Wu finds alternative, perfect Baby Losser on toxic waste dump
We are afresh in Boss Lard’s Kyiv Poster office – the place where Lard kicks back and takes the piss, takes the fucking mickey, using much of his time being astounded by his own brilliance in having marshaled and near-monopolized all Western PR technologies on the Kyiv market, changing the media and promo-scape of the ancient and long-tragic Eastern Slavic capital to a dull-buffed clattering simulacrum after his own image.
Here, Lard, an old-school and institutional PR man, who, had he remained in Washington, D.C., would have faded into oblivion, sings his own praises all the more when he considers how he has managed to co-opt the Kyiv Poster, the only leading English-language news vehicle in town, for his own uses, when, as might be expected, a somewhat transmogrified Welsh Losser, Lard’s lapdog assistant, given many high titles by Lard to massage and assuage his ego, just back from a suspicious and not fully explained trip to the planet Venus, bursts into Lard’s office, incredibly distraught.
And so Losser says to Lard:
Boss Lard! Oh, Boss Lard! Nya-a-a-erempus-eee… This is very upsetting indeed! For I have just read a piece in Kyiv Commix that predicts my future at the centenary of my birth – in 2053! It’s by Dirk Dickerson – I told you he tried to kill me once, nye-a-eh, a arklo gafqui, some kind of maniac. Now this! It’s a living nightmare – Oh, Boss Lard, Boss Lard…
Hold on there, boy. You mean to tell me you aim to live to be a hundred?
No, no – nya-a-kargblach-ooo – Boss Lard, I’ve got to find that contract! With The Infernal One! I’m burning up, I’m burning up!!! Aaaaahhh!!! You don’t know what I’m talking about and you’re not supposed to know! Forget I said that. I don’t want it, I tell you, I don’t want it! A 100-foot monument to me made of reinforced plastic – looming over the city center. It blows hot air out of its mouth…
Yeah, and it probably talks through its ass, too – haaaaawww!!!
It’s awful, Boss Lard, nyug-ooo, just absolutely… And your greatest achievement will be a major fast-food franchise, whose success you won’t even live to see!
Now, hold on there, boy, that’s impossible. For there ain’t nothin’ Boss Lard does that ain’t a success in his own lifetime!
You’re free to live your illusions, Boss, but I want out of this madness! Noripcamythitlebertgla! All of this has to change – but how, nyoo-oog, how???!!!
My boy, I think you’ve gone quite mad. After that unexplained trip to Venus, you should take a few days off, reflect on what you saw and did, maybe write a self-published e-book about it, take a few deep breaths of Earth’s atmosphere, within which you just killed a man and I, as usual, have had to cover up for you. Here, Welsh, take this slip and file it with the outside secretary. It’s good for a week off, roaming the steppes with the Zaporizhian Cossack Host. They’ll take care of you, Welsh, teach you some kind of trade, help bring you back to your senses. Or how about lazing in a small skiff along the Ukrainian delta through untrammeled nature? Or you can do some shallow sea diving off the coast of Kerch – good for someone with your limited eyesight – no offense meant – maybe you can bring up some ancient shards of Greek amphorae, that can be arranged, become a medal-awarded hero with the local populace, get in some of the papers. Wouldn’t you like that, son? Because right now, you’re screwy!
Because in the story, Boss Lard, the story about me in 2053, the main character and hero is a young family man who’s read a lot and able to explain everything to his two children. That family man, Boss Lard, is me! That’s my future – things that I’ve never had or done in my life, and for obvious reasons, things in my lifetime that can never be – nyaaag, agla, oooer…
What you saying, boy? You expectin’ to be reincarnated or something?
Prkslis. Today’s Welsh Losser becomes tomorrow’s 100-foot plastic monument, which precludes any consciousness of becoming the ideal that I had always dreamed of but never was – in the form of that man. Meanwhile, that man is the new Welsh Losser, who knows nothing of his connection to the monument, because he doesn’t continue on with my memory! Now, Boss Lard, if he’s around 30 in 2053, that means I’ve got about another 10 years to live, at which point I die and he’s born. But if he’s 40, that means my time’s up right about now!!!
Now, now, Welsh, let’s just say what you tellin’ ol’ Boss Lard here be true. How do you know your reincarnation and you can’t be alive at the same time?
Because that’s not reincarnation! When he’s born, I die, and 40 years from now, he’s a happy perfect father of two beautiful children, while I’m a grotesque, evil 100-foot plastic monument blowing hot air! Nyaaaa-ga-nyaaaa-ga-nyooo-o-ooo…
Detached Narrator: But perhaps Kyiv Unedited is only partly right. I mean, predicting the future is a mug’s game; isn’t it? For indeed, even if the being is the new Welsh Losser, how does KU know he will be a perfect and well-read family man of two beautiful children who is always able to explain things to them in an easy style of seamless abstractions while surrounded by a world of grotesque evil as left them by the likes of Losser and Lard. Or is this a reflection of Man’s resilience, the strength of his inner nature, under the worst kind of pressure? And why can’t – if the question is indeed posed – a reincarnation live at the same time as the original?
Because even as you read this, idle reader, Doctor Wu (also Woo), who is scavenging the toxic waste dump on the Kyiv outskirts under cover of night, as is his wont, dragging home anomalies and oddities he uses in his scientific experiments toward what ends Kyiv Unedited has yet to find out, he comes across the Venusian Welsh Losser, just recently hatched out of the mouth of the corpse of the late PR consultant Hos, hired by Lard and murdered by Losser – a physically perfect and clearly highly intelligent infant crawling about the irradiated garbage, gaily goo-gooing, lifting up his little hands to Wu and twinkling at him with brightly laughing eyes.
Wu is ignorant of this baby’s Venusian origins as he takes and hides him under his grimy coat, squinting his slanted eyes and darting them furtively from side to side. What name Wu gives the semi-extraterrestrial little Losser or what he does with him – at this point, your guess is as good as mine.
Filed by Jack Step, June 26, 2013