Chp 11: BirdBrain Stutter

I may never hold a banana again!

Howdy! Pirates of Appalachia is an epic absurdist satire releasing as a weekly serial. Think 2 parts Huck Finn, 1 part Slaughterhouse-Five, served with a punch to the face by A Boy Named Sue. This is a completed novel—not a work in progress. Learn more or start from the beginning via the buttons below. Happy pirating!

Previously on Pirates of Appalachia… Brick Breaker was shocked to learn that his son was diagnosed with Crispyism and sent off to a mysterious “tall” school to learn to grow. Meanwhile, at his job in the digital mines, his boss announced that she’d been stricken with that most dreadful of afflictions, the Malady of Milady, the silent pandemic—Candy Crush Thumb!

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Autonomous Segregation Solutions, Bartleby cube #6661

Independent City of Pittsburgh

Friday, October 25, 0026 P.C., 11:03 P.M.

Difficulty breathing. Chest pain. Metaphysical dysphoria. According to Brick’s teledoc (WebMD), he was either buried alive or having panic attacks. Considering the options, he thought panic attacks were the obvious choice (though he had his doubts once he entered his Bartleby cube). Allegedly, the way to relieve them was “mindfulness.” But the more mindful he was, the more he could feel the weight of universes collapsing upon him. Any time he thought about his son—out there, strapped to a pulley system, the grotesque specter of the Growth lurking nearby—the strings of a million half-ideas churned through Brick’s mind before knotting into nooses and strangling him from within.

Inevitably, half-baked, unrealized ideas would be the death of him, his son, and their family line.

“I may never hold a banana again!” Ms. Barbie Woods RN, BSN, PMP, ING, MMA, COPD, AA, AAA, MCO, EIEIO, AEIOU and Sometimes Y lamented to her underlings during their recharge-refresh break. “What other tragedy is to befall me nigh?”

Brick counted to ten silently—he’d learned this was a big part of mindfulness—and tried to be present. Unfortunately, he’d found being present the hardest aspect of mindfulness, especially when it involved being present during one of his boss’s patented “pep talks,” and especially when he was craving corn nuts and wanted to grab a bag from the vending machine before starting their second voluntarily mandatory overtime period. This particular pep talk was a word-for-word reenactment of the testimonial Brick had heard her stream hours before, almost as if she were rehearsing, and the only motivation method Brick could perceive was… play Candy Crush in moderation? He inhaled, held it a beat, and exhaled, trying to focus on Barbie’s words as if it were the first time he was hearing them. And focus he did—directly on the coconuts protruding from her cardigan. Psychically, he traced the contours of those exotic fruits, tasting the flesh, caressing the skin with his fingertips. A tropical breeze filled his lungs and swept the weight from his chest, and in the moistness of those melons his dysphoria dissolved into ecstasy.

With a start, he caught himself daydreaming and snapped his eyes up to Barbie’s. She had stopped monologuing and was staring at him with her mouth agape in an almost constipated expression. She knew. She’d caught him checking her out! Wrong, he’d blown past “checking her out” and was in the middle of making a decadent fruit salad when she’d caught him. She’d probably seen the coconuts, papaya, and bananas mingling in his eyes like pubescent ones and zeros at a frat party.

“Brick…?” Ms. Barbie Woods RN, BSN, PMP, ING, MMA, COPD, AA, AAA, MCO, EIEIO, AEIOU and Sometimes Y rasped. “I should have a word with you after your shift, if you w-will.” She cleared her throat, her breasts heaving like buoys in a hurricane. The scent of Vaseline and nutmeg wafted over him, warm, spicy, suggestive of gooey wood, and even though his logical brain was begging for him to retreat or, at minimum, maintain eye contact, his eyes and body were in control now and he was powerless to evacuate the storm. “Alas, my BirdBrain Stutter is acting up again. After twelve to fifteen words I get so tongue-tied I have to re-restart.”

Tongue-tied? Now there was an idea….

The alarm sounded for door-closing—there went corn nuts—and the overhead lights flickered as if the electrical system could only power the horn or lights at one time. Not that Brick noticed—the flashes of lightning just supplied more electricity, more danger, more… romance.

“Mr. Breaker….”

Oh fuck—he was gawking at her tits again! Brick blinked, his logical brain trying to regain a foothold in his body, but it was too late. He was a deer caught in headlights and Ms. Barbie Woods RN, BSN, PMP, ING, MMA, COPD, AA, AAA, MCO, EIEIO, AEIOU and Sometimes Y’s tits were the vehicle that would put him out of his misery.

“Mr. Breaker, door-closing….”

He gasped for breath, trying to make out her words. But he was drowning in a flash metaphysical flood, and in some unholy twist of circumstances he was still one hundred percent present, reliving the mortifying turn of events in excruciating detail as if he were the worst measuring device ever invented. And then the walls were closing around him. Literally. Again and again. Jabbing him with thumbtacks from ankle to forehead, until his pain receptors awoke him from the dream and he was able to stumble backward and collapse against his desk. Ms. Barbie Woods RN, BSN, PMP, ING, MMA, COPD, AA, AAA, MCO, EIEIO, AEIOU and Sometimes Y’s disturbed, constipated face was the last thing he saw as the Bartleby cube mercifully swooshed closed.

That confirmed it—he wasn’t having panic attacks; he was unwittingly burying himself alive.

Brick rubbed his face and counted to ten, grateful to be alone with no visual lures to snag him by the spectacles. We may create our existential hells, but sometimes they prove helpful. Barbie began to livestream in the adjacent cube—he didn’t even want to know what she was saying—which was his cue to get back to work. He dabbed the beads of blood on his face and arms with a tissue, then turned on his computer. But rather than the Space Invaders jumble of ones and zeros, he was greeted by a lock-screen questionnaire. The latest masterstroke of corporate overreach, the Efficiency Guaranteer 5000+ was an all-in-one solution to the “biological problem,” tracking everything from computer usage to vital signs, and even “coaching” inefficient bio-resources.

Brick groaned—his personal biological problem being the urge to pee—and started the questionnaire.

Question: Who are you?

Answer: Brick GTA Breaker, employee #8969

Question: What is your role?

Answer: Digit Inquisitor, Level II

Question: What is the cause of your inefficient delay?

Answer: It’s embarrassing…

Question: Have you met the minimum work requirements?

Answer: No… this questionnaire prevented me from logging in.

Question: Do you require emergency assistance?

Answer: The thumbtack wounds look superficial, but I could use a bandage.

Note: Continue working until a cross-functional panel of safety and accounting professionals can review your case to determine your eligibility for assistance.

Question: If you were a salad, how would you be tossed?

Answer: Like a fruit?

With a sound like the flushing of a digital toilet, the Efficiency Guaranteer 5000+ spun off the screen and was replaced by Chelsea’s face. There—there was the one thing that soothed him: the glowing eyes and slobbery smile of the best friend he’d ever known. What he wouldn’t do to hear her howl now. He pressed control-alt-escape to boot up his automated sorting program—reprogrammed to cycle between intervals of 1:51, 1:57, and 2:11—and wrapped his arms around his shoulders. The climate control in A.S.S. tower was on the fritz again, and cold air had been blowing into their work area non-stop since the morning. It made him pine for the comparatively sweltering confines of the Muskutter shafts.

Brick sat in a daze as the ones and zeros segregated themselves, lacking even the motivation to turn on his foot heater. But the jabbering of a department’s worth of testimonials poked his ears and needled his concentration until he had to do something to distract himself. With a sigh, he opened his mom’s Instagram and scrolled through the jungle of selfies, glamor shots, and videos. There were more pictures of food than he’d ever seen anywhere this side of Siri’s Facebook page, but judging by his mom’s ample and often centrally displayed cleavage, she’d never had a problem with Instagramorexia. He played a video of his mom standing in a public bathroom, recording herself in the mirror as she pushed her arms and shoulders forward to embellish her breasts. Had she known then? Was she aware of the cancer inflating her breasts, dipping its toes into her lungs and liver?

His mom fumbled her cell phone, and in a stall behind her Brick glimpsed a golden blur about the size and shape of a golden retriever. Chelsea? It couldn’t be. He played back the video, but it had just been an illusion, wishful thinking, time jumbling into one tangled mess in his mind before he could sort it out properly.

He shivered, the notion colder than any malfunctioning A/C unit—if Chelsea had been there to sniff her crotch and scoot across the bathroom floor, maybe his mom would still be alive.

The next video began, this one featuring Mom in her bra and panties leaping spread-eagle over a railroad track. Brick watched it, then rewatched it, not sure what he was searching for but transfixed by the images, until a “spot bonus” caused a tightening in his jeans and he decided he’d had enough of his mom’s IG for the day.

He opened Siri’s Facebook page, hoping to find a picture of their son. It took the better part of an hour scrolling through her feed, but eventually he found one of the day Brick II was born. Siri was lying in a hospital bed with a bundle of fabric on her chest that must have been him, but the only face visible was Siri’s gaunt “duckface” preening for the camera. The bundle didn’t look Crispy-sized. But then again, what did Brick know? The only Crispy he’d ever met was the gentleman he’d sold Chelsea to. He had a better chance of knowing Brick II than Brick I did. Maybe he was making good use of Chelsea’s abilities in the encampments—perhaps they’d even taught her to detect the Growth and she would be there to diagnose Brick II if he ever developed it.

And that’s what Brick didn’t understand—if scientists could edit genes to prevent the spread of viruses, why couldn’t they edit out Crispiness? He knew there had been unfortunate consequences when they’d tried to forestall cancer, but basic genetic tweaking related to height, hair color, and other physical attributes had been demonstrated for decades.

Why were so many people being born Crisp?

Unable to find any other posts about his son, Brick closed Facebook and tried to rub the goosebumps from his arms. He knew the Crispy he’d sold Chelsea to was in politics, so it was unlikely he lived in the encampments, and his son was at school, not loitering about on some bridge, but he still couldn’t escape the sick feeling roiling in his gut that something was amiss. Or maybe he was just hungry—he could practically taste those corn nuts. And then it occurred to him—if the Crispy was in politics, there might be photographs and videos of Chelsea floating around social media.

He opened Internet Explorer—the only browser deemed inconsequential and ineffective enough to be unaffected by W4D—and searched for posts regarding election season. Most of them involved the candidates for guber. Brick didn’t know why anyone cared about the gubernatorial race—it was essentially a ceremonial position consisting of pulling levers, distributing taxes, making a spectacle of yourself, maybe an executive order or two, nothing that has any lasting impact—but after the previous guber and two candidates died of mysterious causes, this election season went viral.

Then he saw her—like, actually saw her, not just some golden figment of his imagination. The #1 post in all media was a video of Chelsea with a haggard Crispy on her back, pacing back and forth as they stared down a couple of security guards at a healthcare park. It took Brick a moment to recognize the Crispy because he appeared to have aged thirty years since he met him, but it was the same guy he’d sold Chelsea to eight years prior. Chelsea looked older too, but rather than surly and infirm like her rider, her grey snot and bowed back bestowed upon her a dignity and gravitas that commanded the scene. As she turned, Brick could see that her hips were dysplastic, and he prayed she wasn’t being ridden routinely—she wasn’t a fucking horse, after all—but he couldn’t stop smiling at the scene. She was radiant—his little girl was radiant! And then it happened: Chelsea and the Crispy burst upon the security guards like a cavalry charging giants. And the giants never stood a chance!

“Mother and Father say what?” Tears filled his eyes and a foreign, buoyant emotion swelled in his belly. As Chelsea stopped to sniff her fallen foe’s crotch, she glowed like a flaming chariot and her rider shone like the ghost of a heroic general. And then the moisture sprung from Brick’s eyes and bladder, and that unfamiliar emotion erupted from his chest. He didn’t know what it was, but it felt like relief.

“Brick,” Ms. Barbie beckoned, “what is that horrible noise? Are you—are you laughing?”