Dogs of Orninica Read online

  Harvey has been single for the better part of the last decade, ever since he parted ways with his soap star former wife, Lady Kinders, after they both had torrid public love affairs. Lady has since remarried, but poor Harvey just can't seem to find the right girl. His long list of celebrity dalliances is eclipsed by none, but sadly he has yet to attain a lasting romance. Good luck, Harvey and Brenda, the whole country has their fingers crossed.

  In other celebrity news, former boy-band star Kade Ino is about to launch a new deluxe cologne exclusively for infants. The fruity scent will debut at Berringers Supermarkets later this month. "I've cherished the creative process of forging this unique and special fragrance for all the newborns of my incredible fans. I'm very proud of it and hope you love 'Essence of Babe' as much as my young ones do. You all have my heartfelt thanks for constantly being at my side. All my love, now and forever, Kade," a statement on the prolific star's official website read.

  You can already pre-order your infant's new cologne on the Berringers Online store for an affordable 59.99. It is specially designed to enhance the natural scent of infants with various chemical approximations of the scents of fruits, berries, and even hugs. Delightful.

  The terror-threat level is currently set to Deep Crimson X3++. Serious threat of terrorist attack imminent. Take care, Orninicans.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Student

  I'm so sick of TV, all it is anymore is a bunch of angry old dogs barking orders at each other. Talking about budget this and tax hike that, minorities, migrants... Fuck it all. It's all a bunch of malarkey, none of it's real. They only put that crap on there to make us focus on petty bullshit instead of what really matters.

  Everyone gets all bent out of shape defending their dumb-ass convictions that are really, honestly pretty fucking similar to their opponent's dumb-ass convictions, if you ask me. Just a bunch of meaningless bickering to keep us all distracted while the big dogs upstairs keep on raking in their moon juice or whatever the hell gives them the power to take a shit all over us and call it charity.

  It's almost enough to make me want to throw my iYglass out the window once and for all. But there's this girl I've been talking to on it, she seems like she might be into me almost... Like, she asked if I'm going to get the new expansion pack for this bad-ass game we both play. If I want to team up with her on it and tear some shit up together. That's gotta be admissible evidence, right? She probably wants a taste, right?

  I was trying to tell her the other day about how the gov is all out to control us and shit, sending some kind of subliminal messages to our modules to make us eat our kibble and sing our ABC’s like good little hamsters, never asking questions or talking back. But she was all like, “I have a hamster called Joe.” I mean, what the hell? And she was going on about her dumb little hamster and his stupid toys for a half hour before I got bored of it and told her I was going to log on to a different lobby.

  I don't think she took it really well, when I came back later she wasn't on, and she hasn't talked to me much since then. But, screw it.

  My dad was being a major dick again yesterday, trying to make me go to this junior dentist retreat thing for the summer. It's some kind of camp for us with dentists for dads. Like having a freaky tooth fetish is inherited or something. I mean, it's my last summer before college, why should I waste it like that? But he did say he'd get me a car if I went, so that's pretty tempting. I might have to check out some car lots.

  He's always saying I haven't got any direction, like I'm supposed to be a street sign or something pointing the way to Rupulfort Road. Like life's just a straight line to some shitty little office no one comes back from, and you have to pay to get there and keep paying everyday to stay there. And oh yeah, you have to act like a giant dick-turd all the time or they don't let you stay.

  I keep on trying to tell him, I'm not going to be a dentist, I don't even like touching teeth, it seriously grosses me out. But he keeps on talking louder than me so he doesn't hear it. And sometimes if he does hear it, he just keeps yelling, “So what are you going to do? What are you going to do with those grades of yours? Tell me, what are you going to do?!” Like if I don't know what I want to do, that means I've gotta be a freaking dentist.

  Why do I even need to do anything? I mean, I like my life just fine the way it is. If I want to keep on doing what I'm doing now until I get bored of it, then what of it? It's not like life is some kind of race. And even if it was, the finish line would always be the same; you sitting in a fucking electric wheelchair, drooling into your cereal, waiting to kick the bucket. So who cares what I do to pass the time until I get to the horrible end?

  What if I figure out what I want to do is take a big ten-year nap plugged into a dream-inducer, or maybe break the world record for doing the most porn stars? That's doing something, right? Maybe if I come up with something like that he'll get off my back for a while... But he'll probably just yell at me or make me assist his dental assistant all summer again.

  I do have some really shitty grades, though. He's right about that. But it's not because I'm stupid or anything, I just don't see the point in racking my brains studying all day when there's nothing particular I want to be. It's a waste of life.

  Well, come to think of it, when I was a little pup, I wanted to be like a mechanic or something. I really liked fixing shit. Too bad they don't teach that stuff at school.

  Things were different back in the day when we were little. We used to play out on the street, and there weren't hardly any drones buzzing about taking our picture and barking orders. Nowadays, there's not even any point in going outside, those drones are everywhere. They keep on issuing you with warnings if you go near a patch of grass or 'loiter suspiciously', and if you get enough warnings, they haul your ass into juvenile court.

  So we mostly just stay inside. Not that things are much different inside, what with all the TVs recording us all the time and showing us a stream of ads for antidepressants just because we had a shitty day, or alerting the cops whenever we raise our voices a bit or use idiotic 'trigger words' like 'blast' or 'bridge'.

  There's a trick, though, if you want to watch some TV without seeing a ton of ads, just don't talk to anyone or show any emotion for a few weeks. Just sit motionless and stare at the wall and don't search for anything on the net or do anything at all, then they can't figure out what to try and sell you, so you barely see any ads at all. I did it once, it really works. Helps if you're on something.

  TVs aren't as bad as drones I suppose, at least they don't follow you around all the time. But I guess that's why we all have iYglass now.

  If one of those drones sees someone not wearing an iYglass they get all bent out of shape about it. Once I saw this blind old dog that wasn't wearing one, and he had like ten drones behind him all analyzing his 'suspicious patterns'. I heard they can look at you and predict if you're gonna break the law by your behavior, like how you walk and the sound of your voice and shit. But this old dog was no criminal, he was a war veteran or something, missing both his eyes and limping down the street with all these flashing drones tailing him. Bet he never went outside again, poor old guy.

  Yeah man, drones are serious business. This teacher I used to have was all nervous all the time, kept fidgeting and twitching for no reason. Everyone says he got blown up by a drone for acting weird like that. It's probably bullshit, but it was weird how he suddenly left without a word in the middle of the semester. Maybe he moved to the country or something where there are less of them buzzing about. I don't know, but if I were him I'd have learned to act normal real quick.

  You have to really think about what you're doing when you're out on the street, you need to make sure you're not acting weird or making sudden movements or walking too fast or too slow or anything. It's really pretty annoying.

  Honestly, our generation has the shitty end of the stick. Our parents didn't have to deal with any of this, they could hop down the street on one leg if they wanted, I bet. Could probabl
y hump each other right up against a building and get away with it. Use all kinds of dangerous words. But they're always on about how fucking easy we have it and how when they were our age, they were working at the drive-through and buying all their own music. Like it's our fault there's no jobs any more, not that anyone nowadays is dumb enough to buy a song.

  If you ask me, their entire shitty generation has fucked up the whole world for everyone. Sure, we might not have any direction or purpose, but at least we didn't sell out for a cubicle and some magic beans. You know what? Fuck dentist camp, I don't care if I ever get a car. I've got enough feds watching me pick my nose all day at home as it is, without them watching me driving around in a car, too. I'm going to do fuck all this summer, and that's just fine with me. Might not even go outside.

  When I was a pup, I used to hang around this sappy mechanic that would scramble the monitoring in cars, but he got caught and they caged him up. They got a list of all his customers and took them in, too. You never really hear of anyone reverse engineering anything any more, it's just not worth the grief. They'll call in the drones if you so much as break the warranty sticker on a device. Makes machines pretty fucking dull really.

  But it doesn't matter anyway, it's all a waste of time, trying to keep shit from the feds. There's too many of them and they don't ever let up. May as well just accept it. I don't really care about them watching me all the time, I'm pretty used to it by now. Sometimes I'll even take out my balls right in front of the set. Fuck it.

  There's this billboard outside that snaps your face when you walk past, and puts you into the ad. So you're up on the billboard riding a flaming jet-ski, drinking Rock Edge-Cola and being all, “Just taste that rocking edge.” It's really goofy. I always thought, if you were gonna get locked up for hacking some device, one of them billboards would be a great choice. You could make it say whatever you want, and put Soupman up on it riding the jet ski or something. You probably wouldn't be able to get near it without getting swarmed by drones, though.

  Rock Edge is pretty nasty stuff, I never touch it. But they do also make Hellergize Liquid Energy, which is damn tasty, so props to them for that. I guzzle that shit down all day, couldn't live without it. Especially the kind with the green stripe on the can. Have a look in the fridge in my room, it's nothing but Hellergize Green Stripe. I basically survive on it.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Politician

  Esteemed dogs of industry and finance, my good friends. If you choose to elect Ruff Sniff to office, I guarantee I will work around the clock to ensure that all your concerns are addressed promptly. I will do whatever it takes to ensure that you're granted all the favors money can buy. Any noble dog that donates to my campaign will be a friend for life, I won't rest until I've fulfilled my sworn duties to every one of my benefactors. As long as you meet the minimum 'with-perks' donation amount, I will make every one of your dreams come true, no matter how outrageous a premise.

  Do you need construction permits? I'll make them rain from the sky. Stricter copyright laws on the books? I'll throw every despicable thieving little pup into a dark grimy cell for ever daring to copy your IP, and still fine the fuck out of their parents. GMOs? I can get them into every school lunch, homeless shelter, hospital, force them into every foreign aid package, and ensure no label on any shelf in any supermarket will ever mention genetically modified organisms.

  I've also noticed that a big market that's going untapped is the organic food movement. I think I can confidently promise that I will be able to get GMOs approved to add to all that smelly hippie food, and they'll never even know about it.

  I know all of you have concerns about the obscenely inflated minimum wage, I want to assure you I have a highly sophisticated plan written up to cut it by at least 20%. Maybe more. If I'm elected, it'll be the first thing I do, guaranteed. That's 20% extra income that can go straight into your pockets. My opponent certainly can't promise that kind of action.

  And that's nothing, I also have a plan to cut corporate tax rates by more than half! My team has done a lot of number crunching, and they've put together an impressive proof of concept to make it happen. Basically, we'll start by inflating taxes for the less successful members of society further, in the name of bettering aid to... Oh, I don't know, starving third world orphans or something. Something they won't be able to kick up a stink about. Next, we'll just need to increase your tax rebates by rewarding your corporations for following environmental initiatives or some baloney.

  We'll just instate a minimum emission quotient on your power plants that's higher than the highest levels of emissions they currently release, so that you don't have to actually do anything to get the rebates. And maybe we can reward the automakers among you for using superior aerodynamics when building your awesome sports cars or something, say it preserves fuel and greatly furthers the all-important green initiative. We can come up with all kinds of make believe like that, and the public will eat it right up, just watch.

  How about this little gem? The government can agree to pay the salaries and benefits of any employees you hire, so long as their job description has something to do with safety or environment or accountability or one of those other beautiful meaningless terms the media loves to repeat. You could add a couple of made-up duties to the official job description of virtually everyone on your payroll and the government would foot the bill. Just think of the savings. And whenever you needed to fire someone, you could just blame it on 'government cutbacks'. You see how these brilliant ideas just pour out of me? I'm just full of them.

  It's easily feasible that, if I come up with enough of these bullshit tax incentives, you could be seeing the tax office sending you back a tax refund at the start of every quarter that doubles what you paid in the first place. It all depends on how big my campaign fund gets. The more incentive I have to do good, the more it'll benefit my valued benefactors.

  What about having the taxpayers provide every corporate executive with a brand new private jet? Ruff Sniff can make it happen. I'll have the media release stories calling attention to the fuel-guzzling, slow moving and frankly hazardous older private jet models our poor austere executives are forced to ride around in, made way back in the stupid ages of five years ago.

  Then I'll announce that, to improve safety in the skies and cause a drop in carbon emissions, the government is going to replace all outdated private jets with brand spanking new ones that meet with the new environmental initiatives, free of charge. And we'll even pay you to scrap the old jets, got to keep that recycling initiative going.

  There's an important issue I've been asked to address by the chem-cos. Yes, I will be able to guarantee the government will buy as many barrels of oil dispersant chemicals as you can muster up. Whenever the oil barons among you have an excess of oil and the market price is dipping too low, you can arrange for a little offshore oil spill, and I'll do the rest. It'll drive the price of oil right up, and the chem-cos will get paid handsomely for the millions of barrels of dispersant we'll flood into the sea. I even have a way for the government to reimburse you for the oil you lose at the later, post-spill price. It's a win-win-win.

  Do you feel the magic here, friends? A vote for Ruff Sniff is all it takes to ensure the future is as prosperous as your wildest dreams. I will have your backs every step of the way. I'll ship in legions of cheap immigrants, take away as many social benefits from the boors as possible, allocate government subsidies to all of your companies, slash taxes on private yachts, mansions, beach houses and private jets, massively increase the forced medicating of unruly welfare pups, triple cyanogenetic inoculations on the poor, allow you to pump more industrial waste into the water-bodies than ever before, fill the prisons with record numbers of inmates for cheap labor, double the drones in the sky, double the spraying of the atmosphere, triple the cancer rates, outsource more jobs, replace the last remaining family farms with corporate biotech operations, increase global warming, expand the sterilization program and finally reach 1
00% surveillance penetration in every home, on every street and in every head all over the world.

  There is no politician on this planet who can make all these promises to you and truly deliver. But you've seen my results so far, you know I will be your loyal ally for the remainder of my political career. I am the best instrument you have available to affect true and lasting change. I will serve you well, and you won't regret choosing me as your political representative in this fucking great nation.

  The market is paramount, the market is sacred and unassailable, and I will see to it that the market is completely dominated by your great companies. Together, we will wipe out small business, we will decimate consumer rights, we will conglomerate every trade and service into one all-encompassing international behemoth that you will control. Why, the very notion of competition will be a distant memory. Every captain on my team will have his monopoly secured indefinitely. That's a Ruff promise.

  There's a war being declared on you as we speak. The sneaky freeloaders on the Internet are mugging every one of you for every penny they can shake out of your wallets. They call themselves 'privacy advocates' or 'hacktivists' or 'copyright reformists' or 'free and open source software proponents', but we know what these scum-buckets really are, and we know how dangerous they are to the wondrous free market that our very survival depends on.

  It will be my number one priority to stamp out Internet freedom. I will push to ensure that no one will be ever dare use the Internet again without paying up for every little click they make. Picture a running meter, constantly demanding payment for every byte the user downloads, reads, watches, plays or listens to. Nothing but your locked-down corporate portals available to browse. This will be the Mona Lisa of my political career.