logodrome

[logodrome]

Prayer

Interesting conversation the other day. But first, Jessa the nurse took me on a mini-adventure. When time came for my morning walk around the hospital hallways (exercise is good for patients waiting for a transplant), she strode into my room and said: "Want to see where the rich people live?"

The seventeenth floor. Up, up near the sky, which makes sense, of course. I stood in a sunlit atrium looking at the tastefully decorated walls, the plants, the marble floor. The hallways in the patient unit were wide and uncluttered (mine always have rolling beds, carts and medical equipment and other accretions clogging the path). As we were passing by the kitchenette, Jessa looked around furtively and half-whispered to me: "You want some gelato?"

Surprised, all I managed was an emphatic "Yuh!"

She walked into the kitchenette, looking like she belonged, calmly removed two small cups from the freezer and came back out.

"Here, put this in your pocket."

Pockets heavy with purloined treats, we retreated to the humble confines of the fifth floor. The path back to my room took us through the surgery recovery area. Most of the wide doors to the patient rooms stood half-open, their curtains drawn to the side. I kept my eyes resolutely on the path ahead, however, and refused to peek at the visions of the future.

I did not succeed fully. As we passed by one of the rooms, Jessa remarked: "He just got his heart the other day." I looked up and caught a glimpse of a male figure seated in an armchair, with a seemingly endless number of tubes coming out of his body and disappearing into hungry machines. A couple more steps, and I could not see him anymore.

Another nurse came out of his room at spoke quietly to Jessa. She walked inside, then came out again. They spoke some some. Then both turned to me. "He'd like to talk to you," Jessa said.

"What do you mean?"

"We just told him you are waiting for a heart as well. He'd like to meet you. He says you can ask him anything."

I did not want to ask anybody anything. I wanted to continue walking back to my room. Once there, I will ask them to shut the glass doors tight and close the curtain, so the rest of the ICU disappears from my view and I disappear from it, and maybe I could just sit by the window, gaze thoughtlessly out on the East River, eat my blood-orange gelato and try to forget about the tube protruding from my own chest or the fact that without allowing them to violate my body in a way that makes me want to wail with repulsion and fear, my life is over.

"What's his name?" I asked.

"Andre."

"Please tell him I'll talk to him later. My mind has just gone blank."

"No pressure," Jessa said gently. "You don't have to do this. Or you can write a message on a piece of paper and we'll take it to him, and he could write a reply."

"I'll think about it," I said.

I walked into Andre's room two hours later. He sent his nurse to check on me in case I wanted to come. He stayed out of bed just so he could meet me and shake my hand, she said. I couldn't refuse.

He was a black guy with big lips and gentle eyes. There was a small scar on his head that would pulse when he spoke, inflating and deflating as if there were no bone underneath, as if there were an open crack there just barely covered with skin. I avoided looking at it and tried to stifle a shameful wave of revulsion that washed over me. This man has been nothing but kind, I told myself. Try to deserve this kindness.

"Hello," I said stiffly, shaking his glove-covered hand. "Thank you so much for meeting with me."

His voice was so weak it barely rose above a whisper. "I just wanted to tell you," he said. "You will be well."

"Thanks," I said and tried to figure out what to say next.

He reached out his hand again. After staring at it for a second, I took it into both my hands; somehow it seemed like the right thing to do.

"You will be well," he repeated and smiled.

"Thank you," I said again and arranged my face into my best expression of sincere gratitude; this also seemed like the right thing to do. This is maudlin, I thought, and then immediately: what kind of a soulless bastard are you? Why does this not move you? The nurses outside the door watched on reverently.

"You will be well," said Andre and smiled again.

"It means so much coming from you. I hope you will be recovering very quickly. It's so important for me to hear these words from you."

"Let's pray," he said and I thought, "Of course."

"Oh Lord," he started, his hand still clasped in both of mine. "Ease this man's fears, help him see the light and help him see that he will be well. For he will be well. Oh Lord our God, with your mighty power protect him and guide him, and make sure that his surgery delivers him, and make sure that he will be well. Oh mighty Savior - "

And so on. This took five minutes, as I stood solemnly over him and tried to look away from the Swan tube embedded in his jugular, from that scar. Once he was done, I mouthed a polite "Amen" and said my goodbyes. He was spent and needed rest, anyway.

Back in my room, I thought: this man is just one day out of surgery. How does he know we will all be well? He repeated it so fervently throughout our conversation. Perhaps he was really praying for himself?

[logodrome]

Knowledge

Now I know why the best diaries are written by young people. As you age and the body betrays you, bit by bit, your mind turns inward, toward the suffering of the self. That’s why conversations with old people are full of litanies of their aches and pains, the tedious play-by-play of slow disintegration.

[logodrome]

(From the notebook)

There is something egotistical and self-absorbed about keeping up with the cutting edge in indie music. The taste in music you display is not private; it’s a signal supposed to impress your peer group with its discernment of the esoteric and obscure, its ability to see genius hidden from others, thus elevating you above others in your sophistication (hence the cliche “I like this band; you probably haven’t heard of them”; it’s not at all self-deprecation but an insult, a verbal elevation of oneself over you). Ultimately, it’s meant to establish one’s coolness, and coolness always implies detachment from others, a distance from their foibles. Life’s problems may fell them, because they are more flawed, but not you, because you don’t give a fuck. It’s a species of sainthood.

Parenthood is emotionally poorly compatible with this stance. A detached parent is a bad parent; instead of trying to distance oneself from life’s problems (dirty diapers, say) one must dive right into them. It’s the parent’s duty to solve these problems. “Cool dad” is a concept that has the sheen of ridiculousness for this very reason.

[logodrome]

Signs

The words came out all garbled, mere verbal mush.  “This is odd,” I thought as time seemed to dilate and reality flattened out, becoming a facsimile of itself.  An imitation of my son was holding up an imitation of a Lego train saying “Look at what I have, papa!”  My brain contained the words of response, yet my mouth could not give them shape.

My mother was repeating: “Are you all right?  What’s wrong?” with concern in her voice turning into panic.

“Ah fweel dizz,” I managed, and sat down.  I did not feel dizzy.  Explaining what I actually felt, however, would have taken more words than I could manage at the moment.

“Is this better?” asked my sister.  She, too, looked concerned.  To my relief, after a moment’s struggle, I uttered almost without slurring: “Yes, I feel better.” That was the truth.

Back in LA, a doctor pointed at a white spot on a darkened picture of my brain and said: “This is where you had your stroke.  Lucky for you, it was tiny.”  He flipped to another picture and tapped on another white spot.  “Here was another one.”

Two months ago, my left arm suddenly went numb. For about thirty minutes, shaking hands with myself felt like shaking the hand of a stranger. Feeling returned to the arm and I forgot all about it.

“We need to find out what’s causing this,” the doctor said.

During my first ever hospital stay, I discover several unsettling facts about being a patient. They cart you around in a wheelchair or on a gurney even if you are an (almost) hale (almost) young man perfectly capable of walking on his own. You have to ask for a permission to take a shower. You have to pee in a bottle so they can monitor your fluids for reasons unknown. They wake you up every four hours at night to check your vitals. And, most annoying of all, an IV needle goes into your arm and stays there for the duration of your stay. They can tap your blood flow at any moment, and they do mine, in copious amounts, for numerous tests. My days are spend reading Herbert Simon’s “Administrative Behavior” (the most boring book ever written) and lying in tight spaces being scanned by humming machinery.

I discover several facts about myself. My arteries are “clean as a whistle”. I do not have a brain tumor. My heart, however, is swollen, and pumping at half its normal strength, and straying from its regular beat with alarming frequency.

To my inevitable barrage of why’s, the doctor can only shrug. The exact causes are unclear, as are my chances of recovery. This is confusing, because despite all the doom and gloom, I feel like a million bucks. And yet a device that can deliver an electric shock down a wire threaded through a vein and buried in my heart muscle may need to be implanted in my chest at the end of the observation period. I google the accounts of those in whom the device misfired, so they actually felt the shock. It’s described as being kicked in the chest by a horse.

On a California Thursday, sunny like all California Thursdays, I walk out of the hospital building. I sit in my car for a bit and think how my life may suddenly have an identifiable before and after.

[logodrome]

Love’s labour’s lost. When gloomy scruples beckon, When every word is either blunt or sharp, A cudgel or a knife; when all I reckon To hide under my uncle's oft-used tarp Is not a body dead but my bedraggled soul Soupless and chickenless, a blighted smudge Upon the universal pavement -- who will judge Me harshly if I'd rather simply bowl?

[logodrome]

Los Angeles, CA

Nobody uses turn signals when driving here. Everybody drives. Everywhere is far. Yesterday, I sat behind a woman busy texting in a turn-only lane while the guarded right light was telling her to go. People honked and honked and honked. The Mercedes behind me, unwilling to suffer the indignity, broke ranks, screeched around to the head of the queue and apoplectically made the turn. Funny how you can tell emotion from the way a car moves. The woman calmly finished texting and made the turn just as the light changed from yellow to red.

[logodrome]

Oakley, KS

Rolling fields under the scorching sun, shadeless. Wind strong enough to make you strain against it as you walk to the doors of the motel. The pervasive smell of manure in the air. At the Buffalo Bill Grill on the desolate main drag that begs for an Ennio Morricone soundtrack, grizzled men with working-class guts sport honest-to-god leather vests and the menu features Rocky Mountain oysters. This is almost too perfect to be a real place.

[logodrome]

Is Scorning Bigots Justified?

Person A holds negative opinion on class of people X. The source of negative opinion is either emotional or rational. If emotional, cannot be controlled (impulse), can only be conditioned away. If rational, can be argued against. If A persists after irrefutable argument, then A's response is not rational but emotional, q.v.

Assume everyone else likes X and thinks they should be held in higher regard. Ergo, disdain for A when he expresses his unpopular POV. But why? If A's opinion is emotional, he cannot control it; it's probably a product of circumstances external to A; A was conditioned and can be deconditioned (presumably). If A's opinion is rational, then providing convincing rational arguments should be enough to change it; no disdain necessary; in fact, it's counterproductive b/c may introduce emotional coloring to A's hitherto dispassionate views. If no convincing rational argument can be found, then perhaps instead of disdaining A, one should take a long hard look at one's own opinions.

Not what we see in real life, of course. Why? B/c same emotional/rational dichotomy applies to opinion on A's opinion (meta).

The concept of "bigot" is like the concept of "monster" - in the eye of the beholder. Bigot is a species of monster.

[logodrome]

Day to day I have to make all sorts of choices about what is good and important and fun, and then I have to live with the forfeiture of all the other options those choices foreclose. And I'm starting to see how as time gains momentum my choices will narrow and their foreclosures multiply exponentially until I arrive at some point on some branch of all life's sumptuous branching complexity at which I am finally locked in and stuck on one path and time speeds me through stages of stasis and atrophy and decay until I go down for the third time, all struggle for naught, drowned by time. It is dreadful. But since it's my own choices that'll lock me in, it seems unavoidable--if I want to be any kind of grownup, I have to make choices and regret foreclosures and try to live with them.

David Foster Wallace, "A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again"

Writing > Translation > Quotation, a slide down the slope of manifest creative impotence. But what choice do I have faced with a perfect reflection of myself in another's words?

[logodrome]

Januariad 2014 Favorites

As tradition dictates, I have chosen three favorite stories from each of my fellow Januariad 2014 sufferers participants.  Here they are, in no particular order:

Jack Rusher

http://blog.jackrusher.com/post/72814692041/blue-eyes-flashed-hot-leaving-every-pink-part-of

http://blog.jackrusher.com/post/72911907459/the-program-started-off-with-a-bang-a-big-bang

http://blog.jackrusher.com/post/75092408355/mortimer-had-a-common-new-york-problem-plastic

Marde and Arbiwale

http://mmichaelmcelroy.tumblr.com/post/74998410279/claim-your-dead

http://mmichaelmcelroy.tumblr.com/post/74192009294/a-bow-and-arrows

http://mmichaelmcelroy.tumblr.com/post/72711696955/my-wife-in-her-garden

The Januaryist

http://thejanuaryist.tumblr.com/post/73263206430/spring-chickens

http://thejanuaryist.tumblr.com/post/73569368071/i-know-who-you-are

http://thejanuaryist.tumblr.com/post/74011005695/the-red-planet

Porter's Notebook

http://portersnotebook.tumblr.com/post/72599335534/you-could-be-sentimental

http://portersnotebook.tumblr.com/post/72684385557/you-could-be-sentimental-part-ii

http://portersnotebook.tumblr.com/post/74150562638/just-one-line-hed-aged-years-past-friday

http://portersnotebook.tumblr.com/post/72826584498/a-quiet-place-just-to-sit

Mollycule Theory

http://mollyculetheory.tumblr.com/post/74134347518/2014-she-ducks-head-into-fur-collar-and-cuts

http://mollyculetheory.tumblr.com/post/73368502856/mollycule-and-the-three-bear-stories

http://mollyculetheory.tumblr.com/post/74912254929/do-you-remember-what-it-feels-like-to-be-cold

Januariad Barnacle

http://januariadbarnacle.tumblr.com/post/72647276322/izmirs-coal-fog-is-lithe-and-gray-and

http://januariadbarnacle.tumblr.com/post/72479004026/inspiration-came-to-him-in-dreams-not-by

http://januariadbarnacle.tumblr.com/post/75199223651/in-favor-of-winter

[logodrome]

An Intellectual Slave Owner's Dilemma

In a benighted place, in a benighted time:

--Hello, little boy.

...

--Hello, little boy!

--I am a fireman.

--What? Yeah, sure, okay, that's great. What's your name?

--It's a big truck. Monkey drive a fire truck. It goes wheeeee-ooooh.

--Jesus! I said, what's your name?

--You're a monkey!

--No, I am your owner. And you are my slave. You're gonna be working for me, understand?

--Funny monkey.

--You are turning three years old. That means you're going to develop psychologically to where you comprehend cause and effect.

--Why?

--Exactly! See? You're asking all these "why" questions because you're beginning to establish logical connections between antecedents and consequents. That means you'll be able to start performing simple tasks, so we can put you to work.

--Why?

--What do you mean, why? So you're not just sitting around consuming my resources. I'm a slave owner, not your benefactor.

--Why?

--Because this is what I do. I own slaves.

--Why?

--I gotta make a living somehow. Some people practice law; some people make watches; some people write books. I own people as property.

--Why?

--Well, I suppose I just fell into it. I wanted to be an opera singer; a baritone. People said I had what it took to make it. But it's such a thankless occupation. Here, listen to this: Là ci darem la mano...

--I wanna go potty.

--What? Hell, just hold it in. I'll let you go in a second. I just need you to understand that you'll be put to work in a week.

--Why?

--Didn't you hear anything I've said? Because you're my slave, that's why.

--Why?

--You were just born this way.

--Why?

--Oh, Jeez, I don't know. Societal convention. Some people are born with lower status than others. Don't ask me why; I could never understand the underlying logic myself. It's just the way it is.

--Why?

--Shh… Kid, you gotta be careful. Questioning the established social order is asking for trouble. I'm pretty liberal as slave owners go, but I gotta warn you: this won't lead to any good.

--Why?

--Because there are powerful interests with much at stake. They won't be happy if the order gets upset. You just can't get around them.

--Why?

--Hmm. Are you implying that one can get around them? Perhaps not challenge them head on; perhaps change little things, the things we have the power to change. Clean up your own house instead of pitching at the whole edifice of questionable practices. Il faut cultiver notre jardin.

--Are you a fireman?

--I'm a slave owner. But I see your point. Do I have to be a slave owner? Do you have to be my slave? These are the things I can change. I may have been lulled into complacency by my success at exploiting people. Is it time to make a change? Should I start with you? … What's this smell?

--I go potty!

--Jesus, Mary and Joseph! Hey, somebody… Nanny? Caretaker? Please take this child. He needs assistance. Thank you, little boy, this was a very informative conversation. I've got some thinking to do. Nanny?!

--Funny monkey!

[logodrome]

Someday my son, who is about to turn three, will be grown. He will find this website. (Perhaps he will click on a bookmark that survived several generations of family computers, preserved by faithful backup utilities; perhaps he will google something that he heard from me and stumble across it; perhaps my very memories will be indexed and searchable at that point). He will find this site; he might even read it. Afterwards, he'll come to me with questions.

"Did you really write all that, papa?"

Yes. Some of it I probably shouldn't have, but it's too late now.

"Was it hard?"

It was a pain in the ass. But I did it, on and off, for ten years, ever since a Saturday brunch in long-gone cafe on the Lower East Side in December 2003, where myself, and J. and P. egged each other on to the point of an actual resolution. One story per day for a whole month. Of all the stupid things to try...

"Why did you do it?"

Just for the hell of it, initially. Because it was a dare, and I was young and had free time on my hands. Because I imagined a reader, a bright-eyed pretty girl somewhere in the digital ether, engrossed in my words, smiling. Don't tell your mother.

"Did it turn out okay?"

More than okay. I have learned that I could write faster, better. I have learned that I could write. And I have met some cool people along the way.

"Why did you stop?"

I wouldn't know what to think in response to that one. Perhaps a slight pang of regret will go through me. Perhaps I'll be indifferent. After all, the roof of the condo is leaking, and my retirement account has taken a hit in the bear market, and my cholesterol is high...

Perhaps later that day, I will sneak away to a quiet place, pick up a pen and a piece of paper, and sit, and stare at the white space with the same dread that paralyzed me always. Except, that is, in those hateful, wonderful months that left no room for it.

In the meantime, my son will log into a parent rating site and maybe, just maybe, upvote me for this.

We end this tale by writing Fin The subtlest ending known to man

R.K.

[logodrome]

Half-face

Dean woke up one day to discover that half his face was gone.

He seemed older and fatter, too: his hair salt-and-pepper in color instead of its usual brown, his stomach jutting out in a soft paunch. But nothing compared to the horror of his face. The left eye was missing, its empty socket grown over with a burl of creased scar tissue. The left cheek was sunken in and unnaturally smooth. A scar ringed it--the boundary of a skin transplant, he knew, although the source of this knowledge escaped him.

Hurried footsteps that he recognized as his mother's approached the door but he ran up to it first and pressed the lock button. A second later, his mother tried to turn the handle.

"Dean," she called anxiously. "Dean, honey, are you all right?"

"You can't come in, ma," he managed in a strangled voice. "Something's happened to me. Something-- Just-- You can't come in."

He heard his father's shuffling walk approaching to join his mother. "Is he up?"

"Yes," she replied. "He's very upset. It's just like they said it would be."

Another knock came from the door, this one louder and more direct.

"Dean, this is me," his father said. "Listen, we know what's happening, okay? We know about your face. We know that you are confused right now. Please let us in, son."

"What the hell do you know?" Dean asked, astonished. "What is this?"

"Let us in, son," his father repeated. "Just let us come in; we'll explain everything."

He stared for a moment at his reflection, unable to move, shocked, scared. Then he picked up a pillow and opened the door holding it up to cover the worst of the damage. The exposed half of his face was almost unrecognizable with anguish; his mother gasped and started to cry at the look of him.

"Here," father said. "Come to the kitchen. Lucy, pour him something to drink."

"I don't want a drink." He might have to take that pillow off his face to take a sip. "What has happened to me?"

"Sit," father said, and added after Dean sat down: "Do you remember anything? Anything that has to do with your face?"

Was he supposed to? This thought had scared him even more.

"No."

"Do you remember going to war?"

The war… Some vague memories stirred in his head: heat and dust of the desert; a bleak, bleached landscape; concrete skeletons of bombed-out buildings; running, shouting; tents flapping in the wind. The weight of a gun in his hand; the weight of the gear on his back. Did he dream this? Did he see this in a movie?

"I... think so."

"You were wounded. We don't know how; when they found you, everyone else in your company was dead. It was a miracle they saved you."

"What are you talking about?" Dean said. "I don't remember any of this."

"Well, that's just the--"

"I feel no pain. And the scars look old. When was this supposed to have happened?"

"Five years ago," father said.

It took him a moment to process. Five years ago he would have been fifteen. Did they let fifteen-year-olds enlist now?

"How old am I?" he asked.

His parents exchanged a strange look.

"Is this normal?" mother asked. "Did they overdo it?"

"They said they'd have to get some things not directly related to the incident," father replied. "It's like pulling roots out; everything's connected. Also, some of the loss is just an immediate after-effect; he'll get better as it wears off."

"Was I in some kind of treatment?" Dean asked. "Did my brain get damaged? How old am I, dammit?"

"You're twenty five, son. And no, your brain did not get damaged. You were lucky that way, I guess."

Twenty five?!

"Why can't I remember anything?"

Another strange look.

"The government… they offered the therapy to you free of charge," mother said. "A veteran's benefit."

"What kind of--"

"Your memory, Dean," father said. "They purged your memory of whatever happened there, that day. Actually, they told us they'd pull out more than that: everything that was making you sick, everything that was troubling you."

Feeling exhausted from the relentless barrage of surprises, he asked: "How---? What---? You let somebody mess with my head?"

His mother burst into tears again. His father pursed his lips and said sternly: "You let them do it, Dean. And yes, we supported this decision. I'd rather see you sitting here confused and angry than dead from drink before you're thirty."

"What are you talking about?"

This was going to be the question of the day. Mother answered.

"We tried to carry on through it all, honey. The sleepwalking, the screaming nightmares at night, the depression, the way you stopped washing, talking, even reacting to words sometimes. But to find you passed out on the floor with a bottle every night--"

"Something had to be done," father said. "This war didn't kill you quickly, so it was going to kill you slowly. We talked about it; you agreed. You even recorded a message to yourself: just look on the computer in your room."

Dean asked in a colorless voice: "What did I say?"

"I don't know. We didn't listen to it. You told us not to. This is between you and… you."

He sat quietly under their worried gaze, trying to wrap his mind around what they just told him. Something horrible had happened, something that crippled him from the inside. He did not feel crippled right now. So the treatment must have worked. Perhaps it was only a matter of time before the sickness returned. Would his message to himself speed up this relapse? Or would seeing his former, more wretched self reassure him that he made the right choice? He suddenly realized that the horror did not leave him. It had mutated: instead of living with the knowledge of what had happened, he now had to live with the absence of that knowledge and the awful fear of ever finding out.

"You can put down that pillow, honey," mother said. "We know what's under there. It doesn't scare us. We love you so much, little one!"

[logodrome]

Reality (part 2, final)

<< part 1

"All right, Chip. You have two minutes; explain yourself, and this better be good."

"The company was foundering," Clarence says hurriedly. "They'd gone through five CEO's in three years. The board knew that they were in a death spiral. The only thing that could have saved them was the right person at the helm, but there was no one available who was up to the task."

"Go on," I say.

"So they made the right person up instead. Or some scientists and psychologists somewhere made you up; you were designed to be the perfect CEO. They needed somebody ruthless, somebody with ice in his veins, with perfect recall and superior strategic thinking, somebody who would show no weakness, give no quarter. Someone who could fire sixty thousand people in the morning and then go play a game of golf without compunction in the afternoon."

"You flatter me, Chip."

"Now is not the time to be glib. You have turned this company around, yes. You are also probably the most hated person in the country, if not the world, at the moment."

"Be that as it may," he says stubbornly, "I am telling you the truth."

"I have a wife and kids," I remind him. "Are they an illusion, too?"

"Actors."

"Don't be ridiculous, Chip."

"Then how come you have no childhood memories? I know you don't; I sneaked a look at your profile. Your mother? Your father?"

I say: "I don't know what you're talking about."

"Where did you go to school? Who was your first love? What color where the walls in your childhood bedroom?"

I say: "I don't know what you're talking about."

"How about you first time, eh? Was she a blonde or a brunette?"

I say: "I don't know what you're talking about."

"Who's being ridiculous now?" says Clarence.

I say: "Your two minutes are up. Tell me, why did you come here with this cockamamie story in the first place?"

"Because with Justin at the helm, we're gonna sink again. He's a twit. He'll wreck everything that you've built up."

"My superior strategic thinking disagrees. I can also guess at the rest of your story: you should be the big swinging dick; not Justin."

"I would keep you running," he says quietly. "Together, we could do even greater things than before. You're programmed to be flexible and adaptable; I know you have the ability to admit your own nature and factor it into your decisions. We could be unstoppable."

I say nothing and turn away from him to face the desk. My head is empty again. My hear rate hovers around 60 beats per minute.

"What do you say?" This is a hopeful question, but the hint of defeat has already crept into Clarence's voice.

"You need a vacation, Chip."

He does not protest, does not argue. He knows better than to test the finality in my voice. As he heads for the door, he pauses and looks at me again.

"You really are the perfect CEO, aren't you?" There is a trace of admiration in his voice. "Not a single doubt."

The door closes behind him and I call up Kingdom, a top-level management application with key executive functions and monitoring modules. It is the conduit of my will through the company networks. I find Clarence's profile and sit for a moment in hesitation. Then I click the button and terminate his run.

"Sorry, Chip," I say to the screen. "You have outlived your usefulness." Who could have thought a simulation could get so unstable? Planning a corporate coup! Our next general counsel will need much tighter parameters.

As I wait for the minutes to pass until that moment when I am authoritatively late to the meeting, I content myself with rocking gently in the chair. The truth is, I have concluded that Clarence very well may have been right about me. Yet another truth is that I simply don't care. Reality is given to us through perceptions, and my perceptions are directly at odds with his account. There may be (there quite likely are) parts of reality that are actually unreal; as long as I can convince myself and others that they can be exploited, they are profitable and therefore as real as anything that I care about in this world. Seeming is as good as being for as long as one cannot tell the difference. So I rock gently in the chair and my heart rate never deviates from 60 beats per minute.

The clock says eight a.m.

[logodrome]

Reality (part 1)

The clock says seven thirty a.m. I sit in my office on the eighty seventh floor and survey the stalagmitic outgrowths of Manhattan's real estate below. My eyes are half-closed; my head is empty. Even without checking my pulse, I know that my heart rate hovers around 60 beats per minute. When the clock shows eight-oh-five, I shall exit the office, take the executive elevator two floors down and walk into a waiting board meeting. There, I shall name Justin Monroe our next COO.

The door behind me opens. I call out without turning around, even before the person has the chance to say anything: "Come in, Chip."

"There's no sneaking up on you, is there?" says Clarence Delahunt III, the company's general counsel.

"Sure." Clarence's enormous body settles into the leather chair. He dithers for a moment, then says: "Don't promote Justin today."

Slowly, I turn around. My head is no longer empty; I am now partially paying attention to this conversation.

"What makes you think I am going to promote him?"

Clarence fidgets and wipes off his brow with a white hankie. His breathing is always heavy; he always sweats rivers. It occurs to me that this is a good disguise: you never know whether the man is truly nervous or just fending off a heart attack.

"You are going to name Justin COO," he says finally, looking straight at me. "And that'll be a big mistake."

"How so?"

"You're not going to believe me," he says, and sighs. "But I gotta try."

I sit and wait.

"He's going to switch you off."

I slowly rotate my chair back to face the window and say nothing.

Behind me, there is a sound of a fat man scrambling to his feet. Clarence comes around the table and stands to my left, where I cannot help but see him.

"Please, listen to me," he says urgently. "The reality of what you do... of what you are... isn't at all what you think."

"You need a vacation, Chip," I say. "You have worked hard these last couple of months. Why don't you take some time off?"

"You don't get it!" he cries. "You're not a real CEO. You're not a real anything. You're a bloody simulation. And you've just about outlived your usefulness to the people who initialized you in the first place. Once Justin becomes COO, he gets the keys to the Kingdom. That's all he wants. The first thing he will do after he logs in is quit you."

He is very agitated, looking even more apoplectic than usual. I see that ignoring him will not help this time. I engage him instead.

part 2 >>

[logodrome]

A comet appears in the sky, piercing, luminous, and humanity sinks into stock-taking and introspection punctuated with skull-bashing and looting. The end of the world is nigh. Some kill, others repent. Some find religion, others renounce it. Governments try to maintain order but it is slipping, slipping, slipped away and gone, coat tails flapping in the winds of change, mix me a metaphor, buy me a cheap beer. A writer sits down to fix on paper the future where it all turns out all right, ends up being a joke, or a dream, or a hacker collective finally having plugged into the software of the universe just fucking around and standing ready to avert the shining hurtling death with a couple of keystrokes at the last moment. He does not get the chance to finish.

[logodrome]

The Human Key (part 2, final)

<< part 1

When Li came to, the chamber was lit again. Several torches burned in bronze holders set around him. He tried to raise his head, tried to sit up, but his body would not obey. His hands and feet were bound by hemp rope, the kind the workers used to haul stone blocks away from the excavation site.

"Extract of hemlock," a voice came from beyond the circle of torchlight. Out of the shadows, the Baron stepped into the light. His face was impassive. "A diluted solution: too much of it would stop your breathing, and that simply won't do. This way, you are merely weakened; the ropes will hold you in place but you won't put up much of a struggle even once I take them off."

Li made a sound like a cow lowing. His eyes rotated from side to side.

"Why do this, you ask?" The Baron leaned in close to Li's face. "An excellent question."

With his right hand, he pulled up Li's shirt. A large birthmark in the shape of a septagram was visible on the Chinaman's stomach.

"Remember when I hired you, my dear Li? Do you remember the advertisement you have replied to, the one in the Nanking Times, all those years ago? It was unusual, wasn't it, a man looking for a servant with some very particular physical characteristics? But I found you!" The Baron's face contorted into a grimace. He leaned in closer still and breathed with demented intensity into Li's face: "I couldn't tell anybody; for so, so long I couldn't utter a word about my plans to a living soul. There are seven keys, just like the vertices of this septagram, one on each of the Earth's continents. You are the Key of Asia. It took decades before I could track one of you down!"

Li writhed on the ground and moaned again. The Baron laughed. "You want to know what it is you open? That's understandable.  I would be curious, too."

He waved in the direction of the niche in the inner wall. "That's the keyhole. The legend promises unearthly powers to the one who enters--and, by Jove, I shall be that one! My companions… those bloody imbeciles! They really thought I'd let them be present at the opening."

The Baron circled to Li's head, bent down and grabbed him under the armpits. Slowly, he dragged his servant to the wall and laid him in front of the keyhole niche. Two flicks of the knife--and the restraints that bound Li's limbs fell to the floor.

"I wish I could say this wouldn't hurt," the Baron said. "Unfortunately, it is my understanding that the opening will extinguish the key. Not my fault, really; I'm not the one who put this door in. Any last words, my friend?"

Li's breathing, already labored because of the poison, became fast and erratic. He let out a stifled scream.

"I didn't think so." The Baron chuckled, pleased with his joke. "And now, my dear Li, if you don't mind--"

Grunting with effort, he lifted the Chinaman off the ground and propped him against his own body, ready to shove the helpless servant into the niche. At the last moment, Li shifted his balance to the left, pivoted around the Baron and used his master's weight to propel him forward.

Baron von Riesenschnautzer went into the niche back first. He growled in surprise and anger and tried to come out. The rock held him fast, as if by glue. A low, ominous hum rose in the air; it seemed to originate somewhere in the depths of the pyramid and reach the surface by traveling through the walls.

"What is this?" the Baron hissed. A new expression distorted his face, that of impotent fury.

Li picked up the knife from the ground. The pyramid was shaking perceptibly. Dust began to scatter from crevices overhead; the fire of the torches flickered wildly. Wordlessly he approached his master. The Baron closed his eyes in anticipation of the deadly stab.

The Chinaman cut open the Baron's shirt. A septagram birthmark bloomed like a brand on the captive man's stomach.

"You knew?!" The Baron's voice was hoarse with horror.

Li leaned in close to his ear and said: "You did not find me. I found you!"

The howl of the Key of Europe was buried in the rumble of the waking elemental force. A vertical crack appeared in the wall. It started at the ceiling and ran into the floor in a straight line along the Baron's spine.

"No," he screamed, eyes coming out of their sockets. "Please, Li, no! Help me!"

The separating halves of the great gate tore his body in two.