The Story
Conspiracy Café tells the comic story of Bernie T. Urlacker, a mortician from New Jersey who, while on vacation in Las Vegas, is kidnapped by a conspiracy of beautiful women, falls in love, and saves the world from their plot to use nanotechnology to make men “more nice” with the unintended consequence of making men sterile.
Bernie T. Urlacker, a young mortician known as “a regular plastic surgeon for the dead,” has just begun his vacation in a seedy Las Vegas piano bar when he is drugged and kidnapped by Sue, a stunningly beautiful redhead.
Sue plants a computer chip in Bernie’s head that enables anyone who types a particular code into an electronic device to temporarily paralyze Bernie. Bernie is taken to the City of Arts and Sciences in Valencia, Spain, site of a sophisticated laboratory where Bernie soon realizes Sue is only one member of an entire conspiracy of beautiful women who have come up with a plan to “make all the men in the world nice” and bring an end to war.
They plan to do this by releasing a nano-virus into the world’s water supply. This virus will alter the male Y-chromosome to make men less aggressive. As a side benefit, they will also program the virus to improve male appearance. That’s where Bernie comes in. His job is to perform plastic surgery on male corpses while the chip in his brain records his actions and teaches the nano-virus how to do the same thing.
The chip has another, unintended, consequence. It enables Bernie to see the ghost of Sam, an old blues singer who died the night he had an affair with Ella, leader of the women’s conspiracy. That affair led, as these things do, to the birth of Betty. Bernie falls in love with the now adult Betty, and discovers a way to make it possible for her to see her father. The two of them intend to enable Ella to see Sam too, but are interrupted when Gladys the Robot informs them that Claudia, the genius who invented the nano-virus, has altered the programming of the virus so that it will now make men sterile. And the nano-virus has already been released! The future of the human race is at risk!
Ella, Gladys, Betty, and Bernie work frantically to warn the world via internet messages to government and news agencies. As the news spreads, many men, instead of avoiding the water, leap into it. “It’s anger management, birth control, and cosmetic surgery – all just for going swimming!” Others drink bottled water or beer. The two sides quarrel with each other and chaos spreads. Ultimately the world changes. War ends because the beautiful sterilized men make lousy soldiers and the ugly virile men are the breeding stock of the race. Ugliness becomes a sign of virility and women pursue the ugliest possible mate. Women still like the new men, but more as friends. Besides, most of the new men become either gay, crossdressers, or transwomen.
This is an especially troublesome occurrence in the Muslim world.
In the end, Gladys the Robot uses the internet to get rich, Bernie and Betty start a family, and a reunited Ella and Sam sing a bluesy love song as they all sail off into the sunset.
Then, on a rainy night, Bernie finds himself back in the bar on the gritty edge of Las Vegas. With a shock, Bernie recognizes the woman on stage singing the blues is Ella. And the black man in the corner is Sam the ghost.
Bernie hurries out of the bar and into the rainy night. Betty the bar waitress is there. She has locked her keys in the car. Bernie offers to help. Betty hesitates, then accepts. Their eyes lock. “Something told me this was the beginning of a beautiful friendship.”
The distant lights of the Las Vegas Strip twinkle through the rare desert rain like a mirage.