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Ethan Vulerummer
could hardly wait to see the report titled,
The Ratio Of Productivity To Con-sumer Spending
. Not that he cared much about its content. Along with his six colleagues they woulddecide how many hundredths-of-a-percent to move the stick forward for the coming fiscal year. No,what he was anticipating was the presentation itself. The previous year that man Carroll had broughtdown the room with his hilarious video.
The Seven Lions of Private Control
had never laughed so hardduring one of their semi-annual meetings. It put them in great spirits for “The Bunny Hunt” later thatnight.The video showed rows of C & B Class workers on stationary bicycles peddled by people in shirt-and -tie;people in hard hats; mail carriers—even sex workers. In one scene from the presentation a hand pushedan accelerator lever forward and caused the workers to peddle faster and faster as a large screen TV infront of them displayed an orchard of fruit trees hung with various consumer products growing larger asthey worked. When the lever came a bit to far forward, one of the stationary bike peddlers keeled overand a big robotic claw reached in, grabbed the worker, and brought her to a window where another ro-botic appendage—this one made to look like a leg—booted the slacker high in the sky; all the way outof the area and into a rural unprotected zone. The keeled-over, booted-out worker landed right in themiddle of a pack of wild lions and was devoured.Above the floor level, circling the workers, sat A Class executives. Each had a little table with a faucet anda large soup bowl. As the workers peddled faster, a flow of what looked like liquid gold would increase asthe stream filled up the bowl. At the highest level in the room sat a panel made up of 
The Seven Lions
themselves. They had even larger bowels. That man who made the video—Carroll—had made the streamof liquid gold brighter and more alluring then what the executives were getting.
The Lions
had been smitten by the video and Vulerummer instantly gave Carroll the coveted assignmentof creating the new lower C Class Compensation ads. And he had nuked that task too. Most of the stuff was functionary and ho-hum. The different compensation companies with different mixes of food choices,hours on the subway sleepers, Sunday porn or church room accommodations, Saturday body maintenance op-portunities, “eternal rest slots” in one of the various retirement towers—all the C Class necessities.What Carroll had come up with in addition to this was
the new organ donor program
.Approved C Class workers could elect to give up their hearts and livers in exchange for a retirementpackage that included a guaranteed spot at University for one of their children along with four nights aweek in a private room for their families. Plus, a double-size 12 inch slot at one of burial towers.He tried it out first with one of the smaller compensation companies running ads on the sleeper sub-ways just after porn or daily prayer hour--right before “lights out”. The commercial showed a workerslumbering peacefully with a smile on his face lying on a bed of fluffy clouds. His family stood by athis internment in one of the premium view alcoves at a burial tower gazing proudly at the double-size,12 inch slot center-placed among the others with a name stripe engraved in industrial-grade gold . A reli-gious official gives final blessing and the tearful son steps up and says, “My father was a hero who gave all forhis family. I will attend University, work my way to A Class status and build a seven acre paradise customhome for my family. My father’s picture will be placed in the large entry and all will remember him as a greatman!”.Vulerummer and the other Lions were stunned when they saw it for the first time. They had it producttested. It was an audience knock-out with a twenty percent favorable rating in the lower C Class. Andthat was before they began to promote it with appearances by company PR people on the Lou Glen Show.All they had to do now was get the religious leaders on board. Since
The Seven Lions
had them fully lev-eraged, it wouldn’t be a problem. It was predicted that fresh hearts and livers for A’s and special B’s
LionWorld
by WILLIAM E JUSTIN
 
The Proud Fascist
 
 
would rise over 50 percent the first year after the various governments rubberstamped the new policy into law. Thatman Carroll was a marketing genius and maybe even a future
 Lion
himself.More available replacement hearts and livers would provide
The Seven Lions
and the A Class executives evengreater control over the B Class, who were always clamoring for more, more, more. With only one A Class positionavailable for every ten B Class successes, these people needed to see extra perks. There were always movementsafoot in the B Class to vote in greater reform.
The Seven Lions
even promoted some dissention just to keep the illu-sion of Democracy intact. But the special “shift circuits” placed in voting machines years earlier made it so theydidn’t have to worry much about political movements outside their control. They still allowed some vigorous de-bate, but they had Private Control Mechanisms or PCM’s all throughout the different countries now.Ethan Vulerummer had accomplished a great deal in the ten years he had been at the helm of 
The Seven Lions of Private Control
. No man since the British Lord Rashling had accomplished as much. For Vulerummer, Rashlinghad been his childhood hero even though, at the end of the Second Great War, the Labor Party in London had sethim up and he was stomped to death in the football stadium by an angry crowd. Following that, it had taken an en-tire generation almost for the Fascists to reinvent themselves. But no man in history had accomplished the kind of change that Rashling brought. In the midst of The Final War, he had exterminated 6 million Arabs, 10 millionAsians, 5 million Indians, 12 million Latinos, 3 million Africans and every Eskimo in Alaska! Plus, over 70 millionmales worldwide had been secretly sterilized with a widely advertised sex drug called
Stiff.
In Vulerummer’s view, eighteen-hundred years after Lord Cristo had laid down before the wild lions in the Greco-Roman Collasium, His gentle vision of world peace had mostly been realized by muscular men like Rashling andleaders of the post-war collusions who mapped out the various spheres of political influence world-wide. TheUnited Nations now had nuclear devices planted in 100 locations on earth and a commanding protocol that allowedtwelve full trials for offending countries and a complete evacuation plan that meant only property would be de-stroyed if a “national death sentence” were to be carried out. And such a thing had never occurred. Mankind hadthrown in the towel on war.Early in the century, leaders had undertaken a huge plan to centralize populations around the major cities andleave outlying areas as preserves for wild lion which were bred in huge numbers to help control expansion into theprivately-held lands. Tens of thousands of years before, the large cats had killed off the chimpanzee and evolved ataste for the great apes. Human beings had largely vanquished the wild lions as a result, but then brought them back to use as the ultimate PCM. Farming, hunting and all recreational use of the wilderness was corporatized and con-trolled by private security firms and the widely-seeded predator cats. Economic opportunity itself gradually becamedeeply stratified in most places. The choice for average people throughout the earth slowly became: except the cor-porate plan with limited government influence, or go out to the wilderness and take your chances with the lions andsecurity officers. There was upward mobility throughout the classes, but corruption had risen in line with the dimin-ished populations and rationale for wars. Some called this period, “the great age of Capitalism”, others called it “thegreat age of cheap-jack con”. Rather then being controlled by armies, the people were now controlled by the televi-sion.For Ethan Vulerummer, it was just a great time to be alive! Especially when you were chairman of the
Seven Li-ons of Private Control
. He had gained the position after convincing the other members that his predecessor had togo; that the man had become, “soft on world security”. So during The Lion’s “bunny hunt of 1799”, they broughtknives to the party and finished him off, “The Roman Way”, stabbing him over two hundred times. The problemwith the previous chairman was his unwillingness to expand intelligence capabilities and agree to testing of new vi-ruses on homosexuals. Plus, he didn’t believe in torture. Vulerummer convinced the other board members theywere in danger of being absorbed back into the ranks of the mainstream A Class where Democracy was favoredmore then Fascism. He felt there must be men such as Lord Rashling with power to “fine tune the gene pool” andprovide a stricter control over populations.Ethan had won and had been winning ever since. And now as he enjoyed a glass of his favorite gin, he thoughtabout “the bunny hunt” later that night.
The Seven Lions
had gone over two full catalogs of 
Gloria’s Girls
to narrowthe field down to seven. The rules never changed for “The Bunny Hunt”. If any of girls managed to evade
The Li-ons
long enough to find the hidden passage out of the thickly landscaped, five-acre atrium where the hunt was con-ducted, they would be given a huge bonus and be promoted. If not, they would have to settle for the raw pleasure
The Lions
provided them .Ever since the ouster of the previous chairman,
The Seven Lions
would conduct the hunt wearing only jockstrapsto prevent secret concealment of weapons. There was always a big argument about what attire—if any—the girlswould be allowed. As
The Lions
all came from different regions on earth, they had different tastes. Vulerummer—the only American on the board—liked to have the girls dressed in actual, skimpy bunny customs complete withfluffy tails and ears.
 
 Big-E sure looked intense. He didn’t see Maxim coming up the lawn towardhis training area at the back of the property. He was all involved in his footwork exercises. Stepping forward, backwards, cross-stepping, whirling about—doing all the moves taught tohim as a child by his martial arts instructor. The basic routine. As he approached he saw Big-E suddenlysurge toward the dummy head stand, smack the target with his baton, take a quick back step—then lungeat it with a snapping sweep of his opposite arm. He could tell right off that Big-E wasn’t working outwith a standard 12” blade. He had sliced at the target with something a bit larger. That was odd—just likeBig-E not noticing him walking up on him was odd. He sure looked intense; withdrawn into himself.
 
On the target stand, the dummy head had flipped backwards when struck with the large blade. The faceof it now pointed skyward. Big-E White, the world’s number one Lion Fighter, had failed yet again to cutit clean off. And this time with a 16” blade he personally sharpened with a file for an hour before he be-gan his workout. He sighed. Then he looked up and saw The Man walking up the lawn. That really star-tled him and again he sighed. Lion-Fighters were
never 
to lose awareness of the field—attention had tosit gently on that edge between their own subtle nervous system and the 360 degrees of outer phenomenaaround them.His brother-in-law Maxim Le Muffett had come up the lawn a full fifty yards without him seeing.He’d catch shit for that!Even on a crowded street it wasn’t like one could miss Maxim. He was 6’8” with a shiny titaniumprosthetic leg peeking strategically out a wide slit cut into the slacks he wore. The edges of the slit werehemmed and fixed in a way that allowed elegant exposure of seven two-caret jewels encrusted in the leg.The diamond, opal, amethyst, ruby, emerald and blue and black sapphires were positively shimmering inthe midday sunlight as he moved. A blind man could’ve spotted him coming. Big-E had sunken halfwayinto a trance as he worked out. Now Maxim came upon him with a big smile mixed slightly with a puz-zled look.“My Oafie”. Maxim greeted his brother-in-law. The two men grabbed each others’ right hands withtheir own and locked onto each others biceps with their left hands. That was the way the fraternity of Lion Fighters had greeted each other for fifty years. They’d go eyeball to eyeball and try and make theother flinch or grimace a bit by squeezing his arm.“So you come in early?” Big-E said, hoping to delay the inquiry that Maxim would soon put forth.“Yeah, flew into L.A. early and drove up. Got here and Coco say, “you better go out and see what’sup with Big-E. He’s been acting funny lately. So I come walking up and see you all sunk into your littleworld out here. What’s going on?”It wasn’t hard for Big-E to have predicted
that 
. He’d seen the puzzled look on her face lately and hadbeen brushing off her own inquiries into his sudden change of behavior. Nothing was up, he told Maxim.He was just into a deep training mode getting ready for next season. Coco always dispatched one her of four brothers to get information about what he was thinking.Maxim began very slowly. He had to be real smooth with Big-E White. Big-E had an ego even biggerthen he himself had when he was at the top of the sport—back before the Lion got his leg. His sisterCoco was becoming very concerned. Women who hooked up with Lion-Fighters became very sensitiveto even small changes in their men. With four brothers, Coco knew men better then most.In his slow and easy baritone, Maxim poured out the right words. “Oafie, you
always
in a trainingmode. That why you Big-E White and everybody else is just a punk. But Coco say you gone a little overthe edge”.
Big-E White’sLast Lion Head
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