Dr. Identity Read Online Free PDF Page B

office door opened and I jaunted into a soundless, black-and-white wax museum…
    Bodies and limbs and innards littered the hallway and dangled from the ceiling. I moved through the jungle slowly at first, calculating the holocaust with the exactitude of a forensics expert. I became less attentive and more anxious the further I proceeded down the hallway. Eventually I was darting here and there at the speed of so many popping flashbulbs.
    The English department bore the likeness of an exhumed graveyard. The mangled corpses of professors, student-things and their ’gängers had been strewn everywhere. The title of one of Phillip José Farmer’s preneurorealist novels rattled in my head: To Your Scattered Bodies Go …A light, swimming fog carpeted the hallway. I could almost see it growing thicker as the internal pipes of torn open androids spit out smoke and steam…I tripped over Gertie’s sluglike corpse, stumbled, and tramped on Dr. Dickens’ severed head. It cracked and caved in beneath my shoe…Blood and guts oozed down the walls…A pile of ravaged student-things barred my way into the English department’s main office. I climbed up the pile, lost my footing, tumbled forward and rolled into a standing position. The department secretary, Mary Kay Rumblepot, lay face down on its desk. The android was an older model. Its oily, neon brain leaked out of a hole in its onyx head.
    Pieces of Frick and Frack had been stuffed into the faculty mailboxes. I recognized the monstrous jaw, the ham-fist, the antiquated brownshirt…
    I flashed over to Hemingway’s office door and peeked inside.
    Like Mary Kay, he lay face down on his desk. Instead of a hole in his head, however, there were three plastic forks.
    I walked over to him. I grabbed a fork and pulled up on it.
    Professor Hemingway’s beard had been ripped off of his face. In its place was a dripping chin of bone…
    The smoke rose, thickened…I flashed down the hallway…
    Sirens whined in the distance…
    Back in my office, dreamtime reverted to realtime…I noticed a cut on Dr. Identity’s neck. Silver blood leaked from the wound. The android had retrieved Lucille from the ceiling and was turning over her corpse in its hands.
    I shook my head at it in disbelief.
    Dr. Identity made a frog face. “I guess I malfunctioned. But the one insurrection I committed is enough to merit the death penalty, despite its accidental nature. I figured a few more wouldn’t hurt.”
    “You murdered the entire English department. You murdered my boss.” I hesitated, overwhelmed by desperation. “How am I supposed to get tenure now?”
    Dr. Identity blinked. “I don’t understand the question.”
    The sirens were close now, and I could hear voices. If only I had time enough to revisit the luge…
    “Let’s go.”
    Dr. Identity dropped Lucille and followed me out of the office.

03
    PLAQUEDEMICS AT LARGE – 1ST PERSON ('BLAH)
    Escaping the department wasn’t easy. The elevator was out of commission again. I told Dr. Identity to hotwire it. The android ripped off the control panel and jammed its finger into a tangle of fiberoptics. No dice: the system had crashed.
    I climbed on Dr. Identity’s back, wrapped my arms around its neck and told it to head for the service stairway. The English department was on the 111th floor of the Boingboing Tower—not a chance of me descending that many floors on my own, especially in a hurry. When we emerged onto the landing, however, there was a herd of Pigs galloping towards us from two floors down. The genetically souped up pseudonyms-made-flesh flaunted German war helmets, oversized Fisher Price mirrorshades and martial arts weaponry. Surrogates of the police, they would tear us to shreds with ease. I got off Dr. Identity’s back, pulled it back into the department, slammed and bolted the door.
    The smoke in the hallway had swelled to our waists. We hurried back to my office, stumbling over corpses and body parts, and retrieved my