THE FEELIES Read online

  He shook his head. "I think I'm going to sit and watch TV for a while."

  Dustin was aware that TV was becoming his equivalent of a headache. Mallory was silhouetted against the light from the bathroom door. She looked good, but his mood wouldn't let him respond. When she spoke, there was an edge to her voice that indicated that if he kept this up, he would pay dearly sometime in the near future.

  "TV? Do you feel okay?"

  "I think I drank a little too much of Martin's port."

  "Being a little drunk never slowed you down before."

  "I feel more queasy than drunk. Besides, I want to watch Bones Bolt."

  "Bones Bolt? Are you kidding? You're going to turn yourself into an imbecile. That show is nothing but hysterical garbage."

  "We have to stay aware of garbage."

  "That's bullshit, Dustin, and you know it."

  Dustin was aware of her slim legs, narrow waist, and full breasts. If Mallory hadn't been such a deadly combination of self-interest and ambition, she would have been perfect. He wanted her right then and there, but he wanted much more to prove a point.

  "He's doing a piece on the feelies. Renfield of Combined Media is going to be on it."

  Mallory practically spat. "The feelies! I'm so sick of that word."

  She stalked off to the bedroom, slamming the door behind her. He would definitely pay in the morning, if not later that night. He sighed and reached for the remote.

  The theme had already started. The crushing electronic pulse of the pressure drop instrumental was cranked up to pain threshold. The crowd in the pit were baying right along with it, and at regular intervals they would break into the unique ululation that was the hallmark of Bones Bolt's audience in the pit-what Dustin always referred to as the monkey noise. The cameras panned slowly across the faces of the crowd members who were already in the first throes of controlled hysteria. They were mainly male and mainly in their teens and early twenties. Later in the show, they were likely to become violently physical, a behavior that was tacitly encouraged. The set for "The Bones Bolt Show" was deliberately grim. One critic had likened it to a "stark prison from outer space that happens to be in the middle of a major inmate uprising." The focal point of the set was the pit itself, the circular central area that contained the noisy and frequently angry audience. They were quite literally walled in. Dustin was of the opinion that this was probably the best place for them. Young, unchecked, inner-city males were the greatest fear of a middle class that felt itself increasingly under siege. The audience was surrounded by a circular wall, some eight feet high, designed to resemble massive riveted steel, like the hull plates of a battleship. The flat top of the wall provided a podium for Bolt and his invited guests. Blinding white spotlights constantly circled as though searching for signs of trouble, adding to the all-over jailbreak ambience and creating a sense of frenetic confusion. A narrow catwalk extended out from the wall like a bridge, over the heads of the crowd. It was from there that Bolt communed with his people and, when the spirit moved him, urged them to greater excesses.

  The theme faded and Bones Bolt made his grand entrance. His face leaned into the camera in massive close-up.

  "Okay! Shut up!"

  Bones Bolt was a larger-than-life figure. He was wearing what appeared to be a kind of dark green satin cowl that, coupled with the heavy gold chains that always hung around his neck no matter what the costume, gave him the appearance of a bizarre African monk or maybe a black Ku Klux Klansman with his hood thrown back, which was a very weird concept in itself. Instead of shutting up, the mob in the pit only bayed louder. Bolt advanced along the catwalk over the heads of the faithful. He leaned over the guardrail, his attitude threatening.

  "I said shut up! Shut the fuck up!"

  Bones Bolt had almost single-handedly forced the FCC to forget about their seven deadly words doctrine. Much of his style went all the way back to the old rolling bucket school of rowdy twentieth-century TV preachers like Swaggart, Sharpton, or the Rev. Ike, but his delivery was all his own.

  "If you rowdy motherfuckers don't shut the fuck up… you won't be hearing what we got on the show for you tonight!"

  The audience noise subsided. Dustin suspected that the quieting of the mob had a great deal more to do with a good audio mixer than the force of Bones's personality, even though Bones was hardly lacking in that department.

  "Tonight we are going to look at the feelies."

  There was a roar from the crowd.

  "That's right, brothers and sisters, the feelies!"

  He straightened up, fist clenched to the sky.

  "You hear me up there in the towers? You hear me, Combined Media? You hear me, CM? Tonight, you going to hear Bones Bolt and tremble!"

  Another roar. The visual cut to a close-up of Madison Renfield-the caption read: "Senior Vice President of Combined Media." Renfield, the archetype of the self-satisfied and somewhat faceless corporate spokesman, looked as though he was wishing profoundly that he were anywhere but just a few feet from that sea of young, sweating, angry faces. There was a common question as to which was the more certain suicide: going on "The Bones Bolt Show," or refusing the invitation.

  Bones, in the center of the catwalk, was still invoking the gods of video. "Tonight we're going to find out for you exactly what is going on inside those fancy downtown buildings where the rich folks dream away their lives while homeboys like us can only walk by and wonder."

  Bones probably had enough money to spend the next three centuries in a feelie, but he still pretended on the air that he was the ass-out-of-his-pants, inner-city home boy. Bones Bolt was possibly one of the most unlikely individuals ever to get on television. He had first come to the public's attention during the Vaccaville Correction Complex crisis. He had been serving fifteen to life for armed robbery, and as the twenty-nine-day standoff ground on between armed convicts on one side and riot police, FBI, federal troops, and National Guard on the other, Bones had quickly become the outspoken and flamboyant leader of the more moderate faction in the prisoners' negotiating committee. As such, he had started appearing on TV on a nightly basis. Once the emergency was over, following the bloody storming of what was, at the time, the most modern, state-of-the-art penal facility in the whole of the country, Bones Bolt came out a hero. The media credited him with personally being responsible for saving the lives of at least twenty of the hostage guards and civilian administrators. Although a good deal of doubt was later cast on Bones's role, it wasn't before he had received a presidential pardon. It was Taras Karamazov, at the time the wunderkind program director at TBN, who had come up with the idea of giving Bones his own talk show. Despite a storm of protest, "The Bones Bolt Show," and its explosive combination of populism, radicalism, and racism, seemed to strike a nerve cluster in the collective consciousness. People couldn't resist watching him. He set and broke ratings records and developed an almost fanatical following that was quite prepared to put sponsors out of business if they so much as hinted that they might be thinking of dropping Bones. Himmler Beer learned that to its cost when its largest Denver warehouse went up in flames after Joseph Himmler himself had withdrawn their advertising in a snit following a Bones show on the cult of multiracial pornography. The rest was so much a part of media history that individuals like Madison Renfield now felt it necessary to risk health and sanity to come on the show and justify their position for an audience of sociopaths.

  Bones had turned and was coming back to Renfield. He was looking at the company man as though examining a specimen for the first time and not really liking what he was seeing.

  "Now this smooth person here, brothers and sisters, he goes by the name of Madison Renfield and is something called a senior vice president at CM, and he's come along here tonight I guess to try and convince us that all those white boys over at CM are real nice guys only working for the best public interest."

  There were shouts from the crowd in the pit.

  "We ain't convinced!"

  "We
ain't convinced, motherfucker!"

  Dustin, like most other media watchers, had heard how Bones's audience was heavily seeded with paid performers who would start those responses on hidden cue.

  Renfield was attempting to look calm and collected but only managed to come off as frightened. Bones was standing beside him, introducing him-or maybe demonstrating the specimen-to the crowd.

  "Now, as we all know, CM is the corporation that has the monopoly on the production and distribution of the feelies, and as a result of this monopoly, they can charge exactly what they want for the service. Maybe the first thing we ought to ask Brother Renfield is how come the feelies are so expensive that they're out of the reach of eighty percent of the population."

  In the conversation pit, Dustin hugged his knees and wondered about a feelie. In public, he and Mallory always scoffed at the idea of a feelie-"technology and bad taste conspiring to take escapism to a pathological level"-but secretly he wasn't so sure. There was something very appealing about the prospect of sinking into a tailormade dream and never waking up.

  Renfield's eyes flicked from side to side as he cleared his throat and tried to be heard above the noise of the mob. "First of all, Bones, let's get one thing straight. The feelies, or as we prefer to call them, integrated entertainment media, IE for short, are actually not really all that expensive."

  Bones Bolt glared at the company man. "Sure seem expensive to me."

  "Well, they aren't cheap, but when you take into account the cost of plant and production and the expense of maintaining a human being in permanent or semipermanent sleep state, they also aren't that particularly expensive."

  There was a sudden close-up of a sweating Hispanic face. "Sure look expensive from where I'm standing, Jack!"

  There were shouts from nearby.

  "Right!"

  "Yeah, right."

  "Dammit."

  Renfield attempted to go on. "As far as the monopoly is concerned, that was by no means our idea. When the IE system was out of the testing stage we had to apply to the FCC for a special license to market the service. At that time, it was agreed that only one corporation should control the process until a full socioenvironmental study could be concluded."

  This time the close-up heckler was a white kid with limp blond hair and long sideburns. "So you bought the government. What else is new?"

  The kid was replaced by a Bones looking less than convinced. "That was five years ago, man. You telling me that they still doing this motherfucking study?"

  "It will be some time until we can really assess the long-term effects."

  "And what do you guys up at CM expect those results to be, if and when this mighty study finally gets completed?"

  "I'm quite confident that they'll show that IE is responsible for a whole spectrum of social benefits on all levels."

  Renfield permitted himself a small half smile. He was clearly very pleased with his answer. That was a mistake. It only made the crowd madder than they were already. The pit was bellowing and shaking its fists. Bones swung away from Renfield as though in disgust and pointed dramatically around the curve of the wall.

  "Is that a fact, Brother Renfield? You are confident? Well, along here we have someone who may not be quite as confident as you are."

  Mark Sturm was leaning nonchalantly on the guardrail. Mark Sturm was a regular guest on "The Bones Bolt Show." As far as Dustin was concerned, the man was nothing but a troublemaker. Sturm had started his career as a stand-up comic with a taste for abusing corporations, but after his mouthing off had become increasingly pointed, he had found that disgruntled executives were starting to drop him pieces of dirt to include in his act. From a mere comic, he was transformed into a man in the know, a man who could at least give an inspired guess as to where the bodies were buried. He was courted by news and talk shows. He developed a research staff and became a definite thorn in the side of the corporations. Many of his researchers were attractive young women-all volunteers-understandable, as Sturm was tall and handsome, a somewhat beak-nosed Errol Flynn with shoulder-length brown hair, every inch the debonair swashbuckler.

  Mark Sturm nodded and smiled to Bones. "Hey, Bones, how you doing?"

  The two of them slapped hands. The crowd's cheering for Sturm was only slightly less deafening than it had been for Bones himself. Sturm was nothing if not in solid for the underdog and underclass. Bones greeted him like a brother. "I was doing fine, Mark, until I started finding out about this feelie bullshit." He indicated Renfield. "This individual right here wants me to believe that if ever this government report on the feelies comes in, it's going to be roses. You agree with that?"

  Sturm hesitated slightly before he answered. He looked almost sad, as though constantly perplexed by the depths of corporate perfidy.

  "Well, Bones, the truth is that there never will be any report. It's like our friend in the pit said. They bought the government."

  A medium shot of the pit going ape was followed by a close-up of Renfield starting to inflate.

  "That's slander."

  Sturm treated Renfield to a look of total contempt. "So sue me. You know damn well that nobody in CM gives a two-cent damn about the long-term effects of the feelies. What do you call the people that you've sold feelies to? Stiffs. Am I right? That's how you refer to your valued clients, isn't it?" He turned to the mob. Sturm was a master at reducing even complex problems down to bite-sized dramatic pieces. "There are two categories. Tempstiffs, the short-term contracts, and permastiffs, the ones who've gone in for life. Stiffs. Think about it."

  He addressed the camera directly. "How can anything be of social benefit when it takes perfectly good minds and reduces them to dreaming zombies? That's worse than any kind of dope you can get on the street. All I can say is thank God it's the rich folks that are getting fucked up for a change."

  The pit was howling. A kid tried to scale the wall to get to Renfield, but Bones's security moved in and pushed him back. Bones's security was made up of big steroid types. They wore white T-shirts and black pants. The words DON'T FUCK WITH MR. ZERO were printed across their T-shirts. There was a new weird slogan for each show. Kids in the street copied them onto their own shirts.

  Sturm pointed an accusing finger. "All these bastards at CM want to know about is their goddamn profits." He looked to the mob and produced a sheaf of papers. "You want me to read a bit from their annual report?"

  Renfield struggled to be heard. "Since when was it a crime in this country to make a profit? We have worked in full cooperation with the unions to insure-"

  He was howled down.

  At that point, Mallory came out of the bedroom. "What the hell do you think you're doing?"

  Dustin looked up, almost guiltily. "Just watching TV."

  "My God, Dustin, you're watching Bones Bolt and Mark Sturm. The next thing, you'll be watching 'Wildest Dreams.' Have you gone crazy? Do you realize how this makes me feel?"

  Dustin sighed and thumbed the power off. If he didn't go to bed, he would never hear the last of it. As he stood up, he wondered what it would be like to just sink into a feelie and not have to deal with the rest of the world.

  "YOU REALIZE THAT WE AIN'T SEEN Artie in something like three days?"

  Sam squinted into the far distance of the vault, as though he expected Artie suddenly to appear because he'd noticed his absence. Ralph shrugged and picked up his broom.

  "His goofing off will get him fired, one of these days."

  "The union won't let him get fired, will they, Ralph?" Sam looked mildly concerned for Artie.

  Ralph leaned on his broom. "The union won't do nothing for him if they find out he's missing off the job more times than he shows up. He'll be out on his ass, and nobody'll say a word."

  Sam scratched his armpit with a perplexed air. "That'd be too bad."

  Ralph blinked. "Huh?"

  "It'd be a shame if they fired Artie."

  "Why?"

  "What do you mean, why?" Sam appeared to be shocked. "I mean
, he's our partner. We work with him. I'd miss him if he got fired."

  "But we never see him. How the hell can you miss a guy you don't ever see, for Christ's sake?"

  "I'd miss not knowing if he was around somewhere. I guess you could say I'd miss not seeing him."

  "You know something, Sam?"

  "What, Ralph?"

  "You ain't fucking normal, Sam. You ain't normal at all." Ralph pushed his broom idly under one of the feelie cabinets.

  Sam stood staring at him. "Wouldn't you miss Artie if he got fired?"

  "Like hell I would. He's a fucking psycho and he gives me the creeps, prowling around here, out of sight. God knows what he does out there."

  "You think he does all those things he tells us about? You think he's really interfering with the women?!!"

  Ralph shrugged. "I don't know if he's raping the stiffs or not. I've never seen any signs of it."

  "You never move more than a couple of rows from here. He could be doing all kinds of weird shit in other parts of the vault."

  Ralph smiled. "You have just had a very profound thought, Sam."

  Sam looked pleased and embarrassed. "I did, Ralph?"

  "You forgot something, though."

  Sam's face sagged. "I did?"

  "If he was messing with the stiffs, they'd monitor something upstairs. He'd have to be pretty smart to unseal the cabinet, open the body bag, and fuck the stiff without unhooking some of the tubes or wires. He'd even have to put the body bag back on and seal the cabinet again. He'd have to be pretty smart."

  "Artie's quite smart."

  "He couldn't go on fucking stiff after stiff without messing something up."

  "Even if he did, they might not notice."