CRACKHEAD CHARLIE AND HIS FANTOOTILASTIC MENAGE A TROIS WITH JUSTICE by Thomas Lipschultz, 12/5/99-12/6/99 I'm part of the design staff for the M.I.T. Factory. This, of course, has no relation to the technical college, but is actually an acronym for "Made in Taiwan". Specifically, I'm the guy who watches the Industrial Grade Stamper while it stamps "Made in Taiwan" onto a plate of stickers. If anything goes wrong, it's my job to shut down the machine and let the boss know. My job is, actually, the final step. The machine packs the sticker plates and prepares to ship them to Taiwan for package placement immediately after passing through my station. It sounds horribly boring, and it is, but the pay's quite good. Ah, but I've jumped ahead of myself. Introductions are in order. Well, one introduction, anyway. Me, of course. My name's Charlie. My friends call me Crackhead Charlie. But it's not exactly crack I use, it's PCP. Thus, I suggested the name "PCP-Head Charlie", or PHC (whoa, the P in PHC stands for PCP, which is another acronym -- freaky!). But everyone still calls me Crackhead Charlie. The Secret Police Tranquility Alliance, or SePTA, is always after me. They even have their own buses. But I always somehow manage to outrun them. Well, I often somehow manage to outrun them. Er, I NEVER successfully manage to outrun them. But they only seem to chase me when I'm sober and drug- free. Sucks to be them, huh? Anyway, by never managing to outrun them, of course I mean that I managed to outrun them ONCE. For the last time, mind you. 'Cause that one time sure did change me. I'll now relate it to you in the form of a flashback. Well... flashbacks are so overused, so blase. I'll tell it from a third person omniscient perspective instead. That's usually not done in this case, and for good reason. One day Charlie had a gallon jug of PCP in his back pocket. He was thinking, "man, I can't wait to drink this PCP and get buzzwhacked!" But what Charlie didn't know (even though it's made known to the reader by means of this unique third person omniscient viewpoint) was that SePTA was chasing him, in a bright purple Demon Bus with lightning bolts and fire and tsunami and earthquakes painted on the side. The bus was thinking, "hey, I'm a bus, I can't have conscious thought if one follows the mindset of modern science," while its occupants were thinking, "hey, there's Charlie, let's run 'im down and ask questions later, to his dead corpse, when he can't possibly reply because he's dead!" Charlie was scared. The bus people were happy. Charlie ducked into coffee shop after coffee shop after sweet glorious Starbucks coffee shop, thinking each time that the bus couldn't possibly find him in such a high-class place as the coffee shop district. But, as usual, Charlie was wrong. The bus continued to find him, over and over again, smashing down coffee shop wall after coffee shop wall until the coffee shop district became known as "the district formerly known as the coffee shop district." That's how smashed the coffee shop district had become, and that's how smashed Charlie wanted to be, but in a much different way. The pursuing bus people were thinking, "whoo, the chase is on, we love destruction, let's kill kill kill, let's see some carnage, more carnage, MORE CARNAGE!" The bus, consequently, wasn't thinking -- at least, that's what modern science had to say about it. Finally, so busy grappling with the issue of the bus's consciousness and its philosophical ramifications on the fate of humankind and buskind alike, the bus-laden pursuers lost their prey. Little did they know what Charlie knew. Charlie knew a lot. They knew only a little. Charlie ducked into an alley when they weren't looking, and slipped in through the back entrance to Badass Rhonda's Fantasyland Arcade and Pinball Extravaganza, or BaRF-APE. "Yeah," he thought, "I sure showed them feds and their fancy buses who's da' boss, and I don't mean Tony Danza, 'cause he ain't no sorta boss compared to me, daddy-o." He then broke out a grammar textbook. His English had suddenly become quite atrocious. From the inner flap of the section on preposition management fell a single shiny quarter. Or maybe it came from the shady reverse-panhandler guy, Han Sulu, who was busy scurrying away from Charlie as if nothing had happened, whistling a fancy tune as he looked up into the air, hands behind his back, nonchalantly galloping along at a quickening, nervous pace. But, either way, Charlie was one quarter richer now, and he thought to himself, "hell's bells, I believe I shall now proceed to a nearby arcade-based gaming console, perhaps 'Cap-Busters', and procure a single gameplay session to satiate my ever-growing appetite for video-fueled procrastination." The English textbook was working well for him. Knowing that he had to hide out for a while, Charlie decided to follow through with his intent to play a game of "Cap-Busters". Just as he was about to place his hard-earned quarter in the slot, though, he saw a message flash up on the screen, with a very professional-looking blue logo superimposed on top of it: "Winners don't use drugs." This is difficult for him to have admitted at the moment as he told you, the readers (or listeners), his story, but this frightened him. He shuddered. He shuddered and shuddered and shuddered. He was going into convulsions. Unfortunately, he had already begun his game, and his convulsions made his aim rather sub-par. He lost. HE LOST. That means he didn't win. That means he wasn't a winner. And guess what? He had done drugs. Winners don't use drugs. He had used drugs. He wasn't a winner. "Wow," he thought, "this is indeed a hard- hitting message for me." Another quarter fell from the heavens, so he decided to test his theory by playing a game of Pac-Man, which echoed the "Winners don't use drugs" message exactly (and, consequently, those were the best graphics on the entire console). "Surely," he thought, "if I don't win at such a simple game as Pac-Man, it will be a sign that I am not a winner." And so he played. Six weeks later, he died. Well, his last Pac-Man life had been extinguished, anyway. He didn't ACTUALLY die, or else he couldn't have written all of this. "I don't understand," he thought, "I didn't win. I reached level 600 billion, with the all-time high score in all of existence, but for some reason the game just kept on going, constantly introducing new levels for me to complete. I lost all of my lives before winning, or before an ending or a final boss even came within sight. I must truly not be a winner." Wow, that's some heavy exposition! The message had reached Charlie. He was not a winner. He had done drugs. Therefore, he would stop doing drugs. After making this decision, he hotwired the Pac-Man console to spit out quarters. He took one, put the rest back, then un-wired the console and restored it to his original form. He put the quarter in the slot and began another game. And this time, he won. He fought the final boss, PacTwo, and saw the ending where he saved the princess Pacsh. "Yay, I've stopped doing drugs, and I'm a winner now! That arcade console really saved me," he thought, "and I owe it all to SePTA for chasing me here!" He took his gallon jug of PCP and dumped it into the arcade's bathroom sink. The sink thought to itself, "awright, now I can get bushwhacked!", though scientifically it didn't think at all. And so, Crackhead Charlie began his life anew as Caffeine Charlie, a regular at the newly-rebuilt coffee district's Starbucks Coffee House No. MLMXVII. And now I'll leave the flashback. Pretty cool style, huh? Third person omniscient isn't used too often for flashbacks. It's freaky, dude. I think the lessons we should all learn from this are (1) Pac-Man is a beatable game, (2) SePTA is here to help us, and (3) PCP comes in gallon jugs now. I feel so much happier and healthier thanks to SePTA. Drive on, buses of wisdom and human happiness. Drive on.