‘Put the fucking lid back on!’ It wasn’t often that Daisy swore.
‘Homo almighty!’ spat out Benny, suddenly. ‘This big beef tastes like shit. I’m sure they shovel cow dung into the vats. Why do we keep on eating this crap? Can you tell me, please?’
‘Because there’s nothing else, except for curries?’
‘Right. Chicken spicy, or beef processed. That’s our lot, until the good bones come up.’ He said this around a piece of gristle, which he then spat out in a rain of spittle. ‘Urghhh! What the fuck is this I’m eating?’ Benny’s voice was a snarl of disgust as he watched the ejected chunk of meat scuttle across the table. ‘Jesus Burger! I’ve been eating something still alive!’ He raised his fork to catch the miscreant, nudging aside the blurb box, even as Daisy made a move to escape the monster meat. And that’s how Sweet Benny managed to stab his fork into Daisy Love’s forearm.
‘Ouch!’ squealed Daisy.
‘Oh fuck, I’m sorry,’ said Benny, jerking the fork free of her flesh. He wiped her arm with the borrowed handkerchief.
‘That’s OK,’ apologized Daisy in the English manner.
Meanwhile, the lump of meat slid down the table’s leg to the floor. A waiter came running with a net to catch the wild gristle, by which time Benny’s blurb had risen from its bed of aluminium. Now the fly was hovering and buzzing, and starting to flutter its message to the world. ‘Sweet Benny Fenton, he’s the gayest gypsy of your genes. Let Sweet Benny unravel your destiny for a single puny. Gay to win! Gay to win!’
The diners were screaming and climbing onto the tables, as the lump of Whoomphy fat slithered away from the net. Legal additive No. 27459 making a dash for freedom. Benny’s blurb dive-bombing all the customers with its advert for camp pride, which caused the Whoomphy’s burgerfly to go into battle.
At which point the burgercops came storming the pavement outside in their battle-scarred meatwagon, emblazoned with the scarlet W of their sponsor, writ large. Some tight-hearted diner must’ve given them the tip-off on the walkie-phone, all about the gay blurb’s presence. Maybe it was one of Zuze’s crew, taking a small revenge for a beating. ‘Time to make an exit, my dear,’ whispered Sweet Benny Fenton, coming close, holding up the bloodstained handkerchief. ‘Something to remember you by.’ And then he was away, calling the blurb home to his shoulder, slipping out through the back door of the cafe.
Daisy was left alone to face the cops as they burst into the place. They had their instruments with them, their probing instruments, and they were demanding the whereabouts of the rampant gay blurb, which had violated all the regulations of health and vitality. Some nanonerd raised up his piping voice: ‘The homo black boy, he went that-a-way…’
The burgercops followed the direction of the thinnest of all fingers.
Play to win
A small aside for social historians. Burgercops are the warriors of orthodoxy. They had given in to the tightening of state budgets and allowed themselves to be sponsored. Whoomphy Burgers won the franchise on the law, ordering the cops to wear, at all times, the logo of the company. Which made the cops one easy target for assassins; all the killers had to do was focus the crosshairs on the illuminated scarlet W.
Easy game. The real cops protested, of course, but the forces of the market held true. It was laser-etched into the contract: ‘No police officer shall fight the war against crime without proudly carrying the corporate symbol.’
The game goes on.
Play to win
Daisy left her burger half uneaten and walked back to the bookshop on Deansgate. The begging hole was still empty. But now a dozen scowling vagabonds were clustered around the pit, as though expecting a dotfall. ‘Celia, Celia!’ they were chanting, each to each. Daisy pushed through them to get inside the shop, rubbing at the wound on her arm.
Whilst Jaz Malik, upon that same afternoon, was upstairs in his parents’ home. Hat and shades off, computer on, dissecting the squishy body of a blurbfly. A stolen blurb full of university education: ‘Learn to win! This message brought to you courtesy of AnnoDomino Co’.
At last, a real-life blurbfly!
Of course, he could’ve purchased such a creature from AnnoDomino itself, sure thing, if he had 1,000 lovelies to spare. But this little bugger had cost him nothing. He had it clamped in the vice on his desk. The thing was struggling for flight, but Jazir was gonna tame the monster. He had a range of copyblurb disks lying on his desk, just waiting for a personal message.
‘Jazir Malik! Gadgets of love! Order to win!’