Mick Farren: Armageddon Crazy

Dreisler

Matthew Dreisler became the absolute overlord of both domestic and foreign security. Although Proverb was president, Dreisler became de facto commander in chief. At first, the Canadians kept him somewhat in check, hut after the pullout, he felt free to start constructing the perfect police state. His design was so self-sustaining that even after he himself was killed in the bomb attack on his private jet, the machine that he had created continued to function.

Carlisle

One month after the Sunday Revolution, Harry Carlisle applied for leave and a passport. He said he was going for two weeks of sun in Rio De Janeiro. He was never seen again. Some claimed that he had changed his name and vanished. Others believed that Dreisler had arranged his murder.

Kline

Around about the same time that Harry Carlisle supposedly left for his Rio vacation, Cynthia Kline also disappeared. Most who had known her assumed that as an operative of the Canadian Secret Service she had merely been given a new identity and transferred to a fresh theater of operations. As with Carlisle, however, there were those who subscribed to a more sinister theory: She and Harry Carlisle had both been killed at Dreisler's instigation.

Mansard

It took the new administration a full six weeks to decide whether Charlie Mansard was a hero or a criminal for having triggered the Armageddon Crazy. Finally they opted for the former, and Charlie went on to become world famous for his theatrical productions using skywalker holograms. He received special Tony awards for his presentations of Wagner's Ring Cycle and the musical The Last Words of Dutch Schultz.

1346408 Stone

Eli Stone got out of Joshua in the first wave of releases. He never, however, really readjusted to life in the outside world. After some months of being unable to hold down a job and treatment for chronic depression, he took his own life in a room in a cheap hotel on Forty-third Street.

Speedboat

Speedboat returned to the Lower East Side. Inside of a year he had pulled off a major narcotics coup and left for Australia, never to return. He surfaced in Sydney, under the name Tommy Wilson, where he successfully managed the popular entertainer Ann Rango.

Parallel shafts of sunlight lanced through the venetian blinds, and traffic noise floated up from the King's Cross red-light district. Down in the street, garish neon flashed and Chinese sailors on raucous shore leave from the aircraft carrier Revolutionary Fervor loudly made their presence known. Up in room 1009 of the Sebel Townhouse, enjoying the soft introspection that was the aftermath of afternoon delight, Harry Carlisle and Cynthia Kline still held on to each other. Their naked bodies were filmed with sweat, and they were both in that half world between satiation and sleep. After New York, Sydney was like a blast of robust freedom. Down the hall, a group of English musicians was having a party. It had been going on for two days. The TV babbled in the corner.

An item about the U.S.A. came on the Channel 17 news. More prisoners had been released from the camps. Carlisle propped himself up on one elbow. There was footage of Arlen Proverb making a speech.

"… and each day brings new discoveries that continue to confirm that the Faithful administration is a regime that will live in infamy."

Harry grunted. "Can't he make up his own stuff any more?"

Cynthia's voice was drowsy. "Harry?"

"Yeah?"

"You don't think we made a mistake, do you?"

Harry shook his head. "We didn't make a mistake."

"We could have been wrong about Dreisler."

"Anything's possible, but I wouldn't want to bet my life on it."

"How do you feel about being away from America?"

"I feel okay. America's going to be a hard place for a long time."

"You think we'll ever go back?"

"I don't know. The America we want to go back to is the America of 1997. That's all gone."

Harry got out of bed and padded to the refrigerator for a Swan lager. He was cultivating a taste for Australian beer.

"You can never go back to the nineties."

Mick Farren is a hopelessly unreconstructed side effect of the late sixties and seventies who still entertains the absurd idea that a writer should be some swashbuckling, Byronic figure who has quite as much fun as any of his characters. Accordingly, he continues to play rock&roll in the saloons of New York, drinks too much, wears a lot of black, and still harbors a desire to be rich and famous before his excesses catch up with him.