Friday, December 2, 2011

Delta Punx: Installment I: Digital Cowgirl and the Shamrock Cafe



The sign says-
Sorry, we’re CLOSED”,


which means, "We're OPEN" in this part of the universe.
We generally don’t move things in these parts. Call it PTSD.


Once they’ve been put down, they pretty much stay put. And we definitely don’t do any sort of advertising. So you can keep your Penny Savers and Midweek Value Shopper agents off my doorstep and outta’ my mailbox, K?
Here's another notion of interest you should know about the Shamrock Café and Boat House.


The redwood log dock ties laced with nautical rope look oddly enough in-place splayed out across this arid high-desert earth. Still attached to the 40 foot dock, scuffed from years of brawny logger's boots and skiffy deck shoes, are refurnished remnants of; a resting cabin cruiser, two cape islanders and four tugboats. All are "parked" out front without a drop of live water nearby. That's right- this here fine establishment used ta’ sit on the South Shore of the great Puget Sound, at the nook of Percival Landing in the North Western heart of Downtown Olympia.That is, before The Incident took place, it did. And so did I.
That’s just part of the problem with being a Superhero. Wait, let me take that back. That’s just part of the problem with being a known Super Hero…the general Super Villain tends to make it their job to screw with you. And if they can’t screw with your person directly, they’ll screw with all the shit you depend on, right down to the building you're standing in.
Anywho, you'd probably like to know about the night in question.


I’d been told that the Digital Cowgirl was the only way I’d find a trace of an answer to La Ti Da's identity. The Circus Obscura Collective had hired me on a short term contract with the understanding that if I could acquire a solid lead on the girl's identity I'd be branded and promoted to initiate status, allowing me entrance into the collective. And this is what I needed. Being a lone-wolf for the past 32 years had taken it's toll. I needed community.


So, I was out hustling information over hill and dale trying to get to DigiGirl 'cause rumor had it she held solitary access to the largest Superperson database and archive in North America. Little did I know that acquiring this information would come at such a huge cost to my freedom and her's, at least as we'd known it. But life’s weird that way. Even for Superbeing's, sometimes you have to lose something to gain something.


She was who I had to find and the irony of having to find the finder was not lost on me. No one could give me the straight dish on who and where she was, exactly. She'd maintained an elusively cloaked online existence minus the white-hat leeks she initiated. Luckily, like all good gossip there in lies snippet's of truth and from that I'd gold-panned a couple morsels; she loved fabric and the water and she was a notorious cameleon both online and in real-time. So I tossed caution to the wind and headed out towards the Pacific North West.


Digital Cowgirl's back story goes like this. D.C.was the daughter of a major direct marketing mail baron. He could get anything on anyone and wanted it that way, permanently. He started investing in nanotechnology before most citizens even knew what a modem was let alone microbial tracking devices. 
Here’s an example, by simply slipping a toothpick sized piece of nanofilm into each Direct Marketing catalog he could track every code that entered into a person’s house from the time of mail delivery to garbage removal; from UPC to VIN numbers and from accounts on checks to partial accounts series on bills.
You would be surprised how often people leave those annoying mailers laying around on their front porch or stack bills one on top of another inside their entryway and on the dash board of their friendly suburban sedan.
Now mind you, this experimentation the baron was doing was completely illegal and went undetected for years (except of course from select members of the Federal Reserve) making advertising a multi- trillion dollar industry for the Direct Marketing family of the Digital Cowgirl.
All this was unbeknownst to dear DigiGirl though. She thought her papsi's was just an unseemly advertising exec. Little did she know he was also the elusive and powerful Super Villain “Data Miner”, who had come into power deep in the heart of the 1950’s as advertising began to take shape under the burgeoning gaze of psychology.
As a member of the bra burning women’s right’s movement Demetra Matrilianos, as Digital Cowgirl was formerly known, wanted only revenge on her father for his sinister ways and she knew the only way she could do it was to turn on, tune in and drop off the face of the known universe-with very rare exceptions. Along the way she thought she might do an honorable service for the rest of us Super Hero’s since she needed a place to hide from her crazy papsi, and so did we.


And me? Well, I’m Brevity. And now, I run the Shamrock Café. Partly  ‘cause I can’t go anywhere else but mostly ‘cause all of us Super Hero’s need it. Without the ability to grab a good meal, talk to some of your own kind and blow off some serious steam going Chaotic Neutral for a while we’d have a universe full of a whole lot more Super Villains. 
 So stop by some time if you know how to get here. Were at 6-52755.




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