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The Uncool Hunters

By Andrew Dana Hudson

Before she settled down into publishing in Minneapolis, before she got taken for a ride by the Chicago AltNormLit scene, before she flared spectacularly out of Silicon Alley, and had her pilot shoot C&Ded by the City of Santa Barbara, and narrowly avoided cryptocollar prison in the floodzone formerly known as Tampa, Rocky Cornelius was a fucking uncool hunter.

She always said it like that, with the “fucking,” because it was important for people to understand how dangerous and difficult the job was. Anyone could hang out in Bed-Stuy, Kichijoji, or the 5th Arrondissement. Anyone could find dope shit, hot trends, hip sub-viral memeplexes. It took a different moxie altogether to trawl the dull edge of the economic machete and actually come to grips with the materiality of majoritarian modern life.

Way Rocky figured, the whole mid-21st century culturesensing apparatus had been fine-tuned to surface niche in-group productpractices that could be brought to masser markets. But inequality had metastasized, and societal fragmentation had reached a critical stage. Global capitalism was a bigass dinosaur with two distant brains. There was a major industry blindspot for what the hell was actually going on in the middle American consumer consciousness. In other words: what nobody was looking at was the stuff everyone was looking at.

The bobo brahmins of the retreating coastlands had no clue what the median decisionmaker of a basic income household ate, read, or dressed her three-point-two kids in. No one who worked at a Brooklyn- or Berkley-based strategy refinement firm could be arsed to take a fact-finding trip to Indianapolis, IN, Chandler, AZ, or goddamn Dubuque, IA. But those places moved units.

So that’s where Rocky Cornelius came in. Rocky had no problem walking into an undead mall where 30% of the patrons were powerwalkers and 40% were concealed carrying. Rocky had an eagle eye for generic branding and had analyzed all fifty-eight seasons of NCIS and its attendant IP multiverse. For a reasonable fee, Rocky could tell the bluechecks and one percenters just what the rest of the country spent their money on.

But market research had become highly adversarial since Rocky had first branded herself a fucking uncool hunter. Customer profiles were jealously guarded, quarterly reports spoofed and redacted and bristling with intellectual traps for gullible trendcasters. There was basically no difference in the productive capacities of the top dozen firms, so market position was attained by kicking the legs out from under the competition through corpo-psychological warfare and by stealing their sales data in the raw.

Which was how Rocky ended up crouched in the rafters of the Bloomington-Normal Costco at 4:45 in the AM, wearing her best ninja grays. When the store opened, she would count how many shoppers selected the Savory Truffle Seaweed flavored pre-popped kettle corn cylinder and how many went for the Goji Berry Glaze. She’d watch their faces make crucial consumer choices, and from their microemotes divine what they wanted, what they needed. And she’d do it without getting caught, lest she end up bag-headed in a Costco corporate black site.

Everything was going peachy until she spotted her nemesis skulking amid the supplements.

Despite being ten years her junior, Amherst Swarthmore had sniped two sweet contracts out from under her. The first time they’d met, he’d deliberately spilled kombucha all over her phone at the Succession: The Next Generation premiere afterparty. Rocky’s professional opinion was that Amherst was a liar, a sadist, and a smarm. She had once heard him brag that he’d coined the phrase ‘suburban sensationalism,’ which was plainly ridiculous to anyone who had actually studied vernacular video, which Rocky had, because she took fucking pride in her work. He was the kinda guy who would say “can I offer you a LEG in this trying time” and try to put his ankle up on your unsuspecting shoulder—non-consensual co-stretching as a social power move. He worked for the absolute least discerning consultancies and fed them only what they wanted to hear.

Now he was muscling in on her turf.

Incensed, Rocky scampered across the rafters and dropped into the seed oil aisle. She clocked that several jugs of canola now bore “Locally Cryopressed!” stickers, then darted along the back-west edge towards the pharmacy. The Costco was lit only by red emergency lights, the rattling ceiling cranes still and silent without solar power. Padding to a halt in her noise-canceling toe-slippers, she peered around a pallet of ancient grains pet chow.

Amherst was fiddling with the childproof caps on several bottles of memory disenhancing nutraceuticals. All that OTC wellness crap was outside Rocky’s remit, but still. This big box wasn’t big enough for the both of them.

“Well, if it isn’t Liberal Arts College Liberal Arts College,” Rocky said, stepping out. “You picked the wrong Costco, bub.”

Amherst startled, then composed himself. “Good to see you too, Cornelius.”

“Didn’t realize you were still in this biz. I’d assumed you’d gracefully bowed out after that conveyor sushi quinceañera fiasco. It was all over the trades.”

“You wish! I’ll have you know there are now two dozen belt-ready food trucks in Baja California alone.”

“How nice for you.” Rocky yawned, determined to get the better of this tête-à-tête.

Amherst patted his pockets, as if performatively searching for a retort. Instead he said, “I don’t suppose you have a factory grade adjustable resealer on you? I left mine in the van.”

Rocky narrowed her eyes above her small batch artisanal XN99 facemask. “What do you need it for?”

“If you must know, my client has me doing guerilla surveillance on the microbiomes of purchasers of these select brands.” He waved expansively at the myriad pills. Then he opened one fist. In his latex-gloved palm sat a trio of unassuming capsules, no doubt each containing a protein-printed lono radio transmitter, an enzyme microreactor, and a sensor package. “With that data, they’ll be able to optimize ad targeting for some of their more…habit forming snack foods.”

Rocky usually kept a professional distance while in the field—the DINER TALK Laws required it—but nonetheless she felt a certain affection for the subjects of her research. She thought of her work as illuminating the needs and desires of those millions that had little voice within the Beltway or on the Peninsula. She didn’t like to see such people get tricked, exploited, or experimented on. And it sounded like Amherst was out to do all three.

“That’s low, even for you,” she said. “Don’t think I won’t report this to the FDA!”

“Go ahead. It’s all aboveboard. In fact, it’s court mandated! All part of discovery for a bigtime merger. I’m surprised you haven’t heard about it.”

“You leave those poor memhanced kids alone,” she warned. “It’s not their fault their AMPA-glutamate receptors are all amped to hell.”

“If they don’t want to swallow my bugs, they can just read the fine print. Did you know you can nanotype whole paragraphs onto the edge of a warning label? Wonderful what the SCOTUS will agree to these days.”

“I’m serious,” Rocky said. “Take the bottles you’ve already doctored and get out.”

“Or what?” Amherst sneered.

Though Rocky detested violence, one didn’t make a habit of interviewing West Pennsylvanians about their lawn care preferences without being able to handle oneself. She stepped back into a fighting stance, coiled her muscles, eyes scanning for improvised weapons.

“I don’t want to fight you,” she said, though she did. She hated this asshole.

With portentous drama, Amherst peeled off the black scarf he wore even in the dead of summer and tossed it over the pillrack. “Then creep back to wherever you were hiding. I’ll be done in a jiff.”

“Last chance,” Rocky said. “Walk out that door. Scuttle the gig. Never darken a Costco aisle again. No one has to get hurt.”

Amherst sized her up. “You do realize I’ve got two stone and eight centimeters on you.”

Rocky found his choice of units infuriating. “And do you realize I’ve seen you at Suri Cruise’s yoga-jitsu retreat? Nice downward fucked-up dog.”

Amherst gritted his teeth. “That. Was. Cross. Training!”

“Just one question before we do this.” Rocky flexed her toes and cracked her knuckles. “Who’s your client?”

“Why do you care?” Every word out of her nemesis’s mouth was a vocal fried pout. “You’d never work for McKinsey, Grimes, & Hoolihan.”

“I just need to know who to bill,” Rocky said. “For when my podiatrist has to remove your teeth from my foot!” And she aimed a roundhouse kick at his head.

Rocky had never seen Amherst in action before. Their battles had always been in the demilitarized zones of the boardroom, the green room, the cocktail bar, the airport terminal business lounge. Turns out he was fast and wiry strong. He dodged back and pulled the rack of supplements off balance. Rocky fell, throwing her arms over her head as jumbo bottles of oscillococcinum gummies and BroBiotic^TM chewables rained down.

Rocky was frankly shocked. It was one thing to collect data or even tamper with products. And light dueling was a frowned-on but accepted part of life for any species of freelance consultant. But to disrupt the normal flow of commerce with such wanton property damage—that was way against the unspoken, unwritten, but (Rocky was sure) universally understood rules of the uncool hunter professional code. This mess would take a stockbot hours to clean up. Costco might have to call in human employees. They might have to close the whole health and hygiene department!

“Let’s see you find my trackers now!” Amherst shouted as he danced tauntingly away, knocking over two stands of seal hair toothbrush multipacks. Rocky let out a guttural growl and gave chase.

She pursued Amherst out of the pharmacy and into the darkened rows of packaged foods. He’d strewn more commodities behind him, and she had to slow to avoid tripping on the thick boxes of dirty chai pocky and vacuum-sealed bags of habanero-honey durian crisps. Rocky resigned herself to the destruction. She’d tear up this whole store if it meant wringing Amherst’s smug neck.

In canned goods they turned to projectile war, grabbing tins of plant-based SPAM and hand-rolled microdolmades and hurling them like a mean, ice-hard snowball fight. Glass shattered when their aim went wild, spilling sticky, spicy ginger mayo and high-sodium soy sauce onto the woodprint linoleum floor.

“That’s for dumping kombucha on my phone!” Rocky bellowed, lobbing a jar of cinnamon-pickled dates at her enemy’s knees.

“Ugh, that was an accident,” Amherst said, pirouetting away and returning fire with spear-caught tuna. “I was mortified!”

“Oh yeah? Then why were you even talking to me?”

“Excuse me for wanting to congratulate you on your producer credit!”

In the next aisle they pelted each other with candied cantaloupe disks and freeze-dried boysenberries. Their battle briefly sprawled out of the canyons onto the open plain of the clothing racks. Rocky couldn’t help but notice that “tactical” branding had recently been replaced by “refugee tested” and “go-bag ready”—grim datapoints she’d include in her final report, should she ever get to make it. She used a fifty-pack of silver-lined compression socks as a shield, batting away the strands of self-programming Christmas lights Amhurst whipped at her from his superior position near outdoor decor.

“You know, you’re the reason I got into this line of work,” Amherst called, singsong.

“Nice try. Everyone knows you’re a nepo baby!”

“What slander! I’ll have you know I’m the child of humble wind farmers!” He grabbed a jumbo-sized bee barn and heaved it at her.

“Is that why you’re always full of hot air?” Rocky shot back, cartwheeling out of the way, wood crunching to safety-splinters where she’d been standing. She scanned for a way past his defenses. His encampment was fortified with automisting beach umbrellas and titanium grill pokers. No way she could survive a frontal assault unscathed.

So Rocky beat a tactical retreat toward the long tables of books, hoping to draw her nemesis out. It worked, and before Amherst could realize his mistake, she snatched up a pleatherbound edition of the president’s bestselling memoir and flung it at him, frisbee-style. He took it in the chest but barely staggered. This guy really had been putting in the hours at the gymcult. She grabbed more volumes and let fly with Ghost of Grisham novels, Crypto4Kids picture books, and the Justin Bieber Ten Year Special Memorial Issue of some nameless, logoless magazine. Rocky loved books, and it pained her to treat the written word this way. But thankfully not much on the table this season struck her as high literature.

“Why’d you take this whole gut tracking job, anyway?” Rocky demanded, moving on to Call of Duty novelizations. “Where’s your sense of professional ethics?”

Amherst bobbed and weaved under the fluttering fiction. “This industry is really hard to break into, okay?”

“It is,” Rocky acknowledged.

“So I took the jobs that got offered! One for them, one for me, you know?”

“More like one from me.” She tossed a seaveg cookbook at him. “You stole the Frost-Dillinger contract from me. And that Scandinavian McDonalds price fixing analysis!”

“Your rates are higher!” Amherst batted the volume away with a judo chop, closing the gap. “They went with the lower bid!”

The uncool hunters fought their way back into the trenches, trading kicks and blocks as they pushed past the animatronic mannequins that would soon be offering up toothpick samples of warm vegan cheese. Amherst shook out a huge container of lion’s mane and psilocybin microdosing mix into the air. Rocky coughed, her eyes streaming, but pressed forward through the gray powder cloud, hoping that shit wasn’t going to get her high. Rounding a corner, she saw a gleaming grin flash in her periph and on pure instinct ducked into a roll. A long, heavy sleeve of black forbidden rice whooshed inches over her head.

Her nemesis had gotten cocky, though, and had underestimated the inertia of his weapon. He stumbled. Rocky found her feet and came up right under his guard, finally landing a few body blows. Her fists hit Kevlar.

“Body armor? Really? For a Costco run?” she griped as they grappled, slamming each other against crates of drought-friendly lentil flour.

“You don’t expect me to walk around a landlocked state unprotected, do you? Cornelius, don’t tell me you’re going soft for these savages?”

“Ugh shut up! You’re cheating!”

“When have you ever cared about fighting fair?” Amherst panted, rage huffing in each breath. “You don’t like my fit, that’s fine. Just don’t get mad when I mess up your makeup!”

His left hand came up clutching a fistful of glass-sharp monkfruit sweetener cubes. Rocky felt a crunch on her face and blood welling inside and outside her cheek. She shoved away and scrambled toward the frozen foods.

Disoriented, throbbing, Rocky realized she had lost the initiative. Amherst pursued her with what felt like leisurely glee. She opened a fridge door and pulled out two extra-long quad-sticks of salted ghee, held one to her face and raised the other like a club. She backed away toward the cleaning supplies.

In the corner of her eye, Rocky saw a pale glow seep in from the distant plexiglass front doors. Soon the sun would be up, and power would begin to flow from the solar panels on the massive roof into the Costco’s automated stocking and checkout systems. Hordes of hungry, needy Sunday shoppers would swarm the aisles. They would find the uncool hunters’ winding path of ruin. They were not going to be happy. Rocky needed to end this.

“Enough of this silly food fight,” she said. “Why don’t we cut to the chase and finish things in the booze section? Everyone knows that’s where the real savings are.”

“You know, I would have been happy to buy you a drink,” Amherst scowled. “We could’ve talked shop. But no! You had to get all territorial. You have been so uncool today!”

Eyeing each other hatefully, the combatants edged around the prestige drama-themed TV meals, past the superhero-shaped birthday cakes, and into the narrower, more tastefully arranged rows of oversized wine and liquor bottles.

Amherst selected a pretentious Italian red, held it by the neck and broke the bottom off on the wooden rack. Crimson liquid splashed onto the floor like watered-down blood. Rocky did the same with a big handle of scorpion-brine mezcal. They held up their jagged shivs and faced off.

But to Rocky’s surprise, Amherst didn’t lunge at her. She didn’t move either. Seconds passed in wary waiting, then a minute. They were—both of them, she realized—a bit scared. Maybe things had gone a little too far? It would not be a good look, careerwise, for either of them to come home with a manslaughter warrant dogging their heels.
Finally, Rocky said, “You wanna get a hotdog?”

After almost three quarters of a century, Costco’s hotdog-and-soda combo still only cost a buck fifty, though inflation and the abolition of coinage meant that you had to buy two at a time. That suited the uncool hunters just fine. They put up a hand-scrawled “SORRY CLOSED” sign and barricaded the doors with supersized flatscreen TVs and 3D-printed office furniture. When the power hummed on, they got the vendingbots churning, then sat and ate their questionable imitation meat in the food court.

“Was I really the reason you became an uncool hunter?” Rocky asked.

Amherst, looking now not quite so frightening sipping his soda, didn’t answer for a long minute.

“Yeah. Five years back I was bored out of my mind doing content analytics. I was at the big Pre-Future of Post-Fun conference, and I wandered into the wrong panel discussion. And there you were, talking about how the trendsculptors had it all wrong, how the meritocratic margins weren’t producing innovation anymore, all that.”

“Wow, yeah, I remember that talk. I kinda let them have it, I do admit.”

Amherst smiled. “Well, it struck home. So I just, I dunno, followed in your footsteps, I guess? I watched your career, tried to take the same kinds of jobs you did. Maybe it was the kombucha thing, but you were always so prickly. So maybe I got a little prickly too.”

Rocky looked around at the ruined store and chuckled. “I guess we were both kinda unprofessional today. Sorry.”

“No, I’m sorry. Sorry I took this microbiome job. I let you down.”

Rocky was bruised and bloody, and her whole week’s research plan was shot. But maybe, she thought, she’d been too hard on Amherst. After all, leaving your adjustable resealer in the van was such a rookie mistake. He was clearly still trying to find his footing. He definitely needed a bit of straightening out by someone who’d been around the block. A mentor, maybe. Which would look good on her CV.

Perturbed shoppers were starting to bang and shove on the front doors, and it was just a matter of time before Costco corporate security was called in.

“Finish your hotdog, kid,” Rocky said. “I’ve got an exit up top.”

They bussed their trays and walked side-by-side through the wholesale devastation they had wrought throughout the warehouse. With a click of her remote, Rocky released her ropeline from the ceiling, and they climbed up to the rafters and out onto the black-paneled rooftop. An intense heat was already radiating off the shiny photovoltaics. Thankfully, Rocky always brought a second wingsuit with her, just in case. She showed Amherst how to strap in, and together they stepped off the roof and soared out over the vast parking lot, into the wilds of residential Illinois—uncool, but never uninteresting.

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Host Commentary

By Mur Lafferty

I have a list of stories ready when people ask me what “fun stories” means. This is a fun story. It’s somewhat dystopian and satirical, lampooning everything from market research to big box stores to health insurance, and still has a nugget of heart somewhere amid the cheap hot dogs and spilled kombucha.

Even amid the violence and market research, we get the feeling Rocky and Amherst will handle thing better now that they’re getting along. Which goes to show that even among the weirder stories, found family stories are some of the best tropes.

It’s hard to find my favorite part of this story, but I think it comes with asking your opponent how their health insurance is before attempting to kick their ass. Honor among thieves and respect among dodgy market researchers and all that.

Our quote comes from Oscar Wilde – “Always forgive your enemies; nothing annoys them so much.”

Have fun, stay safe, and stay kind!