Emperor of Gondwanaland by Paul di Filippo Read Free Book Online Page A

in minuscule type, a line read: “Sponsored in part by the SPCA.”
    There had been a quaver in Burr’s voice. But now that he saw how successful his spiel was, he got cocky.
    “Extra pepperoni! Double cheese! Anchovies and pineapples!”
    “Hey, cool it, man …”
    We drove up and down through the neighborhood until all the fliers were gone. Then we made a big circle back toward Domino’s.
    Parking a dozen blocks away, we switched plates, dismounted the sign and speakers, and trashed them in a Dumpster.
    “Hate to waste good equipment like that—” said Burr.
    “They’re incriminating. And besides, we won’t be needing them again. No repeating ourselves, remember?”
    We started to walk toward Domino’s. Four blocks away, we could hear the angry crowd noise.
    “I’m a little scared,” Fiona said.
    “Nothing to be scared of. Believe me, no one got a good look at us. They were too busy diving for coupons.”
    Sirens started to wail, plainly converging on the disturbance.
    We couldn’t get any closer than a hundred yards to the Domino’s. It was surrounded by a solid mass of people, and the people were ringed by squad cars, their lights painting the scene a patriotic red, white, and blue.
    A chant began to swell.
    “Pizza! Pizza! Motherfuckin’ pizza!”
    I approached a cop. He dropped his hand to his gun instinctively, then recovered himself.
    “What’s happening, officer?” I said in my best concerned Young Republican voice.
    “Some kinda crazy publicity stunt that went cock-eyed.” His walkie-talkie crackled. “’Scuse me.”
    I eavesdropped on his conversation. Apparently, every Domino’s in the city had been enlisted to deal with the crisis. All orders in progress had been diverted to the scene of the incipient riot. Ovens were being crammed with pizza after hastily assembled pizza to satisfy the crowd. Extra tomato sauce and mozzarella had been requisitioned from as far away as Boston. All speed limits and traffic laws had been temporarily waived for the courageous drivers.
    I walked back to Fiona and Burr.
    “Ladies and gentlemen, we have ignition.”
    Perhaps a little unwisely, considering the cops, we gave each other high-five salutes. But we couldn’t help it, and they were too busy to notice.
    “Let’s get home,” said Burr. “I’m starving.”
    “There’s nothing in the fridge,” Fiona reminded us. “Takeout?”
    “Chinese? Or pizza?” said Fiona reflexively.
    And that’s when we lost it, laughing through tears so hard that we could hardly find the car.
     
    The Society for Poetically Creative Anarchy was born in a laundromat, while our grass-greened workclothes were in the spin cycle.
    That’s where Burr and I met Fiona.
    Burr and I had grown up together. We went through elementary school, high school, and three years of college as buddies, reading the same comics, the same science fiction, the same boho philosophers, the same semiotic jarheads. When we both ran out of intellectual steam and tuition money at the same time—that year they axed the Pell grants—we dropped out together and started a landscaping business with a used Ford Ranger and some old tools and mowers given to us by Burr’s uncle Karl, who wanted to retire.
    The work was hard but the money was decent, and we were our own bosses. We even had a few months off in midwinter, when we collected unemployment.
    We were pretty much content to glide along as we were doing. But even though we were pretty comfortable, we still liked to bullshit about how fucked-up society was.
    We were metaphysical malcontents, our brains warped by too much Edward Abbey and secondhand Bakunin, but lacking any clear goals.
    That day in the laundromat we were talking about this book called The Abolition of Work .
    I guess we got pretty loud and excitable. The next thing we knew, this woman was standing over us.
    She wore a backwards baseball cap, overalls with one strap dangling across a thermal undershirt, and the inevitable Doc