I Believe In The Man In The Sky

By Jim McCool

Not your ordinary, limp, fan fiction. I BELIEVE IN THE MAN IN THE SKY channels Johnny Cash, 2000AD, William S. Burroughs, Phillip K. Dick, Elvis, J.G. Ballard and The Louvin Brothers in a slaughter house classic of hillbilly ravings and personal redemption. Set in a toxic dystopian future where 'thee' fundamentalists have taken over, and where imperfection is judged as sin, the novel rampages from ash-bin tunnel shaft, to techno-Gothic 'KillTheatreHall', to psychedelic dream world. Written in a garbled mixture of pseudo-evangelism and 'narcolholic' mumblings, it's fun for all 'thee family'.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Jim McCool
• Release date: Nov 14, 2015
• ISBN: 9781311849519

Jim McCool

Jim McCool has been writing both fiction and non-fiction for over twenty years. His writing has been published in The Fred, The Irish Post, Force 10, and various other publications and websites. His work has also recently featured in New Philosopher magazine, and on ABC Radio National’s Pocketdocs. His short story ‘The Hole Thing’ won the Berkelouw Books Pittwater prize for short fiction in 2014. Jim was born in Northern Ireland, but now lives in Sydney, Australia.

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About the Author

Jim McCool has been writing both fiction and non-fiction for over twenty years. His writing has been published in The Fred, The Irish Post, Force 10, and various other publications and websites. His work has also recently featured in New Philosopher magazine, and on ABC Radio National’s Pocketdocs.

His short story ‘The Hole Thing’ won the Berkelouw Books Pittwater prize for short fiction in 2014.

Jim was born in Northern Ireland, but now lives in Sydney, Australia.

For: Lida, especially.

And for th' chillder.

And for the memory of Joseph Finn McCool, 1918-93.

Chapter 1 - Hell's Half Acre

Prolog: Hell's Half Acre [Brief Tour Guider=Avoid]/ Byeway of an Hintroduction/ Tropical Fish Hobbyist and BioSystem Fetish/ $adness of th’ cuckolded/ Use for a Grillspoint Not in Rev. Flapjack's Thee Real GoodGrub Guide/ Yellowy-White Line Fever.

Prolog:

Hell's Half Acre festered quietly in a dusty and poisonous section of Region 7#568/9 in the Quayledan Triangle, one of a loose string of five grey-belt planets plumb Southwards of Useless, way over to the far West of Federation Territory. Swathed in searing radiation and regularly thumped by meteor downpours that determined surface settlements impassible, these five planets - Pus, Crustii, Minger, Archer’s Hole, and Hell’s Half Acre - had formerly been of some strategic importance through the last Great ReVival, but were now producing little of economic or military value. Long abandoned by all Blessed normal-folk, with the exception of some O’er-seers and Pit-Bosses, these string of planets had been deemed eX-spendable, and all resourcing and vitals removed. Indeed, like the other planets in the string, Hell's Half Acre had been designated a Concentrated SinnerCamp, and people’d with those unFolk whom th' Lord had chosen to mark with evident physical imperfection or mutation. Here, in solemn isolation, th’ UnHoly could attempt to redeem themselves through work, through prayer, and pay for their Forgiveness.

Known as CNF_48f.34 upon discovery, and later officially entitled Hodgkinson’s World, after the father-in-law of the flight astronomer on the Perseus II who first claimed it, Hell’s Half Acre was the most populous, and also the most unpleasant, of the five planets in the string. Its official title had long since slipped into disuse, with the covert approval of thee Authority, after the crew of the Perseus II had come down with a STAD (Sexually transmitted alien disease) case of Greenhorn, which had left them half-dead, totally un-Blessed, and completely deserving of ex-communication. The planet’s new title had grown from the freighter crews mocking reference to the frenzied prayer-meetings of the first mining colony, whose members had consumed earnest theology and bootleg narcohol with equal ferocity. Ferocious, these miners may have been, but determined enough to blast a main-shaft down through the top of the main Snake mountain plateau and deep down into the bedrock beneath, where they moled living quarters and chambers large enough for a small city.

Although other shafts had since been holed, these original diggings remained the core of Hell’s Half Acre, the one enclosed enclave where life was breathable. All other colonies had been left to dust, and, with the retreat of the Normals, all that remained on Hell’s Half Acre was one central warren of disintegrating tunnels. Sunless, and deep beneath the barren surface, ageing ferrocrete tenements contained the only living organisms onPlanet, some ten thousand Sinners who itched and scraped a poor living, digging and refining Hoguano to be used in beautification and perfectation [himplant and herplant] treatments for the Normals on Tectran, and further.

Down in the must of the tunnels, numbered plebcondos cluttered along the decaying pit shafts and workholes, housing families of downplanted sinners. Rounded from ghettos through all parts of the Federation workings, these had been concentrated here to perform useful service, and to keep their Marked Evilness away from the gaze of decent folk. And among these wretched out-castes, there lived the Ingordos, tenants of Plebcondo 34778.2.

The Ingordo family – Gorb, YegYo, their twin bhoys, and baby OnYa - could consider themselves relatively lucky. Their appartamento was not far from the elevator and subway hubs, and thus free from the worst of the mining dust that made the lower levels so unbreathable. Unlike many other families on the lower blocks, they hardly never went hungry, as former RuffRanger Gorb ‘Pappy’ Ingordo's military history [both upper limbs lost in battle, decorated for bravery – Silver Plated Star] had won him a grade two post at the mine headquarters and a relatively constant grub supply. And both parents' and chillders' physical deformities were comparatively minor; neither life-threatening, or incontinent.

Prolog end.

Nestling as inconspicuously as he could, in the darkest corner of the room, Gorb Ingordo sat with one of his metal arms cradled gently around his baby daughter OnYa, and the other holding a flatscreen copy of the latest edition of Build Yer Own BioSystem. OnYa was farting [smellily], drooling [blankly], and moving her own thick fleshy pink arms in her usual random manner, while Gorb paid as much attention as he was allowed, to an interesting article on the ultra-toxicity of the Tunnelweb Spiders of DrumCree5. Gorb, who was short sighted enough to need lenses, liked to think that he was interested in all living things, and in the ways that they connected and interconnected together. His wife, YegYo, on the other hand, was not. In fact, she was vaguely repulsed by virtually anything that walked, flew, swam or crawled. Particularly crawled. So, for her, to live inside a mine planet was no great hardship, since th' tunnels had many of the antiseptic qualities she found so reassuring, and none of the indigenous lifeform which made wide open OtherWorlds so revolting. Here, inside Hell's Half Acre, she could relax in the knowledge that she was safe from creepy-crawly type harm, and enjoy the things that she enjoyed most: the televisual treat of double or triple channel slobsters; and the warm comfort of properly multi-processed food. PROPERSHOP food, as she was constantly nag-pointing out to Gorb, not the green and slimy glop and leaves that HE was always bringing home, trying to feed it to the chillder, forcing th' bhoys to like it, and bubbling it up and spooning it into OnYa's mouth... Awwwhh, the very thought of fresh green wrinkled her belly into a quiver, and she reached out to paw another comforting choc2choc toward her mouth.

Drop that horrible creepy thing you're reading, she demanded of Gorb, " and pass me over the teleViber. You'll give the chillder the nightmares, wi' them horrible pictures of things. Don't bring that anywhere near me ..."

Don’t worry, I won’t....

Gorb’s uniformed return from war office PR-hyped battle, as hero, had won him a marriage certificate to a short, dark, warped woman, whose shallow admiration had quickly turned critical, and who's passion had quickly flicked back to the electric soap life of the slobster channels. Thinking that Gorb would be with her for only a short while, that he would be a posthumous hero after the next battle, and that she would be left peaceful with kudos, caste promotion and a war widow's pension, YegYo had eagerly consented to the marriage. And how dreadful disappointed she had been when the war had ended so early, and she was left with a husband she now didn't want and a bellyful of babies. Yup, things had gone steadily downhill ever since, as she was, uh, often anxious to point out to Gorb. His pension had quickly leaked away, and there they were, stuck in a post-mining void. Money wasn’t everything, she often pointed out to Gorb, but bhoy does it help….

With baby OnYa still in his arms, Gorb arose and moved across the dim room to where the slim black channel charger lay, just out of reach of one of his wife's twisted arms. He passed it to her silently, and returned to his chair. She could have picked it up herself, easy, saved him struggling with the chile, but he kept gubshut. Gorb was a timid man who avoided aggravation whenever he could, and, here was a clear chance to avoid it. As sure as he argued something with YegYo, pointed out that she could have picked up the teleViber herself, say, she would start off, and go on and on and on and on and on about how he never did nothing for her, and what sort of a life did SHE have, and some other PROPER man would have bought her a fitted slobsterino couch wi' intravenous controls. And some war hero HE turned out to be. Yes. Some war hero, for all his talk. And why didn’t he ever SAY anything?

Still immersed in strategies to avoid any imagined confrontation, Gorb backed up to his chair and lowered himself carefully down. Carefully down onto a the razored spikehead of a kustomised wHolyTerror actionbot figure, that th' bhoys had quietly remote-manoeuvred into position. He went arse-first right down onto the pin prick sharp-sharpened metal hat spike that th' bhoys had fashioned on the head of the toy. Some weeks earlier, at an hexpense that he couldn't really afford, Gorb had brought th’ twins home two wHolyTerror figures for their birthday. Immediately, th' bhoys had disembowelled and disassembled the bots' mechanismos, and total rejected one entire corpo, modifying the other till it was two-headed, like some laboratory dog; adding plainPope hat spikes and a bishop’s meter, ready to gauge sinfulness and faith.

Badly stung, Gorb jumped up and yowled with pain, some hat spikes still embedded in his buttend. YEARGHHH! and FUUUGGGGGH! and curses yelped out his mouthhole. He scowled, but still kept his grip of the baby and hopped over to her cot, to place the chile inside, before pulling out two of the bloody, spikes. Meanwhiles, th' bhoys and their Ma, of course, were half drowning in hilarious cackles and hee-heee-hawws, slapping knees and revolting.

YOUSE WEEE GITSSSS!, screamed Gorb, turning towards his twin Sins, after pulling the spikes from his arse. " I COULD HAVE DROPPED THE CHILE... AH MEAN, SHE COULD HAVE GOT SERIOUSLY HURT. SERIOUSLY NOW..."

Munchi & Culchi just grinned at him dully, as their Ma continued to screech with guffin' and chuffin' haws in the background. Th' bhoys just grinned at him in their best evil2evil grin, their faces platefuls of malevolence, their three shoulders hunched in defiance, their slouched stance on their special couchette sending him the same message of blankness that they always did. An almost spiteful curiousity to see how they could enrage him. It seemed that ever since they had been borned, the twins had baited him. As babies they had bit him severely, severing part of an ear; and another time they had knocked one of his teeth out with a hard palastic bat. Twinned - joined fleshily and bonily together at shoulder and thigh, they were united also in their blank disregard for their father. Garbling in their own self-invented language, they mumbled and chawed requests for food, toys, drinks, weapons to their Ma; but to him, nothing. And yet, he knew that they understood him.

Look bhoys, explained Gorb, changing his tone from anger to concern, " I want you to understand. The thing is, I could have dropped OnYa and she might have gotten seriously hurt... And you wouldn't want your wee sister to get hurt, would you? NOW WOULD YOU? "

Th' two spike-headed bhoys ignored him, of course, and turned back toward their gamesets, smirking.

" Buckrake," smirked Culchi.

" Glabber, " sniggered Munchi.

To tell the truth, he wasn't sure if they did give a damn about their sister, either. To OnYa they had demonstrated neither affection nor antagonism; nothing. Not even jealousy, though Gorb lavished unfair attention on his very nearly physically perfect daughter. The lovely girl. If only she would show some sign of development, intelligence, a smile, a movement, or focus those brown eyes. No. Empty. Empty. At her med-test, Dr. Von Wunster had told them that she was either complete empty-headed, or a snail slow developer; would have to be handed over to ReControl if she didn't improve. OnYa was so gentle and empty, and th' bhoys were SO FULL of such robust contrariness and spite. He turned to them again, blustering now. ParentSpeak.

Well, I uh, think you two bhoys should get punished. And that means NO NEW GAMESTORIES this week. Understand?

Th' twins ignored him, continued at their clickering, flickering. Natural, they couldn't give a damn about his chokey gamestories ban, since for months they had been able to directsneak into the major line systems and download just whatever they wanted. They sure didn't need HIM to get them no gamestories. And what's more, Gorb knew it as well; sometimes he didn't even know why he said such stupit nag-nag-nag-nag things to them. Maybe just so he could hear his own voice giving out, like a family-parent was supposed to. So stupit, sounding like a real nag-Da.

You're just mean, you are, glared YegYo. " They were only having a bit of fun, but you just can't take a joke."

She always took their side, always.

It was just a joke, she continued," but you have to make such a fuss..."

Gorb was about to point out - defending hisself - that it was more than that, was dangerous, and what if he had dropped the baby, when the bott-bott rang. A corner of the slobsterscreen was taken over by a fuxzy image which cleared into the shiny lip-glossed visage of Lolo, Gorb’s middle-manager at the mine, his boss.

I'm almost sorry, she rasped, "to disturb you at home, uh, Ingordo... but something nearly important has come up. And I'm sure you won't mind coming back to the office for a few hours, will you?" axed Lolo sharply, using the obvious false smile that she used for underlings. Lolo, a double bossy herm [that is, borned Blessed with both male and female organs], treated Gorb like a raw servant, and often called him back to work at awkward hours. She was wearing a red wig, rotund fashion glasses and some slinky black drape, which dripped off a shiny bare shoulder; obviously, she was on her way out somewheres.

It's the display tank for tomorrow’s meeting, Lolo continued. " It's just not quite right... That biotope. And when I looked at it again, well, I just made up my mind that the DerriFubble river biotope would look so much better... Could you change it? It would be awfully sweet if you could."

Sure. Yeah. Gorb nodded obediantly. He would do it.

Bye then. Must rush.

And the screen merged back into full slobster mode, the televised a-comings and a-goings and laughter and tears, bodily fluid leakage, of the rich and famous and perfect.

" And for goodness sake make sure you do a good job for her, this time whined YegYo, take your time and get it right. You're supposed to be the hexpert in that kinda stuff. "

Yeah.

And don't forget to clean the dust offa your boots when you get back. I have to keep this place clean, but you don't care. Going out at all hours. You and your stupit job. Leaving me on my own with your three chillder to look after. Oh, YOU don’t care.

Yeah.

WHAT ??

" I mean, no... I mean, yes I do care. Anyhow, I'm sorry that I have to go out again like this. But you know how important it is for us family that I keep this job. Don't you? "

YegYo continued to whine vaguely as he went over and kissed OnYa softly on the head - the chile was sleeping softly, her little chest rising slowly, regularly - and then he kissed her wee feet, each with their six perfect little toes.

YegYo avoided his kiss, when he bent toward her, and mumbled something crossly while never taking her one good eye off the flickers on the screen. And as for the twins, well, he knew better than to even go near them. Stooping slightly and feeling old, Gorb went into the hall and took his thick night jacket off the rack, slipped it on over his prosthetic metal arms, and then he went on out into the dark.

II.

After he had un-dusted himself in the corridor, Gorb passed on through his own tatty workspace and on into Lolo's much larger section, sat down at the luxury desk. Sprawled across the luxlizard-leather top were various boxes and sex catalogues, details of new genitalia extensions and extrusions, holsters, horse-pipes and clips. Gorb settled this apparatus to one side, disinterestedly, and cleared a section for his notebooks. In the far corner of the spacious chamber, the big display tank, now in night-time doze mode, bubbled and rippled. Small black lifeforms sleepily drifted through the warm salt water. Gorb hisself, felt no tiredness. In fact, he was glad to be back at work, away from the slobsters for a while, and th' bhoys. He had known Lolo would change her mind, all along, and Gorb had prepared hisself already. That last tank set-up was just a quick rig, and he already drained and freshened the lifeforms for the new DerriFubble river set-up. Both animals and plants were ready for transfixing and it would be a reasonably simple matter to switch from one set-up to the other. Everything would be ready for the morning just like Lolo wanted; ready so that she could lick up the praises from MineBoss when he came to visit - " what an amazing tank you got there, Lolo! A whole little world! And MineBoss would bend his fat guts and peer into the glass, screwing piggy, bloodshot, eyes to scroot the nimble catfish, the edgy crawfish, and flowing algae that Gorb had so carefully transplanted - A DerriFubble river biotope you say ? Amazing! " - while Lolo would purr in the background. And no credit to Gorb, the poor creator.

He poured himself a cup of Nearly2Reel koffee, from the stash on Lolo's desk, thinking, yeah well, it really didn't matter. It was the kinda work he enjoyed, and that was the main thing. A chance to fit out a biotank with real life, feel real green and breathing animals, fish. Feel part of a living world. Yeah. He finished his koffee down to the sugary glop at the bottom of his chipped palastic cup and got to work. He would be finished in two hours, easy.

Gorb always liked to stick his face in the water of a tank when he was finished setting it up, so that he could look down onto the wee fishes and stuff below, and they would look up at him, wondrous and scared, just like as if he was some sort of big man in the sky. Although his official job was design engineer on mine shaft security, most of the time Lolo had him footering about with the big decorative bio tanks, that so impressed the MineBoss, project managers and Federation officials. Gorb built them so that they were just like full floating wee-worlds of their own; perfect little replicas of OtherWorld Biotopes, where small cycles of life, growth and death, circled around, continuous. Carefully balanced Microsystems where the elements of plants and small animals complemented and nourished each other. When set up, Gorb's tanks would run for years - should be forever - without maintenance or overhead interference, and all they needed was some imitation sun. He would stick his head in the water, holding his breath in, and wish that he lived in such a warm, green world, soft-edged and luxuriant. Then, when he come out of the water again, he would see the grey roofs and walls of the tunnels all around him, the thickly congested air filters and fans, the stench of spilled Pine2Fresh. So, he would keep his head in the water for as long as he could, till his chest got all sore and choked, and blots of blackness thickened his vision. And near always, no matter whether it was a Rio Negro biosystem, or some OffWorld saltpond he was building, he would find his head full of the same, same, strange visionthing when he pulled hisself up, bursting for air, and blinking, out of the water...

Soft hair of the summer sun. Warm browned skin thick with shining silver sea drops, sloshing blueblue ocean salt. Resting on the hot, sticky, white sand. Fingered hand to brush back wet hair from a smile. Gold yellow swimmer. Clung body real ripened under tropical skies. And when she opened her mouth, a-laughing softly to herself, sweet liquid words. Happy out…

Ocean ? Gorb didn't even know what type-a thing a real ocean was. Never sawed one in his entire life, never mind tasted. And a hot day ? There was no day or night, hot or cold, in the tunnels; just shifts and cycles. How come he got his head full o' this rubbitch ? From some real ancient pre-slobsterino screen-time when he was a cub? Maybe. Anyhow, damn thing was annoying, especially when he had his head up real close to the clear palastic of the tank, and he could see his own reflection, see hisself. Looked real bad, bent over and near old with all that dust-coughing, straggle-baldy with the spikey hairs sticking up from his head like stupit, and then worse, his two rough steel arms, standing there, with a pain in his trousers... What had he got to be doing, hallucinatin' about such a thing, him that had hardly never even seen a sky? Him who was legally beyond any Redemption, an offence to the very sight of decent Folk ?... Huh?

Anyway, nevermind. He had works to do. There was this tank to get perfect for Lolo, and then there were some other little jobs. One of his old friends, the Brown Bullhead Catfish in tank 5 had developed a fungal tail rot, and the damn fungi thing would eat it alive, if Gorb didn't medicate. Strictly, this was all agin