Part 36 (1/2)

35.

”FLOYD WAYNE VISHNIAK,” SAID THE DIGITIZED VOICE FROM THE computer, and an array of fresh windows popped into life on Aaron Green's high-resolution video screen. One of the windows was a photograph, a head shot of a white man with lank blond hair, not short enough to be short and not long enough to be long, sticking out from beneath a blue baseball cap that were turned down at the corners, giving him a sad and bedraggled appearance, and his skin was flushed and glossy under the blaze of an electronic flash. This was not a posed shot. It had been taken from a low angle as Floyd Wayne Vishniak rode down an escalator at a shopping mall somewhere. He was staring down into the camera with a blank and baffled expression that had not yet developed into surprise. He was wearing a tightly stretched, inside-out, navy blue T-s.h.i.+rt with a couple of holes in it and he had the ropy muscles of a man who got them by doing physical labor and not by working out at any health club.

This image was not the only window on the computer screen. There was a small one next to it, this one showing a brief video clip that kept looping back and replaying. It showed Floyd Wayne Vishniak sitting in the cheap seats at a sports arena somewhere, leaping to his feet along with all of the other people in his vicinity to shout abuse at some miscreant down below. In this clip, Vishniak was wearing a tremendously oversized, bright yellow foam rubber hand over his real hand. The long finger of the hand was extended. Just in case this message was not clear, it had been printed with the words f.u.c.k THE REF. And in case the ref did not happen to be looking in his direction, Vishniak could clearly be seen mouthing the same words - chanting them over and over - in unison with all of the other sports fans in his section. In Vishniak's other hand he was holding a plastic beer cup the size of the Louvre. While he was waving his giant yellow digit in the air, beer sloshed over the rim and splashed down on the shoulders of the fan in front of him, who reacted, but either did not care or was afraid to make a big deal out of it. Floyd Wayne Vishniak was not a person that most people would consider picking a fight with. He was not especially big, but he was tightly wound in the extreme.

Other people were waving giant foam rubber hockey sticks and other hockey-related paraphernalia.

Though the action below - the source of the controversy - was not shown on this video clip, it was evidently a hockey game, and at least one of the teams was apparently named the Quad Cities Whiplash.

Another window, below the video loop, showed a map of the fifty states with a blinking red X superimposed on the Mississippi River, between western Illinois and eastern Iowa. Under the blinking X was the label DAVENPORT, IOWA (QUAD CITIES).There were two other windows on the screen, both of them carrying textual information. One of them was a brief c.v. of Floyd Wayne Vishniak. He had grown up in the Quad Cities, straddling the Illinois-Iowa border, dropped out of high school to get a job in a tractor factory, and been laid off and rehired six times in the intervening fifteen years. During the past year he had barely managed to earn his weight in dollars.

The remaining window was a tall narrow one that ran down the side of the computer screen. It was a list containing exactly one hundred items. Each item consisted of a phrase describing a subset of the American population, followed by a person's name.

As this presentation - this computerized dossier - proceeded from one name to the next, the corresponding item on the list was highlighted, a bright purple box drawn over it so that the user could see which category he was dealing with at the moment. The hundred categories and names on the list were as follows: IRRELEVANT MOUTH BREATHER.

400-POUND TAB DRINKER.

STONE-FACED URBAN HOMEBOY.

BURGER-FLIPPING HISTORY MAJOR.

SQUIRRELLY WINNEBAGO JOCKEY.

BIBLE-SLINGING PORCH MONKEY.

ECONOMIC ROADKILL.

PENT-UP CORPORATE LICKSPITTLE.

HIGH-METABOLISM WORLD DOMINATOR.

MIDAMERICAN KNICKKNACK QUEEN.

SNUFF-HAWKING BAs.e.m.e.nT DWELLER.

POSTADOLESCENT ROAD WARRIOR.

DEPRESSION-HAUNTED CAN STACKER.

PRETENTIOUS URBAN-LIFESTYLE SLAVE.

FORMERLY RESPECTABLE BANKRUPTCY SURVIVOR.

FROSTY-HAIRED COUPON SNIPPER.

CYNICAL MEDIA MANIPULATOR.

RETICENT GUN NUT.

UFOS ATE MY BRAIN.

MALL-HOPPING CORPORATE CONCUBINE.

HIGH-FIBER DUCK SQUEEZER.

POST-CONFEDERATE GRAVY EATER.

MANIC THIRD-WORLD ENTREPRENEUR.

OVEREXTENDED YOUNG PROFESSIONAL.

APARTMENT-DWELLING MALL STAFF.

TRADE SCHOOL METAL HEAD.

ORANGE COUNTY BOOK BURNER.

FIRST-GENERATION BELTWAY BLACK.

80'S JUNK-BOND PAR VENUE.

DEBT-HOUNDED WAGE SLAVE.

ACTIVIST TUBE FEEDER.

TOILET-SCRUBBING EX-STEEL WORKER.

NEO-OKIE.

s.h.i.+T-KICKING WRESTLEMANIAC.

SUNBELT CONDO COMMANDO.

RUST-BELT LUMPENPAOL.

and others . . .Aaron hit the s.p.a.ce bar on the Calyx workstation's keyboard. All of the windows disappeared except for the long skinny one with the list of categories. The next item on the list was highlighted and spoken aloud by the digitized computer voice: RETICENT GUN NUT - JIM HANSON, N. PLATTE, NEBRASKA.

Another set of windows appeared, just like the last set but carrying different images and information.

The photo was in black and white this time, reproduced from a newspaper, showing Jim Hanson, a lean- faced man of about fifty, wearing an adult Boy Scout uniform and standing out in the woods somewhere.

As before, there was a short loop of videotape. It showed him standing by a picnic table in a backyard somewhere, tending a barbecue and acting as eminence grise to a crowd of small children, presumably his grandkids. The map window was the same except that now the red X had moved to the middle of one of those states in the middle of the country; apparently this was Nebraska.

Jim Hanson didn't look very interesting. Aaron hit the s.p.a.ce bar again, moving on to the next item on the list: HIGH-METABOLISM WORLD DOMINATOR CHASE MERRIAM, BRIARCLIFF MANOR, N.Y. This time, the photo was a glossy color studio shot. The video clip showed Chase Merriam teeing off at a very nice golf course somewhere along with three other high-metabolism world dominators.

Aaron started whacking the s.p.a.ce bar, paging through the list, flas.h.i.+ng up the hundred photos one at a time. When it worked its way down to the bottom, it cycled back up to the top again, so he could keep it up forever if he wanted to. The red X on the map hopped back and forth across the country, tracing out a perfectly balanced demographic profile of the United States.

Floyd Wayne Vishniak was sitting in his trailer, watching Wheel, when he heard the sound of tires on gravel. He went to the front door, glancing over to make sure that his sawed-off shotgun was sitting in its secret place; it was there all right, craftily concealed in the narrow gap behind three stacked cases of beer, right next to the door. Having thus established his parameters, he looked out the window to see who had come all the way out here to pay him a visit. If it was another bill collector, he was not going to get a very friendly reception.