P: Vol. 1. Cities of the Future

or
Baltimore, Eastern Ave. 1:00 A.M. Saturday Morning

Steam rose out from under the manhole covers in dry spindles and curved daintily around imaginary axes, the molecules careening off each other freely before dispersing into the air where they disappeared against the backdrop of the crimson night sky. The sky, like the manhole, and the steam for that matter, was illusory; a piecemeal blotch of pointillist burgundy cherries and imploded candy apples, an orchestrated tapestry conducted by tricky-dick lasers, distant particle spinners, and a series of reflective glass orbitals filled with reactive gelatin. The manholes were nothing more than a brand pressed into the asphalt by industrial stamping machines, like the demarcation of cattle with a cast-iron prod. Frozen nitrogen pellets dropped into vats of mineral water created the wafts of “steam” that wavered tentatively against the impressionist blur of the cosmos, like asphyxiating cigar smoke being blown in front of a macabre murder scene.



A car barreled through the whisps of steam, spreading open the gauzy curtains with the rip and roar of a twelve cylinder rhinoceros on wheels. In fact, to the hoards of tourists that sojourned to the foreign city every year, to the untrained eye with virginal vision, a motorcar cruising the streets at night looked more like a purple rhinoceros stampeding through the moist funk of an enshrouding jungle than an automotive achievement.



By official ordinance, all automobiles produced after the inauguration of the Futurcon Amendments were required to be built in the likeness of rhinoceroses (sedans), elephants (four wheel drive), or hippopotamuses (wagons). Occasionally, with government approval, state-commissioned engineers were allowed to design, for their express purpose as status symbols and bribes to foreign dignitaries, ostentatious two-seater convertibles inspired by the stout-snout tapirs of South America. Of course, production of such sportive beasts was limited and their acquisition coveted. The pachydermal carriages brayed sighs of congestion and excreted exhaustive clouds of carbon monoxide. The inhabitants of this zone of terror, whether they be butchers,



barristers,



belittling buckwheats,



bank robbers,



bobble bangers,



bourbon bottlers,



barnacle bumpers,



or bee bouncers,



all lived in the purgatorial vividness of their dreams. They all lived in Pulchritude.