Default Burger
By
T. Lloyd Reilly

It was in a small country in the Micronesian Island chain. There used to be one country before the Tsunami, but so many people died or were scattered that each large island declared independence in order to be eligible for more UN/USA aid. I was one of the relief workers, assigned to building the infrastructure of the island nation of Gatunai. My specialty was computers, and the company I worked for was paying me a fortune to do what turned out to be quite a task. Prior to the flood, there had been little or no technology on this island. My task involved the complete design of a system the locals could learn quickly.
Education levels were almost non-existent. Most of the indigenous population were craftsman or fished for a living. Getting them to understand simple instructions on a computer screen took three months, and that was for the teachers. The work would have taken years if I hadn’t found a reasonably inexpensive touch screen program to install. My girlfriend did the graphics and e-mailed it to me. I was finally making progress when it all come tumbling down. What made it come tumbling down, you ask? Quite simply, I went to lunch.
* * * * *
It was Friday, well, actually Tuesday but that was the day I got paid so I called it Friday. I was guaranteed three days off every time I got paid. I usually grabbed a plane out on my days off, but I was staying in and working so I could save up enough days to go home for Christmas. I did allow one concession to the “Friday” theme. I went out to lunch. For many years the ritual surrounding Friday included beer and burgers with some buddies, and little or no work in the afternoon. This was not hard to accomplish on the small island…work amongst the illiterate workers moved at a snail pace, and I had the hotel restaurant programmed with my favorite meal choices. I keyed in my choice, and got no reply. This worried me due to the fact that if the computer at the hotel didn’t work, I would probably have to fix it. I called and they told me that an electrical outage had caused some chaos, and all orders would be delayed. I knew better than to ask how long so I just went back and cancelled my order. I decided to go local. They had homemade hooch that worked better than beer, and cost much less. The quantity imbibed necessary to get an equitable experience was significantly lower than with the Barley Pops offered at the hotel. Taste was a problem, but alcohol really didn’t taste that good in any form. Function did not always follow form.
I went down to the beach and found a palm thatched building with a neon parrot in the window. I sat down at the bar, and asked for a menu. The snaggle toothed old woman behind the kitchen window laughed and prattled off some kind if nonsense in the local language. The barkeep, who I later discovered was the owner, informed me that they were officially online. He also had a smile of irregular demeanor. I could see no terminal, and wondered how he would pull this one off.
He asked for my credit card while handing me a chalk menu. He pulled an old dialup machine, and swiped my card. A minute later he gave me a slip to sign. The total was $5.95. I found a burger and beer section, but decided to maintain my goal of going local. “Give me this pork thing, and some of that turpentine you call booze.” My mood started to lighten with the expectation of an afternoon buzz. I ate with relish, and endured the conflagration the local spirits caused going down my throat. I numbed after a few shots, and began to enjoy myself so much that I called the job and told everyone to go home.
I took up temporary residence in my newfound Shangri La for the rest of the afternoon, and well into the night. I vaguely remember a local girl dancing around me in the back room, and asking for some money. I came to on the beach, with a bottle of what I now thought of as the Nectar of the Gods, and an extremely large naked woman in my arms. She rolled over and I realized from her smile that she must be related to the barkeep and his cook. I smiled back and tried to stand up. I couldn’t feel anything below my waist except for that part the girl was trying to reinvigorate through oral therapeutic massage. I laid back down while she finished, figuring it would be rude to stop her, especially taking into account how hard she was working.
I finally got up with much effort, and some help from my soon to be (unbeknownst to me) future ex-wife. Working would be a challenge {what with all the vomiting I found it necessary to do in the next twelve hours) so I called another day off, and went home. My soon to be spouse came along to help with the cleanup, and whatever other massage duties she might have opportunity to perform. The rest of the day was sandwiched between the worship at the porcelain temple in my bathroom, and being wrapped in the girls arms. I fell asleep and woke up six days later. The girl was gone, and a small smiling oriental man stood over me with a huge pistol.
* * * * *
That was the day I first heard the word “Legion of Neo-Luddites.” The Oriental man told me that I had violated the first rule of this organization…never deviate from the blueprint. As a result of my transgression I was to die. I would have right there if the girl hadn’t walked in and saved me. She saw the gun, and clobbered the assassin with a pineapple. After the police came, and hauled the unconscious man away, I got on the Net to check out these “Neo Luddites.” This action turned out to be a rather bad mistake.
I knew the Luddites, or at least the original Luddites, were an organization that grew out of the Industrial Revolution. Their main conviction seemed to be that technology presented the world with an unspeakable evil, and should be destroyed. They were proponents of a simpler life. Mankind would be better served by the uncomplicated life of an agrarian society. They were the ultimate reactionaries, and, they were true to their values.
I almost couldn’t find it, hard as that seemed to me. I had to dig deep for some old musty skills from my days as a teenage hacker. Those skills, and the help of my girlfriend back in the States, I was able to defeat some extremely determined firewalls, and steal some passwords. I found the New Luddites, and I didn’t like what I found. It was, in actuality, the largest corporation in the world. Forget Wal-Mart. Forget Microsoft. Forget the Roman Catholic Church. Forget any government on the planet. These guys were large on an unfathomable level. They didn’t even come close to the original Anti-machine nuts of the early to late 1700’s. At least the founders of the movement had some fidelity to their principles.
This new group not only dishonored the original prototype, they did so with arrogance and greed. Technology was the enemy, but only certain advanced skills were demonized. The group financed themselves using three part system; agriculture, real estate, and organized crime. They were the largest owners of corporate farms and used massive computer networks to ensure the crops grown would be bought. The real estate division, also heavily dependent on modern information technologies, administered the purchase of land, which created more and larger farms, and provided capital for the development of properties for customers to purchase who would use these farms products. The organized crime branch did whatever needed to guarantee the survival of the other two components.
The third part of this system is where my sad tale begins. In order to justify the desecration of the original beliefs of the Luddites, the new guys had made certain exceptions to the code. Computers had become a necessity instead of a curse. This meant that all food must be controlled. Any food grown, delivered, or eaten was tracked, categorized, and dispensed according to “The Blueprint.” This represented the foundation of the new order. It detailed exactly what, based on profit/loss statements, had to be done to keep things flowing. When I ordered off the menu, I had upset the balance, and that triggered an interdepartmental memo on my behavior. The memo should have gone to the review department, but through some fluke ended up in the annihilation division.
Annihilation had strict parameters. Once a name came to them, that person was to disappear from the face of the earth. There would, or could be no reprieve. The Blueprint didn’t allow for technological mistakes, and no network in the system allowed editing of memorandums. Memorandums were to be treated as Gospel. To change a memorandum would be to admit weakness in the face of an already defiled system. The grand charade must be sustained. It was all very much as Orwell depicted life in 1984. With the “exceptions” to the Luddite philosophy it was evident that someone had also prescribed to the ideology of Mr. Orwell’s “Animal Farm.” Apparently it worked for them…or so they would have you believe.
The flaw, which they refused to acknowledge, came from a prehistorically distant place. Programmers and geeks called it “The Ghost in the Machine.” It was that part of the space/time continuum where strange events occurred. Unfathomable as it may seem, sometimes computers did what they wanted. The unbridled hypocrisy of the New Luddite philosophy prevented them from admitting they were wrong. As a result of this ignorance…I had to die.
I had trouble believing it at first, that is, until the fifteenth or twentieth time I barely escaped death. First, a car tried to swerve out of the path of a stray dog, and clipped me. Next a construction wall collapsed just before I walked in front of it. Things like that happened on a regular basis, two or three times a week. Some swarthy looking men with coal black hair and prayer beads hung for their belts came into my new hangout, and had to be arrested. These gentlemen of obvious Middle Eastern descent, tried to start a drunken fight with me…only they weren’t drunk, or even drinking alcohol. Grandfather, as I began calling the old man, pulled a huge rifle out from behind the bar, and shot their car to pieces, right through the wall. This brought the police, and convinced me that something was afoot, as Sherlock Holmes would say, and it definitely wasn’t a game.
The family with the crooked smiles (as I had begun to think of them) had turned into a real comfort to me, especially the daughter with her massage skills. One night, for no particular reason, I asked her to marry me. I spent most of my time there, and the wedding arrangements were simple. I tried to call my girlfriend back in the States to tell her, and got a disconnected message. According to her mother, the cabal responsible for my trouble had contacted her about my problem, and threatened similar retribution if she didn’t reveal my movements to her. Not wishing to give up the ghost for a drunken boyfriend, she sold my belongings, and moved to places unknown
Further trouble came from more Japanese fanatics, Muslim fundamentalists, an IRA splinter group, Paranoid American Paramilitaries, Suicidal Palestinians, Italian Mafia, Russian Mafia, the Yakuza, the Bloods and the Crips from Los Angeles, Corsican pirates, Caribbean Pirates, a guy claiming to be the “Wind of Retribution”, two guys from the American Indian Movement, the Red Brigade, what was left of the Baader-Meinhof gang, Greenpeace, a Mongolian teenager mimicking Genghis or Kublai Khan, (including the pointed furry hat) a pair of Thai transvestites with strait razors, and finally a group of young southern wives claiming to be the National Committee for the fall convention of the Junior League. All of them had taken a crack at making me a capital crime statistic. The days grew longer. I couldn’t sleep at all for need of defending myself. My girl started carrying a pair of chrome plated, ivory handled nine millimeters. She bought us a matching set of Kevlar vests. I was just about ready to give up when I met The Principal.
* * * * *
I woke up one night, to the sound of the girl nervously laughing at this old man in a three piece suit. I was sleeping on the couch of her apartment (well, our apartment in her maiden name), and they were sitting at the kitchen table drinking some coconut/pineapple tea mixed with fire hooch. I called this concoction the “Judgment Day Protocol.” I had drank so much of the hooch in the last year that I found it necessary to tone down a little. Straight, the hooch was tearing my insides up. Besides, I needed to stay alert (or as alert as possible) in the face of my uncertain future. The “Judgment Day” business was an attempt on my part at some frivolity. Not that I had anything to be frivolous about. I had lost just about everything, or close to everything.
The local government had canceled my contract because of the perilous situation I kept putting the workers in. My room at the hotel had been badly torched when the Junior Leaguers came at me with flamethrowers, and the management invited me to leave. My credit card was canceled courtesy of the New Luddites. My cell phone exploded thanks to the Palestinians. (My hand still hurts) I’m pretty sure my only living relative, my drunk and homeless uncle, sold me out to the Paranoid Paramilitaries for a week at the Plaza Hotel in New York enjoying the services of a pair of French Indochinese ladies of the evening.
All that I really had left was the Crooked Smile folks. The old couple adopted meas a son, and the girl worshipped me. We never got around to learning to speak each other’s language, but seemed to be telepathic. I called her “Mia” for want of the ability to pronounce her name. She called me “Gentle Man”…the only English she spoke. At least, that is, until I woke up that morning to find her speaking it fluently to the old man. She spoke in a West Cork accent, as did the old gentleman. Along with the surprise of this stranger being there, I was thunderstruck at the fact that all this time she knew what I was saying. I started to demand an explanation, and stopped myself. The only normalcy in my life came from this woman and her family. I could not lose that. I simply asked her why she never told me she could speak English. “You never asked,” was all she said.
I turned to the old man, and inquired as to method of my death. He looked at me with a bemused look, and asked me what I meant. I told him that I could not take it anymore. I could not imperil the lives of other people, especially the crooked smile family, and I just wanted to know how I was going to die.
“Ah, son, it’s not your death that I’m to look after, it’s your life that I’d be saving.” He proclaimed.
“W-w-what do you mean?”
“I’m here to take you to safety. I’m the Principle.”
“Principle…of what?”
“And how would I be knowing that? They gives me this daft title and never once told me what in the name of Jesus, Mary, and holy St. Joseph t meant.”
“Who would that be?”
“Why the Emissaries, who did you think?”
“If I knew that I wouldn’t be asking you, would I? Who the hell are the Emissaries?”
“Why, they’re those who fights the faction that’s seeking your departure to the Blessed Isle.”
“What the hell is the Blessed Isle?” It was starting to sound like the dialogue from “Finians Rainbow” and I was getting irritated.
He winked at the girl, “A gentle poor man he is, but a bit soft in the head. Wouldn’t you say?”
She smiled that soft jagged smile I’d come to love, “He’s not so terrible.”
“Good man yourself,” he told me, “it’s a credit to yourself that a sweet child such as this would be taking up for you.”
He was starting to wear on my nerves, and I told him to get to the point. “I’ve a days’ worth of dire circumstance to avoid. Unless that is, you can give me something safer to do with my time.”
“Ah, if ever I could just be havin’ a bit of cooperation.” He looked to the ceiling, “And why not on me own schedule?” He complained. He reached under the table and pulled out a blowgun. I remember the look on his face just before he shot me with a tranquilizer dart. It was pity.
* * * * *
I woke up in a lot of pain. I lay in a hospitable bed, in a dark room. There were no windows, and a single bulb light hung from the ceiling. I tried to get up, and collapsed in a wash of agony. A nurse came to respond to the monitoring alarm that went off when I sat up. She took a syringe and injected me through an IV tube in my arm. As I fell into the stupor I would come to get used to, I dreamt of the girl. Only she had perfect teeth in my dream. I woke again, and this time I was restrained. The pain was mercifully absent. A large man in a white orderly’s uniform brought me a tray of food, and proceeded to feed me. He wouldn’t answer any questions except to say that the Principal would be here tomorrow.
Just prior to the arrival of the Principal the next day, the orderly came and gagged me with a piece of duct tape. The principle came in with another man; both were dressed in clerical cassocks. The Principal told him that he was now the guest of the Society of Jesus. The priests of this order had been charged by the Emissaries with the task for ensuring the wellbeing of those unfortunate souls who ran afoul of any andall evil organizations, such as the New Luddites, who found it necessary to murder innocent people. He was to enjoy there protection, and grace as long as he behaved. Behaving meant that he would go and do whatever they told him to do.
First, they had altered his appearance to fit the needs of the area he would live. In his case that would mean he lived with the Crooked Smile family. The girl was deeply in love with him, and he would treat her with the love and respect she deserved. He would not ever touch a computer again. He would work as a dishwasher/janitor for the beachfront bar. He would stop drinking. He would do all these things without reservation. If he broke any of the requirements of this arrangement, he would live in this room for the rest of his life.
“I tried the softer way, son, but you were extremely disrespectful, and needed a lesson taught to you. The duct tape ensured you cooperation. Declan,” he looked at the other priest, “and I come from a time when priests were listened to. You have a big mouth, my friend, and you drink too much. If you’d controlled yourself in the first place, none of this would have ever happened. The orderly, Father Demetrius, will see to you until it’s time for you to leave.” With that he and Father Declan left.
My mind raced. My mind could barely grasp the idea of not ever touching a computer. It was absolutely prehistoric. I have been addicted to computers since I was five. I didn’t mind going back to the girl, but the dishwashers I’d seen at the place were all treated like dogs. And what have they done to my appearance? I still felt sore from whatever it was they did to me. I have always been extremely vain. I am an extremely handsome man, what did they do to me!?
I fretted and wondered in silence for the rest of the day. The orderly came and fed me, only to replace the tape. I stayed that way for several weeks. Sometimes I would scream when he took the tape off. When that happened, I didn’t get fed. The pain in my joints lessened, then finally went away. I grew despondent. I thought of suicide, and realized I couldn’t…I was too vain.
The orderly came in one day, and let me out of my restraints. He told me that we would be working toward regaining my physical strength, and took me to another room with workout equipment. It hurt at first, and then I got into it. I forgot about everything but working out. After a while the orderly told me it was time to go back to the island. He brought me clothes, and handed me new identification and a plane ticket. I was so glad to be going that I never even bothered to look at myself.
I got back to the island, and found the old man sitting at a table doing the books. He frowned at me when I handed him the letter from the Principal the orderly gave me. Grandfather bellowed into the back for the girl. She came out looked at him, and walked away. I followed her, and asked what was wrong. She took me by the arm, and led me to the mirror in the men’s room. I looked and saw the ugliest human being I ever saw. All the pain had to have come from them breaking facial bones and letting them heal naturally. I was a horror! I looked at the girl expecting to be rejected. The girl told me she loved me anyway, and it would be okay.
Despondent and devastated, I went and got a case of the fire hooch, walked out to the beach, and drank myself to an unconscious oblivion. I woke up back in the dimly lit room, once more bound and gagged. The Principal and Father Declan sat watching while the orderly tightened my restraints. Drinking, as I had been told, was unacceptable. It was my sole duty, now, to get used to my new home. The orderly pulled the tape off my mouth, and The Principal asked me if I had anything to say for myself.
Tears streaming from my eyes, I admitted “I should have ordered the Default Burger!”