Happy Faced Spider by GB Hajim

Happy Faced Spider
A sci-fi feature film concept by GB Hajim

At work Hunger Miyasato worked on the 222nd floor. Some said he had made it to the top in a short dash.

He was an anomoly of anomolies in the business world in Honolulu: a Japanese-american whose father was a tall black Jew sheep herder from Ethiopia and mother a ginger farmer from the Big Island.

Hunger was a corporate developer of software that was designed to infiltrate specific nodes in the Web and fragment web sites and destroy data structures. He thought as a youth what a clean form of warfare. Just computers destroying data.

Unfortunately, his latest system was being used to disrupt food distribution in People's Republic of South China and was causing a famine that could killed millions of people.

No one even declared it a war. No one knew it was man made except the people who authorized it and maybe a few their software maintainence personelle.

Hunger could read the patterns of the net like a Happy Face spider reads his web.

He knew it was one of the corporations he had sold his software to and with a couple more hours of looking he would figure out which one did it.

The speed was burning off: the day was over- it was 11pm. Time to go through the after work ritual.
The last of the employees filed into the elevator with Hunger. Down a hundred or so floors- starting to tell jokes to relieve the day's stress. Practicing their english while telling the dirtiest of stories.

Hunger Miyasato sat at a table in a gishu lounge. He drank Wat Beer and was intoxicated to the point of being aware of where he was and all that went on around him, but not self aware. He saw the businessmen all laughing in their shopo-groups: straight from work never seeing their wives or families. They play vitual honofuta to win for only winners have honor, but winners have to buy the drinks. Hunger had always won more than he could afford. The tall thin curtosy girls attached themselves to the various large pieces of furniture. Dressed in formal evening attire, like some neo-Parisian noir flic, contrasting sharply against the stark naked women who danced on raised tables. A band of americans played old loose jazz standards that turned the air into a thick cream. The club designer must dream in Champs-Elysee Burlesque. Hunger tried to look at the naked women fucking these long blinding xenon tubes. The light was piercing, hard to look at until one of these bitches sucked it up inside herself and it became a warm glow and she the earthmother.

"Dojo, tu as une sale gueule. Qu'est-ce tu veux?"

One of these young nipponese francophile living mannikins had come up to him to ease him out of the club. Everyone knew Hunger would take the Fall soon or the Rothko: the Dive.

"No french. Speak anglo or japanese."

"Look dojo, you gotta go."

"Merci."

Hunger wanted to say "va te faire foutre" fuck off, but no one says such stuff here. He'd rather beat himself against a wall then be caught swearing at a non-person. He looked into the light. The earthmother was off the glare. Her incandescent red hair filtered the rays. Her olive skin sparkled with sweat. Her green eyes flashed as she covered the sun bright bulb and her wet mouth opened and relaxed. The music swam around her. Then a single loud click of cold heavy metal cut the music off.

It could have been his skull hitting the marbled table or maybe his brain implant going awry, but a hand gripped his shoulder and steered him effortlessly into the elevator and down to the street where Hunger had not been since he arrive in Honolulu 9 years ago. The street were filled with cars and pedestrians filled the sidewalks eventhough it was the middle of the night. The hand on his shoulder was attached to three other people he did not know. He was too drunk to resist and too suicidal to care. Through tunnels and metros, monorails and cars, Hunger always looking out the window for that warm light. The hand steered Hunger into an old temple and down halls past monks to an empty room. The door was left ajar, but Hunger just lay down on the stone floor and fell asleep.

A monk was at the door offering herbs and a modest breakfast. Later the monk silently beckoned Hunger out to a bath area. Hunger cleaned himself and was given monks orange robes. Another monk motioned for him to sit and enjoy the rock garden and after a while Hunger saw the river flow through the dry garden and was taken to gather wood for the evening meal.

Such a place cannot exist, Hunger thought. With the world crammed end on end, I cannot be walking through a forest gathering wood.

Then he remembered the program and the millions dying in China. He ran from the woods back to the monastary. He shook the monks asking them how to get back to the city. In English, Japanese, and Chinese. The monks didn't understand what he was saying. They were displaced Tibetan monks and spoke only in Sanskrit.

He ran from the monastary. He ran down the hill. The night was falling and it was winter. He began shivering in the cold and it began to snow. He saw a small shack. Inside candles burned and a small family ate a modest meal. He knocked on the door. The family offered for him to come in. They were Cantonese and couldn't really understand Hunger's Mandrin, but through dinner Hunger realized how poor these folks were.

At first Hunger tried to walk to another town, but during a days travel he found no towns. He would come back tired and sore. The daughter, Ye, would massage his feet. One night he fell in love with Ye and promptly forgot the famine eventhough he had landed right in the middle of it. When he awoke he understood their Cantonese better and they adopted him as one of the family: almost too readily.

By the time he awoke. They were ushering him to a little house out back which had been converted and where the daughter was busily making tea.
She called him husband as he drank. He worked with his father in-law on the roof of the barn and made love to his wife in the moon light.

In the middle of the night, some police knocked down the door and rounded the family into a truck with lots of other families. The police were shabbly uniformed Americans and Hunger tried convincing them that they were making a mistake. They assured him that they were not and drove them to a large internment camp out on the edge of a desert.

The months passed and the police guards smoked Wat cigarettes and Hunger and his wife had a child.

Xpati Day, Hunger was dragged into the office of the camp warden. He was made an offer to become one of them. His family was offered a house and a job with the police. He accepted.

On the first night patrol, he came across some starving people breaking into a food dispensary. The officer in charge ordered Hunger to kill them. When Hunger hesitated, "Do they.." said the officer as he pointed his weapon at the cowering, starving people "have a place in your heart?" He swung his gun and poked it gently at Hunger's chest. Without looking Hunger unloaded his semi-automatic into the ground near the people-the officers began laughing- then Hunger swung wildly, killing the officer and the other two soldiers. He jumped into the jeep and drove fast to his house that was already ablaze and surrounded by MP's. He turned and was chased driving into a small town.

He managed to escape and stole a car and drove into a big city and got good and lost.

He abandoned all his police gear and clothing and wore the clothes he found in the car.

With the little bit of money he had he checked himself into a small bar where a band was playing the blues of course. When he laid his money on the bar to pay for his drink he noticed the face on the bill was his own.

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