Saving the Cyber Soaps by Mike Morris (free romance novels .TXT) 📕

Mike Morris/Gloria McKenzie
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S A V I N G T H E C Y B E R S O A P S
__________________________________________________________________
by Gloria McKenzie


Science Fiction Approx 18,208 words First US Serial Rights

CHAPTER 1 – Stale, Sweaty, Passé
In the earth, under the Windy City known as Chicago, in an underground world called the Warren, the business of producing brain-balm for survivors continued smoothly with the making of the eternal soap-opera. “Suburban Secrets – episode 14,172,” the script said. I, William L Jones, was the star, and Sweet Annie Pankowski was my leading lady. Ernie LaDouce, the co-star, was competent but basically second-rate, a good foil for my usual sterling performance. Three-hundred and two years after the star-travelers came and went, everything was smooth, uneventful, boring really, until the flying windows came crashing down all over the place, falling to earth in virtuous pieces.
Ernie the Douche started pounding the hypermike, teeth gleaming brownly behind cigarette smoke as he muttered bits and bytes to the cyber-lords. And Annie, sweet Annie, tossed her curly orange mop, gazing cow-like at the Douch’s sweaty grubshirt, while I gazed cow-like at Annie’s heaving bosom. We had been working this gig for about 56 years, and we were getting stale.
Suddenly Sir Simon entered, tuxedoed and shiny. “Gig’s over boys and girl,” he hollered. “You are all three stale, sweaty, passé.” He paused and switched off the crashing windows.
Ernie, hyper and brown-toothed, was the first to answer with a Douche curse, but sweet Annie was not far behind. “Jesus Gates,” she snarled, shedding cow like a skin. “Fifty years of cow-eyes is worse than fifty years of shit shoveling.”
I was, for a second, ready to cheer her. I snapped out of it soon enough, but Ernie developed a permanent tic, and they wiped him clean and reassigned him to shit-shoveling duties. As for me, two securities grabbed and disconnected me, none too gently. By the time my eyes had uncrossed, New Guy had taken over, smirking, and he and Annie were in a thrashing frenzy. Without the connection, though, sweet Annie looked a little beat-up. I doubt she even noticed the switch.
The two securities escorted me to Suddenly Sir Simon’s private office, where he, grinning wolfishly, told me I was in big trouble. He was chief gofer and an uninspiring bit-player when we started the eternal soaps, and he never forgotten my unkind but accurate remarks about his acting ability. He had, over the years, brown-nosed himself into a boss-bureaucrat politically correct producer of low-budget, no-brainer trash. In a world of ever-falling standards, Suddenly was a master at finding the lowest common denominator, and lowering the bar on standards that would seem to be too low, even for a no-talent third-rater.
“What is it now?” I asked him. “Someone in the audience up there had to think a little, and blew his brain-cell? Did I inadvertently use a word with more than one syllable? Did one of the sad bits last longer than ten seconds?” I asked him to explain and expand, tell me what terrible blunder of mine had caused him to end my fifty-six year streak as leading man in the world’s worst soap opera. The fact that he gave no further details indicated that he had no idea what was going on. It was obvious that someone down there was after my head, or other tender parts. He was enjoying himself tremendously until I reminded him of my opinion of his non-existent acting ability, at which point he bared his wolfs’ teeth and waved at the Securities.
I had heard about the new security force during the occasional soap breaks, when my character was supposedly dead, frozen, or comatose, felled by the evil Dr Krank, or a jealous lover, even by a spurned Sweet Annie Pankowski once, two days before we got married forever for the sixth time in episode 10,621. It seemed a little strange in our dull, rich self-satisfied little burrow where crime was almost unknown. Some of the executives suggested that the force served as a harmless safety valve for less talented Moles, but I had heard tales of over-zealous Securities roughing up citizens who expressed mild amusement over their comic-opera purple and gold uniforms, and some of them had started wearing the insignia of the department heads.
The two who came for me had an ornate ‘J’ stitched in gold braid on their left breast. The big one looked like a happy prize fighter who could easily beat a guy to a pulp and then laugh and buy him a drink. The little one looked mean.
“OK, who complained,” I gasped to Big Security. We were walking up endless flights of stairs, higher than I had ever been before, definitely away from the big boys with their fat chairs and pert secretaries and desks the size of football fields. Big security grunted and Little Security snickered. “You musta done something really stupid,” he told me stupidly. Then “Word came from big Dee herself.”
That knocked the wind out of me until I realized I wouldn’t be dealing with her directly. Big Dee lived really far down, with a whole army of wide shoulders to do her bidding, and an office the size of Australia. We were still going up, and I swear the air was getting thinner and colder. Up here, close to Topside, clerks and cleaners did their work and lived their endless lives. We passed through corridors of untidy looking shops and cheap restaurants. Some bars were open, and a few Moles looked at us disinterestedly or nervously as we marched past. At the end of each block, big security opened the steel emergency doors, and we walked up more endless stairs. I had no idea why they didn’t use the elevators, unless this trek was the mysterious ‘J’s’ idea of punishment and humiliation. I stumbled up the endless stairs, tripping and gasping, and I felt the iron bite into my ankles. Some of the levels were residential, and the pale flicker of Television showed under the doors. It occurred to me that these people were not much better off than Topsiders. Up here, close to Topside, the carpets were thin and dingy, and the brass nameplates on the doors had long since morphed into untidy hand-written pieces of cardboard.
We finally stopped in a corridor of broom-closets and toilets. The door in front of me had ‘Jones’ scrawled on it, and a broken handle. The Securities bundled me in. “All yours, Jonesy,” the big one rumbled, articulating for the first time. They left me in the middle of the uncarpeted room, which was definitely cold. There were a few unconvincing file cabinets with papers stacked untidily on top, and old bundles of paper on the floor. A sign on the wall announced that this was headquarters, Chicago division, of Acme Surveys, Inc. Jonesy sat behind a rickety desk, pretending to sign important papers. He was a small man with a pinched face who looked as if he spent all day adding up figures. I remembered an actor who played his type on every Soap on the slate. He played a series of short-term gigs because his character was the perennial fall-guy. Unattractive and unlamented, the guy acted as a foil for us stars, continually duped, dragged away to jail, run over, occasionally murdered when the writers ran out of ideas and required a cheap boost. This was the man. Then he looked at me and his eyes were dead. There was no soul behind them, and for the first time I realized I was in big trouble.
My acting training kicked in and I acted casual. I looked for a chair, but there were none, so I leaned on the desk and recited my credentials, starting with the fact that I was the longest serving field operative in the organization, and that I knew Big Dee personally. Jonesy looked at me with his fish eyes, and I realized what the big ‘J’ stood for on the purple and gold uniforms of the securities. This man was important – and dangerous. “I’m a personal friend of Big Dee,” I blurted, the first time I’d ever felt the need to bring up my old connection with the most powerful woman on the Eastern Seaboard.
Jonesy smirked at this. “So, why are you here, instead of down there with your contemporaries,” he asked sourly. “The ones who started with you, and survived the first couple of gigs.”
“I know what contemporaries means,” I snarled. If there’s anything I hate, it’s being seen as a dumb spider. The worst part of it was, he had me. Others had moved steadily down the ladder, except for me. Most of them were head flunkies, living in the depth of luxury. Jonesy stood up, all five and a half foot of him and strutted round the desk. Up close he smelled like a cheap perfume shop.
“Hate being this high up,” he said. “Gives me nosebleed.” He flashed a security badge at me, one of the fancy golden plates that the top brass were fond of waving, not at all like the cheap tin my securities had worn. “This is all very top secret,” he said importantly. “I’m going to have to take you down to corporate level.” He smirked again. “I doubt you’ve been that far down. Don’t fret. You won’t be there for long.”
“You going to drag me all the way down there in these leg irons?” I asked.
“You’re in big trouble, my boy,” he told me condescendingly. I bit back a smart remark and looked at him stonily as he scratched his neck irritably. “Big Dee wants to see you. Alone,” he went on, unable to contain his surprise. He’d been listening to his built-in communicator, and there must have been a video feed hidden somewhere in the bleak office. He tossed me a key. “Unlock them yourself,” he said irritably.” As I fumbled with the irons he fished a card from out of his desk and swiped it across a sensor plate. The wall opened up and warm air wafted in. Sardonically, he waved me forward, into a shaft forty stories deep. He probably thought I was going to panic, but I tossed the irons on his desk and stepped into the gravity well. Like Alice down the rabbit hole, I fell forty stories into the earth.

CHAPTER 2 – In the Womb of the Warren
His real office was done tastefully in orange and purple, with life-size pornography on the ceiling. Fashion, these days, stayed pretty stable. “I see nothing has changed in the past fifty years,” I told him, letting him know that I was no stranger to the low life.
“No need, now that we’re practically immortal,” he said, rattled. He was reassessing my relative importance in whatever was going on, and obviously didn’t like what the numbers added up to. I tried to look as if I knew the exact score, hoping I could coax some information from behind those stony eyes. I put my hand on his shoulder and he looked at me with fury and I just managed not to flinch.
“I understand,” I told him. “You have to be careful in your line of business. Like I said, Dee and I are old friends.” I stressed the last two words. “So,” I continued,” what are my instructions.”
He shook off my hand. “Dee will brief you,” he