From: Simon Speed <simon@speed.demon.co.uk>
Subject: OJ in mirrorshades
Date: Tue, 12 Mar 96 00:03:28 GMT

OJ  In  Mirrorshades
====================

OJ drives the Bronco at ever increasing speed.  The Bronco becomes a
racing car.  The Bronco becomes a rocket.  And yet.  The cops say he is
speeding beyond all limits of space and time.  And yet.  Observers see
only a sedate crawl.  Only one explanation is possible - time travel.


The light glints on OJ's mirrorshades.........................


22nd November 1963.  Dallas.  OJ stands in the grassy knoll.  Lee Harvey
is in the book repository.  He needs to make an impossible shot.  But
that's OK - OJ's a team player.  The homecoming hero raises his hand to
make the catch.  OJ throws the nuclear powered football, nanotech
devices on its surface guide its trajectory.  He makes the pass.
Touchdown.

Lee Harvey makes his way to ground floor.  Faster than the speed of
possibility.  Observers say.  The cops say.


The light glints on OJ's mirrorshades.........................


OJ's bumming a lift from Karen Silkwood.  Its an easy ride despite the
rain and some odd lumps bulging up from under the seats.  Nuclear
powered street lighting makes the road safe.  The industry that supports
it provides a guaranteed job for all.  A police escort adds the comfort
of security.  Muggers, drug dealers, assorted street scum and criminals
- all slink back into their burrows at the sight.  OJ and Karen discuss
the TV soaps and "I love Lucy" and the space programme.

It's quite OK that OJ's here in the car with a white woman.

The windscreen wipers are slapping time to a song on the car radio -
Joplin sings Kristofersen - "Freedom's just another word for do you know
the rules.  Enterprise it aint nothin' if it aint free.  Feelin' good is
easy Lord, if you take Prozac.  Feeling dumb is good enough for me....
me and Kerr McGee".

The police car lights flash confusingly.  Impossible tracks skid across
the road.  Marks in time that cannot have been.


The light glints on OJ's mirrorshades.........................


OJ is climbing a hot dusty hill in the middle of an otherwise empty
plain.  The sun is almost directly overhead.  The brown grass of the
area has almost failed completely on this man-made mound of earth.  As
he climbs he thinks about duty and honour and the valiant efforts of the
crew of a ship called the Enterprise to keep those suppositories in
place.  Crickets call like electric buzzers, some only a few feet away
though still invisible.  Sweating, he reaches the top of the Tailhook
National Monument to Military Sexuality.  A small conical barrow where a
hotel once stood.  A piece of stone, carved, rests on the summit.  Tears
well up in OJ's eyes, he has to fight to control them, as he reads the
few simple words of the inscription.


                     STRANGER

              GO  TELL  THE  SPARTANS

THOSE  WHO  PARTIED  HERE  RAPED  THEIR  FELLOW  OFFICERS

   THEY  HAVE  THEIR  HONOUR  -  THEY'RE  NOT  FAGS


It's too much for OJ.  Impossible things reflect from his mirrorshades.
Don't ask, don't tell.


The light glints on OJ's mirrorshades.........................


OJ's in a Kuwaiti hospital.  Standing surrounded by babies in
incubators.  Facing off with the ambassador's daughter.  They circle
around each other, slowly, a couple of times - sizing each other up.
Then simultaneously, they each flip open an incubator with one hand and
grab a baby by the ankle with the other.  An enthusiastic cheer from the
entire pool of journalists, ensconced in a hotel hundreds of miles away,
is relayed to the two contestants via a VR feedback loop.

The rules of baby fighting must, by now at least, be known to all my
readers.  But some of the subtleties of its techniques may have passed
them by.  A baby is not a natural club, both its tendency to wriggle and
its natural limpness must be counteracted by centripetal force.  The
weapon's integrity fails when it is not being swung - use it or lose it,
as the military analysts would put it.  Control of the weapons
trajectory is a delicate matter of causing its path to precess.  But the
very fact that one is constantly committed to maintaining the baby in
its orbit, leaves one open to blocking and counterattack.  Many babies
must be discarded as de-limbed or brained without even a proper strike
being recorded.  Thus a contest of chess-like strategy often ensues - as
long as the supply of babies is not limited.  Sadly this is not the case
for OJ and his opponent.  They both stand bruised and battered and
covered in baby-brains.  But for all their enthusiastic applause the
journalist pool cannot disguise that the outcome is a draw.

After showering the ambassador's daughter and a PR man load the (now
empty) incubators onto a B52 bomber and set off for Bagdad.  The B52 is
a beautiful machine, regarded with affection by all the world's plane
buffs.  The B52 is capable of carrying fiftyfour 750 pound bombs, each
one able to take out a small city block.  Humanitarian missions such as
the one currently being described are well within its capabilities.  A
formation of B52s can create "rolling thunder" an additive interference
effect from the shockwaves of individual blasts, destroying underground
shelters and leaving those who do survive psychologically incapacitated.
Both the pattern of falling bombs from a formation and the pattern of
rolling thunder shockwaves make excellent wallpaper for Windows(TM)
systems, especially in conjunction with educational software.

A crowd of men who might have been car workers or gone into space, stand
in line in the desert waiting for vaccine shots.  "Will you sons of
bitches get your thumbs out of your asses, cos we're go'na teach these
motherfuckers about Western Culture.  'Ttention!"


The light glints on OJ's mirrorshades.........................


And briefly he's taking part in a NASA Mars shot that never happened.


The light glints on OJ's mirrorshades.........................


So he knows he's all the way into news-space.  He turns to face the
camera and here the verdict.

Sharon Tate is prosecuting.  She politley asks him to sing "Old Man
River".  He refuses - a virtual admission of guilt - and in virtual
reality what could be more damning.  The Sharon Tate icon says "You
killed me nigger.  Look at this blood."

Various icons lead the observer around a tasteful display of all the
gory aspects of the crime.  Ratings levels soar.  The simulation is
counted a great success and a game version appears.  Somewhere else in
spacetime William Gibson will see some kids playing on this very game
and come to understand how mankind can master technology.

OJ remains silent.

"And who could have done it if wasn't you?", argues the Sharon Tate
icon, "Everyone knows it's always the husband.  Who else?  Some freak
nobody's heard of?  Some hippy maybe?"

Observers start to giggle.

"Maybe a failed rock musician with a grudge against Doris Day's family
whos gone and knocked on the wrong door?"

Roars of laughter fill news-space.

Even with no real evidence the verdict is still - black.


The light glints on OJ's mirrorshades.........................


And he's back.  The observed speed of the bronco and the cop measured
reality at last coincide.  The car has stopped.  OJ takes off his
mirrorshades and blinks a little in the light.  Getting out of the door
he pauses, he's dropped something on the ground, a bloody glove.  He
leaves it there and continues out of the car smiling gently - thank God
for the time dilation effect.


-- 
Copyright 1996 Simon Speed

C & C Welcome

Distribute freely in cyberspace - if you can find it.