A Future We'd Like to See 1.54 - The Joy of Silly By Stefan "Twoflower" Gagne (Copyright 1994) I turned a page, skimming the paragraphs. Problem with these cyberpunk books was they kept concentrating on the guns. I don't mind a little wild uncontrolled gunplay, but there's only so much data I can handle on one particular weapon. Take the shotgun the guy in the car I'm tailgating has. It's a rather nice one, with a caliber and a barrel count and a reloading time and stuff like that, but once you know it's a shotgun, there's not much else you need to know. "Get off my car!" he shouted out his driver's side window, pointing said BoomStick at my hammock. "Okay, okay, I'm going," I said, putting the book aside and unhitching the framework. The hammock skittered along on all three wheels, slowing down with no visible puller. I spotted a likely speedster and harpooned it... little jobby of my own, with a really thick cable and one bad-ass magnet. The kind of metal lawyers make refrigerator magnets out of that never come off (you never know when your own careless magnet relocation can cost you a legal suit.) The magnet, decorated with a LARRY COHEN, LEGAL ATTORNEY slapped itself to the bumper, and the cord ran taught. I reeled it in, hooked up and reclined into the hammock to continue reading. Most people wouldn't use a hammock on a rickety wheel-cart to tag-along on the highway. Maybe a skateboard would be safer or faster, but I like my hammock. It's comfy, and allows me to get fresh air while relaxing under a good book. Plus it's silly, and counts towards my quota. Above the huge purple letters reading SNORT FISH on my shirt is a flash patch, a simple happy face turned upside down crossfaded to a purple letter G. This is the badge of the Generik Sillys, a proud organization of wacky people that enjoy doing wacky things. The wackier, the better. The hammock didn't count as much as I'd like it to, because Generik philosophy states that you're supposed to do your silly things randomly. Spur of the moment. Feel like grabbing a lobster and making it dance on an office block floor? Do it! Want to hang glide without going anywhere, like a kite? Go for it! However, if you do the lobster karoke or the kite thing more than once, it loses its Generik appeal. It's been done. Old. Not random enough. Only worth 1/6th the points it got the first time. I make up for the gap caused by this hammock in other ways. The water balloon basketball game, for instance. Score 0-0 and wading ankle deep by the end. Got me five points. My cat who could stick to a velcro ceiling was worth three. The best I've ever done was the double-headed Yugo, which went nowhere when both drivers floored it... fifty points. The point system is as important as you make it out to be. You can have zero points and still be a full-fledged member of Generik Silly as long as you stick to the concept of Any Fun Any Time. I like to use the points to measure how well I'm living my life. Others compete, others aim for records. I just like to rack 'em up. The car whipped into the inner city at impressively illegal speeds. People these days... breaking the speed limit wasn't very silly, so it had no value to me. The hammock leaned left and right, threatening to topple me, so I dug out my teflon spatula and pried the legal magnet off the bumper. My hammock coasted along in the lane, amusing and freaking out drivers left and right. I guided it over to a curb cut and stopped it by crashing into a wall, impact absorbed by the stretchy hammock material. Another end to a lovely ride. I folded the hammock up, locked it to a bike rack with the sixteen chains I had in my pack. No lock, just a lot of chains. It's really hilarious how thieves will get scared away by a few pounds of metal without realizing a single tug would earn them a free hammock. I walked the rest of the way to the Reckless Room, circling the block once backwards just for good measure and maybe a point. The city was a really neat one to live in... C'atel, home of all pop culture and alternative culture. Sort of the demon spawnzones for tomorrow's has-beens. Nice and rainy, but that's okay; the hammock has a built in umbrella rack. After completing my lap around the Reckless Room, I walked inside. In true Generik style, the lobby was never the same room it was the previous day... the sofas seemed to be bisected with a chainsaw and someone painted a picture of Elvis on the far wall. Didn't quite get the sequin shine correctly. Frannie was sitting in the center of the room, behind the one feature that rarely changes in the lobby; the Home Desk. One block of wood with the center's main computer, storing everybody's point tallies and honors and achievements in the name of absurdity. Frannie specialized in computer silliness, constantly tuning and retuning her free-use VOSNet/UberNet site to achieve a level of useless spectacle hitherto unobserved by man. "'evenin', Frannie," I said, closing the door to keep the glaring sun out. (Side Note. One of the few days it wasn't raining on C'atel. Generik Silly lore says that much fun can occur on a day like that. I suppose we'll see.) "Happy noontime, Jer. What you been up to?" she asked, not looking up from her deck and trodeset. "Let's see... rode over on the hammock again." "Not worth that much now. Barely anything, really, according to your logs." "Aw, skip it, I don't mind. I also read a cyberpunk novel back to front. The ending was okay, but that beginning was just a little too deux ex machina, you know." "Not bad, two points, I'd say. Anything else?" "I brushed my teeth with contraceptive jelly." "Three at least!" she beamed. "It wasn't intentional," I said. "Both tubes were green, so hey." "Oh, it wasn't? Never mind, then. Hope the day picks up for you, Jer. Sun's out, you never know." "Better believe it, Fran. I'm gonna head to the lounge and get some brunch. Want anything?" She didn't say anything. She never wanted anything; I guess staying wired up like that represses the need to eat. I don't know myself, I rarely jack in. I guess VR silliness is an acquired taste. The lounge was off to the north-north-east of the lobby, specially designed to be the antithesis of a conversation pit. Chairs were scattered in patterns that broke up the flow of hungry Generiks into raw chaos theory. The floor had lumps and pits in it that changed every hour, rearranging the chairs magically. If a Generik had to do it each day it'd get old. The lounge was suspiciously empty today... everybody off seeing what the new day's sun had in store for them, I guess. Only one Generik left, sitting by the drink machine, reading the labels. None of them were correct, of course (for instance, root beer mapped to listerine). That would be dull. This guy was obviously new to the Generiks, since others just pick a spigot and take the chance, not lollygag around trying to find a good one. "Hey ho," I waved, elbow-elbow-wrist-wrist-wrist. "What's new?" The guy looked up. "I'm supposed to ask you if you knew why the seagull gets burned alive by lightning that strikes the steeple in the rain." "Yes, I know why." Pause. "Why?" he asked. "So, are you new to the Generiks?" I asked, weaving around the mosaic chairs and reaching the drink table. "Actually, I'm a reporter," he said, showing me a press badge where a Generik Silly patch would normally go. "Doing a story about Generiks in General. It's a pun, you see. My editor thought it up." "Exemplary," I lied, nodding. "Well, I showed up and the girl at the help desk told me to ask anybody I saw about the seagull there, and whoever answered it right was my interviewee. Is this some sort of cult thing?" "No, it's just Frannie pulling your leg. What would you like to know?" "Basics, I think," he said, pulling out a palmtop to dictate the interview. "Should we have a seat?" "Unless you want bruised shins in a few minutes, no," I said, reading my watch. "This is the safest place to be at the moment." "Err... okay. I just want to get the truth behind some public misconceptions about this place. In light of the recent protest, you see." Protest, ah yes, that thing a week ago. Couple people camped out on the doorstep waving signs like KEEP THE INSANE PEOPLE AWAY FROM US and GENERIK IS IMMORAL and CLOSE THIS DEN OF CRIME DOWN. Seems a Silly went and built a vehicle to drive OVER traffic, and it caused a few accidents. Public didn't appreciate that. I thought it was a pretty righteous morsel of weirdness, and a hell of a way to get around. "Okay," I said. "Fire away." "First of all, does your organization condone the traffic hazard one of your members engaged in last week?" "Yes. No. Depends," I said. "I liked it myself, some of us didn't, etc. Generik Silly is an organization in the same sense that a beach is an organization of sand. No unanimous actions, and you can make cool castles out of it." "What about reports of 'generiks' engaging in acts of rape and murder?" "Wrong Generik." "Excuse me?" "Wrong Generik. Past history quiz : what was the first form of Generik ever made?" "Umm... I think I'm supposed to ask the questions here..." "Fine, if you want to be that way, I'll answer my own questions. The Church of Generik Good. Buncha guys with a philosophy of do a nice deed every day. Kind of the antithesis of an evil cult, where you need to follow planned scripts for cutting out hearts and stuff. If you want to help an old lady across the street, do you say 'Sorry, can't, I need an assortment of herbs and chanting first'? No, you help the old biddy cross the street. Generik Good was like that; do goodness randomly for goodness's sake." "What does this have to do with the crimes?" "I'm getting to that. Okay, so Generik Good was made and it was really popular. Then some seriously bad people got into the Generik idea and made the First Cult of Generik Evil. Do a bad thing every day, the more random the better. That's why nobody can catch those guys, you see, they hit and run and the next hit's never the same as the last. No pattern. Might be rapes with salad shooters one day, then light muggings, then full scale remove-all-the-organs-and-draw-nasty-looking-symbols-on-the-floor afterwards. Maybe jaywalking the next day. Random, sporadic evil, the Generik concept stretched over a different goal." "What's the difference between your organization and this 'generik evil'?" "We don't go around slaughtering the masses, for starters," I grinned. "We also have a neater badge and like to mess around. We just have fun, throw a little scare into people with our differentness and so forth. Nothing not-nice." "Scaring people?" "Lightly, you understand. In the same way that inflatable alligator beach floats being dumped on first avenue is a bit confusing and scary. People fear the different, and we like to be different, so it's just a side effect you deal with." "Kind of like your... umm..." he trailed off, feebly pointing to my forehead, the spot he was stealing glances at over the last few minutes. "Third eye?" I asked, going blink-blink-blink. "It's fake. I just like the way it looks. Maybe I'll remove it in a day or two, the servos are a bit pointy. That's what I'm trying to explain, we're random, sporadic, uneven, generik." "I thought random and generic were opposites." "They are. Silly, huh? Applies better to good an evil, which can be generally good 'n bad, but we couldn't drop the word or we'd lose the point." "What other 'generik' groups exist?" he asked, putting generik in apostrophes again. Getting on my nerves. "Let's see... Generik Good, Generik Evil, Generik Silly... also Generik Bored, although they're a bit of a drag... Generic Conformists, which kind of miss the point... Generic Travellers. They're getting pretty big, mostly filthy rich people with a yen for touring far off places." "That should be enough material for the article," he said. "Any last words you'd like the public to know about your organization?" "The square of the hypotenuse is equal to the squares of each side," I said gravely, driving my point home. "Err... okay. Thanks. What's your name, by the way?" "I. P. Freely," I lied, putting on a politician smile and shaking his hand. "Glad to be of help." "Thanks. Goodbye, Mr. Freely," he said, letting go of my hand and weaving his way out the lounge. Two seconds after he shut the door, the floor lumps shifted and a series of wood-on- wood clunks ensued as the chairs settled. Say, this tale didn't have a plot with appropriately placed climaxes and character developments, did it? How absurd. Maybe it'll get me a point or 3.14.