The RODEO - Part 1

The makeshift RODEO grounds were hastily constructed. They didn’t nearly cover the whole of the East Concavity; only a cordoned off and bulldozed section that was abandoned and left barren by the inhabitants thereof. The barriers erected against whatever lurked beyond looked sturdy enough and the fencing in the actual arena was NASCAR certified but who could tell. The whole place did have all the neon glitz and cheesy glam which was a sure cynosure for rubbernecks the world over.

It was purportaged that the Hengemen did try to go further West, into the East, and even the whole, of the Great Concavity but were driven back by huge armored insects whose only perfunctory habit greater than their strict adherence to meticulous immaculateness, when it came to their recently acquired permanent habitation, is their unfettered and blind defense of what they incredibly believe is their personal property; so fervent, in fact, that they view it as an extension of their very own personal map and would fight past their very existence in this dimension for it. But it wasn’t as if the Hengemen didn’t have the fire power to defeat them, it just wasn’t their main objective on that particular mission, only rather a tertiary scouting endeavor to see how far they could push into the Great Concavity without meeting stiff resistance. It was miles in before they were even noticed and so miles from the barrier of the outer wall of the East Concavity but they still insisted on using a 4” thick wall of clear aluminum to enclose the RODEO grounds beyond the wall.

The signs upon entering the now opened ASCHTMEd doors read,

‘No one, absolutely no one is allowed to venture outside of the grounds of the East Concavity into other parts of the Concavity. Clearly defined barriers have been set up. Health institute personnel have not deemed it safe to venture outside the barriers and doing so is strictly prohibited. ONAN’s very own Hengemen will be on patrol and anyone caught trying to bypass the barriers to get to the untamed wild beyond, trying to incite riots or general dissent and trying to break into or out of the grounds at other than specified times will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.’

The warning was also posted at various locations throughout the venue in every conceivable shape and size and on every available format, from the old (and outdated) plywood to the ordinary citizen sensing 3D hologram; that activated when a regular ticket purchaser passed it but not when someone of an official nature walked by.

Crisp, clear music blared out of speakers too thin for the casual observer to see. Vendors were ubiquitous; under huge bright spotlights and glowing,  blinking freon signs that blotted out the stars shining above. There was no other night light pollution way out here, except maybe the glowing blue hue of the Shawshine river, which one of the vendors had also been entrepreneurial enough to bottle and were selling for $10 a piece. The digital advertisement billcellumat above the booth read ‘Naturally Pure Native Juice,’ in huge glowing-blue letters and a much smaller subscript that read thus, ‘The exclusive owner and bottler of the naturally refreshing water untouched by human hands since almost before subsidized time and proud co-sponsor of time, Wehigh Inc.’ And finally, under that, barely legible without a monocle as big as that old, now broken-down space Hubble telescope, ‘May cause profuse expectoration, regurgitation, radiation sickness, gigantism, subcutaneous lesions, diphtheria, dysentery and nightmarish hallucinations of gargantuan proportions.’ The booth was slick and bright and modern with rounded curves and computer-assisted voice control. People lined up deep to get their portion. There were also all sorts of other oddities lining the edge of the outer  ATHSCMEd wall in cardioid fashion. Shrunken heads and feral bone trinkets all lazed with invisible barcodes were waiting to be scanned and sold. Cures for every conceivable malady stood on counters and back shelves. It was a cornucopia of alluring ensnarements.  The whole set up was produced with the latest trends in tech, construction and engineering but it still seemed to have that late 1860’s, snake-oil cure, hokey, feeling to it. A toned down version of the ‘entertainment’ with a modified, cliff-hanger ending was available for purchase*. There were three kinds of escorts available for rent and nice firm beds to use them on, if one had enough tumescent inclination before during or after spectating over what was sure to be mass carnage.

The FDA had been functionally dead since the advent of subsidized time. It still technically existed but had been subsumed by huge agro-corporations who didn’t care about anything but profit and marketed genetically modified organisms with little or zero ‘effect’ trials before putting them on store shelves for mass consumption.

Rumors that President Johnny Gentle was getting ready to croon soon started to spread, waxing and waning before cresting again through the dense crowd, causing them to turn their heads toward one central spot. Scopophobes, hidden behind large dark glasses,  brazen enough to venture to this seminal event suddenly dropped out of view, most ducking so as not to be seen but a few fell to the ground in fetal position, a quivering, blubbering mess, the sudden mass attention of what they mistakenly thought was them was the final push in their already shaken psyches. The crowd slowly made its near frenzied way toward and into the stadium where the contests would take place.

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Recessed and off to the right was the area where they stored the terrible infants. The 2’x2’ heads on the things made Billy Fucillo’s look small and infantile by comparison. They were fanged and feral with blood-shot and rabid eyes They were purportaged to be the most vicious creatures in the whole of the Great Concavity. They were free in the enclosures to thrash about and cause whatever chaos they might in an empty, dirt floor pen surrounded by thick, reinforced steel bars. They were certainly not happy being caged, not yet given enough time to ease into it and trick themselves into believing that comfort of the familiar in the habituation of habitation and a certain appearance of an ease in survival was an acceptable choice that negated being held captive.

There were unsubstantiated rumors floating around about how they had actually captured the beasts. The obvious; tranq darts filled with the most powerful postsynaptic neurotoxins available on the market and huge nets using cranes and large industrial-sized dump trucks for transportation - to the more obscure - some descendent of Imipolex G that was stiff enough to restrain but pliable enough to allow for proper respiratory function being dumped on them unawares and quickly hardening to injecting them with a modern derivative of Ice 9 that put them into a mild, short-term cryonic stasis.  

What sort of toxic brew resulted in what I can only assume such a gross example of Acromegaly and general gigantism, I couldn’t tell but reports had said their hunger was near insatiable and even when satiated they were prone to pugilism, tantrums and, more recently, melt downs; which not so tangentially, ill-equipped parents of a former age used to describe the tantrums of their attention deficit disorder, mostly autistic, children. And these feral babies’ ‘meltdowns’ could last for days, weeks, even months,  having no one to riddle them with ritalin, or whatever mind-numbing, brain-stopping, mood enhancer was in fashion in these days of subsidized time.

It was apparent that any human contestant will have to have super amounts of legerity to overcome these feral infants and gain their freedom, which the director of unspecified services, as well as, its planning committees, were very well aware of and probably was a major reason why such a dangerous event was even allowed to be sanctioned in the first place. That and the lesser gossiped about culling that ONANUSS had more recently determined needed starting in both the concavity/convexity and the populace at large. It was the pinnacle of depravity. Mesmerizing entertainment down to the minutest detail. And, of course, revenue, always revenue - profit ueber alles - which certain actuaries, with the latest and greatest collaborative accounting algorithms, projected could reach, if not exceed, a trillion dollars.  They also really didn’t expect any of the foolhardy contestants to make it out alive, much less be able to physically actually put one foot in front of the other and walk out on the off chance the did actually defeated a feral. Actually, B.S.S. was counting on it and hoping that it wasn’t only the start of a grand tradition but also the start of the trimming that needed to be done.  The percentages, as calculated by the latest, most-expensive quantum computer - a yes and or a no at the same time  - in all of ONAN, put the chances of survival as only slightly better than death; virtually nil.

* After unspecified services procured the cartridge and trying to further weaponize it they finally realized that giving the viewer a modified version  - just enough to keep coming back and buying more - was a far better source of revenue and much easier way to control the populace than turning them into catatonic zombies that required constant care.