# HH antics for the feint of heart (cynics, psychos, and other soulless scum)
# Version 1.2
# From Grindhouse of Mirrors MMXX, an anthology of anathemata
# Copyright 2020 by Hassan Hirsch and Reef Wizen
# CC-BY-SA http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0


* Hey Brother

An E-D Fanfic

"Hey brother," said the Joe Camel marionette with the ill-fitting,
outlandishly ethno-fluid accent. "I made here one spectacular Emacs
package."

The reanimated wildebeest trophy in the sequined Mama Cass muumuu turned
to meet his gaze, its warm and welcoming animatronic grin the instant
envy of every mad taxidermist from here to Timbuktu.

"Wow, great," the beest replied, in an all too familiar, elusive accent.
"I hope you have free software license." The vendor badge around his
neck read "gnusupport," though it lay nearly buried beneath a mala of
garish pearls. "That I can use it too," he explained.

"Sure," said Joe, ever nonchalant, smarmy furrows forming on his
forehead. "It has free software license." Ashing his cig over the
solitaire-like spread of pretty FSF stickers fanned out on the booth's
table, the camel smiled a snaggletooth grin. "Fine GPL terms here
inside."

The bovid paused, as if struggling to bottle his excitement (or perhaps
just to redisplay), as heart emojis replaced his pupils. "Alright, give
me," he gushed, his horns engorging and betraying his smittenness. "That
I try."

"Sure," replied Joe, in his signature way, this time producing a fresh
pack of smokes from his conference-swag tote. "Here it is." He flashed
the underside of the pack before tossing it to the gnu, who comically
fumbled the slippery, cellophane-wrapped prize before =C-g='ing
repeatedly till it froze in mid air.

As onlookers leaned in to coo over the artifact, the wildebeest, now
drooling, scanned the branded QR adorning one of its faces. "To run this
software," continued Joe, "you only need to download the proprietary
LastPass." As though priming for a dramatic flourish, the camel popped
his Fonze collar and loosed a natty smoke ring. "Then it will work."

The ring curled forth ominously, wreathing the suspended artifact in a
hypnotic, puckering halo. As if unable to look, the gnu's eyes turned
downcast, and his horns went flaccid. "Oh, is that so?" he managed to
ask, ferklempt and crestfallen. "And what does LastPass do to my
computer?"

Joe grinned back smugly in a sort of silent retort, clearly thinking the
question rhetorical. The onlookers had had enough though, perhaps put
off by the confusing churn of airs, perhaps just distracted by shinier
pastures. As they skedaddled, a few deftly retracted large bills once
seemingly destined for the donation tray.

"Do they track me?" coughed the gnu, as wisps from the dissipating
nebula streamed up his flared nostrils and beads of sweat coalesced on
his brow, "read my information? Cooling fans on every machine in the
vicinity suddenly kicked on, and the panicked gnu yelped, "read my
passwords?"

Gasping, grasping at his muumuu, clutching his pearls, and crumpling his
conference pass, the poor bovid � poor bovid �

#+begin_example
  Oct 16 18:52:27 gnusupport kernel: emacs[42] received signal SIGSEGV, Segmentation fault.
  Oct 16 18:52:27 gnusupport systemd[1]: Process 42 (emacs) of user 1000 dumped core
                                         core.emacs.1000.deadbeef.42.1602874347000000.zst
  Oct 16 18:52:27 gnusupport systemd[1]: Please see coredumpctl(1).
  ...
#+end_example


** Epilogue
😭

😭😭

😭😭😭😭

What had begun as a solo act of defiance from a single pint-sized
troublemaker had snowballed into a hellish, crooning chorus of a good
dozen rugrats. In kind, the pink sea of "I ♥ Code" t-shirts had grown
increasingly saltier as the young mothers nurtured another, more
colorful crescendo of authentic haranguing and nail wagging, raising it
to a titanic swell—the bulk of their rage directed, of course, at him,
the piazza's resident puppeteer. His Lewinsky beret and whimsical Lycra
jailbird onesie, both specifically chosen for their perceived
wrath-assuaging properties, had proven combat ineffective.

"Sacrebleu," cursed the distraught puppeteer, in an over-the-top
"European" accent. He'd have to make a break for it, and fast, before
this flurry of outrage manged to inspire a proper pitchfork posse. In
his line of work, cries of "burn the pedo" were never far behind,
especially when virtuous yuppies with daypacks got involved. But add the
word "outreach" and he might as well have arrived wearing a chastity
belt forged from /Battle Royale/ collars.

"Free shit!" someone exclaimed.

All eyeballs landed on the middle-aged custodial worker emptying trash
bins nearby—his new guardian angel, apparently—though her completely
incongruous, dumbfounded expression attested otherwise, as did the
likelihood that by all bigoted presumptions, she didn't speak a lick of
the ol' Anglolang.

Still, whoever /had/ emitted that eureka had really saved his bacon, for
the stockpiles of ordinance formerly stenciled with his face had
seemingly been reallocated to the home front for what had fast become a
swirling frenzy of Black-Friday bedlam. His nemeses, the new mothers,
had degenerated into a primeval slurry of hectoring and elbowing in the
midst of redeeming their coat-checked carriages. He could almost hear
the CTF commentators going full Jerry the King Lawler. The combatants'
driving motivation? Likely the inflated prospect of monopolizing some
virgin raffle on the distant periphery was this chauvinist's guess, a
theory propped up by the small contingent now descending on his
petrified sanitation angel—no doubt intent on extracting a map to her El
Dorado by any means necessary.

/Easy peasy/, mused the puppeteer, miming a dusting off of his hands and
a self-congratulatory pat on the back, /for any ventriloquist worth his
lulz, that is/. He couldn't help but waste a few more precious seconds
basking in his handiwork as he observed his erstwhile medium, the
panicked municipal worker, fend off the circling war party of cynically
self-described "future diversity hires" with nothing but a rosary and
sundry sanitation frobs. And for the briefest of seconds, he almost felt
a pang of what normies referred to as "guilt," for it seemed his poor
lass, no spring chicken by the tipsiest of objectifications, had grown
winded and wobbly at the knees: a cardiopulmonary crisis in the making.
He glanced down at the Joe Camel marionette, whose frozen smirk beamed
back approvingly.

With the young hens and their broods sufficiently distracted, the
puppeteer scrambled to pile his pups and other gear into his carny
satchel. The Punch-and-Judy-like diorama he'd meticulously fashioned
would have to be scuttled. /Shame/. Its flat work and other scenery were
approaching Jim-Henson-level shit, if you asked him. The main set
depicted something like a bake sale after a mass shooting (or maybe a
vendors village at an expo of some kind, only all drenched in corn syrup
and marred by squib holes with black-light graffiti spelling out memory
addresses and assembly instructions; or maybe just Chuck E. Cheese's on
any given day). It was his best work. And there was a good chance these
underserved witches would want to defile it when they came to. But he'd
deny them the pleasure. Dousing its papier-mâché innards with the dregs
from his wine skin, he lit a match.

Aggrieved but resolute, the puppeteer then cinched his suspenders and
stole off, leaving the dysfunctional coterie of coder moms in an
exasperated haze beneath his pixelated, violet banner, the one with
something scrawled on it in illegible, cursive chicken scratch. The moms
were out of their gourds, as usual, this time dizzy with car-flipping
fury as they ran around headless and fuming, posturing up to face down
some phantom demon who was nowhere to be found. That is, their
/children/ were nowhere to be found.

"Ladies, please! Ladies, if you'd please just follow us."

In the puppeteer's wake, a squad of smiling, bright-eyed, cosmopolitan
youths with vests reading "event volunteer" swarmed to the rescue,
schlepping diaper bags and strollers up to the adjoining terrace while
ushering the now insanely relieved but indignant teens along with
anodyne nothings. The area's slick stage lighting, "diamond sponsor"
banners, and animated, iris-like holograms only served to highlight the
main attraction: a first-class, complimentary daycare for the gifted and
talented, prepopulated, of course, with the "missing" infants and
toddlers, all rolling around in ecstasy. Hunky booth dudes in
tight-fitting, sleeveless hoodies emblazoned with squarish, azure-blue,
half-Möbius-ribbon needlework were serving booze to the grandmas and
other second-order guardians already gathered around the open bar.

"What a caucazoidal cluster fuck," the puppeteer uttered, this time
owning his own voice as he collapsed exhausted into the back of his
white pedo van, which, as it peeled away driverless from the plaza,
transformed into a black SUV with diplomatic plates. The voice, though
still familiar, was now devoid of any hint of European extraction.
Instead, its timbre and cadence matched that of the devilishly handsome,
iconic mug now revealing itself beneath the smeary
French-mime-cum-Guy-Fox makeup being wiped away with acetone. It was a
face we'd all grown up grudgingly admiring: that of a certain
cocktail-juggling, tightie-whitey-shaking, ceiling-suspending,
couch-jumping Operating Thetan (in his prime).

Sporting a vintage Material-Girl headset, the OT puppeteer began issuing
impassioned edicts. His peon interlocutor, cupping his earpiece and
straining to concentrate, stood framed in a monochrome window among the
other dated /Minority Report/ UI now forming in place around the OT.

"And the moms, commander?" asked this head peon, a well toned male model
in a sleeveless hoodie with an azure-blue logo. Behind him inferior
peons, more or less clones, waited with bated breath.

"Those that assimilate: give 'em a living, but never discuss the family
business," instructed the puppeteer. "The rest you can recycle, along
with the geezers: it's the little ones that hold our fate."

Pin-drop silence from the other side as the OT, a bit taken aback tapped
a "u-there?" on his headset, before (duh) clearing his throat. "/After/
they've signed, of course," he clarified.

A sally of relieved laughter erupted from the peons. "A billion years!"
toasted the puppeteer.

"A billion years!" chanted the peons, before dispersing with purpose out
of frame.

Exhausted, the OT ditched his headset, causing the HUD to collapse
around him. He then began breathing in a controlled, yogic manner, but
suddenly seized, uncontrollably, his limbs flailing spasmodically,
before snapping into angular /Vogue/-like poses.

This went on at some length before inscrutably, /violently/, the OT
proceeded to tear away at his archetypally beautiful though diminutive
flesh suit till it had fully metamorphosed into something, well, even
more uncanny and diminutive: a real-life cartoon à la /Roger Rabbit/ but
in the far more adorable mold of a familiar feline with five benign
tentacle-like appendages.

Or not.

Nay, something was clearly amiss with this particular rendition of that
famously lovable feline-molluscan mashup, something inhibiting the less
spineless, more ferocious side of its taxonomic temperament. Indeed,
this creature appeared sickly, pallid, docile. Dead? Its coat had taken
on the jaundiced hue and striped rule of a yellow legal pad. A
scaffolding of exoskeletal, rebar-like protrusions skewered its flesh in
places but were clearly coplanar segments of a continuous whole. They
wove a sort of grotesque, oblong metal spiral in and around the poor
creature's body, one that, on quick reflection, looked to be none other
than a giant, cartoonish paperclip.

Suddenly, the bionic monocles fused to the feline's skull over its
vacant sockets flickered on as a pair of huge, buggy toon peepers popped
forth from their portals and rode up along the clip's inner edge till
they hovered aloft before the entire abomination; and a boxy,
custard-tinted speech bubble materialized overhead.

"Hey, brother," it began. "It looks like you're looking for a text
editor."


# ---