Chapter 30

“Welcome to Thugz Mansion, homie,” Tupac greeted Isaac from the hot tub. “Happy to see you’re participating in the festivities and enjoying our many amenities.” He rubbed the end of his nose.

Surprisingly, Isaac got his hint, but rather than wetting the ends of his fingers in the water to scrub his nose clean, he lowered his entire body into the hot tub, clothes and all. “This is nice!” he shouted to Tupac and Zee over the jets once his head resurfaced. “The water is so warm! Makes you want to pee!”

“Oh fuck!” Tupac laughed. “This your boy, Zee?”

“I’m not sure who he is,” Zee admitted.

“I come from Earth,” Isaac informed them, prompting Zee and Tupac to side-eye each other before laughing. “What? I do.”

Once Tupac calmed down, he picked up Isaac’s VIP badge, bobbing amongst the bubbles. “Shoulda known. He’s Anne’s boy.”

“Huh,” Zee said flatly.

“Your cat led me to you.”

“Captain Flapjacks?” Zee wondered.

“Yes.”

“No shit,” Tupac said, surprised. “Good on you to bring party favors with you. I see you got some manners.”

“Well, until I lost him,” Isaac conceded.

“Goddamn.” Tupac shook his head, disappointed.

“But before my love interest stole him, Captain Flapjacks led me to you, Zee.”

“Why?” Zee asked.

“I have to save the world! Together!”

“Save the world?” Tupac asked, laughing again, eying this wet Muppet of a man floating around his Jacuzzi. “You must be trippin’.”

“Did the cats ever get to Super Jesus?” Zee asked.

“P38 may have. I sort of blacked out during the last battle.” Isaac rubbed the back of his head apologetically. “What do they want with Super Jesus?”

“To kill him, I suspect. It’s what I would do.”

“Rat-a-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat!” Tupac imitated gunshot noises. “That’s just the way it is.”

“You would?” Isaac asked. “Kill him?”

“If I wanted to save the human race, I would,” Zee responded casually.

“Cold.” Tupac let out a long, low whistle. He sunk a little lower in the tub.

“How does killing Super Jesus save the human race?” Isaac inquired.

“Because it stops the lizards from finishing Super Jesus 2.”

“...”

“Enough. Just give it to him straight, aight?” Tupac said. “Beating around the bush over here. The man’s a guest.”

Zee sighed as a preamble to her story. “Once upon a time, I wrote a little film named Super Jesus. You may have heard of it. Well, I thought it was pretty clever. A satire on what would happen if the second coming of Jesus came of age during the age of superheroes—”

“You can skip that part. I’ve seen it,” Isaac interrupted. “Everyone has.”

“Thank you, sweetie. Believe me, no one appreciates compliments more than I do, but yours is hollow. I mean, you couldn’t help but like it. What you don’t know is that Super Jesus was engineered to make you re-watch it. It’s like if I gave you a baggie of coke and you complimented my cooking skills.”

“Some is better than others,” Tupac reminded her.

“But you get my point. I didn’t realize it when I first wrote Super Jesus. In fact, I didn’t really remember writing the movie, and I thought that was sort of weird. The whole thing sort of came to me out of the blue, almost as if they were divinely inspired.”

“Angels?” Isaac asked.

“Lizardmen,” Zee countered.

“Lizardmen,” Tupac agreed. “Goddamn Illuminati bullshit.”

“I only figured it out after snooping around Lennox’s office.”

“What tipped you off?” Isaac asked.

“Nothing. Happy accident. Sheer luck. I thought he was cheating on me with Margot Robbie, and I wanted the evidence.”

“I’m not about that life,” Tupac assured her.

“I know, baby,” she told Tupac before continuing. “So, as I was saying, I was in Lennox’s desk and imagine my shock to discover that my therapist—”

“Dr. Rousseau?” Isaac asked for clarification.

“Yes, Dr. Rousseau. I’m ashamed to admit it, but he stewarded nearly all my ideas for the movie from the start. He had a subtle hand in the process, and I was too full of my own ego to notice. But he got me to write the damned thing, and that’s how I got involved in a grand conspiracy to enslave the human race via a superhero movie.”

“But how?” Isaac wondered. “How does that work? A movie?”

“The movie has a hypnotic effect on the audience. But there’s a catch. It supposedly takes some time to rewire our brains to pick up the signal, so their plan is only coming to fruition now even though it was set in motion decades ago.”

“Baby brains. Psychological conditioning,” Isaac said more to himself than the group, remembering both Anne’s lesson on consciousness and the focus group at the Twin Towers. So all those slack-jawed patients in the rec room weren’t retarded, as Isaac had initially assumed. They were hypnotized! And Isaac must have been immune because of his lizardness.

Zee continued, “All the superhero movies and television shows over the years were produced to elevate the idea of superheroes in the public consciousness. That was step one. Step two was Super Jesus. That movie planted a religious fervor into the culture. It primed the pump, so to speak, for the sequel, which is the key that will start the ignition. Once they view Super Jesus 2, it’s over.”

“How could this happen?”

“Easily. People have willingly lost sight of the boundary between fiction and reality. Don’t believe me? Look at the Harry Potter sorting program and the U.S. Ministry of Magic. Imagine selling out 25% of the population to the government so you can pretend to live in a children’s book. The fact that House Badges implemented another caste system/status symbol to lord over your neighbors was just an added sweet treat. Only Disney adults are a lower form of life than these people,” Zee spat. “Any nation accepting of Disney adults has already been hypnotized and imprisoned by the power of pop culture propaganda..”

“What do the lizards want with hypnotized humans?” Isaac needed to know.

“Rape?” Zee posited a guess. “I don’t know. I never really got that far, but I know whatever it is, it’s not good.”

“Nah,” Tupac interjected, “they’re harvesting our minds.” He tapped his temple.

“What were you doing that night at the Annenberg?” Isaac asked Zee.

“Captain Flapjacks told me to get Super Jesus to meet him there. It was a setup, and I was the bait,” Zee explained. “The more I looked into what Lennox was up to, the more I realized that the Birmans played an integral part in the cinematic hypnotization process. They have some sort of special effect. So when I went to the cat trainer—”

This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.

Isaac cut her off again, “Jane Furbaby?”

“Yes, Jane Furbaby!” Zee shouted, exasperated. “Can I finish? Please? I’m the storyteller, aren’t I?”

“Let her cook,” Tupac instructed Isaac.

“Thank you, baby. So when I went to see Jane to dig deeper into the situation, I got this visualization from the cats like they were telling me to go to the Annenberg telepathically. But I’m not sure what would happen once we got there because we were attacked by a lizardman.”

“I remember that from my dream. Mark was lucky to get out alive.”

“Mark’s alive?” Zee said with astonishment. “We got split up.”

“Who’s Mark?” Tupac demanded.

“A bit of good news, bad news on that front. The good news is that Mark survived that night at the Annenberg. But the bad news is a lizardman killed him a different night.”

“Oh, god,” Zee exclaimed.

“But he’s here! In Thugz Mansion, and he’s still in love with you.”

“Aww, sweetie. That’s so Mark.” Zee smiled, but Tupac did not.

“And the blue beam at the center of the Annenberg?” Isaac pressed.

“I don’t know what that was,” Zee admitted. “It was beautiful, though, in a scary-as-fuck sort of way. So then, after I escaped from the Annenberg, I went to Anne for help, looking for a place to lay low. I thought I should remove myself from the game if we couldn’t remove Super Jesus. No screenwriter, no reshoots, no movie, right?”

“Do you know what made you so special that only you could write the script?”

“How much time do you have?” Zee teased. “Kidding. Well, sort of kidding, not really. I mean, aside from my marvelous wit and poetic prose, what made me special, probably, is I’m half-lizardwoman and half-human.”

“Girl’s got the tongue to prove it. Ayyyyyyy!” Tupac added, which earned him a playful splash from Zee.

“Just like me,” Isaac marveled.

“One of your parents fucked a lizard, too, huh?” Zee said, and Isaac had never thought of his conception in those terms before. He wondered which one of his parents it was, and for some reason he suspected the culprit was his father. Had to be. Isaac fucked a vacuum.

While Isaac reckoned with the information his father was a lizard-fucker, Zee mused, “There must be something about the half-lizard and half-human mix that works as a conduit to implant lizard code to humans. We’re the mac-to-PC adapter dongle, I guess.”

“And Dr. Rousseau must have been our handler. I wonder how many more clients he has,” Isaac wondered, but the idea elicited only a shrug from Zee. “Unfortunately,” Isaac continued, “I don’t think your plan worked, Zee. It seems they’ve nearly perfected the sequel without your input. Just today, on my way to Anne’s, I saw a billboard promotion for the upcoming teaser trailer release, if that’s any indication.”

“Oh?” Zee seemed unfazed.

“You have to come back to Earth and help me stop them. That must be what Captain Flapjacks wanted me to come here and tell you.”

“Thanks, but no thanks. You can tell him I’m flattered that he thinks I can save the world, though.”

“…”

“Don’t give me that look. Why the fuck would I want to leave Thugz Mansion and go back to Earth?” Zee asked, as mad at Isaac as she was incredulous. “Have you seen this place?” She lifted the bubbles of her bath as evidence. “Did you even realize these are champagne bubbles? That we’re bathing in champagne?” Isaac cupped some bath water, brought it to his face, and drank. It was champagne. Isaac hiccuped.

“And have you seen my man? Look at him!” She indicated Tupac, who was Tupac. “Why would I give this up for Earth?”

“I mean, this is nice. But there’s always something better. It’s not heaven, right?” Isaac asked.

“Not technically, no,” Tupac said.

“Well, what if you saved the world, Zee? Maybe that would make up for driving that Irving Hodges kid to suicide. Maybe you’d get into heaven?”

“This place suits me way better than heaven.”

“Heaven is kind of whack anyway,” Tupac declared.

“It is?” Isaac needed to know.

“Sure,” Tupac confirmed. “In heaven, you become one with God. It’s pure bliss, you understand? But at what cost?”

“Pure bliss sounds kinda nice,” Isaac ventured.

“Yeah, yeah, yeah, but when you become one with God, you really become one with God, you know what I’m saying? That shit is no joke. You lose yourself. Poof! Gone! Sayonara, sucker! You become nothing more than a drop of water in the ocean,” Tupac explained.

“But a happy drop of water?”

“An ecstatic drop of water,” Tupac confirmed, “An orgasmic drop of water, even, if I may be so bold, but how do you differentiate the drops of water in the ocean?”

“So what?” Isaac said, enticed by the idea. A little euphoric anonymity sounded nice after all this time being used and abused for who and what he was.

“Pfft,” Tupac countered. He looked over to Zee. “This fucking guy, eh?”

“This fucking guy,” Zee concurred.

“Well, Isaac, we ain’t about that, aight?”

“Wait, are you alive or dead?” Isaac asked Tupac.

“I’m as alive as the hills were with the sound of music,” Tupac confirmed.

“That a Sound of Music reference?” Isaac asked.

“What? You don’t think I fuck with Julie Andrews, Isaac? How do you think a young Pac learned his scales? Want me to call her up here? I will. She’s kicking around Thugz Mansion someplace. I usually find her in the ball pit.”

But Isaac declined his offer. “So, did Anne send you here, too? Like Zee?”

“Yeah. Yeah. Did me a solid when I needed a place to get my head right. And while I was kickin’ it here, I built Thugz Mansion as a place for all my niggas to rest in power.”

“What about Elvis? Dead or alive?”

“That fat fuck is dead.”

“And Biggie?”

“That fat fuck is dead, too.”

“Oh. Well. You don’t have to hide anymore, Tupac. Death Row is over, and Suge Knight is in jail,” Isaac said. “He ran a guy over.”

“For real?” Tupac laughed. “Sounds like something Suge would do. But I wasn’t hiding from him.”

“Who were you hiding from?”

“To be straight up with you, I don’t hide from anyone. You got that? But I was evading, you understand? I was evading the Illuminati. What else? I was getting too big for them. Getting too much attention. It put a target on my back, you know what I mean? It’s why they shot me. Originally, I planned to plot my revenge and return from the dead, Machiavelli-style, after seven days, or that was the theory anyway.”

“And then what happened?” Isaac asked.

“I realized something. I had to get out of the game for myself. I was getting too big for myself. I needed to evade myself.”

“...”

“The power trip was sending me, brotha. I didn’t like what it was doing to me. But I was addicted to it. When you got a room full of people, an arena full of people, and they’re hanging on your every word, they’re vibing with you, they’re worshipping you, you can feel it. It’s intoxicating. Better than any coke Zee could cook up.”

Isaac did know what Tupac was saying this time. “The force. You were feeling the force from the crowd.”

“I could tell them to jump, and they’d jump. I could tell them to fuck, and they’d do that, too, you know? It got really surreal when I went to jail, I tell you. I could have started a prison riot just like that, and the whole place woulda popped off.” Tupac snapped his fingers. “The power. The influence. It wasn’t good for me.” He tapped his temple. “I had to get humble.”

“Did it work?” Isaac looked around at their glitzy, maximalist surroundings.

“Hell yeah, but this place got me soft,” Tupac lamented. “Heaven ‘ain't shit, but Thugz Mansion ‘ain't perfect either, you know? After a while, you realize that your best life is simply life itself. Living. It’s true what they say: you gotta have some lows to feel the highs. You spend enough time here, and you become numb, and I’m not talkin’ about the coke.” Tupac pulled Zee closer to him. “Zee, here, will figure that out sooner than later. I try to tell her, but she won’t listen. So that’s why I’ll come back to Earth with you.’’

“You will?” Isaac and Zee asked simultaneously.

“Yup. Got that right. We’re going to put it to those lizard bastards.”

“Fine.” Zee pouted.

“What’s wrong, baby?” Tupac asked Zee.

“Besides the obvious? Please. I don’t want to get into it in front of the help.” Zee indicated Isaac with her chin. “It’s embarrassing.”

“C’mon. He needs us. The human race needs us. Captain Flapjacks needs us. There’s no need to trip. I’ll come back for you, but I got a job to do. They don’t call me the Don Killuminati for nothing.”

Zee rolled her eyes. “No one calls you that except for yourself. Fine. Go ahead. Take your little boys’ trip, but I’m staying here,” she said as the champagne bubbles in the bath began to burst. “Have fun.”

“Thanks, babe. I’ll bring you back something nice from Earth.”

“Wait!” Isaac insisted. “Before we go, can you tell me how my storyline ends, Zee? I only got as far in the Super Jesus sequel script as the Koreatown ambush. What happens to me next?”

Isaac’s question produced the first genuine smile Zee’s face had seen in years. “I’m sorry, Isaac. No spoilers,” Zee taunted.

“But —” Isaac tried.

“Don’t bother, my guy. Let it die,” Tupac warned before softening his words. “No sense of worrying. It’s wasted energy. Whatever will be will be.”

Somehow, Tupac’s simple wisdom instilled a small sense of serenity in Isaac. “Okay. So, how do we leave Thugz Mansion?” Isaac asked, moving on with his life.

“We gotta hit the strip club,” Tupac said as if it were obvious.

When Tupac arrived at the strip club with Isaac in tow, it was, as Destiny’s Child would say, bumpin’ bumpin’. Isaac didn’t quite understand the economics of Thugz Mansion and what purpose money served here, but he sure did enjoy himself as cash rained down on him from everywhere. Bills. Bills. Bills. But there wasn’t any time to soak up the scene as Tupac hurriedly ushered Isaac to center stage, where two bootylicious babes were in mid-routine.

“Excuse me, ladies,” Tupac said before inviting Isaac on stage. “Go on now.”

“Me?” Isaac questioned Tupac after the strippers obliged them by ceding the stage to Isaac. “I couldn’t. I haven’t warmed up. And I don’t think the DJ has Avril Laivgne’s I’m With You.”

“Get up there and get on that pole,” Tupac ordered, and Isaac obeyed, doing his best not to slip on any of the money that littered the platform. Isaac was about to request Mystikal’s Shake Ya Tail Feather as his second favorite song to strip to until he got up close and personal to the pole. He could now see that the stripper pole was more of the fireman variety as a hole was cut into the stage around the pole to allow someone to slide down it and through to the other side.

Carefully, Isaac tip-toed to the hole’s edge and peered down. He expected to find a basement below or a dressing room to peep into, but there was no such thing in Thugz Mansion. Instead, Isaac saw a perfectly blue sky interrupted only by the chrome pole extending downward into infinity.

“The wind helps with stage effects, too. Blows the girls’ skirts up,” Tupac noted. “It’s time, brotha. Let’s ride. I’ll be right behind you, aight?”

Isaac nodded. It was hard for Isaac to tell whether the courage he felt swelling up inside him was a product of all the drugs he consumed or the fact Tupac had his back, but Isaac confidently gripped the pole and ripped it, sliding down and out of Thugz Mansion at a million miles per hour. The air through his hair and the sun on his face was exhilarating. Isaac was a survivor. He wasn’t going to give up. He wasn’t going to stop. He was going to work harder to keep on surviving.