Free Harsh Oases by Paul di Filippo Page A

old National Lampoon , wherein the advertising icon Mr. Peanut goes on a mad crime spree.
    That’s probably just a meme at work in me.
     
    BAD BELIEFS
     
     
    I had kept putting off my quarterly mandatory visit to the local branch of the Department of Memes, and now I couldn’t leave the house because of all the Bad Beliefs hanging around on my doorstep.
    Don’t ask me why I had neglected my checkup and inoculations, because I can’t tell you. I know it’s every citizen’s civic duty to keep his antimeme vaccinations up to date. But some perverse streak inside me (possibly, now that I think about it, an anti-antimeme meme) made me keep postponing my appointment until it was just too late.
    Maybe it was the way the nurse had treated me the last time I went to the DOM clinic. She was very pretty, and I wanted to like her. But she regarded me as if I were a leper, just because I was diagnosed as having a mild case of Yuppie Flu. With a look of absolute distaste, as if she had swallowed a fly, she boosted the volume on her white noise earphones and clicked down heavy filters on her protective goggles. I felt like a criminal.
    Or maybe it was the supercilious way the doctor talked to me as he hefted the heavy needle whose tip dripped with antimeme juice. He was the kind of doctor who wore his degrees like a thousand-dollar suit.
    “I’m afraid you’ve got a very bad complex this time, son. On top of the Yuppie Flu, the tests show definite traces of Someone Else Will Pick Up My Litter, Bodybuilders Are Godlike, and Elvis Lives.”
    “But Elvis does live!” I said.
    The doctor just clucked his tongue chidingly while the buzzing, shortsighted nurse swabbed down my right ass cheek with antiseptic. Then he jabbed the needle in, and it really hurt.
    For a whole day afterwards I was very disoriented. As the serum surged through my brain, driving out all the bad memes inside, I experienced frequent hallucinations. Most of these involved a pumped-up Elvis driving a pink BMW while throwing empty soda-cans out the window.
    After twenty-four hours, I was back to normal. Or at least what I had to assume was normal. It was so hard to tell these days. I felt a weird compulsion to pay my taxes early, and that kind of pissed me off. The government isn’t supposed to put any proactive memes of their own into our shots, but you can’t tell me that they don’t. I’ve had several pacifist friends who have just upped and joined the Armed Forces without even saying goodbye.
    Anyhow, for whatever reason—whether out of sheer stubbornness or actual meme infection—I delayed my next shot until the last possible minute and well beyond. And now I was paying the price.
    Besides the antimeme components specific to a patient’s unique illness, each tailored shot contained a general-purpose booster that protected you from a wide range of memes. Mine had run out. That was why all the Bad Beliefs were now camped on my doorstep.
    They seemed to be able to sense when a person was vulnerable, and tended to congregate around a victim’s house. Generally, what with every responsible citizen being well and frequently inoculated, you didn’t see many Bad Beliefs in the good neighborhoods. Oh, sure, you might spot Don’t Mow the Lawn or Thumbsucking Is Cute hanging around, but that was about as bad as it got out in the ’burbs where I lived. In the quarantined inner-city ghettos though, where people disdained DOM and their shots—man, that was another story. You tried to avoid those places if you could. The streets were full of Bad Beliefs of every conceivable variety, and there was no telling what you could pick up.
    Now, though, I was the source of contagion.
    Why, oh why, hadn’t I just gone in for my shot …?
    With a start, I realized that I was falling prey to Crying Over Spilt Milk Will Help. That meme had been one of the first to arrive, and was surely still out there now. Or was it? Maybe they had all gone .…
    I crossed my living room