is your plan to jumpstart the economy and put the city back into good standing?”
“That’s a good question, Captain Small-Pants. But you know what a better question is—why do trolls like you even exist?” The Hawk marched around the ring, hands outstretched as if everyone in the audience was asking the same thing. Between his marching, high-pitched voice, and bulging brown eyes, he looked like a freshman quarterback trying to rally a Mongol horde. “People of Pittsburgh, there is an epidemic of toddler pregnancy plaguing our streets. My opponent would have you believe toddlers aren’t fertile, but I would have you believe otherwise. We didn’t wage the Small Wars just to get stuck with more small babies. When elected, I will sign legislation to make Crispy breeding illegal! These trolls cannot be allowed to breed when there is a dearth of quality big men in the NBA. Are we willing to live in a world where Shaq Diesel will never lay down the hammer again? My opponent will tell you Crispies can be useful for shining shoes and picking up keys, but can we trust a Crispy-wrangler? Backstage, Candidate Paterson keeps a troll on a perch, feeding him crackers and teaching him silly phrases, no doubt. Patterson is your enemy, Pittsburgh. An enemy of the state!”
Chants of “Crispy-wrangler!” rained down from the bleachers. Adam, however, hadn’t heard a thing. It was a trick he learned early in his political career: if you don’t listen to your opponent, it’s easier to avoid responding to them and deviating from your talking points. Suddenly he felt an itch in his undercarriage—could it be testicular cancer? He looked at Chelsea and immediately lost himself in the soft brown hollows of her eyes. What did she see? Did the dimple in his right cheek poll well with her? Or could she only smell the surgeries, the metastasizing cancer, the baby oil puddling in his belly button? Somehow, she managed to look at him as neither Babyface nor Heel. There was something more—something he wished he could see or smell or taste himself. It made him crave dog biscuits.
“And your rebuttal, Candidate Patterson,” Peter asked, his deep, resonant voice dripping with apathy.
“Citizens, countrymen—lend me your fears!” Adam bellowed, his stringy hair whipping over his ears and bald scalp. “Candidate Hawk is a… is a—” Fuck, what was that insult again?—“gaping rebuttal!” Great save. “And this election season, you must tell him one voting credit at a time to—suck it!”
“Suck it, suck it, suck it…” returned the crowd.
“When elected, I’ll spend the tax payout on providing superscreen televisions to every citizen. No longer will Pittsburghians be doomed to experiencing life in two dimensions! Nay—I say nay!”
“Nay, nay, nay…”
“By decommissioning more Muskutter shafts and raising taxes on the Contributor Class, we can enrich the way of life of every man, woman, child, and other. Blanket sweaters and Pet Coal for everyone!”
As the crowd broke into a Pet Coal-induced frenzy, Adam was unnerved to see Chelsea had wet herself more than usual. There was so much urine it looked like she was standing upon a golden lake, a gentle shower dripping from the turnbuckle behind her. And she was no longer looking at him; she was gazing out at the audience as if searching for a new owner. His stomach knotted. She’s shunning me. Shunning me for proposing more cuts to travel. And without the shafts, how would he even get to his tribunal hearings to get authorization to be checked for cancer? Come to think of it, the whole idea made no sense! He looked around and realized Umpire McCarthy was staring at him as if he expected him to continue. He was in a pinch—already! Frantically, he spat—“Loon-looney crumpet of-uh, of-uf… pig parmigiana!”
“Looney crumpets indeed,” Umpire McCarthy said without inflection, rubbing his face with his palm as if he’d been smacked in the nose by the stupid-shovelful. “This question is to you, Candidate Parmigiana. The war with the Xioddarm has raged for more than a decade at an estimated cost of three trillion MIM, commonly referred to as Magic Internet Money. If elected, what will you do to finally resolve this conflict?”
Candidate Hawk ripped the microphone from Adam’s hand, froze in position, then slowly tilted his head until he was looking straight up and his uncorrected profile was in grotesque silhouette. “Can you smellllll-ell-ell-ell-llla… that Pat. Is. Sweatin’?” he crooned with trademark lambast. “And the better question is—why do we need to resolve the conflict at all? The war inspired the most popular video game in history, DroneStrike. Season Seven dropped yesterday, and it’s epic! And those Xioddarm savages, with their giant women and tiny men, have never even set foot in the ’burgh, so we’re unquestionably winning, no matter what the cost may be. Besides, why else have kids if we can’t leave our problems to them? My incel opponent couldn’t answer that, but I’ll tell you—because the retirement age for the Governing Class is too high! It’s unsightly that a hard-working bureaucrat should endure a longer career than a running back for the Steelers. Should our gubers be forced to make policy into their forties when Jerome Bettis retired at thirty-four? Eff no! It’s our duty to lower the retirement age from forty to thirty years old. To not do so would be unconscionable. #RetireEarly #BestLife #Yeet4Eva #GetPittsburghHighAgain—visit my merch store, everyone!”
Wow, what a pro! Adam marveled at the way Mike listened to the questions and responded before returning to his talking points! And what an idea! Lowering the retirement age was far better than shafting more commuter shafts. Just the thought of it made him forget about Chelsea’s episode in the corner and her frightful diagnosis. He was so excited his pecs popped involuntarily, jitterbugging Gangnam-style to The Hawk’s every hashtag. If Mike was elected, Adam could retire and live out his days carving cartoon characters out of bushes. He could make a Navy Stan and a Flare Bear and a—
“Candidate Patterson, your response…”
And a Giggly Mo and a Poo Bear—
“Candidate Patterson, do you have a response?”
Suddenly he heard his name and realized he was paying attention to The Hawk and had completely lost focus. He tried to remember a talking point, any talking point, but couldn’t. He nodded his head, then nodded again, and before he knew what he was doing, he was nodding so emphatically he feared he’d crack his facial molding.
“Informative,” Ump McCarthy said with a sigh. “We still have a few minutes to fill, so let’s continue to enthrall and enlighten with head gestures and jackassery.” He turned to Mike. “In that vein, Candidate Ass, regarding the pollution of the rivers: The confluence of the Ohio, Monongahela, and Allegheny is so thick commuters are walking across it. Images have been caught of a shark-like cat creature dismembering citizens. If elected, what will you do to ease concerns over attacks at Three Rivers?”
“#BallsNUrFace!” The Hawk shouted, pushing Peter over like a bowling pin.
“And Mr. Pec Pop,” Peter said, rolling onto his side and crossing his legs, “your response?”
He was talking to him again! Dear Mother—he was talking to him.
“Pec Pop?”
He’d give anything to be retired. To be far from here. Languishing in a garden. Picking apples. Cursing gophers. He tried to focus on the Method. To hear Harv’s words, see his face. But all he could focus on was the movement of his neck. Finally, sore and gasping, he said, “Nod.”
“Is ‘nod’ your response, Candidate Patterson?”
He was still talking to him! Dear Father—what would Chelsea do?
“Your wit is as fluent as the rivers,” Peter said, rising to his feet. “Okay, we have one final question, and whoever wants to completely dismiss it and rant—or just nod—can go first. There has been a rise of unauthorized afflictions—most notably, cancer—which has led to a backlog in tribunal hearings. Most will not be treated under Title Nineteen because the disease has not gone untreated for the mandatory three-year ‘Right to Life’ period. What is your position on the calls of many who think Title Nineteen should be revised?”
“Pittsburghians,” The Hawk said, flapping his arms like wings, “when elected, I will blow out the city’s political constipation by instituting Sloppy Joe Tues—”
Chelsea howled—a doleful squall so loud and long it drowned out Candidate Hawk before he could finish his clinching position on Sloppy Joe Tuesdays. Adam looked at Chelsea, then at Mike, then back at Chelsea, an ocean of possibilities splashing back and forth in his mind. Blow out the congestion? Adam knew he was talking about reducing the record rates of constipation by feeding the populous copious amounts of Sloppy Joe, but what if there was something more? What if he was hinting at finding a way to reduce travel congestion, as well?
What if The Hawk was a religious man?
It’s a sign! He was sure of it. Mother and Father were speaking to him through Chelsea, through the cancer, through vaguely edible meat and ketchup sandwiches! Blissfully, he forgot his talking points, and when he spoke, he spoke not from a polling station but from the pulpit. “We have to end the mandatory metastasizing period and start diagnosing cancer earlier.”
“There’s no way to detect it—none, impossible, no way,” The Hawk insisted.
“A dog can—they can be taught to smell it.”
“Dogs?” Mike regarded Chelsea scornfully, his eyes and nostrils so wide Adam couldn’t help but envision an attack ad with him inhaling an entire stadium. “Dogs are man’s best friend. I don’t know about you, but my best friend’s an idiot, and he keeps trying to sleep with my wife. Is that the type of person you want to trust diagnosing you with cancer? A moronic philanderer? If his incompetence doesn’t kill you, his rabies will. And rabies is worse than cancer. It’s an epidemic. More than four billion Pittsburghians are estimated to have rabies by the end of the month—that’s a stat! You can trust me—that is a stat!”
“Chelsea diagnosed me with cancer just now before I was introduced.”
“That’s because you’re weak and confused. I ask you, Pittsburgh, do you want someone weak and confused on the molecular level making decisions with your debt? Instead of growing cancer, Candidate Patterson should grow a pair!”
Adam would not be deterred. Suddenly numbers, data, analyses, histories—knowledge—flowed through his mind unobstructed. It was painful yet exhilarating, like diarrhea after a long bout of constipation. “Eighty percent of the population has developed an unauthorized affliction since the last unmodified seeds were melted down in the Farming Portfolio Consolidation of.”
The Hawk stomped his foot and held his hands out to the audience as if begging for MIM. “Do you trust someone who can’t even regenerate his own cells right with regenerating the economy? The only thing #PatsyPat knows about percentages is that there’s a hundred”—he held up one hand—“and ten”—he held up the other—“percent chance I’ll be delivering a smackdown come Election Day! Cancer has a right to life, and Patterson has the right to get beat down.”
“Maybe cancer isn’t what should have the right to life—maybe it’s us…” The words came out as if spoken directly by Mother and Father. “Pittsburghians,” he implored, ripping open his leotard to reveal the full breadth of his divine pectorals. He took a breath, savored the air in his lungs and against his chest, then released the words he knew would change his destiny: “We must… #ReformItAll.”
Umpire Peter McCarthy perked up; for the first time, life flashed across his eyes. “The forbidden hashtag?”
“We don’t need billion MIM widgets that are only three percent accurate to detect disease. We have nature. We have dogs. We have fleas!” It was really coming to him now. “We didn’t bastardize the union to stare at screens and slurp down meat-adjacent sandwiches. We did it in the name of hashtag REFORM. IT. ALL!” Yes, yes—this is exactly what Mother and Father intended. “And the states fell. Multinational corporations crumbled. The cocks of the CEOs of the Four Domains were blown off and still float in orbit to this day. The people of this city dreamt of creating their own land, and we achieved that dream with Pittxit, but after a time we fell into the same destructive patterns of violence and indifference. And that’s when Guber Oblamo called upon the forbidden hashtag to right this city. To reform voting rights, abolish guns, and ensure we only fall back with daylight savings. And yay, there was reform. And yay—it was good!” Adam paced the ring, flexing and popping, soaking in every cheer, every jeer, every flash of camera. “And now we must reform again. We must lube the knotted sphincter of the city’s bureaucracy and release its pent-up citizens! We will give the city a colonic. We will travel again. We will treat disease again. Say it with me, Pittsburgh—re-form, re-form, re-form…”
The audience joined in: “Super-screen, Super-screen, Super-screen….”
For good measure, Adam added: “And tell this puny puppet of big pharma to stuff his Sloppy Joes up the tailpipe they came out of!”
Nailed it.
The crowd exploded with laughter and cheers. Candidate Hawk’s jaw dropped, but only for a second. The next instant he leaped onto the turnbuckle and raised his arms out wide as if asking for the world’s biggest hug. “Reform it all?” he scoffed, scrunching his nose as if he’d gotten a whiff of twice-baked sewage. “Typical Babyface overreach. But we should expect as much from the Party of Oblamo. We don’t need to reform anything to travel. We can travel in our minds, in our spirits, in our drones!”
On the word “travel” Chelsea howled again, but this time she didn’t stop. She sang along as if a choir humming during a sermon. Adam started. There were more modes of transportation than he’d accounted for—and the most divine of all, spirit, had been extolled by The Hawk.
“I’ve set fires in the Xioddarm grasslands, high scores in the Anasazi plains. Ah, the wonders I’ve exploded from the comfort of the arcade.” Candidate Hawk’s eyes glistened as he traveled through memory. “Vote for me, Pittsburgh, and I’ll save the city from the Babyfaces who would neuter it, the hillfolk who would violate it, the Xioddarm who would eat its babies…”
They were the words of madman, a rebel king, a prophet! Adam had not only failed to account for all possible modes of transit, but also the threats the city faced. If he had a role to play in saving Pittsburgh, it was clear that The Hawk did as well.
Looking almost aroused by the constant use of the R-word, Peter wiped the sweat from his forehead. “Voting for the Master Debater is now open,” he said, “You can vote via your iAm by using the winner’s name and the hashtag PittsburghBigDog, or via selfie drone by streaming your response. Voting closes in two minutes.”
“Thunderhawk, ho!” Candidate Hawk bellowed, jumping from the top turnbuckle and driving his elbow down onto the base of Peter’s neck and shoulder. Peter crumpled like an aluminum can beneath a heel.
“I’ve lost feeling in my hand,” he hissed, writhing and clutching his left arm.
Then it happened: the Golden Shower, Mike’s signature celebration. A stream so golden and enduring it could have spouted from Chelsea arched down onto Peter’s chest. It looked like a liquid rainbow, gushing and glowing as lights flashed from every direction. Adam couldn’t believe that Mike’s bladder was comparable to Chelsea’s in volume and color, but why shouldn’t it? Somehow, through their voices and their urine, they had both spoken to Adam’s heart in ways he’d long forgotten.
Peter tried to roll away from the onslaught, but Candidate Hawk waddled after him with the immaculate aim of someone who has spent ten thousand hours playing DroneStrike. Finally, The Hawk’s miraculous bladder emptied, and a drenched, injured Crispy rose from the mat, shaking with rage. “Fuck this shit I’m out,” he spat, flipping Mike the bird with his right hand, then twirling to flip off the entire crowd. “I hope this fucking city burns.”
As former umpire Peter McCarthy ducked beneath the ropes, the MC reentered, artfully dodging the pools of piss. “The Likes are in,” he announced. “And the Master Debater is… Adam “Pec Pop” Patterson and his promise of superscreen televisions!”
Adam’s heart pounded so hard he could feel blood pressing into the fissures of his facial molding. It felt like he was awaking from the grave. Buried alive, but alive! He looked at Chelsea and almost wet himself when he saw her staring back at him, smiling. Sure, it was a sloppy, goofy smile that showed way too much tongue, but it assured him that he was on the right path. That he had found his calling.
Behind him, The Hawk withdrew a gold latex mask from the back of his Speedo and pulled it over his head. Painted like a raptor’s face with a gold beak and sinister furrows above black-ringed eyes, it was both glittery and menacing in the grand tradition of the lucha libre. The Hawk’s manager, a hulking woman dressed like she was going to a board meeting, stood up from her ringside seat and slid a wooden paddle across the mat. Adam was too preoccupied with pec-popping and gazing into Chelsea’s eyes to notice Mike bounce against the ropes, sprint towards him, and—WHACK!
The paddle slammed into the back of Adam’s head so hard it reformed his skull. His molding wobbled, the coppery taste of blood filled his mouth, and he was out. Unconscious. Splattered across the ring in a pool of blood and urine and baby oil. It took a solid forty seconds for him to come to, camera flashes bursting around him like pigeon poop. Luckily, his molding hadn’t cracked, so he was still surgically locked onto message, but his innards felt scrambled, his nerves sautéed, and his mind fried. Still dizzy, he tried to stand, but The Hawk kicked him back down. It was one of the spoils of being a Heel—people expected this type of behavior.
Harv rolled into the ring and crouched down next to Adam. “Are you okay, champ?” he asked, patting his chest. “That paddle damn-near knocked your face off.”
Adam looked at him, but his PermaTwinkleTM had smeared and all he could see was a brown smudge that smelled of boiled cabbage. Behind Harv where the audience should have been, there were now only heavenly glowing hills sailing across the sky as if charioted by clouds. Lightning crackled within the hill-nebula’s belly, tingling the hair on Adam’s arms and neck. For a moment, he thought he was dying. But then he saw the prophet Michael Hawk standing before the disintegration, his body in perfect, unfiltered focus except for one additional feature that convinced Adam he wasn’t on the precipice of death, but of life—
Encircling The Hawk’s face was a rainbow-colored halo.
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