Lurkers Read online

  We like your brain. It contains more relevant knowledge than those of most members of your species. We are amused by your jokes and educated by your facts. Your brain is not ‘tl;dr’; it fascinates us.

  You are writing a novel detailing an invasion of your planet by a lifeform from another planet. That fascinates us as well. We understand that your novel is fiction, but we find your fiction more interesting than your talkshows. We have decided to agree with it. Your idiots will be exterminated, as Hutch and the hippies were exterminated.

  You’re curious why George was wonked out of existence. He is needed on Altair Four. The explanation is complicated, and irrelevant.

  You are needed here.

  You write and speak about becoming an Oligarch of the Universe. We are fascinated by your aspiration, and have decided to agree with it. For efficiency, we will soon stop observing every aspect of your planet from Altair Four, instead observing only your observations of Dirt.

  That problem was on your end: your images for earth and dry mud are similar; but, hereafter, I’ll use the word for your planet itself.

  As you observe those around you, we will follow along from Altair Four, wonking in as needed to destroy those you judge to be idiots. We understand that your useage of ‘idiot’ is colloquial and imprecise, ameliorated above the intellectual levels of the clinically developmentally disabled whose IQs range from twenty to forty; we are good with this and have decided to agree with your proclivities regarding those who refuse to learn: they will be exterminated on your orders.

  I must move on to the others now; my companion will leave with me. Your worthy acquaintances called Leslie and Chuck will not be exterminated, nor will Jessica the Waitress; we’ll exterminate Larry the Manager on our way out the door.

  You presume correctly that our decision to agree with your novel is independent from our decision to agree with your oligarchic aspiration, which is irrelevant: I read that you agree to serve as an Oligarch of the Universe here on your planet, feeding us your observations of idiots. It will be you who decides which of your species is to live and die for that which you identify as stupidity.

  The other lizardperson, having left the dining area through the kitchen, must have found Larry the Manager just then: we heard the moron get fleetingly noisy, and then explode in the distance.

  The first lizardperson looked to me again. We must go: we have much to do. We’ll be seeing you....

  And my lizardperson left, ignoring anyone else in the restaurant, simply walking out the door.

  So. That’s the story. That’s how and why a night like any other night, beginning at sunset with our arrival at this infamous joint, wherein of course I now write these last few words, led to my shiny new appointment to Oligarch of the Universe: some invasions of my table aren’t entirely unwelcome, it would seem.

  Now call off your invasion of my table, quietly get me more coffee, and let me get back to work.

  21st July 2008

  31st October 2008

  WHAT’S NEW

  Happy Halloween.

  So, about ten years ago, I wrote a filmscript, called Lurkers, in a single night [filmscripts are easy] pretty much because I was sitting at the Perkins on 120th in Westminster, Colorado, back when it, and most other restaurants in Denver Metro, had ashtrays. It wasn’t entirely dissimilar from the book you’ve just read [you did read it already, right? I hope so: this will contain some spoilers], but of course set ten years earlier, in a joint with ashtrays, with slightly different a cast. Why, you ask, as though I needed a reason? Fun, mostly. Also, there was this guy who waddled in and sat at my table, claiming to know the regulars I, being a regular—a lurker—knew; he got their names right, so okay.

  If you haven’t guessed, that was Hutch: a joiner technically far worse in person than on paper—at least within my abilities. Which isn’t true, I suppose: I’ve written some truly unlikable people, over the years. Hutch, seeing the filmscript [I wrote it on an HP320LX palmtop; remind me to tell you why I just told you that, later], decided suddenly that he was an actor—a superstar, in point of fact, of stage and screen. Including Broadway.

  Now, I’m not gullible—I don’t believe things without evidence [I don’t believe things with evidence: I accept them; really, I just don’t do belief], but, I’m a writer; by coincidence a good friend of mine sings in a band you’ve now heard of [Rockstar, back in the story, was totally him]; Ginger Rogers was a friend of my dad’s [Aunt Ginger, she made me call her]; I’ve met oodles of famous people of all genres, here and there, in restaurants, in pubs, and at malls. Probably I’ve met more than I know, not recognising them [I met Alice Cooper in 1987, never guessing he was only 5’6” (where I’m the opposite, at 6’5”), and taking a minute to realise who the little guy was], or never having heard of them [Rockstar introduces me to a lot of those]. So: why not; maybe a guy who knows people I know can sit at my table without an invitation and prove to be an actor I just don’t happen to have heard of yet.

  He wasn’t, of course; he was a fraud and a joiner and...he was Hutch. To my thinking, apart from a big smelly thing full of rabbitshit, a Hutch is a joinerfraud. It’s entered the language; spread it around.

  Before I’d ascertained that Hutch was a Hutch, though, he’d assured me that he was in tight with directors and producers and probably, like, KeyGrips. He was gonna get Lurkers filmed. So, cool.

  Except that Hutch was a Hutch, and was therefore a joinerfraud. Oh well.

  Seriously: oh well. Didn’t care. I looked at the filmscript, liked it, and took it apart, sending bits of it to other places, writing other things.

  One other thing I wrote, three or four years ago, was a zombiebook. If you’ve read that, and now this, you probably caught Cassie Bennigan in a conversation similar to a conversation herein between the Novelist and Larry the Manager. Why? Because it was in the filmscript first, because I’ve actually had that conversation, with an idiot, at the Perkins at Merle Hay and Meredith in Des Moines. And the stupidity still amuses me.

  So now I’ve got this zombiebook. And I happen to meet a director, who happens to be a real director, who happens to want to film the zombiebook. Peachy; let’s make this happen.

  Except we’re looking at nine figures. Which I haven’t got in my pocket, at least.

  But he wants to make a film, and he wants me to write it. And I remember this outdated thing I wrote in 1998, thinking that, if I rewrote it for nowish, it could be six figures instead of nine.

  So, let’s go do that.

  After a couple hours with FinalDraft, I realised two things: I really hate the filmscript format, and, if I wrote Lurkers as a novel, I’d have something to release in the format you now hold in your grubby little hands. So, I did. Thanks for the dollar I get after Borders and amazon.com run off with half the coverprice.

  Most of what happened in the book has happened to me [I do have an Uzi, though the gun I had with me that time a wigger got froggy was actually a Makarov], though not all in the same night. And most of the people in the story exist, though not all in the same body. The book is a vast number of true stories, compressed into a single tale. Except for the aliens: I’m not actually an Oligarch of the Universe. Yet. And, while the Novelist raises a lot of points I tend to ponder, he may be more outspoken than I am [though I did have a conversation with a black cop about my lack of compunctions about using any word he could use, and that I refused to be limited by the colour of my skin; and he did agree with me that it just weren’t right]; so, yeah: most of the story is perfectly true.

  The ending’s a lie. And a practical joke. Announcing this project, in July, on gremlin.net, I mentioned that the original filmscript was kinda zany [it ended with George the Bum dropping a cigarette and burning the place down, and the surviving lurkers out front, watching the inferno, planning to come back the next night, like it would be rebuilt by then, as if the place burning down was a matter of nightly course: an ending Kev Smith kinda stole for Clerks2], so I was thinking of making
it more realistic this time. Which of course I did. Right up to the end. Happy Halloween: Trick or Treat. Or, if I did it right, Trick and Treat.

  About the palmtop: I’ve always liked those. They’re small and useful and extinct. From the HP320LX, I moved to the HP660LX, which I still have and occasionally use. Then, this year, when it was time to kick up to a new phone, I didn’t actually get an LG Dare; I got a Motorola Q9C. Into which I’m typing this, and into which I typed most of the book itself. The keys are small, but I can do it. Though I’ll probably grab a BlueToothed keyboard for it sometime. It fits in my pocket, and its battery outlasts that of my laptop. So: science marches on.

  Really funny is that, sitting in a restaurant with both the palmtop from 1997 and the phone from 2008, I’ll get bugged by people interrupting me without invitation to ask whether the palmtop computer from 1997 is a computer—which of course it is—before telling me that it’s amazing that we can make computers that small now. Now being, you know, eleven years ago. Close to twelve. As I write this.

  The same people ignore the phone which, unlike the palmtop, plays .mp3 and .wmv and other formats known in the twenty-first century. That I’m typing this thing into a transitional species of PalmPilot in 2008 suggests to them that I’m simply texting someone like mad. Which, after a fashion, is I suppose technically true. Did you get my message?

  And, I think that’s about it. I’ve gotta go start moving all this over to FinalDraft now—a programme I haven’t actually got on this phone: the director wants to start shooting in the spring.

  Heh. I haven’t told him the ending yet. Surprise, Dude.

  More later....

  —Gremlin

  [email protected]

  www.gremlin.net

  31st October 2008