/dev/null

Gold Teeth
My grandfather had gold teeth. Two, at least, maybe more.

The Possessed Man is not a bad man, nor a good one. He is terrified. Alone among friends and family, he “works” to support his family, but is not exactly sure of what he does. He “administrates creative product strategies,” according to the Job Description on file at Human Resources.

The Detective Agency.  Lucrative business.  Citizens forever curious about each the other’s secrets.
Agency’s most famous failure: Losing Our Sons and Daughters (LOSD). Case: Infamous disappearance of a minor (name withheld), dubbed “The Missing Girl.” Major source of income for The Agency hunting down and finding Missing Young. Access high levels of Pyramid.  But no, but no.  She is not found.  The Detective Agency knew everything about everyone except The Missing Girl.

The Mayor vowed clean streets, eliminate unwanted elements. Misfortune-seekers; the homeless and insane; the Missing Young, and other misfit targets of The City compacted and wrapped in jargon for easy pick-up:  Viral Deviants (VDs).
Police got tough about degrading quality of tax paying Citizens’ invaded lives.  Whose streets anyhow?

I lurked The Network, skulked. Examined “Missing Girl” sites deep into the early-morning-nights. Servers choked with data.
Stories, legends, tales. My summary, my digest, gleaned from gigabytes of talk:
“Before she was missed she was a girl. Just a girl, before she was missed. Room full of scent, dolls, sock-puppets, mirrors, clothes, telephone.  She left it all behind.

Up night browsing The Network. Search “The Missing Girl.”
Thousands of references, citations, sites, blogs. What-have-you.
One site displayed a three-dimensional replica of her bedroom as she left it — or was taken from it — 20 years ago. 3D model based on photographs and original magazine stories about The Missing Girl. Dreams courtesy The Missing Girl’s diary (once upon a time, before the Network, there was the private note-book or diary, handwritten). Intimate details. Opened roll of cherry candy in her dresser drawer.

Thousands reported each year. But what is it to be “Missing,” or for that matter, “Young?”
The Young flooded The City May and June. They sought and usually obtained “Missing” status, or their own, particular variants of Missing style: rings in their navels, nether parts, and cheap tattoos; faded-to-rags funereal coats and black costumes of lived lives bought or stolen from thrift shops.
Arrogant street corner beg-beers. Clumsy bacchanals at dusk. Liberation-rush of “nuthin ta do.”

At the Market Research Information firm I talked “shop” with a Certified Searcher. Searchers searched the Pyramid Database like bees collecting pollen for Executive drives.
Perhaps I too could learn art of the search. Perhaps I too might find some thing. Or some one.
“Time brings data,” said The Searcher, a woman of early, fierce middle-age. “Trajectory of information. Got to keep track of what the citizens are consuming. Immense! I preside over a mere twig on the Tree of Knowledge.  Or rather, Tree of Information.”

Today we shall feast and drink and watch football and give thanks to the Machine for prompt dispatch and delivery of hecatombs of slaughtered fowl.  Tomorrow, we must put our shoulders to the wheel and shop, shop till it hurts, shop till it delivers us from evil, shop for the good of those who otherwise could not afford to shop if not for the brief, temp-gigs that trickle down from Santa’s workshop in celebration of…of….the sacred something or other…and of course, time off work….

Visited The Network Castle where important and unimportant personages gathered to shoot the breeze. Visitors paid a fee to The Keepers of The Castle, received access.  Other requirement was a generic image provided by The Keepers (akin to rubber nose and goggles), or send The Keepers an image of your choice.
Submitted The Solitary Novelist. Most icons were movie stars, old and recent; television stars, old and recent; sports stars, old and recent; all species of celebrity, old and recent.