The Smart Phone Civil War

by Idaho Chubbs

PART I

When I was a young lad I never knew such technological wonders could exist past the first wheel ever created and the white lamborghini/lotus submarine that Roger Moore drove in "The Spy Who Loved Me". But then came Thee Lord Steven from the far away land of "Turtle Necked Jobs". He burrowed his way into our mind folds, leaking machine-fueled necessity into the white bloodless cells of our collective subconscious. Two decades later he is The Emperor of our meek planet and we are the ones with "new" clothes. With the arrival of the excruciatingly pointless ipad and it's subsequent golden child, the iphone 4, his clutches deepen to a core that even the great Dom Cobb could never "dream" but to trespass through. LET US ALL BOW TO THE CHURCH OF OUR SHACKLED I-LIVES! Let us worship these machines! (Morpheus voice) Let us take the immensely short time we have on "THIS ROCK" (Sawyer voice) to program our brains into living "life" through the glossy, black metallic, silvery structures that aid in our false communication with one another.

But whispers have surfaced, faint, but true; that a saviour...of sorts, has defied Lord Steven on the cavernous and rustic banks of Saint Nick's Sea Lawn of Roast Beef, giving him some much needed competition by a single, coup-like purchase. A tiny rebellion, yet small in nature, can start a mini WWIII. Change, and especially one that will break a tyrannical rein, is good--it's a start, but not without its consequences.

Hear ye! Hear Ye! A DroidX smart phone brick has been bought by one Boy Prince using the hard earned deutschmarks he has accumulated through displaying himself in front of a huge pick-up truck. And he wants everyone to know it. Yes, the new cellular device is bigger than my ego, but the upside is that I can watch INCEPTION on it feeling totally IMAXED while fielding a five minute phone call that will result in bulgy trophy-wife appreciating fore-arms, while standing in drunken dart frustration mediocrity known as La Lucky Dog. Alas this benefit will surely be lost on local hispterdom. They’d rather write in their "Mole-skin apps" and duct tape their i-jesus’s than tolerate the intolerance of being tolerant of the fact that Steve Jobs didn’t invent life (He’s the Atheist’s god right?). For a ripple of a dropped call apocalypse will echo from Beverly to Cambridge, boomeranging North to the ends of the EARTH (known as Rockport’s version of Diagon Alley).

As Great Colossus and The Throwbacks (Caspian) hypnotize the entire communist regime of the Starbucked—nest stadium-ed Eastern Land of Opium, I quickly fly to BP’s (no oil-spill pun intended) newly constructed Japanese bamboo beer garden he had just embarked on building for his latest Madame patron, to diffuse the fall-out that could crack the foundation of the Great Wall once the dastardly news spreads. For any hipster, let alone a North Shorian one, the thought of owning any ear-metal-transmitter device that is neither iphone nor the opposite (“I got this flip phone like 4 years ago. I don’t need all that internet mapquest bullshit. I just like, use it for texting and uh, as a phone.”) is complete blasphemy.

PART II

For over a fortnight my gut worms stood on mutinous end as civil war eventually struck our small arrangement of hamlets. The battles have commenced, already laying waste to good, honest, hipster, smart phone using lives. Colossus returned with a vengeful fury from the exotic lands of the East with battle-tested goods of silken worms, 5000 tons of duct tape, magic teas, and opium fit for consumption by every iphone fanboy/girl who would fight by his side. Somehow through a combination of his band's mythic brain vomit and a strategic use of his and Prinz Freddy's iphone strobe-light apps, he was able to hypnotize China into thinking our debt was paid back in full. The band instantly received every medal of USA significance from Obama, who also vigoriously declared "Some Are White Light" our new national anthem. A week ago today, the reign of terror began as they set foot back in fair Beverly, emboldened by Jobsian world domination, knowing their choice of technology was right for all humankind, whether they liked it or not.

Boy Prince and his ragtag "Widerstand", although small, had withstood Colossus's great army of gunslinging appsters thus far. A week earlier at La Lucky Dog, he had attempted to plead with him, justifying his purchase as being the best thing for his personal needs. The spikey-haired G-Star officiado would hear none of it. He was consumed with Apple domination. "How could anyone help but want to exist in a world without Shazamm or a pretend beer-drinking app"? He thought. "No one should. And anyone who does not have a want of this shall perish, no matter if it be friend, family or foe. Right then and there he ordered Prinz Freddy (who was somehow physically half iphone/Macbook cyborg by this point)to destroy Boy Prince with text lasers that sprang from is actual eyes screaming, "SEE YOU LAETAHHH!!!!" BP dodged Freddy's visual wrath, activating his bamboo-kevlar app ("DROID!" - Droid phone voice), suddenly covering him from head to toe (Think Batmobile security system style...Burton's BATMAN) in an impenetrable composite of both elements, hastily escaping with his life.

Once, a friendship formed by the gayest of times, now eternally sworn enemies (all because a silly piece of technology that makes you waste loads time by taking too many hipstamatic photos of yourself as well as constant updating about your life when you should just be living it (“I’m saying how cool my phone is, on my phone!”---Cut the meta crap sloors, it’s old).

As I sat in the Widerstand's "Paths of Glory"-styled trenches, curled up with my meagre fire and DroidX manual, I realized that our conflict was in vain. I had no need for such a contraption, and I would not stand to have my forearms, hands, and necky vein discs (although completely useless and whip-lashed from a week of digging trenches) replaced with Droid's pitiful T2000 "New Limb Extensions" App. Boy Prince's were all metal plates and bamboo veins now. All of the skin and bone from his elbow down had been torn off, resulting in a mess of tassel shredded blood bits, dripping with embittered puss. A recent, vicious shelling had killed his small platoon and left him shocked but not defeated. Colossus had secured a WWI German anti-tank app that had almost taken out Boy Prince as he was running reconnaissance missions back and forth on what use to be Route 127, from St. Nick's to the Apple Stronghold located in a Spanish villa styled stucco and red slated mansion located on the highest of cliffs of Magnolia. The spikey haired goliath (who strictly wore a charcoaled-grey, custom made G-Star Snuggy at all times now) had always fantasized of holding court in said architectural palace. His selfish dreams of world domination had made it sorrowfully so.

BP had wanted to amputate my arms.

He found that his new Droid ones were vastly superior to his old human ones. 

There was a fire burning in his eyes--

I feared he was turning into a machine. It had happened to Prinz Freddy (completely Apple product now), why not my Droid-loving friend, for even though our small gorilla-trenched army had started this most long and arduous week long war as one soul in defiance against the technological tyranny of Apple's Ceo Jobs and his trusty lieutenant Colossus 

(who wanted every single person in the world to have the exact computer and smart phone to express their individuality), 

we were coming apart, we were on the edge of defeat, starving with maddened rage from all of the smart phone radiation polluting once clean, crisp New England, apple orchard air. I-life had made it's mark on our world, it's Mussolini-like regime has rid us of choice, 

you could burn cds once--I remember...yes, ah, you could read actual books too, certain material things had their rightful place in our common, human nostalgia. 

Art you could touch and feel, along with the wonderful melodies existing through airwaves but also possessing a lovely decorated sheath envelope as its earthly home.

And stories that could be read by the touch of a page, you could mark parts manually in your cloth-bound tome, grabbing it whenever needed, not waiting for it to load, not worrying about having a $500 book (ipad) stolen from you on your morning commute. Mac Air, no cd drive, mp3s everywhere! What happens if it all gets blown to hell? Oh yes, you better back that shit up, OR I can just make a monumental book/cd/even DVD shelf that really puts the room together. Do apple products double as decor too? NO. We are slowly being forced to have no choice. Why must it be one or the other? What fun is giving a loved one a musical mix when the case is the size of a flash-drive? 

Even with a miracle defeat of Colossus, there would still be the task of rescuing Boy Prince's mind, for he had been marked from on high, by a far away big brother of sorts.

I saw that now. Much like the Bolsheviks' uprising a hundred years before us or Madame Defarge and her fetishized decapitation-loving rabble rousing mob two and change centuries hence, power would always corrupt. The Droid obsession was now equal to Colossus' fascist virtues. Boy Prince was a lost pawn who could not see the bleak truth staring back at him through his Pool Boy mirror app. I was on my own plain of opinion when it came to these thoughts. No one would dare question him now. His landscaping Cougar charm and “up for anything at anytime” influence reached far into our clan, including the feared dart sniper Frau General Katherine who had recently snuck a dart literally through a Droid messenger’s cigarette from 100 meters away just because he forgot to pay BP his proper respects when delivering treaty terms. This was a fate I had no want of, but I knew that unless I acted, this war was lost even if we won. 

Our army had become incredibly psychopathic, and not in a good way. Before the unnecessary death of our own scout by the sinister, medicinal hands of Frau, he had conveyed that Colossus, Prinz Freddy, and his star protege Jezebel (who thought any piece of technology not possessing an Apple logo should be banished from our planet despite the fact that her new version of itunes prevented her from fully enjoying her favorite mix-making hobby) were leading an all out apocalyptic assault on our crumbling above and underground headquarters. This knowledge gave me pause, but then made me realize that inaction of any kind would lead to the undoing of the fabric of our doomed(?) reality. Maybe they would destroy each other and save me the razor-sharp stress plaguing my being. But I could not take any chances. I was forlorn, wavering with monumental uncertainty. 

Night fell, my hands, limbs and brain, feeling distraught with pain and tense nerves. I blew my actual candle out in my hovel cave room positioned under the great walkway that criss-crossed the once beautifully manicured St. Nick's Lawn of Roast Beef. The darkness sunk into my core, beckoning to take me away to place of calm.

"CHUBBS".

There would be no peace, for the voice that echoed my name stirred a fear I had known but only two months ago. Somehow, some way, Mad Glen had found me. I figured his retribution was finally here to commence my physical undoing. 

"I know what you're thinking Idaho, but you would be wrong," said the voice. "You and me are square old man. I've come to solve your little problem." 

"How so?"

"You're not going to like it, but then again, you are actually a sicker more insane entity than I am even though you think the latter of me, it just isn't so...You will probably relish this final solution."

Six hours after dawn broke Glen's madness was achieved, and though I had been opposed to becoming part machine, his rationale had won out. Both smart phone generalissimo's had to be destroyed, and there was only one way to do it. 

We had removed my lifeless paws and replaced them with Nectar bottles made of the finest kevlar, kevlar so strong and rare that even the great Bruce Wayne had no knowledge of it. On the upper part of my spine lay an intricate fuse box the size of (ironically) a smart phone. The difference was that it was made of a skin composite His Madness had procured from T2000's refrigerator. The surgery was complicated but successful. My frame had been fully anesthetized in a free-standing tub of a watered down version of Trotsky goo. This enabled me to aid in the physically invasive endeavor while feeling no pain. Three tubes, each as thin as five needles were spliced into me from the spinal skin box, two traveling through my lean shoulder blades, down into my lats and forearms culminating in an entrance to the hand-Nectar containers. The third and final tube ran through my right rib canal touching on my lacking fat cells contained in one side of my always present fat back, finally resting in the pelvic forum where my gut worms held court. The toxicity of the worms was key. The skin box was able to translate my hybrid Nectar/blood into pure Nectar. Then the savory liquid was forced into the poisonous realm where the worms lay, destroying yet preserving their reptilian corpses, reproducing a toxic gut worm Nectar that could ravage any element known to man, but only when it hit earthy oxygen air. Because of this assault on my pelvic gut "friends", a gaseous, red ab vein formed; but that was as far as it went because as the poison was battling the sweet Nectar it was also constantly being recycled out of me only through the bottles and only when I vocally activated it by saying, "NECTAR ROAR!!!" Fortunately when I calmly purred, "Nectar", the bottles would produce the finest said drink, enabling me to quench my thirst literally when and wherever I wanted. 

* raw design sketch by Mad Glen

PART III


(Listen while reading: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iDMGSxURGqk)

Mine eyes hath seen some things in this universe, but I fear the worst for my fair and peaceful technologically lacking soul. For the final battle is set and the formerly beautiful, mossy green ground will surely run frat floor smelly yellow with the blood of many a PBR pitcher. And darts will be thrown, and shrapnel apps shall be deployed without discern for human life at people who love smart phones, from all sides of the spectrum. There can be no "recall" of fallen souls; Hades would never allow it. 

The gut worm Nectar was luke in my veins and my task was clear.

Like a running-back waiting to pick his tunnel to TD euphoria, I had to choose my moment wisely, have patience, and then STRIKE without reprieve. 

It went something like this.

The buildings tumbled in on themselves

Hipsters clutching their skinless bloodied femurs while attempting to text orders, picked through the rumble, scalped of all hair

The skyline was beautiful on fire, purple, grey, yellow, full of insecure distraction that had led to such a ridiculous scene

All twisted metal and duct tape, tattered designer clothes melding into vintage fabric-ed burnt flesh nightmares never foretold

Everything washed out in a bone thinned orange haze 

As I waited for my moment, standing in my bunker cave dwelling, I said, "Kiss me Mad Glen, you're beautiful, these are truly the last days."

He said, "No"

I chuckled sadly

Then fell upward, into it, like a raving mad daydream full of violence and fevered resolve.

I emerged from my trap door dwelling to a nuclear heat that would make President Truman jealous, immediately seeing a Boy Prince vs Colossus duel producing enough laser radiation to destroy the moon. Corpses flailed on the ground, most were already on Charon's boat. The facade of St. Nick's was shattered, caved in from multiple Desktop Mac cannon blasts. In a split second I caught both men's eyes, and they somehow knew what I was about to unleash. 

The propelled blast from my kevlar bottle wrist rifles sunk into their smart phone energy plasm. The three us held on to our singular voltages as if we were clutching the loves of our lives. 

Slowly a black hole started to form.

I felt the skin box in my lungs and chest yearning to rip out of my back, straight through to my solar-plexes. I held true as Boy Prince and Colossus slowly got sucked into the abyss. Both parties pleaded, worn faces of evil realizing their folly, right before their existence was about to be snuffed out. My conscience was clean as I fought back lowly, sleepless, blood tears. The greater good demanded their demise. But what had that ever done for an individual human being? If Hitler had been assassinated right after Viennese art snobs rejected his bad drawing perspective, well, it probably would have saved a million times six human lives, so...

One more, "NECTAR ROARRRRRRR!!!" and it was DONE. 

Their physical forms melded into the dark chasm, leaving no ounce of bone or body part in its wake. The black form imploded in on itself and unleashed a sound so sonically nuclear that I was catapulted fifty yards back into crumbled building rock, feeling the warm red blood trickle down my face as my skin broke open. It rained jagged stone ash. No sound sung to my ears as I saw two burnt-to-a-crisp smart phones on the ground; one iphone 4 and the other a DROID-X. Defeated, tiny machines; whoever knew they could produce so much destruction? 

I closed my eyes

then NOTHING...SILENCE. 

AFTERMATH

In the weeks following; relief, sadness, and talk of rebuilding came to pass. The only survivors were me and other people that don't really matter, much like most of the castaways on LOST. Prinz Freddy's metal dome head still functioned despite it being severed from his body, but was quickly melted down for scrap, just in case. Our national anthem was restored, and China quickly let us know that we still owed them our great grandchildren's college tuition. Lord Steven, and even the Google heads of state were put under close surveillance by the CIA; but since nothing actually linked them to Colossus or BP's actions, no prosecution took place. About two thousand cougar housewives/Boston entrepreneurs/hipsters/creative people who like cool things but don't try as hard, died in the war. Marshall Law had never been imposed simply because Obama was under Colossus's strobe light app's spell. It's as if nothing happened in the eyes of the world. I felt as crazy and angry as Rorschach, except, luckily (I guess), I still walked this earth. 

But The North Shore knew. At first the people wanted me to be Mayor of all the villages. I declined and gave the power back to them. I only warned that they remember what had happened here and not repeat it. Technology was a beautiful thing, but not all things have to die right away for progression to happen.

Despite all I've been through in this silly life, this particular war had taken many a toll on me. Good friends became arch enemies and then I had to rid the earth of them. It was almost too much to bare.

I placed the ashes from both of their phones in an urn made from Prinz's head, placed it on one of Boy Prince's old, rickety surfboards, lit it on fire, and sent it down the bamboo garden pond he had worked so hard to create outside the PF Changs off of Route 128. 

"So you did IT."

Glen stood directly behind me.

"It was terrible, but yes."

He continued, "I forgot to tell you something. There is an extra feature I installed for your bottle hands. Once this fight was over, there would be no need for such a weapon. Calmly say, "Nectar Hands."

I did, and suddenly the bottles broke apart smoothly and formed into actual kevlar hands that had the smoothness of human skin.

"My hands! They work again! I feel like I can do normal things like wash dishes or make my bed."

"Indeed", said Glen. But I also have a plan for you, and I think you know what it is. Like I said we are square but this will be good for both of us.

"What is it?"

"WE GOTTA GO BACK!...to the University of Hawaii.