This is how it works. I ride my bike down the street looking in apartment windows until I see a TV set. I ride right next to the sidewalk, letting the very hot air move over my arms and chest.
When I see a TV set, big blue square through the parted curtains and behind the translucency of the insect screen, I reach behind me and unsling the biathlon rifle from my back.
Feet flat.
Lock left elbow against chest so bone supports stock of rifle.
Left hand pushed forward hard against the shooter's sling.
Big blue square bright inside the black ring of closed aperture sight, just to right of a silhouetted human head.
Fucking sights are bouncing all over because it's a standing shot - always hard - and my heart rate is way up. I wait for the old ticker to bump the sight picture back up and snap it off.
A gratifying "glass rod breaking" 4 pound trigger pull and I watch the TV go dark and listen to the screaming from inside the apartment. One down.
The rifle is a real thing of beauty and truth. An Anschütz Biathlon rifle with a hammer forged barrel and 1/6 M.O.A. corrosion-resistant micrometer sights. It's got a spiffy crank action - which means I just let my shooting hand float up, kind of wave over the receiver, and she's ready to dance again, pulling from a little five round magazine tucked up into the stock.
Why the biathon rifle? Well, like my Great-uncle used to say, "You could drive tacks with that sumbitch." And let's be honest, assault rifles are so played. And the Anschutz looks great on TV. I already made my martyrdom tape - it seems everyone's putting one out, but I don't have a cave in the mountains, so I shot mine under the overpass from inside a burned out car, wrapped in the California flag and wearing a jock strap. Flag doesn't mean anything, just giving the profilers something to chaw over later. Tape's on my desk right now, with a note for the police.
Back on the bike and I'm looking in windows. I can't believe how much people spend on these TV's! They are huge! You live in some shit apartment that's going to kill you in the next earthquake, but you own a $3000 tv set? I'll never understand. This next one's a beaut - really big. Two kids are sitting in front of it, watching what appears to be "Ace Ventura: Pet Detective." I put one right between their cabezas. That's two.
And here is the police helicopter! And the news copters! Everything is right on track.
I was very much waiting for this. That's why I have my web address painted in block letters across the back of my body armor. Planetmotherfucker.net. I'm wearing body armor and a ballistic helmet. A guy shooting out TV's from the back of his mountain bike, with a biathlon rifle? That, ladies and germs, is what we call good TV. For those tuning into my website, they can hear the streaming audio from my cellphone, which is velcroed over the trauma plate on my body armor.
Another tv set! Everyone is headed inside, to watch the chase, of course! This means more TV's to shoot.
The police are headed my way, according to the sirens. As the first one rounds the corner, I put a fast two shots through the windshield, and they thrown on the brakes. This .22 won't even go through the windshield - just give them a scare and a medal. Plus it makes me a credible threat.
I am cranking hard, back up the hill. The road is a dead end - to cars. Three more police prowlers are speeding up the road.
More windshield shooting. Back on the bike and down the pedestrian stairs at the end of the cul-de-sac. Full suspension Cannondale takes it like butter.
It's a really long ways off, maybe fifty yards, when the buckshot flips me off the bike. I'm a little winded, dinged to be sure, but it's back on the bike and between some homes. I know the terrain.
Ok, I'm scared. Really scared.
I ride like I never thought I could. This is like riding home after getting hit by a car - but MORE. It's GOOD, scary good.
I left a bunch of shit on my website about how I've been growing anthrax in my basement. The police have to know about this by now. I drop two super stink bombs I made last week behind me and keep stroking for the park. That will put the fear of god into them.
For just a moment, it's me and the helicopters. I'm in an open field at the bottom of the biggest hill in the park. I unsling the rifle again and start trying to put rounds through the fuselage windows on the police chopper. It's good TV.
Back on the bike. Ride hard, right to the top.
Water tower at the top of the hill. A squat cylinder made of plate steel. Under the roof is a metal grillwork that rings the top level - like the loopholes and murder holes on a medieval keep.
That's the last of the bike. I'll miss riding. I wonder what I was thinking.
I was thinking that it was time to put my money where my mouth is, that I would rather die than go back to working in an office.
And today is as good a day to die as any.
That sounds good on paper, but I didn't think I would still feel the fear under the rush.
I could stop now - just throw the rifle aside and surrender. There could still be sun. They let you see the sun, even in prison. Even in an office.
I have to get into the top of the water tower before the ground units get here. I just manage to slip inside when a rifle round takes my right foot and spins it around backwards - like I'm an incorrectly articulated GI Joe doll.
I am an incorrectly articulated GI Joe doll.
I am an action figure with no actionable intelligence.
I slam the door shut behind me and padlock it from the inside. I'm basically invisible now - so I swap out the Anschutz for an AR-15 I've been building in the basement. It's loaded with rubber bullets that I bought off the Internet. It's got a very heavy barrel, and I worked up this water cooling jacket out of PVC pipe.
I'm going to put rounds out until the barrel glows red hot.
Police ribs will crack under their Kevlar wrappers, chewy candy centers of moral correctness and I'll ask the questions here.
I'm going to shoot from under my heavy steel roof until the steam whistles from the escape valve on my cooling jacket like a teakettle that says you better snatch me off the stove motherfucker because I'm boiling and everything inside me is changing from a liquid to a gas that demands dissipation because that is the heat law.
I will shoot from under this new roof new home until they begin shooting back with hundreds of ferreting tear gas rounds like I'm an apache up a canyon and they are going to smoke me out but I will sing the enemies song and say let them not see me because I am of the sun. I am of the sun. I am of the sun.
I am going to shoot until they have no option. I am going to shoot until I glow like metal become plastic. I am going to shoot until I hear the heavy rotorwash on my metal roof, and I hear the heavy sound of a duffle bag falling, loaded with 200 pounds of Tovex gelatin dynamite from the Dupont corporation, on a thirty second fuse, and I will become a liquid changing into a statistical gas that can move across the radio spectrum as a hope that refuses to be contained.
Happy birthday.