Desiring-Bodies and Imagining-Bodies
Installment #2 of the Space Adventures of Bodak Thorn Series
by Gtron
Bodak Thorn’s MDO pod was roughly egg-shaped, and was painted the usual WHEAT-O Navy camouflage, which meant that it was black with little incandescent yellow dots, clouds and spirals, obviously, because it was a space navy. It was called the “Space Navy” (“Armada d’spacio” in the official WHEAT-O language of Spanglish), even though it has hardly any units that actually go in or around water. It had officially been known as WHEAT-O Space Force during the first campaigns of the Gradius Wars until the government was forced to settle a copyright suit brought by a leading WHEAT-O manufacturer of action figures. “Spair Force” didn’t sound right, nor did “Spavey” or “Spacey;” hence the less-than euphonious moniker “Space Navy.”
Anyway, Thorn’s MDO pod looked like an egg with stars and planets painted on it. Each MDO was issued shiz* own pod. It was not cost effective to be constantly switching out ergochairs and preset entertainment and ration packages. It was also, missle defense officers found, good for Observer morale. Many observers took pod customization seriously, pimping out their MDO Pods to the limit of the regs and beyond. Naming was an absolute minimum, usually done with incandescent paint on the back of the pod. Bodak Thorn’s had “Gallant Fox” written in jaunty cartoon lettering with a small foxtail drawn hanging off of the x.
The Gallant Fox was bumping. Bodak Thorn had Gursky Unster on, a band which an early 21st-century critic might label “math-crunk” or even (mistakenly) “ethno-crunk,” because of the complexity of the rhythmic patterns. The ethno-misapprehension might stem from the NATO citizen’s passing familiarity with the raga or gamelan or other non-western musical styles which eschew the numbing and repetitive 4/4 of 20-21st C western music (ignorant of the fact that western composers had started going way outside the 2/4 / ¾ / 4/4 paradigm since Mozart died, basically). Of course, if such a traveler thought that there would actually be ethnicities at all hundreds of years in the future seriously overestimated humans’ natural race-consciousness or sexual selectivity or both, because Bodak Thorn looked pretty much like every other human male – about seven feet tall with coffee skin, dark hazel eyes and black hair. No, 4/4 music simply went out of fashion because people realized that it was stupid and boring after the third generation of anti-ADD drugs came into widespread use and people all of a sudden had real not-to-sniff-at attention spans and gave rock and hip-hop the boot in favor of new forms of epic poetry and lushly orchestrated song cycles with modulating keys and meters. Now anything in 4/4 was basically hypnotically repetitive mood music, as in, a dentist’s office or upscale massage parlor might pipe in some old re-mastered Jay-Z or Stav da Muff, if it was the kind of establishment that catered to boring old people.
Anyway, Gursky Unster’s latest release was bumping out of Bodak Thorn’s quality bass enclosures. As Bodak watched (the cone of space in his designated defensive area) and listened, he imagined that he, Bodak Thorn, was Gursky’s front man and was currently crooning the lovelorn lyrics of the track he was currently listening to, except that it was at a sold-out virtua-concert. He also imagined the front 100 meters of the Zev Thernstrom Musicdome to be taken up almost exclusively with hot girls, with the front-and-center spot right close to the stage occupied by Borka Tindlin, a Missile Defense Observer 9th Class assigned, like Bodak Thorn, to the 2nd Quadrant of Defense Refueling Depot D-73. As the song began it’s mournful coda, #1 Gursky Unster fan Borka Tindlin, normally neurotic and uptight but now suddenly overcome with emotion and adoration, jumped up onstage. She then locked eyes with her idol (Bodak Thorn), who coolly waved away the securobots and continued to croon without missing a beat, the amplified vibrations of his silken vocal cords humming through the stands of the Zev Thurstrom Musicdome and through the plump, lovely body of the all-of-a-sudden-sans-neuroses-and-hangups MDO9 Tindlin, who was (Thorn somehow knew) from that moment on his and only his, forever.
And just as old BT reached for the canister of jack juice, Cmdr Steffy Krenzel-Kong, EAT-O Fire Direction Officer, was bent over a holo-screen, finalizing her Newtonian Predictive Model on the latest fire mission to come down from higher. The objective? To degrade the enemy’s ability to reinforce sector 72 by destroying WHEAT-O logistical assets in the vicinity. The target? Deepspace Refueling Depot C-72.
* “His or her;” my choice for a neologismic gender-neutral possessive pronoun. – The Author
