Pop Apocalypse-A Possible Satire PDF
Preview Pop Apocalypse-A Possible Satire
For my father, my mother, and Sabrina Write the things which thou hast seen, and the things which are, and the things which shall be hereafter. Revelation 1:19 Contents Epigraph iii Prologue Call to Prayer 1 Part I The Terror Forecast 5 Part II Reputations Exchange 53 Part III Another World is Possible 99 Part IV The Riot Zone 157 Part V Final Judgment 217 Epilogue The Book of Life 275 Acknowledgments About the Author Credits Cover Copyright About the Publisher PROLOGUE CALL TO PRAYER From the newly built minaret From the newly built minaret of the al-Aqsa Mosque, the mu’azzin shouts the noontime call to prayer, sponsored today by the Caliph Fred Entertainment Group. Outside the wall of the Old City, Jerusalem’s lunchtime crowds compete with electric mopeds for space on narrow lanes. Vans bring in Ethiopian and Filipino laborers from distant worker barracks to stations by the Lions’ Gate. Eastward, smoke rises from Arab ghet-tos and from inside the heart of the Riot Zone, inside a Palestine gripped by a Fourth or, depending on which pundits you believe, Fifth Intifada. Today’s Terror Forecast has predicted a day of low-to- moderate unrest for East Jerusalem with mild political pressure moving inward from the west. Offprints of the Jerusalem Po j st am defabricator bins and proclaim in three-inch headlines that some new atrocity has been committed somewhere against someone. Have no doubt: many someones are furious about this outrageous crime. Pundits across the global mediasphere are certain that the Situation could erupt into a veritable Crisis at any moment, if not a total Catastrophe. Everything is, in other words, more or less normal here. The mu’azzin repeats his phrase, lengthens and elaborates it. His voice, amplified by loudspeakers, adds a spiritual humidity to the summer’s drier, more disputative heat. In Western Wall Plaza, Hasidim consult outmoded mobile phones, download news from the mediasphere, and loudly debate the Situation among themselves in Hebrew. American evangelicals dressed in Hawaiian shirts and khaki shorts, pretty blouses and flow-ery skirts, tour the courtyard of the mosque, recently reopened to non-Muslims after the previous Crisis resolved itself. The Chris tians, awed at the glimmering golden Dome of the Rock, take video with palmcams, documenting this climax to their Holy Land vacation package tour. From the mu’azzin’s vantage point atop the new minaret, a gift of the Caliph, the From the mu’azzin’s vantage point atop the new minaret, a gift of the Caliph, the Chris tians are tiny and insignificant. Clustered together, they record everything, pointing cyclopean palmcam eyes at the sky, uploading images wirelessly onto their mediasphere travel-ogues for friends, family, and coreligionists. They seem, the mu’azzin notices, very interested in the sky. A pale blue dot cuts a parabola across the sky’s deeper blue. When the dot reaches the apex of its arc, it spreads what look like wings. The dot —which now looks like a man with wings, what an angel might look like if angels still visited the earth—is coming fast. Something is about to happen. There are a series of pops, explosions. The mu’azzin adjusts the brown skullcap on his hairless head. The Hasidim turn away from their debate. The evangelicals gasp and cheer, then pause expectantly. And this is how the end begins. PART I THE TERROR FORECAST Eliot R. Vanderthorpe, Jr., has Eliot R. Vanderthorpe, Jr., has a curious revelation. It hits him like a cartoon anvil during a self-consciously hip, sin-cerely debauched party—raging now into its second week—in the executive suite of Barcelona’s Hotel Internacional. Something doesn’t sit right with Eliot as he watches his friend William Pearson, the British prime minister’s son, take off his plaid boxer shorts and climb onto the king-sized bed. William is wearing a puffy white tuxedo shirt and is kneeling on the mattress, his lower body exposed, penis engorged. Two girls, a blonde and a brunette, lie on either side of him. They had until recently been wearing scanty party dresses. Now they’re zoned out. You might say passed out. A man with a palmcam records William and the girls while another man wearing mediashades orchestrates their action. These two, the videographer and the director, work for the show That’s So Fucked Up, which streams every evening on the popular Sex, Lies, and Celebrities Channel. A curt wave of the director’s hand indicates that the time has come for Eliot to strip off his tux and join in the fun. At that moment some long-forgotten inner gear begins to move within Eliot. “We’re exploiting these girls,” Eliot says. “We shouldn’t have sex with them.” William turns to Eliot. “Wha? Have the drugs finally gotten to you, dude?” True, hallucinogens, amphetamines, entactogens, and a number of other substances whose pharmacological effects have yet to be fully mapped have all taken turns blasting Eliot’s brain over the last few weeks, so this strange feeling of ethical revulsion might be the by-product of an unforeseen drug interaction. And yet.
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