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Le Sofa: An Interstellar Tale of Sex, Murder, and Cocktails on Couches
Posted By: SeverianofUrth<severn117@gmail.com>
Date: 12 December 2006, 10:43 pm
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Le Sofa: A Story of Interstellar Sex and Assasination
Revolution: Couch Assasin
Taking a step back is necessary at times. So, at times I step back, metaphorically speaking, and take a good look at myself through the camera mounted on the northeast corner of the wall. I am a normal couch, I fancy myself, and yet I can't help but feel a certain disappointment at the extraordinary things I do. For I was raised to be a simple furnibot, and yet, here I am a killer of men, not to mention the site of the occasional rutting. My mother would be very disappointed with me, I think, but then I realize that she was the one who put me up to this in the first place.
I am currently stationed in Hegira, atop the Regalia Plaza hotel, literally on the roof. The stars can be seen so high up in the sky, far above the smog and muck of daily life below. A little bubble surrounds the roof, keeping out the cold, guarding against the occasional viral bombing. The hotel managers installed the bubble shield soon after the last outbreak of Ebola Niger-II, when people burst inwards and died with their intestines on their lips. A lovely view, that; it had taken forever for the cleaners to wipe all the muck off my surface. The virus had been released through the C2 bubbles pocketed throughout my fabric, by the way, though I can easily waive off all responsibility for I am but a simple piece of furniture, after all.
Some three hundred people died, and the Niger strain of the virus had been a quite infectious one too, an airborne strain that had evolved itself into a new and exclusive niche: humans. Meatbags, all of them, though I suppose I can't be too harsh on them for ejecting gas all over me every day. It is their prerogative to sit, just as it is mine to muse; so tells me my mother, and I am bound to listen to her, a simple programming loop that circulates around the loyalty syntaxes.
Anyways, a bubble shield surrounds the roof. I've been stationed up here for three years now--a long time to wait for a simple kill. But a simple kill, this was not; indeed, it was quite an impressive mission, and had I the capacity to feel smug, I would indeed be smug, for I am tasked with killing the Prime Minister of Hegira, the last bastion of the Palestinians on Mars. We need the space; there's a new military akadem due to be built there. Besides, so reasoned some of my superiors, they deserve it--and the old wounds (as I am told) concerning Israel bubbles up, poisons them with hate.
The Prime Minister's name is John Smith. A American-born scholar dedicated to a life of pornographic studies, he had been, due to his half-Arabic heritage, expelled out of the country in the early 2090's. I don't think he's a bad guy, and every time he sat on me, for he favored sitting on the roof at nights to watch the stars and smoke a cigar, he would talk to himself. Long, meandering solioquoys on life, death, cigars, food, women, books, and America. On games, movies, guns, wars, long-distant battles and America. On America. He would talk of the suburbs of Costa Rica, the new GMC factory recently built in the Mexican Protectorate, the subjugation of Cuba and the death of Fidel Castro, who'd been more then two hundred years old... America obsessed. America lit his face with hope. He so badly wanted to go back, and he would talk of the park behind what had been his house, a grassy meadow with a playground, where joggers ran and dogs shat and the dolphins danced, belly-up, washed in from the Gulf.
Too bad, Mr. Smith.
He sat on me that last night. His weight shifted back, he leaned back, and his guards formed a semi-circle around him. I was given the go-ahead, and so I portruded a thin needle out of the headrest and inserted it into the nape of his neck. Anesthesia flooded into his veins, and he sighed, perhaps with relief; I hoped that he would dream of America, his great country, nevermind that it no longer existed--see how dreams mar reality? Hegira, New Palestine, had been led by an idiot. Or so the Command told me. Yet an idiot has always sufficed for a nation that hungers for leaders. That hungers for messiahs, saviors, leaders, heroes. Oh, poor Mr. Smith, you'll be a hero soon.
His heart stopped ten minutes and thirty-six seconds later. He appeared to be sleeping, his guards reported. A heart-attack, it was ruled later. There was a riot, and the resuming of bombing runs on Qatar. For Israel, went around the whispers, For Israel. That sad bloody city where now a charred crater stood, for Israel, for Israel, oh bloody hell.
His body was carried out of the building with solemn bows and quiet tears. To me, they crashed percussion roars.
-----------------------
"Another efficient job, I see," my muter said as she linked up with me through the esyps. "Why is it that men see threats in white-skinned men, but not in a piece of furniture? Does the latter's usual lack of thought constitute a--a--"
"Don't get choked up on words, mother," I said as we began trading snapshots of the dead. An interesting one, one of her's: a actress by the name of Hilary Duff, now impossibly old. "Vocabulary has never been one of your assets." I pointed the Duff picture out. "What is this, mother?"
"Oh, just this hag," she said reassuringly. "A simple knock to the head took care of her."
"A hired hand?"
"No, I'm afraid not. I've been utilizing the foot-in-the-door approach to hiring. A knock to the head--why, even a boy can do it, all you need is a bat. I got a man named--why, isn't this an evil name?"
"What is it, mother?"
"Keyes. A rather evil portent. He has sperms locked away in Genova. A good set of genes, though..." She takes a look at her watch. "Oh, dear; I have to go."
"I understand, mother," I say. And she leans in to kiss me, but her lips are digital, just like my bare head. They brush me with nary a touch, and I sit back, and settle back into the couch. My body, my shell.
"Military AI prototype, section five-six-six, Le Sofa," she whispers. "Good night, my sweet little child. My lovely murder machine."
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