Part One
The Ice Man Cometh…now if only we could get him to leave.
It was a pleasure to burn.
There he stood, like some…big…guy…destined to…stand out over…something. His hands anxiously tightened and shifted around the bronze nozzle as it spat napalm out of its geometrically perfect orifice like a snake that’s just spat out very spicy flaming tomato juice. The books sizzled with the excitement of several children who happen to be inanimate, made of paper and lit on fire.
In this strange and bizarre world that was the eighty-gajillionth century, no one knew what was real any more. I mean, if you were living thousands of years in the future from us, now, and the most technological progression you saw was that television screens now took up an entire room, I’m sure your concept of reality would be a little disgruntled due to boredom, as well, so you can’t blame them.
Guy Dude posed. He was very good at dramatic still life. And man, was he pretty. Miniscule black particles of burnt paper, each like small weightless licorice jellybeans, floated in front of him, in very much the same manner that several small weightless licorice jellybeans would float in front of a dramatically posing man. It was all very complicated, he decided.
Guy Dude felt that his beautiful and unkempt hair had blown vividly in the wind for long enough. He put his helmet back onto his head. Light glinted off the symbolic “56” on the front of it, as though God were coughing right onto it, and God’s coughs were made of brightness.
The 56 stood for the temperature at which burning books stop burning and really just smolder. This was very important to the firemen of the eighty-gajillionth century, because even though they liked burning books, they didn’t like forest fires; and there’s nothing that causes forest fires more often than an irresponsibly lit burning book. Hence, the smoldering stage was essential to the cause. All right, it was essential to those who paid attention to the rules, and not as much to the blithering idiots who did the dirty work for the department.
“You talking to me?”
No, Guy. Go back to posing.
“Oh. All right.”
Moron.
Suddenly, Guy Dude was tapped on the shoulder. He turned with all the speed and ferocity of a newly castrated steroid enhanced antelope. His eyes were ablaze with the vicious grease fires common to fast food establishments and their aura was just as deadly.
He faced a girl. She was not like anyone he had ever seen before, as though he had never laid eyes upon someone like her. It was as though he hadn’t thought anyone like her could exist. Who was she? He didn’t know. He had completely failed to notice her prior to him noticing her.
“What is your name?” she queried.
“Guy Dude.” His radiant white teeth glinted in front of the background inferno, standing out like shiny marshmallows in a bright tomato sauce.
“No, seriously,” she intoned.
“Really!”
“Somehow, that doesn’t surprise me.”
Guy got this a lot. He was used to it. Sure, he didn’t understand it, but he was used to it.
“Where’d you come from?” he demanded.
“My name is Plot Progression. I’m your new neighbor.” She smiled.
Guy raised a curious eyebrow. “’Plot Progression’? Is that French?”
“I think so.”
“Ah.”
“Mr. Dude, I’ve been a little displaced…it’s like I don’t even remember specifics about the eighty-gajillionth century. Can you tell me some things about it?”
“I don’t know; it’s pretty common knowledge.”
Plot elbowed him in the ribs. “For the audience, numbskull,” she hissed.
“Oh, right! Ah, well, apparently, some years back, the corrupt government decided to kill off personal expression by eliminating the written word and replacing it with mindless gory television, so now all the tax money goes to the fire department, who, in an ironic twist of job description, now sets fires to all forms of print they can possibly find in order to fully oppress the independence of the masses,” Guy said in one breath and smiled absently.
Plot scratched her head quizzically, “And you DON’T have a problem with this?”
Guy’s mouth said “yes”, but his voice said “no”. The result was a strangely slurred “ynuwss”. He squinted at the air as he reformulated his thoughts. There was a small clicking sound.
“Hey,” he started slowly, “you know what? I DO have a problem with that!” He said, rather proudly. “Erm, I do, don’t I?” he made sure.
“Yes, you do,” Plot sighed heavily.
Guy Dude returned home to find his wife, Millie, recovering from one of her daily chemical overdoses. A man in a clean-pressed white lab coat was stooped over her panting body and placing small tablets into her hands.
“…take six of these, three of these, and nineteen of these.” He stood.
“Golly, thanks, Doctor!” Guy went to shake the man’s hand.
“Oh, I’m not a doctor,” said the man, and he left.
Guy helped Millie to her feet.
“Honey,” he excitedly started, “you’ll never guess whom I met just a few moments ago!”
“Wouldn’t care if I did,” she replied.
“Her name was ‘Plot Progression’ – that’s French, by the way – and she made me completely reevaluate my moral philosophies on life, the universe, and everything!”
“That’s a coincidence, the police chief just called and left you a message saying that someone named Plot Progression was hit by a car and her family immediately moved away.”
The skin on Guy’s face restricted as though it were a fleshy comforter wrapped around an oddly shaped sphere, and being pulled from behind.
“I only knew her long enough for her to disorient my social values before she was randomly killed!”
“Yeah, kooky, isn’t it?”
Guy knew it was the wrong thing to do, but in memory of Plot Progression, he retrieved the box of books he had stolen from previous burnings and started perusing through their weathered pages.
He found one book and began reading, “Big Brother is watching.”
“Jimminy Jerkins!” he exclaimed. “This book is like a better-constructed, better-written version of THIS story!”
“Don’t you think I’ve realized that?”
It was then that Guy noticed, for the first time, a man weeping pathetically in a shadowy corner of the room.
“Who’re you?”
The man looked up. “Ray Bradbury.”
