It might have been the pain pill I took yesterday, but what the hell, I decided to enter the fray of Mr. Duke's throw down with something a tad different. I was listening to My Morning Jacket's "I'm Amazed" over and over, drinking a lot of coffee, and maybe the rough caffeine got jiggy with the little white pill. So harmless. Kind of looked like a tiny submarine, a Russian doll, a Tic-Tac...oh...just forget it. Here goes nothing.
PENULTIMATE ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS OF OUTLAW MJ PARKSON JR.'S MEGA BESTSELLER: THE SUPER LIE ©2091
Almost time now.
From the ridge here I can see them coming twelve miles out. Actually they're out there now, four drones, just sitting there, black smooth-edged specs hovering over the landscape, their blades chopping the scorching thermals blooming up from the canyon at three hundred plus RPMs. Not sure what they're waiting for, I mean, I can see them and that sure as hell means they can see me. Guided ordnance would obliterate more than an acre around me in the bat of an eye so, what? They see me as an actual threat? No hero here. Perhaps they want me to run so they can say I was a coward in my final moments on earth. Some hubristic folly that...as if history will be written after all is shit is said and done, but I'm not a fool. Running out of a canyon like this? Can you imagine anything more pathetic? I won't give the bastards the satisfaction. Just going to sit here and drink the last of this fine Armagnac and watch them come for me. Hell, I'm ready. Karen is here beside me and she's ready too. We're both ready. Bring it. Your liquefying fifty calibers, your laser-sighted RPGs. Set my love and I free of this world with the remote touch of a button and time will see who the real cowards are. We won't feel a thing except maybe a warm whisper before our negation.
It's not like these authority assholes can stop the unraveling I started with this little book in your hands. I've won and they know it. You're reading this as are millions and millions of others worldwide. THE SUPER LIE's digitized screed is out there and picking up speed, tearing the flesh off of the bones, the long extirpation of our whimpering world. Try as they will, nothing will stop THE SUPER LIE now. Not their sanitized violence. Not their oppression. You want to know something cool? This morning after Karen and I had our oatmeal I learned via the satellite trans that THE SUPER LIE had been translated into isiZulu. Wow. Now there's something you could fucking etch on your tombstone, that is, if we still had tombstones. Martin James Parkson, Jr., revolutionary mind, writer, and outlaw harbinger of mankind's final demise, translated into every single dialect and language on known to man. Wouldn't mom be proud? Actually to be honest I'm pretty grateful my mother never lived to see this day. My mother was a tender Mid-Western soul and gentle hearts like hers were the first to fall once THE SUPER LIE went viral and seared into the global consciousness like a hot needle. The ensuing intellectual madness and wholesale carnage would've been unbearable for her. The cities burning. Mothers smothering their babies. The young and the old slaughtering each other in the streets. Holocausts--nuclear and otherwise. And why? All because of her little boy, because of what I wrote in a silly book, one hundred and ninety seven pages of pure philosophical drivel that managed to pierce the soul of every living being on the planet.
Perhaps I should apologize once and for all but I won't. What would be the value in that? What I do want is to say thank you to those who made my destructive words possible, those who helped me get the final truth out there. Yeah, yeah...fault me for kick starting the end of the time, but I suppose they're to blame too.
First up--Bret Wallace, for compelling this techno-drop out of a revolutionary into jacking the bio-vid relays. It wasn't easy, believe me, but Bret was up to the task. Bret was the one who forced me to watch the initial recordings of my father's assassination. Son of a bitch was onto something, but jumbo brain PhD that he was, my old man had zero in street sense and the power elite cut him down. And to think I once believed his death was a tragic scuba accident. That epiphany ignited my relentless investigation into our global predicament and the depths of the authority's shime-waza on us all. Good old Bret--the ledge pusher. Brilliant teacher and better friend. Mankind might have endured another thousand years of pounding sand if Bret had kept his big trap shut. Stay in hiding, my friend, if they haven't gotten to you already.
Equal heady gratitude is due to the late members of the Artist Subversive Assemblage for reading everything I wrote and for threatening me at gun point when I suggested letting sleeping dogs lie. I heard that even when they were tortured and executed they never stopped believing in me and my pursuit of the truth. Got to admire that. Going out with style and balls to spare.
Next, my family. You guys initially supported and loved me--so there's that. No hard feelings for finking me out of my safe house in Argentina as I'd have done the same if I had your milky-willed temperaments. Who knew the little kid with the mild asthma would one day man up and soar above your heads on black wings of doom? Guess I had the genes, a worm's swatch of code imprinted with father's audacity to question everything. Oh, and by the way, Christmas 2053? I was the one who hid Grandma's fruit cocktail lime gelatin salad. Flushed that bastard straight down the toilet. None of you could admit to her that stuff just plain sucked and she brought it year after year. I'm not sorry for that either. Bleah.
Humble gracias go out to my outlaw amigos who have always felt like family-- Jacob, Chris, Sarah, Wendy, Ed and Lauren--for keeping me focused, armed to the teeth, and for providing the right drugs to facilitate key spiritual and mental breakthroughs. I shall see you soon and buy you all a round. Yes, it was mistake to leave my files unencrypted. They found them and subsequently they found you. Sorry about that, my bad. Hey, at least it was quick.
I am indebted to my my wonderful agent, Christine Hudson, for knowing all the rational things to say when I delivered the end of the world on her doorstep. Christine was the rare combination of warmth and honesty I needed in a desperate hour. I was lucky to have her represent me before New York City was leveled in the first wave of air strikes.
Gracious thanks are due to my editor, Myles Marino, for believing in THE SUPER LIE and taking a chance on one last hurrah. He always made me feel like a writer even as we wept openly during our manuscript sessions. Myles, I cherished your suicide note, drank all your bourbon, and it was me who stole the last of your franken-weed.
Finally I owe every word to Karen here at my side. Lover, friend and the best gun-slinging lay I ever had. You are my fortunate heart, pudding, and have forgiven all my transgressions. Thank you for keeping the weapons clean, for telling me none of this bullshit really matters, and for holding my hand as I now press SEND.
The black specs are closer now, moving fast.
Damn, I wish I had a smoke. Give me a kiss.
MJ Parkson Jr. (shortly before his death)
Tall Box Butte, Montana -
Wednesday, August 11, 2093 - 7:43 a.m.
BIO
KIERAN SHEA’s fiction has appeared in dozens of venues including Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, Thuglit, Dogmatika, Word Riot, Plots with Guns, Beat to a Pulp, Crimefactory, and Needle: A Magazine of Noir ...as well as in some beefy-looking anthologies most of which will make you question the tether of his shiny, red balloon. To his self-deprecating astonishment he's also been nominated for the Story South’s Million Writers Award twice without sending the judges so much as a thank you note. He co-edited the satiric transgressive fiction collection D*CKED: DARK FICTION INSPIRED BY DICK CHENEY and his debut novel KOKO TAKES A HOLIDAY is out now from Titan Books. Kieran divides his time between 38°58′22.6″N- 76°30′4.17″W and 39.2775° N, 74.5750° W.